john lennon drunkingly singing yesterday and changing the lyrics to “why he had to go, i don’t know he wouldn’t say” sounds like something from a fanfiction but it really did happen like theres even a recording of it
I avoided reading memoirs by ex-Dakota employees for a long time as they seemed so depressing, and had a reputation for being distorted. But I finally decided to because it's so difficult to get anything that seems like accurate information about those years. "Official" accounts like Elliot Mintz's book are so obviously whitewashed, while Goldman's biography seems the opposite extreme - ridiculously negative. So I read Dakota Days (1983) by John Green aka Charlie Swan, one of the many tarot readers that Yoko employed in the late 1970s, and The Last Days of John Lennon (1991) by Fred Seaman, who worked as John's assistant in 1979-80 and was embroiled in an insane saga involving purloining John's diaries after his death and endless lawsuits. Both slightly disreputable characters, so obviously their accounts should be approached with healthy scepticism. The following is a review of Dakota Days; Seaman's book review will be in a later post.
With all that in mind, does Dakota Days ring true? To a certain extent, yes. Dakota Days is based on many hours of conversation between John Green and Yoko and John (separately). The book is largely made up of dialogue, the accuracy of which Green ascribes to his "excellent memory". That already sounds pretty sus - no one could remember conversations that precisely. It seems more likely that Green either (a) took notes during his conversations, which would be facilitated by many of them taking place over the phone; (b) invented the conversations wholesale based on his recollections; or (c) secretly recorded his phone calls and transcribed them. Options (a) and (c) would lend credence to claims of their accuracy, while (b) would be closer to fanfic. I can't tell which option is more likely. He does say in his introduction that he altered some things and modified timelines for readability, so he gets ahead of accusations of making it all up. I will say that his John and Yoko do largely sound like the real people. His John uses wordplay and grandstands a lot, and his Yoko is scattershot and indiscreet.
With the above caveats taken into consideration, Green's picture of JY is both interesting and perhaps more bizarre than depressing. The overwhelming sense is of two people who suffer from a chronic inability to communicate (sound familiar?) and also don't seem to understand each other on a fundamental level. One of Yoko's most frequent questions to Green is to use the cards to find out what John is thinking. She could just ask him, but seemingly such simple communication is impossible. There seems to be an assumption that neither will be honest with the other about how they really feel. John, for his part, seems to cycle between pulling away from Yoko and wanting desperately for her to give him all of her attention. Green observes a pattern where John initially gives support to Yoko when she starts a new venture, for example being the Lennon representative in business meetings with Apple, but as she gets more successful, starts pulling away and undermining her. I couldn't help but wonder if he exhibited the same behaviour in his relationship with Paul. Yoko's reaction to his mind games is to plan out things, (with input from psychics at every step) such as their summer trips to Japan, which she is sure will be great for all of them, meanwhile John is complaining that he doesn't want to go but "has to" because "that's what husbands do." Yoko just barrels on though, even when it becomes increasingly obvious her plans aren't working out (again, sound familiar??). She often says things that sound so delusional you wonder if she's being serious, but it seems she is. You get the sense of a couple that do care about each other but seem to have an image of each other in their heads that doesn't gel with their actual personalities. One of their most common appeals to Green is not to tell the other what they said in their conversation with Green, something Green only sporadically adheres to.
Green observes John go through three distinct stages: at first, in the immediate post-reconciliation period, John is running hot and cold - living in the Dakota but frequently disappearing to go out on the town, but telling Green that he has to make his marriage work this time. Sean's birth shakes things up a bit, but John appears to go into a kind of post-natal depression when the reality of caring for a small baby hits him, and he withdraws. Later he becomes more active again, and is always approaching Green with new ideas for things he wants to research and even a short-lived art project idea, while bemoaning the loss of his musical muse. On the first trip to Japan in 1977, Yoko calls Green in a panic because John has gone into some kind of catatonic state, not talking, staying in bed and making strange sounds. Eventually he comes out of it and is OK for a bit when they return, before going into what Green calls a fifteen month depression. The last stage is his rejuvenation in Bermuda and writing songs, during which Yoko is displeased and thinks that her songs are better than his. There is often a dynamic between them where if one of them is thriving, the other is suffering. Green posits himself as a savvy business guru to JY, which is probably grandstanding on his part, but he does emphasise the many times he tried to get John to be proactive in his business affairs (to no avail). Green also indicates that JY were spending way more than they were bringing in and putting themselves on the brink of ruin.
There's also the promised hi-jinks: the intricately planned but inevitably chaotic trips; the visit by Green and Yoko to a bruja in Colombia (that whole section is hysterical); Yoko's mother playing scheduling mind games with her in Japan (I guess the apple didn't fall far from the tree!). It's very funny, but also sad, as both JY took all this terribly seriously and suffered with chronic inability to make decisions without the input of various psychics, readers etc. It sounds like no way to live. Meanwhile Sean seems emotionally neglected - well-looked after by his nanny, indulged to the point of being spoiled, but with not much of a relationship with his mother. He has a closer relationship with John, but John can run hot and cold in a way that must have been very confusing for a small child. The Dakota is always full of people, but everyone living there seems fundamentally alone.
Dakota Days is famous for the section when John is calling Green to talk about Paul's Japan drug bust and arrest, worrying if he is being mistreated while repeatedly saying "Not that I care!" This conversation (if accurate) encapsulates the wildly contradictory nature of John's emotions, especially towards Paul. In the space of one breath he says that he is affected because he knew Paul "long and intimately", then says "We were never close", then caveats that with "We were never close creatively" and ends with another anxious query as to whether Paul is being mistreated. These contradictions apply to his relationship with Yoko too, as he veers between mocking her superstition to wholly believing in it, expressing aggravation and frustration with her eccentricities yet bemoaning her distance from him. Whether the conversation about Paul occurred exactly as described or is an invention based on memory, it certainly sounds realistic.
John Green remained a rather mysterious figure after the book was published, not doing a whole lot of publicity and disappearing from public view. Apparently he is dead now. That could lend credence to his claim that he wanted to publish the book to counter the "Saint John" image being promoted by the Estate in the early 80s. But his status as a disgruntled ex-employee can't be discounted either - he left (or was fired from) Yoko's employ in around 1981. So he would have motivation to exaggerate or distort. Still, the general tenor of his account jibes with others, and the picture it paints makes you rather sorry for both John and Yoko. Yoko in particular seems rather a helpless figure, veering between authoritarianism and anxiety, constantly worried about how John's moods are going to affect things and about what the outside world thinks of her. Their concerns and neuroses are the domain of the super-rich and insecure, and both seem caught in a trap of their own making.
I'd say Dakota Days is worth a read, with the caveats about its accuracy and possible agendas as noted above.
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