This Lennon interview is interesting as John refuses to provide the nice “personality” piece that the interviewer seeks, and instead challenges most questions and dismisses the rest with one-liners. John does, however, oblige the interviewer in reading one of his new poems, which would become “Neville Club” in Lennon’s first book, In His Own Write, published three months later.
Q: It’s said, John Lennon, that you have the most Goon-type humor of the four Beatles.
Lennon: Who said that?
Q: I think I read it in one of the newspapers.
Lennon: You know what the newspapers are like.
Q: I don’t know. What are they like?
Lennon: Wrong.
Q: [laughs] This is going wrong…I want to get a nice “personality” bit.
Lennon: I haven’t got a nice personality.
Q: [laughs] Is this evidence of Goon-type humor?
Lennon: No, I don’t think I really have Goon-type humor. That’s just an expression people use.
Q: What has the success you’ve enjoyed with the Beatles meant to you personally?
Lennon: More money than I had before. That’s the good bit.
Q: Is it going to make any difference to your life the way you live it after, say, this calms down…the enormous excitement you’re generating at the moment?
Lennon: I don’t know, you know. Really.
Q: Do you think your career as a comic might open up to you?
Lennon: No. [laughs] I don’t stand a chance being a comic.
Q: Why not?
Lennon: I’m not funny enough.
Q: You were interested in poetry in school.
Lennon: Who said?
Q: It’s printed in a book compiled by the Beatles and entitled, The Beatles.
Lennon: [laughs] I haven’t read that book. We don’t normally write those things.
Q: Written any good comic poems lately?
Lennon: Yes.
Q: [laughs] I just happened to have it here by sheerest coincidence.
Lennon: “Dressed in my brown…” Oh no, I’ve lost it. Hold on. I can’t read it, you see. I’ve only just written it. Well, that’s how it starts, actually!
Q: [laughs]
Lennon: “Dressed in my teenold brown sweater I easily micked with crown at Neville Club, a seemy hole. Soon all but soon people accoustic me saying such thing as ‘where the charge man?’ ” I’m turning it over… “All too soon I noticed boys and girls sitting in a hubbeled lump, smoking Hernia and taking Odeon, and getting very high. Some were only 4 foot 3 high, but he had Indian Hump which he grew in his sleep.” But things like that just help me keep sane.
Q: Is this business enough to drive you insane?
Lennon: No, I’m quite normal really. If you read in the Beatle books…it says I’m quite normal.
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