Lennon's downfall: Had it not been for one last touching act of love, he might still be alive today



Philip Norman - the world's foremost Beatles authority - was given hours of astonishingly candid interviews by John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, for his definitive new biography of the star. The resulting book gives a fresh and detailed insight into the tormented genius of Lennon and his struggle to come to terms with his stardom.



Here, in this final extract, Norman reveals how a treacherous sailing trip to Bermuda inspired Lennon to start making music again, shortly before that tragic day in December 1980...



John Lennon sat down with his cassette recorder in the autumn of 1979 and announced: 'Tape one in the on-going life story of John Winston Ono Lennon.'

His intention was to recall childhood memories for the autobiography he had promised himself he would write.



He began with a description of the terrace house near Penny Lane in Liverpool where he lived as a toddler. He pondered the first thing he could ever remember and decided it was 'a nightmare'. Then suddenly he complained: 'This is boring. I can't be bothered.' And that was that.

Final glimpse: The last picture of John Lennon, posing with a fan on the day of his death

He was entering his 40th year, and the awful realisation was dawning on him that time no longer stretched ahead in unlimited quantities, that more of his life might be behind than ahead, that the weeks were starting to fly by like days, the years like months.



He began to fret that his son Sean's childhood was passing too quickly and that before he knew it, he'd no longer be needed to supervise bathtime or sing lullabies, as he had happily been doing for the past four years as ' househusband' in the Lennon/Yoko Ono family at their apartment in New York.



'He used to say: "When we're 80, we'll be in rocking-chairs, waiting for Sean's postcards,"' Yoko remembers.



He even speculated about what the two of them might do to fill the void in their lives after Sean had gone away to university. One idea was to return to Britain and join the famous artists' colony in St Ives.



On other occasions he felt bleak about the future. Sometimes, Yoko recalls, she would wake in the night and find him crying, smitten by terror that she would die before he did - a logical thought because she was seven years older.



He remained completely faithful to her - so far as she knew, or wanted to. But it didn't mean he wasn't as sexually ravenous as ever.



On that same tape where he started (and finished) his autobiography, he went on to discuss an interview he'd read with E.M. Forster, one of Britain's greatest 20th-century novelists, who lived into his 90s but never became reconciled to his own homosexuality.



Forster always hoped that when he reached old age, his sexual urges would vanish - but, instead, he told his interviewer, Truman Capote, they seemed even more of a burden. 'Sh*t!' John commented, 'cos I was always waiting for mine to lessen. But I suppose it's gonna go on for ever.'





Nostalgia: John recorded a tape of childhood memories, beginning with a description of the terrace house hear Penny Lane where he lived as a toddler

As middle-age beckoned he became increasingly nostalgic about his homeland, pining for British institutions and values he had once spurned. He loved watching classic BBC serials on the television such as I, Claudius or Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.



To his Aunt Mimi, the woman who had brought him up, he sent a stream of requests for mementoes of the old days. He wanted the Royal Worcester tea service she had kept on display in the front hall of her suburban semi, never sullied by the tiniest speck of dust.



She even had to root out his once-hated uniform blazer from Quarry Bank High School and his black-and-gold striped school tie. Thereafter, if ever obliged to wear a suit, he often set it off with the school tie half-unknotted and askew, as if baiting long-gone headmasters.



Though he pretended otherwise, it got to him that Paul McCartney's post-Beatles group, Wings, were among the biggest concert attractions in the world and that Paul's Mull Of Kintyre had sold more copies in the UK than The Beatles' She Loves You.



Such insecurities struck coldest in the middle of the night and he would rouse Yoko to listen as he endlessly fretted over just what magic facility it was that his old partner possessed and he did not.



'He'd say: "They always cover Paul's songs - they never cover mine,"' Yoko remembers.

He complained too when George Harrison beat him in the autobiography stakes by publishing his reminiscences. John was hurt and angered, feeling it barely mentioned all he had done for George.





'He remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist, but I was left out as if I didn't exist.' Actually, John receives 11 mentions, more than Paul, The Beatles, Eric Clapton or even George's second wife, Olivia.





Regret: When he turned 40, John began to fret his son Sean's childhood was passing too quickly

John had virtually retired from the music business when his son Sean was born, and, as the Eighties began, the scene had moved on from super-groups to punk rock.



But The Beatles were far from forgotten. Newspapers full of tittletattle about the Sex Pistols still cleared headline space for any rumoured reunion of the Fab Four.



An American promoter, Sid Bernstein, took out full-page ads in the New York Times offering more and yet more millions for what, even after all these years, would still be the hottest ticket on earth.



Paul, George and Ringo were reportedly not unamenable; the stumbling block was always said to be John. The band had given the world their all for ten years, he argued - and anyway if they tried performing together now after so long they would be 'just four rusty old men'.





As his 40th birthday loomed, he felt a desire, common to many men at that stage in life, for some great adventure outside all his previous experience. He had learned to sail on Long Island, where he and Yoko had a weekend house. Now he began discussing the possibility of a yacht trip into more challenging waters.



He chose Bermuda as his destination (or, rather, Yoko's astrologists, numerologists and psychics did) and set off from the American seaboard on a 43ft sloop, the Megan Jaye, skippered by a bearded salt named Hank Halsted.



It would be a 700-mile journey that crossed busy tanker routes and unpredictable weather zones and included the notorious Bermuda Triangle.

Mid-life crises: A bearded, 40-year-old John Lennon with Yoko Ono at Palm Beach

A few days out to sea, they were in unbroken brilliant sunshine with flat seas and dolphins curveting off the bows. John was exhilarated.



In the communal cabin with the four other crew, he found himself living in closer proximity to other people than he had since travelling around by van to gigs with The Beatles before they became famous.



Then, out of nowhere, a storm broke, with 65mph winds and 20ft waves. As the Megan Jaye heaved and corkscrewed, three of the crew went down with terrible seasickness and lay prostrate on their bunks. Cap'n Hank was unaffected - and so, amazingly, was John.



Cap'n Hank stayed at the wheel for 48 hours, then, dazed with fatigue, shouted to John: 'I'm gonna need some help here, big boy. Come and drive this puppy. I'll tell you what to do.'



The inexperienced John felt out of his depth, as if The Quarrymen - his pre-Beatles schoolboy skiffle group - had been asked to back a veteran rocker such as Jerry Lee Lewis. 'Hey Hank,' he protested, 'I've just got these little guitar-playing muscles here.'



But the skipper would brook no shirking, and John gingerly took over as helmsman. Cap'n Hank barked out a few basic instructions and then went below to grab some desperately needed sleep.



John was at first almost paralysed with panic. But gradually he connected with the boat and began to understand its responses, almost as if it had been some great silver-bodied guitar.



His fear passed and he began to enjoy himself, roaring out every obscene sea shanty he had ever heard around Liverpool docks to the screaming audience of wind and waves.





Close: John Lennon and Yoko Ono pictured with their son, Sean Lennon, shortly before John's tragic murder

'When I came back on deck, this was a man who was just enraptured,' Cap'n Hank would remember. 'It was stimulus worthy of this stimulus-addict of a guy.'



Cap'n Hank was not surprised that John had risen to the challenge. 'I think on that journey he discovered the tremendously strong man who had always been there inside him.'



John had certainly discovered something, because the Megan Jaye adventure galvanised him into wanting to make music again, and he was suddenly seized with a desire to make another album.



'I was so centred after the experience at sea,' he said. 'All these songs came, after five years of nothing, no inspiration, no thought, no anything, then suddenly voom voom voom.'



In fact, he had never stopped making music during his retirement, putting numerous song ideas on tape, but never perservering with them. The tracks he wrote in Bermuda all dealt with the life he had been leading since Sean had been born and they testified that, by and large, it had been a happy and fulfilled one.



Beautiful Boy was a hymn of joy to his son, affording a peep into his warm, safe nursery world and tempering impatience to see him grow up with a poignant selfreminder to appreciate every moment ('Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans').



Another song, (Just Like) Starting Over, signified that, whatever Bermuda Triangle his marriage had passed through, it was back on an even keel and sailing confidently forward.



It was a declaration to Yoko that 'our life together is so precious' and 'our love is still special'. The dark clouds, it seemed, had all rolled away.



The news that John Lennon was back in business sent a tremor throughout the music industry, which had not heard a peep from him for so long. But the sessions in the studio were nothing like those in his tumultuous past.



Shocking: John Lennon and Yoko Ono during the filming of a video to promote their album, Double Fantasy in 1980. During the film, they strip and simulate making love

The musicians did not include any old cronies who might lead him astray, and the studio atmosphere suggested a health spa more than a rock album.



Instead of cocaine and cognac, the band were served tea and sushi; a plate of sunflower seeds and raisins stood beside every microphone. Sean's picture hung over the mixing desk, a constant reminder that sessions must end in time for John to get home and say goodnight to him.



The release of the new album threw John's life back into the public arena again. There had been rumours that his retirement had brought terrible physical changes, which might prevent his ever reappearing in public. Some reports said he had gone completely bald, others that the septum of his nose had been destroyed by cocaine.



Yet here he was, the same old John, if a little thinner and more lined of face, his hair still almost Beatlishly abundant, his accent unchanged. Here were the same articulateness, honesty and irresistible wit, but all somehow calmer and mellower, as if deep inside him a storm had finally blown out.



And - defying the heaped-up insults, defamations and curses of the past decade - here too was Yoko, still with him at every moment.



But any idea that the old, shocking John and Yoko had gone for ever and that they had turned into a staid, middle-aged couple, sipping Ovaltine and watching TV, was confounded when they shot a video for a music track.



As the camera turned, they undressed, climbed onto a bed, kissed each other, then simulated having sex. Not even the wildest punks and post-punks had yet dared stage something like this.



John's old friend, photographer Bob Gruen, remembered meeting up with him at about this time and was struck by how happy he seemed. He was talking about putting a new band together and even going back on the road.



'He seemed to have such a positive vision and a sense of hope for the future. He'd discovered he could be grounded with his family and sober, and still put out a message people could relate to. He seemed finally to understand what it was to be alive.'



Tragic: Fans of the late John Lennon hold photos, candles and flowers outside the West Side apartment building where he was shot death two years later

John began seriously thinking about the return to Britain he had been promising his family there for years. His nostalgia had increased to the point where he'd choke up if he so much as read the name Liverpool.



He told Aunt Mimi that at night he would look out of his window facing in the direction of his hometown. He would see ships leaving the harbour and wondered if they were heading there.



'He was very homesick towards the end,' Mimi said. 'He was wanting to come home, to sail up the Mersey on the QE2.'



Nor was this a passing fancy just for Mimi's ears. He declared the same intention when he received a surprise transatlantic call from an old Liverpool friend he had not spoken to for 15 years.



His plan, John said, was to charter the QE2, and the friend promised to help by finding out whether the Mersey could handle such a big ship.



To other people, John said that after his exploits on the Megan Jaye, he fancied sailing across the Atlantic.



He had a vague date in mind. In a private tape of odd thoughts and musings found after his death, he could be heard promising himself he'd take Sean back home in 1981, 'because that's a good year to go'. It was a year he would never get to see.



For those who set store by such things, the great puzzle must be why the astrologists, numerologists and psychics Yoko had on permanent watch for dangers did not send him away on a journey to the far side of the world.



Later, Yoko realised that she had received an oblique and ambiguous warning from one psychic who foresaw 'a woman and she's crying like crazy. I think she's your sister because she looks very much like you. She has a young son, and she's holding him and she's going to be devastated about something'.



Yoko later concluded: 'That was me she was talking about.'



But no one could have foreseen Mark Chapman, an archetypal nerd, overweight and without distinction, whose main solace for the joylessness of his life was Beatles music.



The media reports of John's emergence from retirement - and the revelation that he was a very wealthy man thanks to Yoko's business brain - turned Chapman's former fan-worship into ferocious hatred.



He felt that, by acquiring large houses and investments, John had betrayed the ideals of The Beatles - and therefore betrayed him personally. 'Voices' in his head dictated that these grievances could be avenged only by blood.



The evening of Monday, December 8, 1980, John was in the studio working with Yoko. He found time to telephone Aunt Mimi and talk further about his imminent homecoming to Liverpool.



When they stopped work, at around 10.30pm, Yoko suggested going straight out to dinner, but John wanted to pop back to their home at the Dakota mansion block. He had to give Sean his goodnight kiss.



'The last thing he had on his mind,' Yoko remembers, 'was getting back and seeing Sean before he went to sleep.'



Chapman was waiting outside the Dakota with a .38 handgun. He dropped into the two-handed combat stance familiar from innumerable cop movies, and fired the five shots that ended John's life.



Sean Lennon has a recollection of getting up the next morning and not being able to make any sense of what was happening - the grim-faced strangers coming and going through the apartment; his father's unexplained absence.



He was summoned to Yoko's bedside. 'I remember standing there and her telling me, "Your dad's been shot and killed," and I said to her, "Don't worry, Mom, you're still young. You'll find somebody else," because at five years old it sounded like a very mature thing to say.'



He did his best not to cry as he walked slowly from her room 'and as soon as she couldn't see me, I burst into tears and I cried for days'.



From outside, he could hear the multitude in the street below and in Central Park, chanting his father's peace anthems between their own tears as a wave of grief reverberated around the world.

