Imagine. Imagine if all the people associated with John Lennon-or any other celebrity, for that matter-decided not to write tell-all books. Imagine if they didn`t feel a compelling need to ”set the record straight,” drop a few shocking tidbits and, just coincidentally, make a few dollars on the side. Well, forget it. That`ll happen about the time the IRS starts mailing out just-for-fun refunds. So now, on the publishing heels of blab-and-blurt biographies of such figures as Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant-to say nothing of Kitty Kelley`s recent tome on Nancy Reagan-comes, ”The Last Days of John Lennon: A Personal Memoir” by Frederic Seaman.
Seaman worked for Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, from February 1979 until after Lennon`s death in December 1980. He was a personal assistant, chauffeur, companion, gofer, general factotum and, he maintains, friend of the former Beatle`s.
In 1983, it should be noted, he pleaded guilty to stealing Lennon`s diaries, which he said he was trying to deliver to Lennon`s son Julian. He was sentenced to 5 years` probation.
In an interview that coincided with the start of his national book tour, Seaman said he felt he ”had to write this book” for personal reasons and to puncture the ”myth” surrounding John Lennon to give his fans ”a better perspective” on the man and on his marital relationship with Ono.
This evidently means telling the reader such things as the ”fact” that Lennon had fantasies about torturing women to death, and that his relationship with Ono, whom he called Mother, was so strained that he had to call her office first to see if she was available for lunch.
As for Ono, Seaman writes: ”Yoko`s life revolved around her acquisitions, but her most valuable acquisition was John. … Once she had acquired something, Yoko lost interest in it. She lost interest in John … she lost interest in Sean. … She treated them both with an icy reserve bordering on contempt.”
And Sean, that sweet-faced little boy, ”was very spoiled and he also had a serious discipline problem.”
Obviously, in Seaman`s version of things, life in the Lennon`s cavernous apartment at the Dakota, on Manhattan`s Central Park West, more closely resembled ”The Addams Family” than ”Father Knows Best.”
Ono`s attorney did not return several phone calls from the Tribune about the Seaman book. But Elliot Mintz, a spokesman for the Lennon estate who appeared on CNN`s ”Larry King Live” with Seaman, said the memoir was
”riddled with all kinds of lies and distortions.” He characterized it as
”sleaze” and added, ”I think it`s a worthless book.”
Asked if dispelling the myths around Lennon didn`t really mean serving up the ”bad things” about him, Seaman replied:
”I wouldn`t say these are bad things. I`m not making a value judgement. John was a brilliant man, but there was a side to him, a dark side, a weak side that was not much understood. … He was brilliant, he was a genius, but the dark side of genius often is not very pretty.”
The German-born Seaman, now 38, says he knows some Lennon fans in New York who have read the book and liked it. ”Yes, in a sense it does puncture the myth, but people want to know, those who are inquisitive,” he says.
”There are some people who don`t want to know and they`re probably just better off playing their Beatle records and living in their own mythical bliss or whatever.”
The book has been, as they say in Hollywood, years in the making.
Seaman says he began writing the first draft in 1983, but deals with two different publishing houses fell through, he alleges, after Ono threatened litigation.
This time, Seaman says, when Ono`s attorney sent a letter to Birch Lane Press, the book`s publisher, saying he had signed a confidentiality agreement with the Lennons and demanding a prepublication manuscript, ”we basically wrote them back saying we will not submit to censorship and that we would welcome a lawsuit. We have not heard from them since.”
Seaman also says he never signed a non-disclosure agreement with the Lennons.
Purloined diaries
After leaving Lennon`s employ, Seaman was a cabriver, and a proofreader for a law firm and an advertising agency. He also became entangled in serious legal problems as a result of removing Lennon`s diaries from the Dakota.
Seaman says he took them after Lennon`s death to give to Julian Lennon, John`s son by his first marriage, because ”there was no doubt in my mind and in my heart that it had been John`s wish that his oldest son should have his journals.”
Seaman writes that he first took the journals to a friend with whom he had worked on a college newspaper six years earlier. But instead of copying the journals for him, as he had promised, the friend announced he was going to use the diaries as a basis for a book, Seaman maintains. He says he was
”shocked.”
So, Seaman writes, he went to his psychotherapist, who offered to help by bringing in another patient as a ”troubleshooter.” He says he was told the troubleshooter returned the journals to Ono for a $60,000 finder`s fee.
Seaman maintains that he subsequently was abducted and beaten up by two police officers working as Ono`s bodyguards who apparently thought he still had one journal. In July 1983, Seaman was given his sentence of 5 years`
probation and ordered never to reveal the contents of the volumes, which remain in Ono`s possession.
This book, he says, is based solely on his own diaries, kept at the time he was working for Lennon and Ono. ”For two years, I compulsively scribbled my diary in everything from small memo pads to massive, leather-bound books,” he writes.
And the book includes a sample, handwritten page from Seaman`s diary that is almost mind-numbing in its detail. ”8:30-bath,” it begins,
”9:30-breakfast: toast w. apricot butter. … 10-watch `Deputy Dawg` with Sean. …”
There also are detailed descriptions of Lennon: what he was wearing
(yellow T-shirt), how he wore his hair (ponytail) and his facial expressions. Although Lennon was not speaking to anyone on the day of this particular diary entry, Seaman says he often recorded Lennon`s conversation, thus accounting for the large snippets of dialogue in the book.
(Seaman`s memoir also includes a handwritten memo from Lennon, the health nut, to the author saying, among other things, ”No more yogurt balls and raisins: it`s making me sick!”).
In his acknowledgments, Seaman says he`s ”deeply indebted” to Albert Goldman, author of a controversial earlier biography of Lennon. Goldman, Seaman wrotes, ”taught me that where there is a will, there is a way.”
And what specifically does Seaman come up with? Among, other things, he alleges that:
– Ono helped orchestrate Lennon`s affair with her secretary, May Pang, because, ”she could not be bothered with catering to John`s voracious sexual appetite.”
– ”John Lennon lived like a prisoner … not only of the massive stone walls (of the Dakota) but of his wife, his staff, his fears and
superstitions.” One of Ono`s favorite ways to control Lennon, Seaman writes, was to tell him that the planet Mercury was ”going retrograde,” a dire astrological situation that meant trouble was on the way and he had better stay inside or behave himself.
– Ono gobbled large quantities of a herbal laxative and ”also had a disquieting habit of vomiting without warning.”
– Ono ”lost interest in Sean after he was born” and ”could hardly tolerate” her child. Her main involvement in his upbringing, Seaman writes,
”was to instruct the servants to indulge his every whim.”
– Lennon ”talked about `weird,` recurring dreams in which he suffered a violent death. … He told me he often fantasized about getting shot, which, he said, was a modern form of crucifixion.”
– Ono may have helped arrange former Beatle Paul McCartney`s 1980 arrest on drug charges in Japan. According to Seaman, McCartney passed through New York on his way overseas and called Lennon to say he`d like to stop by because his wife, Linda, had gotten ”some really dynamite weed.”
McCartney also supposedly disclosed that he and his wife planned to stay in the presidential suite at Tokyo`s Okura Hotel, the suite Lennon and Ono always stayed in. Seaman says Lennon was furious, claiming the McCartneys would ”(expletive) up our good hotel karma,” and Ono set to work with her tarot card reader/voodoo priest to cast a ”spell” on the McCartneys.
The next day, McCartney was arrested at Tokyo`s airport, before he got anywhere near the hotel, after customs officials found a large quantity of marijuana in one of his suitcases. The suspicion, of course, was that Ono, or someone in her employ, had tipped off the officials. But Lennon, Seaman writes, ”firmly believed that Yoko had managed to cast a spell on Paul. John had always claimed that Yoko had magical powers and here was proof.”
Seaman says he did not write the book to get even with Ono. ”I feel I bent over backwards to take out all the gratuitous swipes at her. The picture I paint of Yoko is an honest and accurate picture. … I have no grudge against her, (though) I`m sure she probably considers me her worst enemy because Yoko lives for the myth and the biggest thing she fears is truth.”
`Basically a recluse`
Asked to describe the Lennon ”myth,” Seaman said it included such elements as Lennon as a left-wing activist, a ”prince of peace,” and a
”peace loving man, very caring about the world.”
What he found, Seaman said, was a man who was ”basically a recluse, he was selfish … no longer political at all. In fact, he was quite
conservative. He probably could be described politically as a Reagan Republican. … I also saw a man who when he was around Yoko regressed to the level of a child and became utterly dependent on her.”
As for his own relationship with Lennon, Seaman writes at the conclusion of the book, ”I would like to think that I made John Lennon`s isolated, lonely and often tortured life a little easier.”
