Robert Rosen

This is the introduction to the new edition of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon.

 

Forty years ago, when I sat down to write this book, I could not have imagined that it would take 18 years to find a publisher. But it did. I filled a filing cabinet with rejections, all of them expressing fear—of lawsuits, of the reading public's having little interest in John Lennon, and of my inability to provide documented proof that what I'd written was true.

 

Then… something happened. Maybe the stars and planets finally lined up—that's what Lennon and Yoko Ono would have said.

 

Soft Skull Press, a tiny independent operating out of a tenement basement on New York's Lower East Side, made an offer for Nowhere Man. They loved that the book was "controversial"; they understood that it was more than a standard Lennon biography; and they played the media with an impressive combination of skill and audacity. Nowhere Man became an object of global fascination, and when Soft Skull published it in the summer of 2000, I found myself transformed from an obscure middle-aged writer to an author with an international bestseller in multiple languages. Those were the days.

 

Nowhere Man exists because five months after Lennon was murdered, his personal assistant Fred Seaman handed me the diaries the ex-Beatle had been keeping for the last six years of his life and told me to turn it into a book—it's what John had told him to do, he said.

 

So there it was, the old literary trope: an "ordinary man" in an "extraordinary situation." Did I take at face value what Seaman told me? Yes. Was this naïve? Obviously. Did I recognize the moment as a life-changing occasion? No, I saw it as a job, and I went forward without doubt or hesitation. Of course I wanted to turn Lennon's diaries into a book. I was a writer looking for a story, and the story of the Beatles was the story of my generation.

 

Today I think Lennon's diaries were a rough draft of the memoir he never had a chance to complete.

 

Today I think Lennon's diaries were a rough draft of the memoir he never had a chance to complete. He put everything in there—the gossip, the fear, the rage, the insanity, the insecurity, the inspiration, the love, and the hate… all the emotions and contradictions that made Lennon who he was. And it was up to me to turn this disjointed mass of raw material into a coherent narrative. I was inspired. But before I could finish—and this is the story behind the book, which I detail in the next chapter—everything I was working on was taken from me.

 

Nowhere Man has provoked a number of people to ask what right I had to reveal the personal information in a man's private diaries. I've often asked myself the same question. Many times over the 18 years that the book remained in limbo I tried to walk away from it, to forget it, to get on with my life. But the story in John's diaries kept calling me back—it demanded to be told. So, when Lennon's spirit moved me, I worked on the book, matching fragments of information that turned up on the public record with what I knew to be true from the diaries. I was constantly adding to the manuscript, refining it, and somehow infusing it with the energy Lennon transmitted in his daily scribblings.

 

But there were crucial facts that I was unable to confirm from the public record or from speaking with people who knew John. That's where an aspect of this book that has sent certain readers into a state of spluttering apoplexy comes into play: I wrote in the author's note, "Nowhere Man is a work of investigative journalism and imagination."

 

I want to emphasize that I used my imagination not to simply make things up, but as a fictional technique that allowed me to get closer to the truth than if I'd written a conventional biography. I applied this technique most frequently in the "Dream Power" chapter, about Lennon's efforts to "program" his dreams. Details of many of those dreams have never appeared anywhere outside his diaries. In those cases I used my imagination to create parallel dreams that approximated the feeling of his real dreams—though in this  edition, the Barbara Walters dream is essentially real, a partial description having turned up on the Internet several years ago.

 

Nowhere Man, then, is a journey through Lennon's consciousness, a view of the world through his eyes.

 

But did I have the right to tell this story?

 

But did I have the right to tell this story? All I can say is that John Lennon was a historical figure, the information in his diaries was of historical value, and an extraordinary circumstance allowed me to be a conduit of that information. Had I chosen to not publish Nowhere Man, this story would not have been told in my lifetime, if ever. So I made a decision: I chose to put the story out there.

 

If you're uncomfortable with that, you may want to put this book down and pick up one of the multitude of authorized Lennon biographies. But if you prefer a book written by one of the few people outside John's inner circle to have read his diaries, you can stay with this revised, expanded, and updated Nowhere Man. I've done my best to give you the truth as I know it.

________

Buy Nowhere Man on Amazon or Bookshop. If you'd like a signed copy, e-mail me here for details.

 

A Brooklyn Memoir is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

You can now buy the new edition of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon at any brick-and-mortar bookstore. That's the final frontier of its distribution: The paperback and e-book are available everywhere books are sold, online or off.

 

Of course, it's always good to support your local indie bookstore, and indiebound.org will direct you to one in your neighborhood.

 

My personal favorite indie is Subterranean Books, in St. Louis. One of the last live events I did, back in October 2019, before the onset of the pandemic, was a reading from Bobby in Naziland (since re-released as A Brooklyn Memoir) at Subterranean. The enthusiastic crowd bought enough books to put Bobby in Naziland on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch bestseller list, and the staff was so happy with the way the evening went, they invited me to come back.

 

I was going to return in October 2020 to read from Nowhere Man on what would have been Lennon's 80th birthday. But this thing called Covid forced me to cancel. Now, here it is December 2022—on the eve of a sad day filled with reminders of what happened to John 42 years ago—and I've still not returned to St. Louis.

 

I'm going to make a New Year's resolution: In 2023, I will again do live events. And assuming they still want me back, one of those events will be a celebration of John Lennon and the new edition of Nowhere Man at Subterranean Books.

 

To all my friends and family in St. Louis and environs, I will see you there. Details to be announced in 2023.

________

A Brooklyn Memoir is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

Should you be in the market for a personalized gift for a Beatles fan or somebody who appreciates a good book, may I suggest a signed copy of the updated edition of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon.

 

That's my hand in the above photo demonstrating where I'll inscribe the book to your specifications. If this exclusive offer interests you, write to me here and I'll tell you where to send your check or money order for the unbeatable price of $16 if you live in the U.S. Unfortunately, I'm not set up for 21st century e-commerce so we'll have to do this the old fashioned way.

 

If you'd like a signed copy of any of my other books, that can also be arranged.

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

As promised last week, the updated and expanded e-book edition of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon is now available from Barnes & Noble and Scribd. You can download it from B&N by clicking on the above image, and you can read it on Scribd by clicking here. Scribd, for those unfamiliar with it, is a digital library offering unlimited access to e-books, audiobooks, and magazines for a monthly subscription of $11.99.

 

If you'd like a signed copy of Nowhere Man, A Brooklyn Memoir, or Bobby in Naziland please contact me by clicking here and I'll send you the details.

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

The updated and expanded edition of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon continues to reach more online bookstores. It's now available as an Apple e-book, which you can download by clicking on the cover, and as a Kobo e-book, which you can download by clicking here.

 

Soon it will also be available from Barnes & Noble and Scribd. The final frontier, of course, is your local book store, and in due time you'll be able to find the paperback edition there, as well.

 

Stay tuned for more updates on the availability of Nowhere Man.

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

Talking with Emerson Souza, host of the Hear Some Evil podcast, is kind of like hanging out at a bar and getting into a stimulating conversation with the knowledgeable stranger sitting on the barstool next to you. Souza originally told me that he was interested in discussing Beaver Street, my book about the history of pornography. But we ended up talking for two hours about my other books, too: an updated edition of my classic John Lennon bio Nowhere Man, which was just re-released, and A Brooklyn Memoir, a darkly comic tale about growing up in Flatbush in the 1950s and 60s, surrounded by Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans who fought the Nazis. In short, Souza and I covered the entire Rosen oeuvre, and you can listen to our conversation if you click on "Play," above.

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

The best way to get a sense of how the new edition of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon has changed from previous editions is to take a look at the table of contents. For one thing, this is the first English-language edition to have a table of contents.

 

In addition to the new introduction, "In My Own Write," which grapples with many of the obstacles I had to overcome before Nowhere Man could be published, most of the new material can be found in Part V, "Afterlife." In these chapters I delve into such things as conspiracy theories and the absurd lengths that certain compromised people in the media and law enforcement went to in an effort to derail the book's publication. There's also an extended exchange I had with Bill Harry, founding editor of Mersey Beat, the first newspaper to cover the Beatles and to publish Lennon's poetry and prose.

 

Throughout Nowhere Man there are countless refinements, updates, corrections, additions, and clarifications. You can look at this new edition as the "director's cut." Here's the complete table of contents.

 

CONTENTS

 

In My Own Write xi

 

PRELUDE

John Lennon's Diaries 3
Jerusalem Fantasy 11

PART I
DAKOTA 1980

 Being Rich 15
That Magic Feeling 20
Sean 25
The Lunatic Incident 27
Answered Prayers 29
Cold Turkey 35
Macrobiotic Perfection 37
The Servant Problem 39
After Breakfast 47
Dream Power 49
Afternoon 53
Lennon's Complaint 62
The Occult Arts 64
The Book of Numbers 67
The Cards According to Swan 80
Beatle Economics 86
Money 90
His Finest Hour 97
People I Remember 101

 

PART II
GETTING CENTERED

Interlude at El Solano 107
The Visitors 112
Happy Birthday Dear Yoko 115
Imagine 116
Jude 117
Born Again 121
Going Back to New York City 123
Cannon Hill 124
A Plan 127
Vow of Silence 129
Cape Town 131
Voyage to Bermuda 134
Knapton Hill 137
Villa Undercliffe 138
American Tourist 140
Night Life 145
Birth of a Song 147
Mother's Arrival 151
Inspiration 154
Madonna and Child 158

PART III
THE FINAL DAYS

Double Fantasy 161
Media Blitz 167
Geffen's the One 169
October 9 170
Completion 173
Ecstasy 174
Life After Double Fantasy 175
Yoko Only 179
Weekend 181
12/8/80 182
The Best Is Yet to Be 183

PART IV
THE CODA 1980–1981

The City on the Edge of Time 187
Young Man with a Goal 191
What Would Holden Do? 193
The Diagnosis 204
God's Decision 207
Chapter 27 209
Dakota Fantasy 214

PART V
AFTERLIFE

Aftermath 217
Strawberry Fields Forever 228
And the Mersey Beat Goes On 229
The Unfinished Life of John Lennon 238
An Open Letter to G. Barry Golson 242
A Question of Conspiracy 250
The Book That Cannot Be 254
(Just Like) Starting Over 258
How It Began 259

 

Sources 261
Index 263
About the Author 279

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

The new Nowhere Man, the first update to the print edition in 20 years and to the Kindle edition since 2015, is slowly working its way into distribution channels. The Kindle became available this week. You can preview or download it by clicking on the buttons above.

 

In additions to updates, corrections, and clarifications, the book contains six new chapters, including Mersey Beat founding editor Bill Harry's interview with me; a discussion of conspiracy theories surrounding John Lennon's murder; and "In My Own Write," a new introduction, available in the preview, that grapples with the question: Did I have the right to tell this story? Check out the table of contents to see what else is new.

 

In the coming weeks, the e-book will also be available on Apple Books, Kobo, Scribd, Barnes & Noble, Overdrive, and all other online bookstores. The paperback will be available in your local bookstore in late November.

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

 

The front and back covers of the new Nowhere Man paperback, the first updated English-language print edition in 20 years, has certain references and symbols that a casual reader might overlook. Let's begin with the the color red in "Nowhere" and in the background of the front cover. This is a reference to the cover of J. D. Salinger's classic novel of disaffected youth, The Catcher in the Rye, which plays a crucial role in Nowhere Man. Mark David Chapman believed that if he murdered John Lennon he would literally disappear into the pages of Catcher, become the Catcher in the Rye for his generation, and there would be a new chapter of the book, Chapter 27, written in Lennon's blood. At Chapman's court hearing, after he pleaded guilty to murder, he chose to read a passage from Catcher as his way of explaining why he did it.

 

In Nowhere Man, I explore the insanity of what Chapman believed and what he did, and try to make sense of a senseless act that defies rational explanation.

 

The photo of Lennon, which perfectly captures the mood of the book, was shot in Denmark in 1970.

 

The circle and lines on the back cover are a reference to the tarot card the Sun, which portends good fortune, joy, and harmony. Both John and Yoko were deeply into tarot—they had a full-time tarot-card reader, Charlie Swan. In Nowhere Man, I examine their obsession with tarot and other occult practices, including magic, astrology, and numerology.

 

There have been 15 editions of Nowhere Man, in various languages, all with different covers. This cover, designed by Grey Thornberry, I think is the best one yet, and I hope it will entice you to pick up the book.

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

It's been a long time coming but now it's here. For the first time in 20 years, an updated and expanded paperback edition of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon is available—for the moment exclusively from Amazon, but soon in all the usual online places as well as your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

The 2022 Nowhere Man contains six new chapters, including Mersey Beat founding editor Bill Harry's interview with me; a discussion of conspiracy theories surrounding Lennon's murder; and a new introduction, "In My Own Write," that grapples with the question: Did I have the right to tell this story?

 

You can also check out Robert Rodriguez's interview with me on his podcast, Something About the Beatles. In this episode we talk about Yoko Ono's efforts to suppress unauthorized narratives about her and John, especially those that discuss the information in Lennon's diaries... like Nowhere Man.

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

The latest edition of the Don't Pass Me By podcast, with host Bob Wilson, is a deep dive into my book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon. Originally published 22 years ago, the book continues to endure in the popular imagination—because the Lennon I portray is a talented yet flawed human being that we can relate to.

 

By all appearances, in the last years of his life, Lennon was working on a tell-all memoir, and Nowhere Man is the closest we may ever get to the essence of what he'd written. On the podcast, we cover everything from John's jealous rivalry with Paul McCartney to his forceful rejection of a Beatles reunion to his brief acceptance of Jesus.

 

Wilson doesn't hesitate to ask (and I don't hesitate to answer) tough questions about Yoko Ono. It's quite a conversation and we hope you will enjoy the show!

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

The Nowhere Man Interview

 

I met the prolific Marshall Terrill when he was writing The Jesus Music, a book about rock stars who found redemption in Christianity. We spoke about my John Lennon bio, Nowhere Man, and the brief "born again" period in the ex-Beatle's life. Over the course of our conversation, Terrill became intrigued by my other two books, Beaver Street and A Brooklyn Memoir, which will be published in July. Terrill is one of the few journalists who have read all three books, and we later spoke in depth about them. He provided me with a transcript of our conversation about Nowhere Man, which I've edited for clarity. Our discussion of Beaver Street and A Brooklyn Memoir will follow in parts two and three.

 

Marshall Terrill: You've had a most unusual writing career, and I say that with great respect. You've written about John Lennon (Nowhere Man), your years in the porn magazine business (Beaver Street), and your childhood growing up in Flatbush (A Brooklyn Memoir). Everything you write is so personal, much like Lennon's songs. Now that you know my take, what's your take on your career?

 

Robert Rosen: My career has been absurd. It's absurd that it took me 18 years to find a publisher for Nowhere Man. It's absurd that I don't have a U.S. publisher. My last two books were published by Headpress and their new imprint, Oil on Water Press, in London. Thank God for Headpress.

 

All three of my books have received very good reviews. Nobody's lost money on them. Nowhere Man was a bestseller in multiple languages and countries. And yet I find it extremely difficult to get anything published. I'm sure that has to do with the personal nature of the things I write about and the fact that I'm not a major celebrity nor do I have my own TV show and a billion Twitter followers. But the resistance I continue to run into after all these years still surprises me.

 

So I write to keep myself entertained; I write what I'd want to read. The result is the three books that you've read.

 

"It's absurd that it took me 18 years to find a publisher for Nowhere Man."

 

MT: Given what you've just told me, it makes me respect you even more. The fact that you're willing to fight—in many cases for years—for your books to get published is a testament to your resolve.

 

RR: I appreciate your saying that. I've always wanted to be a writer and I've always felt I could do better than most of the junk that gets published. I turned professional in 1974, after I finished college. I had friends who were editors at newspapers and magazines, and it wasn't that hard to get published and make some money doing it. I'm talking about articles, not books. But as time went on, all the people I knew who were in the business dropped out and went on to more lucrative careers. Instead of it getting easier as I went along, it got more difficult because I didn't know anyone in the business anymore.

 

MT: I want to go back to something you said earlier about Nowhere Man being in limbo for 18 years. What were some of the behind-the-scenes machinations to getting it published?

 

RR: It's not like I was working on the book nonstop for 18 years. I'd put it aside for years at the time, but something always drew me back. It just seemed amazing that nobody wanted to publish Nowhere Man. Editors told me things like, "Ono sues everybody," which is totally false. She threatens to sue but never actually sues writers for something they've written. I talked about this in the Village Voice article I wrote about Lennon's gardener, Michael Medeiros, and how nobody will publish his memoir. Editors also told me things like, "Nobody's interested in Lennon's last years," and "You can't prove what you wrote is true."

 

In 1998, I met Darius James, a writer known for his book Negrophobia. Darius had been living in Berlin and had just returned to the States. He was in New York and had no place to live. I happened to have a spare apartment at the time that I was using as an office. I let him stay there for several months. To thank me he introduced me to his agent, the late Jim Fitzgerald, who couldn't believe Nowhere Man hadn't been published. He was able to place it with Soft Skull Press.

 

Soft Skull's publisher at the time, Sander Hicks, had absolutely no fear of being sued—and he ended up getting sued for a book he published about George W. Bush, Fortunate Son; the author, J. H. Hatfield, later died by suicide. Anyway, as Soft Skull was going forward with Nowhere Man, Fred Seaman, Lennon's former personal assistant, the guy I used to work for, sued or threatened to sue Ono and Capitol Records for copyright infringement for a photo that he'd taken and that she'd used on the John Lennon anthology CD. She countersued, and her lawyers needed me as a witness at the trial. I think it was understood that if Ono's lawyers gave me a hard time with Nowhere Man, I wasn't going to cooperate with them on the Seaman case. Actually, I didn't have much choice. They were going to subpoena me; they did subpoena me; and I was a cooperative witness. They deposed me. I answered all their questions. I testified in court, they won their case, and they didn't hassle me. Those were the behind-the-scenes machinations.

 

"I started writing the book that became Nowhere Man a few weeks after I came home from vacation and found my apartment had been ransacked."

 

MT: What I find amazing as you're telling me this story is how you were able to retain all that information in your head given that you were working on Nowhere Man for all those years. You must have a great memory.

 

RR: I started writing the book that became Nowhere Man a few weeks after I came home from vacation and found my apartment had been ransacked. Everything I was working on for the Lennon book I was doing with Seaman had been taken. This was a book based on Lennon's diaries that Seaman had given me. I went into a state of shock. I was paralyzed for two weeks. I couldn't believe what had happened. And then at a certain point I realized that I had portions of Lennon's diaries memorized. I started writing down everything from the diaries I could remember. The more I remembered, the more I remembered. I wrote the bulk of Nowhere Man in 1982, and in the ensuing 18 years, I was able to refine it. It was published in 2000. The only thing I wrote after I got the book deal was the section about Mark David Chapman, which Soft Skull asked me to write.

 

MT: What I love about Nowhere Man is the writing itself because you were able to pack in so much information in a fairly thin book. Was that simply your writing style and was it something that you were conscious of?

 

RR: It's something I was conscious of. That's how I was taught to write. Joseph Heller was one of my writing teachers in college, and he taught me to condense, to say as much as possible in as few words as possible. Make every word count. That's the way I try to write every single sentence.

 

MT: One last question about Nowhere Man. What was your biggest takeaway regarding John Lennon's life after being one of the few people to have read his diary in its entirety from 1975 to 1980?

 

RR: There were a couple of things that really surprised me. One was the extent of his pettiness, especially towards Paul McCartney, and how much pleasure he took in McCartney's arrest in Japan for marijuana. Another was how much he thought about McCartney, which was virtually every single day. The third big thing was how deeply he was into the occult—tarot, astrology, numerology, magic. Those were my three major takeaways. 

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir is available for pre-order on Amazon and all other online booksellers.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

With the passage of time, I've come to think of my three published books as an interconnected trilogy. Though the subjects appear to be unrelated—John Lennon, pornography, Brooklyn—they're bound together by voice, tone, style, and sensibility. To me the books are a natural progression.

 

The seeds of Bobby in Naziland, to be re-released in 2022 as A Brooklyn Memoir, can be found in the opening pages of Beaver Street, where I describe the scene in my father's candy store in 1961. And I wrote much of the John Lennon biography Nowhere Man while working in the purgatory of "adult entertainment," living the material that would become Beaver Street.

 

I've been appearing on a number of podcasts lately, and the hosts all recognized the thematic connections between my books. On each podcast I spoke at length about all three of them.

 

In my latest interview, on Politically Entertaining with Evolving Randomness, the host, Elias, from the Bronx, expressed boundless curiosity about everything I brought up, even Brooklyn. The interview begins at 1:34:11 and runs for an hour. (If you click on the above link, you can fast-forward on the podcast site.)

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland, to be re-released in 2022 as A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

Matthew Nathaniel, host of the L.A.-based podcast Evolved Idiots, wanted to talk about John Lennon and my book Nowhere Man. "Perfect," I said, as Saturday, October 9, would have been the ex-Beatle's 81st birthday—a number 9 (8+1) that Lennon would have found significant. So Nathaniel and I took a deep dive into all things John Winston Ono Lennon, covering such subjects as his private diaries, his relationship with Yoko Ono, his rivalry with Paul McCartney, his involvement with the occult, and his desire to put the Beatles in the past and move forward with an identity that transcended "ex-Beatle."

 

And that was just the beginning of our wide-ranging conversation. We also talked about the porn industry and my book Beaver Street; Brooklyn in the aftermath of World War II and my book Bobby in Naziland (which Headpress is re-releasing next year with a new title, A Brooklyn Memoir); and the as yet untitled book I'm currently working on, about the 1970s, the underground college press, and hitchhiking.

 

Finally, Nathaniel asked me about my work habits. How did I go about writing these books? "Do you wait for inspiration?" he inquired. I'd suggest that my answer, whether you're a writer or not, is worth listening to.

 

You can watch Evolved Idiots on Youtube, above, or listen on Spotify, Apple, Soundcloud, and all other major streaming platforms.

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland (to be re-released in 2022 as A Brooklyn Memoir), is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

A window briefly opened in May and June. It seemed as if the pandemic were ending and life as we knew it might return. For the first time in more than a year, I walked Manhattan streets without a mask. I flew to Florida and visited my mother. I visited friends in their apartments. I went to a party and conversed maskless with maskless (and fully vaccinated) strangers. And I rescheduled an event at Subterranean Books, in St. Louis, which had been cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic.

 

The original event was to be a celebration of John Lennon's 80th birthday. I was going to read from and discuss my Lennon bio, Nowhere Man, and the Beatles section of my most recent book, Bobby in Naziland (which Headpress is going to re-release next year with a new title, A Brooklyn Memoir). The new event, a celebration of the end of the pandemic and Lennon's 81st birthday, was scheduled to take place October 7.

 

But almost as soon as the arrangements were made, the pandemic began going in the wrong direction. Suddenly the news was full of breakthrough infections in vaccinated people, highly contagious Delta variants, millions of people who refused to be vaccinated, Covid wards filled to capacity, and too many people dying.

 

Could I really go forward with a live indoor event even if everybody was required to wear a mask? Would more than a handful of people show up? Was I willing to risk my health to sell books?

 

People I spoke with in New York were unanimous: Don't do it. I called people in St. Louis and asked them what they thought. Some told me they'd been avoiding indoor events and would be hesitant to come. Two people said they'd probably come. And a former bookstore owner told me it would be "foolhardy" to go through with it.

 

I've been doing book events for more than 21 years and have never cancelled. St. Louis, where I've done five well-attended events, has been amazingly supportive of my work, no venue more so than Subterranean Books. It was with great sadness that I cancelled the event.

 

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had this to say about the return of live book events in the city.

 

So, now I've got the "Talking St. Louie Covid Blues" again. But someday the pandemic will end and I shall return.

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland (to be re-released in 2022 as A Brooklyn Memoir), is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

I've made it a point, over the past two decades, to speak to anybody who wants to interview me about any of my books. It's a simple philosophy: If I'm going to spend years writing a book and placing it with a publisher, then I'm going to do everything I can to get people to read it. So it was an easy decision to go on the right-wing Electile Dysfunction Podcast. The host, Ashton Cohen, an attorney, wanted to speak to me about Beaver Street, which examines 20th-century history, politics, and technology through a pornographic lens. I wrote the book after spending 16 years working as an editor of "adult" magazines, and I describe Beaver Street as an investigative memoir.

 

Cohen and I covered a lot of ground, including free speech, the First Amendment, and cancel culture; how computerized phone sex revolutionized the porn industry; my X-rated experiment in participatory journalism; and the connection between porn and Marvel Comics. Then we somehow transitioned to John Lennon's final years and my book Nowhere Man. So we got into Beatles, drugs, and music. (He likes them.)

 

Cohen is a Trump supporter and we disagree on just about everything political. But our conversation serves as a demonstration that people at opposite ends of the spectrum can have a rational, respectful, entertaining discussion. That in itself may be the most notable takeaway.

 

You can watch the interview on Youtube, above, or listen on Apple Podcasts.

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland (to be re-released in 2022 as A Brooklyn Memoir), is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

b

Matt Nappo, host of the Minddog TV podcast, invited me to come on his show and talk about my three books, Nowhere Man, Beaver Street, and Bobby in Naziland. Our spirited, wide-ranging discussion covered John Lennon's final years, the porn industry's plunge into the cultural abyss, and growing up in Brooklyn in the aftermath of World War II. (Matt grew up there, too.)

 

If you didn't catch the show live, you can still listen to the podcast, above, or watch it on YouTube, below.

 

I don't know what a Minddog is, but if Matt invites me back, I'll find out.

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland (to be re-released in 2022 as A Brooklyn Memoir), is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

This past April, I was texting with Carlos Enrique Larriega Ayala, a journalist with the Peruvian-based Internet radio station Todo Beatles. Ayala had translated into Spanish a story I'd posted on this blog, "The Book That Cannot Be," about why Prisoner of Love, by Peter Doggett, based on Doggett's reading of John Lennon's diaries, had been canceled just before publication. Ayala had some questions about my own experience with Lennon's diaries, which I transcribed in 1981 and were the inspiration for my book Nowhere Man.

 

Our text exchange on Facebook Messenger, edited for clarity, is below.

 

There's another book about Lennon that could not be printed, John Lennon's Garden, by Michael Barbosa Medeiros, the gardener from the Dakota. It seems that was thanks to Ono's lawyers. It was interesting to hear Fred Seaman's comments in the interview with the Australian DJ. But now that interview was deleted from YouTube and from that DJ's Facebook. I suppose it was because of the legal actions against Seaman.

Yes, the gardener, Mike Tree, as he's known. I heard about his book some time ago. Fred's interview with the DJ seemed harmless. But that's what got him sued again. It's very treacherous territory.

 

Yes, it's harmless. I translated the interview and put it in my radio program days after it was published in Plastic EP's Facebook. I saw the news in the Daily Mail about Seaman's legal trouble with Yoko. I told that to Plastic EP but I had no comment from him. I suppose he was afraid of the legal repercussions. I had read most of the legal papers. Again Project Walrus is named. It's curious that the legal proceedings could be used to make up fantasy stories.

Calling my work with Seaman "Project Walrus" was an inside joke that set off the conspiracy theorists who concluded that I must be with the CIA. It was insane. The first time I saw something like that my shock was profound, to say the least.

 

I know you prefer not to talk about that because you haven't done a serious interview about that.

It was more than 21 years ago that Nowhere Man came out and I started doing interviews. Nobody ever asked, specifically, about why Seaman and I called what we were doing Project Walrus. There's a piece I wrote several years ago for Proceso, the Mexican magazine, where I discuss the absurdity of the conspiracy theories. It's one of the bonus chapters in the e-book edition. You can also read it on my blog.

 

Thank you, Robert. You believed the trouble with Fred Seaman, as producer Jack Douglas said in an interview, was that John never gave him a document to prove that he'd given Fred some of the things that Yoko accused him of stealing.
I think it's true, though I never said it.

 

Jack Douglas thought Fred Seaman told the truth about that but could not prove it because he didn't have a document from John. For me it's important because that proves that your book had valid sources. But I don't know if Douglas would talk about that topic again after he settled his demand for money with Yoko.

You're probably right about Douglas. By "valid sources" I think you mean it's not a question if I had access to the diaries; it's a question if John gave Fred permission to show them to me to use as a source for a book. I don't think that can ever be proven one way or the other. Not now, anyway.

 

You are right. I'm sure you and Fred had access to the diaries. But the question that can't be solved is if John gave Fred permission to work with them to tell the true story. But many Lennon fans think that Lennon was trapped in the Dakota and it would not be strange if he planned to become independent or leave Yoko.

Well, I believed at the time that Seaman was telling the truth. When they asked me in court, at his copyright-infringement trial, in 2002, if I still believed it, I said yes. Do I believe it now, today, this minute? Maybe. It could be true. I'd like it to be true. But I can't prove it. The real question is: Should the true story of Lennon's final years, according to his diaries, be told? And my answer to that, is: Yes, absolutely. It's history and it's important.

 

I have only a slight objection to working with the diary of such a complex person as John Lennon. Great care must be taken in knowing how to interpret what the writing really means. One who has kept a personal diary knows that there are many things that are not within the realm of formal writing. There is a lot of material that can be misinterpreted by the public.

I can't argue with that. Keep in mind I had 18 years to think about what I was doing, to do additional research, and to put everything in context. That whole time I was determined to tell the story as truthfully as I could. Now it's up to readers to make up their minds if I succeeded or not. I stand by my work.

 

Yes, I understand that, Robert. I congratulate you with your work. It has provided us with very valuable information. It is up to us to expand or analyze.

¡Exactamente!

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland (soon to be re-titled A Brooklyn Memoir), is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

AQUÍ UNA PISTA MÁS PARA TODOS USTEDES ...

 

En abril pasado, estaba intercambiando mensajes de texto con Carlos Enrique Larriega Ayala, un periodista de la estación de radio por Internet TodoBeatles.com con sede en Perú. Larriega Ayala había traducido al español una historia que había publicado en este blog, 'The Book That Cannot Be' (El libro que no puede ser), sobre por qué el libro Prisoner of Love, de Peter Doggett, basado en la lectura de Doggett de los diarios de John Lennon, había sido cancelado justo antes de su publicación. Larriega Ayala tenía algunas preguntas sobre mi propia experiencia con los diarios de Lennon, que transcribí en 1981 y fueron la inspiración para mi libro Nowhere Man.

 

Nuestro intercambio de texto en Facebook Messenger, editado para mayor claridad, se encuentra a continuación.

 

CLA: Hay otro libro sobre Lennon que no se pudo imprimir, John Lennon's Garden, de Michael Barbosa Medeiros, el jardinero del Dakota. Parece que fue gracias a los abogados de Ono. Fue interesante escuchar los comentarios de Fred Seaman en la entrevista con el DJ australiano. Pero ahora esa entrevista con ese DJ fue eliminada de YouTube y del Facebook por el propio entrevistador. Supongo que fue por las acciones legales contra Seaman.

RR: Sí, el jardinero, Mike Tree, como se le conoce. Escuché sobre su libro hace algún tiempo. La entrevista de Fred con el DJ parecía inofensiva. Pero eso fue lo que hizo que lo volvieran a demandar. Es un territorio muy traicionero.

 

Sí, es inofensivo. Traduje la entrevista y la puse en mi programa de radio días después de que se publicara en el Facebook de Plastic EP. Vi la noticia en el Daily Mail sobre los problemas legales de Seaman con Yoko. Se lo dije a Plastic EP pero no tuve ningún comentario de él. Supongo que tenía miedo de las repercusiones legales. He leído la mayoría de los documentos legales. Nuevamente se nombra el Projecto Walrus. Es curioso que en los procedimientos legales se puedan utilizar como soportes historias que a todas luces parecen de fantasía.

Llamar a mi trabajo con Seaman "Proyecto Morsa" fue una broma interna que hizo que los teóricos de la conspiración llegaran a la conclusión de que yo debía estar con la CIA. Fue una locura. La primera vez que vi algo así, mi conmoción fue profunda, por decir lo menos.

 

Sé que prefiere no hablar de eso porque no le han hecho una entrevista seria al respecto.

Hace más de 21 años que salió Nowhere Man y comencé a conceder entrevistas. Nadie preguntó nunca, específicamente, por qué Seaman y yo llamábamos Proyecto Walrus a lo que estábamos haciendo. Hay un artículo que escribí hace varios años para Proceso, la revista mexicana, donde hablo de lo absurdo de las teorías de la conspiración. Es uno de los capítulos adicionales de la edición del libro electrónico. También puedes leerlo en mi blog.

 

Gracias, Robert. Te parece que el problema con Fred Seaman, como el productor Jack Douglas lo ha dicho en una entrevista, fue que John nunca le dio un documento para probar que él le había dado a Fred algunas de las cosas que Yoko le acusaba de haberle robado.

Me parece que es cierto, aunque nunca lo dije.

 

Jack Douglas pensaba que Fred Seaman dijo la verdad sobre eso, pero que no pudo probarlo porque no tenía un documento de John. Para mí es importante porque eso prueba que su libro tiene fuentes válidas. Pero no sé si Douglas volvería a hablar sobre ese tema después de que resolvió su demanda de dinero con Yoko.

Probablemente tengas razón sobre Douglas. Por "fuentes válidas" creo que te refieres a que no está en cuestionamiento si yo tuve acceso a los diarios; lo que se cuestiona es si John le dio permiso a Fred para mostrármelos para usarlos como fuente para un libro. No creo que eso se pueda probar de una forma u otra. Al menos ahora no.

 

Tiene razón. Estoy seguro de que Fred y Ud. tuvieron acceso a los diarios. Pero la pregunta que no se puede resolver es si John le dio permiso a Fred para trabajar con ellos para contar la historia real. Muchos fanáticos de John piensan que Lennon estaba atrapado en Dakota y no sería extraño que planeara independizarse o dejar a Yoko.

Bueno, en ese momento creí que Seaman estaba diciendo la verdad. Cuando me preguntaron en el tribunal, en su juicio por infracción de los derechos de autor en el 2002, si todavía lo creía, dije que sí. ¿Lo creo ahora, hoy, en este minuto? Quizás. Podría ser cierto. Me gustaría que fuera verdad. Pero no puedo probarlo. La verdadera pregunta es: ¿Debería contarse la verdadera historia de los últimos años de Lennon, según sus diarios? Y mi respuesta a eso es: Sí, absolutamente. Es historia y es importante.

 

Solo tengo una pequeña objeción en cuanto a trabajar con el diario de una persona tan compleja como John Lennon. Hay que tener mucho cuidado con el saber interpretar lo que realmente significa el escrito. Quien ha llevado un diario personal sabe que hay muchas cosas que no pertenecen al ámbito de la escritura formal. Hay mucho material que el público puede malinterpretar.

No puedo discutir con eso. Ten en cuenta que tuve 18 años para pensar en lo que estaba haciendo, hacer investigaciones adicionales y poner todo en contexto. Todo ese tiempo estuve decidido a contar la historia con la mayor sinceridad posible. Ahora depende de los lectores decidir si lo logré o no. Me respalda mi trabajo.

 

Sí, lo comprendo, Robert. Te felicito por tu trabajo. No has proporcionado muy valiosa información. Depende de nosotros ampliarla o analizarla.

¡Exactamente!

________

El más reciente libro de Robert Rosen, Bobby in Naziland (que pronto tendrá un nuevo título A Brooklyn Memoir), está disponible en Amazon y en todos los otros establecimientos de ventas de libros online.

 

Traducido y editado por Mundo Beatle para TodoBeatles.com, EGB Radio, BFC, Beatles & Solistas: Fans Perú, Club Todos Juntos Ahora y grupos Facebook Beatles amigos.

 

Victor Wong, a PhD candidate studying public policy at the University of Western Australia, is working on a thesis that he describes as an attempt to connect the policies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to the current state of Democratic politics. 

 

He contacted me because he'd read my John Lennon bio, Nowhere Man, and thought I might be able to answer some questions related to his thesis. I told him I'd try. As it turned out, only one question was about Lennon; two touched on material I'd covered in Bobby in Naziland; and the rest were about the politics of the 1970s. The latter, in part, is what I've been exploring in the still-untitled book I'm currently working on, some of which is set at a politically radical and pornographic student newspaper at the City College of New York.

 

Answering Wong's questions (off the top of my head) was challenging, kind of a mental warm-up to get in gear for another day of re-creating the atmosphere of the 1970s, a time when the student left was giving way to the encroaching forces of what was not yet called punk.

 

Below are Wong's 16 questions and my answers.

 

What exactly were the motives ascribed to the Johnson administration regarding its acceleration of the war in Vietnam? Was it the domino theory pertaining to Communism, as some have suggested, or was there talk of some other underlying, more complicated motive such as imperialistic excess, for example?

The "domino theory" is what they taught us in school—junior high and high school at the time. My understanding now is that the U.S. was fighting in Vietnam because of all the American corporations that did business there. As with everything, the war was about money. We had to keep Vietnam safe for capitalism. There's a documentary, Millhouse (1971), about Nixon. If I'm not mistaken, the end credits include a list of every U.S. corporation doing business in Vietnam. And, of course, there was the "We've invested so much blood and treasure, we can't leave now" excuse. And nobody wanted to be the president who lost a war for the first time since 1812, even though they knew the war was unwinnable.

 

Was the U.S.'s youth particularly partial to leftist ideologies such as Trotskyism—or Leninism—or were most of them distracted by other things in their lives?

In the early 1970s, at the City College of New York, only a tiny minority of students were hardcore communists or involved with Trotskyist or Leninist organizations. Most students were simply opposed to a war they thought was pointless, illegal, and never-ending. Then, in 1973, the draft ended (though the war continued), and the remaining energy animating the student left began to dissipate. And yes, there was a multitude of distractions—drugs, music, and sex among them.

 

What were John Lennon's true feelings regarding the war? Did he ever express his thoughts regarding the war in his diaries?

Though Lennon never mentioned the war in his diaries, I think he was genuinely opposed to it. His antiwar activism was more than an act.

 

Often, in my experience, the military—or some of its members—are quick to lay blame for America's defeat or withdrawal on the media for its depictions of the war on TV. Do you think this is a fair assessment?

Vietnam was the first televised war, beamed into your living room every night. People were appalled by what they saw on TV and read in many of the mainstream newspapers and magazines and the underground press. Then there was the moment Walter Cronkite, whom everybody listened to, turned against the war. So, yes, I think the media played a role in ending the war. But to blame the media for America losing the war is absurd. As the Pentagon Papers make clear, the war was unwinnable.

 

Is there any comparison whatsoever between the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq?

Both wars lasted seemingly forever (Iraq continues); both were unwinnable; and both were based on lies.

 

Ultimately, did the Vietnam War have a deleterious effect on American politics on the domestic front?

Yes, it taught us to hate the government and to assume that everything the government told us was lies and propaganda. And it gave rise to groups like the Weathermen, who literally declared war on America and, in order to end the war, were prepared to kill people with massive dynamite-and-nail bombs.

 

Why did the U.S.'s youth view World War II as an existential struggle in comparison with the war in Vietnam, which they regarded with contempt?

Our fathers were World War II veterans who fought the Nazis and Japanese. They brought us up to believe in the righteousness and necessity of that war, and to hate the Nazis and Japanese. This is exactly what my book Bobby in Naziland is about—growing up in the aftermath of World War II among Holocaust survivors and World War II vets, and the war lingering "like a mass hallucination." Though I was politically naïve and ignorant in the late 60s and early 70s, as I approached draft age (I turned 18 in 1970), it was clear to me that the war was pointless. I was prepared to do anything necessary to not be drafted and sent to Vietnam. Most people I knew felt the same way. Fortunately, all I had to do was go to college and get a 2S student deferment.

 

Was there really widespread opposition to the war, or was it more of a niche movement?

The opposition in New York City was widespread. Nobody wanted to get drafted and sent to Vietnam to die in the jungle for Richard Nixon. And many of our parents didn't want to see that happen, either.

 

Was Nazism viewed as more of a threat to U.S. interests than Communism as it was being practiced by Vietnam, China, and the USSR?

If you're talking about Nazism in the 1940s, I'd say yes. They were overrunning the world, committing genocide, bombing major cities of our European allies, working on an atomic bomb, and trying to figure out how to invade the U.S. It was a very dark time when we thought we might lose the war. The main horror of Communism during the 60s and 70s was the threat of nuclear war. But with the exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it seemed more like a background threat, not something you worried about every single day. I don't think anybody outside the John Birch Society believed the Russians or Chinese were going to overrun America. The U.S. fought Communism far away, in Korea and Vietnam (to protect corporate interests). And that's where they stayed. "We fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here," the saying went. As far as Joe McCarthy, I doubt he believed communism was the threat he made it out to be. He was a lowlife politician trying to score political points. In the 1960s and 70s, you never heard about the threat of Nazism. The Nazis were over, defeated, and buried… except for the fugitive war criminals smoked out in the U.S. or on the loose in South America who might be kidnapped, brought back to Israel, tried, and hanged.

 

Would the generation that fought the Korean War have reacted to Vietnam the same way the baby boomers did?

I think anybody with a functional brain, unless they were willfully blind, eventually recognized the futility of Vietnam. The longer the war went on, the more obvious the futility became. I don't see why the generation that fought the Korean War would have reacted any differently than the baby boomers.

 

Did those on top such as McNamara truly make bad decisions, or were they put in an impossible situation?

The Pentagon Papers make it clear that the war was unwinnable and the Johnson and Nixon administrations knew it. So, yes, I'd attribute it to bad decision-making.

 

Why did LBJ, who accomplished much on the domestic front (at least when it came to civil rights), fail so profoundly when it came to Vietnam?

The war was unwinnable; he knew the war was unwinnable; he got bad advice from his cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff; he continued to bomb the country; he continued to send more troops; Americans were dying in large numbers; atrocities were committed; people saw it every night on TV; they were horrified; and the public eventually turned against him and the war.

 

Why does Vietnam continue to captivate the American public's imagination, in your view?

I'm not so sure Vietnam still captivates the American public's imagination. People are too caught up with the pandemic and the current political and economic nightmares.

 

Was the '60s truly a time of optimism and opportunity, or, as writers such as Stephen King, in Hearts in Atlantis, have suggested, was it a more chaotic time?

The 1960s were a time of war, riots, massive antiwar demonstrations, domestic bombings, and assassinations. That is chaos. But there was also more opportunity, which I'd attribute to the state of the economy. It was much easier to find a job that paid a living wage, college was affordable or free, and, especially in New York City, it was much easier to find affordable housing.

 

Do you think the younger generation today has the potential to have as big an impact politically—if not culturally—as yours did?

I sure hope so. Greta Thunberg and the Parkland high school kids come to mind.

 

Given your time in government, do you have any insight as to how the U.S. government/bureaucracy currently views Vietnam? How organic are protest movements in general? Is the view of the government sometimes that these moments of spontaneity are a way of tamping down the political climate?

I briefly worked as a speechwriter for the Secretary of the Air Force, in 1975, in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War and the evacuation of Saigon. The Pentagon was in a state of shock. It's a different world now. But the attitude still remains that the Pentagon always needs more money to build more and better weapons. I also think that it's generally accepted in the government and military that Vietnam was a cataclysmic mistake that was badly handled from beginning to end. And yes, I do think that protest movements today are organic. My wife and I enthusiastically demonstrated when Bush invaded Iraq and when Trump was elected. And finally, I'd be willing to entertain the possibility that the government sees some demonstrations as a way of allowing people to let off steam and lower the temperature.

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland, is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

Prisoner of Love: Inside The Dakota With John Lennon, by Peter Doggett, who has written extensively about the Beatles, was scheduled to be published April 13. The book was based on Doggett's reading of the private diaries Lennon kept during his five years of seclusion in the Dakota, before he reentered public life with the release of Double Fantasy, the last album he completed before his murder on December 8, 1980.

 

If this description sounds familiar, it's because it's almost identical to that of my book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, published 21 years ago.

 

While Nowhere Man was in part based on what I remembered from Lennon's diaries after I transcribed them, in 1981, Dogget had more recent access to the diaries and was apparently able to take detailed notes on their contents. (I say "apparently" because his exact methods are unclear.)

 

A few weeks ago, I contacted Doggett's publisher, Jawbone Press, to request a review copy of Prisoner of Love (a title that struck me as more reminiscent of a song in Mel Brooks's The Producers than Lennon's relationship with Yoko Ono). Jawbone informed me that the book had been canceled; they wouldn't explain why. I then contacted Doggett directly but he, too, refused to comment on the matter (though he did say he enjoyed Nowhere Man).

 

I was interested in Doggett's book because if what he wrote about the diaries is accurate (and I have no reason to believe it isn't), then it would confirm large portions of Nowhere Man.

 

In order to tell the story of Lennon's diaries, I used what I described in the introduction to Nowhere Man as a fictional technique to communicate a small amount of vital information that I couldn't confirm from sources other than the diaries themselves. (I explain the fictional technique in more detail in the e-book edition, published in 2015.) In 2000, soon after the book was first published, the Lennon estate and numerous journalists and readers attempted to discredit Nowhere Man as a work of complete fiction. Some of them suggested that the diaries didn't exist.

 

Much of what I wrote in Nowhere Man has since been confirmed, notably in my sworn testimony at the 2002 copyright-infringement trial of Lennon's former personal assistant Fred Seaman. (The trial involved work-for-hire photographs Seaman had taken.) Over the years, most people have come to accept Nowhere Man as accurate. But a small minority of true believers in the Myth of Lennon the Happy Househusband continue to doubt the book's credibility. Prisoner of Love, I thought, might dispel some of that remaining doubt.

 

So I was surprised and disappointed that the book was canceled. Though we may never learn exactly what happened, and how Doggett was able to read Lennon's diaries, below are my speculative answers to some of what I hoped to learn from interviewing Doggett and reading Prisoner of Love.

 

 

Berlin police provided this photo of John Lennon's diaries.

 

How and where was Doggett able to read Lennon's diaries?

In 2006, Ono's chauffeur Koral Karsan was accused of stealing Lennon's diaries and other personal effects. In November 2017, the diaries and dozens of those personal items, including Lennon's eyeglasses, were recovered in the Berlin auction house Auctionata. A 59-year-old German man whom police identified only as "Erhan G." had sold the diaries to Auctionata for 785,000 euros. "Several years ago," states the Prisoner of Love synopsis, "a mysterious set of circumstances led [Doggett] to a room where he was able to read several of the ex-Beatle's private diaries." Doggett must have read the diaries when they were in the possession of Erhan G. or Auctionata.

 

Why was Prisoner of Love canceled?

Ono's lawyers routinely send threatening letters to any publisher who intends to publish an unflattering or unauthorized book about Lennon. Even the remote possibility of a lawsuit is usually enough to dissuade publishers from putting out such a book. It should be noted that Ono has never gone forward with a lawsuit against a writer for something they have written, not even Albert Goldman for The Lives of John Lennon, which described the ex-Beatle as a murderer and homosexual who could barely play the guitar. Winning such a suit would be almost impossible for a public figure like Ono and would bring more attention to the book in question. Copyright infringement is a different story, and it's possible that Doggett quoted directly from the diaries, which would be an infringement.

 

Why go after the book if the story's already been told?

Forty years ago, Fred Seaman gave me Lennon's diaries to use as the basis for a book Seaman said Lennon had authorized him to write. Ono has never forgiven Seaman for this and is currently suing him for a recent interview he gave that she claims violates the provisions of the settlement of his 2002 copyright infringement-trial. Doggett's book is yet another reminder of what Seaman did in 1981 (and what Karsan did in 2006). Ono simply does not want to see another book by a credible journalist that goes against the Lennon Myth and validates what's in Nowhere Man.

 

Will Prisoner of Love ever be published?

I think a heavily revised version of the book will eventually be published. It took me 18 years to find a way to publish Nowhere Man. Perhaps Doggett can find a quicker path to publication.

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland, is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

EL LIBRO QUE NO PUEDE SER

 

'Prisoner of Love: Inside The Dakota With John Lennon' (Prisionero de Amor: En el Interior del Dakota con John Lennon), de Peter Doggett, quien ha escrito extensamente sobre los Beatles, estaba programado para ser publicado el 13 de abril. El libro se basaba en la lectura que hizo Doggett de los diarios privados que Lennon tuvo durante sus cinco años de reclusión en el Dakota, antes de volver a ingresar en la vida pública con el lanzamiento de 'Double Fantasy,' el último álbum que completó antes de su asesinato el 8 de diciembre de 1980.

 

Si esta descripción suena familiar, es porque es casi idéntica a la de mi libro 'Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon', publicado hace 21 años. Si bien 'Nowhere Man' se basó en parte en lo que recordaba de los diarios de Lennon después de que los transcribí, en 1981, Dogget tuvo un acceso más reciente a los diarios y aparentemente pudo tomar notas detalladas sobre su contenido. (Digo "aparentemente" porque sus métodos exactos no están claros).

 

Hace unas semanas, me comuniqué con la editora de Doggett, Jawbone Press, para solicitar una copia de la reseña de 'Prisoner of Love' (un título que me pareció más parecido a una canción de 'The Producers' de Mel Brooks que a la relación de Lennon con Yoko Ono). Jawbone me informó que el libro había sido cancelado; ellos no explicaron por qué. Luego me comuniqué directamente con Doggett, pero él también se negó a comentar sobre el asunto (aunque dijo que disfrutaba de 'Nowhere Man').

 

Estaba interesado en el libro de Doggett porque si lo que escribió sobre los diarios es correcto (y no tengo ninguna razón para creer que no lo es), confirmaría grandes porciones de 'Nowhere Man'.

 

Para contar la historia de los diarios de Lennon, utilicé lo que describí en la introducción a 'Nowhere Man' como una técnica ficticia para comunicar una pequeña cantidad de información vital que no pude confirmar de fuentes distintas de los propios diarios. (Explico la técnica ficticia con más detalle en la edición del libro electrónico, publicada en el 2015). En el 2000, poco después de la primera publicación del libro, los herederos de Lennon y numerosos periodistas y lectores intentaron desacreditar a 'Nowhere Man' como una obra de ficción pura. Algunos de ellos sugirieron que los diarios no existían.

 

Mucho de lo que escribí en 'Nowhere Man' ha sido confirmado desde entonces, en particular en mi testimonio jurado en el juicio por infracción de derechos de autor del 2002 del ex asistente personal de Lennon, Fred Seaman. (El juicio involucró fotografías de trabajo por encargo que Seaman había tomado). A lo largo de los años, la mayoría de la gente ha llegado a aceptar a 'Nowhere Man' como algo exacto. Pero una pequeña minoría de verdaderos creyentes en el mito de Lennon El Feliz Amo de Casa continúa dudando de la credibilidad del libro. 'Prisoner of Love', pensé, podría disipar algunas de las dudas restantes.

 

Así que me sorprendió y decepcionó que el libro fuera cancelado. Aunque es posible que nunca sepamos exactamente qué sucedió y cómo Doggett pudo leer los diarios de Lennon, a continuación se encuentran mis respuestas especulativas a algo de lo que esperaba aprender al entrevistar a Doggett y leer 'Prisoner of Love'.

 

¿Cómo y dónde pudo Doggett leer los diarios de Lennon?

En el 2006, el chófer de Yoko Ono, Koral Karsan, fue acusado de robar los diarios de Lennon y otros efectos personales. En noviembre del 2017, los diarios y docenas de esos artículos personales, incluidos los anteojos de Lennon, fueron recuperados en la casa de subastas de Berlín Auctionata. Un alemán de 59 años a quien la policía identificó solo como 'Erhan G' había vendido los diarios a Auctionata por 785.000 euros. "Hace varios años", afirmaba la sinopsis de 'Prisoner of Love', "un misterioso conjunto de circunstancias llevaron a Doggett a una habitación donde pudo leer varios de los diarios privados del ex Beatle". Doggett debe haber leído los diarios cuando estaban en posesión de Erhan G. o de Auctionata.

 

¿Por qué se canceló 'Prisoner of Love'?

Los abogados de Ono envían cartas amenazadoras a cualquier editor que pretenda publicar un libro poco halagador o no autorizado sobre Lennon. Incluso la remota posibilidad de una demanda suele ser suficiente para disuadir a los editores de publicar un libro de este tipo. Cabe señalar que Ono nunca ha presentado una demanda contra un escritor por algo que han escrito, ni siquiera Albert Goldman por 'The Lives of John Lennon', que describió al ex Beatle como un asesino y homosexual que apenas podía tocar la guitarra. Ganar un caso así sería casi imposible para una figura pública como Ono y llamaría más la atención sobre el libro en cuestión. La infracción de derechos de autor es una historia diferente, y es posible que Doggett haya citado directamente de los diarios, lo que sería una infracción.

 

¿Por qué ir tras el libro si la historia ya está contada?

Hace cuarenta años, Fred Seaman me dio los diarios de Lennon para usarlos como base para un libro que Seaman dijo que Lennon le había autorizado a escribir. Yoko Ono nunca ha perdonado a Seaman por esto y actualmente lo está demandando por una entrevista reciente que dio en la que ella afirma que viola las disposiciones del acuerdo de su juicio por infracción de derechos de autor del 2002. El libro de Doggett es otro recordatorio de lo que hizo Seaman en 1981 (y lo que hizo Karsan en el 2006). Ono simplemente no quiere ver otro libro de un periodista creíble que va en contra del mito de Lennon y valida lo que hay en 'Nowhere Man'.

 

¿Se publicará 'Prisoner of Love'?

Creo que eventualmente se publicará una versión muy revisada del libro. Me tomó 18 años encontrar la manera de publicar 'Nowhere Man'. Quizás Doggett pueda encontrar un camino más rápido para la publicación.

 

Traducido y editado por Mundo Beatle para TodoBeatles.com, EGB Radio, BFC, Beatles & Solistas: Fans Perú, Club Todos Juntos Ahora Oficial y Grupos Facebook.

 

I come here to neither bury nor praise James Patterson. I've not read his latest book, The Last Days of John Lennon, nor do I intend to. I don't read books written by elves who toil in Patterson's word factory, no matter how closely he oversees their work. Patterson is more brand name than author, and the elves in this case are named Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge. I assume they researched and wrote the book based on Patterson's outline and guidance.

 

My only interest in Patterson's (for simplicity's sake I'll refer to the three authors by their brand name) heavily promoted "true-crime story," as he calls The Last Days, is that my book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon is cited in the notes. Naturally I was curious to see what scrap of information Patterson gleaned from my book.

 

The note section of Patterson's book is extensive. Virtually every fragment of information throughout The Last Days is attributed to a source. The Nowhere Man note is from Chapter 43. It says:

 

Playboy magazine: Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon (New York, Soft Skull Press, 2000), 180.

 

This isn't quite correct. Playboy magazine is mentioned on page 180 of the Quick American Archives edition, not the Soft Skull Press edition—a sloppy, though hardly tragic, mistake.

 

But sloppy research may also be apparent in the full-page back-cover ad for the book that recently appeared in The New York Times Book Review. In the ad, Patterson writes that the day after Lennon's murder, "I was in the huge, sad crowd gathered in Central Park." He seems to be referring to the vigil that took place December 14, six days after the murder.

 

I'm not usually a nitpicker when it comes to this kind of thing. And having made my share of factual mistakes in my own books, each one invariably pointed out by concerned readers, I understand just how easy (and human) it is to err. But considering that the two things I looked at—an endnote and a prominent newspaper ad—contained factual mistakes, I think it's an indication that the sloppy research is widespread, and that Patterson needs to hire a few more elves to do his fact checking.

 

The scrap of information he gleaned from Nowhere Man is straightforward: Lennon's assassin, Mark David Chapman, bought, at the Sheraton Center Hotel on Seventh Avenue, a copy of Playboy featuring an interview with John Lennon.

 

The scene is more or less mirrored in Chapter 43 of The Last Days, describing how Chapman gets into a cab, goes to the Sheraton Center, and buys Playboy and a copy of The Catcher in the Rye at a bookstore near the hotel.

 

Curiously, Patterson adds a fictional B-movie element to the scene: He has the cabdriver say to Chapman, "Get in, bud."

 

The book begins on December 6, 1980, with Chapman flying to New York from Hawaii. Patterson also adds some fictional elements to this scene. He has Chapman sitting in a cloud of cigarette smoke looking at his handgun permit.

 

I assume such fictional elements are pervasive, and I'll leave it to others to decide if Patterson achieved his goal of telling "a story that's almost impossible to stop reading," as he says in the ad. I was able to put the book down where I found it in the bookstore. I know the story well—too well. It's been told in about 400 other Lennon biographies, many of which I read when I was writing Nowhere Man. I feel no need to hear it again, as told by hired elves.

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland, is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore, where you should (and probably can) buy it again.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

John Lennon left us 40 years ago, on December 8. We're fast approaching the day, sometime in February 2021, when he'll have been gone longer than he was with us. As time continues to pass at an ever-accelerating pace, I find myself looking back, as I often do at this time of year, on the night when the unthinkable happened.
 

Like John, I was a compulsive diary keeper. Below are two excerpts from my diary from the days immediately after John's murder. Both excerpts appear in Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon. The "Fred" I refer to is Fred Seaman, John's personal assistant. The book I mention would, 18 years later, become Nowhere Man.

 

I post these excerpts now to share with you a sense of what it was like at a time when the world changed and my own life would never be the same.

 

 

 

12/9/80 John Lennon was killed last night. At around 7:00 I'd smoked the last bit of dope Fred had given me, my "Lennon Dope." I looked at those crumbs in the bag and said, "What the fuck am I saving this for, sentimental reasons? This stuff is for getting stoned." It was Jim Morrison's birthday and I was listening to a Doors special on WPLJ. When news of the murder came over the radio, all I felt was a chill. Around 2 A.M. I went down to the Dakota. I felt it was important to observe the scene. I shed a few tears, I couldn't help it. God help you, John Lennon. Thank you for touching my life. At 5 A.M, when I got home, I tried to call Fred at the Dakota. I got the accountant. He said Fred wasn't available. I said, "Tell him I called and that I'm sorry." There was nothing to say then and there's nothing to say now. There is only sickness in a sick world.

 

 

 

Yet as I absorbed the unfolding events, I couldn't help but consider my own role in them.

 

12/10/80 I'm an eyewitness to history. I would not be human if I were not fascinated by Lennon's death. My perfectly human desire is to want to be part of the scene, to be part of history. There is a possibility Fred will ask me to begin work on the book. He called this morning to say he's quitting his job at the end of the week to begin writing it. "It's what John wants," he said. "John knew he was going to die and he poured his heart out to me. He knew I was working on a book." I'm not going to ask to participate in this project. If I'm not part of it, my life will go on as it has. But if Fred does ask me, there's no way I can say no. I believe I can execute such a project in a spirit true to John Lennon's memory.

 

I hope that Nowhere Man is sufficient proof that the last sentence is correct.

________

My latest book, Bobby in Naziland, is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore, where you should (and probably can) buy it.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

Since the Covid-19 pandemic cut short my Bobby in Naziland promotional tour, all has been quiet on the media front. But today and yesterday, things came to life.

 

This morning, my John Lennon bio, Nowhere Man, was referenced in The Wall Street Journal in an article about the sale, for $36 million, of El Solano, the mansion in Palm Beach that John Lennon and Yoko Ono bought in 1980. El Solano is where John, after five years of musical silence, reconnected with his muse several months before his murder, on December 8, 1980. You can read all about it in Nowhere Man.

Then yesterday, my appearance on Sharifah Hardie's Round Table Talk Show with four other inspiring guests was not only fun but gave me the opportunity to talk about all my books, including Beaver Street. So thank you, Sharifah!

 

I will now return to my regularly scheduled day of writing another book and enjoying the walls closing in on Donald Trump.

________

Bobby in Naziland is available on Amazon and all other online booksellers, as well as at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore, where you should (and probably can) buy it again.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

Guest Post by Mary Lyn Maiscott

My husband, Robert Rosen, and I were supposed to be in St. Louis this month. We'd gone in October last year so that Bob could do a reading from his memoir, Bobby in Naziland: A Tale of Flatbush, at Subterranean Books, an indie store on a popular strip called the Loop, near Washington University. Bob had a great turnout, including relatives and friends of ours—I grew up in the area, and my two siblings, Cecilia and John, and my nephew Sean live in the city.

 

After the event, the bookstore manager told Bob they'd love for him to come back, and so a date was set—October 9, 2020, John Lennon's 80th birthday; Bob was going to read from his 2000 cult classic, Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon. With that settled, a group of us walked across Delmar Boulevard to celebrate at a Thai restaurant and, later, the club Blueberry Hill (famous for the numerous performances in its Duck Room by favorite son Chuck Berry).

 

Of course, the October 2020 Lennon reading evaporated in the wake of the coronavirus. But the event that transpired last year remains a wonderful memory, and Bob and I are both grateful to Subterranean and all of those who came out that night—a spirited Q&A followed the reading—as well as those who attended another reading, at the spacious, art-filled home of Bob's childhood friend Ernie Abramson, who had, coincidentally, moved to St. Louis long ago to study dentistry. 

 

Soon after we got back to New York, we found out that Bobby in Naziland had made a bestseller list in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch! And now Subterranean has set a date for next spring for the Nowhere Man event. 

 

In the meantime, Bob is working on a book about the 1970s, and I have a single coming out inspired by feelings of missing people, especially my family, during this time: "I Can't Touch You (Supermoon)." It's a true quarantine production, and I'll be writing more about it before its release November 20!

 

En mi entrevista con Juan Pablo Silvestre, presentador de Mundo Babel, transmitido por Radio 3 de España, el 8 de diciembre de 2018, en el 38 aniversario del asesinato de John Lennon, yo comento la última edición en español de mi libro Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon. Entre los tópicos, que exploré con detalle en el curso de nuestra conversación, están: el proceso de edición y transcripción de los diarios de flujo de conciencia, que Lennon mantuvo desde enero de 1975 hasta el día que murió; mi relación con el asistente personal de Lennon, Fred Seaman, quien me dio los diarios; y el estado mental del asesino de Lennon, Mark David Chapman.

 

Silvestre empieza el programa con un corte extendido de "Walking on Thin Ice", la canción de Yoko Ono que Lennon estaba grabando con ella la noche del 8 de diciembre, e ilustra nuestro diálogo con canciones de Lennon con los Beatles y de su carrera como solista, incluyendo "Imagine", "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", "A Day in the Life" y "(Just Like) Starting Over".

 

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Babel World: The Day John Lennon Died

 

In my interview with Juan Pablo Silvestre, host of Mundo Babel, broadcast on Radio 3 Spain, on December 8, 2018, the 38th anniversary of John Lennon's murder, I discussed the latest Spanish edition of my book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon. Among the topics I explored in detail in the course of our conversation are: the process of editing and transcribing the stream-of-consciousness diaries Lennon kept from January 1975 until the day he died; my relationship with Lennon's personal assistant Fred Seaman, who gave me the diaries; and the state of mind of Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman.

 

Silvestre begins the show with an extended cut of "Walking on Thin Ice," Yoko Ono's song that Lennon was recording with her on the night of December 8, and he illustrates our dialogue with songs from Lennon's Beatles and solo career, including "Imagine," "Happiness Is a Warm Gun," "A Day in the Life," and "(Just Like) Starting Over."

 

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"Esta es una de las noches más memorables de mi carrera", le dije al grupo reunido en Strawberry Fields, un local de hamburguesas cuadra abajo desde el Café Comercial, en Madrid. Era el 3 de noviembre y recién habíamos venido del café, donde por las últimas dos horas yo había estado respondiendo preguntas, sobre la nueva edición en español de mi libro Nowhere Man. Y ese céntrico restaurante beatle era el lugar ideal, para celebrar mi primera presentación en España. El video "Hey Jude" de los Beatles estaba rodando en la pantalla detrás de nosotros, y mi esposa, Mary Lyn Maiscott, señaló que su viejo amigo Joel Soroka estaba tocando la pandereta, en esa cápsula de tiempo de 50 años. María Martín, quien colabora con Jordi Melgosa en la revista beatle El Submarí Groc y quien organizó el evento, pareció encantada con esta pequeña noticia.

La energía había sido eléctrica durante toda la noche. Me sorprendía y apocaba que tantas personas hubieran venido de toda España, para asistir al evento. Su amor por los Beatles era incondicional; estaban ansiosos de cualquier información nueva, y deseosos de oír lo que yo tuviera que decir sobre mis experiencias, de muchos años atrás, mientras editaba los diarios de John Lennon. Sus preguntas fueron desafiantes, fue como una conferencia de prensa. Yo lamento que no pude ofrecer mejores respuestas, a la ráfaga de preguntas sobre la ama de llaves española de John Lennon, Rosaura López Lorenzo, sobre quien conocí mucho después que Nowhere Man fuera publicado. Cuando se trataba de los empleados, Lennon sólo escribía sobre esos que lo enojaban y, al parecer, Rosaura se las agenció para quedarse en su lado bueno.

La audiencia llenó el café con una clase de emoción, que no se parece a ninguna cosa que yo haya visto en Estados Unidos en décadas. Estos fanáticos de los Beatles españoles eran personas no cínicas, que no pudieron obtener suficiente de los Cuatro Fabulosos cuando ellos existían como grupo, o que habían nacido demasiado tarde y los habían extrañado por completo.

Como mi traductor, Diego Harris, quien nació en 1977, me había dicho antes: “Yo estoy feliz de haber estado vivo al mismo tiempo que John Lennon.”

Hacia el final de la presentación, yo expliqué cómo mi experiencia me había habilitado para escribir Nowhere Man, y leí un extracto de mi nuevo libro, Bobby en Nazilandia (que será publicado el próximo año, por Headpress), describiendo cómo compré mi primer álbum grabado, Meet the Beatles, por tres dólares, en una tienda de cinco y diez centavos el 10 de febrero de 1964, el día después que la banda apareció por primera vez en el programa de Ed Sullivan. Fue, dije, “la primera vez en mi vida, que yo poseyera una música que pudiera llamar mía propia”. Y por el medio siglo siguiente, he continuado prestando una atención cercana.

Esa noche mágica en Madrid, marcó asimismo el 18 aniversario de la publicación de un libro, que por 18 años nadie había publicado. Yo dudo que pudiera haber habido una mejor manera de celebrarlo, que con mis nuevos amigos en el Café Comercial y en la fiesta posterior en Strawberry Fields. Me sentí como un embajador de Nutopia, un representante terrenal del señor Lennon, haciendo lo que pudiera para comunicar su vibra, en un tiempo cuando parece que nosotros podemos necesitarla más que nunca.

Así que yo quiero expresar mi más profunda gratitud, a todos quienes hicieron posible el evento y vinieron al Café Comercial, especialmente a María; a Diego, por sus extraordinarias traducciones al vuelo; a Arturo Gonzalez, editor de 10, Mathew Street, por su cobertura a lo largo de los años, y por el gran tour por Madrid que él y su esposa Almudena nos dieron a Mary Lyn y a mí; y a René Portas, quien tradujo no sólo Nowhere Man, sino asimismo la declaración de apertura que yo leí en el café, así como éste y muchos otros posts del blog.

¡Gracias a todos!

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“This is one of the most memorable nights of my career,” I told the crowd gathered at Strawberry Fields, a hamburger joint down the block from Café Comercial, in Madrid. It was November 3, and we’d just come from the café, where for the past two hours I’d been answering questions about the new Spanish edition of my book Nowhere Man. And this Beatles-centric restaurant was the ideal place to celebrate my first presentation in Spain. The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” video was playing on the screen behind us, and my wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott, pointed out that her old friend Joel Soroka was playing the tambourine in this 50-year-old time capsule. María Martín, who collaborates with Jordi Melgosa on the Beatles magazine El Submarí Groc and who organized the event, seemed delighted with this unexpected bit of news.

The energy had been electric throughout the night. I was amazed and humbled that so many people had come from all over Spain to attend the event. Their love of the Beatles was unconditional; they were hungry for any new information and eager to hear what I had to say about my experiences, so many years ago, editing John Lennon’s diaries. Their questions were challenging—it was like a press conference. I’m sorry that I couldn’t provide better answers to the flurry of questions about John Lennon’s Spanish housekeeper, Rosaura López Lorenzo, whom I learned about long after Nowhere Man was published. When it came to employees, Lennon only wrote about the ones who pissed him off and, apparently, Rosaura managed to stay on his good side.

The audience filled the café with the kind of emotion that’s unlike anything I’ve seen in America in decades. These Spanish Beatle fanáticos were uncynical people who couldn’t get enough of the Fab Four when they existed as a group, or were born too late and had missed them entirely.

As my translator, Diego Harris, who was born in 1977, had told me earlier, “I’m happy to have been alive at the same time as John Lennon.”

Toward the end of the presentation, I explained how my background had enabled me to write Nowhere Man, and I read an excerpt from my new book, Bobby in Naziland (to be published next year, by Headpress), describing how I bought my first record album, Meet the Beatles, for three dollars, in a five-and-dime store on February 10, 1964, the day after the band first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. It was, I said, “the first time in my life I possessed music I could call my own.” And for the next half century, I’ve continued to pay close attention.

This magical night in Madrid also marked the 18th anniversary of the publication of a book that, for 18 years, nobody would publish. I doubt there could have been a better way to celebrate than with my new friends in Café Comercial and at the after-party in Strawberry Fields. I felt like the Nutopian ambassador, an earthly representative of Señor Lennon, doing what I could to communicate his vibe at a time when it seems as if we need it more than ever.

So I want to express my deepest gratitude to everybody who made the event possible and who came to Café Comercial—especially María; Diego, for his extraordinary on-the-fly translations; Arturo Gonzalez, editor of 10, Mathew Street, for his coverage over the years and for the grand tour of Madrid he and his wife Almudena gave Mary Lyn and me; and René Portas, who translated not only Nowhere Man, but also the opening statement I read at the café as well as this and many other blog posts.

¡Gracias a todos!

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Sábado 3 de noviembre, a las 18.00 pm en el Café Comercial de Madrid—1a planta (Glorieta de Bilbao 7)

Apertura 17:30 pm

Entrada Gratuita

Robert Rosen, autor del best-seller Nowhere Man sobre los diarios secretos de John Lennon, ofrecerá una charla acerca de su libro el Sábado 3 noviembre, a las 18.00 pm en el Café Comercial de Madrid, en lo que será la primera visita del autor neoyorkino a nuestro país.

En mayo de 1981, los diarios de John Lennon, que cubrían los años 1975-1980, llegaron de forma inesperada a manos de Rosen con la misión de ser transcritos para una biografía.

Más información: eventorobertrosen@gmail.com.

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Este es el musical chileno inspirado por Nowhere Man. Puede leer sobre ello aquí.

This is the Chilean musical inspired by Nowhere Man. You can read about it here.

Te invito a unirte a mí en Facebook o a seguirme en Twitter.

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En mayo de 1981 el asistente personal de John Lennon, Fred Seaman, me dio los diarios que Lennon había estado escribiendo, entre enero de 1975 y el 8 de diciembre de 1980, el día en que fue asesinado. Esos diarios, explicó Seaman, eran la clave del proyecto, que Lennon le había pedido llevara a cabo en evento de su muerte. Seaman iba a escribir la historia verdadera de los últimos años de Lennon, y quería que yo lo ayudara a hacerlo.

Yo acepté ese encargo sabiendo, que podría ejecutarlo en un espíritu que fuera verdadero para John. La historia de los diarios es la historia que cuento en Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon.

Desde ese día de 37 años atrás en que Seaman me dio los diarios, mucho se ha escrito sobre lo que hice con éstos. Pero una simple verdad se ha perdido en las resmas de la cobertura de los medios: yo traté esos diarios con amor y respeto, y los usé para crear un retrato de John Lennon como un ser humano tri-dimensional.

En la entrevista de María Martín a mí, en el último número de la revista beatleriana española El Submarí Groc, y en el video de abajo, en inglés con subtítulos en español, ella pone en claro esa simple verdad, diciendo en el titular que “Robert Rosen… nos acerca la belleza de un John Lennon humano.”

Ha sido como un arribo tras largo tiempo.

Para pedir una copia de El Submarí Groc, escribe a elsubmarigroc@hotmail.com.

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In May 1981, John Lennon's personal assistant Fred Seaman gave me the diaries that Lennon had been writing in between January 1975 and December 8, 1980, the day he was murdered. These journals, Seaman explained, were the key to the project Lennon had asked him to carry out in the event of his death. Seaman was to write the true story of Lennon's final years and he wanted me to help him do it.

I accepted this assignment knowing that I could execute it in a spirit that was true to John. The story of the diaries is the story I tell in Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon.

Since the day 37 years ago that Seaman gave me the diaries, much has been written about what I did with them. But a simple truth has gotten lost in the reams of media coverage: I treated those diaries with love and respect, and used them to create a portrait of John Lennon as a three-dimensional human being.

In María Martín’s interview with me in the latest issue of the Spanish Beatles magazine El Submarí Groc (The Yellow Submarine)—and in the above video, in English with Spanish subtitles—she makes that simple truth clear, saying in the headline that “Robert Rosen… brings us the beauty of a human John Lennon” (“nos acerca la belleza de un John Lennon humano”).

It’s been a long time coming.

To order a copy of El Submarí Groc, write to elsubmarigroc@hotmail.com.

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