'Corn Flakes With John Lennon' by Robert Hilburn

[Ed Roach]

In My Life: Robert Hilburn's 'Corn Flakes With John Lennon'


Robert Hilburn was pop music critic for the Los Angeles Times for 35 years, from the psychedelic era to the emergence of the iPod. He witnessed many of rock 'n' roll's seminal moments and interviewed virtually every major pop figure of the period. All of this is chronicled in his memoir, "Corn Flakes with John Lennon (and Other Tales From a Rock 'n' Roll Life)," to be published this month. In this abridged excerpt, Hilburn explores his relationship with Lennon after the Beatles' breakup and explains the book's title. Additional excerpts will appear Monday and Tuesday in Calendar.

John Lennon raced into Yoko Ono's home office in the mammoth old Dakota building with a copy of Donna Summer's new single, "The Wanderer." "Listen!" he shouted to us as he put the 45 on the record player. "She's doing Elvis!" I didn't know what he was talking about at first. The arrangement felt more like rock than the singer's usual electro-disco approach, but the opening vocal sure sounded like Donna Summer to me. Midway through the song, however, her voice shifted into the playful, hiccuping style Elvis had used on so many of his early recordings.

"See! See!" John shouted, pointing at the speakers.

The record was John's way of saying hello again after five years. I had spent time with him in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, during the period he later referred to as his "lost weekend" -- months when he was estranged from Yoko and spent many a night in notorious drinking bouts with his buddies Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr. John got so boisterous one night that he was thrown out of the Troubadour, one of the city's landmark music clubs. He invited me to dinner a few times, and I later found out it was when he had an important business meeting the next morning and didn't want to wake up with a hangover. I got the nod over Harry and Ringo because I didn't drink anything stronger than diet soda. We would eat at a chic Chinese restaurant and then return to his suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Those hours would race by because we loved talking about our favorite rock hero, Elvis, which brings us back to "The Wanderer."

I've experienced hundreds of memorable concert and interview moments, so it's hard to rank them in any favorite order, but my final hours with John in New York are certainly on the short list. It was just weeks before his death in December of 1980, and his playing the Summer record was an endearing greeting -- and one that was typical of John. Of the hundreds of musicians I've met, John was among the most down-to-earth.

::

As soon as I started working at the Los Angeles Times, people warned me not to get too close to artists because it could make it difficult to review their work and you can never really tell if the "friendship" is genuine. Even so, I felt there was much value in getting to know some of the most important artists beyond what you can glean in the hour or so you have to interview them. The relationship with Lennon -- and it never approached anything like a daily or even weekly tie -- came about naturally. I liked him and enjoyed his company.

John came to town in late 1973 to record an oldies album with Phil Spector and to promote his new solo album, "Mind Games," which he had produced himself. I interviewed him at the Bel-Air home of record producer Lou Adler, a chief force behind the Monterey Pop festival. May Pang, who introduced herself as John's personal assistant, answered the door and took me to the patio where John was waiting. He was wearing jeans and a sweater vest over his shirt and he walked toward me enthusiastically. "Well, hello at last," he said with a warm smile.

"Phil tells me you're a big Elvis fan," he said.

We ended up spending so much time talking about Elvis and other favorites from the 1950s that I was afraid we weren't going to get to the Beatles and his solo career. I was particularly interested in his thoughts on his "Plastic Ono Band" album (from 1970); the songs struck me as being so personal.

"I always took the songs personally, whether it was 'In My Life' or 'Help,' " he said. "To me, I always wrote about myself. Very few of the completely Lennon songs weren't in the first person. I'm a first-person journalist. I find it hard, though I occasionally do it, to write about, you know, 'Freddie went up the mountain and Freddie came back.' And even that is really about you."

John said he actually preferred "Plastic Ono Band" to its follow-up, "Imagine," even though the latter sold more copies and got generally better reviews. "I was a bit surprised by the reaction to 'Mother,' " he said, referring to "Plastic Ono Band" by his own title for it. "I thought, 'Can't they see how nice it is?' " So, John said, he went back into the studio and wrote new songs about many of the same themes, only this time he put on some strings and other production touches that made the message more accessible. That's why, he said, he privately called the "Imagine" album "Mother With Chocolate."

The interview didn't run in The Times until the album "Mind Games" was actually in the stores several weeks later. In the meantime, Phil invited me to one of the sessions for the oldies project. They had been going on for some weeks and the word was that they were pretty raucous, even drunken affairs. On the night I stopped by the studio, the liquor flowed freely. John, a gob of cake in his hand, chased Phil around the control booth while those around them danced to John's just-recorded version of an early Elvis recording, "Just Because."

But John wasn't all playfulness. He had sharp words for one of the studio employees and insulted a record company guest. This wild John was a lot different from the charming guy I had met at Adler's house, and I hoped the rude, drunken behavior was an aberration. But I kept hearing reports, including one about Phil firing a pistol one night and others about a tipsy John out on the town with his buddies and how he sometimes drank as much as a bottle of vodka a day. The first time I saw him this way away from the studio was at the Troubadour, where I was reviewing the opening of R&B singer Ann Peebles, who had a hit single, "I Can't Stand the Rain."

I didn't know John was in the club until he was in the middle of a big commotion. He was so drunk that he had wrapped a Kotex sanitary napkin around his head. When one of the waitresses tried to quiet him, he shouted, "Don't you know who I am?" Her answer was repeated the next day in all the record company offices and later in lots of magazine articles: "To me, you're just some ass -- with a Kotex on his head." A bouncer escorted John and his party out onto Santa Monica Boulevard.

Eventually, John returned to New York with May and spent weeks trying unsuccessfully to get Phil to give him the sessions' master tapes so he could finish the album himself. By then, I was beginning to hear reports about a strain between John and Yoko Ono and the suggestion that his relationship with May was more than simply professional. John was in a terrific mood when he returned from New York a few months later. He was only supposed to be in town for a few days, but the trip was extended and May phoned one day to say that John would like me to join him for dinner. When I got to the hotel, I figured he'd have a limo waiting downstairs. But John, wearing blue jeans and a black T-shirt, suggested that I drive, and we were soon off to a nearby Chinese restaurant, where we spent a couple of hours talking about Elvis, naturally.

Back at the hotel, Around 11:30, John turned on Johnny Carson's TV show and ordered corn flakes and cream from room service. He turned the sound down on the TV and stirred the corn flakes and cream with his spoon in an almost ritualistic fashion before taking a bite.

I didn't think much of it until the same thing happened the next time we returned to the hotel after dinner. This time I asked what was up with the corn flakes.

He smiled.

As a child in Liverpool during World War II, he explained, you could never get cream, so it was a special treat. He took another bite and gave an exaggerated sigh to underscore just how sweet it tasted.

The mention of Liverpool made John nostalgic. I already knew a little about John's early days, but it was fascinating hearing him tell the story. John was born in 1940 -- a year after me -- and he was raised by his Aunt Mimi after his parents broke up when he was about 5. His mother, Julia, started seeing another man who had children of his own and didn't want another one around. John loved Mimi dearly, but he also longed for his mother, who lived only a few miles away.

During his teens, just around the time he had formed the Quarrymen skiffle group, he said he had begun seeing more of his mother and had gotten the feeling she was trying to make up for all the years of her absence from his life. She was especially excited about the band, and John treasured their time together. But his mother was hit and killed by a motorist while walking to a bus stop. His mother had been taken from him twice. He was 17.

John had thought that rock 'n' roll fame would make everything right in his life, but even after his success he continued to search for someone or something to make his world seem complete. That was the theme of the "Plastic Ono Band" album. The very first song, "Mother," started with him screaming, "Mother, you had me, but I never had you / I wanted you, but you didn't want me." It continued, "Father, you left me, but I never left you / I needed you, but you didn't need me."

He found that missing foundation in Yoko, which is why she became more important to him than even the Beatles. In "God," a later song on the record, he again screams, "I don't believe in Elvis. I don't believe in Zimmerman [ Bob Dylan]. I don't believe in Beatles. I just believe in me. Yoko and me. That's reality."

As he spoke, I could understand why John felt so adrift. Until that night, I had assumed he had separated from Yoko and was involved in a new relationship with May, but he said that Yoko had pretty much demanded a break in their relationship. He was clearly still in love with her. Without her, he had no shield against the pressures of the rock 'n' roll world and his own depression.

::

In the fall of 1980, John and Yoko were finishing up their new album, "Double Fantasy," and I headed to New York for John's first newspaper interview in five years. This was when John raced into Yoko's office at the Dakota with a copy of Donna Summer's "The Wanderer."

He had returned to New York after the "lost weekend" period and spent the next five years rebuilding his life with Yoko and helping to raise their son, Sean. On this day, he looked nice and trim in jeans, a jean jacket and a white T-shirt. He was maybe 25 pounds slimmer than the last time I'd seen him. "It's Mother's macrobiotic diet," he said later about his weight, employing his nickname for Yoko. "She makes sure I stay on it."

By the time we headed to the recording studio, it was nearly dark. As the limo pulled up to the studio's dimly lit entrance, I could see the outlines of a couple dozen fans in the shadows. They raced toward the car as soon as the driver opened John's door. Flashbulbs went off with blinding speed. Without a bodyguard, John was helpless, and I later asked if he didn't worry about his safety. "They don't mean any harm," he replied. "Besides, what can you do? You can't spend all your life hiding from people. You've got to get out and live some, don't you?"

Inside the studio, I heard several tracks from "Double Fantasy," which was John's most revealing album since "Imagine." I could see he was happy to be back in the studio, and he looked forward to making more music with Yoko. Some critics branded the gentle, relaxed tone of the collection too soft. They missed the old Lennon bite. To me, however, the collection was a marvelous reflection of John's mood, and Grammy voters were right when they named it album of the year.

The Dakota is one of New York's most famous residential addresses. Built in 1884, it has spacious rooms and high ceilings; John and Yoko's living room had the formal but graceful feel of a museum with its Egyptian art, including a sarcophagus that dominated one side of the room. From one window of the seventh-floor apartment, I could see across Central Park and much of the city's spectacular skyline. For the preceding five years, that scene had been John's primary view of the world.

I spent hours at the apartment and the studio talking to John about the changes since Los Angeles. He felt at peace for one of the few times in his life. He was deeply in love with Yoko and thrilled to be a father again. He also spoke with affection about the Beatles days and how much he still looked forward to seeing Paul. That surprised me because of the sarcastic barbs he'd launched in interviews and the biting lyrics he'd written about Paul since the breakup of the band. "Aw, don't believe all that," he said, smiling. "Paul is like a brother. We've gotten way past all that." He also spoke fondly of Ringo but more distantly about George. He felt slighted by some things in George's autobiography, "I, Me, Mine," especially George's failure to give John credit for helping him learn guitar techniques.

Mostly, we talked about the "house husband" period that was just ending, a time of emotional drying out, a chance to reset priorities.

He had decided in 1975 to shut down his career to work on his strained marriage with Yoko and to spend time with Sean, who was born that October. He also wanted to escape the pressures and expectations of the rock 'n' roll world. Despite his highly acclaimed solo works of the early 1970s, John found it difficult to deal with the ghost of his Fab Four association.

"When I wrote 'the dream is over' [in 'God' in 1970], I was trying to say to the Beatles thing, 'Get off my back.' I was also trying to tell the other people to stop looking at me because I wasn't going to do it for them anymore because I didn't even know what the hell I was doing in my own life," he told me that first day. "What I realized during the five years away was that when I said the dream is over, I had made the physical break from the Beatles, but mentally there was still this big thing on my back about what people expected of me. It was like this invisible ghost. During the five years, it sort of went away. I finally started writing like I was even before the Beatles were the Beatles. I got rid of all that self-consciousness about telling myself, 'You can't do that. That song's not good enough. Remember, you're the guy who wrote "A Day in the Life." Try again.' "

John wasn't a recluse for those five years. He and the family traveled to Japan and elsewhere. He also went out regularly in New York, but he stayed away from the music business and the media. He said he had begun writing again the previous summer, during a vacation with Sean in Bermuda. Excited about the new material, he had called Yoko, who had remained in New York to take care of some business matters, and he played her a tape on the phone. She then wrote reply songs, which she played back to him a few days later. With the songs forming a dialogue, the Lennons went into a recording studio in New York in the autumn to record an album.

In the limo on the way to the studio, John continued to talk about Yoko, saying she served as an artistic catalyst -- questioning, discussing, challenging. He called their musical relationship a partnership, noting that she wrote and sang half the songs on the album. But what about the commercial consequences? There had been so much anti-Yoko feeling because of the breakup of the Beatles. Would his fans accept Yoko as a musical partner?

This time, Yoko spoke up. "I have two concerns in this album," she said. "First, I hope that it reminds people of John's talent. Second, I hope the fact that I am working with him enhances the man-woman dialogue. At the same time, I don't want the situation to become negative because my songs are too far-out or anything. That's hurting the chances of the album reaching as many people as possible. That wouldn't be fair to John. So in selecting my songs, I was conscious about the ones that are not too -- shall we say -- offbeat. This album is like our first hello. When you say hello, you don't want to complicate things. Maybe in the second or third album, we can experiment more."

John smiled at her words and said, "Yes, this is just starting over. We're going to move forward in the next album. It's going to be even better, so people better get ready."

As she leaned on his arm in the back of the limo, they seemed very comfortable. It was nighttime and everything felt quiet and safe in the car. "It's not really so unusual, you know," Yoko said, mentioning the literary couple Robert and Elizabeth Browning. "Ah," John said. He started quoting one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's most famous lines: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." Yoko talked about how Robert and Elizabeth had inspired each other. I said that might be a good angle for a story: "John and Yoko, the Robert and Elizabeth Browning of rock." We all smiled.

On that second day, he took me to Sean's playroom, where he kept one of his prized possessions, a vintage jukebox. Plugging it in, he punched one Elvis Presley record after another and bopped around playfully.

As Elvis sang "Don't Be Cruel" in the background, John recalled his first and only meeting with our mutual rock hero. It was a story he relished sharing as much as he did his Beatles memories.

"It was probably 1965 and we had a break in L.A. during a tour. We went up to his house and we were terrified. I can't remember the first moment I saw him, but he looked great. We started singing some of his songs. That's what we always did when we met Chuck Berry or Carl Perkins or any of them."

I asked if Elvis had known how big the Beatles were and if he had felt any hint of competition.

"Are you kidding?" John replied with a laugh. "He knew damn well who we were -- from the word 'go.' He was terrified of us and the English movement because we were a threat to him. I heard he was so paranoid all afternoon that he kept practicing things to say to us, asking the guys around him if we were any good. It was like Ali wondering if he could handle Frazier. To us, he was a god. We'd like to beat his record and become the champion, but we would always give him credit. It always hurts and infuriates me when Mick Jagger puts Elvis down. Maybe he's jealous because Elvis was the original body man in rock and it's too near to Mick's game for him to admit that Elvis' movements were at least as good as his and that maybe Elvis could sing a damn sight better than he could."

John's favorite time with the Beatles surprised me -- the early days. Hamburg, Liverpool, the dance halls. I'd thought he'd say it was when the band had conquered America. "Naw," he said with a wave of a hand. "We were already blasé. We had the show down. We were already past our peak as performers. It was like Vegas -- what we did on stage, I mean. We shook our head on this number and . . . well, you know the rest."

We had never spoken all that much about the Beatles, and John seemed to be amused by my sudden display of interest. He even laughed when I told him the reason I wanted to be Elvis was because of all the screaming girls. Was it the same with him in the Beatles? "That was one of the main reasons you go on stage, because the guy in the band gets the girls," he said with a broad grin. "There's an old joke, but it's true: Sometimes you'd get this girl after the show and you'd be in bed and she'd ask you which one you are. I'd say, 'Which one do you like?' If she said, 'George,' I'd say, 'I'm George.' "

This was so much fun that it didn't even seem like an interview. I was just a fan, asking him to name things like his favorite Beatles albums ("Rubber Soul," "Revolver," "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," and the White Album) and what tracks he'd put on a Beatles greatest hits package ("I'd favor my own tracks, of course. I'd go with 'Walrus,' 'Strawberry Fields,' 'Come Together,' 'Revolution,' 'In My Life,' 'Hard Day's Night,' 'Help' -- stuff like that and some of the early tracks like 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' and 'Day Tripper.' ").

John was so into reminiscing that he even came up with a question: What would have happened if the band hadn't broken up in 1970?

In answering it, he said, "We would have probably gone down the tubes and then been resurrected like everything else. I always thought it was best to go out when you're flying high. The popularity was always ebbing and flowing. That's what people forget. It was only during the initial rush that people thought everything we did was right. After that, it was up or down depending on the single or the album or whatever. We could split up in 1970 because we were on top. In fact, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to the Beatles myth. I read this book about Mick where he said after the breakup, 'At last, we're No. 1.' What he didn't realize was that when we split, we created a much bigger thing than if we had stayed. He could never catch up with that."

I told John I couldn't imagine, as a fan, how hard it must have been for him to simply walk away from music.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life -- not make music," he said. "Not because I had this love for music or because I was so creative and I couldn't bear not to be creative, but because I felt that I didn't exist unless my name was in the gossip columns of Rolling Stone or the Daily News or whatever. Then, it dawned on me that I do still exist."

We had such a good time over the three days that John invited me to his and Sean's birthday party at Tavern on the Green. I knew what the perfect birthday present for John was. I had mentioned in the studio that there was a great new Elvis photo book by Alfred Wertheimer, who had spent a couple of weeks with Elvis around the time of "Hound Dog" in 1956. John hadn't seen it.

The party was scheduled for noon, and I left the hotel around 11, thinking I'd pick up a copy of the book at a bookstore. But I had to go to a half-dozen stores before finally finding one, and the party was over by the time I got to the restaurant. I headed back to the Dakota. I didn't want to bother John, so I left the book with the doorman.

At the bookstore, I also picked up a copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry in case I wanted to quote more from the poem John had mentioned. He had said he wished he could put those feelings into a song, because it would be the perfect love song. During the flight back, the final lines struck me. In them, Barrett Browning says, "If God choose, I shall but love thee better after death."

I flashed on that final line two months later when I heard the news.

Excerpted from "Corn Flakes with John Lennon (And Other Tales From a Rock 'n' Roll Life)," by Robert Hilburn. Copyright ©2009 by Robert Hilburn. Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, Pa. 18098.

[Ed Roach]

Second of three parts from 'Corn Flakes With John Lennon'

In 1980, after 10 years at The Times, I was at a crossroads in my personal life. I loved my family, but I was also so obsessive about my work that I found myself devoting more and more time to it. I wanted to be everywhere there was a good story, and that meant I had to choose between that and being with the family on important days. I saw how Bruce Springsteen gave all of himself to his work and I bought into it. Finally, my wife and I separated.

To get away, I flew to Memphis for a week's vacation and spent the whole time working on some stories I had long wanted to do. I pored over local newspaper articles from the 1950s at the library, for a story about the social and cultural mood of the city when Elvis emerged with his first recording in 1954. I also interviewed soul singer Al Green and stayed up until almost dawn one night interviewing one of my heroes, Sun Records founder Sam Phillips.

I was exhausted on a flight home and happy to find a row with three vacant seats, which allowed me to stretch out and sleep. I didn't wake up until the wheels were touching the runway in Los Angeles. I was still rubbing my eyes when a stewardess said I was supposed to phone the city desk at The Times as soon as I got to the terminal. I assumed there must be some fast-breaking news, perhaps even an accident at the airport. I went to the pay phones and called the paper. A voice said gently, "John Lennon was shot to death in New York, apparently by some crazy fan outside his apartment building."

I was stunned, but not in the same way I had been when I'd learned of Elvis' death. I'd been at home when that news came on television and I'd felt like a part of me died. This time, I thought about how hard John had fought not to end up another rock 'n' roll tragedy. I recalled those lines from the Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem. But there wasn't time to dwell on it. The editor wanted me to write an appreciation of John for the next day's paper and then go to New York to cover the funeral. So I rushed straight to the office. Normally, I try to outline a story before actually writing it, but this time I just started writing. I wanted the appreciation to be straight from my heart. I wrote about how we were accustomed to tragic deaths in rock -- Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon -- but that John's death didn't fit the pattern. He wasn't a victim of rock excesses.

I continued with something John had said just two weeks before by phone. He was excited that the new single "(Just Like) Starting Over" was already in the Top 10. "It's still a thrill to hear your record on the radio," he said. "It sort of finally makes the music real to me even though I've heard the song a million times by now in the studio." John was also touched by the way disc jockeys were responding to his return. "When they play the song, the DJs don't have to say anything, but they've been saying all sorts of wonderful things. That makes me feel like they really like it. Yoko and I are so excited that we're going right back in the studio to begin working on the next album. I feel just like a kid again."

I ended the appreciation with what had been my last question to John. I had wanted a feel-good quote to end that earlier story, so I asked him if this was a good time for him. His answer: "The best."

Six hours later, I was on a plane to New York.

I spent most of the flight writing down thoughts about John and going through the notes from my various interviews with him. In the final interview, we had talked about Elvis, which led to John talking about the concept of death. At the Dakota, he had pointed out all the Elvis records on the jukebox. "Everybody tried to contact me when he died, but I was still doing my Greta Garbo disappearing act," he said. "I nearly opened my mouth and said something, but I was in the mountains in Japan and that helped me maintain my distance. It's hard for me to speak about death. I have had so much death around me. My mother was killed in an auto accident; Stuart Sutcliffe [a musician and close friend in the early days of the Beatles] died of a brain tumor. So did Len Gray, another guy in one of our groups. Buddy Holly died when I was in art school. They all affected me, but I can't find a way to put the feeling into words. It's like you lose a piece of yourself each time it happens."

Looking at those notes, I thought about how Memphis had mourned so visibly following Elvis' death. I hoped that New York, which often struck me as a cold, anonymous place, would also show some sentiment. I checked into my usual hotel near Central Park and phoned Elliot Mintz, John's friend, who normally stayed across the street at the Plaza. He wasn't in, so I left a message that I was in town and wanted him to tell Yoko that my prayers were with her. Then I put down the phone, lay on the bed, and waited. Finally, Elliot called. "I gave Yoko your message and she would like to see you at the Dakota."

What did that mean? Did she want to see me as a friend or as a journalist who could relay her feelings to John's fans? I picked up my wallet and notebook, but I left the tape recorder on the bed. I didn't want to send Yoko the wrong signal.

I took a cab to the Dakota, where there was a large crowd of fans in the street singing John's songs and staring up at Yoko's window. Elliot was waiting at the entrance to escort me past the security guards. I wanted most of all to hug Yoko and tell her how much I missed John and about how people, including those in my office, were so deeply touched by his music. But I knew how strong Yoko is -- it was one of the things John so liked about her, needed from her -- and I vowed to stay calm. Elliot led me into the living room and said he'd see if Yoko was ready to see me. Sean, who was 5, was in the apartment with Julian, John's son from his first marriage.

When Elliot returned, he led me to Yoko's room. The curtains were drawn and Yoko was sitting up in bed, a cigarette in her hand and the covers pulled up around her. I could see the tear stains on her cheeks. I could also hear the fans below singing, but the words were indistinguishable. It just sounded like mournful tribal chanting.

I didn't know what to say, so I just sat on the bed and reached out and hugged her. I fought hard not to cry myself. Elliot stood next to the bed as Yoko started talking. She told about how hard it was to accept that John wasn't here with us and she said some sweet things about John's feelings for me. Then, she recounted the evening. "It was so sudden . . . so sudden," she said. "We had planned to go out to eat after leaving the recording studio, but we decided to go straight home instead. We were walking to the entrance of the building when I heard the shot. I didn't realize at first that John had been hit. He kept walking. Then, he fell and I saw the blood."

She sighed and leaned back. Finally, she looked over at the drapes and said how sweet the music sounded, how nice the fans were to come by. She said she wished she could speak to them all, but she knew that would be crazy. But I had the feeling that what she said next was what she would have said to them: "The future is still ours to make. The '80s will blossom if only people accept peace and love in their hearts. It would just add to the tragedy if people turned away from the message in John's music."

I asked her if she would like me to put that quote in the paper -- the idea of not giving up -- and she said that would be nice. She also said she hoped that people wouldn't blame New York City for John's murder. "People say that there is something wrong with New York, that it's sick, but John loved New York. He'd be the first one to say it wasn't New York's fault. There can be one crank anywhere."

By now, I had my notebook out. Yoko paused, and I could imagine her trying to think of what else John would have wanted her to say. After a slight pause, she said, "We had planned on so much together." She was now crying. "We had talked about living until we were 80. We even drew up lists of all the things we could do together for all those years. Then, it was over. But that doesn't mean the message should be over. The music will live on."

I was in the room for probably 10 minutes, but it felt like an hour. I took a cab back to the hotel, where I borrowed a typewriter in the manager's office and wrote the story for the next day's paper. I was so concerned that everything be true to Yoko's feelings that I requested that a copy editor read me the headline before the paper went to print, something writers rarely do because the headline choice belongs to the copy desk. But the copy editor understood the sensitivity involved and read me the headline that would appear on Page 1: "A Time for Love, Not Hate: Yoko Hopes the World Will Let It Be, Let It Be." I was so stressed that I didn't even think about "Let It Be" being a Paul McCartney song. The spirit felt right, so I said the headline was fine.

Yoko had decided there would be no public service for John. She wanted to avoid the circus-like atmosphere that had surrounded Elvis' funeral. She asked that people join in a silent, 10-minute prayer vigil Sunday, "wherever you are." But New York Mayor Ed Koch felt there should be a public tribute, so he invited fans to join Sunday near the band shell in Central Park. I decided to stay and cover the Sunday memorial -- and was touched by how the city was moved by John's death. Wherever I walked, I felt the impact. There were conversations everywhere -- in the subways, coffee shops, hotel lobbies. The words I heard most often were "sad" and "why?" John's death knocked the wind out of New York City as much as Elvis' had Memphis, which I would have loved to have been able to tell him because of how much he loved Elvis.

On the day of the prayer vigil, visitors in the heart of Manhattan didn't need to ask for directions, they just followed the crowd. Unlike the hysterical weeping that I'd seen in Memphis in 1977, the audience on Sunday was more subdued, listening to Lennon songs over a loudspeaker. Some held signs, offering messages like "Just Give Peace a Chance" and, inevitably, "We Love You, John." At 2 p.m., the crowd began its silent prayer. This was the day's most emotional moment. Midway through the silence, a photographer in the roped-off press area stopped taking photos of weeping mourners and retreated behind a parked truck to cry himself.

One thing troubled me on the flight back to Los Angeles. Had I been honorable in contacting Yoko? I had wanted to express my feelings to her about her and John, but I also hoped deep in my heart that she had wanted me to write a story. I remained anxious until the day a card arrived from Yoko.

It read "Thank you" and was signed "With love."

[jeremylr]

Thanks for posting this article, Mr. Roach.  I love Elvis & The Beatles.  Looks like I'll have to buy "Corn Flakes."  I was definitely impressed by the excerpts.

[Ed Roach]

In the third excerpt from his new book, rock critic Robert Hilburn sits down with a couple of today's titans to gauge the future.

By Robert Hilburn

October 13, 2009

Former Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn writes in his new book "Corn Flakes With John Lennon (and Other Tales From a Rock 'n' Roll Life)" that after John Lennon's death in 1980, he focused on artists who carried on in Lennon's tradition, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, U2 and Kurt Cobain. But in the second half of the decade, the music began to drift and widespread piracy threatened to throw the recording industry into collapse. Looking for some answers about the future of rock, Hilburn sat down with Bono, a visionary from one generation, and Jack White, the most captivating musician from a newer generation.

Bono was in town to address the Women's Conference 2008, and we talked over breakfast about why U2 has remained such a compelling force for so long. He stressed the importance of keeping your sights set on artistry, something they learned from Dylan, Lennon and Springsteen, among others.

"Bruce is probably one of the only people in the world who understands how to survive in this kind of a life, how to get through all this without dying or walking with a limp or with one eye -- the way so many of these great people we've known and met did, these musical geniuses who didn't make it through the fire," Bono said. "They gave us beautiful music, and they were left exhausted, empty. It's heartbreaking. You've got to be tough, and you've got to avoid being self-conscious.

"I certainly went through a self-conscious phase, and it makes you ugly. . . . And it can change the way you walk and think because you don't want to let people down. . . .

"I am much more recognized now than I ever was, but I don't notice it anymore. People come up to me all the time, and I don't care if I've washed or if I'm crawling on my hands and knees out of a night club. The artist's journey is away from self-consciousness. That's where you've got to have tenacity. Bruce certainly has that. Lennon had it. I had that," he said. "It's like we are locked into something and we will not let go of it. If your drug of choice is that song that's never been heard before but feels like it's always existed, then you'll do anything to protect it."

Despite the struggle he outlines, Bono doesn't feel rock is at the end of the line. "It's still the most powerful art form," he said.

"Rock brought together rhythm, harmony and top-line melody: rhythm for the body, top-line melody for the mind, and harmony for the spirit. That's a very powerful concoction. Classical music has harmony and top-line melody, but it didn't have rhythm. That's why rock 'n' roll surpassed it."

So why do young bands seem to be afraid of massive stardom or contemptuous of it?

"I think one thing is they are suspicious of fame because fame is now associated with 'celebrity,' and that has become oppressive in our society. The bands don't want to become part of this thing which is crawling all over us. But when they pull down the shutters and block out the light, they lose their curiosity. I've never seen art improved by someone who has double-locked the door, turned off the light, and found a little cupboard in the back of the house where no one is going to find them. There is something about the spotlight that keeps you sharp."

Jack White was in town on business, and we met at his hotel. One of 10 children of working-class parents in Detroit, he told a story of being inspired by rock 'n' roll that was similar to those I had been hearing from musicians for years. Music was, he said, the only thing that made sense to him, and it left him with a desire to use that music to touch others in the same way he had been touched.

The area of Detroit I came from wasn't the golden age of Detroit in the 1930s and 1940s," he said. "It was the 1980s, and nothing seemed to work. The potholes wouldn't get fixed, and the garbage wouldn't get picked up. If you went to the store to get something, they'd be out of it or they wouldn't have enough change. It wasn't like a real city anymore. . . . So like a lot of artists do, you go to your room and you shut it all out. You look for something that makes sense to you and makes you feel good, and I don't think you really pick it. It picks you. It's like you don't get to pick who you fall in love with, it just happens. For me it was the drums. As soon as I started playing, it meant something to me immediately, just the pleasure of playing."

His duo the White Stripes moved to Warner Bros. Records after four albums on minor labels, but I wondered if he still clung to the widespread indie notion of fearing too much success.

"I never said, 'I don't want to be famous,' or 'I don't want to be the best I can be at what I'm doing,' or 'I don't want to share my music with millions of people instead of a roomful.' I was willing to do whatever I had to do to reach an audience.

"But it was a fight all the time because it was the music scene around me in Detroit who would go, 'Oh, I don't know if you should be on the cover of Rolling Stone' or 'I don't know if it's a good idea to sell your records in Starbucks' or whatever. That's the reason I finally had to leave Detroit and move to Nashville, where you don't run into that thinking. I appreciated it when Edge and I did this film together [the 2009 documentary 'It Might Get Loud'] and he said, 'Thanks for having ambition.' "

Though Jack said he could never picture himself in Bono's or Springsteen's "spokesman" role, he does share some of their values. "There was a period when I thought I was just making music for myself, but I sometimes feel it's bigger than that," he said. "I feel like I'm an antenna and I'm being used -- by God or by whatever -- and I want to be that antenna. I'm not going to stop it. I've never thought, 'I'd better slow this down because there's too much ambition or too much passion coming out of me.' "

Jack, who turned 34 this year, wasn't so fast to answer when I asked if young rock audiences were as passionate about music as they were in earlier decades.

"I'm not a negative person, but I'm very realistic, and it doesn't look good right now," he said. "I hope it gets better. I hope that children of the next generation are going to be shown there is more beauty and romance in tangible, mechanical things than in invisible, digital things. The artists of the past all had their rebellion. Elvis was rebelling against sexual repression, and Dylan was rebelling against immorality, and I feel like I'm rebelling against technology and the death of romance. I would pick this as the absolute worst time to connect with people through music. Today's generation takes a lot for granted when it comes to music. It's like, 'I'm going to play video games, and when I come back to rock 'n' roll it's going to be there waiting for me.' They don't buy the CD, but they'll download it and give it to their friends."

As Jack spoke, it occurred to me that a common strand ran through the voices of Jack, Bruce, Bob Dylan and Bono: a trace of idealism and commitment -- or, as Bruce's aunt had once described him, a touch of preacher.

On the way home, I passed the Sunset Strip -- the section of Los Angeles that was immortalized in the Buffalo Springfield youth anthem "For What It's Worth." Stephen Stills wrote the song after seeing hundreds of young people protesting the closing of Pandora's Box, a music club.

I had driven down the stretch of Sunset Boulevard hundreds of times, especially at night when lines of fans stood outside the Roxy, where Springsteen played on his "Born to Run" tour, and outside the Whisky a Go Go, where I first saw Elvis Costello and Tom Petty. I also passed Tower Records, where I'd spent hours looking through the bins for some hidden album or import single. The Roxy and Whisky were still there, but they no longer represented the pulse of the city's music scene, and Tower was boarded up.

I wondered again about whether rock's golden age was ending. If it was in danger, it wouldn't be critics, musicians, record companies or radio stations that would save it. The future belonged to young music fans -- as it always has.

Even with the charisma of Elvis and the ringing guitar of Chuck Berry in the 1950s and the idealism of the Beatles and Dylan in the 1960s, the rock 'n' roll revolution was never just about a sound; it was about an ideal. Historians speak about a convergence of forces rising up against such issues as sexual repression, social injustice, growing conformity and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Even more than all that, the music was an article of faith -- which helps explain why some of the most enduring anthems spoke about a better world, whether it was in Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" or John Lennon's "Imagine" or Bruce Springsteen's "The Promised Land" or U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name."

One of the strengths of music is that it speaks to each of us in such a personal and affecting way. Many of my favorite artists over the past 35 years have been described as cult figures because they reached only a tiny fraction of the mass pop audience. Still, they helped me celebrate treasured moments and cushioned disappointments in my life. But my greatest joy was in finding artists who could speak to millions with the same intimacy and grace. I believe there is something about that massive, communal celebration that helps lift our spirits and aspirations.

I'd love to see rock 'n' roll continue to be the force that inspires new generations. If the young, including my two grandsons and two granddaughters, turn to another art form or a different style of music, I only hope it serves them as profoundly. May they always stay forever young.


Excerpted from "Corn Flakes With John Lennon (And Other Tales From a Rock 'n' Roll Life)" by Robert Hilburn. Copyright ©2009 by Robert Hilburn. Permission granted by Rodale Inc., Emmaus, Pa. 18098.

[Ed Roach]

Here's a link to some videos related to these book excerpts:
http://www.latimes.com/videobeta/watch/?watch=empty&cat=2d9249a2-cd6e-4d96-b400-ac8a84cd5242&src=front&title=John Lennon and Robert Hilburn

[Ed Roach]

Who is Robert Hilburn? A champion and an advocate

By Geoff Boucher

October 11, 2009

Bob Dylan, dressed for the Grammys in a pewter troubadour's coat and a dandy western tie, arrived backstage to greet the assembled press after winning the album of the year award for 1997, but before the first question he turned to his handlers and asked, "Is Bob out there?"

Another night, a few years later, Bono peered out on sold-out Staples Center and told the story of U2's first visit to America and how a critic had thrilled the scruffy young band by declaring them a major new force in music. "This next song," the still-grateful singer told the crowd, "is for the mighty Bob Hilburn."

There were plenty of other nights over his 35-year tenure as Los Angeles Times pop music critic when Robert Hilburn became much more than a witness to the scene that he covered for the paper that lands on the doorstep of the music industry. Ken Kesey once said the problem with journalism was that it made a writer more of seismograph than a lightning rod, but he hadn't considered Hilburn work's as a sharp voice of demanding appraisal and something akin to a newsprint conscience for a community that measures merit in spun gold and platinum.

Born in Louisiana in 1939, he had the South in his ears when he came west to L.A. as a teen. Music mattered to him because of Elvis Presley's raw rebel energy and then later because of Dylan's startling poetry, and in 1966 he started a life's pursuit of trying to make sense of it all in The Times. His early championing led to breakthroughs for artists such as Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Gram Parsons, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, U2, N.W.A, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Eminem, Alicia Keys and the White Stripes.

Hilburn was notorious for his persistent advocacy for some artists -- the joke in the newsroom was that he loved to celebrate the four "Bs," which stood for Bruce, Bob Dylan, Bono and Bruce again -- but it was his negative reviews that stuck in the memory of his subjects. When Toto won a half-dozen Grammys, the band sarcastically thanked Hilburn on the air; viewers around the country may have scratched their heads, but readers of The Times knew that Hilburn had been dogging the high-gloss studio act for months. Billy Joel, bruised by years of relentless pans, once mailed an autographed photo to the newsroom just for Hilburn. In the picture, the Bronx native offered a one-finger salute.

Make artists angry and you even end up in the lyrics. The Go-Go's used to perform "Robert Hilburn" (Sample lyric: "New wave music makes good copy / Tell us, Bob, could punk be art?"), and Danny Elfman was reportedly writing about him in the sneering tune "The Imposter." One line: "You don't believe what you write / You're an imposter."

With respect to Elfman, that line is way off -- you can argue his taste but not his faith in music.

"The critics when I was coming up, sometimes they wrote things that made you tilt toward things," Springsteen said backstage recently. "The really good ones would do that, and Robert was one of those writers. You don't always like it, you don't always agree, but he always had a take."

Dr. Dre was in the studio several years ago and Hilburn's name was mentioned. The hip-hop artist recalled that in his early N.W.A days he was perplexed to see a middle-aged white guy in the crowd. "The next day the Calendar said we were the future. Robert Hilburn, that's who it was. You tell old man Hilburn I said he's all right."

The "old man" is already sizing up another book and, full of energy, has just launched a blog, www.roberthilburnonline.com.