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Zusatztext "James Mitchell carefully and lovingly has reconstructed an inspiring and poignant chapter both in John Lennon's odyssey and in the tangled flow of the American anti-war and other protest movements of the late nineteen sixties and early seventies. The Walrus and The Elephants is an indispensable window into an amazing time in American history and the history of rock and roll." —Danny Goldberg! author of Bumping Into Geniuses "This book serves as a backstage pass to the missing link between Lennon’s music and his activism! ranging from decriminalization of marijuana to termination of undeclared war—both ends of that spectrum fueled by the government’s misuse of power without compassion—revealing how the Nixon administration tried to silence him." —Paul Krassner! author of Confessions of a Raving! Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture "Lennon is one of the most documented individuals in modern culture! yet never before has this early New York period of his history been examined with greater depth and clarity." —Lee Ranaldo! co-founder of Sonic Youth Informationen zum Autor James A. Mitchell Klappentext Nineteen-seventy-one was the year John Lennon left London and pop stardom for a life in New York City as a solo artist, record producer and activist looking to help end the war in Vietnam. He settled in Greenwich Village and quickly came to be seen by the leaders of the faltering anti-war movement as someone who was capable of reinvigorating it. The government was acutely aware of Lennon's power as well, seeing him as a viable threat to Nixon's reelection hopes, initiating extradition proceedings against him. Lennon's second solo album, Imagine, appeared in 1971, followed the following year by Sometime in New York City. Meanwhile, John and Yoko are searching for her daughter, a primary reason they came to America in the first place. And John is struggling to embrace feminism. The Walrus and the Elephants tells a double-barreled story of music and politics, how the personal is political and the political is personal, of upheavals in one life amid the larger cultural upheavals of an era. Chapter One: THE ADVENT of THE HIPPIE MESSIAH “We came here . . . not only to help John and to spotlight what’s going on . . . but also to show and to say to all of you that apathy isn’t it, and that we can do something.” —John Lennon, (Ann Arbor, MI, December 1971) IN DECEMBER 1971 John Lennon stood onstage to sing and speak on behalf of John Sinclair, a radical leader who was serving a ten-year prison sentence for possession of two joints of marijuana. Sinclair had been incarcerated for more than two years when Lennon pleaded his case. The decade of the sixties was over. A new decade was beginning. Two days after Lennon sang, “Let him be, set him free,” a state circuit court reversed a previous decision and Sinclair walked out of prison. With the nation reeling after years of political turmoil, America needed a new kind of leader. The recently turned ex-Beatle was one of the most famous and influential people on the planet. If he could get a man out of prison, what else might he do? A government eager to silence enemies asked the same question. They thought Lennon might use his considerable clout to, in their words, “sway” the upcoming presidential election. It would be better for some people if he just went back to England, and the Nixon administration tried to make that happen through methods legal and otherwise. “So flower power didn’t work,” Lennon said from the stage between songs that night. “So what? We start again.” *** JOHN LENNON FELT like a newcomer to New York in the summer of 1971. He’d been to the city before, of course, but those were whirlwind Beatles visits, frantic tours whe...
