\n<\/p>\n
A long-lost interview with John Lennon, rediscovered in a basement by the young DJ who conducted it 50 years ago and in which the former Beatle speaks of fears the US government was tapping his phone, is being aired on what would have been the singer-songwriter\u2019s 85th birthday.<\/p>\n
Nicky Horne was 24 and an up-and-coming DJ with London\u2019s Capital Radio when he was invited to the star\u2019s New York apartment for a wide-ranging interview.<\/p>\n
While parts of the interview were broadcast on Capital in 1975, Horne recently found the original reel-to-reel tapes in a dusty box at home and thought: \u201cThis is gold dust.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lennon, who had sued the Nixon administration over illegal wiretapping and surveillance amid his battle to avoid deportation, speaks of his suspicions that he was monitored over his anti-war activism.<\/p>\n
He explains he wanted to \u201cjust throw away\u201d his fourth solo studio album, Walls and Bridges, until friends persuaded him not to. He also expressed now poignant hopes that his best music was yet to come, and that \u201capart from acts of God, I will be around for another 60 years and doing it until I drop\u201d.<\/p>\n
Interviewed in a Boom Radio special to be broadcast on Wednesday, veteran broadcaster and station presenter Horne recalls meeting Lennon at his Dakota building apartment, outside of which the songwriter would be shot dead five years later by Mark David Chapman.<\/p>\n
Lennon told Horne: \u201cI know the difference between the phone being normal when I pick it up and when every time I pick it up, there\u2019s a lot of noises.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The administration was] coming for me one way or the other; I mean, they were harassing me. And I\u2019d open the door and there\u2019d be guys standing on the other side of the street. I\u2019d get in a car and they\u2019d be following me in a car and not hiding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lennon said while he couldn\u2019t prove tapping at the time: \u201cI just know there\u2019s a lot of repairs going on in the cellar [of the Dakota building].\u201d<\/p>\n
He was not the only rock star the US administration had qualms about, he said. \u201cMick [Jagger] had to vanish up his own manhole to get Keith [Richards] and the rest of them in to tour even. I mean, he did a lot of behind-the-scenes work just to get \u2018em to be allowed in. So all of us have problems. It\u2019s just that I wanted to stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of his solo Walls and Bridges studio album, which went gold in the US, and was written and recorded during his 18-month separation from Yoko Ono, Lennon confessed he \u201ccouldn\u2019t stand to listen\u201d to the studio tapes at first, and thought to \u201cjust throw this away\u201d. He then played them to friends \u201cand they said: \u2018Hey, it\u2019s all right.\u2019 So I said: \u2018It\u2019s all right. Oh it\u2019s not bad at all. I quite like some of it myself. OK, let\u2019s put it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Describing his day-to-day life, he said: \u201cBasically it\u2019s a bedroom, a studio, a TV, a night out, back home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Horne reveals he was nervous before the interview, with Lennon putting him at ease and even baking chocolate cookies for him. But sitting cross-legged on the singer\u2019s white shag pile carpet to interview him, Horne \u201crealised as I looked down that I\u2019d spilt some chocolate crumbs on this pristine white carpet, and I was trying desperately to sort of pick them up one by one so that he didn\u2019t see that\u201d.<\/p>\n
Horne reveals the full story in a broadcast special of how he managed to land the interview with the former Beatle and what happened behind the scenes, while playing some of the interview on Boom Radio at 9pm on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A long-lost interview with John Lennon, rediscovered in a basement by the young DJ who conducted it 50 years ago and in which the former Beatle speaks of fears the US government was tapping his phone, is being aired on what would have been the singer-songwriter\u2019s 85th birthday. Nicky Horne was 24 and an up-and-coming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[481,1460,262,15926,15925,15927,572],"class_list":{"0":"post-26536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-fears","9":"tag-interview","10":"tag-john","11":"tag-lennon","12":"tag-longlost","13":"tag-phonetapping","14":"tag-reveals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}