TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. In 1971, the year after The Beatles broke up, John Lennon and Yoko Ono moved from London to New York. They spent the next 18 months living in a small Greenwich Village apartment before moving uptown to the Dakota, a more lavish and secluded building. During that time, they held a benefit concert for the children of Willowbrook, a state-run Staten Island facility housing disabled children in horrifying conditions. It was the only full-length concert Lennon gave after the Beatles, and a new film by Kevin Macdonald documents both the concert and that period in Lennon's life. It's called "One To One: John & Yoko," and it's now streaming on demand. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.
DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: Kevin Macdonald and editor and co-director Sam Rice-Edwards frame their movie about John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the early '70s by looking through the lens of television. In this case, it's a perfect framing device. As Lennon arrived in this country, being more politically outspoken than he was as a Beatle, he and his wife, Yoko Ono, eagerly went on TV talk shows to rally support for their causes, showing up everywhere from Dick Cavett to a week co-hosting "The Mike Douglas Show." And even more eagerly, John Lennon devoured television. In their small Greenwich Village apartment, which is re-created for the documentary, John and Yoko installed a TV at the foot of their bed so they could lounge around watching. And both the variety and sheer volume of what was available delighted them.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO")
YOKO ONO: We're very comfortable here, especially, like, having TV, you know, 24 hours a day or something.
JOHN LENNON: Suits me fine. Suits me fine.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: What are your favorite programs?
LENNON: I just like TV, you know? To me, it replaced the fireplace when I was a child. And if you want to know what 20 million Americans are talking about on Saturday night, it's what they saw on Friday night on TV. It's a window on the world. Whatever it is, that's that image of ourselves that we're portraying.
BIANCULLI: They consumed it all, from "The Waltons" to Watergate coverage, and lots and lots of news about Richard Nixon and Vietnam and George Wallace and Attica. They also watched American football games and beauty pageants. And in one of Lennon's first local radio appearances after arriving, he responded to a phone-in caller by demonstrating his familiarity with televised beauty pageants.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO")
UNIDENTIFIED RADIO HOST: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I'd like to ask John a question.
UNIDENTIFIED RADIO HOST: Sure.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: John?
LENNON: Yeah?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I can't believe I'm speaking to a myth.
LENNON: A myth?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yeah.
LENNON: Myth World or Myth Universe?
BIANCULLI: For Lennon, it was a time of reinvention, both musically and in terms of his political involvement. He fell in with activists like Jerry Rubin and appeared and performed at a rally protesting the 10-year sentence of another activist, John Sinclair, for a minor drug possession. But after agreeing to headline a series of national protest tour dates leading up to the 1972 national political conventions, Lennon backed off because he sensed the leaders of that movement were advocating violence.
Even so, Lennon's activities got him singled out by the Nixon administration, which threatened to deport him and installed listening devices on his phone. And just as President Nixon ended up secretly taping his own White House conversations, John Lennon ended up taping his own phone calls, too. From heated talks with his then-manager to casual chats with friends, they provide some of the best moments in this documentary. In this call, which is loaded with suspicious static, a reporter asks about the wiretap rumors.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO")
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: People say their phones are bugged.
LENNON: First of all, I thought it was paranoia. I've been reading all these, you know, conspiracy theory books. You can hear things going on on the phone every time you pick it up, people clicking in and out.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE STATIC)
LENNON: There's a lot of repairs going on downstairs to the phones every few days, down in the basement. I started taping my own phone calls, too, so - you know, I don't know why. I thought, well, at least I'll have a copy of whatever they're going to try and say I'm talking about.
BIANCULLI: Eventually, John and Yoko find yet another cause by watching TV. After seeing a news report by ABC correspondent Geraldo Rivera exposing the terrible treatment of young disabled patients at Willowbrook State Development Center (ph), John and Yoko decide to hold a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, just as fellow Beatle George Harrison had done the year before with his concert for Bangladesh. They called theirs the One to One concert, and this film plays many songs from that show full length - "Imagine," "Instant Karma" and "Mother" - a searingly emotional song about John feeling abandoned by his parents, a father who left and a mother who died - and even a Beatles song to which Lennon adds an overt message of opposition to the Vietnam War, to the audience's obvious delight.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO")
LENNON: (Singing) He roller-coaster. He got early warnin'. He got muddy water. He one mojo filter. He say, one and one and one is three. Got to be good-lookin' 'cause he's so hard to see. Come together right now. Stop the war.
(CHEERING)
BIANCULLI: Sean Ono Lennon is one of this documentary's executive producers, which may explain why some of the more unflattering details from the period are omitted or downplayed. But Yoko gets her due here, as she should, as an artist in her own right and as the victim of some awful treatment by Beatles fans and the press. And by using TV to tell their story, "One To One: John & Yoko" retells the story of that time as well - incendiary times, inspirational artists, amazing music.
GROSS: David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed "One To One: John & Yoko," which is now streaming on demand.
Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, our guest will be Mark Hamill. He played one of the most iconic heroes in movie history, Luke Skywalker in "Star Wars," but he's also played one of the most notorious comic book villains, doing the voice of the Joker in "Batman: The Animated Series." He's in the new movie "The Life Of Chuck," which is an adaptation of a Stephen King story. I hope you'll join us.
Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I am Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO")
LENNON: (Singing) Mother, you had me. I never had you. I wanted you. You didn't want me. So I just got to tell you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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