THE BALLAD OF GEOFF & YOKO

Guest Blogger / David Haber, Beatles News Editor

War is over, if you want it. Unless you’re Yoko Ono, and the war you’re fighting is a war against the truth. Or, so says Geoffrey Giuliano.

Since 1984, acclaimed Beatles author, journalist and actor Geoffrey Giuliano has written twenty books on the Beatles, and thirty books altogether, including books about Rod Stewart, Jimi Hendrix, and The Who. This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the writing of his first book, “The Beatles, A Celebration,” which was published in October, 1986. Paul McCartney wrote the forward for his second book, “John Lennon, My Brother”, written with John Lennon’s sister Julia Baird.

But as the years passed with each new book about the Beatles that he researched and wrote, Giuliano started to get to the real picture of the lives of the Beatles, buried under the veneer of their carefully crafted public relations image.

Giuliano told Beatles News, “When I wrote my first two books, ‘The Beatles, A Celebration’ and ‘John Lennon, My Brother,’ those were very complimentary. Even the Beatles had ‘The Beatles, A Celebration’ on the coffee table at Apple. And then, as I continued my research, and went to Liverpool and got in touch with the Beatles’ families, a lot of great things came up, but a lot of disturbing things came up as well. I’m a writer and a journalist, and I have an oath and allegiance to the truth. And fortunately, or I guess unfortunately, I’ve discovered and still possess a lot of information on John Lennon in particular and the other Beatles’ private and personal lives that if you look at them, should change your worldview of who they were.”

Giuliano knows his presentation of the “real” Beatles to the world in his books hasn’t endeared him to some Beatles fans who’d rather view them through rose-colored glasses. He’s sure it hasn’t made Yoko Ono happy, either.

"I don't see Yoko as particularly talented,” Giuliano says. “John Lennon has said, look, if you want to blame her for breaking up the Beatles, please credit her for Imagine, and there's no question, if you read Grapefruit, that Imagine came from Yoko’s influence or inspiration. But surely, the entire body of his solo work cannot be credited to her.”

“I believe that Yoko was a not very talented young person who had her own issues, her family was concerned about her mental state in Japan, she was a hustler, esoteric, exotic, worlds away from Cynthia. But if you tear apart her contribution to John Lennon’s life, it’s far more negative than positive.”

What were Yoko’s contributions to John’s life? Because of his extensive research and unrivaled Beatles archives that he’s collected in the course of his work over the last twenty-five years, Giuliano can shed some very specific light on that question.

Giuliano said, "When Yoko Ono met John Lennon, she was living with her husband, Tony Cox, in London. And there was a document which has been referred to in a number of books and I actually at one point in London was shown a copy of something that was purported to be this document, which was an agreement between Tony Cox and Yoko Ono saying basically that Yoko would render to Tony Cox fifty percent of whatever she got from John Lennon, or got out of John Lennon. Now that, to me right off the bat, doesn't sound like true love."

Giuliano also has documentation about John’s use of psychedelic drugs and where John was in his life at the time when he first met Yoko.

"The acid wore him down. His career, his bad marriage to Cynthia,the incredible pressure of being John Lennon. He was ground down by his life, and for John, Yoko was more an escape from his mock-Tudor life in Kenwood, as he put it, rather than going towards something else. It was him wanting to get away and distance himself the teenage marriage thing he got into with Cynthia.”

Although in the decades since 1969 it has become to be thought of as apocryphal, Giuliano believes that from those bad beginnings, Yoko Ono really did go on to break up the Beatles.

“I know the truth. The Beatles had no love for this woman. She was a negative influence on the continuation of the Beatles. She felt the Beatles were such a great influence over John that it threatened her position, and so she needed to get him out of there, so that she could have him for herself.”

“That’s my position on Yoko Ono, and I have made that very clear in all of my books, and Yoko is aware of that.”

But why does Giuliano take these positions when it makes him unpopular with some of the fans, and some of the people he writes about?

Giuliano proudly says, “I think of John Lennon as a hero, as a mentor. John Lennon’s message was very clear. He said, all I want is the truth. Just gimme some truth. He didn’t mince words, he didn’t waltz around the truth, so why should I?”

“There’s no sense in wasting my life by sitting down and writing twenty books about the Beatles that are just press releases, they’ve got people to do that for them. As a journalist, I’m only interested in getting to the truth.”

“The Beatles are far more interesting as human beings, flawed, fallible humans that came from extraordinary circumstances with everything going against them, for their talent to rise up from nothing and supersede their environment, and allow them to change the whole world, that’s an amazing, much more compelling and interesting story than some kind of Disneyland, magical nonsense that these people keep putting out.”

“I’ve spent the bulk of my adult life doing this, documenting the Beatles, because I didn’t want the sands of time to sweep it away. I wanted it accurately recorded.”

And recorded it, he has. Over the past twenty five years, Giuliano has built a job writing books about the Beatles into a publishing empire, composed of a backlist of thirty published books and over 200 audio tapes, backed up by an impressive library of rare interview tapes, photographs and other archival material about the Beatles and Rock and Roll that can be found nowhere else in the world.

So, what do you do after you’ve written and published thirty books and 200 tapes? Eight years ago, Giuliano, who is a vegetarian and meditates, and was making frequent trips to meditate in India, ended up in Bangkok, Thailand, to put his life in order. One of his books, “Paint It Black, The Murder of Brian Jones,” was made into a movie called “Stoned, The Wild and Wycked World of Brian Jones,” made by Stephen Woolley, who also made “Interview With A Vampire” and “The Crying Game.” He was doing some acting, and had done his own radio show. And he came to the realization that he had done it all, and decided to retire.

Giuliano’s plan for retirement was to sell his publishing empire, all the rights to his thirty books and 200 audio tapes, including all of his rare archival tapes and photographs, for $12 million, which would provide a nice living for him and his family in Bangkok. He formed a company, G2 Media, to organize it all. Over the following few years he got some offers to buy one piece of the company or another, but he always refused, preferring not to break up his Beatles books, other books, published tapes and all of his archival material, which alone could be used to create other insightful new books and documentary movies.

Around this time, he became aware that Yoko was buying up material about herself. He said, “I sell Beatles memorabilia from time to time from my collection that’s worth a few million dollars, and I was approached by someone who said that Yoko Ono was purchasing and looking to purchase tapes, books, documents, about herself or her and John, and inquired if I had anything I might want to sell her.” But he says, he didn’t think much of it at the time.

In the meantime, writers don’t stop writing, and in 2001 he published the controversial and very successful “Lennon In America,” based on material from John’s lost diaries, copies of which he obtained from John’s long-time friend, Harry Nilsson.

“When I got copies of Lennon’s diaries, people said, wow, you can’t publish that. The copyright clearly belongs to the Lennon estate. But my attorneys told me, no one owns a thought or an idea, only the particular expression of a thought or idea. That means I couldn’t quote from the diaries, I had to reword them. Which I did. That’s how I got around that one and Yoko didn’t appreciate it.”

“I later met someone who worked for Yoko who told me that Yoko was really worried about ‘Lennon In America.’ She left the country with Sean and hid-out in Switzerland until the publicity died down. Another reason I’m not on Yoko’s Christmas card list,” says Giuliano.

And for the last twenty-five years, Giuliano has had another book in the back of his mind, fueled by everything he’s learned about the Beatles and the life of John Lennon. He is currently working on a book called “Black Widow, Yoko Ono Unauthorized.”

Which brings us to the present, and Giuliano’s recent discovery of a special CD interview set that he produced several years ago but ended up never being put out. He found the CD masters in a drawer where he had forgotten them since the company that was to issue the set went out of business. It was to be a five CD box set of John Lennon interviews from 1969 and included many rare interviews including the Bag event in Vienna. The set took two years to assemble and edit, at the cost at that time of about $80 thousand.

Upon rediscovering the material, Giuliano realized that this year, 2009, is forty years since the interviews, and the fortieth anniversary of John Lennon’s bed-in for peace and international peace campaign. The timeliness of John’s anti-war philosophy to today’s problems jumped out at him as if the tapes were meant to be saved for just this moment in history.

So Giuliano went out and hired one of the world’s best designers, and worked up the CD set into a new package that is going to be something that’s really special.

The new CD set, now called “John Lennon, Man of Peace”, will include the original five CDs of John Lennon interviews from 1969, a 32 page book of liner notes about the CDs, an additional special 300 page book of interviews of John Lennon from 1969, created especially for this set, a previously unpublished 8x10 photo of John from 1969, a button and a bumper sticker, all contained inside a limited edition specially designed vinyl shoulder bag. The impressive set can be seen at its official web site, http://www.johnlennonmanofpeace.com.

It’s very likely you’ve gone ahead and viewed the link above. I did, when I first heard about the site. So did Yoko Ono.

Shortly after the release of the web site, Giuliano received a cease and desist letter from Yoko Ono’s lawyers. Want to try to guess why? Because Giuliano had used interview material who’s rights she claimed? (Which he hadn’t.) No. Because Giuliano had used photographs she claimed she owned? (Which he hadn’t.) No, nothing like that.

Yoko’s lawyers informed Giuliano that Yoko believed she legally owned the words “Imagine” and “Peace.” And that Giuliano did not have her permission to use those words, “Imagine” and “Peace,” on the accessories included with the “John Lennon, Man of Peace” product.

Through his company, G2 Media, Giuliano responded with several letters back and forth between his company and Yoko’s lawyers. His company gave Yoko’s people complete and unrestricted access to the new product and to vet all the material it contained. He even went as far to change “War Is Over, If You Want It” that was to be printed on the set’s shoulder bag, and changed it simply to “War Is Over”.

“I was begrudgingly cooperative,” Giuliano remembers, “but I didn’t want any trouble with her anymore. I was trying to be nice.”

The original cease and desist order and the situation surrounding it has still not been completely settled. But in the course of the letters being exchanged between Giuliano’s company and Ono’s lawyers, and remembering how he previously had heard that Yoko was interested in buying material about herself, Giuliano wondered if Yoko might not be interested in buying his entire company, the rights to all of his published books and vast unpublished archive, just as he’s been openly and publicly trying to sell it for some time.

“My company, G2 Media, offered Yoko Ono, through her attorneys, the same deal that I offered anybody who’s got $12 million to spend. The lawyers wrote back and said Yoko, or perhaps some associated company, like Apple, could have an interest in the material, and they asked for a brief description of all the material, books, tapes and archives.”

It was at this point, sensing there might be some kind of deal in the works, that Giuliano brought in his own lawyer, to protect his financial interests. However, he says he quickly heard from the lawyer for another reason.

“The lawyer told me, Geoffrey, we have a problem. Yoko Ono is talking to the district attorney in Kings County, and they’re attempting to have you arrested for blackmail.”

Giuliano couldn’t believe it. He says, “I’m not a criminal, just a hard working guy, honest to a fault. I’m not trying to blackmail anybody, my company was just offering her the same deal my website was offering, so that I could retire.”

“I have tapes of John Lennon and Yoko Ono that no one’s ever heard, and on these tapes they talk about all manner of things. And after the latest cease and desist order, I said, OK, well, maybe it’s time to put this thing down, I’ve been fighting with this chick for years, it’s getting a little old, so, look, why don’t we just offer her the company? I wasn’t trying to blackmail her, first of all, if you’re going to blackmail someone, you wouldn’t do it through their attorneys, would you?”

Mr. Giuliano is still interested in selling all of his research on the Beatles and John Lennon, including his vast audio archive of lost and historically important, unpublished and very private Lennon home tapes. In addition, he’s currently seeking a publisher for his next book, “Black Widow, Yoko Ono Unauthorized,” as well as two new books, “Lennon In London” and “Lennon In Liverpool,” the follow ups to his successful book, “Lennon In America.” Film rights to “Lennon In America” are also available.

Giuliano says, “How can you like her? Because you see what she’s done to John, you see the weakness she exposed in John Lennon, how vulnerable he was. People have demonized me for exposing this. It’s very hard to like Yoko Ono and to have very much sympathy other than the fact that it was quite touching that during WWII she got separated from her family and after the atomic bombs dropped she was homeless with her two younger siblings and they had to beg, so she’s had kind of a tough life, but that doesn’t mean she’s had a charmed life also, and she has a modicum of talent, I suppose, in some quirky way, but certainly not mainstream, you know, nobody goes, ‘Hey! Let’s put on the Yoko Ono records tonight, kids!’ But would be talking about her if she never met John Lennon?”

But we are, indeed, talking about her, and Giuliano insists that it is his mission, he will never stop speaking and publishing the truth about Yoko Ono and John Lennon.

He says, “I guess I am now the Salman Rushdie of Rock and Roll. And Yoko is the Ayatollah.”