New book on The Beatles claims Yoko Ono instructed John Lennon how to take heroin
A new book about The Beatles has claimed that Yoko Ono once instructed John Lennon on how to take heroin.
Set for release this Thursday (April 11), All You Need Is Love includes a part in which Lennon’s ex-wife Ono denied she “put John on H”.
“It was just a nice feeling [being on heroin]. So I told John that,” explained Ono, who reportedly first used the drug when she was in Paris (via People).
She noted that Lennon “wouldn’t take anything unless he wanted to do it”, claiming: “[He] wanted to take it, that’s why he was asking [about her experiences with the drug].”
Ono stated that she was keen to refute the claim that the Beatles icon’s dependence on heroin was entirely her fault. She said that the couple “never injected” it, but usually just snorted it instead.
In 1970, Lennon opened up about taking the drug. “It just was not too much fun,” he remembered during an interview with Rolling Stone. “I never injected it or anything. We sniffed a little when we were in real pain.”
He continued: “We got such a hard time from everyone, and I’ve had so much thrown at me, and at Yoko, especially at Yoko. Like Peter Brown in our office – and you can put this in – after we come in after six months he comes down and shakes my hand and doesn’t even say hello to her. That’s going on all the time.”
Lennon added: “And we get into so much pain that we have to do something about it. And that’s what happened to us. We took ‘H’ because of what the Beatles and others were doing to us. But we got out of it.”
All You Need Is Love is comprised of interviews taken from the controversial book The Love You Make (1983), which was written by Steven Gaines and Peter Brown – the personal assistant to Beatles manager Brian Epstein.
An official description reads: “All You Need Is Love is a ground-breaking oral history of the Beatles and how it all came to an end.
“Based on never-before-published or heard interviews with Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and their families, friends, and business associates, this is a landmark book, containing stunning new revelations, about the biggest band the world has ever seen.”
The forthcoming title also details a Lennon encounter that made The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger feel “uncomfortable”.
In other news, McCartney has praised Beyoncé’s “fabulous” cover of The Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’ for fighting “racial tension”. “I think she does a magnificent version of it and it reinforces the civil rights message that inspired me to write the song in the first place,” he wrote.
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Tom Skinner
NME
