Lennon - the last big interview
Dec 8 2005
Four shots rang out and John Lennon fell. Now, on the 25th anniversary, DJ Andy Peebles tells of the happy man he interviewed two days before the murder that shocked the world. David Charters reports
Daily Post
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Andy Peebles with the statue of John Lennon in Mathew St.
NOBODY recognises him on the famous old street, where once they stacked fruit cartons and the girls sitting on them left lipstick stains on their cigarette tips.
Anyway, most of the passing people are foreign tourists, hunched in the bitter chill, but still awestruck enough to pose for pictures in front of John Lennon's statue, as the rain turns to hail and strange purple streaks web the sky.
But the stocky figure with the broad shoulders walking, head down, straight towards the Grapes pub on Mathew Street has a little bit of history to tell.
He was the last man on earth to speak at length to Lennon.
There was a time when you would have recognised Andy Peebles. He was on TV and in the papers a lot in the hours after Mark Chapman shot Lennon dead outside the Dakota building in New York.
Fate had turned the hours of interview taped for Radio 1 between Peebles and Lennon into news, and that news turned into popular history.
Peebles sits down on a padded bench seat in the Grapes. It has not changed much since Lennon drank here.
The Cavern is only a few yards up the street, now cluttered with office girls "doing" lunch with their pals. Forty years ago their counterparts would have been heading for the cellar, clinking on the cobbles in their high-heeled boots, to break the humdrum routine by listening to a group. Times change.
Peebles, 56, is chinking the ice cubes in his tumbler of cola, as he recalls that permission for the trip to New York was only granted by the BBC bosses when he had secured an interview with David Bowie, playing the Elephant Man at the Booth Theatre off Broadway.
"We had tickets to see him on the Friday night and a meeting with Yoko at the lunchtime," says Peebles, who is married to Anne, 53, and has a stepdaughter Sarah, 22.
The Radio 1 team arrived at the Dakota block.
"Yoko was very tough," he says. "She gave us a really severe grilling in the office about whether it would be suitable for them to do the interview with us rather than anyone else."
But it was agreed that they would meet at noon the following day at the Hit Factory recording studio, Manhattan. Peebles kept the appointment, but there was no sign of the Lennons, who had been up late the previous night mixing a Yoko track called Walking on Thin Ice. They left a message putting the meeting back six hours
"My heart sank. I thought this is not going to happen" says Peebles. But he returned at 5.50pm.
"There they were. My most vivid memory was walking into the studio and John greeting me like a long lost friend. He was absolutely delightful. There was no doubt in that he had terrific affection for the BBC. The World Service had been part of his life-blood. Yoko told me that whenever he turned on the radio and heard Liverpool mentioned he used to get very tearful and very emotional. To be blunt, he was homesick.
"I was 3,000 miles away from home meeting a man who to me, from my school days, had literally been a god. Maybe he hadn't been my favourite Beatle, but there was a bit of spit and sawdust about Lennon that I always liked.
"I thought we would do an hour and when we had done two, John said that he was hungry and sent out for a Chinese takeaway. It went cold on a side table because he just gushed with memories. It was a great out-pouring for him, mildly cathartic because a lot of the issues we talked about had been difficult for him.
"When it was all edited, for the saddest of reasons as you know, we got seven, one-hour programmes.
"After the interview he and Yoko invited our party to Mr Chow's restaurant which was full of a lot of affluent New Yorkers. John put his arm round me on the stairs and said, 'look at that lot down there all wondering who's that with Andy Peebles'. We laughed a lot and had a fantastic meal."
John was on a microbiotic diet at the time, which Peebles believes explained his gaunt appearance. But his mood was good. How was he getting on with Yoko?
"I saw two people who seemed absolutely madly in love, genuinely," he says. "Some people have suggested since that it might have been a bit of an act. If it was, they were two very fine actors. They seemed very happy. Yoko definitely thought she was in charge and wanted that impression to be given to us. I remember after our first meeting, speaking to Paul Williams (the producer) and saying, 'she's hard work'.
"But when we got in the studio and John opened his mouth to answer my first question, Yoko's face changed. She had made it clear on the Friday that this interview was to be half and half. I walked away from the meeting thinking "no way" because "mother", as John affectionately referred to her, was not the reason we were there. We could give her two per cent of the time, but that would be about it. But within the first five minutes her attitude changed and she became so entranced by John telling all these stories. Everybody had a really good feeling that he was enjoying the interview.
"Some of the things he came out with, I thought were quite extraordinary," says Peebles,, who now broadcasts with Smooth FM and lives near Blackburn. "He asked me if anyone in England would be prepared to promote his concerts. But you have to remember that it was a long time since he had been home. The old promoters might have left the business."
Peebles interviewed Bowie on the Saturday and did his usual Sunday Radio 1 programme from the BBC's New York studio. They took the 7pm flight back to the UK from the JFK airport.
At about 6am they arrived in London and Paul Williams phoned his wife. "Paul suddenly dropped the hand-set and tears started rolling down his face" recalls Peebles. "I went to him and said, 'God Paul, what's the matter'. He said, 'John's dead'. I said, 'John who?' and he said,, 'John Lennon, he's dead'.
"The next 24 hours was a blur. I remember appearing on The Old Grey Whistle Test (a TV programme of tribute to Lennon). I didn't make any real contribution because I was completely out of my tree with jet-lag and exhaustion.
"The tabloids offered me a fortune in grubby money to say what had happened over dinner with John. In 1980, I thought that was personal and I still do to a degree."
But he did broadcast a Lennon tribute on Radio 1 with the late John Peel in the studio with him.
"I am not going to claim that to spend six and a half hours with somebody makes you anything other than a friend with a very small 'f', but the man could not have been more charming, more delightful, more genuine," says Peebles.
There remains the irony in Lennon's reply to his question about the need for security in New York. "John told me he could walk out of the room and down the street and nobody would hassle him," recalls the DJ.
