John Lennon said he wouldn’t get himself ‘shot’ in chilling phone call 8 years before tragic murder
John Lennon talked about being a victim of gun violence eight years before he was shot and killed.
The new documentary “One to One: John & Yoko” explores the late Beatle’s Free the People Tour, which he was planning with activist Jerry Rubin with the goal of raising bail money for prisoners who couldn’t afford it.
In one scene, Lennon talks on the phone with drummer Jim Keltner about the risk of getting political on the tour, which was set to conclude at the Republican Convention in August 1972.
Lennon is asked by Keltner, now 82, if he has “any paranoia” about people before the tour.
“What people? … You mean people trying to kill us or something like that? I’m not about to get myself shot,” Lennon said on the phone, per People.
“It’ll cause excitement in its own way. But, er, you know, I’m still an artist, but a revolutionary artist, right?” the “Imagine” singer added.
In a later scene, Lennon told a journalist he started taping his own phone calls out of fear for his life.
“We started noticing people hanging outside the apartment. And I have a driver, he’s an ex-cop. But we’re getting followed by this car, all the time,” he said. “So we’re all very nervous.”
Eight years after the phone call with Keltner, Lennon was shot and killed outside his apartment in New York City on December 8, 1980. He was 40 years old.
Before his death, Lennon decided to call off the Free the People Tour.
According to People, the documentary depicts Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, falling out with Rubin “over the risk of violent confrontation at the Republican Convention.”
“One to One: John & Yoko” premiered at the Venice Film Festival Friday and also played at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend.
Directed by Kevin Macdonald, the project follows Lennon and Ono’s move from London to New York City nine years before his death. It features archival footage of interviews and phone calls combined with concert and archival footage.
In an interview with Deadline, Macdonald said he was approached about making the documentary by a producer at Mercury Studios.
“I was a Beatles fan and was particularly fond of John, so I was never going to say no,” he said. “But I thought, there’s been so many films about The Beatles and Lennon — how do you say something fresh?”
“I was doing a bit of research,” Macdonald continued, “and I came across these quotes where John talked about when he went to America, all he did for the first couple of years was watch TV. It’s the quote that starts the film. So I thought it might be interesting to replicate his experience in the early days of being in America, trying to understand this country through how it presents itself on television.”
Lennon’s tragic murder remains a shocking moment in history.
Mark David Chapman, the man who shot Lennon, is currently serving a 20-years-to-life sentence at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York’s Hudson Valley.
