Gary James' Interview With The Author Of
Dakota Days: The True Story of John Lennon's Final Years
John Green



Dakota Days: The True Story of John Lennon's Final Days. That's the title of a new book on John Lennon, written by his personal tarot card reader, John Green. For the first time ever, the reader gains a deeper understanding of what the last five years of John Lennon's life was like. We talked with author/tarot card reader John Green about his book, and John Lennon.

Q - I've heard it said that Yoko Ono is quite upset with your book. Have you heard anything about that?

A - No, I haven't. You know, I thought about asking her and getting permission to write the official story, but that would mean researching a lot of different elements I didn't know. What I chose to do was write the story that I knew to add to the overall mosaic. If I asked for Yoko's permission, she would've required control, and I know her well enough to know that, and in fact I don't blame her at all. I didn't feel competent enough as a writer to both please or appease her, and then also get this story to the general public. And it was the general public I was trying to talk to.

Q - You're a professional tarot card reader. How does one go about becoming a tarot card reader?

A - Well, there are a couple of ways. The way I did it was, it had been in the family awhile and I was sort of raised with the negative approach to it. Not that it wasn't real, but "don't do that!" My Mom had grown up in a family where it was used and so she was against it and let me know it was real. When I went off to school, I met someone who had a pack, and they read for me, and I was thrilled by them. He gave me the deck. I studied everything I could get my hands on, talked to everyone who read, apprenticed with a fellow for five years and another one for two more. And that's basically how you go about it. You find a deck you like and someone you can feel comfortable with. I'm avoiding the word trust because never trust too fully or have blind faith in anything. Work with that person as an apprentice and that way, you'll learn. There are schools that teach this, although being an apprentice, I'm a believer in the apprentice system.

Q - Is that what you're doing presently for a living?

A - Oh, yes. That's what I've been doing for seventeen years and that's what I hopefully will do for the remainder of my days. I love reading cards.

Q - During the five-year period when you were doing readings for John Lennon, were you using the name "Charlie Swan?"

A - Yeah, because there are a couple of reasons. Yoko told me she wanted me to use the name Charlie Swan instead of John Green because if John Lennon knew there was someone else named John, he'd be jealous. Now I never really believed that, but it's a good story. And another was when John and Yoko were separated in the holidays of '74 and '75, one of my jobs was to find which of a group of motels he might be at. And,' I'd had pretty good luck at that. She'd say, "Is he at this one or that one?" and I'd read on each one and choose the one that appeared to be the most likely. And the track record was good enough that at one point John said, "Are you having me followed? How do you know what's going on here?" And her response was, "No, it's this tarot card reader, John Green." Well, he said, and I think as a joke, "If we ever get back together, get rid of that card reader." So, the day I met him, she told him, "I got rid of that card reader, John Green, so you're Charlie Swan." But when he was traveling in Africa in '78, he was traveling under the name John Green, so I rather suspect he knew all along.

Q - When you first met John Lennon, you wrote "He gathered light, as if a follow spot was on him." Did you sense any type of aura that surrounded him?

A - Now we're getting metaphysical. In writing the book, I intentionally tried to avoid occult references, unless it was done in humor or explanation. I tried not to use the analysis an occultist uses when they study someone, and that is in fact what I am. I am an occultist. So, when I saw him, what I particularly noticed was a brightness about him as a person, and how each element of the face, the hairs, and the beard even, seemed to be clearly etched. He was not of vague appearance. He was quite startlingly there. To say that it was aura, not so much that, as just the energy field around him.

Q - At one point, John told you, "I don't have any friends." Why didn't John Lennon have friends?

A - Certainly there's the limitations of celebrity and just meeting folk that you or I could. You go to a party and meet someone and they seem nice. Well, if you have a name worldwide, you have to be more careful than that. But on top of that was the issue with John, that what he loved to do was his work, what he loved to do was perform, write music, and record it. And when he worked with people, they were his friends, and otherwise they were just people he associated with. So it was very difficult for him to maintain a friendship because a friend was nothing he had ever required in his life. His work was his friend, His work was his true lover.

Q - John complained to you about Yoko, "It used to be that she really did things for me. She paid attention to me, not to the Beatle." Is that what John Lennon was looking for from Yoko and from other people, non-stop attention all the time?

A - Well, there's two answers to that, and the second is based on the idea of what I knew and noticed when I was with him. As he described his history, there had been, as a performer, so much attention on the four. He was one of The Fab Four. He was one of The Beatles. He was never really himself and he felt that he singularly was The Beatles. Way back when, it was his idea, his drive, and his initiative, and that's what created the group. He held it together. He put it on the map and he pushed it. So it was him, and in the group, people still related to The Beatles and not to John. So, when he met Yoko, originally I think it was in '66 or so, her constant attention on him was terribly flattering because it wasn't someone going after any of the four or all four, it was specifically him. During the time I knew him, specifically because he wasn't creating, he needed distraction, and part of his distraction was his giving attention and getting it. John had a way of looking at you where his eyes would be wide open and his mouth would be slightly ajar, and you got the impression that anything you said would be remembered for all time. Any gesture you made would somehow be videotaped in his mind. When he wasn't giving attention like that, he wanted to get attention like that. Yoko was being terribly distracted by all the massive amounts of business going on and so didn't have the time to give that to him. So he felt not only the loss of in someway the audience, but also the loss of someone who had given all that attention and was not apparently withholding it from his point of view.

Q - What do you say to a person like John Lennon when he remarks, "What am I going to do if I'm not doing music?"

A - The real key was his own resolution and decision that he needed to get the music back, because any of the distractions, write a book or do the paint boxes, which were his art project, or anything else, they were avoiding the real issues. When he says, "What am I going to do if I'm not doing music?" the answer has to be a series of questions, which leads him to the point where he says, "I want to do the music. I cannot do the music. Why can't I do the music?" What stands in the way? And then try to define the barrier.

Q - Why couldn't John write songs for five years? Had he said everything he wanted to say? Was he too rich to be bothered?

A - The way he gave away money in his life and senselessly about it, to be taken from him, is a definite indicator that what the man was doing was not trying to accumulate wealth at any point in his career. Certainly he was grateful that he made the money, but in opening the Apple Boutique, where they gave away the stock, I mean they lost a fortune there. They allowed Apple, the corporation, to be managed at one point in such a way that it was going broke, and that's a fabulously wealthy corporation, for a group of singers. It was pretty damn impressive. So money wasn't the goal. It wasn't that he made enough money to quit. He loved the people he did this music for. He loved the people he performed for. He loved, I hesitate to say specifically, Americans, but America was the birth of Rock 'n' Roll, and Rock 'n' Roll was his music. And to perform that music and to record that music for people was his great love. He never turned his back on that group of people who bought his stuff, listened to it, were touched by it. He never said, "Oh well, I've said all I have to say." John always had more to say. So this is what happened in retrospect. At the time, if you'd ask me in '77, '78 or '79, I would have had a different answer any day you'd ask me. What I think it is now is that while he was on his rise to stardom and while he was a star, he was so changing himself constantly. He was always in a terribly threatening position. The group's next record wouldn't work. Someone in the crowd will throw firecrackers on the stage. Whatever image he had of himself as the poor boy was ruined by the rich boy, the ignorant one as being the genius who likes Rock 'n' Roll to let's have more of Rock 'n' Roll. When he came to this country, after a brief skirmish with immigration, he settled into a life where he wasn't challenged anymore, so there was no adrenalin pumping through him demanding more and more.

Q - Yoko told you, "I've already written a lot of things that the fans think John did." Did she elaborate on that at all?

A - No, she didn't. She would say John would leave something on the piano that was one line and she would finish it out and then John would come back later, play it, and like it and use it as his. I never had any indication as to which pieces those were. Having known John, and especially having seen him go through a creative period, I don't think anybody muddled around very much with his work. He was highly possessive about it. One of the reasons "Double Fantasy" pleased him is that he was working alone again, not that he didn't want to make the public image of John and Yoko, but in that studio, he wanted to be the sole authority. He not only did the record, he financed his own production for it, so he was in total control, and total creativity is what John was always after. So I found that a little hard to believe, but one of the reasons I put it in the book was to see the myriad of images that's presented by both parties of the couple, about each other.

Q - Was there any way you could have seen John would be in danger on the night of December 8^th, 1980?

A - In the summer of 1980, July, Yoko had asked me to do a spread on what's going to happen for the next year, 'cause there was talk about the music and what not, and how big would this get, and in November I saw a violent separation for the couple, and frankly I thought it would be a divorce. I thought if they didn't change their pattern, the increased publicity would cause a schism between them that would take him away again. I wasn't asked to follow up on that and do more readings and I don't answer questions I'm not asked. As their public exposure increased, I did warn them about security, but not as a card reader, but as a practical business. If millions of people know your name, and know where you live, literally where you live, and you're saying whatever you're saying, there's going to be someone you're going to offend. Out of the millions of people who heard him, there's one in a million chance that there could have been a crazy.

Q - And there was a crazy.

A - And there was a crazy who stalked the Dakota for three days and their security didn't even click to it.

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