RK: Has living in New York affected your music, John?
JL: Well, one way it's done that is I wrote "New York City", but it's like wherever Yoko and I lived, we were going pretty fast in our lives. It was like we were a little miniature New York City in London or something, but this is the only place where everybody is going at the same speed as us, which is good. So it's like, instead of going against the waves, which we'd been doing a lot of the time - in New York, you go with the waves, they're all going with you.
It's that kind of inspiring thing and there's just so many great people here apart from the stars that live here, ya know, the great artists of music and of straight art, just all the people are much groovier here. It's the hippest place on earth and that's why it's really inspiring to be here and it just makes you wanna rock like crazy.
RK: Yoko, how do you feel women are oppressed by the society and what can be done about it?
YO: Well, women have been oppressed by the society for ages and in such a way so that some of them are brainwashed to the extent that they love to be slaves or they feel that they have to say that they love to be slaves. The woman's role is to say that you are a slave and you love to be one and that's considered to be feminine and it's a very sad situation. I'm very proud that my husband is the first man in the world who sang about women's problems and I think it's very meaningful for the female liberation too that we're getting an understanding from the most male chauvinest business in the world - the star industry. He's in that world and he's singing about it.
RK: Have your views changed since writing "All You Need Is Love"?
JL: No, not really. Because there was a period when...I think if you get down to basics, whatever the problem is, it's usually to do with love. People's neurotic need for love. So I think "All You Need is Love" is a true statement. I'm not saying, "All you have to do is..." because "All You Need" came out in the Flower Power Generation time, it doesn't mean that all you have to do is put on a phoney smile or wear a flower dress, and it's gonna be all right. Love is not just something that you stick on posters or stick on the back of your car or on the back of your jacket or on a badge. I'm talking about real love, so I still believe that. Love is appreciation of other people and allowing them to be. Love is allowing somebody to be themselves and that's what we do need.
YO: The thing is we're all sort of worried about this love generation because it's dying down or something like that. The reason for that is, like John said, they were really taking the message on a superficial level like, "all right, let's just stick a little label on their car" kind of thing. But this is an age when people finally drew the conclusion that we failed in a form of communication between two people. If you just see the divorce rate and all that, you'll see what it's like. And young people not believing in marriage which is understandable..and the reason for that is because they had a lot of bad experience in that area. If two people can't get along with each other, then how could a society operate smoothly? So the thing is, we have to start to pick up on that again, not lose any faith in it and start to understand each other, start to establish communication between two people.
RK: How do you feel about the IRA in Northern Ireland, John?
JL: I don't know how I feel about them because I understand why they're doing it, and if it's a choice between the IRA or the British army, I'm with the IRA. But if it's a choice between violence and non-violence, I'm with non-violence. So it's a very delicate line.
RK: That's really no choice.
JL: No it isn't, but our backing of the Irish people is done really through the Irish Civil Rights, which is not the IRA. Although I condemn violence, if two people are fighting, I'm probably gonna be on one side or the other, even though I'm against violence. The Irish thing isn't new for me. I'm always getting accused of, more in Britain than here actually, is hopping from subject to subject like "one minute he's on meditation, the next minute he's on peace." Well, to me it's all been the one trip, it's just an evolution and I haven't changed basically. Only through experience and more awareness over the years.
I bought a piece of land in Ireland simply 'cause I'm a quarter Irish or half Irish or something and long, long before the trouble started, I told Yoko that's where we're going to retire, and I took her to Ireland. We went around Ireland a bit and we stayed in Ireland and we had a sort of second honeymoon there. So I was completely involved in Ireland. This was long before the trouble started. I bought this in about '66 and I never did do anything with it, but some hippies came and wanted to live on it. He's called "Sid the Hippie" and he's a famous European Hippie and he is now living on my island and they have a community there. It's really been a freak scene for the local people 'cause they're all very square and suddenly there's these hippies living on the island.
There's been a whole sort of change of awareness around the district because they've had to accomodate these 20th century people living on this island. They're freaking them out and I've heard news since they've survived the winters which are really rough. I mean, it's right in the Atlantic. They survived the winters and everything - they had their crops burned, but they managed to save themselves. But when the Irish trouble started again, these hippies, who weren't Irish, were more involved with protesting than the local people. They organized all the local people to protest against the British, which is fantastic. I don't know whether you heard that. And so the whole area was buzzing just because we let them go on that land four years ago, and we'd forgotten about them. We just got requests, we had the land and said: "Ok, you use it, do what you want with it." And they've been turning the people on down there. It's really great.