JL: Oh, it hasn't at all. I mean, after all, it must affect me if I'm somewhere. It's crazy to say it hasn't affected me at all. But I don't feel any of it. I just feel me in a different surrounding for a period of time. I enjoy coming here, but I think we've been here more than necessary.

EM: But the transitional pace from the lifestyle in England to your lifestyle in New York, is not that much of a difference?

JL: Oh, no. Because Yoko and I always live at about 2000 light years speed when we're working, or having absolutely no movement at all; it's one extreme or the other. But it's usually moving very fast and there's always a small hurricane around us.

EM: If you were a draft age American male living in the United States, would you have gone to Vietnam, gone to jail, or left the country?

JL: I think I probably would have left the country. When I was a youngster just around 16, they still had the draft in England. I didn't have any money, so I wasn't sure how to do it, but I always had the idea to go to sourthern Ireland for a start. I probably would have ended up in Dublin and then Paris and then probably in New York if it had happened in England. I wouldn't have gone, no.

EM: You once called radio station KPFA in Berkeley during the People's Park hassle and at that time you said you didn't believe that there was any cause worth dying for. Do you still believe that..

JL: I'm not sure, although I don't think I can any more although I'd like to. But I really believe after what's happened everywhere.. I really think that defensive violence is, you know, okay.

EM: Defensive violence..

JL: When you're attacked, you have to defend yourself. Right?

EM: Like the thing that you were talking about on the Cavett show?

JL: I don't remember if I've got it exactly right, but I remember reading some Black Panther ten-point program. I'm not a great reader of all those things that are going on, but I think they say it very well. I don't know how people interpreted it to start killing them off, but they said it very well in their original thing.

EM: I remember you mentioning that on the Dick Cavett show. So you do believe that under certain conditions it's all right to take somebody else's life?

JL: Well, I don't know. I'd hate to even admit it in my own head when I see on TV people on the streets of Northern Ireland just getting killed. I think they should defend themselves. Yes. There's nothing else for them to do. What can they do? I think before maybe I still had a bit of religion hanging on in my head. But Yoko hasn't, but I think she would agree with defensive violence. I'm not sure. I can't speak for her.

EM: John, you have pretty much given up now on dope and God and politics. What are the things you do now to get yourself high?

JL: I wouldn't say I've given up politics in that way. I mean, I never took up politics. Things I do or for that matter that anybody does are done politically. Any statement you make is a political statement. Any record, even your way of life is a political statement. So in that way, I haven't given up politics. I get high by working. There's some old cliche that I used to despise: work is noble or some jazz like that. Well, I don't know about noble, but that's what I dig doing. And always have, you know. And my work is music and things like that.

EM: If you were of voting age in America, if you had just turned 18 or 19 or 20, would you register and become part of the system in terms of participating in electoral politics?

JL: Well, I've never voted. I've never voted yet although I could have voted for the last ten years.

EM: Why haven't you?

JL: Because I've never believed any of them. And I just couldn't vote for someone I couldn't believe in. I was always waiting for somebody to believe in. But I don't believe they'll ever come. But if there was a concerted effort, and if there was a movement or group policy to try and get behind somebody that you knew about, then I would use that vote if it meant anything. It's never meant anything yet.

EM: So if given the choice of voting for two candidates, neither of whom turned you on, or not voting at all, you would prefer not to vote at all.

JL: You mean Harold Wilson or Ted Heath? I wouldn't vote. But an interesting thing happened after nobody voted for Wilson the second time or the last time they had a vote. Heath got in and Richard Neville of Oz said an interesting thing, that none of us realized the difference between the Conservatives and the Labor parties, because there is virtually no difference except for the half an inch in which we breathe when the socialists were in. There was certainly less haranguing of the underground and black people and everything else before Heath got in.

When Heath went to the United Nations just after he got in, and he went to see Nixon or whoever was president, they seemed to have had a little tete-a-tete. Then Heath comes out and says that from now on our problems will be internal. What it sounded like to me is that Nixon and he had got their heads together and decided that if they caused a riot at home, people would forget what they were doing abroad. That's what it seems like to me. It seems to be coming true.

EM: Is there any political figure today in America that is at all appealing to you?

JL: Well I've only seen the ones they present on the media. The McGoverns and the other one, the whispering poet, and none of them seem to mean anything. I really don't know. There's nobody any American friends of mine have mentioned, so I guess there ain't nobody.

EM: Would you ever consider running for political office?

JL: I've thought of it in one way, but I don't think I could do it. I'm not a politician,you know. I think to do it you would have to lie and cheat and I've had enough. I don't think I could do it. But I don't think that they're the only ones that are important. I think that what we do and what you do is as important. One doesn't work without the other. It's like the ad they have on TV. They have this cartoon where they take a man's art, and craft, and everything away from him, and he's left up a tree with a wolf howling down below. In a nutshell, they're saying: Don't take art for granted, it isn't some extra bourgeois piece of chocolate you get to go with your bread and potatoes. It's a necessity in society. I believe that.

EM: I think one of the most important points that Yoko makes all the time is that we are all artists.

JL: Yeah, right. You know she's having this show at Syracuse on the 9th.

EM: The water-art show.

JL: I guess that show is on now. There are many people in this show that donated things to the water event including Andy Warhol, George, Ringo, me..thousands of names and they participate in this water event, but one of the best pieces came from our driver, Tom. Now the idea for the water event was that all different kinds of people from artist to driver Tom would give a container in which Yoko would put water in. That was the sculpture event and it would be almost like an indoor lake. It would be in one of the inside rooms of the museum and it would be many, many different ideas of things which could contain water. He came up with a ship's compass which would have to have water in it and that's beautiful.

EM: That's lovely.

JL: I believed it before when she kept saying that everyone is an artist. We used to say as the Beatles there are many of you or almost all of you who could make music the way we do; it's just a matter of taking a couple of years out to learn how to do it, that's all. With this kind of art, anybody can do it. And Tom's piece is one of the best pieces, it's fantastic. There are many other pieces like that which I can't remember offhand.