Summary

December 1970, Regency Hotel, New York City: After a spontaneous film festival in the Elgin Theatre for which Yoko Ono and John Lennon had produced two new films in only two weeks, the organiser Jonas Mekas and the two artists sat together, exhausted and probably also very happy. They talk about how the audience received the films and how Jonas Mekas managed to draw the attention from the famous couple to their works. Almost accidentially, the conversation touches many topics of creative production, from early childhood influences to collaboration, from hearts beats in a waltz rhythm to electronic music, from realism to stutter to catharsis. And love and peace.

Jonas Mekas was well acquainted with a great many New York artists, such as Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg or Susan Sontag. He conducted numerous interviews with artists, some of which appeared for the first time in his Scrapbook of the Sixties, published by Spector Books. This ebook contains the outtake of one chapter of the Scrapbook. This intimate conversation with John and Yoko reveals Mekas as a friendly, attentive interlocur with a stunningly agile and honest perception.


Jonas Mekas

Bum-Ba Bum-Ba

Conversations with John Lennon & Yoko Ono

taken from the Scrapbook of the Sixties (Spector Books, 2016)

a mikrotext

Created with Booktype

Cover: Lydia Salzer

Cover Typeface: PTL Attention, Viktor Nübel

www.mikrotext.de – info@mikrotext.de

ISBN 978-3-944543-53-6

All rights reserved.

© 2017 mikrotext, Berlin / 2015 for all texts by Jonas Mekas; Spector Books, Leipzig

Jonas Mekas

Bum-Ba Bum-Ba

Conversations with John Lennon & Yoko Ono

December 18 and 21, 1970


Part 1

It was December 1970. I had one of those sudden irresistible urges to see my friends’ films. An orgy of films. Since I don’t like watching films just by myself, I rented the Elgin theatre for seven days, just before Christmas, and announced a 7 ¾ New York Film Festival.

One of the people I called for films was Yoko Ono. I wanted to see some of the films she had made with John in London. After hearing what I wanted to do, Yoko said, “Yes, yes, but don’t you think I should make something new for the festival instead of showing old films?”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s a terrific idea. But we have only two weeks to Christmas. You have only two weeks to make your film.”

We left the idea right there. A few hours later Yoko calls and tells me: “John and I decided to make two new movies for your festival. That’s it.”

John and Yoko’s film team, supervised by Steve Gebhardt and Bob Fries, moved at full speed. Yoko and John didn’t sleep. Things moved hectically and with great excitement. The whole artistic community of New York was immediately involved. Two films were under way. They became known as Legs and Fly. Both were completed in time for the December 18 screening at the Elgin.

The conversations that follow began the evening after the screening, late at night. We were all totally exhausted. It was a trying week for all of us. We couldn’t do anything else but talk.

1. December 18, 1970. Regency Hotel, New York City.

Jonas

So what do you want to do with these movies now?

John

I don’t know …

Yoko

I think that the sound was very good, you know?

Jonas

I liked the camera sound in the background.

Yoko

Fantastic …

[Legs — 365 members of the New York artistic community were invited to appear at the studio where Steve Gebhardt was waiting with the camera, to film their legs. Legs were filmed to just about a few inches above the knees. Some 333 of those called showed up and were actually filmed.]

Jonas

Many failed to recognize their own legs, when they saw the movie. It’s amazing.

John

They didn’t recognize their own legs …

Jonas

No, they didn’t. But what amazed me most is … I thought these would be all very beautiful legs. But they were not … All that collection of pairs of legs, but no leg in any of the pairs looked alike — that’s the amazing thing.

Yoko

But they were like sculptures.

Jonas

No Roman or Greek would really like these legs.

Yoko

But Jonas, it’s a very deformed age, you know?

Jonas

I didn’t expect to see that, that’s all. I expected anything but that. Some small … some crooked … fat …

Yoko

It’s not a Greek or Roman age.

Jonas

Yeah, I know.

John

But the Greeks and the Romans, all we have is pictures … It’s like just showing Hollywood, you know, or Playboy. People don’t look like that.

Jonas

But still, one has certain ideal images, projections …

Yoko

But those legs match this New York landscape better. They seem so crushed and pushed and lonely …

Jonas

Now, it would be interesting to shoot another three hundred legs in some other place …

Yoko

They might look different, you see. It might be on some island, a nice island where there’s less pressure. The legs might grow better, you know. But I enjoyed it and I also enjoyed the idea that everybody was a star, you know? Like, not one prima donna performing in it. Everybody who went up on the platform became a star immediately. You said something about preferring Legs over Fly. Why is that?

[Fly — Twenty-minute film showing a fly crawling or sitting on a nude female body. Towards the end more flies join in.]

Jonas

Well, I prefer just straight things. Now, here, in Fly, there is an idea …

Yoko

Did it project any specific idea?

Jonas

There was an attempt at dramatization, I thought. Maybe I am wrong. But at this stage, you know, of where I am now, what touches me most is something that is very direct, not dramatized. That’s why I very much liked Apotheosis.

Yoko

Yes, I understand.

Jonas

Where was it shot, Apotheosis?

[Apotheosis — The film begins with a close-up of John and Yoko, but then it immediately opens on an aerial view of a snow village, a small medieval-looking old village. The camera (in a balloon) slowly floats up, gradually disappearing as we go higher, as the balloon softly floats along, and then it goes into a cloud … stretching into infinity.]

John

In an English village, down South.

Yoko

That is my favorite, too.

Jonas

When did you make it?

John

Last year sometime. About a year and a half ago.

Jonas

That village looked very medieval.

John

Well, it’s a classic English village, you know. It’s preserved still. It’s one of those beauty spots …

Jonas

What was the name of the village?

John

I don’t remember but when we got there, we didn’t know what village it was — the cameraman picked it, I think. You know, he just said, “That’s a good place to shoot.” We said, “Just get us a village square somewhere.”

Yoko

And it started to snow at night.

John

Yeah, it started to snow the night before, and they were all saying, “Oh, why did you choose us? ’Cause we’re a famous village?” You know. We said, “No, we never heard of it.”

Jonas

And the snow did it. Without snow it would be something else.

John

Well, we made it twice, once without snow. We had to shoot it a few times. It was beautiful without snow, yeah. But it wasn’t as good as with snow.

Jonas

It’s very peaceful, it’s very … Did you, was it … the noise, the cackling and the barking, that was recorded in the village?

Yoko

In the same village.

John

From the balloon.

Yoko

[says something in the background]

John

It was recorded on the ground and in the balloon.

Jonas

That sound really came up there?

John

Yes, yes, you could hear it for miles around. We didn’t have enough of it, so I had to repeat it sometimes. Because they kept getting it wrong. We kept sending them up again to get me a decent sound. And, uh, we couldn’t get a better one …

Jonas

Did you get up in the balloon yourself?

John

No, no. We went up in the air for about ten feet …

Yoko

It’s very scary up in the air in a balloon …

Jonas

And then the balloon went into the cloud and for a minute or two there was absolutely nothing to see, you know. The screen went blank, white. So they [the audience] began making sort of funny remarks, and whistles. They were whistling.

John

They had a long night …

Jonas

There were people there who didn’t even come to see the movies: they came to see you.

John

Yes.

Jonas

So, at that point I went up front and I asked them why they had come here, why, this generation of peace and love … I said: You come here and you think you are a generation of love and peace, but you behave like you are a generation of anger and war …

Yoko

[laughs]

Jonas