The Ballad of Yoko and John | Julia | 1
British Scandal
Audible
4.4 • 7.2K Ratings
🗓️ 7 December 2022
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John Lennon has a dream - to make music. So when he enlists George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to join his band The Quarrymen, he feels like this is the start of something big. But as tragedy strikes, and he faces the perils of newfound stardom, John seeks out new inspiration - an avant-garde, Japanese artist called Yoko Ono.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, Prime Members. You can listen to British scandal at free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. |
| 0:06.0 | Oh, Matt, if I was going to call you that in the episode. |
| 0:09.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:10.0 | Do you think we'd need a strong language warning? |
| 0:12.0 | Yeah, I mean, you call me that in the street, but I don't think we should do it on Mike. |
| 0:16.0 | Okay, I think we should probably put a warning on this then. |
| 0:32.0 | 8th of December 1980, Sheraton Hotel, New York. |
| 0:37.0 | In his hotel room, Mark David Chapman takes a giddy and viable from a cracked leather hold-all. |
| 0:43.0 | Opens it at the gospel of John and adds the word Lenin with a gold pen before placing it on the polished teak bureau. |
| 0:52.0 | His heart thuds with nervous excitement as he pictures the room swarming with FBI agents. |
| 0:59.0 | Then he straightens his aviator glasses in the mirror. |
| 1:02.0 | Tells himself to focus. |
| 1:05.0 | He puts John Lenin and Yoko Ono's new record, Double Fantasy Under His Arm. Takes a hotel branded pen from the bedside table and pockets the scrap of paper on which he's scrolled and address. |
| 1:18.0 | Dakota apartments, one west, 72nd street. |
| 1:22.0 | Finally, from the bottom of the hold-all. |
| 1:25.0 | He takes the loaded 38 revolver and slowly fingers its cold heavy smoothness before stuffing it down his pants. |
| 1:33.0 | He heads for the door, leaving his room key. He won't be coming back here as long as he has the bottle to go through with it. |
| 1:42.0 | He leaves fire the main entrance. The weather's unnaturally warm, almost spring-like. |
| 1:48.0 | Two blocks away, he finds a rundown bookstore. |
| 1:51.0 | He buys a copy of Catcher in the Rye and scribbles the words, |
| 1:54.0 | This is my statement across the first page. Holden Coldfield gets it. This world is full of phonies. Phones like John Lenin, singing about peace and poverty from his penthouse apartment. |
| 2:08.0 | Turning his back on God, Jesus and the Beatles to worship Yoko. These phonies need to be eliminated. |
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