- From Faith Current: “The Sacred Ordinary: St. Peter’s Church Hall” - May 1, 2023
- A brief (?) hiatus - April 22, 2023
- Something Happened - March 6, 2023
“Hmm…I did not know that”
Reader @Maya writes in to ask:
“Hi, Michael. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the cancelation of Peter Doggett’s book on Lennon’s Dakota Days, Prisoner of Love: Inside the Dakota with John Lennon that was meant to be released April of last year. It would have been so great to have a book on Lennon’s life in the late 70s that wasn’t marred by accusations of total unreliability, so I was very disappointed to see that it had been not just delayed, but completely canceled. It has started to legitimately frustrate me. If it was a problem with the copyright of quoting the Lennon diaries, why not just paraphrase as many other books have done? I just don’t understand how this could be set to be published and then totally disappear without explanation. I’m this close to actually emailing Peter Doggett to see if there’s ever a chance of this book reaching the public. I was just wondering, as a person with far more familiarity with both publishing and the Beatles than I, if you had any insight on this? Thank you.”
Thank you, @Maya. I do have some thoughts, or more accurately, suspicions regarding the fate of this project. After familiarizing myself with the particulars a bit (thanks to Erin Torkelson Weber and Karen Hooper’s blog, The Historian and The Beatles), I think I can make an educated guess—based upon a story from my own life.
In 2012, St. Martin’s Press contacted me via my semi-highfalutin’ agent in New York. “I loved your Barry Trotter books”—the ones that sold a million plus worldwide—“and have always wanted to work with you. There’s a project idea we have, are you interested?” Sure I was. They wanted me to do a parody of Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes’ costume drama popular at the time and, as Kate and I were fans of the show, I readily agreed to write the parody. But before I did, I asked the $64,000 question: “Are all the higher-ups behind this book? Have you gotten a sense of what Julian Fellowes might think? Parodies often get sued—are you prepared for that?” Yes to all this, the editor said, and he and my agent began negotiating the deal, while I got down to the writing and designing of the parody. At great speed, of course, because it was July or something, and they wanted it for their fall list.
Six weeks later, I finished the project on deadline, and presented it to them for publication. I’d been showing my editor chapters as I’d written and designed them, and gotten much laughter and encouragement. All lights were green.
Until, one morning, they weren’t. Instead of paying me the agreed-upon $30,000 for a book which they’d asked me to write, and had approved of in-process—they suddenly offered me $5,000 “to put the manuscript in a drawer permanently.” All communication with me stopped; even my agent couldn’t get a straight answer as to what had happened. It was, of course, completely illegal to do what they had done, get me to write a book to order on spec with a false promise, but neither my well-respected New York agent, nor my $400/hour New York publishing lawyer would back me in a lawsuit. “Mike, I’d never be able to sell another book to them again,” said my agent; with so few publishing houses, backing me and the stink I planned to make would hinder his other clients, and spell career doom for him. And my lawyer, too, made all her money working with these companies. They both required good relations with the publishing houses, not with me, the guy who they nominally worked for.
So I Kickstarted the book, and said sayonara to book publishing for good. The contracts are terrible, there is no Union, and the structure of the business itself compromises an author’s representation. And the houses themselves—with all due respect to the many smart and ethical people who toil for them—are purest courtier culture, as bad in this regard as fashion or Hollywood. As large companies, book publishers are exquisitely sensitive to pressure; as individuals, most of them come from the best (read: most expensive) schools, and must come from significant money to be able to pursue such a poorly paid career in such an expensive city. And finally, since 1980 the book publishing business has not only really embraced the blockbuster model, they have increasingly looked to Hollywood for their ethics. And in Hollywood, fame and money rules. Star-power.
I think what happened was that some editor had a bright idea, contacted me, and got me writing. His higher-ups, such as they were paying attention at all, had no very clear idea what “a parody” would be, thinking that it was something sorta like an original, only funny. Then, when it came time to publish the manuscript—traditional literary parody, as I’d done with Barry Trotter—either someone inside the house thought Fellowes wouldn’t like it and pre-censored themselves, or Fellowes himself said he wouldn’t like it. “You publish this, and I won’t even let you bid on the Downton Abbey Calendar!”
I think something similar might’ve happened to Doggett’s book. I think someone asked him for ideas, post-You Never Give Me Your Money. He pitched the book to an editor, the editor bought it, Doggett wrote it, the project was ready for publication, and then the Estate read an advance copy and threatened a lawsuit. The publishing house, looking at sales of Doggett’s You Never Give Me Your Money, a fine and worthy book, calculated that any lawsuit—no matter how frivolous—would cost more than they were likely to make on the book. Or perhaps there is another Lennon- or Yoko-related book that they figure they’d make more money on. Or perhaps it was simply that someone high up enough in the company is friends with Yoko; bigtime publishing execs and people like the Lennons are likely to know each other, have houses near each other—New York wealth and culture is a small world. (Added later: apparently the publisher, Jawbone Press, is a London-based independent. I have little direct knowledge of UK publishing culture, save for my conversations with my UK editor. But in such cultural realms, in my experience the US and UK form one ecosystem.)
Whatever the details—and it’s unlikely that we’ll know any, because Doggett writes books for a living, and anybody in that racket has to keep certain aspects of this game to themselves (as I would, had I any interest in writing a book for a Big Six publisher ever again)—there is really only one reason a book gets pulled so close to its publication date, and that is a surprise communication from a powerful party that publication will result in legal action.
Of course the book was strongly vetted; of course all conventions (like paraphrasing) were employed; of course the copies of the Diaries were obtained legally; I’m sure there were no obvious holes. In fact, I would be highly surprised if the house did not contact the Lennon Estate the moment they considered accepting Doggett’s proposal—wouldn’t you? In no way was the project undertaken as something adversarial to a famous, generally well-thought of widow and feminist icon…who also happens to be a billionaire. That is not how book publishing—or America—works in 2022.
Did Yoko signal “go ahead” and then, after the book was completed and ready for sale, change her mind? I cannot say, but she did something similar with the Norman biography of her husband, which deeply wounded the sales profile of that book. (The authorized Lennon biography will sell better than another unauthorized one.) And there is another advantage: by waiting until the book was ready to go, the Estate inflicted maximum pain on both the house and the author, costing them maximum emotional discomfort and maximum money. This will chill the already-chilly waters for any future projects on John Lennon, save for ones done by Yoko or Sean. This is a wonderful advantage.
As depressing as this reading of events is for Beatles and Lennon fans, we must always realize that what is many people’s passion is some people’s business and a few people’s family legacy. While we might hunger for “the truth,” what we will get is what the Estate feels is its financial or emotional benefit.
The person I feel worst for is, of course, Peter Doggett, who added something of real value to Beatles literature with You Never Give Me Your Money, and would have been able to clarify so much about the last truly murky aspect of John Lennon’s story. Unlike Norman or the Sheffs, I generally trust Doggett to give us an even-handed account of what he examines, and with people like Goldman, Rosen, Seaman, and “John Green” as our main sources on the Dakota Years, Doggett’s book would’ve provided a real service. I suspect Doggett was paid to “put it in a drawer” and, for his sake, I hope it was enough money for him to feel whole—though given that the book seems to have had a distinctly personal cast to it, I suspect it took something major out of him to have the project pulled.
This, then, is the tragedy of the Estate’s behavior. By wishing to control the narrative, it is not just asserting that it owns John Lennon—which it does, in the narrow legal sense—but also what we can think of John Lennon. The most important “John Lennon,” certainly at this late date, is the man who lives on in the minds of his fans, before and after December 8, 1980. And by disallowing Doggett’s expression of that—regardless of what his book said or did not say about Yoko, Sean or anyone else—the Estate is engaging in a kind of erasure. Petty, vain, self-absorbed, and with no regard to who really should be driving the narrative today, 42 years after John’s murder—the fans who loved and love him.
Which is why I’m going to make a prediction: the moment Yoko Ono passes away—and for the sake of her son and others who love her I hope that is a long time from now—the pressure will begin to build, and someone will release a PDF of that manuscript. I don’t think Doggett will, there are probably some really Draconian penalties in whatever he was forced to sign. But an assistant, an ex-editor, a freelance copyeditor, someone. I do not think there were review copies or galleys circulating, because if there were, this would’ve happened already. But the manuscript clearly was finished, and does exist somewhere, and thus will appear sooner or later. When my wife worked for some popular TV shows, I saw the amount of effort that went into keeping scripts from leaking for the relatively short time between filming and air. To keep Prisoner of Love secret, it will have to kept secret forever, and I just don’t think that’s possible in this day and age. Even against the wishes of billionaires, even in the 1% of New York where everyone knows each other, even in the Hollywood-with-less-money courtier culture of book publishing.
Related posts:
Beatle Memories from Marijke Kroger of The Fool
Best of What’s Left of?
Imagine Beatles chocolates
John Lennon, Alma Cogan, and the Delicate Mechanism of Efficient Beatles Operations
"Dear Boy"
Allen Ginsberg: “Portland Coliseum” (1965)
A sneak preview of Peter Jackson’s Get Back
The Artist as a Dissipated Man: Fred Seaman’s “The Last Days of John Lennon”
My night of Rutlesmania
Why The Beatles Never Had a Mudshark Story
David Cloyd, "Dear Boy"
The Beatles on Shindig
What’s weird is that Julian Fellowes claims to love Downton parodies.
Fellowes is a Tory*, so it’s possible he’s simply lying when he says he loves these parodies. Maybe he’s just praising the horses that escaped from the barn. Ending your book project might have been him finally closing the barn door.
I think that’s it in a nutshell.
We as fans forget how strange we look to the estate. We’re odd little creatures to them. Our role is to reach into our pockets and buy whatever the latest approved, curated product is. But when we insist on knocking too persistently on their door they become puzzled and irritated: “What else do you want? We sold you some music and pictures. Now go away.”
I would love to read all about Lennon’s 1970-1980 years, every last personal detail. But someone like Yoko (or Paul or Ringo) probably sees that as unhealthy. Maybe it is. The more we think and behave like fans, the stranger we look to them. Especially after Chapman, all us fans are viewed with suspicion by Beatle family and friends.
Here’s an example of Fan Brain:
A few years ago the body of the Big Bopper was exhumed. The purpose was to move him to a different cemetery, but the Bopper’s son took the opportunity to have the body examined and x-rayed, so as to put to rest rumors of foul play on the fatal flight. They learned there was no evidence of a gun shot wound and no evidence that the Bopper was able to crawl from the wreckage. (These were rumors spread by fans.)
One man who was present at the exhumation was considered one of the top authorities on the Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, and 1950s R&R. He was such a superfan that he’d become friends with these artists’ families. And so he wrote extensively about the exhumation, cataloging every detail of the body and casket.
But here’s where his brain functioned as a fan: In his description of the exhumation he expressed surprise that the Bopper wasn’t buried in his garish leopard-skin jacket, but rather just a dark suit.
Because his brain was in fan-mode, he couldn’t perceive how odd it would have seemed to the family in 1959 if anyone had suggested “Hey, let’s bury him in his stage costume!” And yet that possibility seemed perfectly reasonable and even likely to this expert who had devoted his life to investigating the lives of the doomed three stars.
As a fan I find it perfectly reasonable that I should know every last thing that happened in the Dakota. But the estate sees me as someone who wants to climb into the marionette’s stage box to examine the strings, costumes and cross brace.
————
*He turned Sarah Bunting, a young idealistic teacher interested in workers’ rights and equality, into an unsympathetic character. But I loved her!
@Baboomska,
“What’s weird is that Julian Fellowes claims to love Downton parodies.”
And he may. I still don’t know what happened, and never will. But an author who might be A-OK with a sketch on SNL might feel quite different about a print parody in the college humor tradition. The sketch is a marker of cultural omnipresence and, let’s be honest, a form of publicity (or can be perceived as such). A silly book like my Downturn Abbey might have felt like “this is going too far.” I dunno; all I know is that it was highly strange that an editor would actually call me and ask me to write it, because publishers are so confused about what parody IS, and so conflicted about whether it should be allowed at all. We should remember that media corporations only want freedom for their products, and onerous legal restrictions on everybody else.
But because I am a person, and not a corporate entity, the Downturn experience broke my health and drove me from the world of books, for good. I loved books, and loved writing for my fans, of which I had quite a few. The cynicism within publishing exhausted and ultimately disgusted me. I never write anything as a cynical cash-grab, but as an exploration of a form I think is really valuable and interesting as our religions are slowly being replaced by pop culture. Parody makes us aware of that process, and (my hope) more intelligent and purposeful about it. Plus, the way I do it, parody is as creative and personal as straight comedy writing. My parodies are loaded with references to my own life and obsessions, and interesting side-ideas — for example, I always loaded them with Beatle references. Being scammed by St. Martin’s AFTER fighting and starving and having my dream finally come true, I realized that, no matter how successful I became, I could not expect even the respect accorded a writer of the seamiest of erotica or pulpiest of pulp. What I was doing was seen as weirdly heretical, and I just couldn’t fight that lonely battle anymore. Her more recent social media activities aside, I will always be deeply grateful to JK Rowling for smiling on Barry Trotter, seeing the spirit in which it was written, and allowing me to entertain a lot of people. That was my intent; that’s my intent with this blog, too, though in a different way.
“We as fans forget how strange we look to the estate. We’re odd little creatures to them. Our role is to reach into our pockets and buy whatever the latest approved, curated product is. But when we insist on knocking too persistently on their door they become puzzled and irritated: “What else do you want? We sold you some music and pictures. Now go away.”
YES. This is exactly right, and it’s particularly intense with the phenomenon of The Beatles, four actual people and not a TV show. For all the pandering that media corporations do at things like San Diego Comicon, their fundamental stance towards fans is as a cow to be milked. That can be good in some ways–now that Disney is handling Star Wars and not George Lucas, there is lots of good stuff for Star Wars fans to watch. But fandom is particularly weird for The Beatles, and they’ve said as much, over and over. They don’t understand WHY people love it all so much; and how could they? They were the only four people in the world who didn’t experience The Beatles. That’s an immense cultural gap between how they perceive the world and how we do. “Why are people still listening to Sgt. Pepper and not my new album? Huh, must be Fan Brain.”
Think about it: Does Yoko seem like the kind of person who sits around looking at all the nice stuff she owns thinking, “Gosh, Beatles fans paid for all this; how nice they are and lucky I am.” Or does she think of us as occasionally dangerous idiots? Or Sean — does he look at his life and think, “I could be another talented but struggling musician, if not for Beatles fans.” Or does he think, “A fan killed my Dad”?
And I’m not here to judge them; what you call Fan Brain is a real thing, and it’s something I actively fight against on this blog. Not because it’s bad (though it occasionally can be), but because it’s BORING.
People who knew and loved Lennon–colleagues and family members–might well want to protect his secrets. But fans aren’t like that; they aren’t judging, only fascinated. They want to know more, so they can be closer to. That’s why my parodies worked so well, by the way — I was endlessly telling “the real story” behind the narrative, and contemporary fans love that. It didn’t injure the property, but deepened the fans’ connection. Teasingly critical, fundamentally non-injurious parody, while completely in-tune with the way modern fans interact with their favorite Universes, is something that most creators and their media watchdogs don’t understand. They think it’s a cynical cash-grab, a tearing-down, when it doesn’t have to be. Downturn Abbey perhaps felt like an attack to Julian Fellowes in precisely the same way that a public airing of John Lennon’s diaries would feel to Yoko and Sean. But fans feel differently because they live in a world where these cultural items exist as sources of pure pleasure. The creators–sadly–do not, and cannot.
I guess it is not an ‘either / or’ kind of thinking about the fans.
.
You can very well realize that you owe your wealth to your talent, the efforts of many others and plain luck, and the money of your fans/clients…
… and still, think, or even say
‘they are dangerous idiots’
or as Paul McCartney sang on ‘Fixing a Hole’
“See the people standing there
Who disagree and never win
And wonder why they don’t get in my door
…
Silly people run around
They worry me and never ask me
Why they don’t get past my door”
In this topic referring to the lennono-clan is probably a bad example. John lacked the empathy or his emotional vulnerability of both his youth and the fame hindered balanced thinking in which one can hold two different contradicting truths in your head or hands and be comfortable with that. His aggressiveness in 1970 (and later) against those who supported The Beatles with their work and love while they were trying to reach the top (Brian, Martin, Taylor, etc.) showed in the Lennono-ecosystem that narcissism was or is rampant.
.
I suspect it will be mr. Mintz who will come out with a biography or a similar kind of resource.
I guess Doggett’s book will be kept out of sight along with Lennon’s diaries and Goldman’s original research material. And it seems like most of the Estate-dissenting books about Lennon that managed to actually get published are long out of print (e.g. the May Pang and Fred Seaman books).
On a related topic, has anybody here seen May Pang’s new documentary film about the Lost Weekend and, if so, is it any good?
@D.N Goldman’s research material is housed at Columbia University. I don’t know what sort of access restrictions they have, but I assume his papers are open to researchers who request it. I may be wrong. but I think Phillip Norman used the Goldman archive for his Lennon bio -after vocally lambasting Goldman’s research on television in the late 80s!
@D.N., Goldman’s research archives–along with the rest of his papers–are housed at his alma mater Columbia. Dullblogger Michael Bleicher has talked about going there and requesting some items from the Lennon portion. We should arrange a Dullblog field trip and show up en masse. 🙂
The kind of information control Yoko has engaged in is not possible over the long haul, IMHO. The very information (bisexuality, violence) that was so scandalous in 1987 when Goldman’s book came out is, today, a fairly accepted part of John’s persona and story. I think we’ll see a similar move towards accepting the Dakota Years as a time of deterioration for him, and perhaps even see some doubts about the official story of his murder.
I would love to see that doc! I’ll look for it!
Mr. Albert Goldman’s research material is publicly available, has been so for decades now. https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_6910494 I have seen it had it in my hands… and so have others who wrote reliable books from that material.
Thank you for the link Rob. I wonder what nuggets, if any, researchers will find when his journals are opened in 2025.
The diaries seem to present a quandry: guarding them so litigiously suggests they must be damaging or genuinely inflammatory. Seaman claimed he was beaten up and had his life threatened by hired goons in the 80s; and he’s been way up on Yoko’s enemies list ever since. (Rosen, who also got to see the diaries, has fared better: after he handed over the diaries and manuscripts facsimiles he and Fred copied, he was put on Yoko’s payroll. So I wouldn’t trust much of what he says.) Geoffrey Giuliano claimed Harry Nilsson showed him the diaries. How or in what context? The diaries were obviously still at the Dakota when Lennon died, so John didn’t give them to Nilsson. Did Harry go to lunch at the Dakota in 1985 and stow away with the books down his pants? Or did Yoko say ‘Oh hi, Harry, here are some secret diaries you might like’? Did Yoko and Harry have much/any communication after Lennon’s death? Later on, Yoko’s chauffeur apparently made off with the diaries -and between the interim of recovery is seemingly when Doggett got a look. The odd thing about all this is that for something the Estate is so desperate to protect from prying eyes, for a span of decades they seem to have been easily accessible for the servants to steal -even after the initial drama with Seaman and Rosen. In the 40 something years since Lennon’s death, has Yoko or anybody in her employ not considered safeguarding them in a vault? Or, if protecting the content is such a prerogative to Yoko, and she has no plans to ever make the diaries public, why not have them destroyed? I mean, it would be a terrible thing for everyone else, but from Yoko’s point of view, it would solve the problem. As for how other authors have got away with paraphrasing the diaries, it might be that they actually haven’t. Consider, Rosen wrote ‘Nowhere Man’ two decades after he’d looked at the diaries while copying them hastily. By then he had to have been relying on vague impressions at best. Giuliano actually having seen the diaries, as I implied, is a dubious claim until or unless he ever comes out and explains it adequately. Ergo, the two authors who were “allowed” to publish books are both the most questionable and less reliable. That leaves Doggett and Seaman as the two people with a genuine claim to having properly read the diaries, and the two people whose voices have been genuinely quashed. Seaman never made any attempt to write a book about the diaries anyway, but he’s so persona non grata with Yoko (as Lennon’s P.A, he saw everything) that even dreaming about Lennon’s journals gets him into trouble. Maybe it’s simply that Doggett is a more respectable writer, but something, in terms of content, or even simply the authenticity of the content, had to distinguish ‘Prisoner of Love’ from, say, ‘Lennon in America’ and spell its demise. Considering how unflattering Giuliano’s book was, you have to wonder what the difference was. Let’s say for a second Giuliano actually saw the diaries, his book is accurate, and it was still allowed to be published. The thing that differentiates Doggett’s book may be the thing clearly indicated by the title: the whole premise that suggests something off about the Lennons’ marriage, or Lennon’s relationship to or with Ono. A most literal reading would plainly be ‘Prisoner of Yoko.’ Now something so Yoko-critical would definitely be something that Ono herself and the publishers of the forthcoming Sheff memoir would want to shut down. Lord knows, there’s been enough books (diaries or no diaries) in the last 30 years about Lennon being a dick. That boat has truly sailed. But Yoko’s buttressing of her own reputation in recent years is another thing altogether. In mainstream media at least, Yoko is now so far beyond criticism (from one extreme to the other in fifty years), that Doggett’s publisher may truly have feared the backlash if not the outright litigation they were contending with.
@Matt, I think this is all 100% right. Especially the last bit. It is likely incredibly injurious to Yoko’s reputation; as you say, we already know about John.
Because of the seeming inevitability of litigation, we shouldn’t assume that Jawbone–or Doggett–necessarily knew what they’d be getting into when they did the deal.
Someone who has the diaries during what you call “the interim of recovery,” contacts Doggett, because Doggett’s “You Never Give Me Your Money” has established him as the preeminent independent Beatle journalist. “I have the diaries; do you want to read them?”
Doggett: “If they’re real, yes.”
Doggett, having read the sample, determines that they are real and calls his agent, who calls Jawbone. They do a deal. It’s a medium-sized deal; not so big that it’s major news.
Doggett gets the full set of diaries and begins to read.
HOLY SHIT. Calls editor. “This is really really dark stuff.”
Jawbone–who has already done the deal–says, “OK, let’s make this half a memoir. It’s the diaries, but it’s also about you and your fandom. Let’s try to use that as cover.”
Doggett says, “OK.” He writes that book.
Then, Jawbone waits as long as possible before alerting the Estate. They announce the book; they prepare the book. This allows Jawbone to ascertain whether there’s even a market here.
There is, so they send the finished MS over to the Estate’s lawyers. Yoko’s old, and infirm, and maybe they’re all asleep.
They’re not. The Estate’s lawyers say, “This was prepared with stolen property, OUR property, and we will sue if it appears.”
Deal dead.
I’m very skeptical about Giuliano, too. To be fair, he claimed that the journals from Harry Nilsson were copies, but there’s just too much unexplained. Here are a few quotes from the introduction to his book:
I feel that he must have been a bit disappointed that Yoko didn’t put him on blast over his book. (Did she comment publicly?) However, he’s still, at the very least, hedging his bets by not quoting from the diaries. Probably a good legal choice! But not one that enhances his credibility. And the question of how he got hold of the diaries (if he even did) is not answered. Why did Harry Nilsson give them to Giuliano? How and why did Nilsson even have copies? Were these some of the copies that Seaman/Rosen made as part of Project Walrus, or is that whole thing unrelated? What years of the diaries did Giuliano read? Are they hand copies or photocopies? Does he still have the copies? etc etc.
I haven’t read the whole book, however I would be surprised if the main text provides more context. If anyone has read it, are there any clues? And how does he actually make use of the journal contents?
Giuliano makes a point to mention the relationships with Beatles relatives and friends that he’s developed over the years, and positions himself as the one man who will tell the truth: a guerrilla fighter for the True Story. In the way he writes, he seems to see himself as part of the story in a way that feels… unearned, from my view.
Given Nilsson’s very good relations with Yoko after John’s murder, I find it difficult to credit him as the source of anything controversial regarding John. And when I say “good relations,” the guy is all over the 1984 LP ‘Every Man Has a Woman” the all-star tribute to Yoko on her 50th. Are we to believe that Harry was handing over stolen diaries–something Yoko took Fred Seaman to court over–while working on such projects?
I mean, it’s possible, but seems unlikely. I’d be more likely to believe that Harry slept with Yoko–not to start a rumor. 🙂
How Harry Nilsson fits into the Dakota years is a very interesting question — I was under the impression that after the Lost Weekend, Lennon and Nilsson didn’t socialise anymore, what with Yoko freezing out John’s buddies and hangers-on. I don’t think Nilsson comes up at all in Seaman and Rosen’s books, and I can’t remember much about John and Harry hanging out post-1975 from Alyn Shipton’s 2013 biography on Nilsson. But as you say, Harry and Yoko seemed to remain on good terms, at least they did after John’s death — Yoko was one of the interviewees in the 2006 “Who is Harry Nilsson?” documentary film and was generally complimentary about Harry. Given that Nilsson’s star had receded post-1980 and Harry was dutifully supporting gun-legislation causes and not rocking the boat of the Estate or impugning the myth of John, it’s not hard to assume Yoko deemed Harry as no threat. Which, of course, makes it unlikely Harry would have been funnelling copies of John’s diaries to anyone.
What you say here is true, but Harry was doing much more than simply supporting gun control, as this post lays out. So he and Yoko really had common cause in precisely the period Giuliano mentions; and as I said, Harry was deeply involved in the 50th birthday present John had planned for Yoko, an LP of covers of her songs. So it seems to me very unlikely that a man doing these things would do anything to imperil his relationship with the famously touchy widow of his dear departed friend.
Maybe he did. But that would be at odds with what we know.
@Michael – She bailed him out when his dealers came after him for his drug debts; gave him a large sum of money, presumably on the condition that he’d play nice thereafter (she probably sent the dealers). I think it was mentioned in the Shipton biography, or maybe Nilsson himself admitted it in an interview, but I remember reading that.
Oh now this is interesting, @Elizabeth. Because someone underneath the catspaw like that would be conflicted in just that way. “On the surface I am going to revere you, but underneath, I am going to mess with you.”
@Kristina – From what I understand, Giuliano got copies of the diaries from Seaman. He said he got them from Nilsson because Nilsson was dead and no one could prove he didn’t.
@Elizabeth, that would make a lot more sense that him getting them from Harry. Where did you hear that? or is that what you’ve surmised yourself?
@Michael Gerber, did you read Robert Rosen’s take on the matter? https://www.robertrosennyc.com/blog/posts/38566
I know, it’s Robert Rosen… but his opinion largely tracks with yours, that the Lennon estate leaned on Jawbone Press to squash the book. We have to speculate because no one is talking (and you’re right, I’m sure Doggett can’t and won’t speak on the matter publicly), but I think we can virtually consider this fact – why else would the book have been cancelled so late in the game?
Interestingly enough, it looks like a Dakota-era memoir by J&Y’s gardener was acquired, and then offloaded, by Jawbone a few years back. https://www.villagevoice.com/2021/12/07/mike-tree-in-john-lennons-nutopia/
Of course, Doggett is a very highly-respected Beatles author – a book by him carries a lot of weight, and if it confirms some of the more negative depictions of John’s later years, that would be likely to make headlines. The other Dakota-era publications are long out of print, and are, rightly or wrongly, pretty easily dismissable by the Estate as disgruntled former employees trying to make a buck. And then there’s Fred’s lawsuit, Fred & Robert’s journal theft saga, and the inherent WTFness of John Green telling stories about Egyptian mummies and witch ceremonies in South America. (Those stories do seem to be corroborated! But there’s no getting around the fact that they sound completely nuts).
(By the way, I read John Green’s book recently – would Dullblog be interested in a guest post reviewing it?)
Getting back to Doggett, I too wonder if the manuscript will leak at some point, or maybe even a physical copy? It was cancelled so close to publication that it surely when to print… maybe any copies got pulped. What I’ve seen indicates that no review copies were sent out/received.
I feel for Doggett. Imagine all that work, down the drain. I hope the Lennon estate cut him a nice cheque, honestly.
PS — Ooops, I left out Goldman in my run-down above. But the problems with that book are well-documented…
@Kristina,
Sure I would be interested in a review of John Green’s book. Read it myself about 14 years ago, found it interesting and credible. Once you accept as fact that J&Y did and believed all sorts of weird things (which were not so weird or crazy within the universe of celebrities–read about Peter Sellers, for example–or the world of the aging counterculture), then what is true and what is false has to be recalibrated. If people said Henry Kissinger was hanging out at The Magickal Childe in 1977, I’d be skeptical. But John and Yoko? That’s very on brand.
Is it crazy for ME, in 2022, to set up a GoFundMe to buy an Egyptian mummy for its mystical power, or because I think it was my form in an earlier life? Yes. Is it crazy for a person worth $150 million in 1977 who’s into all sort of occult stuff and has had a really strange, dramatic life to spend literally a day’s worth of interest on a mummy? Not really. Given what we know about them, we should expect such behavior. Really rich people surrounded by sycophants who spend all their time holed up in several rooms of a mansion doing drugs, get up to weird stuff. Our resistance to the stranger accounts of the Dakota Years stems from our wishing–longing, really–that John and Yoko were okay. That wealth and fame hadn’t totally distorted them. Because we, as fans, know on some level that we are the source of all that money and fame. They have given us a lot; we wish for them to be well. That’s why the “househusband” PR campaign worked so well in 1980. But whatever was going on in the Dakota from 1975-80, it was definitely mediated by fame, wealth, power, occult paperbacks, strange medical and mystical beliefs, and drug use.
If Doggett’s agent is smart, they would’ve put something into the contract that gave Doggett some kind of parachute in case the Estate changed its mind. But Doggett may not have had that kind of negotiating power; certainly he would’ve had to indemnify Jawbone against any legal action–that’s boilerplate in a book contract; to get Jawbone to waive it would’ve been quite a feat. The relative power of the parties would all have to do with the P&L’s they used to offer Doggett the deal (“P&Ls” being sales figures of similar books, which publishing houses use to determine the scale of potential sales for a book. The obvious ones here would be Doggett’s own book, Rosen’s book, and perhaps Goldman, though that’s hella old). My top-of-head wild guess would be $200,000 for a worldwide deal at a big publisher; but since Jawbone’s an independent, let’s say $125,000. That sounds like a lot, but it’s not. First, subtract 15% for the agent; then that $106,250 would be divided into three and given upon signing of the deal, acceptance of the manuscript, and then publication. Now if Jawbone were smart, approval of the manuscript would include something where the Estate would agree not to sue. In this world–which is a complete fantasy, please keep this in mind–Doggett might have been given the full 2nd piece as a gesture of goodwill. So he made $70,833 for however long it took him to write the book, which is not nothing, but still it must all be somewhat dispiriting. The preceding is only meant as an example of the kind of dickering that goes on in the book biz. (Jawbone might’ve done the deal hoping that once the book was published, it could resell US rights and get its entire advance back, making the UK and territories it still owned pure profit. That’s how I would’ve done it.)
As to whether the manuscript exists: it’s certainly in PDF form, and once you have that, it’s impossible to stop if enough people want it. I lost at least 100,000 sales from PDF piracy back in 2003.
Cool, if and when I write something down about Dakota Days, I’ll hit you up! I agree, it was a lot more credible than I’d assumed it would be going in. J&Y were each the type of person to have intense and unconventional beliefs, and, as you say, the money to indulge in these kind of flights of fancy…
Yeah. Not the kind of living situation that promotes balance and good health – and we know that J&Y weren’t down-to-earth types. At the same time, with the 1980 PR campaign, I can easily believe that part of that was about them wanting to believe all that “happy househusband” interview fluff.
What surprises me is that Jawbone* titled the book Prisoner of Love – surely that’s exactly the kind of title that would get the Lennon Estate to start sharpening their knives, regardless of the book’s actual contents? Why not go with something still suggestive, but more neutral? e.g. This bird has flown: inside the Dakota with John Lennon; Nothing is real: inside the Dakota with John Lennon, etc etc.
(* correct me if I’m wrong, but I assume that it was the publisher’s title rather than Doggett’s).
Thanks for all of your insight into the contractual and financial side of things. I’m not too surprised by those numbers, given that this is an independent book on a niche aspect of a famous subject. If Robert Rosen’s “catch and kill” theory is correct, then maybe Doggett got some Lennon hush money too. I kind of hope so because researching and writing a book like this has got to be a lengthy process.
I don’t encourage piracy, but I certainly do hope the book comes to light at some point. I was really looking forward to reading Doggett’s take on things, and see what he made of Goldman’s interview material. It’s a morbid thought, but maybe after Yoko passes on, publication will be possible.
@Kristina, as I say I’m guessing at all the contractual stuff, but for a time there I was reading (and shadow-negotiating, through my agent) about 25 US and foreign book contracts per year. So I have some idea of how things might have gone. Maybe it’s all changed now, but in case not I thought it was worth sharing.
I do agree that the title was provocative, which makes me think that perhaps there was an initial go-ahead (maybe when Yoko was ill a while back?), and then when she recovered, the project was reassessed? I am sure there are layers and teams at this point.
It is morbid, but I agree that things may loosen in this regard after Yoko passes on. The question then will be, how much was edited out? Every year you recede from the creation of an historical item, the more possibility it has been altered/tampered with.
“Our resistance to the stranger accounts of the Dakota Years stems from our wishing–longing, really–that John and Yoko were okay. That wealth and fame hadn’t totally distorted them. Because we, as fans, know on some level that we are the source of all that money and fame. They have given us a lot; we wish for them to be well.”
YES. I think this is an important and often overlooked factor, Michael. I also wonder if elements of this reality affected the Doggett book deal, because how many people want to read something so dark about Lennon and Ono?
Just wanted to say, I’m one of the people who don’t really want to read about the dark things John and Yoko did. It’s just too depressing to think about John being so lost. It’s heartbreaking really.
I ACCEPT that John and Yoko did get into some strange and unhealthy things, but I don’t need to know the details. That’s just me.
I think most Lennon fans agree with you, @Tasmin. That’s why Goldman’s book didn’t sell.
@Nancy, I think this impacts every bit of Beatle dirty laundry — if Doggett’s publisher was convinced it would sell like Harry Potter, and they’d macerated the manuscript the way any reasonable book publisher does, they might well have rolled the dice. After all, I don’t think the Estate REALLY wants a lawsuit.
But I think the P&L’s they pulled for the book showed it to have solid midlist potential, and a worldwide market. A good bet, if the advance was sensible, and Doggett’s such a good writer, you never know it might break out. But then once they factored in the costs of a defense, and the PR battle, it just didn’t make sense financially.
@Kristina – I read it somewhere quite recently; I think it was an old comment on that Usenet group, but I can’t say for sure. I do remember that the person who allegedly gave the copies to Giuliano (having got them from Seaman) was named.
It makes sense. I doubt whether Giuliano was even being serious when he said he got the diaries from Nilsson – he was just throwing out a name that he knew no one could argue with.
This is all very interesting. I have never read Doggetts book, but I’m familiar with it.
My question to you Michael is, do you think that at this point in time, it’s not just “The Estate” that wants to protect Johns image, but also Apple? Meaning Paul, Ringo, and Olivia Harrison?
They have all made peace now (including Yoko), so perhaps it’s in the interest of all Beatle business to keep any weird occult, and other strange things John and Yoko may have indulged in, under wraps.
In the discussion here about Mark Lewisohn, someone pointed out that they had read Lewisohn had complained that no one from the Beatle camp would talk to him any longer. Perhaps it’s been decided that information should come from Apple, and that’s it.
@Tasmin, I think there’s probably some truth in what you say. And also I’ve noticed that as a certain type of person gets older, they tend to not want to dwell on anything controversial. Many is the Baby Boomer I’ve met who refuses to talk about their youthful adventures. I sometimes suspect that’s what’s behind the rightward turn of the Boomer demo.
Don’t be fooled: the Boomers got up to some SHIT, let me tell you. But now? “Oh, I don’t want to talk about THAT.” 🙂
@Michael,
“Many is the Baby Boomer I’ve met who refuses to talk about their youthful adventures. I sometimes suspect that’s what’s behind the rightward turn of the Boomer demo.”
I’ve often wondered what happened to the Boomers. How could people who protested the Vietnam War and touted peace and love, turn right wing??
I’m a Boomer, but at the very end (1964).
“And also I’ve noticed that as a certain type of person gets older, they tend to not want to dwell on anything controversial.”
I think you are right; Paul, Ringo, and Co., want to remember the good times, not the bad.
And who can blame them, really?
I don’t even think it’s certain generations or types of people, really – just human nature. Haven’t we all had bad breakups or fallouts with friends, situations were seemed all-important at the time? And then time passes and you move on, you let things go and the idea of relitigating anything seems like a waste of time. I’d argue that that’s a healthy way to be.
Add to that the burdens of fame… by now, Paul and Ringo and co probably just don’t really care about a bunch of the stuff that fans obsess over, much less want to draw back the curtain on the details of those situations.
@Kristina, great points and I agree.
I’m coming to this thread about a day late, but I could swear that I read an interview with Lewisohn who said that Paul has answered some questions/provided stuff to him. I don’t think Paul has agreed to any formal interviews, but ‘answered questions’ might mean that if Lewisohn asked him to confirm an event, or maybe asked him about something music-related, Paul has answered. I can’t find the interview, so don’t take this as gospel, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s true, since Paul seems to have a good relationship with Lewisohn.
@Tasmin. I’ve often wondered what happened to the Boomers. How could people who protested the Vietnam War and touted peace and love, turn right wing?? But most young people of that age didn’t go on protest marches in the first place, and those that did tended to be closer to John’s age than my age who were born in the1950s. In truth, most generational trends are embraced by minorities, whether they be hippies, punks, metal heads, whatever. Newsworthy, headline-hitting minorities, who control the cultural mileau of the time. Others may display the outer characteristics, for sure, but much of that is to do with fashion and acceptance rather than any deeply held set of beliefs. That’s what kids do. We get the phenomenonal events of course – the Beatles themselves, when, for a brief time during peak Beatlemania, nearly EVERY kid followed them. But that’s very rare. I never became a peace and love hippie, neither did my siblings or most of my class mates. While some people certainly do swing from left to right as they get older, I think most people with age and life experiences tend to fall somewhere in the middle. That applies to all generations as witnessed in my own parents. Anyone who still thinks and behaves the same way they did at 20 would indicate a person seriously lacking in growth and self-development in my opinion. I don’t think either Paul or Ringo have fundamentally changed, not internally at least. Age has given them perspective, the ability to move on. But even that can change right until the very end.
@Lara, thanks for your perspective as someone who was there.
I agree with this, “While some people certainly do swing from left to right as they get older, I think most people with age and life experiences tend to fall somewhere in the middle.” That is certainly my experience, and what I’ve noticed in my friends and family.
First I will say that I try to understand Sean and Yoko’s feelings. We have a lot of murders in the United States and having your husband gunned down while at your side has to be a nightmare of the first rank.
However…I find Yoko’s public facing side pitiful. While I cannot imagine witnessing the murder of your spouse, nor can I imagine spending forty years deploying lawyers and enforcers, as if this were a regimental field exercise, to pursue any and all who deign to traduce (earned or not) the high holy name and image of John PBUH. It has the whiff of the Streisand effect raised to exponential and stratospheric levels.
Instead of the constant defensive crouch why not do something seriously useful like bringing in experts to inventory, edit, and prepare for a university’s archive whatever extant material there might be?
I know…I know. I answer the question in the asking for what Yoko does an what the interested, and serious, public wishes are at great variance. What a complete, and unfortunate, hall of mirrors this all is.
Perhaps when Yoko passes Doggett gets another bite at the apple (no pun intended) or else he sets up a dead man’s switch of sorts in which the manuscript is released after his death. He is not at all old, but he must have put a lot of work into it so it would be a shame that someone could one day use the material as a source.
This whole thing is like sending out the legal intimidation muscle in 1974 to quash a book about the 1932 Lindbergh baby kidnapping. As I said, it’s pitiful isn’t it?
Indeed, @Neal. They could easily establish something like the Morgan Library, have scholars tromping in and out of it, do talks for the public…or if that was too much hassle, just donate the whole collection to Columbia or ilk. The Estate’s behavior isn’t merely custodial, its controlling–they want to spin public perception which, at this late date, seems rather sad. Whatever secrets are being kept, most of the people in the story are long dead, or soon will be.
On a related topic, I’ve just finished reading Fred Seaman’s book, a paperback copy of which I’ve had for a few years but had never read.
(In fact I forgot I had it. I was recently on the verge of shelling out sixty bucks for a copy on eBay, then I had the common sense to check my bookshelf and discover I already had the darn thing.)
I found it a depressing read, like Rosen’s book, but aside from Seaman’s self-serving post-1980 epilogue, I don’t find myself questioning much of the book’s content. John is portrayed sympathetically – he comes off as an OK guy, but aimless and dispirited, at least before the Bermuda trip. He’s not the breadbaking dutiful househusband of the Ballad, but he’s not the nasty, barely functioning wastrel of Goldman either (which makes Seaman’s fulsome praise of Goldman in the epilogue rather strange). It’s not an unconvincing portrait, a diminished but a familiar Lennon.
Really, the impression I got from Seaman is that in the late 1970s, John Lennon needed a friend. To me, the most heartbreaking moment of Seaman’s book is when John repudiates the notion of friendship with the words “I don’t have any friends. Friendship is a romantic illusion” and rubbishes the idea that he and Paul McCartney were ever friends, insisting that “friendship” is merely “a symbiotic exchange of services.” Did John really say this? Did he really believe it? Per Seaman at least John seems convinced of it, and certainly in the Dakota years John seemed to have broken off contact with his friends in lieu of Yoko-endorsed transactional relationships with paid lackeys and sycophants, aside from Peter Boyle and his wife.
(Seaman himself never seems to have the perspective to question why he, a paid servant, is hanging out with John and going on holidays with him — and even contributing to his cassette demos! — like they’re buddies.)
Which beings me to Yoko, whom Seaman inevitably paints in the most negative light possible. Although it’s quite possible Seaman exaggerated/embellished things, I honestly don’t find his portrayal of Yoko very hard to believe, tracking as it does with what we now know about the Dakota years and with Yoko’s professional widow/self-mythologing duplicity.
@D.N., I remember having similar reactions to Seaman’s book when I read it years ago–to the degree that whenever someone on this site slags Seaman, I find myself defending the guy. Not because his motives were simon-pure, but because 1) we can’t know whether John gave him the diaries or not, and we shouldn’t assume Fred’s lying just because he’s not famous; and 2) the portrait he paints of his old employer is, as you say here, sympathetic, familiar but diminished, and more sad than tabloid-y.
I don’t understand enough about the legal side of things to know if Doggett is allowed to answer questions about the book, or if there would be a true gag order to keep him quiet.
Could he speak freely if Mr. Gerber or Ms. Carr were to interview him? Could he reveal every last thing he covered in Prisoner of Love?
I mean, he still owns the rights to his work? Is the threat of a lawsuit stopping him from reading pages out loud in a podcast or some other media?
I know that Sean has taken over management of the estate and I’ve seen people conjecture that he’ll be more reasonable than his mom, but surely he’d hate this book and be just as interested in destroying it as Yoko was.
I suspect that even if Doggett is legally able to answer questions about the book (unclear, since we don’t know the agreements/threats in play), he won’t. Too much potential risk, too little payoff. If he did decide to take that risk, I think he’d wait for a big name interviewer and/or outlet. Just my suppositions. Michael Gerber probably has the best sense of the possibilities here, since he’s been involved in trade publication issues in a way that I haven’t.
I’m just guessing like all of us, @Nancy, but I can tell you that when St. Martin’s offered me the poison-pill deal on Downturn Abbey, part of it was that I couldn’t talk about it.
If Doggett’s book was scuttled over worries of legal action, I would be shocked if he could legally speak about it, and there’s probably some stipulation in there that if the manuscript ever gets out, he will be liable…unless it can be proved without any doubt that he wasn’t the source.
IT’S UP TO YOU, UNDERPAID ASSISTANT! LEAK IT LEAK IT LEAK IT 🙂
@Baboomska, we’d love to interview Peter on anything–You Never Give Me Your Money, Prisoner of Love, or anything else Beatles-related. I’ve actually got a very interesting interview lined up, if I can get off my duff and put together some questions. Doing lots of Bystander issues, but the smoke has to clear sometime…doesn’t it?
I think PD would be very, very constrained, if things got legal. I think the best we could hope for would be some kind of leak — and then perhaps he could confirm or deny the leak’s authenticity. And then perhaps, if the “cow were already out of the barn,” the book could be published properly.
It feels very absurd, yet very 2022, that we are having this kind of discussion over a long-dead rock star. I hope Sean is more permissive because, as I’ve said so many times before, the Estate’s tight control has only reduced John Lennon’s currency among people under 40. Versions of the man which show him in his wholeness are always fascinating; it’s only when he is reduced to “John Lennon, Peace Activist” that his personal flaws seem to swamp him in hypocrisy. If young people are allowed to know John Lennon fully, John Lennon will charm them…just as he has people since 1962. Like Muhammad Ali, he was a unique and valuable man who, while a creature of his time, still has something valuable to say to young people today.
One book about the Dakota Years that I have enjoyed and used is John Robertson’s The Art and Music of John Lennon, which is mostly a chronological description of John’s demos from 1976-80, with some discussion of Lennon’s art projects. It has some thoughtful commentary on John’s life during those years as well.
I don’t know anything about the author (he may have used a pen name) or how he was able to sort the many bootleg recordings and “Lost Lennon Tapes” broadcasts into their original order, or how reliable they are. They make sense to me, but I have no way of knowing whether he’s correct.
An estate approved book with pictures of the cassettes and a description of their contents would be great, but given their reluctance to share information about this era, it’s probably not coming out any time soon. Does anyone know who Robertson is, or how he was able to chronicle Lennon’s home recordings?
I don’t know of Robertson or his book, @Peter, but I have always loved the Dakota demos. Much more, in fact, than Double Fantasy.
I’ve never been able to enjoy Double Fantasy or Milk and Honey because the whole thing gives me the creeps *and* the production is so sterile. But on the demos, I hear someone who’s actually enjoying making music.
YES! This is exactly how I feel. Both LPs feel positively funereal to me (for obvious reasons, and also for the production).
It’s nice to remember what Double Fantasy sounded like before John was shot. It was a bit slight, but pleasant. Seemed like both a warm-up for much bigger things ahead, and a continuation of the John and Yoko story which, if you didn’t look too closely, was happy enough. “60’s radicals grow up, have a kid” is a nice story, and everyone was enjoying that. There was definite foreboding about Reagan and Thatcher, but John’s reappearance seemed to suggest that other forces were just as vital in our society.
Okay, so fun fact, Mac and Michael: John Robertson was a pseudonym for — no shit — Peter Doggett. Later republished under his name, to boot.
Thank you! How did he determine when the recordings were made? I have most of them on LPs, tapes, & CDs, but they are all chopped up and out of sequence.
Well now I REALLY wanna read “Prisoner of Love.”
The Dakota Years do need a go-to source, and I can think of no one better to do that than Peter Doggett. What I liked about “You Never Give Me Your Money” was its balance. The Dakota Years would test anyone’s balance.
Woah, my jaw just dropped! That’s super interesting. The main question for me here — and maybe it has a simple answer — is why would he publish under a pseudonym in the first place? What could possibly be the benefit to that unless he was trying to hide in some way? If we’re to believe that Doggett got to view the diaries after they were stolen in 2006, then this book, published in 2005, could not have contained information from them.
[…] excited to see that he was publishing a book about John’s Dakota years; only to be dismayed by its cancellation for undisclosed reasons. Here’s hoping that Doggett’s manuscript eventually sees […]
[…] You Never Give Me Your Money author Peter Doggett wrote Prisoner of Love, a book about John’s Dakota years which used the Lennon diaries as a source, although the publisher’s blurb was vague about how Doggett gained access to them. The book was due to be published in April 2021, but was cancelled at the eleventh hour. […]