Genius Is Pain: John Lennon Interview, National Lampoon MP3

On Saturday at 2pm New York time, BBC4 will broadcast the unreleased audio of Jann Wenner's 1970 interview with John Lennon. You can hear the interview in realaudio from this page when it airs, or if you can't wait, you can just download this MP3 of the National Lampoon's parody based on the interview, in which Lennon bitched about Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and declared that "Genius Is Pain." Several times, in several different ways. BBC article. Thanks Fabio and Douglas!

Comments

[protogenes]

ah, they used to play that little gem on CHOM FM in Montreal in 1974.

[L'Angelo Mysterioso]

This National Lampoon track is not a parody of a 1979 interview; it was made in the early 1970's as a parody of the song "God" off the Plastic Ono Band album (1970). That's where John declared "I don't believe in Beatles" and "The dream is over" (spoken by the faux-Yoko in the parody).

[Jim]

The song is funny enough, but what still makes me howl is the fact that most of the lyrics of the song were taken from the interview that John & Yoko did in ROLLING STONE when the eponoymous Plastic Ono Band was released

[raymond jones]

Attention all Beatle lovers and rock historians:

For an outrageous scandal check out
erichowellmusic.com - then click 'variety show-McCartney
Reveals...' and get ready for a bucket of ice water in the face. It's safe for the whole family, but...shocking.

This one's worth investigating (although you may
want to listen somewhere you feel comfortable crying
out loud).

Or, as McCartney himself said, "you only give me your
funny paper".

Peace & Loov.

Raymond Jones

[Matt Love]

The blogger got the date wrong. During the interviews Lennon did close to the end of his life, Lennon had mellowed considerably, and repudiated a lot of what he had said earlier as lies he told to be hurtful to people. But many of these lyrics were taken verbatim from an interview he did with Rolling Stone during his hurtful phase. The guy who did the recording (he played the manager in Spinal Tap) did a brilliant job - though he was fearful that the cult of Lennon, strong even in the early 70s - would have it in for him for doing such a brilliant job. It made it all the worse because it was all true. As with seditious libel, the fact it was true is no defense, in fact, it compounds the crime. And seditious libel was still a crime around the time of this recording, if I recall! Now they don't bother with legal technicalities, they just torture you. WWJLD (What would John Lennon Do?) if he were alive today?