The Final Time John Lennon Saw The Rest Of The Beatles
The late John Lennon was in speaking terms and even friendly with his ex-Beatles bandmates by the time of his death on December 8, 1980. They would even get together whenever they passed through his New York hometown.
Paul McCartney – 1976
The Beatles were offered by Lorne Michaels $ 3,000 on the April 24, 1976 episode of SNL, where Lennon and McCartney were hanging out in the Dakota, which was a mile and a half run to 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The two even considered making the trip.
McCartney showed up at Lennon’s place the following day but Lennon wasn’t available to take guests. “I said to him, ‘Please call before you come over. It’s not 1956, and turning up at the door isn’t the same anymore. You know, just give me a ring’. He was upset by that, but I didn’t mean it badly. I just meant that I was taking care of a baby all day, and some guy turns up at the door,” Lennon said in a 1980 Playboy interview.
That was the last time they ever saw each other in person, but they would often call each other. McCartney told Playboy in 1984: “The last phone conversation I ever had with him was really great. and we didn’t have any kind of blowup. It could have easily been one of the other phone calls when we blew up at each other and slammed the phone down.”
George Harrison – 1978
Harrison met Lennon for the last time two years before he was murdered. “I was in New York at his house at the Dakota. He was nice. He was just sort of running around the house making dinner,” Harrison said.
Harrison admits that Lennon’s death didn’t really change his life too much, seeing that they would meet again in the next life. “I hadn’t seen him for so long. I didn’t see him for two years anyway, occasionally [I’d] maybe send a postcard, and it’s knowing that he’s on the other end of the telephone if you do want to call. That’s the difference. Now you need the big cosmic telephone to speak to him. But I believe that life goes on, and so to me, I can’t get sad. I’m sad that I can’t go play guitars with John but then I did that, anyway. I did that for a long time. So, we’ll meet again somewhere down the line.”
Ringo Starr – 1980
Starr was the last and latest Beatle to see his bandmate alive when he and wife Barbara Bach visited New York a few weeks before he was killed.
In a conversation with Barbara Walters, he said: “I was staying at the Plaza; we went over to New York for a while. And I hadn’t seen him for a while because, you know, we see each other wherever we are. And he came over with Yoko for an hour. And we had such a great time, cause they stayed five hours. And it didn’t matter that it was a year between we didn’t see each other, it was always fine when we did – but it was a particularly great time that we, that I had, anyway.”
Lennon was in a happy disposition due to the recent release of Double Fantasy, as well as giving Starr some tapes and discussing going into the studio by January.
“And then the asshole appeared. There’s no understanding it. You think about it, but I’m telling you, you never understand it. The world has lost a wonderful man,” he said in a Rolling Stone interview.
