"Rocks Off"

Oh yeah

I hear you talking when I'm on the street
Your mouth don't move but I can hear you speak

What's the matter with the boy?
He don't come around no more
Is he checking out for sure?
Is he gonna close the door on me?

And I'm always hearing voices on the street
I want to shout, but I can hardly speak

I was making love last night
To a dancer friend of mine
I can't seem to stay in step
'Cause she come ev'ry time that she pirouettes over me

And I only get my rocks off while I'm dreaming
(Only get them off, only get them off, only get them off)
I only get my rocks off while I'm sleeping
(Only get them off, only get them off, only get them off)

I'm zipping through the days at lightning speed
Plug in, flush out and fire the fuckin' feed

Heading for the overload
Splattered on the nasty road
Kick me like you've kicked before
I can't even feel the pain no more

And I only get my rocks off while I'm dreaming
(Only get them off, only get them off, only get them off)
I only get my rocks off while I'm sleeping
(Only get them off, only get them off, only get them off)

Feel so hypnotized, can't describe the scene
It's all mesmerized all that inside me

The sunshine bores the daylights out of me
Chasing shadows moonlight mystery

Heading for the overload
Splattered on the dirty road
Kick me like you've kicked before
I can't even feel the pain no more

And I only get my rocks off while I'm dreaming
(Only get them off, only get them off, only get them off)
I only get my rocks off while I'm sleeping
(Only get them off, only get them off, only get them off)

And I only get my rocks off while I'm dreaming
(Only get them off, only get them off, only get them off)
I only get my rocks off while I'm sleeping
(Only get them off, only get them off, only get them off)

And I only get my rocks off while I'm sleeping
(Only get them off, only get them off, only get them off)
(Only get them off, only get them off, only get them off)

Donald Trump Press Conference With SoftBank CEO 12/16/24
President-Elect Donald Trump holds a press briefing At Mar-A-Lago with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. Read the transcript here.
December 16, 2024

Donald Trump (00:00):

… with you. We'll discuss a couple of points. We'll take some questions later if you'd like. I'm sure you might have one or two. I'd be shocked if you didn't. I'd be very impressed. But I'm honored to welcome one of the most accomplished business leaders of our time, the founder and CEO of SoftBank. Everybody knows Masayoshi Son. Masa runs one of the largest companies in Japan, and among the most successful investment and technology companies anywhere in the world, one of the most successful investors in the world. And we've just concluded a very productive meeting. And today I am thrilled to announce that SoftBank will be investing $100 billion in America, creating 100,000 American jobs at a minimum. And he's doing this because he feels very optimistic about our country since the election. And many other people are also coming in with tremendous amounts of money. You probably noticed that a poll was just taken.

(01:04)
Business is… Literally in 39 years, there's been nothing like it. It's been the biggest increase. Small business owners gave it a 41% jump. It's the biggest jump that we've had in 39 years and nobody's ever seen anything like it. And it's just… They're very optimistic. This historic investment is a monumental demonstration of confidence in America's future. And it will help ensure that artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, and other industries of tomorrow are built, created, and grown right here in the USA. One of the beautiful things about Masa is he's very much involved with emerging technology, probably knows it maybe better than almost anybody. So it's a great honor. And some of you remember after the 2016 election also SoftBank committed to invest $50 billion in our country. And they did.

(01:59)
And I'm very pleased to say that they kept that promise in every way, shape, and form. And now they're looking to do a hundred. And I've looked at their books. They do have the possibility of doing more. I'm going to ask him to do a little bit more, but first I'm going to ask him to speak and just say a few words. Masa, please. Thank you.

Masayoshi Son (02:18):

Thank you.

Donald Trump (02:18):

Please. Thank you.

Masayoshi Son (02:22):

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Donald Trump (02:22):

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Masayoshi Son (02:26):

Thank you so much. I'm very, very excited. I would really like to celebrate the great victory of President Trump. And my confidence level to the economy of United States has tremendously increased with his victory. So because of that, I'm now excited to commit this a hundred billion dollars and a hundred thousand jobs into the United States. This is double of last time, as President Trump said, because I say, "Oh, president Trump is a double down president. I'm going to have to double down." A hundred billion dollars and a hundred thousand jobs, this is my confidence level because that has doubled down.

(03:22)
So I am truly excited to make this happen. And of course, business is important, technology is important but one more thing I'm really hoping is that President Trump would bring the world into peace again. That's my additional hope and I think he will actually make it happen. So anyway, I'm excited to go and we were discussing and President Trump said, "Masa, double down is not enough. Maybe go for more." Right?

Donald Trump (04:11):

That's right. I'm going to ask him right now, "Would you make it $200 million?" Believe it or not, he can actually afford to do that. Would you do that?

Masayoshi Son (04:24):

Well, my promise is hundred, but he is now asking to do more. I think your leadership, my partnership with you, with your support, I will try to make it happen.

Donald Trump (04:41):

That's good.

Masayoshi Son (04:41):

All right.

Donald Trump (04:42):

200, he'll make it happen. $200 billion investment.

Masayoshi Son (04:47):

He is a great negotiator.

Donald Trump (04:52):

He is a brilliant guy and did an unbelievable job. And the people of Japan and all over the world are very proud of him. They have tremendous respect for him. So when he does what he just did… And I would be surprised if… What didn't go to… When you say you'll try, I know you'll do it.

Masayoshi Son (05:10):

I will really try. And I need your support though.

Donald Trump (05:14):

You'll have my support.

Masayoshi Son (05:15):

All right.

Donald Trump (05:15):

You have our country's support.

Masayoshi Son (05:17):

Oh, fantastic.

Donald Trump (05:18):

Thank you, Masa, very much.

Masayoshi Son (05:19):

Fantastic.

Donald Trump (05:19):

Appreciate it.

Masayoshi Son (05:20):

Thank you. Thank you.

Donald Trump (05:21):

You want to say a word to the people of Japan who are all watching?

Masayoshi Son (05:24):

Well, I'm sure our people in Japan are proud to make the partnership of US and Japan be stronger and I'm very excited to make this happen. Thank you very much.

Donald Trump (05:42):

Thank you, Masa.

Masayoshi Son (05:42):

Thank you. Thank you, thank you.

Donald Trump (05:49):

Great job. Thank you. It's amazing. He's a great gentleman, a great leader, and a great investor. So to have that offer made, and we have so many companies coming in now that will be announcing or that will announce themselves… We don't have to be with them to do it, but they'll be announcing. And as I said, small business optimism took a 41 point jump, 41 points, it went up 41 points. That's unheard of. And that's the biggest they think in recorded history, but they know at least a minimum of 39 years. So that's great. But on behalf of the American people, I want to thank Masa for his faith in what's happening with our country and what's happening with the world. There's a whole light over the entire world. Many people, some reporters in speaking of it, they said it actually is true. A couple of them are not necessarily friends of mine, but they said it is actually true that there's a light shining over the world.

(06:43)
We're trying to help very strongly in getting the hostages back, as you know, with Israel and the Middle East. We're working very much on that. We're trying to get the war stopped, that horrible war that's going on in Ukraine with Russia, Ukraine. We've got a little progress. It's a tough one. It's a nasty one. It's nasty. People are being killed at levels that nobody's ever seen. It's very level fields. And the only thing that stops a bullet is a body, a human body. And the number of soldiers that are being killed on both sides is astronomical. I've never seen anything like that. And rapidly. I get reports every week and it's not even… It's like just… They're going down. Nobody's seen anything like it. It's a very flat surface, a very flat land. That's why it's great farming land.

(07:37)
It's the breadbasket for the world actually. But it's very flat and there's nothing to stop a bullet but a body. There's no protection, no nothing. And what's happening there is far worse than people are reporting for both sides. So we're going to do our best, and we've been doing our best and we'll see what happens. Since the election, I've been working every day to put the world at ease a little bit, to get rid of the wars. We had no wars when I left office and now the whole world is blowing up. But there's great optimism and you saw that by SoftBank… Starting on day one, we'll implement a rapid series of bold reforms to restore our nation to full prosperity. We're going to go full prosperity and to build the greatest economy the world has ever seen, just as we had just a short time ago, and we had it in my term. We had the greatest economy that the world had seen. We were blowing away everybody. Our country was doubling up on China, doubling up on everybody, and everybody knows it. And then we had to slow it down with Covid unfortunately at the end. But even then I gave it back with a substantial increase of the stock market, bigger than it was pre-Covid. So it was pretty amazing. Already preparations are underway to slash massive numbers of job-killing regulations, eliminating 10 old regulations for every new one. You put a new regulation on, you have to get rid of 10 and we'll be able to do it. And that was about the percentage we had. We cut more regulations than any president has ever cut by far, actually by approximately five times. Some of those regulations unfortunately were put back on, but we'll catch up very quickly. We'll catch up with it.

(09:26)
One of the things I'd like to ask the Biden administration, as you probably heard, there are two events that took place. We're talking about a friendly takeover, a friendly transition as they like to say. This is a friendly transition and it is. But there are two events that took place that I think are very terrible. One is that if people don't come back to work, come back into the office, they're going to be dismissed. And somebody in the Biden administration gave a five-year waiver of that so that for five years people don't have to come back into the office. It involved 49,000 people. For five years, they don't have to go. They just signed this thing. It's ridiculous. So it was like a gift to a union and we're going to obviously be in court to stop it. The other thing is… Really terrible. We spent a tremendous amount of money on building the wall.

(10:18)
The wall was designed specifically by the border patrol because it's very hard to climb. They need to have it see-through. They needed it to be steel because you can't cut… It's very powerful steel. It's very hard steel. It's a special type of steel, but very, very hard to cut. Inside the steel, as you know, we pour concrete, and that's a grade-ten concrete, which is a very strong concrete… As though you were building about a sixty-story building. It's very powerful concrete. They've made tremendous technology advances in the world of concrete. Who would think that? But I know that from the construction industry. Today, what you can do with concrete is incredible. So we have a very strong concrete and then we have a rebar. We put rebar inside the concrete and the rebar, likewise, is very hard to cut. So it's a very expensive process, very expensive wall.

(11:12)
And then we put a anti-climb plate on the top. You saw that. And I didn't like the look of it, but then when I watched… We had people testing… We had mountain climbers actually testing and they were not able to get over the anti-climb plate. So I said, "All right, I guess we're going to put it on." That plate on top, which I never loved the look of it, but it works so unbelievably well, you have to do it. We spent a lot of money on building it, and we have hundreds of miles that we put up. Lot of people don't realize, but we did 571 miles of wall. That's why we had such good records, in addition to the fact that Mexico helped us with their military. They kept people out and they were actually very good under the past leader.

(11:55)
But now we ordered an additional 200 miles of wall. It's very expensive. And now it's about double the price of what it would've been six years ago. And the administration is trying to sell it for 5 cents on the dollar, knowing that we're getting ready to put it up. And what they're doing is really an act… It's almost a criminal act. They know we're going to use it, and if we don't have it, we're going to have to rebuild it and it'll cost double what it cost years ago. And that's hundreds of millions of dollars because you're talking about a lot of wall. I built much more than I said I was going to build. But then after it was built, I said, "We can do some more because it's sort of like water, people flow through and that will pretty much really take care of it."

(12:47)
And what happened is they just… As you see, they're trying to sell it for 5 cents on the dollar. And that has nothing to do with a smooth transition, that has to do with people really trying to stop our nation. And all it means really is that we're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more… Not even talking about the time. Time would be pretty long, but we'll spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on building the same wall that we already have. And people have already come back to us that have deals at 5 cents and 4 cents and one guy at 3 cents on the dollar and they offered to sell it back to us at more money than it cost us to build substantially. Can you believe it? So they make a deal with the United States to buy it for pennies. And then they call us and they say, "Do you want to buy it back? We'll sell it back to you for hundreds of dollars a foot," hundreds of dollars, from pennies to hundreds of dollars a foot.

(13:53)
And we can't let this take place. Now we're going to go… I spoke with the Attorney General of Texas. I spoke to the Senators of Texas. I spoke to a lot of people and hopefully they'll be able to stop… We're going to be having a restraining order. But just think about how ridiculous it is. And this is just people that don't want this country to succeed. And this has nothing to do with Democrat or Republican. This has to do with common sense. We won on common sense, and this is maybe one of the most egregious examples I've seen. So the people that are buying it or trying to buy it, they are trying to make a deal with us to sell it back at hundreds of times more than we paid. And this is all because the Democrats. So I'm asking today Joe Biden to please stop selling the wall. We're going to use that to create a strong barrier. And it worked. That's why our numbers were so good. It really worked and it worked well and it's very expensive to do.

(14:55)
And I'm asking Joe Biden to stop his people from giving it away. It's something that people can't even believe is happening. So hopefully Joe will be able to stop it. We'll soon unleash American energy. And this will be done at levels not seen before, issuing quick approvals for pipelines, drilling, and other infrastructure. It'll be clean energy and we'll bring in the price of electricity and we're going to bring it down fast. We're also going to create clean coal. Clean coal is something that has really taken over. We have coal that will last for over a thousand years. We have so much coal and with a process, it becomes clean coal. It's very powerful energy, unlike wind. It's very, very powerful. And we're going to be doing a lot of clean coal for the people of West Virginia and others, Wyoming. So many states. We have great states and they'll be happy to hear it, but we're going to be very much into clean coal.

(15:57)
I don't ever use the word coal. I use the word clean coal, and I'll keep my promise to pass historic tax cuts for American families, workers, and businesses that create jobs in America. As you know, we're giving tax cuts if they do it here. We brought it down from 44%, 42%… In some cases it was 39. We brought it all the way down to 21% and now we're bringing it down to 15 but only if they make their product, their car, or whatever they're doing in the United States, in the US. And people are thrilled. I've had the smartest people on Wall Street call me. They said, "Where'd you get that idea?" And it doesn't seem that complicated. But it's like the paperclip. Nobody ever thought of it. One guy thought of it, everybody looked at it, they said, "Wow, that was a good idea. Why didn't I think of it?"

(16:48)
But we're bringing it down six more points, and that will put us really at the best level we've ever had for bringing in business. We've never been down to that level. We'll be among the lowest-taxed states, and a lot of businesses are going to come in. Between that and our taxing and tariff policies, we're going to have business nobody's ever seen in this country before. That's why we're having a 41-year record in optimism from small businesses and big businesses. And I'll keep my promise to pass historic tax cuts for families, workers, and businesses that create jobs in America. Any business that invests $1 billion or more in the United States will be eligible for fully expedited permits and approvals, including environmental approvals from the federal government.

(17:37)
So when companies come in, if they're going to invest a billion dollars or more… There'll be many of them and they'll go into Detroit and they'll go into a lot of places where we want them. You saw how well I did with the auto workers. We did unbelievably. You saw how well we did with the teamsters and also the non-union were record 98%, 97%. Nobody's ever gotten numbers

Donald Trump (18:00):

… like that because we're bringing business back and they're all coming back. We lost them over years of stupidity, I call it. I call it the years of stupidity. The decades of stupidity. Through the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk has been working very hard with various people, including Vivek, will going to eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars of wasted fraud, and I can only tell you, I'll give you a little early report. They're finding things that you wouldn't even believe. So we're looking to save maybe $2 trillion and it'll have no impact. Actually. It'll make life better, but it'll have no impact on people. We will never cut social security or things like that. It's just waste, fraud and abuse. And we'll immediately restore the sovereign borders of the United States and stop illegal immigration, which is costing us, I believe, trillions of dollars a year. I think it's a cost that nobody's ever seen anything like it.

(18:58)
I don't know. How can you be satisfied releasing prisoners into the United … Think of this, you're releasing prisoners from jails all over the world, not just in South America, from the Congo. I would talk about it all the time. They're a very big sender of people. But from all over the world, they're sending prisoners out of their jails. Some of their jails are empty and they will be empty soon if this ever continued. I spoke with the president of Mexico, and as you know, I spoke with Justin Trudeau of Canada and we told them it's not fair, not right. You can't let these people come into our country and they understand. They're very much on notice and they're going to have to stop this from happening. They're going to have to stop it.

(19:44)
We lose a lot of money to Mexico. We lose a lot of money to Canada. Tremendous amount. We're subsidizing Canada, we're subsidizing Mexico, and that can't go on. Then I get along with the people of Mexico and Canada very well, but we can't let that happen. Why are we supporting and giving other countries hundreds of billions of dollars? It's not fair. It's not right. And the people of Mexico and Canada fully understand that. We've talked about it before, but now we're doing something about it. We started and then we had to fix the COVID situation and that's what we did. But now we're doing it. We're doing it from the beginning.

(20:23)
Howard will be largely in charge. We'll be working on it together. Howard's terrific. He's done a fantastic job and he's really helped us a lot with transition. I think we have fantastic people coming in. So all of these policies will help us rapidly defeat inflation, create millions of new jobs, and put money in the pockets of the hardworking families of our country. Pay off debt. We're going to be paying off a tremendous amount of debt where $36 trillion want to be there. And we're going to be using a lot of the money that we make. We're going to be opening up, a lot of businesses are going to pouring in because of our tax policy. And we're going to use the money that we made to pay off debt and to reduce taxes.

(21:06)
We're going to further reduce taxes. If you remember when we reduced them last time, that brought a tremendous amount. We brought it down to 21% and that was the biggest tax cut in the history of our country. And nobody ever thought this would happen, but this is what's supposed to happen. We actually ended up taking in more revenue at 21% than we did at 40%, which was pretty amazing. But this will be the most exciting and successful period of reform and renewal in all of American history, maybe of global history. The golden age of America, I call it. It's begun. So it's the golden age of America and that's what it's going to be. And we hope we don't have any intervening problems because things happen. Like out of nowhere came the China virus. Out of nowhere came other things we don't want to have.

(21:56)
When I left, we had no wars, we had no problems. The Middle East was good. We did the Abraham Accords. We did things that nobody thought were even possible. But think of it, four years ago, we had no wars. You didn't have Russia going into Ukraine. They wouldn't have done it. They weren't even thinking about it. When they saw what happened in Afghanistan, I think that gave them an idea. But they wouldn't have done it. They would've never gone. President Putin would've never gone in. And now you look at all those people are dead. All those cities are destroyed. It's nice to say they want their land back, but the cities are largely destroyed. They've left Kiev because probably maybe they want to use it or occupy it, but they haven't done it. They've done a lot of damage, but relatively compared to the other cities, very little. But many of those cities are gone.

(22:49)
Those beautiful towers, those beautiful buildings that they had are now laying on their sides destroyed, totally destroyed. The turrets and all of the magnificent 1,000 year old, 2,000 year old structures that were very strong are blown to smithereens. You look at some of those cities and not one building standing. So when you say, take over the country, take over what? Take over what? That's a 100-year rebuild. Take 100 years to rebuild it and you can never have it the way it was. What a shame. It should have never happened. It would've never happened. If I were president, that war would've never happened. Nor would Israel have happened with the attack on Israel. So we're inheriting big challenges at home and all over the world. Again, we had no wars, we had no problems, we had no inflation. We had no inflation. We had at less than 1%. A perfect number. And then we had inflation, the likes of which I say I don't believe the country's ever seen inflation like that.

(23:55)
They say 38 years. I don't know. I think it's probably ever. But we're going to take care of all of it. We're going to get the prices down by energy. The energy is going to come in. We have more energy than anybody else. We're going to use it. We don't have to buy energy from Venezuela when we have 50 times more than they do. It's just insane what we're doing. So we will not rest until America is richer, safer, and stronger than it has ever been before. And we have a big head start. Last time we didn't and last time we didn't know the people. We didn't know a lot of things, but by the time we got it up and going, it was incredible. Again, we built the greatest economy in history for that period of time and we'll do it again.

(24:36)
I believe substantially more so, because we understand number one, the people of Washington. I know them. I didn't know any of them virtually. I relied on other people for recommendations. Some were very good recommendations. We had some great people. Bob Lighthizer I thought was great. We had a lot of great people. But we had some people that I wouldn't have used in retrospect, and now I know them better than anybody, better than they know themselves. Once again, I'd like to thank Massa for what he's done with that investment, which will end up being $200 billion I believe. But I just want to thank him. Just an outstanding man. When you have that kind of brainpower wanting to invest in this country. And that's money that he can't invest elsewhere, so that's a big investment, but makes me feel very good. Makes me feel that we're absolutely on the right track.

(25:28)
So thank you to Massa and we'll take a couple of questions.

Speaker 1 (25:31):

Mr. President.

Donald Trump (25:31):

Jeff?

Jeff (25:31):

Mr. President, you mentioned the wars. Can you tell us what you said to Prime Minister Netanyahu in your call on Saturday and have you spoke President Putin since your election?

Donald Trump (25:41):

Well, I'm not going to comment on the Putin question, but I will comment on Bibi. We had a very good talk. We discussed what is going to happen and I'll be very available on January 20th and we'll see. As you know, I gave warning that if these hostages aren't back home by that date, all hell's going to break out and very strong. But we generally just discussed, I asked him where are things. Mike Waltz is there doing a great job, by the way. Everybody is very happy. I think he's doing a fantastic job. But he was very much involved in the call, but it was a recap call more than anything else.

Speaker 1 (26:28):

[inaudible 00:26:28] stop the ban on TikTok next month?

Donald Trump (26:30):

Who?

Speaker 1 (26:30):

How do you plan to stop the ban on TikTok next month?

Donald Trump (26:33):

We'll take a look at TikTok. I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points. And there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that. Now, Joe Rogan did and some of the other people that were recommended by my son Barron. He knew names. I said, "Who is that? Tell me, who's that?" "Dad. You got to be kidding. I can't believe you don't know." And I did those interviews and it was actually sort of cute if you want to know the truth. But we did them and that had an impact. But TikTok had an impact. And so we're taking a look at it. But we won youth. Republicans are always 30 points down in youth. I don't know why. But we ended up finishing. There was one poll that showed us down about 30. We were 35 or 36 points up with young people. So I have a little bit of a warm spot in my heart, I'll be honest. Yes-

Crowd (27:27):

[inaudible 00:27:28] President Trump. President.

Speaker 2 (27:29):

Are you entertaining the idea of preemptive strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities?

Donald Trump (27:33):

Against who?

Speaker 2 (27:34):

Against Iran's nuclear facilities?

Donald Trump (27:36):

Well, I can't tell you that. I mean, it's a wonderful question, but how can I … am I going to do preemptive strikes? Why would I say that? Can you imagine? If I said yes or no? You'd say that was strange that he answered that way. Am I going to do preemptive strikes on Iran? Is that a serious question? How could I answer a question like that?

Crowd (27:58):

[inaudible 00:27:58]

Donald Trump (27:58):

Say it.

Speaker 2 (27:58):

Would you be in support of Israeli strikes on Iran's [inaudible 00:28:06]

Donald Trump (28:05):

Could I tell you a thing like that now? You don't talk about that before something may or may not happen. I don't want to insult you. I just think it's just not something that I would ever answer having to do with there or any other place in the-

Crowd (28:21):

President Trump [inaudible 00:28:22]

Speaker 3 (28:21):

[inaudible 00:28:22] Time magazine interview. Can I ask just clearly, do you believe there's a connection between vaccines and autism? Do you believe there's a link?

Donald Trump (28:33):

Well, look, right now you have some very brilliant people looking at it. I had dinner the other night with the head of Pfizer, the head of Eli Lilly and RFK, as you know, and Oz and other people within the administration that are involved in the medical, and we're looking to find out. If you look at autism, so 30 years ago we had, I've heard numbers of one in 200,000, one in 100,000. And now I'm hearing numbers of one in 100. So something's wrong. There's something wrong. And we're going to find out about it.

Crowd (29:11):

[inaudible 00:29:16]

Speaker 3 (29:18):

Can I follow up on Robert Kennedy? He's on the hill. Today he's meeting with senators. What do he say to people who are worried that his views on vaccines will translate into policies that'll make their kids less safe?

Donald Trump (29:28):

No, I think he's going to be much less radical than you would think. I think he's got a very open mind or I wouldn't have put them there. He's going to be very much less radical. But there are problems. We don't do as well as a lot of other nations and those nations use nothing. And we're going to find out what those problems are. And another thing that came up, the dinner was fascinating. They had Bobby and I had, again, the head of Pfizer, you know who that is. He's a highly respected man who has run an incredible company, likewise with Lilly. The top two people. And we had the head of the industry also. So all companies were represented. And I said, let's have it out now a little bit. And what came out of that meeting is that we're paying far too much because we're paying much more than other countries. And we have laws that make it impossible to reduce, and we have a thing called the middleman.

(30:21)
You know the middleman, right? The horrible middleman that makes more money frankly than the drug companies, and they don't do anything except they're a middleman. We're going to knock out the middleman. I'm going to be very unpopular after that statement.

Crowd (30:32):

[inaudible 00:30:35]

Donald Trump (30:35):

I don't know who these middlemen are, but they are rich as hell. We are going to knock out the middleman. We're going to get drug costs down at levels that nobody has ever seen before. And that really, I tell you, we spent more time talking about that with Bobby and with the executives and Oz, all of them. We spent more time talking about that than anything else.

Speaker 1 (30:59):

Thanks President Trump. What about the polio vaccine?

Donald Trump (31:02):

Well, I'm a big believer in it and I think everything should be looked at, but I'm a big believer in the polio vaccine, the Salk vaccine.

Speaker 1 (31:10):

Do you think schools should mandate vaccines? Do you think schools should mandate vaccines?

Donald Trump (31:15):

I don't like mandates. I'm not a big mandate person, so I was against mandates. Mostly Democrat governors did the mandates and they did a very poor thing. In retrospect, they made a big mistake having to do with the education of children. They lost like a year or two years of their lives. The mandate was a bad thing. I was against the mandate.

Speaker 4 (31:35):

Mr. President?

Donald Trump (31:37):

Yes, please.

Speaker 4 (31:38):

Do you expect Ron Desantis to appoint Lara Trump to Senator Marco Rubio's seat?

Donald Trump (31:43):

No, I don't. I probably don't. But I don't know. Ron's doing a good job. That's his choice. Nothing to do with me. Lara is unbelievable. I mean, she was incredible. The job she did at the RNC as chairman, along with Michael Watley, the combination, but I could just speak for Lara, she's so highly respected by women. I mean even her workout routines are through the roof. She lifts 150 pounds. I don't know how the hell she does it. She's a bad example for men and women. I wouldn't be able to beat her, I don't believe. I'd try like hell. But no, she's an incredible woman.

(32:27)
And it's funny, people oftentimes talk about nepotism. I never had … when I put her there, people said, how did you get her to do it? She could have run for the Senate in North Carolina. Ted Budd would be the first to say, and he wouldn't have run. Nobody would've run. And she just said, "No, I want to really focus on my children." And my family. She has a great family. When the election started getting closer, I asked her would she go to Washington and work on as chairman of the committee along with Michael Watley, and they did such an unbelievable job, especially on cheating.

(33:10)
They stopped it. Or at least they stymied it. Too big to rig. And we won in a landslide. We won tremendously. She did an amazing job. Now, Ron is going to have to make … because Marco has been really a star already and we haven't started, but we see signs from some people or very early, we see signs of stardom and Marco has done incredibly. He's sort of born for it. It was such an easy decision. The Marco decision was such an easy … but he leaves a vacancy in Florida and Ron's going to have to make that decision and he'll make the right decision. I also know that Lara's got so many other things. She's got so many other things. People want her to be on television. They want to give her contracts. Her predominant thought is our country and her family. Those are her thoughts, but she's got so many other things that she's talking about. He'll make the right decision.

Speaker 5 (34:12):

Should Senators who oppose your nominees or cabinet nominees, should they be primaried?

Donald Trump (34:18):

If they are unreasonable … I'll give you a different answer. An answer you'll be shocked to hear. If they're unreasonable, if they're opposing somebody for political reasons or stupid reasons, I would say it has nothing to do with me. I would say they probably would be primaried. But if they're reasonable, fair and really disagree with something or somebody, I could see that happening. But I do believe that if they're … I think we have great people. I think we have a great group of people.

(34:50)
Pam has been unbelievably received. You take a look. Pam Bondi. So many have been just unbelievably received. I think Pete Hegseth is making tremendous strides over the last week. He's going to be great. Look, he went to Princeton. He went to Harvard. He was a great student there. But he really was, from the first day I met him, all he wanted to talk about was military. He's just a military guy. I think it's a natural. This was my idea. And Pete Hegseth gave up a lot because he was going big places in Fox. Big, big places. A lot of money. And he didn't even hesitate when I said, "Do you want to do this?" He said, "Absolutely." I said, "If it doesn't work out, you'll never have the opportunity that you have right now in terms of the world of entertainment or business, whatever you want to call it. You'll never have that opportunity again." In fact, it could be just the opposite because it's nasty out there. He said, "I don't care. I have to do it for my country." He gave up a tremendous amount. If this didn't work, it would be a tragedy, but that's what he loves. He loves the military. I never talked to him about anything else. He'd talk about the military.

Donald Trump (36:00):

… military. He'd come to see me about a soldier that was unfairly treated, and could I help? That's the only thing I virtually ever talked to him about and I always remembered it. I've seen him many times and I don't think I've ever had a subject on anything other than military with him. That's where his love is.

(36:18)
And he didn't say, "Well, I'd like to think about it. I'd like to talk to my family." He said, "Not even a contest." And you know he was going through the roof over there. He was doing great. They have the number one show, that Saturday and Sunday with Will and Rachel. That was great chemistry and this didn't work out for him. It would be actually sort of tragic. Yeah.

Journalist (36:42):

Would you consider pardoning Eric Adams?

Donald Trump (36:46):

Yeah, I would. I think that he was treated pretty unfairly. Now, I haven't seen the gravity of it all, but it seems like being upgraded in an airplane many years ago, I'd say. I know probably everybody here has been upgraded. They see you all stars and they say, "I want to upgrade that person from NBC. I'm going to upgrade him." And that would mean you'll spend the rest of your life in prison. I don't know. Somehow-

Journalist (37:11):

I hope not.

Donald Trump (37:12):

I mean, I'd have to see it because I don't know the facts. I think he was treated… It's very interesting, when he essentially went against what was happening with the migrants coming in, and he made some pretty strong statements like, "This is not sustainable," I said, "You know what? He'll be indicted soon." And I said it, not as a prediction, a little bit lightheartedly, but I said it. I said, "He's going to be indicted." And a few months later he got indicted. I would certainly look at it.

Journalist (37:43):

Mr. president, can I ask you a question about the drones?

(37:44)
[inaudible 00:37:45] Syria. Are you you planning on pulling them when you get to office or will you make [inaudible 00:37:53]?

Donald Trump (37:52):

Well, we had 5,000 troops along the border and I asked a couple of generals. So we have an army of 250,000 at Syria and you had an army of 400,000. They have many more people than that. Turkey is a major force, by the way. And Erdoğan is somebody I got along with great. But he has a major military force and his has not been worn out with war. It hasn't been worn out with all of the other things. I mean, he's built a very strong, powerful army.

(38:21)
And so we have 5,000 soldiers in between a 5 million person army and a 250,000 person army. And I asked the general, " What do you think of that situation?" He said, "There'll be wiped out immediately." And I moved them out because… And I took a lot of heat and you know what happened? Nothing. Nothing. I saved a lot of lives.

(38:45)
Now we have 900. They put some back, but 900, if you're talking about two. Now, one of the sides has been essentially wiped out, but nobody knows who the other side is. But I do. Do you know who it is? Turkey. Okay.

(39:00)
Turkey is the one behind it. He's a very smart guy. They've wanted it for thousands of years and he got it. And those people that went in are controlled by Turkey. And that's okay. It's another way to fight. But no, I don't think that I want to have our soldiers killed, but I don't think that will happen now anyway because the one side's been decimated.

Journalist (39:26):

Mr. President what have you [inaudible 00:39:27] of drones?

(39:27)
… think of the drones?

(39:27)
Mr. President… concerned about more unrest in that region or do you think it will be calmer?

Donald Trump (39:32):

Well, nobody knows what the final outcome's going to be in the region. Nobody knows who really the final. I believe it's Turkey. And I think Turkey is very smart. He's a very smart guy and he's very tough. But Turkey did an unfriendly takeover without a lot of lives being lost.

(39:51)
I can say that Assad was a butcher here--what he did to children. You remember I attacked him with the 58 missiles, unbelievable missiles coming from ships 700 miles away. And every one of them hit their target. But I did that. That was the red line in the sand. Obama drew it and then he refused to honor what he did. He said, "If anybody goes across the red line…" And Assad killed many more children after that and Obama did nothing, but I did. I hit him with a lot of missiles.

(40:22)
In fact, President Xi was sitting here the night he was in that dining room having chocolate cake. Remember the famous chocolate cake? And that's when I explained what we were doing as the missiles were shot. And it was amazing as to precision because every one of those missiles hit its target from a long distance away.

(40:46)
Had President Obama drawn the line and where it meant something, you wouldn't have even had Russia there. But in the end, I never understood why Russia went there. They were not getting very much out of it. But now their time has taken up with Ukraine and we'd like to get them to stop on Ukraine, and Ukraine stop also.

(41:07)
As you know, when I went to the cathedral, which is fantastic, the job that they've done in France and the job that Macron Emmanuel did a… He did a phenomenal job on the rebuilding of that cathedral. It's magnificent. And they did a great thing and they had great respect for our country. They treated me… Meaning I'm the country, I'm the representative of our country. And we were treated with great respect.

(41:32)
And one of the people that came to pay his respects is, as you know, Ukraine, Zelenskyy. And he would like to have peace. He wants peace. Everyone's being killed. It's the worst carnage that this world has seen since World War II.

(41:54)
I've had pictures of fields where bodies lying on top of bodies, looks like the old pictures of the Civil War where just bodies are all over. Just if you saw those pictures, you'd feel more strongly about it. It's got to stop, and we're trying to get it to stop.

Journalist (42:11):

[inaudible 00:42:12] security drone side is?

(42:11)
Mr. President?

Donald Trump (42:14):

Well, we're going to see.

Journalist (42:15):

Mr. President! [inaudible 00:42:16].

Donald Trump (42:17):

We'll be talking to President Putin and we'll be talking to the representatives, Zelenskyy and representatives from Ukraine. We got to stop it. It's carnage.

Journalist (42:26):

What about the fear here at home of the drone?

(42:27)
Mr. President?

(42:29)
Good to see you.

Donald Trump (42:29):

Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you.

Journalist (42:32):

Can you comment on the drones that are flying around with New Jersey ports? It seems like the American people have a big…

Donald Trump (42:39):

The government knows what is happening. Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it's a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went, and for some reason they don't want to comment. And I think they'd be better off saying what it is.

(42:58)
Our military knows and our president knows, and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense. I can't imagine it's the enemy because if it was the enemy, they'd blast it out. Even if they were late, they'd blast it.

(43:12)
Something strange is going on. For some reason they don't want to tell the people and they should because the people are really… I mean, they happen to be over Bedminster, want to know the truth.

Journalist (43:21):

Have you received an intelligent [inaudible 00:43:23]?

Donald Trump (43:24):

They're very close to Bedminster. I think maybe I won't spend the weekend in Bedminster.

Journalist (43:28):

Have you been a-

Donald Trump (43:28):

I've decided to cancel my trip.

Journalist (43:30):

Have you received an intelligence briefing on the drones?

Donald Trump (43:33):

I don't want to comment on that.

Journalist (43:34):

Have you've been-

(43:34)
Do you have any reason to think they're a threat?

(43:34)
[inaudible 00:43:38]

(43:38)
Two quick questions. First on vaccines, do you want RFK Jr. to revoke any vaccines?

Donald Trump (43:44):

No. I want him to come back with a report as to what he thinks. We're going to find out a lot. We're doing two things. We're going to have tremendous cost savings, will come out of this. That's a minimum. And we're also going to have… And I think very serious discussions about certain things, whether it's pesticides or…

(44:02)
Europe doesn't use pesticides, and yet they have a better mortality rate than we do. They don't use pesticides. In fact, they use it as an excuse not to take our farm product. We spend billions and billions of dollars on pesticides and something bad's happening.

(44:19)
Again, you take a look at autism today versus 20, 25 years ago. It's like not even believable. So we're going to have reports. No, nothing's going to happen very quickly. I think you're going to find that Bobby is much… He's a very rational guy. I found him to be very rational. No, nothing…

(44:36)
You're not going to lose the polio vaccine. That's not going to happen. I saw what happened with the polio. I have friends that were very much affected by that. I have friends from many years ago, and they have… Obviously, they're still in not such good shape because of it. That was… And many people died. And the moment they took that vaccine, it ended. Dr. Jonas Salk did a great job.

(45:04)
So I don't anticipate that at all. But we're going to look into finding why is the autism rate so much higher than it was 20, 25, 30 years ago. I mean, it's a hundred times higher. There's something wrong. And we're going to try finding that. We're also going to find out why are we paying more than other countries? And we were in the process of doing that through transparency and other things.

(45:27)
We were doing a good job in that first term. And we brought it down. We got to $35. All of the different things. We got… We were the ones that got all of that done. Every one of those things, we got them done. I said, "I hope I win because otherwise somebody's going to take a lot of credit for what we did."

(45:46)
But now what happens is we're going to have a big conversation on price. Why is it that Germany and UK and other countries are paying so much more for the same box of medicine made in the same plant? Why is it that we're paying many times more?

(46:05)
And I know the answer, because our government didn't do what they were supposed to do and what I put in place was terminated unexpectedly by the Biden administration and they shouldn't have terminated it. It would've had a huge impact.

Journalist (46:17):

And Mr. President, one quick question. On Ukraine, you mentioned that some of the areas are already decimated. Do you believe that you Ukraine should cede territory to Russia?

Donald Trump (46:29):

Well, I'm going to let you know that after I have my first meeting. But a lot of that territory, when you look at what's happened to those… I mean, there are cities that there's not a building standing. It's a demolition site. There's not a building standing, so people can't go back to those cities. There's nothing there. It's just rubble.

(46:49)
Just like when I knocked down a building in Manhattan, which is actually… This is worse actually because we do it step by step. This thing has just got demolished. And by the way, in those buildings are many people. Many people were in those buildings.

(47:07)
When they said the number in Ukraine is going to be a much higher number of deaths is going to be a much higher number than you're hearing. They're big buildings. That's what I did very well. And these are very long buildings.

(47:19)
They're 15 to 20 stories high. They're massive buildings. I was surprised at how big… And they're flattened like a pancake. One or two bombs hit them and they just collapsed. And they'd say nobody was hurt. Well, nobody knows who was in those buildings. There were a lot of people in those buildings. They're going to find that when they start doing the removal.

(47:41)
Many more people are being killed in the Ukraine war with Russia then is being reported. And that includes soldiers. The soldiers are being… It's a carnage that we haven't seen since the second world war. It's got to be stopped. And I'm doing my best to stop.

Journalist (47:57):

Sir?

Donald Trump (47:57):

Yeah, please go ahead.

Journalist (47:59):

You had a meeting with Mrs. Abe yesterday, but Japanese Prime-

Donald Trump (48:04):

Mrs. Abe.

Journalist (48:05):

Mrs. Abe, yeah, and Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba is hoping to have a meeting anytime soon. Are you-

Donald Trump (48:11):

I will do that. In fact, I sent him a memento. I sent him a book, the Prime Minister. But Mrs. Abe was very close with our first lady, with Melania, and she loved Melania's book and she called and wanted to know if she could have…

(48:26)
I was very close to the Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He was great. He was a great man and his wife wanted to know if it would be possible to have dinner. And it was just out of respect to Shinzo. And yes, I'd love to see the Prime Minister and we will do that. I actually sent him a book and some other things for him through Mrs. Abe.

Journalist (48:50):

Will that happen before the inauguration day?

Donald Trump (48:52):

It could. If they'd like to do that, I would do that. Yeah.

Journalist (48:55):

Sir? President [inaudible 00:48:56], leaders have [inaudible 00:48:57].

Donald Trump (48:58):

I have great respect for the position and if he'd like to do that, I'd be here.

Journalist (49:03):

Mr. President, [inaudible 00:49:05] about the board?

(49:05)
… support that Ambassador of Japan will be George Glass? Is that your final decision?

Donald Trump (49:09):

Highly respected men. That's right. Highly respected. He's been an ambassador before, did a fantastic job. We consider Japan very important. He's very highly respected. Okay. Couple-

Journalist (49:21):

[inaudible 00:49:21]

(49:21)
Which other world leaders have you invited to the inauguration?

(49:23)
Next question about border?

(49:24)
Which other world leaders have you invited to the inauguration?

Donald Trump (49:28):

The world leaders are calling me and some really would-

Journalist (49:32):

Are they coming?

Donald Trump (49:32):

… really would like to meet. No, I mean, literally they're calling me and I'll be seeing some of them. I think it's rude not to, I mean, it's hard to say. I'm not going to see you.

(49:43)
And I've spoken to way over a hundred where they call to congratulate on, not only the election, but the size of the election, the extent of the victory. And they were great. I mean, I spoke to over a hundred countries.

(49:59)
You wouldn't believe how many countries there are and I'm trying with the best I can to get back to everybody. But there are a lot of countries and every one of them, literally everyone called and it was very nice. So yeah, I'd see some if some felt it was an emergency. I've seen-

Journalist (50:16):

Anyone in [inaudible 00:50:16]?

Donald Trump (50:16):

As you know, I've seen President Zelenskyy. He came to France while I was there for the cathedral opening. They actually had about 70 presidents and prime ministers and in one case a king. And we saw some great people. I also met with William, and I was very impressed by William. I think William is terrific. I was very impressed by William. As you know I met with him too.

Journalist (50:44):

Are you disappointed in Xi Jinping [inaudible 00:50:45] inauguration?

(50:45)
President Trump? [inaudible 00:50:46]

(50:45)
Did you invite Zelenskyy to the inauguration?

Donald Trump (50:51):

No, but if he'd like to come, I'd like to have him. I mean, I didn't invite him, no.

Journalist (51:01):

Are you disappointed China, Xi-

(51:01)
Can I ask you a question about [inaudible 00:51:02]-

(51:01)
… can't come to the… Are you disappointed that China, Xi, won't be at the inauguration?

Donald Trump (51:05):

I don't know that he won't be at the inauguration. I mean, I haven't really spoken to him about it. I don't know that actually. I would say that if he'd like to come, I'd love to have him. But there's been nothing much discussed.

(51:19)
I have had discussions with him, letters, et cetera, et cetera at a very high level. We had a very good relationship until Covid. Covid didn't end the relationship, but it was a bridge too far for me. But if he'd like to come, I'd certainly be…

Journalist (51:38):

If he still going to-

Donald Trump (51:39):

Just so you understand, he hasn't said one way or the other because a lot of people say he won't come, he will come. People think he will come, he won't come. It's something we barely discussed; just about, didn't discuss. But I have had, especially through letters, some very good conversations.

Journalist (51:57):

Have you had conversations with Venezuela?

Donald Trump (51:58):

Because China and the United States can together solve all of the problems of the world, if you think about it. So it's very important. And he was a friend of mine. I mean, he was here for a long time, right in that spot, except sitting in a very comfortable chair. He wasn't standing like you are, but we spent hours and hours talking and he is an amazing guy.

Journalist (52:25):

Have you spoken to Venezuela?

Donald Trump (52:26):

The press hates when I say that, but he's an amazing person.

Journalist (52:29):

Have you spoken to anyone in Venezuela, sir?

(52:29)
President Trump, can I as you about-

(52:29)
On the border, on the border, if I could just ask you on the border.

(52:33)
… UnitedHealth care shooting?

Donald Trump (52:34):

Real quick.

Journalist (52:35):

UnitedHealth care shooting-

Donald Trump (52:36):

I didn't-

Journalist (52:36):

… the shooting of the CEO. Can you give us your thoughts about that, and what do you make the reaction around the-

Donald Trump (52:42):

I think it's terrible.

Journalist (52:42):

… suspected shooter? Does that you anything about health care?

Donald Trump (52:42):

Yeah. I think it's a terrible thing. I think it's really terrible that some people seem to admire him, like him. And I was happy to see that it wasn't specific to this gentleman that was killed. It's just an overall sickness as opposed to a specific sickness.

(53:01)
That was a terrible thing. It was cold-blooded; just a cold-blooded, horrible killing. And how people can like this guy is… That's a sickness, actually. That's really very bad. Especially the way it was done. It was so bad, right in the back and very bad.

(53:21)
Thing like that, you can't believe that some people… And maybe it's fake news, I don't know. It's hard to believe that that can even be thought of, but it seems that there's a certain appetite for him. I don't get it. Yeah, please.

Journalist (53:35):

Could you just comment on…

(53:36)
I want to expand on the defamation lawsuits. Could you see moving that to other people with individual platforms, social media, influencers, people that-

Donald Trump (53:46):

Or newspapers? Yeah.

Journalist (53:46):

Yeah,

Donald Trump (53:48):

Yeah. Oh, I do. I do. I think you have to do it because they're very dishonest. We need a great media, we need a fair media. It's very important. And we need

Donald Trump (54:00):

… need borders, we need walls, but we need borders and we need fair elections. You look at California, millions and millions of ballots were sent out. They're still counting the vote in California with the machines. They're counting the vote. If you had paper ballots, that votes would've been counted four weeks ago, three weeks ago.

(54:19)
Now you need fair elections, you need borders, and you need a fair press. And the press is… No, I see others. I have a few others that I'm doing. I'm going to, as an example we're bringing… I'm doing this, not because I want to, I'm doing this because I feel I have an obligation to, I'm going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time and then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points and it became the biggest story all over the world, because I was going to win Iowa by 20 points.

(54:56)
The farmers loved me and I love the farmers. And it was interesting the way she did it, she brought it down two weeks before, she said I was going to only win by four. That was a big story. But that was good, because she brought it down from 22 points to four, or whatever the number was. Way up, way up. Easy win. Never even thought to go there. I respect them, I love them, and they understand there's no reason to go there, because she brought it from way up, walk away, which it was, and it turned out to be in the election too, by the way. It was a win by many, many points. And then she brought it down very smartly to four a couple of weeks before, and everyone said, "Wow, that's amazing. He's only up by four points." Then she brought it down to where I was down by three or four, whatever the number she used, and that was the Des Moines Register, and it was their parent, and in my opinion it was fraud and it was election interference.

(55:52)
She's gotten me right always. She's a very good pollster. She knows what she was doing, and she then quit before and we'll probably be filing a major lawsuit against them today or tomorrow. We're filing one on 60 Minutes. You know about that. Where they took Kamala's answer, which was a crazy answer, a horrible answer, and they took the whole answer out and they replaced it with something else she said later on in the interview, which wasn't a great answer, but it wasn't like the first one. The first was grossly incompetent. It was weird.

(56:24)
And that was fraud and election interference by their news magazine, a big part of CBS News. So as you know, we're involved in that one. We're involved in one which has been going on for a while, and very successfully, against Bob Woodward, where he didn't quote me properly from the tapes. And then on top of everything else, he sold the tapes, which he wasn't allowed to do. He could only use them for reporting purposes, not for sale purposes, and he admits that, and I think we'll be successful on that one.

(56:57)
And we have one very interestingly on Pulitzer, because reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post got Pulitzer Prizes for their wonderful, accurate and highly professional reporting on the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Well, it turned out to be a hoax, and they were exactly wrong. People, like many people, John Solomon, Sean Hannity is not for Pulitzer, but Sean Hannity got it right. Many people got it right. Tucker got it right. Jesse got it right. Laura got it right. Jeanine got it right. A lot of people got it right. They didn't get anything. They gave it to reporters that got it absolutely wrong, and now everybody admits it was a hoax, and I want them to take back the Pulitzer Prizes and pay big damages.

(57:45)
And I think we're doing very well on that one. They have no excuse for it. They gave a Pulitzer Prize to writers that got Russia, Russia, Russia wrong. And so, I think we're doing well. And I feel I have to do this. I shouldn't really be the one to do it, it should have been the Justice Department or somebody else, but I have to do it. It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt. Almost as corrupt as our elections.

Speaker 6 (58:15):

Are you worried about Venezuela? [inaudible 00:58:17] Sir, have you had any discussions on Venezuela?

Speaker 7 (58:19):

For January 6th defendants, you had said in the first few minutes of your administration you want to issue pardons for January 6th defendants. Does that include… Will that be a blanket pardon? Does that include everyone?

Donald Trump (58:30):

Well, you'll find out, but it's going to go quickly.

Speaker 7 (58:32):

And just to follow up on your previous [inaudible 00:58:33].

Speaker 6 (58:35):

… discussion, sir, in terms of your mass deportation plans, have you had any preliminary discussions with countries like Venezuela, from where the Tren de Aragua gang is now popping up?

Donald Trump (58:44):

They'll take them back.

Speaker 6 (58:46):

They're going to take them back?

Donald Trump (58:46):

They're all taking them back. Yep. And if they don't, they'll be met very harshly economically. Okay. They'll all take them back. Venezuela and other countries were not behaving very well with us during my administration, and within 24 hours they were behaving very well. They'll all take them back.

Speaker 6 (59:05):

And separately can I ask a follow-up on that?

Donald Trump (59:07):

Jeff, nice to see you, Jeff. This is like the old days, right?

Jeff (59:10):

It's nice to see you too, sir.

Donald Trump (59:12):

You've looked actually look much better now than you did four years ago. What are you doing? What's he doing? All right, go ahead.

Jeff (59:17):

Thank you, sir. The first day you just mentioned that you're in office, I imagine you've got some executive orders that you're going to go through. Can you tell us what your [inaudible 00:59:25]-

Donald Trump (59:24):

We'll have a lot, well you-

Jeff (59:26):

… what are your priorities?

Donald Trump (59:26):

I'll bet you could say as well as I could. We will have many executive orders, and other things that we'll be signing on the first day.

Jeff (59:36):

Can you also, just going back to my initial question about the Middle East, you said that your conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu was kind of a review. Did you repeat that [inaudible 00:59:44]-

Donald Trump (59:44):

We just had a very good conversation, and the real conversations will start on the 20th, but we had a really good conversation, and I think we're going to be in a good place in the Middle East. I think the Middle East will be in a good place.

(01:00:01)
I think actually more difficult is going to be the Russia-Ukraine situation. I see that as more difficult.

Jeff (01:00:07):

When you say there will be [inaudible 01:00:09]-

Donald Trump (01:00:08):

I don't think they should have allowed missiles to be shot 200 miles into Russia. I think that was a bad thing, and that brought the Koreans in, North Korea. Another man I get along with very well, I'm the only one that does. But that did a lot of bad things. I don't think that should have been allowed. Not when there's a possibility… And certainly not just weeks before I take over, why would they do that without asking me what I thought? I wouldn't have had them do that. I think that was a big mistake they made.

Jeff (01:00:37):

Will you reverse that decision when you're in office? To let those-

Donald Trump (01:00:41):

I might, yeah.

Jeff (01:00:41):

… missiles be-

Donald Trump (01:00:42):

I thought it was a very stupid thing to do.

Jeff (01:00:43):

And when you say-

Speaker 8 (01:00:44):

Do you have any reaction [inaudible 01:00:45]-

Jeff (01:00:45):

Just one last [inaudible 01:00:46] when you say that there will be hell to pay if the hostages are not released before January 20th, what does that mean?

Donald Trump (01:00:51):

Well, they're going to have to determine what that means, but it means it won't be pleasant.

Speaker 9 (01:00:56):

Mr. President, how was your meeting?

Donald Trump (01:00:58):

It's not going to be pleasant. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:01:00):

How was your meeting with Apple CEO, Tim Cook. And did you talk about tariffs in that meeting?

Donald Trump (01:01:05):

Meeting with who?

Speaker 9 (01:01:06):

Apple CEO, Tim Cook.

Donald Trump (01:01:08):

I did have dinner with Tim Cook. I had dinner with almost all of them, and the rest are coming. And this is one of the big differences I think between… We were talking about it before. One of the big differences between the first term, and the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term everybody wants to be my friend. I don't know. My personality changed or something.

(01:01:32)
But I had, as you know, I had Sundar from Google, but I also had Sergey. Nobody reported that. Sergey is the owner, the primary owner, along with his friend, as you know, and Sergey was here also. I can't believe you didn't pick that one up. Nobody picked that up. But I will tell you… No, it's a big difference. The big difference is that the first time everybody was fighting me, on all fronts, and we had a great administration.

(01:02:03)
We got the biggest tax cuts in history, rebuilt the military. Too much of it was given away to Afghanistan, stupidly given away, horribly given away. I think that's one of the reasons that Putin went in to Ukraine, when he saw the stupidity of Milli and these guys, stupid people, very stupid people. If they didn't do such a big… We were pulling out of Afghanistan, but I would have pulled out with dignity and strength, they wouldn't be having parades, I guarantee you, showing our equipment that they left behind, because we weren't going to leave any equipment behind, not 10 cents. We were going to take every screw and every bolt.

(01:02:38)
So yeah, the biggest difference is that people want to get along with me this time. Well, they've gone through four years and it wasn't easy for me, but it wasn't easy for them either, and that's a great thing though. Getting along is a great thing. So, Tim Cook was here, I think he's done an incredible job at Apple and he talked about the future of Apple. It's going to be a br

Trump Rally Ahead Of Inaguration
Donald Trump speaks to his supporters on the eve of his inauguration. Read the transcript here.
January 20, 2025

Donald Trump (00:00):

Thank you very much. We won. We won. You.

Crowd (00:06):

USA. USA. USA.

Donald Trump (00:21):

Thank you very much, everybody. What a good feeling. We like winning, don't we, huh? We're going to make our country greater than ever before.

(00:33)
Hello, Washington and hello, America. We're all over America. I'm thrilled to be back with so many friends, supporters and true American patriots on the eve of taking back our country. That's what we're going to do. Take back our country.

(00:53)
Tomorrow at noon, the curtain closes on four long years of American decline, and we begin a brand new day of American strength and prosperity, dignity and pride, bringing it all back.

(01:13)
Once and for all, we're going to end the reign of a failed and corrupt political establishment in Washington, a failed administration. We're not going to take it anymore. We're going to stop the invasion of our borders. We're going to reclaim our wealth. We're going to unlock the liquid gold that's right under our feet, liquid gold.

(01:47)
We're going to bring back law and order to our cities. We're going to restore patriotism to our schools, get radical left woke ideologies the hell out of our military and out of our government, and we are going to make America great again.

(02:23)
I want to thank the tens of thousands of incredible men and women who have come from all over the nation to take part in this very special moment. And I just heard and watching some of the coverage that there are rallies like this taking place all over the country. People are happy. People are happy. It's been a long time. None of this would have been possible without you and the millions of hardworking citizens who have joined our cause.

(02:53)
You know right over there just noticed a group of beautiful ladies, beautiful women from North Carolina, from North Carolina right here, too. I don't know how the hell they'd… They've been to 167 rallies. Do you believe it? You think their husbands are happy about that? I don't know. But they look beautiful. They're incredible people, and they love our country. Thank you very much.

(03:22)
Then up here I see we have front row Joes all over the place, Uncle Sam, Mr. Wall. Oh boy, oh boy. But we've been through so much together and for the next four years, I will fight for you. Every single day, we're going to be fighting for you.

(03:39)
This is the greatest political movement in American history. And 75 days ago, we achieved the most epic political victory our country has ever seen. That's what they say.

(03:55)
We won the popular vote for the first time of any Republican in many, many years. We swept all seven swing states by big numbers. We won Pennsylvania, we won Georgia, we won North Carolina, we won Michigan, we won Wisconsin, we won Arizona, we won Nevada. We won them all by historic margins, and we won the great state of Florida by 13 points. Nobody's done that ever.

(04:29)
And a record that will never be broken, all 50 states shifted toward the Republican Party, the first time that that's ever happened. All 50 states.

(04:47)
We won the largest number of African American voters in Republican Party history. We won more Hispanic American votes than any Republican has ever gotten before by a lot. And we won Latino men and women and on top of that, youth, men, women, urban, suburban, rural, and people from everywhere in between are joining us in record numbers. We've never had anything like this. Too big to rig. That's what I used to say. Too big to rig. We made it too big.

(05:23)
Oh, and they tried. They tried. It was too big, around 902. They just said, "Let's get the hell out of here. This isn't working." They were swamped, to put it nicely.

(05:35)
We also took back the US Senate. We had some great people running, and the house Republicans won their largest popular vote majority in presidential years since 1928. We had a lot of people voting. So the senate, the house Republicans, we got all three of them. A little bit close on those two.

(06:02)
Senate's in great shape, house Republicans. Actually, they both have great leaders. They both have great people heading. John Thune is fantastic, and if you look at Mike Johnson, he's got a pretty tight majority, but actually it's very tight, but it's very good because we vote unified. We're really voting unified.

(06:24)
And so, it doesn't make much difference. In the election of 2024, which will be the most consequential election in American history, we not only won a mandate, but we built a new American majority that will lead our country to unparalleled success for generations to come. That's what we want to do.

(06:48)
And someday, and 30 years from now, 40 years from now, 50 years from now, some of these young people are going to say, "I remember Donald Trump. He did a good job. He set us on his way. He gave us a path."

(07:03)
Our new administration will inherit disasters at home and abroad, an economy plagued by inflation and high interest rates, a catastrophic border crisis.

(07:13)
Nobody can believe they let people in. They have an open border policy. Do you think that makes sense, open borders? Anybody wants to. Jails, prisons, mental institutions, gangs being emptied right through that ugly open border. A government that cannot care for its citizens in a time of emergency. Look at what's happening in Los Angeles. Look at what's happening in North Carolina. They've treated them so badly, and a planet on the brink of World War III. It's not going to happen. That's not going to happen.

(07:47)
But starting tomorrow, I will act with historic speed and strength and fix every single crisis facing our country. We have to do it. We're not going to have a country, you know? Before even taking office, you are already seeing results that nobody expected to see. Everyone is calling it the… I don't want to say this, it's too braggadocio, but we'll say it anyway, the Trump effect. It's you. You're the effect.

(08:20)
Since the election, the stock market has surged, and small business optimism has soared a record 41 points to a 39-year high. Bitcoin has shattered one record high after another. The major investment company known as DAMAC, the Properties, has announced that it'll be investing between 20 and $40 billion in the United States. And SoftBank, another great company, has pledged between 100 and $200 billion.

(08:53)
These are all investments that are only being made because of the fact that we won the election can we create jobs for hundreds of thousands, even millions of Americans.

(09:03)
Today I spoke with Tim Cook of Apple. He said they're going to make a massive investment in the United States because of our big election win.

(09:15)
And as of today, TikTok is back. You know, I did a little TikTok thing. We have a guy, TikTok Jack. He's a young kid, like 21 years old, and we hired this guy, and I went on TikTok. Can you believe what I'll do to win an election?

(09:42)
And we went on TikTok and Republicans have never won the young vote, the youth vote. They win a lot of votes, but they never won the youth vote. We won the youth vote by 36 points.

(09:55)
So I liked TikTok. I like it. I like it. I had a slightly good experience, wouldn't you say? Romney lost it by 40 points not so long ago. We won it by 36 points. That's a very big spread.

(10:15)
But I said we need to save TikTok because we're talking about a tremendous… Who in this audience goes with TikTok? Many? Yeah, very popular.

(10:28)
And frankly, we have no choice. We have to save it, a lot of jobs. We don't want to give our business to China. We don't want to give our business to other people. And I said, "You know, TikTok without my approval," meaning the president's approval because congress gave the president the right to make a deal, do whatever he wants. And they did that a long time ago when they had a different president. They didn't know that I was going to be the president, I guess.

(10:56)
So I said, very simply, a joint venture. So if TikTok is worth nothing, zero, without an approval. You know, if you don't approve, they're out of business. They're worth nothing. If you do approve, they're worth like a trillion dollars. They're worth some crazy number. So I said, "I'll approve, but let the United States of America own 50% of TikTok. I'm approving on behalf of the United States."

(11:27)
So they'll have a partner, the United States, and they'll have a lot of bidders. And the United States will do what we call a joint venture, and there's no risk. We're not putting up any money. All we're doing is giving them the approval, without which they don't have anything.

(11:42)
So I don't know. It sounds like that works. What do you think, good? Think so. So whether you like TikTok or not, we're going to make a lot of money.

(11:52)
Perhaps most beautiful of all this week, we achieved an epic ceasefire agreement as a first step toward lasting peace in the Middle East. And this agreement could only have happened as a result of our historic victory in November. That was some victory. Was that the greatest? I don't even know which was greater, 2016 or this one? I think this one.

(12:18)
Look, Honest Abe Lincoln. We have Honest Abe. We have Uncle Sam. You know Uncle Sam shook my hand about two months ago. He's got the strongest grip I've ever… You are a strong man. I said, "What the hell was that?"

(12:38)
But I'm glad to report that the first hostages have just been released and who knows what's going to happen.

(12:52)
I know that Biden is saying that they made the deal. Well, you know, I mean that deal should have… First of all, it would've never happened if I were president, would've never happened. There was not even a thought of it. Iran was broke. They had no money for Hezbollah. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money. They were broke, totally broke, and they would've never done anything.

(13:21)
But they did it, you know? And so, I like to think back to the past. I said, "If only the election weren't rigged, all the things that would've happened that would've been so good." But it was. We're not going to let that happen again.

(13:33)
I want to thank my friend Steve Witkoff, who I think is here. I know he made a beautiful speech. I heard he made a great speech, but he's an amazing guy.

(13:43)
I said, "I got to get myself a negotiator. We have to get a good negotiator." A lot of guys are knowledgeable, but they can't negotiate. They don't have the personality or whatever. And Steve does, and Steve's a great negotiator, very successful guy. But he's our new special envoy to the Middle East for helping reach this great breakthrough and really couldn't have been done without Steve.

(14:07)
Where is Steve Witkoff? Is he around here someplace? Because he was so great. There he is. Hello, Steve. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Steve. What a job.

(14:20)
Our incoming administration has achieved all of this in the Middle East in less than three months without being president. We've achieved more without being president than they've achieved in four years with being president. But just imagine all of the good things that we will accomplish together with four more years in the White House, and we're going to do a lot of things.

(14:45)
You're going to see something tomorrow. You're going to see executive orders that are going to make you extremely happy. Lots of them. Lots of them. We have to set our country on the

Donald Trump (15:00):

… proper course.

(15:00)
By the time the sun sets tomorrow evening, the invasion of our borders will have come to a halt, and all the illegal border trespassers will, in some form or another, be on their way back home. Think of it. We've allowed millions and millions of people into our country through open borders, no checks, no vetting, no anything, millions and millions of people. And lots of those people are murderers. 52% of them killed more than one person. Other than that, they're quite fine. They're nice people. These are rough people. Remember I used to say, "These people are rough." And they would say, "No, no, these are illegal immigrants. They're very safe." I said, "They're not safe. Look at what's happened with Venezuela where they're sending these gangs in and they're taking over apartment complexes in Colorado and then cutting off the fingers of a man who had the nerve and desire to call the police." He said, "You want to call the police? Bah, guess what? You have no fingers." These are rough people, and they're getting the hell out of our country. They're out.

(16:16)
The border security measures I will outline in my inaugural address tomorrow will be the most aggressive sweeping effort to restore our borders the world has ever seen. We had the best, safest border in the history of our country. You remember that with the great chart that I put up. I don't even know if they have that chart now. Maybe they do. These guys are good. Maybe they do. Who that? I don't know. I didn't tell them I was going to do this. I didn't tell them, but we have some very good people, but I didn't say it, but we had a chart, and I looked to my right and then they said, "Ooh, that was it. That hurt. What the hell was that?" I still have that throbbing feeling in my ear. Oh, there it is. Look at it. These people are amazing. I didn't tell them I was doing that. That's fantastic. Yeah, it's all over the place. I love that. That is the most beautiful piece of paper I've ever seen in my life.

(17:15)
But if you look at that chart, and you look at the red arrow on the bottom, that's the single lowest we ever had in history, at least recorded history, of illegals pouring into our country. We had done a great job, and then they took over and look what happened. It's like an Elon Musk rocket ship going up. That reminds me of Elon, his rocket ships. Look at that. Look at the difference. And it just continued and continued, and we're taken in people that shouldn't be here. They come in from prisons, from jails, they shouldn't be here, mental institutions.

(17:55)
I used to mention, and the press would always excoriate me, I'd say the late great Hannibal Lecter came into our country today. Silence of the Lamb. Did anybody see that movie? Lovely movie. And when people went to the voter booth, they say, "We don't want Hannibal Lecter in our country." The press would say, "Why is he bringing up Hannibal Lecter? That was a fictitious character." Actually, they're not so fictitious. We have people in our country that are probably worse than we allowed in, but we will quickly reestablish control of our sovereign territory and borders. We will expel every single illegal alien, gang member, and migrant criminal operating on American soil, and remove the savage gang, Tren de Aragua from the United States. Here's a little video for you to see about this gang. Go ahead.

Speaker 1 (18:47):

Open borders, deadly consequences.

Speaker 2 (18:49):

Border crisis. Record high crossings are putting a strain on cities across America.

Speaker 3 (18:55):

It is a full blown invasion.

Speaker 4 (18:57):

Armed Venezuelan gang members storming an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado.

Speaker 5 (19:02):

When people talk about migrant crime, this is what they're talking about.

Speaker 6 (19:04):

San Antonio, Texas, just one of the latest cities to have apartment complexes taken over by members of the Venezuelan gang.

Speaker 7 (19:11):

Biden and Harris had created a program to bring them in under humanitarian parole.

Speaker 8 (19:16):

I am in favor of saying that we're not going to treat people who are undocumented, across the borders criminals.

Speaker 7 (19:21):

More than 13,000 illegal immigrants convicted of murder have been released into the United States.

Speaker 9 (19:28):

My 20-year-old daughter, Kayla Hamilton, was murdered in her own room. Kayla's murderer was apprehended by border patrol crossing illegally into the US.

Speaker 10 (19:36):

Kayla's murderer had been improperly released into the United States.

Speaker 9 (19:40):

Abolish ICE.

Speaker 11 (19:41):

Yeah, we need to probably think about starting from scratch.

Speaker 12 (19:44):

More than a dozen people suspected of being Tren de Aragua gang members right here in San Antonio.

Speaker 13 (19:48):

The gang members had been terrorizing the apartment complex.

Speaker 14 (19:51):

New details in the murder of Laken Riley.

Speaker 15 (19:53):

The illegal immigrant suspect, who cops say, committed the heinous murder is a Venezuelan national.

Speaker 16 (20:03):

And was paroled and released into the country by the Biden Administration.

Speaker 17 (20:04):

If they al been properly vetted, that probably wouldn't have happened.

Speaker 18 (20:05):

Two men, investigators say are in the country illegally from Venezuela, are charged with capital murder and the death of Jocelyn Nangaray.

Speaker 19 (20:12):

Martinez and Angel wrapped his arms around Jocelyn's neck, took off her pants, and climbed on top of her, later strangled Jocelyn to death, and then tied up her hands and feet.

Speaker 20 (20:22):

Court documents suggest a group of men arrested for beating and robbing a Dallas woman last month are members of a Venezuelan street gang.

Speaker 21 (20:29):

The men threatened to cut off her fingers if she did not cooperate. Emmanuel Hernandez Hernandez was booked by Colleyville Police just two days earlier and released the day before the robbery.

Speaker 22 (20:40):

A Peruvian gang leader who was wanted for 23 murders, who was arrested by border patrol near Roma, Texas, then released into America.

Donald Trump (20:56):

That's what we allowed in, and they're nice people compared to some of them. They're nicer than others. These are really vicious people, gang members, and many, many people from prisons, and crime all over the world is down. You know why? Because they got their criminals into the United States of America. You look at Venezuela, they've emptied their prisons into our country. Many other places, the same. I would've done the same if I headed up any of the countries. I know most of those guys. They're smart, they're leaders. They are smart, streetwise people. As soon as I heard they were going to have open borders, I said, "If you do that, every prison all over the world is going to be emptied out into our country." They come in from the Congo. The Congo is big on emptying their prisons. The only thing good about it is they make our criminals look like really nice people.

(21:48)
These people are vicious people all over the world, not just South America, all over the world they come from mental institutions and from jails and prisons. With our actions tomorrow, my administration will deliver justice for every family whose loved one has been stolen from them by migrant crime, including Laken Riley, Rachel Moran, Jocelyn Nangaray, Kayla Hamilton, and every other precious American soul that we have lost to these animals. Their memories will live in the hearts forever, in our hearts forever, and we will never ever forget them. And their contribution, I told their mothers, who were devastated, their parents, their fathers, they're devastated. They'll never be the same. They'll never be the same. But I said, "Your daughter has made a major contribution. Your son has made a major contribution." There are hundreds and even thousands of victims of this horrible atrocity, and you add those numbers to the numbers of crime that we are already going through the roof, and it's something that you wouldn't even believe.

(22:58)
Do you remember I did the debate, and I had David Muir from ABC saying, "No, no crime has gone down." I said, "No, no. It's gone through the roof. Crime has gone through the roof, David." "No, no crime has gone down." I said, "It's gone through the roof." And then he goes, "I disagree with that." The next day they announced the crime was up like 40%. This guy is, the whole thing, it's so bad. You can't even imagine how anybody could, before these things of, think of it, open borders, prisons, and mental institutions, men playing in women's sports, transgender for everyone, transgender, and very soon we'll begin the largest deportation operation in American history, larger, even larger than President Dwight Eisenhower who has the record right now.

(23:55)
And we're going to end the Biden War on American energy and unleash our energy resources to quickly defeat inflation and achieve the lowest cost of energy and electricity on Earth. And we're going to be using our emergency powers to allow countries and entrepreneurs and people with a lot of money build big plants, AI plants. We need double the energy that we already have, and it's going to end up being more than that. And we're going to slash, we're going to slash the regulations, environmental regulations, that are really put in there in order to stop progress in this country. We're going to also slash something else, the waste in our bloated federal bureaucracy. We will create the new Department of Government Efficiency headed by a gentleman named Elon Musk who's here someplace. I don't know where the hell he is. He's here someplace. Come here, Elon. Did you see his rocket yesterday? It was captured. Ah. And X is with him. X. Come on, Elon, say a couple of words.

Elon Musk (25:19):

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Sorry. Little X just followed me on the stage here. He's a very enthusiastic supporter, as you can see. Woo. Yeah.

(25:41)
So we're looking forward to making a lot of changes, and this victory is the start really. What matters going forward is to actually make significant changes, cement those changes, and set the foundation for America to be strong for centuries, forever. And make America great again. Yeah. So yeah. So anyway, we can do great things here. Thank you.

Donald Trump (26:54):

Thank you, Elon.

(26:54)
I always say we have to be protective of our geniuses, because we don't have too many, but that one is a good one. Now, I watched his rocket come down about three months ago, and I thought it was crashing. I was talking to somebody on the phone. By the way, same thing happened yesterday. It came down, and it was captured so beautifully. It came down. It's tumbling. It's a mess. It's going down. I say, "Oh, look at that thing. That's a disaster."

(27:20)
And then it gets a couple of miles away from Earth and all of a sudden the engines start going on. The things start, and then I see it coming in and landing in the gantry. And I'm watching. I'm saying, "Oh, it's going to crash. Oh." But those engines came out, and they blew the fire all over the place. And all of a sudden, those two big arms came and hugged it like you would hug your little baby, and that sucker landed it. Nobody's been able to do that but him. And he's a great guy.

(27:52)
And we have him and Vivek and some great people working on a thing called costs, and he's got the credibility to do it too, and we're going to do things that are really amazing.

(28:03)
But he went out to Pennsylvania after that. He landed that rocket. Nobody had ever seen, by the way, China can't do it, Russia can't do it or come close. It would be 10 years before they can do it. And the US can't do it except for him, and it's pretty amazing, but he did that. And then he journeyed to Pennsylvania where he spent a month and a half campaigning for me in Pennsylvania, and he's a popular guy, and he was very effective, and he knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers, those vote-counting computers, and we ended up winning Pennsylvania in a landslide. So it was pretty good. He's pretty good. So thank you to Elon, and his son's name, who's cute as a button, his son's name is X. He's the only guy that could get away with the name X, but his son is a great guy.

(28:56)
One thing we know, his son is smart. If you believe in the racehorse theory, he's got a nice, smart son. But thank you very much to Elon and everybody. We've had so much help. Every radical and foolish executive order of the Biden Administration will be repealed within hours of when I take the oath of office. Oh, you're going to have a lot of fun watching television tomorrow. Somebody said yesterday, "Sir, don't sign so many in one day. Let's do it over a period of weeks." I said, "Like hell we're going to do it over weeks. We're going to sign them at the beginning." You know that old story. Let's do it later then it never gets done. No, we're doing them tomorrow, and we'll have plenty to sign in the future. Don't worry about it. It's not going to stop, but we're

Donald Trump (30:00):

… going to stop the destructive and divisive diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates all across the government and private sector and return our country to the merit system. The Supreme Court ruled that the United States is allowed to go by the merit system, which is what made us great in the first place. That was a big, big ruling that a lot of people don't even know about, but that was a big, tremendous ruling. And you're focusing on character, competence, and qualifications in all hiring decisions. Now you're allowed to go by competence and ability and genius. You don't have to hire somebody to send up one of his rocket ships that doesn't know anything about what's happening.

(30:52)
As the first step toward restoring transparency and accountability to government, we will also reverse the over-classification of government documents. And in the coming days, we are going to make public remaining records relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother, Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other topics of great public interest. It's all going to be released, Uncle Sam. And I will direct our military to begin construction of the great Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will all be made in the USA. And we will get wokeness the hell out of our military immediately and make it like it used to be. Take a look at this.

Speaker 23 (31:56):

You little scumbag. I've got your name. I've got your ass. You will not laugh. You will not cry. You will learn by the numbers.

Speaker 24 (32:07):

Happy pride. Happy Pride Month. And actually, let's declare it a summer of pride.

Speaker 23 (32:12):

So you're a killer?

Speaker 25 (32:14):

Sir, yes, sir.

Speaker 23 (32:14):

Let me see your war face.

Speaker 25 (32:16):

Sir?

Speaker 23 (32:17):

You got a war face? Aah! That's a war face. Now let me see your war face.

Speaker 25 (32:22):

Aah!

Speaker 23 (32:24):

Bullshit. You didn't convince me. Let me see your real war face.

Speaker 25 (32:36):

Aah!

MUSIC (32:36):

[inaudible 00:32:37].

Speaker 23 (32:37):

You will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death, praying for war. But until that day, you are pukes. You're the lowest form of life on Earth. You're not even human fucking beings. You're nothing but unorganized, grab-asstic pieces of amphibian shit.

MUSIC (32:53):

Abracadabra. These bitches know I got answers. The way I-

Speaker 23 (32:58):

Looks to me like the best part of you ran down the crack of your mama's ass and ended up as a brown stain on the mattress. I love working for Uncle Sam.

Speaker 26 (33:11):

I love working for Uncle Sam.

Speaker 23 (33:11):

Let's me know just who I am.

Speaker 26 (33:11):

Let's me know just who I am.

Speaker 23 (33:18):

1, 2, 3, 4, United States Marine Corps.

Speaker 26 (33:36):

1, 2, 3, 4, United States Marine Corps.

Donald Trump (33:37):

Thank you. So we won two World Wars with that, and that's the way it's going to be. The American people have given us their trust and in return, we're going to give them the best first day, the biggest first week, and the most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency in American history. To implement this historic agenda, I've assembled an all-star cabinet of patriots and visionaries and reformers who will fight for America. And together, we will win, win, win for America. To restore the spirit of American Armed Forces, I have appointed Pete Hegseth as our next Secretary of Defense. Where's Pete? Where's Pete? Pete's here someplace. Where is he? Good job, Pete. They like you, Pete. Thanks, Pete. They Like him.

(34:51)
To bring back integrity to our intelligence community, Tulsi Gabbard will be our next director of National Intelligence. To make America healthy again, we will have Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. To end the weaponization of our government and restore the impartial rule of law, oh, this is so important, she's so incredible, Pam Bondi will be an outstanding attorney general. She's going to do an incredible job. She will do an incredible job. And she's working with another person who's going to be unbelievable at the FBI, Kash Patel. And tomorrow, everybody in this very large arena will be very happy with my decision on the J6 hostages. Very happy. I think you'll be very, very happy. I would say about 99.9% in this beautiful arena.

(36:18)
And by the way, I want to thank the owners of this arena. They are great. They're up here someplace in one of those beautiful boxes and their team is doing very well. And Ovechkin is a great player, right? But I want to thank Ted and all of the owners for allowing this to take place. It was really great, and thank you. It's a hell of an operation. Great place. Fantastic arena. Thank you, Ted. Thank you, everybody. At Homeland Security, we will have a tough leader in Kristi Noem, and we will have an outstanding secretary of transportation in Sean Duffy, Congressman Sean Duffy. Great people. And we're going to win so much with Governor Burgum of the Interior. You know Governor Burgum, one of the best governors in the country.

(37:15)
His in charge of Department of the Interior and the hottest man anywhere in the world for energy. When I announced him, people couldn't believe it. You didn't hear of him, but if you're in the energy business, he's considered the absolute best. Mr. Chris Wright of the energy department, he's going to head up the energy department. He's the hottest guy there is. Anybody in the energy business, they said, "I can't believe you got Chris Wright." And a man named Marco Rubio is going to be our great future Secretary of State. And Howard Lutnick, a tremendous success on Wall Street is going to be our Secretary of Commerce. They have to go through these drills, but they're going to.

(38:06)
And I want to thank the Republican senators. They've been doing great. And John Thune has been doing a great job in moving the process along quickly. We're going to have a lot of them, hopefully, approved very quickly. And a very special woman, Linda McMahon, is going to be our future Secretary of Education, which we're going to be giving back to the states. Let the state run education. I said to Linda, "Linda, I'm making you the Secretary of Education, but if you do a great job, you'll put yourself out of a job because you're going to be sending it back to the states." And she's fantastic. And her staff, which has been largely hired, is fantastic.

(38:54)
And all of the other leaders will come to me and they're going to say, "Do you remember I used to do this for fun?" But it's really not fun, it's fact because we have to do some of best of, right? But they're going to come and say to me, "Sir, we're winning too much, sir. We can't take it anymore. We have to stop winning, sir. We can't do it. We're not used to winning in our country." And each one of them is going to say, every single one, "Sir, please, please, you're destroying our country. We're winning too much. Our country isn't prepared for this. They're not used to winning, sir." And I'll say, "No, no, Linda and everybody, we're not going to stop winning. The people of our country want us to keep on winning and we're going to go win like never, ever before."

(39:47)
And that's what we're going to do. We're going to be doing it, Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam is having a heart attack down here. Look at him. Uncle Sam is going wild. And they think I pay for these people. I have no idea who he is. All I know is he does. And there's Abe Lincoln. Thank you, Honest Abe. I swear I have no idea who the hell he is. But he looks like Abe. He's probably a little bit shorter, in all fairness. Abe was 6'6". He's a little bit shorter. He's about a foot shorter. Other than that, he's perfect. Thank you, Abe. In addition to the most talented cabinet ever assembled, and we're hearing things like, we will be supported in our mission by countless wonderful American patriots.

(40:35)
First, let me thank my incredible family, and I want to thank, in particular, somebody that headed up the Republican Party, along with Mike, the two of them, Lara Trump, who you saw before, who produced those two beautiful children. Lara Trump is unbelievable. She was the chairman of the Republican Party and nobody ever said, "Oh, gee, it's a family member." They actually said, "How the hell did you get her to do it?" And she did a phenomenal job. We had a minimum of cheating. We watched them like… Where is Lara? Where the hell is she? But she did some job. See, she wants to be nice and quiet. She's here someplace. Thank you, Lara. Thank you very much, Hon. She's phenomenal, the job she did.

(41:26)
And her son who was up… Didn't they do a beautiful job, the son and the daughter? How many young kids know that one? They don't know that one. But her husband is somebody I'm very proud of. He's doing a great job. He's been subpoenaed more than any human being in history, I believe. Every day he'd get a subpoena from Congress on something, oh, bullshit. But he'd get a subpoena. He's got a PhD in subpoenas. But he did a fantastic job. And Don, you know all about Don, how he did. He's great. He's very popular too. He knows a lot about guns, I want to tell you that. By the way, I have to tell you, we had great support from every gun group, including the NRA. It's really worked hard. And Ivanka and Jared are here. And Tiffany and Michael are here. And Baron and my 10 incredible grandchildren, and another one coming through Tiffany.

(42:34)
And of course, I want to thank our next Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, wherever he may be. There's a lot of people. Wherever the hell he is. He's here someplace. It's a lot of people. It's a little tough when you say, "Where is he?" You got a lot of people in here. But JD Vance has been extraordinary, and he's got an unbelievable wife, the Second Lady of the United States Usha Vance. So, Usha, thank you very much. It's a beautiful couple, great people. We're also pleased to be joined tonight by Hulk Hogan. The Hulkster. One thing, it's not hard to find him, all he has to do is stand up. You just say, "There he is." But he's great. And Kid Rock. Wow. Kid Rock is a friend of mine. He's a friend of mine for a long, long time. He did that thing on Budweiser, Budweiser will never be the same, when he did the gun with a MAGA hat. That was the commercial that everybody saw.

(43:51)
Also with us tonight is a great actor, a tremendously talented guy, John Voight, who's great, and a friend of mine. And Sylvester Stallone is here, a great guy. And I got Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone, and John Voight to become ambassadors to Hollywood, California, to put it back on track. So they're all ambassadors. You have to refer to them as Mr. Ambassador. And a man who's got an army of young people, Charlie Kirk, is here. And I want to thank Charlie. Charlie is fantastic. Don't believe the stuff when you hear the kids are liberal, they're not liberal. Maybe they used to be, but they're not anymore. You got to see how many people are for us. And I want to thank Megyn Kelly. She's been terrific. She's been really good. And Billy Ray Cyrus. And Lee Greenwood. Wow. Has he been something? What a song and what

Donald Trump (45:00):

What a man. And by the way, these microphones, you see the microphones? I said, "What the hell are those microphones doing standing behind me?" You're going to have a little special treat at the end of this speech. I don't want to tell you because you'll rush me off the stage. "Get off the stage," but you have a little special treat. And I won't tell you, but let's put it this way, it's the people that 30 years ago had a hot song, never hit number one, hit number five, but 30 years later, it hit number one week after week.

(45:42)
And they're here to sing. They're here to sing for you, and you won't recognize them. They're slightly larger than they used to be, but that's the way life goes. We can all tell you that's the way life goes. There's nothing we can do about that. Sebastian Gorka, stand up, Sebastian. I see Sebastian. There as a patriot. He's been with me through thick and thin, right, Sebastian? Now he's with the administration. Thank you. Great guy. And again, I want to thank Elon for what he did in Pennsylvania. He worked so hard. He worked so hard in Pennsylvania. A great guy and a man who is a champion, a man who took something from nothing. Everybody said this is something will never work. It's too violent. But he understood people. He said, "They like violence, unfortunately," right? But a man who understood fighting better than any man ever, there's never been anything like this. What Dana White did with the UFC and building it into a monster sport franchise.

(46:54)
So I want to thank Dana White of USC for being here. And Dana, you've done a job like nobody could have done. Thank you. He's a great guy and a friend of mine. Great friend of mine. He's a tough cookie. You want him on your side at all time. Every one of those people you want on your side. And we have dozens of other celebrities and everything, but we're going to get back to what we're doing. But I do want to say in the audience, we have many governors, many, many senators, many members of Congress and other distinguished guests, far too many to name, unless you'd like me to name them. No? Do you want me to name governors, senators and congresspeople? No, I thought you were going to say that. Sorry, governors. No, but we appreciate all of the love that we've gotten from them.

(47:45)
I'll tell you, our house and our Senate, Republicans have been unbelievable, and the governors are unbelievable, the job they're doing. Of the crime-ridden cities, the top 25, every single one of them is run by a Democrat. Does that tell you something? We don't have problems in the Republican cities. Tonight I also want to send our love to everyone affected by the terrible wildfires raging in California. We're praying for you all. We love you all. We're going to be there very soon. I'm going to go out there on Friday to see it and to get it moving back. We're going to get some of the best builders in the world. We'll get it moving back. And I also want to pay my respects to the great people of North Carolina. I won it every single time, and they've been treated very badly. FEMA almost didn't know it existed. And we're going to get North Carolina rocking and rolling. Okay? We're going to get them rocking and rolling.

(48:52)
They've been treated very badly as a state. Together we will rebuild Los Angeles better, more beautiful than ever before. We're going to get it going. We have the best builders in the world. It's the only people that could do it. Nobody else knows what the hell they're doing. And in 2028, the Los Angeles Olympics will be one of the great sporting events and patriotic celebrations in history. I was with Johnny, the head of the Olympics. And because of the wildfires, they're going to do a special, special job. They're going to really do something very special on the Olympics. And the opposite. Some people say, "Oh, maybe the Olympics can't go." It turned out just the opposite. They came to see me the other day and the committee, and it's just the opposite. So the Olympics is great. And Johnny for the others, the World Cup, Johnny is the head of it.

(49:46)
We had our top people, Wasserman, they all came in on the Olympics. And then I saw Johnny. And we got the World Cup too. And it's only because they rigged the election that I'll be your president representing you there. I got both of them. I got the Olympics and I got the World Cup and I said, "You know, it's too bad. One was in 2026 and the other was in 2028." And I said, "I won't be there. I won't be your president. But then they rigged the election and now we won, so I'm going to be your president for the Olympics and for the World Cup." So Johnny, thank you for the World Cup. And everybody, thank you for the Olympics. We're going to have a great time.

(50:32)
We have another thing happening, 250 years, a celebration like no other, 250 years, and that's going to be taking place next year. So we have a lot of big events coming. And everything we do, we do everything. We take it very, very seriously. But what do we do more than anything else? We put America first, and it all starts tomorrow when I raise my hand on the Bible to be sworn as your… We'll be sworn in tomorrow. We're all going to be sworn in together. That's the way I look at it. It's not me, it's you. Greatest of all time. So we will be sworn in tomorrow. I'll be representing you as your 47th President of the United States. And just in conclusion together, we're going to cut your taxes, end inflation, slash your prices, getting them back down, raise your wages, and bring thousands of factories back to the USA, right where they belong. And that'll be done through tariffs and smart policy. We will build American, we will buy American and we will hire American. I will end the war in Ukraine, I will stop the chaos in the Middle East and I will prevent World War III from happening. And you have no idea how close we are. We will crush violent crime in our cities and give our police the support, protection, resources and respect they so dearly deserve. We will strengthen and modernize our military again. We did it. We rebuilt our entire military, and then they gave billions and billions of dollars of it to, you remember, to the Taliban. They gave it to the Taliban.

(52:38)
They gave our military equipment, a big chunk of it to the enemy. Do you know that we pay billions of dollars a year? Do you know this? Does anyone know this, to Afghanistan? Do you know that? And I say, "If we're going to pay billions of dollars a year, tell them we're not going to give them the money unless they give back our military equipment that these poor, stupid people allowed for them to have." So we'll give them a couple of bucks. We want the military equipment back. We will rebuild our once great cities, including our capital in Washington, D.C., making them safe, clean, and beautiful again. And we want to make this city again safe.

(53:26)
We don't want people coming to Washington and getting mugged, shot, killed. We're going to stop it. Law enforcement. And they have very good police here, but they have to be allowed to do their job. We're going to stop it. We're going to beautify it. We're going to make it the most beautiful capital in the world. We will teach our children to love our country, to honor our history, and to always respect our great American flag. And we will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.

(54:11)
And always remember, this is so easy, this will be done tomorrow. We will keep men out of women's sports. It's over. I will defend religious liberty, I will restore free speech and I will defend the right to keep and bear arms. We're going to defend that right. After years of building up foreign nations, defending foreign borders and protecting foreign land, we are finally going to build up our country, defend our borders, and protect our citizens. And we will stop illegal immigration once and for all. We will not be invaded. We will not be occupied. We will not be overrun. We will not be conquered. We will be a free and proud nation once again. And that will take place tomorrow at 12:00.

(55:18)
Everyone in our country will prosper, every family will thrive, and every day will be filled with opportunity and hope, and also filled with a thing called the American Dream that you don't hear much about anymore. For the past nine years, you and I fought side by side against the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth. And in our magnificent victory on November 5th, you showed them once and for all that this nation does not belong to them. This nation belongs to you. From New York to Los Angeles, from Philadelphia to Phoenix, from Chicago to Miami, and from Houston to right here in Washington. D.C., our country was won and built by generations of patriots who gave everything they had for our rights and for our freedom.

(56:21)
They were farmers and soldiers, cowboys and factory workers, steelworkers, coal miners, police officers and pioneers who pushed onward, marched forward and let no obstacles stand in their path. Nothing could get in their way. Together, they laid down the railroads, raised up the skyscrapers, built the great highways, won two world wars, defeated fascism and communism, and launched American astronauts to the moon. It was hard-working patriots like you who built this country. And 75 days ago, on November 5th, it was hard-working patriots like you who saved our country. You saved our country.

(57:11)
Now after all we have been through together, we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history. With your help, we will restore America's promise and we will rebuild the nation that we all love so much. We are one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God. We will never give in, we will never give up, we will never back down, and we will never, ever, ever, ever surrender. We will fight, fight, fight, and we will win, win, win. And together we will make America powerful again. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America healthy again. We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. What a great victory for everybody. Thank you America. Thank you very much. Thank you.

PLAYBOY: "What do you say to those who insist that all rock since the Beatles has been the Beatles redone?"

LENNON: "All music is rehash. There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme. Try to tell the kids in the Seventies who were screaming to the Bee Gees that their music was just the Beatles redone. There is nothing wrong with the Bee Gees. They do a damn good job. There was nothing else going on then."

PLAYBOY: "Wasn't alot of the Beatles' music at least more intelligent?"

LENNON: "The Beatles were more intellectual, so they appealed on that level, too. But the basic appeal of the Beatles was not their intelligence. It was their music. It was only after some guy in the 'London Times' said there were Aeolian cadences in 'It Won't Be Long' that the middle classes started listening to it... because somebody put a tag on it."

PLAYBOY: "Did you put Aeolian cadences in 'It Won't Be Long?'"

LENNON: "To this day, I don't have any idea what they are. They sound like exotic birds."

PLAYBOY: "How did you react to the misinterpretations of your songs?"

LENNON: "For instance?"

PLAYBOY: "The most obvious is the 'Paul is dead' fiasco. You already explained the line in 'Glass Onion.' What about the line in 'I am the Walrus'... (correction: Strawberry Fields Forever) ...'I buried Paul'?"

LENNON: "I said 'Cranberry sauce.' That's all I said. Some people like ping-pong, other people like digging over graves. Some people will do anything rather than be here now."

PLAYBOY: "What about the chant at the end of the song: Smoke pot, smoke pot, everybody smoke pot'?"

LENNON: "No, no, no. I had this whole choir saying, 'Everybody's got one, everybody's got one.' But when you get 30 people, male and female, on top of 30 cellos and on top of the Beatles' rock 'n roll rhythm section, you can't hear what they're saying."

PLAYBOY: "What does 'everybody got'?"

LENNON: "Anything. You name it. One penis, one vagina, one asshole-- you name it."

PLAYBOY: "Did it trouble you when the interpretations of your songs were destructive, such as when Charles Manson claimed that your lyrics were messages to him?"

LENNON: "No. It has nothing to do with me. It's like that guy, Son of Sam, who was having these talks with the dog. Manson was just an extreme version of the people who came up with the 'Paul is dead' thing or who figured out that the initials to 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' were LSD and concluded I was writing about acid."

PLAYBOY: "Where did 'Lucy in the Sky' come from?"

LENNON: "My son Julian came in one day with a picture he painted about a school friend of his named Lucy. He had sketched in some stars in the sky and called it 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,' Simple."

PLAYBOY: "The other images in the song weren't drug-inspired?"

LENNON: "The images were from 'Alice in Wonderland.' It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere and I was visualizing that. There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me... a 'girl with kaleidoscope eyes' who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn't met Yoko yet. So maybe it should be 'Yoko in the Sky with Diamonds.'"

PLAYBOY: "Do you have any interest in the pop historians analyzing the Beatles as a cultural phenomenon?"

LENNON: "It's all equally irrelevant. Mine is to do and other people's is to record, I suppose. Does it matter how many drugs were in Elvis' body? I mean, Brian Epstein's sex life will make a nice 'Hollywood Babylon' someday, but it is irrelevant."

PLAYBOY: "What started the rumors about you and Epstein?"

LENNON: "I went on holiday to Spain with Brian... which started all the rumors that he and I were having a love affair. Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But we did have a pretty intense relationship. And it was my first experience with someone I knew was a homosexual. He admitted it to me. We had this holiday together because Cyn was pregnant and we left her with the baby and went to Spain. Lots of funny stories, you know. We used to sit in cafs and Brian would look at all the boys and I would ask, 'Do you like that one? Do you like this one?' It was just the combination of our closeness and the trip that started the rumors."

PLAYBOY: "It's interesting to hear you talk about your old songs such as 'Lucy in the Sky' and 'Glass Onion.' Will you give some brief thoughts on some of our favorites?"

LENNON: "Right."

PLAYBOY: "Let's start with 'In My Life.'"

LENNON: "It was the first song I wrote that was consciously about my life. (sings) 'There are places I'll remember/ all my life though some have changed...' Before, we were just writing songs a la Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly-- pop songs with no more thought to them than that. The words were almost irrelevant. 'In My Life' started out as a bus journey from my house at 250 Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning all the places I could recall. I wrote it all down and it was boring. So I forgot about it and laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about friends and lovers of the past. Paul helped with the middle-eight."

PLAYBOY: "'Yesterday.'"

LENNON: "Well, we all know about 'Yesterday.' I have had so much accolade for 'Yesterday.' That is Paul's song, of course, and Paul's baby. Well done. Beautiful-- and I never wished I had written it."

PLAYBOY: "'With a Little Help from My Friends.'"

LENNON: "This is Paul, with a little help from me. 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you, but I know it's mine...' is mine."

PLAYBOY: "'I am the Walrus.'"

LENNON: "The first line was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in after I met Yoko. Part of it was putting down Hare Krishna. All these people were going on about Hare Krishna, Allen Ginsberg in particular. The reference to 'Element'ry penguin' is the elementary, naive attitude of going around chanting, 'Hare Krishna,' or putting all your faith in any one idol. I was writing obscurely, a la Dylan, in those days."

PLAYBOY: "The song is very complicated, musically."

LENNON: "It actually was fantastic in stereo, but you never hear it all. There was too much to get on. It was too messy a mix. One track was live BBC Radio-- Shakespeare or something-- I just fed in whatever lines came in."

PLAYBOY: "What about the walrus itself?"

LENNON: "It's from 'The Walrus and the Carpenter.' 'Alice in Wonderland.' To me, it was a beautiful poem. It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter.' But that wouldn't have been the same, would it? (singing) 'I am the carpenter....'"

PLAYBOY: "How about 'She Came in Through the Bathroom Window'?"

LENNON: "That was written by Paul when we were in New York forming Apple, and he first met Linda. Maybe she's the one who came in the window. She must have. I don't know. Somebody came in the window."

PLAYBOY: "'I Feel Fine.'"

LENNON: "That's me, including the guitar lick with the first feedback ever recorded. I defy anybody to find an earlier record... unless it is some old blues record from the Twenties... with feedback on it."

PLAYBOY: "'When I'm Sixty-Four.'"

LENNON: "Paul completely. I would never even dream of writing a song like that. There are some areas I never think about and that is one of them."

PLAYBOY: "'A Day in the Life.'"

LENNON: "Just as it sounds: I was reading the paper one day and I noticed two stories. One was the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next page was a story about 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. In the streets, that is. They were going to fill them all. Paul's contribution was the beautiful little lick in the song 'I'd love to turn you on.' I had the bulk of the song and the words, but he contributed this little lick floating around in his head that he couldn't use for anything. I thought it was a damn good piece of work."

PLAYBOY: "May we continue with some of the ones that seem more personal and see what reminiscences they inspire?"

LENNON: "Reminisce away."

PLAYBOY: "For no reason whatsoever, let's start with 'I Wanna Be Your Man.'"

LENNON: "Paul and I finished that one off for the Stones. We were taken down by Brian to meet them at the club where they were playing in Richmond. They wanted a song and we went to see what kind of stuff they did. Paul had this bit of a song and we played it roughly for them and they said, 'Yeah, OK, that's our style.' But it was only really a lick, so Paul and I went off in the corner of the room and finished the song off while they were all sitting there, talking. We came back and Mick and Keith said, 'Jesus, look at that. They just went over there and wrote it.' You know, right in front of their eyes. We gave it to them. It was a throwaway. Ringo sang it for us and the Stones did their version. It shows how much importance we put on them. We weren't going to give them anything great, right? That was the Stones' first record. Anyway, Mick and Keith said, 'If they can write a song so easily, we should try it.' They say it inspired them to start writing together."

PLAYBOY: "How about 'Strawberry Fields Forever'?"

LENNON: "Strawberry Fields is a real place. After I stopped living at Penny Lane, I moved in with my auntie who lived in the suburbs in a nice semidetached place with a small garden and doctors and lawyers and that ilk living around... not the poor slummy kind of image that was projected in all the Beatles stories. In the class system, it was about half a class higher than Paul, George and Ringo, who lived in government-subsidized housing. We owned our house and had a garden. They didn't have anything like that. Near that home was Strawberry Fields, a house near a boys' reformatory where I used to go to garden parties as a kid with my friends Nigel and Pete. We would go there and hang out and sell lemonade bottles for a penny. We always had fun at Strawberry Fields. So that's where I got the name. But I used it as an image. Strawberry Fields forever."

PLAYBOY: "And the lyrics, for instance: 'Living is easy...'"

LENNON: (singing) "'...with eyes closed. Misunderstanding all you see.' It still goes, doesn't it? Aren't I saying exactly the same thing now? The awareness apparently trying to be expressed is-- let's say in one way I was always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was different from the others. I was different all my life. The second verse goes, 'No one I think is in my tree.' Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius-- 'I mean it must be high or low,' the next line. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn't see. I thought I was crazy or an egomaniac for claiming to see things other people didn't see. As a child, I would say, 'But this is going on!' and everybody would look at me as if I was crazy. I always was so psychic or intuitive or poetic or whatever you want to call it, that I was always seeing things in a hallucinatory way. It was scary as a child, because there was nobody to relate to. Neither my auntie nor my friends nor anybody could ever see what I did. It was very, very scary and the only contact I had was reading about an Oscar Wilde or a Dylan Thomas or a Vincent van Gogh-- all those books that my auntie had that talked about their suffering because of their visions. Because of what they saw, they were tortured by society for trying to express what they were. I saw loneliness."

PLAYBOY: "Were you able to find others to share your visions with?"

LENNON: "Only dead people in books. Lewis Carroll, certain paintings. Surrealism had a great effect on me, because then I realized that my imagery and my mind wasn't insanity; that if it was insane, I belong in an exclusive club that sees the world in those terms. Surrealism to me is reality. Psychic vision to me is reality. Even as a child. When I looked at myself in the mirror or when I was 12, 13, I used to literally trance out into alpha. I didn't know what it was called then. I found out years later there is a name for those conditions. But I would find myself seeing hallucinatory images of my face changing and becoming cosmic and complete. It caused me to always be a rebel. This thing gave me a chip on the shoulder; but, on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted. Part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society and not be this loudmouthed lunatic musician. But I cannot be what I am not. Because of my attitude, all the other boys' parents, including Paul's father, would say, 'Keep away from him.' The parents instinctively recognized what I was, which was a troublemaker, meaning I did not conform and I would influence their kids, which I did. I did my best to disrupt every friend's home I had. Partly, maybe, it was out of envy that I didn't have this so-called home. But I really did. I had an auntie and an uncle and a nice suburban home, thank you very much. Hear this, Auntie. She was hurt by a remark Paul made recently that the reason I am staying home with Sean now is because I never had a family life. It's absolute rubbish. There were five women who were my family. Five strong, intelligent women. Five sisters. One happened to be my mother. My mother was the youngest. She just couldn't deal with life. She had a husband who ran away to sea and the war was on and she couldn't cope with me, and when I was four and a half, I ended up living with her elder sister. Now, those women were fantastic. One day I might do a kind of 'Forsyte Saga' just about them. That was my first feminist education. Anyway, that knowledge and the fact that I wasn't with my parents made me see that parents are not gods. I would infiltrate the other boys' minds. Paul's parents were terrified of me and my influence, simply because I was free from the parents' strangle hold. That was the gift I got for not having parents. I cried a lot about not having them and it was torture, but it also gave me an awareness early. I wasn't an orphan, though. My mother was alive and lived a 15-minute walk away from me all my life. I saw her off and on. I just didn't live with her."

PLAYBOY: "Is she alive?"

LENNON: "No, she got killed by an off-duty cop who was drunk after visiting my auntie's house where I lived. I wasn't there at the time. She was just at a bus stop. I was 16. That was another big trauma for me. I lost her twice. When I was five and I moved in with my auntie, and then when she physically died. That made me more bitter; the chip on my shoulder I had as a youth got really big then. I was just really re-establishing the relationship with her and she was killed."

PLAYBOY: "Her name was Julia, wasn't it? Is she the Julia of your song of that name on 'The White Album?'"

LENNON: "The song is for her... and for Yoko."

PLAYBOY: "What kind of relationship did you have with your father, who went away to sea? Did you ever see him again?"

LENNON: "I never saw him again until I made a lot of money and he came back."

PLAYBOY: "How old were you?"

LENNON: "24 or 25. I opened the 'Daily Express' and there he was, washing dishes in a small hotel or something very near where I was living in the Stockbroker belt outside London. He had been writing to me to try to get in contact. I didn't want to see him. I was too upset about what he'd done to me and to my mother and that he would turn up when I was rich and famous and not bother turning up before. So I wasn't going to see him at all, but he sort of blackmailed me in the press by saying all this about being a poor man washing dishes while I was living in luxury. I fell for it and saw him and we had some kind of relationship. He died a few years later of cancer. But at 65, he married a secretary who had been working for the Beatles, age 22, and they had a child, which I thought was hopeful for a man who had lived his life as a drunk and almost a Bowery bum."

PLAYBOY: "We'll never listen to 'Strawberry Fields Forever' the same way again. What memories are jogged by the song 'Help'?"

LENNON: "When 'Help' came out in '65, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help. It was my fat Elvis period. You see the movie: He -- I -- is very fat, very insecure, and he's completely lost himself. And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how easy it was. Now I may be very positive... yes, yes... but I also go through deep depressions where I would like to jump out the window, you know. It becomes easier to deal with as I get older; I don't know whether you learn control or, when you grow up, you calm down a little. Anyway, I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for help. In those days, when the Beatles were depressed, we had this little chant. I would yell out, 'Where are we going, fellows?' They would say, 'To the top, Johnny,' in pseudo-American voices. And I would say, 'Where is that, fellows?' And they would say, 'To the toppermost of the poppermost.' It was some dumb expression from a cheap movie, a la 'Blackboard Jungle,' about Liverpool. Johnny was the leader of the gang."

PLAYBOY: "What were you depressed about during the 'Help' period?"

LENNON: "The Beatles thing had just gone beyond comprehension. We were smoking marijuana for breakfast. We were well into marijuana and nobody could communicate with us, because we were just all glazed eyes, giggling all the time. In our own world. That was the song, 'Help.' I think everything that comes out of a song-- even Paul's songs now, which are apparently about nothing-- shows something about yourself."

PLAYBOY: "Was 'I'm a Loser' a similarly personal statement?"

LENNON: "Part of me suspects that I'm a loser and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty."

PLAYBOY: "How about 'Cold Turkey?'"

LENNON: "The song is self-explanatory. The song got banned, even though it's antidrug. They're so stupid about drugs, you know. They're not looking at the cause of the drug problem: Why do people take drugs? To escape from what? Is life so terrible? Are we living in such a terrible situation that we can't do anything without reinforcement of alcohol, tobacco? Aspirins, sleeping pills, uppers, downers, never mind the heroin and cocaine-- they're just the outer fringes of Librium and speed."

PLAYBOY: "Do you use any drugs now?"

LENNON: "Not really. If somebody gives me a joint, I might smoke it, but I don't go after it."

PLAYBOY: "Cocaine?"

LENNON: "I've had cocaine, but I don't like it. The Beatles had lots of it in their day, but it's a dumb drug, because you have to have another one 20 minutes later. Your whole concentration goes on getting the next fix. Really, I find caffeine is easier to deal with."

PLAYBOY: "Acid?"

LENNON: "Not in years. A little mushroom or peyote is not beyond my scope, you know, maybe twice a year or something. You don't hear about it anymore, but people are still visiting the cosmos. We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD. That's what people forget. Everything is the opposite of what it is, isn't it, Harry? So get out the bottle, boy... and relax. They invented LSD to control people and what they did was give us freedom. Sometimes it works in mysterious ways its wonders to perform. If you look in the Government reports on acid, the ones who jumped out the window or killed themselves because of it, I think even with Art Linkletter's daughter, it happened to her years later. So, let's face it, she wasn't really on acid when she jumped out the window. And I've never met anybody who's had a flashback on acid. I've never had a flashback in my life and I took millions of trips in the Sixties."

PLAYBOY: "What does your diet include besides sashimi and sushi, Hershey bars and cappuccinos?"

LENNON: "We're mostly macrobiotic, but sometimes I take the family out for a pizza."

ONO: "Intuition tells you what to eat. It's dangerous to try to unify things. Everybody has different needs. We went through vegetarianism and macrobiotic, but now, because we're in the studio, we do eat some junk food. We're trying to stick to macrobiotic: fish and rice, whole grains. You balance foods and eat foods indigenous to the area. Corn is the grain from this area."

PLAYBOY: "And you both smoke up a storm."

LENNON: "Macrobiotic people don't believe in the big C. Whether you take that as a rationalization or not, macrobiotics don't believe that smoking is bad for you. Of course, if we die, we're wrong."

PLAYBOY: "Let's go back to jogging your memory with songs. How about Paul's song 'Hey Jude'?"

LENNON: "He said it was written about Julian. He knew I was splitting with Cyn and leaving Julian then. He was driving to see Julian to say hello. He had been like an uncle. And he came up with 'Hey Jude.' But I always heard it as a song to me. Now I'm sounding like one of those fans reading things into it... Think about it: Yoko had just come into the picture. He is saying. 'Hey, Jude'-- 'Hey, John.' Subconsciously, he was saying, 'Go ahead, leave me.' On a conscious level, he didn't want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you.' The devil in him didn't like it at all, because he didn't want to lose his partner."

PLAYBOY: "What about 'Because'?"

LENNON: "I was lying on the sofa in our house, listening to Yoko play Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' on the piano. Suddenly, I said, 'Can you play those chords backward?' She did, and I wrote 'Because' around them. The song sounds like 'Moonlight Sonata,' too. The lyrics are clear, no bullshit, no imagery, no obscure references."

PLAYBOY: "'Give Peace a Chance.'"

LENNON: "All we were saying was give peace a chance."

PLAYBOY: "Was it really a Lennon-McCartney composition?"

LENNON: "No, I don't even know why his name was on it. It's there because I kind of felt guilty because I'd made the separate single-- the first-- and I was really breaking away from the Beatles."

PLAYBOY: Why were the compositions you and Paul did separately attributed to Lennon-McCartney?"

LENNON: "Paul and I made a deal when we were 15. There was never a legal deal between us, just a deal we made when we decided to write together that we put both our names on it, no matter what."

PLAYBOY: "How about 'Do You Want to Know a Secret?'"

LENNON: "The idea came from this thing my mother used to sing to me when I was one or two years old, when she was still living with me. It was from a Disney movie: 'Do you want to know a secret? Promise not to tell? You are standing by a wishing well.' So, with that in my head, I wrote the song and just gave it to George to sing. I thought it would be a good vehicle for him, because it had only three notes and he wasn't the best singer in the world. He has improved a lot since then; but in those days, his ability was very poor. I gave it to him just to give him a piece of the action. That's another reason why I was hurt by his book. I even went to the trouble of making sure he got the B side of a Beatles single, because he hadn't had a B side of one until 'Do You Want to Know a Secret.' 'Something' was the first time he ever got an A side, because Paul and I always wrote both sides. That wasn't because we were keeping him out but simply because his material was not up to scratch. I made sure he got the B side of 'Something,' too, so he got the cash. Those little things he doesn't remember. I always felt bad that George and Ringo didn't get a piece of the publishing. When the opportunity came to give them five percent each of Maclen, it was because of me they got it. It was not because of Klein and not because of Paul but because of me. When I said they should get it, Paul couldn't say no. I don't get a piece of any of George's songs or Ringo's. I never asked for anything for the contributions I made to George's songs like 'Taxman.' Not even the recognition. And that is why I might have sounded resentful about George and Ringo, because it was after all those things that the attitude of 'John has forsaken us' and 'John is tricking us' came out... which is not true."

PLAYBOY: "'Happiness Is a Warm Gun.'"

LENNON: "No, it's not about heroin. A gun magazine was sitting there with a smoking gun on the cover and an article that I never read inside called 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun.' I took it right from there. I took it as the terrible idea of just having shot some animal."

PLAYBOY: "What about the sexual puns: 'When you feel my finger on your trigger'?"

LENNON: "Well, it was at the beginning of my relationship with Yoko and I was very sexually oriented then. When we weren't in the studio, we were in bed."

PLAYBOY: "What was the allusion to 'Mother Superior jumps the gun'?"

LENNON: "I call Yoko Mother or Madam just in an offhand way. The rest doesn't mean anything. It's just images of her."

PLAYBOY: "'Across the Universe.'"

LENNON: "The Beatles didn't make a good record of 'Across the Universe.' I think subconsciously we... I thought Paul subconsciously tried to destroy my great songs. We would play experimental games with my great pieces, like 'Strawberry Fields,' which I always felt was badly recorded. It worked, but it wasn't what it could have been. I allowed it, though. We would spend hours doing little, detailed cleaning up on Paul's songs, but when it came to mine... especially a great song like 'Strawberry Fields' or 'Across the Universe' ...somehow an atmosphere of looseness and experimentation would come up."

PLAYBOY: "Sabotage?"

LENNON: "Subconscious sabotage. I was too hurt... Paul will deny it, because he has a bland face and will say this doesn't exist. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about where I was always seeing what was going on and began to think, Well, maybe I'm paranoid. But it is not paranoid. It is the absolute truth. The same thing happened to 'Across the Universe.' The song was never done properly. The words stand, luckily."

PLAYBOY: "'Getting Better.'"

LENNON: "It is a diary form of writing. All that 'I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved' was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically... any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster."

PLAYBOY: "'Revolution.'"

LENNON: "We recorded the song twice. The Beatles were getting really tense with one another. I did the slow version and I wanted it out as a single: as a statement of the Beatles' position on Vietnam and the Beatles' position on revolution. For years, on the Beatle tours, Epstein had stopped us from saying anything about Vietnam or the war. And he wouldn't allow questions about it. But on one tour, I said, 'I am going to answer about the war. We can't ignore it.' I absolutely wanted the Beatles to say something. The first take of 'Revolution' ...well, George and Paul were resentful and said it wasn't fast enough. Now, if you go into details of what a hit record is and isn't... maybe. But the Beatles could have afforded to put out the slow, understandable version of 'Revolution' as a single. Whether it was a gold record or a wooden record. But because they were so upset about the Yoko period and the fact that I was again becoming as creative and dominating as I had been in the early days, after lying fallow for a couple of years, it upset the apple cart. I was awake again and they couldn't stand it?"

PLAYBOY: "Was it Yoko's inspiration?"

LENNON: "She inspired all this creation in me. It wasn't that she inspired the songs; she inspired me. The statement in 'Revolution' was mine. The lyrics stand today. It's still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. That is what I used to say to Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Count me out if it is for violence. Don't expect me to be on the barricades unless it is with flowers."

PLAYBOY: "What do you think of Hoffman's turning himself in?"

LENNON: "Well he got what he wanted. Which is to be sort of an underground hero for anybody who still worships any manifestation of the underground. I don't feel that much about it anymore. Nixon, Hoffman, it's the same. They are all from the same period. It was kind of surprising to see Abbie on TV, but it was also surprising to see Nixon on TV. Maybe people get the feeling when they see me or us. I feel, What are they doing there? Is this an old newsreel?"

PLAYBOY: "On a new album, you close with 'Hard Times Are Over (For a While).' Why?"

LENNON: "It's not a new message: 'Give Peace a Chance'-- we're not being unreasonable, just saying, 'Give it a chance.' With 'Imagine,' we're saying, 'Can you imagine a world without countries or religions?' It's the same message over and over. And it's positive."

PLAYBOY: "How does it feel to have people anticipate your new record because they feel you are a prophet of sorts? When you returned to the studio to make 'Double Fantasy,' some of your fans were saying things like, 'Just as Lennon defined the Sixties and the Seventies, he'll be defining the Eighties.'"

LENNON: "It's very sad. Anyway, we're not saying anything new. A) we have already said it and, B) 100,000,000 other people have said it, too."

PLAYBOY: "But your songs do have messages."

LENNON: "All we are saying is, 'This is what is happening to us.' We are sending postcards. I don't let it become 'I am the awakened; you are sheep that will be shown the way.' That is the danger of saying anything, you know."

PLAYBOY: "Especially for you."

LENNON: "Listen, there's nothing wrong with following examples. We can have figure heads and people we admire, but we don't need leaders. 'Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters.'"

PLAYBOY: "You're quoting one of your peers, of sorts. Is it distressing to you that Dylan is a born-again Christian?"

LENNON: "I don't like to comment on it. For whatever reason he's doing it, it is personal for him and he needs to do it. But the whole religion business suffers from the 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' bit. There's too much talk about soldiers and marching and converting. I'm not pushing Buddhism, because I'm no more a Buddhist than I am a Christian, but there's one thing I admire about the religion: There's no proselytizing."

PLAYBOY: "Were you a Dylan fan?"

LENNON: "No, I stopped listening to Dylan with both ears after 'Highway 64' [sic] and 'Blonde on Blonde,' and even then it was because George would sit me down and make me listen."

PLAYBOY: "Like Dylan, weren't you also looking for some kind of leader when you did primal-scream therapy with Arthur Janov?"

ONO: "I think Janov was a daddy for John. I think he has this father complex and he's always searching for a daddy."

LENNON: "Had, dear. I had a father complex."

PLAYBOY: "Would you explain?"

ONO: "I had a daddy, a real daddy, sort of a big and strong father like a Billy Graham, but growing up, I saw his weak side. I saw the hypocrisy. So whenever I see something that is supposed to be so big and wonderful, a guru or primal scream, I'm very cynical."

LENNON: "She fought with Janov all the time. He couldn't deal with it."

ONO: "I'm not searching for the big daddy. I look for something else in men... something that is tender and weak and I feel like I want to help."

LENNON: "And I was the lucky cripple she chose!"

ONO: "I have this mother instinct, or whatever. But I was not hung up on finding a father, because I had one who disillusioned me. John never had a chance to get disillusioned about his father, since his father wasn't around, so he never thought of him as that big man."

PLAYBOY: "Do you agree with that assessment, John?"

LENNON: "Alot of us are looking for fathers. Mine was physically not there. Most people's are not there mentally and physically, like always at the office or busy with other things. So all these leaders, parking meters, are all substitute fathers, whether they be religious or political... All this bit about electing a President. We pick our own daddy out of a dog pound of daddies. This is the daddy that looks like the daddy in the commercials. He's got the nice gray hair and the right teeth and the parting's on the right side. OK? This is the daddy we choose. The dog pound of daddies, which is the political arena, gives us a President, then we put him on a platform and start punishing him and screaming at him because Daddy can't do miracles. Daddy doesn't heal us."

PLAYBOY: "So Janov was a daddy for you. Who else?"

ONO: "Before, there was Maharishi."

LENNON: "Maharishi was a father figure, Elvis Presley might have been a father figure. I don't know. Robert Mitchum. Any male image is a father figure. There's nothing wrong with it until you give them the right to give you sort of a recipe for your life. What happens is somebody comes along with a good piece of truth. Instead of the truth's being looked at, the person who brought it is looked at. The messenger is worshiped, instead of the message. So there would be Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Marxism, Maoism-- everything-- it is always about a person and never about what he says."

ONO: "All the 'isms' are daddies. It's sad that society is structured in such a way that people cannot really open up to each other, and therefore they need a certain theater to go to to cry or something like that."

LENNON: "Well, you went to est."

ONO: "Yes, I wanted to check it out."

LENNON: "We went to Janov for the same reason."

ONO: "But est people are given a reminder..."

LENNON: "Yeah, but I wouldn't go and sit in a room and not pee."

ONO: "Well, you did in primal scream."

LENNON: "Oh, but I had you with me."

ONO: "Anyway, when I went to est, I saw Werner Erhardt, the same thing. He's a nice showman and he's got a nice gig there. I felt the same thing when we went to Sai Baba in India. In India, you have to be a guru instead of a pop star. Guru is the pop star of India and pop star is the guru here."

LENNON: "But nobody's perfect, etc., etc. Whether it's Janov or Erhardt or Maharishi or a Beatle. That doesn't take away from their message. It's like learning how to swim. The swimming is fine. But forget about the teacher. If the Beatles had a message, it was that. With the Beatles, the records are the point, not the Beatles as individuals. You don't need the package, just as you don't need the Christian package or the Marxist package to get the message. People always got the image I was an anti-Christ or antireligion. I'm not. I'm a most religious fellow. I was brought up a Christian and I only now understand some of the things that Christ was saying in those parables. Because people got hooked on the teacher and missed the message."

PLAYBOY: "And the Beatles taught people how to swim?"

LENNON: "If the Beatles or the Sixties had a message, it was to learn to swim. Period. And once you learn to swim, swim. The people who are hung up on the Beatles' and the Sixties' dream missed the whole point when the Beatles' and the Sixties' dream became the point. Carrying the Beatles' or the Sixties' dream around all your life is like carrying the Second World War and Glenn Miller around. That's not to say you can't enjoy Glenn Miller or the Beatles, but to live in that dream is the twilight zone. It's not living now. It's an illusion."

PLAYBOY: "Yoko, the single you and John released from your album seems to be looking toward the future."

ONO: "Yes, 'Starting Over' is a song that makes me feel like crying. John has talked about the Sixties and how it gave us a taste for freedom... sexual and otherwise. It was like an orgy. Then, after that big come that we had together, men and women somehow lost track of each other and a lot of families and relationships split apart. I really think that what happened in the Seventies can be compared to what happened under Nazism with Jewish families. Only the force that split them came from the inside, not from the outside. We tried to rationalize it as the price we were paying for our freedom. And John is saying in his song, OK, we had the energy in the Sixties, in the Seventies we separated, but let's start over in the Eighties. He's reaching out to me, the woman. Reaching out after all that's happened, over the battlefield of dead families, is more difficult this time around. On the other side of the record is my song, 'Kiss Kiss Kiss,' which is the other side of the same question. There is the sound of a woman coming to a climax on it, and she is crying out to be held, to be touched. It will be controversial, because people still feel it's less natural to hear the sounds of a woman's lovemaking than, say, the sound of a Concorde, killing the atmosphere and polluting nature. Altogether, both sides are a prayer to change the Eighties."

PLAYBOY: "What is the Eighties' dream to you, John?"

LENNON: Well, you make your own dream. That's the Beatles' story, isn't it? That's Yoko's story. That's what I'm saying now. Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself. That's what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshiped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be. There's nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you."

PLAYBOY: "What is it that keeps people from accepting that message?"

LENNON: "It's fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that... it's all illusion. Unknown is what what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing. Everything is unknown... then you're ahead of the game. That's what it is. Right?"

PLAYBOY: "What about the Bangladesh concert, in which George and other people such as Dylan performed?"

LENNON: "Bangladesh was ca-ca."

PLAYBOY: "You mean because of all the questions that were raised about where the money went?"

LENNON: "Yeah, right. I can't even talk about it, because it's still a problem. You'll have to check with Mother (Yoko) because she knows the ins and outs of it, I don't. But it's all a rip-off. So forget about it. All of you who are reading this, don't bother sending me all that garbage about, 'Just come and save the Indians, come and save the blacks, come and save the war veterans,' Anybody I want to save will be helped through our tithing, which is ten percent of whatever we earn."

PLAYBOY: "But that doesn't compare with what one promoter, Sid Bernstein, said you could raise by giving a world-wide televised concert... playing separately, as individuals, or together, as the Beatles. He estimated you could raise over $200,000,000 in one day."

LENNON: "That was a commercial for Sid Bernstein written with Jewish schmaltz and showbiz and tears, dropping on one knee. It was Al Jolson. OK. So I don't buy that. OK?"

PLAYBOY: "But the fact is, $200,000,000 to a poverty-stricken country in South America..."

LENNON: "Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn't mean a damn thing. After they've eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I'm not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway."

(Ono rejoins the conversation)

PLAYBOY: "On the subject of your own wealth, the New York Post recently said you admitted to being worth over $150,000,000 and..."

LENNON: "We never admitted anything."

PLAYBOY: "The Post said you had."

LENNON: "What the Post says... OK, so we are rich; so what?"

PLAYBOY: "The question is, How does that jibe with your political philosophies? You're supposed to be socialists, aren't you?"

LENNON: "In England, there are only two things to be, basically: You are either for the labor movement or for the capitalist movement. Either you become a right-wing Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become an instinctive socialist, which I was. That meant I think people should get their false teeth and their health looked after, all the rest of it. But apart from that, I worked for money and I wanted to be rich. So what the hell... if that's a paradox, then I'm a socialist. But I am not anything. What I used to be is guilty about money. That's why I lost it, either by giving it away or by allowing myself to be screwed by so-called managers."

PLAYBOY: "Whatever your politics, you've played the capitalist game very well, parlaying your Beatles royalties into real estate, livestock..."

ONO: "There is no denying that we are still living in the capitalist world. I think that in order to survive and to change the world, you have to take care of yourself first. You have to survive yourself. I used to say to myself, I am the only socialist living here. (laughs) I don't have a penny. It is all John's, so I'm clean. But I was using his money and I had to face that hypocrisy. I used to think that money was obscene, that the artists didn't have to think about money. But to change society, there are two ways to go: through violence or the power of money within the system. A lot of people in the Sixties went underground and were involved in bombings and other violence. But that is not the way, definitely not for me. So to change the system... even if you are going to become a mayor or something... you need money."

PLAYBOY: "To what extent do you play the game without getting caught up in it... money for the sake of money, in other words?"

ONO: "There is a limit. It would probably be parallel to our level of security. Do you know what I mean? I mean the emotional-security level as well."

PLAYBOY: "Has it reached that level yet?"

ONO: "No, not yet. I don't know. It might have."

PLAYBOY: "You mean with $150,000,000? Is that an accurate estimate?"

ONO: "I don't know what we have. It becomes so complex that you need to have ten accountants working for two years to find out what you have. But let's say that we feel more comfortable now."

PLAYBOY: "How have you chosen to invest your money?"

ONO: "To make money, you have to spend money. But if you are going to make money, you have to make it with love. I love Egyptian art. I make sure to get all the Egyptian things, not for their value but for their magic power. Each piece has a certain magic power. Also with houses. I just buy ones we love, not the ones that people say are good investments."

PLAYBOY: "The papers have made it sound like you are buying up the Atlantic Seaboard."

ONO: "If you saw the houses, you would understand. They have become a good investment, but they are not an investment unless you sell them. We don't intend to sell. Each house is like a historic landmark and they're very beautiful."

PLAYBOY: "Do you actually use all the properties?"

ONO: "Most people have the park to go to and run in... the park is a huge place... but John and I were never able to go to the park together. So we have to create our own parks, you know."

PLAYBOY: "We heard that you own $60,000,000 worth of dairy cows. Can that be true?"

ONO: "I don't know. I'm not a calculator. I'm not going by figures. I'm going by excellence of things."

LENNON: "Sean and I were away for a weekend and Yoko came over to sell this cow and I was joking about it. We hadn't seen her for days; she spent all her time on it. But then I read the paper that said she sold it for a quarter of a million dollars. Only Yoko could sell a cow for that much." (laughter)

PLAYBOY: "For an artist, your business sense seems remarkable."

ONO: "I was doing it just as a chess game. I love chess. I do everything like it's a chess game. Not on a Monopoly level... that's a bit more realistic. Chess is more conceptual."

PLAYBOY: "John, do you really need all those houses around the country?"

LENNON: "They're good business."

PLAYBOY: "Why does anyone need $150,000,000? Couldn't you be perfectly content with $100,000,000? Or $1,000,000?"

LENNON: "What would you suggest I do? Give everything away and walk the streets? The Buddhist says, 'Get rid of the possessions of the mind.' Walking away from all the money would not accomplish that. It's like the Beatles. I couldn't walk away from the Beatles. That's one possession that's still tagging along, right? If I walk away from one house or 400 houses, I'm not gonna escape it."

PLAYBOY: "How do you escape it?"

LENNON: "It takes time to get rid of all this garbage that I've been carrying around that was influencing the way I thought and the way I lived. It had a lot to do with Yoko, showing me that I was still possessed. I left physically when I fell in love with Yoko, but mentally it took the last ten years of struggling. I learned everything from her."

PLAYBOY: "You make it sound like a teacher-pupil relationship."

LENNON: "It is a teacher-pupil relationship. That's what people don't understand. She's the teacher and I'm the pupil. I'm the famous one, the one who's supposed to know everything, but she's my teacher. She's taught me everything I fucking know. She was there when I was nowhere, when I was the nowhere man. She's my Don Juan." (a reference to Carlos Castaneda's Yaqui Indian teacher) "That's what people don't understand. I'm married to fucking Don Juan, that's the hardship of it. Don Juan doesn't have to laugh; Don Juan doesn't have to be charming; Don Juan just is. And what goes on around Don Juan is irrelevant to Don Juan."

PLAYBOY: "Yoko, how do you feel about being John's teacher?"

ONO: "Well, he had a lot of experience before he met me, the kind of experience I never had, so I learned a lot from him, too. It's both ways. Maybe it's that I have strength, a feminine strength. Because women develop it... in a relationship, I think women really have the inner wisdom and they're carrying that while men have sort of the wisdom to cope with society, since they created it. Men never developed the inner wisdom; they didn't have time. So most men do rely on women's inner wisdom, whether they express that or not."

PLAYBOY: "Is Yoko John's guru?"

LENNON: "No, a Don Juan doesn't have a following. A Don Juan isn't in the newspaper and doesn't have disciples and doesn't proselytize."

PLAYBOY: "How has she taught you?"

LENNON: "When Don Juan said ...when Don Ono said, 'Get out! Because you're not getting it,' well, it was like being sent into the desert. And the reason she wouldn't let me back in was because I wasn't ready to come back in. I had to settle things within myself. When I was ready to come back in, she let me back in. And that's what I'm living with."

PLAYBOY: "You're talking about your separation."

LENNON: "Yes. We were separated in the early Seventies. She kicked me out. Suddenly, I was on a raft alone in the middle of the universe."

PLAYBOY: "What happened?"

LENNON: "Well, at first, I thought, Whoopee, whoopee! You know, bachelor life! Whoopee! And then I woke up one day and I thought, What is this? I want to go home! But she wouldn't let me come home. That's why it was 18 months apart instead of six months. We were talking all the time on the phone and I would say, 'I don't like this, I'm getting in trouble and I'd like to come home, please.' And she would say, 'You're not ready to come home.' So what do you say? OK, back to the bottle."

PLAYBOY: "What did she mean, you weren't ready?"

LENNON: "She has her ways. Whether they be mystical or practical. When she said it's not ready, it ain't ready."

PLAYBOY: "Back to the bottle?"

LENNON: "I was just trying to hide what I felt in the bottle. I was just insane. It was the lost weekend that lasted 18 months. I've never drunk so much in my life. I tried to drown myself in the bottle and I was with the heaviest drinkers in the business."

PLAYBOY: "Such as?"

LENNON: "Such as Harry Nilsson, Bobby Keyes, Keith Moon. We couldn't pull ourselves out. We were trying to kill ourselves. I think Harry might still be trying, poor bugger... God bless you, Harry, wherever you are... but, Jesus, you know, I had to get away from that, because somebody was going to die. Well, Keith did. It was like, who's going to die first? Unfortunately, Keith was the one."

PLAYBOY: "Why the self-destruction?"

LENNON: "For me, it was because of being apart. I couldn't stand it. They had their own reasons, and it was, Let's all drown ourselves together. From where I was sitting, it looked like that. Let's kill ourselves but do it like Errol Flynn, you know, the macho, male way. It's embarrassing for me to think about that period, because I made a big fool of myself... but maybe it was a good lesson for me. I wrote 'Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out' during that time. That's how I felt. It exactly expresses the whole period. For some reason, I always imagined Sinatra singing that one. I don't know why. It's kind of a Sinatraesque song, really. He would do a perfect job with it. Are you listening, Frank? You need a song that isn't a piece of nothing. Here's the one for you, the horn arrangement and everything's made for you. But don't ask me to produce it."

PLAYBOY: "That must have been the time the papers came out with reports about Lennon running around town with a Tampax on his head."

LENNON: "The stories were all so exaggerated, but... We were all in a restaurant, drinking, not eating, as usual at those gatherings, and I happened to go take a pee and there was a brand-new fresh Kotex, not Tampax, on the toilet. You know the old trick where you put a penny on your forehead and it sticks? I was a little high and I just picked it up and slapped it on and it stayed, you see. I walked out of the bathroom and I had a Kotex on my head. Big deal. Everybody went 'Ha-ha-ha' and it fell off, but the press blew it up."

PLAYBOY: "Why did you kick John out, Yoko?"

ONO: "There were many things. I'm what I call a 'moving on' kind of girl; there's a song on our new album about it. Rather than deal with problems in relationships, I've always moved on. That's why I'm one of the very few survivors as a woman, you know. Women tend to be more into men usually, but I wasn't..."

LENNON: "Yoko looks upon men as assistants... Of varying degrees of intimacy, but basically assistants. And this one's going to take a pee." (he exits)

ONO: "I have no comment on that. But when I met John, women to him were basically people around who were serving him. He had to open himself up and face me... and I had to see what he was going through. But I thought I had to move on again, because I was suffering being with John."

PLAYBOY: "Why?"

ONO: "The pressure from the public, being the one who broke up the Beatles and who made it impossible for them to get back together. My artwork suffered, too. I thought I wanted to be free from being Mrs. Lennon, so I thought it would be a good idea for him to go to L.A. and leave me alone for a while. I had put up with it for many years. Even early on, when John was a Beatle, we stayed in a room and John and I were in bed and the door was closed and all that, but we didn't lock the door and one of the Beatle assistants just walked in and talked to him as if I weren't there. It was mind-blowing. I was invisible. The people around John saw me as a terrible threat. I mean, I heard there were plans to kill me. Not the Beatles but the people around them."

PLAYBOY: "How did that news affect you?"

ONO: "The society doesn't understand that the woman can be castrated, too. I felt castrated. Before, I was doing all right, thank you. My work might not have been selling much, I might have been poorer, but I had my pride. But the most humiliating thing is to be looked at as a parasite."

(Lennon rejoins the conversation)

LENNON: "When Yoko and I started doing stuff together, we would hold press conferences and announce our whatevers... we're going to wear bags or whatever. And before this one press conference, one Beatle assistant in the upper echelon of Beatle assistants leaned over to Yoko and said, You know, you don't have to work. You've got enough money, now that you're Mrs. Lennon.' And when she complained to me about it, I couldn't understand what she was talking about. 'But this guy,' I'd say, 'He's just good old Charley, or whatever. He's been with us 20 years...' The same kind of thing happened in the studio. She would say to an engineer, 'I'd like a little more treble, a little more bass,' or 'There's too much of whatever you're putting on,' and they'd look at me and say, 'What did you say, John?' Those days I didn't even notice it myself. Now I know what she's talking about. In Japan, when I ask for a cup of tea in Japanese, they look at Yoko and ask, 'He wants a cup of tea?' in Japanese."

ONO: "So a good few years of that kind of thing emasculates you. I had always been more macho than most guys I was with, in a sense. I had always been the breadwinner, because I always wanted to have the freedom and the control. Suddenly, I'm with somebody I can't possibly compete with on a level of earnings. Finally, I couldn't take it... or I decided not to take it any longer. I would have had the same difficulty even if I hadn't gotten involved with, ah...."

LENNON: "John-- John is the name."

ONO: "With John. But John wasn't just John. He was also his group and the people around them. When I say John, it's not just John..."

LENNON: "That's John. J-O-H-N. From Johan, I believe."

PLAYBOY: "So you made him leave?"

ONO: "Yes."

LENNON: She don't suffer fools gladly, even if she's married to him."

PLAYBOY: "How did you finally get back together?"

ONO: "It slowly started to dawn on me that John was not the trouble at all. John was a fine person. It was society that had become too much. We laugh about it now, but we started dating again. I wanted to be sure. I'm thankful to John's intelligence..."

LENNON: "Now, get that, editors... you got that word?"

ONO: "...that he was intelligent enough to know this was the only way that we could save our marriage, not because we didn't love each other but because it was getting too much for me. Nothing would have changed if I had come back as Mrs. Lennon again."

PLAYBOY: "What did change?"

ONO: "It was good for me to do the business and regain my pride about what I could do. And it was good to know what he needed, the role reversal that was so good for him."

LENNON: "And we learned that it's better for the family if we are both working for the family, she doing the business and me playing mother and wife. We reordered our priorities. The number-one priority is her and the family. Everything else revolves around that."

ONO: "It's a hard realization. These days, the society prefers single people. The encouragements are to divorce or separate or be single or gay... whatever. Corporations want singles-- they work harder if they don't have family ties. They don't have to worry about being home in the evenings or on the weekends. There's not much room for emotions about family or personal relationships. You know, the whole thing they say to women approaching 30 that if you don't have a baby in the next few years, you're going to be in trouble, you'll never be a mother, so you'll never be fulfilled in that way and..."

LENNON: "Only Yoko was 73 when she had Sean."

(laughter)

ONO: "So instead of the society discouraging children, since they are important for society, it should encourage them. It's the responsibility of everybody. But it is hard. A woman has to deny what she has, her womb, if she wants to make it. It seems that only the privileged classes can have families. Nowadays, maybe it's only the McCartneys and the Lennons or something."

LENNON: "Everybody else becomes a worker/consumer."

ONO: "And then Big Brother will decide. I hate to use the term Big Brother..."

LENNON: "Too late. They've got it on tape." (laughs)

ONO: "But, finally, the society..."

LENNON: "Big Sister-- wait till she comes!"

ONO: "The society will do away with the roles of men and women. Babies will be born in test tubes and incubators..."

LENNON: "Then it's Aldous Huxley."

ONO: "But we don't have to go that way. We don't have to deny any of our organs, you know."

LENNON: "Some of my best friends are organs."

ONO: "The new album..."

LENNON: "Back to the album, very good."

ONO: "The album fights these things. The messages are sort of old-fashioned. Family, relationships, children."

PLAYBOY: "The album obviously reflects your new priorities. How have things gone for you since you made that decision?"

LENNON: "We got back together, decided this was our life, that having a baby was important to us and that anything else was subsidiary to that. We worked hard for that child. We went through all hell trying to have a baby, through many miscarriages and other problems. He is what they call a love child in truth. Doctors told us we could never have a child. We almost gave up. 'Well, that's it, then, we can't have one.' We were told something was wrong with my sperm, that I abused myself so much in my youth that there was no chance. Yoko was 43, and so they said, no way. She has had too many miscarriages and when she was a young girl, there were no pills, so there were lots of abortions and miscarriages; her stomach must be like Kew Gardens in London. No way. But this Chinese acupuncturist in San Francisco said, 'You behave yourself. No drugs, eat well, no drink. You have child in 18 months.' And we said, 'But the English doctors said...' He said, 'Forget what they said. You have child.' We had Sean and sent the acupuncturist a Polaroid of him just before he died, God rest his soul."

PLAYBOY: "Were there any problems because of Yoko's age?"

LENNON: "Not because of her age but because of a screw-up in the hospital and the fucking price of fame. Somebody had made a transfusion of the wrong blood type into Yoko. I was there when it happened, and she starts to go rigid, and then shake, from the pain and the trauma. I run up to this nurse and say, 'Go get the doctor!' I'm holding on tight to Yoko while this guy gets to the hospital room. He walks in, hardly notices that Yoko is going through fucking convulsions, goes straight for me, smiles, shakes my hand and says, 'I've always wanted to meet you, Mr. Lennon, I always enjoyed your music.' I start screaming: 'My wife's dying and you wanna talk about my music!' Christ!"

PLAYBOY: "Now that Sean is almost five, is he conscious of the fact that his father was a Beatle or have you protected him from your fame?"

LENNON: "I haven't said anything. Beatles were never mentioned to him. There was no reason to mention it; we never played Beatle records around the house, unlike the story that went around that I was sitting in the kitchen for the past five years, playing Beatle records and reliving my past like some kind of Howard Hughes. He did see 'Yellow Submarine' at a friend's, so I had to explain what a cartoon of me was doing in a movie."

PLAYBOY: "Does he have an awareness of the Beatles?"

LENNON: "He doesn't differentiate between the Beatles and Daddy and Mommy. He thinks Yoko was a Beatle, too. I don't have Beatle records on the jukebox he listens to. He's more exposed to early rock 'n roll. He's into 'Hound Dog.' He thinks it's about hunting. Sean's not going to public school, by the way. We feel he can learn the three Rs when he wants to... or when the law says he has to, I suppose. I'm not going to fight it. Otherwise, there's no reason for him to be learning to sit still. I can't see any reason for it. Sean now has plenty of child companionship, which everybody says is important, but he also is with adults a lot. He's adjusted to both. The reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility of bringing them up. Everybody's too scared to deal with children all the time, so we reject them and send them away and torture them. The ones who survive are the conformists. Their bodies are cut to the size of the suits... the ones we label good. The ones who don't fit the suits either are put in mental homes or become artists."

PLAYBOY: "Your son, Julian, from your first marriage must be in his teens. Have you seen him over the years?"

LENNON: "Well, Cyn got possession, or whatever you call it. I got rights to see him on his holidays and all that business, and at least there's an open line still going. It's not the best relationship between father and son, but it is there. He's 17 now. Julian and I will have a relationship in the future. Over the years, he's been able to see through the Beatle image and to see through the image that his mother will have given him, subconsciously or consciously. He's interested in girls and autobikes now. I'm just sort of a figure in the sky, but he's obliged to communicate with me, even when he probably doesn't want to."

PLAYBOY: "You're being very honest about your feelings toward him to the point of saying that Sean is your first child. Are you concerned about hurting him?"

LENNON: "I'm not going to lie to Julian. Ninety percent of the people on this planet, especially in the West, were born out of a bottle of whiskey on a Saturday night, and there was no intent to have children. So 90 percent of us... that includes everybody... were accidents. I don't know anybody who was a planned child. All of us were Saturday-night specials. Julian is in the majority, along with me and everybody else. Sean is a planned child, and therein lies the difference. I don't love Julian any less as a child. He's still my son, whether he came from a bottle of whiskey or because they didn't have pills in those days. He's here, he belongs to me and he always will."

PLAYBOY: "Yoko, your relationship with your daughter has been much rockier."

ONO: "I lost Kyoko when she was about five. I was sort of an offbeat mother, but we had very good communication. I wasn't particularly taking care of her, but she was always with me... onstage or at gallery shows, whatever. When she was not even a year old, I took her onstage as an instrument-- an uncontrollable instrument, you know. My communication with her was on the level of sharing conversation and doing things. She was closer to my ex-husband because of that."

PLAYBOY: "What happened when she was five?"

ONO: "John and I got together and I separated from my ex-husband." (Tony Cox) "He took Kyoko away. It became a case of parent kidnapping and we tried to get her back."

LENNON: "It was a classic case of men being macho. It turned into me and Allen Klein trying to dominate Tony Cox. Tony's attitude was, 'You got my wife, but you won't get my child.' In this battle, Yoko and the child were absolutely forgotten. I've always felt bad about it. It became a case of the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral: Cox fled to the hills and hid out and the sheriff and I tracked him down. First we won custody in court. Yoko didn't want to go to court, but the men, Klein and I, did it anyway."

ONO: "Allen called up one day, saying I won the court case. He gave me a piece of paper. I said, 'What is this piece of paper? Is this what I won? I don't have my child.' I knew that taking them to court would frighten them and, of course, it did frighten them. So Tony vanished. He was very strong, thinking that the capitalists, with their money and lawyers and detectives, were pursuing him. It made him stronger."

LENNON: "We chased him all over the world. God knows where he went. So if you're reading this, Tony, let's grow up about it. It's gone. We don't want to chase you anymore, because we've done enough damage."

ONO: "We also had private detectives chasing Kyoko, which I thought was a bad trip, too. One guy came to report, 'It was great! We almost had them. We were just behind them in a car, but they sped up and got away.' I went hysterical. 'What do you mean you almost got them? We are talking about my child!'"

LENNON: "It was like we were after an escaped convict."

PLAYBOY: "Were you so persistent because you felt you were better for Kyoko?"

LENNON: "Yoko got steamed into a guilt thing that if she wasn't attacking them with detectives and police and the FBI, then she wasn't a good mother looking for her baby. She kept saying, 'Leave them alone, leave them alone,' but they said you can't do that."

ONO: "For me, it was like they just disappeared from my life. Part of me left with them."

PLAYBOY: "How old is she now?"

ONO: "Seventeen, the same as John's son."

PLAYBOY: "Perhaps when she gets older, she'll seek you out."

ONO: "She is totally frightened. There was a time in Spain when a lawyer and John thought that we should kidnap her."

LENNON: (sighing) "I was just going to commit hara-kiri first."

ONO: "And we did kidnap her and went to court. The court did a very sensible thing... the judge took her into a room and asked her which one of us she wanted to go with. Of course, she said Tony. We had scared her to death. So now she must be afraid that if she comes to see me, she'll never see her father again."

LENNON: "When she gets to be in her 20's, she'll understand that we were idiots and we know we were idiots. She might give us a chance."

ONO: "I probably would have lost Kyoko even if it wasn't for John. If I had separated from Tony, there would have been some difficulty."

LENNON: "I'll just half-kill myself."

ONO: (to John) "Part of the reason things got so bad was because with Kyoko, it was you and Tony dealing. Men. With your son Julian, it was women... there was more understanding between me and Cyn."

PLAYBOY: "Can you explain that?"

ONO: "For example, there was a birthday party that Kyoko had and we were both invited, but John felt very uptight about it and he didn't go. He wouldn't deal with Tony. But we were both invited to Julian's party and we both went."

LENNON: "Oh, God, it's all coming out."

ONO: "Or like when I was invited to Tony's place alone, I couldn't go; but when John was invited to Cyn's, he did go."

LENNON: "One rule for the men, one for the women."

ONO: "So it was easier for Julian, because I was allowing it to happen."

LENNON: "But I've said a million Hail Marys. What the hell else can I do?"

PLAYBOY: "Yoko, after this experience, how do you feel about leaving Sean's rearing to John?"

ONO: "I am very clear about my emotions in that area. I don't feel guilty. I am doing it in my own way. It may not be the same as other mothers, but I'm doing it the way I can do it. In general, mothers have a very strong resentment toward their children, even though there's this whole adulation about motherhood and how mothers really think about their children and how they really love them. I mean, they do, but it is not humanly possible to retain emotion that mothers are supposed to have within this society. Women are just too stretched out in different directions to retain that emotion. Too much is required of them. So I say to John..."

LENNON: "I am her favorite husband..."

ONO: "'I am carrying the baby nine months and that is enough, so you take care of it afterward.' It did sound like a crude remark, but I really believe that children belong to the society. If a mother carries the child and a father raises it, the responsibility is shared."

PLAYBOY: "Did you resent having to take so much responsibility, John?"

LENNON: "Well, sometimes, you know, she'd come home and say, 'I'm tired.' I'd say, only partly tongue in cheek, What the fuck do you think I am? I'm 24 hours with the baby! Do you think that's easy?' I'd say, 'You're going to take some more interest in the child.' I don't care whether it's a father or a mother. When I'm going on about pimples and bones and which TV shows to let him watch, I would say, 'Listen, this is important. I don't want to hear about your $20,000,000 deal tonight!' (to Yoko) I would like both parents to take care of the children, but 'how' is a different matter."

ONO: "Society should be more supportive and understanding."

LENNON: "It's true. The saying 'You've come a long way, baby' applies more to me than to her. As Harry Nilsson says, 'Everything is the opposite of what it is, isn't it?' It's men who've come a long way from even contemplating the idea of equality. But although there is this thing called the women's movement, society just took a laxative and they've just farted. They haven't really had a good shit yet. The seed was planted sometime in the late Sixties, right? But the real changes are coming. I am the one who has come a long way. I was the pig. And it is a relief not to be a pig. The pressures of being a pig were enormous. I don't have any hankering to be looked upon as a sex object, a male, macho rock 'n roll singer. I got over that a long time ago. I'm not even interested in projecting that. So I like it to be known that, yes, I looked after the baby and I made bread and I was a househusband and I am proud of it. It's the wave of the future and I'm glad to be in on the forefront of that, too."

ONO: "So maybe both of us learned a lot about how men and women suffer because of the social structure. And the only way to change it is to be aware of it. It sounds simple, but important things are simple."

PLAYBOY: "John, does it take actually reversing roles with women to understand?"

LENNON: "It did for this man. But don't forget, I'm the one who benefited the most from doing it. Now I can step back and say Sean is going to be five years old and I was able to spend his first five years with him and I am very proud of that. And come to think of it, it looks like I'm going to be 40 and life begins at 40-- so they promise. And I believe it, too. I feel fine and I'm very excited. It's like, you know, hitting 21, like, 'Wow, what's going to happen next?' Only this time we're together.

ONO: "If two are gathered together, there's nothing you can't do."

PLAYBOY: "What does the title of your new album, 'Double Fantasy,' mean?"

LENNON: "It's a flower, a type of freesia, but what it means to us is that if two people picture the same image at the same time, that is the secret. You can be together but projecting two different images and either whoever's the stronger at the time will get his or her fantasy fulfilled or you will get nothing but mishmash."

PLAYBOY: "You saw the news item that said you were putting your sex fantasies out as an album."

LENNON: "Oh, yeah. That is like when we did the bed-in in Toronto in 1969. They all came charging through the door, thinking we were going to be screwing in bed. Of course, we were just sitting there with peace signs."

PLAYBOY: "What was that famous bed-in all about?"

LENNON: "Our life is our art. That's what the bed-ins were. When we got married, we knew our honeymoon was going to be public, anyway, so we decided to use it to make a statement. We sat in bed and talked to reporters for seven days. It was hilarious. In effect, we were doing a commercial for peace on the front page of the papers instead of a commercial for war."

PLAYBOY: "You stayed in bed and talked about peace?"

LENNON: "Yes. We answered questions. One guy kept going over the point about Hitler: 'What do you do about Fascists? How can you have peace when you've got a Hitler?' Yoko said, 'I would have gone to bed with him.' She said she'd have needed only ten days with him. People loved that one."

ONO: "I said it facetiously, of course. But the point is, you're not going to change the world by fighting. Maybe I was naive about the ten days with Hitler. After all, it took 13 years with John Lennon." (she giggles)

PLAYBOY: "What were the reports about your making love in a bag?"

ONO: "We never made love in a bag. People probably imagined that we were making love. It was just, all of us are in a bag, you know. The point was the outline of the bag, you know, the movement of the bag, how much we see of a person, you know. But, inside, there might be a lot going on. Or maybe nothing's going on."

PLAYBOY: "Briefly, what about the statement on the new album?"

LENNON: "Very briefly, it's about very ordinary things between two people. The lyrics are direct. Simple and straight. I went through my Dylanesque period a long time ago with songs like 'I am the Walrus' ...the trick of never saying what you mean but giving the impression of something more. Where more or less can be read into it. It's a good game."

PLAYBOY: "What are your musical preferences these days?"

LENNON: "Well, I like all music, depending on what time of day it is. I don't like styles of music or people per se. I can't say I enjoy the Pretenders, but I like their hit record. I enjoy the B-52s, because I heard them doing Yoko. It's great. If Yoko ever goes back to her old sound, they'll be saying, 'Yeah, she's copying the B-52s.'"

ONO: "We were doing a lot of the punk stuff a long time ago."

PLAYBOY: "Lennon and Ono, the original punks."

ONO: "You're right."

PLAYBOY: "John, what's your opinion of the newer waves?"

LENNON: "I love all this punky stuff. It's pure. I'm not, however, crazy about the people who destroy themselves."

PLAYBOY: "You disagree with Neil Young's lyric in 'Rust Never Sleeps'-- 'It's better to burn out than to fade away....'"

LENNON: "I hate it. It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison ...it's garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo. They're saying John Wayne conquered cancer... he whipped it like a man. You know, I'm sorry that he died and all that. I'm sorry for his family, but he didn't whip cancer. It whipped him. I don't want Sean worshiping John Wayne or Sid Vicious. What do they teach you? Nothing. Death. Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? I mean, it's garbage, you know. If Neil Young admires that sentiment so much, why doesn't he do it? Because he sure as hell faded away and came back many times, like all of us. No, thank you. I'll take the living and the healthy."

PLAYBOY: "Do you listen to the radio?"

LENNON: "Muzak or classical. I don't purchase records. I do enjoy listening to things like Japanese folk music or Indian music. My tastes are very broad. When I was a housewife, I just had Muzak on, background music, 'cuz it relaxes you."

PLAYBOY: "Yoko?"

ONO: "No."

PLAYBOY: "Do you go out and buy records?"

ONO: "Or read the newspaper or magazines or watch TV? No."

PLAYBOY: "The inevitable question, John. Do you listen to your records?"

LENNON: "Least of all my own."

PLAYBOY: "Even your classics?"

LENNON: "Are you kidding? For pleasure, I would never listen to them. When I hear them, I just think of the session. It's like an actor watching himself in an old movie. When I hear a song, I remember the Abbey Road studio, the session, who fought with whom, where I was sitting, banging the tambourine in the corner..."

ONO: "In fact, we really don't enjoy listening to other people's work much. We sort of analyze everything we hear."

PLAYBOY: "Yoko, were you a Beatles fan?"

ONO: "No. Now I notice the songs, of course. In a restaurant, John will point out, 'Ahh, they're playing George' or something."

PLAYBOY: "John, do you ever go out to hear music?"

LENNON: "No, I'm not interested. I'm not a fan, you see. I might like Jerry Lee Lewis singing 'A Whole Lot a Shakin' on the record, but I'm not interested in seeing him perform it."

PLAYBOY: "Your songs are performed more than most other songwriters. How does that feel?"

LENNON: "I'm always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of my songs aren't that doable. I go to restaurants and the groups always play 'Yesterday.' I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us 'Yesterday.' He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing 'I am the Walrus.'"

PLAYBOY: "How does it feel to have influenced so many people?"

LENNON: "It wasn't really me or us. It was the times. It happened to me when I heard rock 'n roll in the Fifties. I had no idea about doing music as a way of life until rock 'n' roll hit me."

PLAYBOY: "Do you recall what specifically hit you?"

LENNON: "It was 'Rock Around the Clock,' I think. I enjoyed Bill Haley, but I wasn't overwhelmed by him. It wasn't until 'Heartbreak Hotel' that I really got into it."

ONO: "I am sure there are people whose lives were affected because they heard Indian music or Mozart or Bach. More than anything, it was the time and the place when the Beatles came up. Something did happen there. It was a kind of chemical. It was as if several people gathered around a table and a ghost appeared. It was that kind of communication. So they were like mediums, in a way. It's not something you can force. It was the people, the time, their youth and enthusiasm."

PLAYBOY: "For the sake of argument, we'll maintain that no other contemporary artist or group of artists moved as many people in such a profound way as the Beatles."

LENNON: "But what moved the Beatles?"

PLAYBOY: "You tell us."

LENNON: "Alright. Whatever wind was blowing at the time moved the Beatles, too. I'm not saying we weren't flags on the top of a ship; but the whole boat was moving. Maybe the Beatles were in the crow's-nest, shouting, 'Land ho,' or something like that, but we were all in the same damn boat."

ONO: "The Beatles themselves were a social phenomenon not that aware of what they were doing. In a way..."

LENNON: (under his breath) "This Beatles talk bores me to death. Turn to page 196."

ONO: "As I said, they were like mediums. They weren't conscious of all they were saying, but it was coming through them."

PLAYBOY: "Why?"

LENNON: "We tuned in to the message. That's all. I don't mean to belittle the Beatles when I say they weren't this, they weren't that. I'm just trying not to overblow their importance as separate from society. And I don't think they were more important than Glenn Miller or Woody Herman or Bessie Smith. It was our generation, that's all. It was Sixties music."

PLAYBOY: "The word is out: John Lennon and Yoko Ono are back in the studio, recording again for the first time since 1975, when they vanished from public view. Let's start with you, John. What have you been doing?"
LENNON: "I've been baking bread and looking after the baby."

PLAYBOY: "With what secret projects going on in the basement?"

LENNON: "That's like what everyone else who has asked me that question over the last few years says. 'But what else have you been doing?' To which I say, 'Are you kidding?' Because bread and babies, as every housewife knows, is a full-time job. After I made the loaves, I felt like I had conquered something. But as I watched the bread being eaten, I thought, Well, Jesus, don't I get a gold record or knighted or nothing?"

PLAYBOY: "Why did you become a househusband?"

LENNON: "There were many reasons. I had been under obligation or contract from the time I was 22 until well into my 30s. After all those years, it was all I knew. I wasn't free. I was boxed in. My contract was the physical manifestation of being in prison. It was more important to face myself and face that reality than to continue a life of rock 'n' roll... and to go up and down with the whims of either your own performance or the public's opinion of you. Rock 'n' roll was not fun anymore. I chose not to take the standard options in my business... going to Vegas and singing your great hits, if you're lucky, or going to hell, which is where Elvis went."

ONO: "John was like an artist who is very good at drawing circles. He sticks to that and it becomes his label. He has a gallery to promote that. And the next year, he will do triangles or something. It doesn't reflect his life at all. When you continue doing the same thing for ten years, you get a prize for having done it."

LENNON: "You get the big prize when you get cancer and you have been drawing circles and triangles for ten years. I had become a craftsman and I could have continued being a craftsman. I respect craftsmen, but I am not interested in becoming one."

ONO: "Just to prove that you can go on dishing out things."

PLAYBOY: "You're talking about records, of course."

LENNON: "Yeah, to churn them out because I was expected to, like so many people who put out an album every six months because they're supposed to."

PLAYBOY: "Would you be referring to Paul McCartney?"

LENNON: "Not only Paul. But I had lost the initial freedom of the artist by becoming enslaved to the image of what the artist is supposed to do. A lot of artists kill themselves because of it, whether it is through drink, like Dylan Thomas, or through insanity, like Van Gogh, or through V.D., like Gauguin."

PLAYBOY: "Most people would have continued to churn out the product. How were you able to see a way out?"

LENNON: "Most people don't live with Yoko Ono."

PLAYBOY: "Which means?"

LENNON: "Most people don't have a companion who will tell the truth and refuse to live with a bullshit artist, which I am pretty good at. I can bullshit myself and everybody around. Yoko: That's my answer."

PLAYBOY: "What did she do for you?"

LENNON: "She showed me the possibility of the alternative. 'You don't have to do this.' 'I don't? Really? But-but-but-but-but...' Of course, it wasn't that simple and it didn't sink in overnight. It took constant reinforcement. Walking away is much harder than carrying on. I've done both. On demand and on schedule, I had turned out records from 1962 to 1975. Walking away seemed like what the guys go through at 65, when suddenly they're supposed to not exist anymore and they're sent out of the office..." (knocks on the desk three times) "'Your life is over. Time for golf.'"

PLAYBOY: "Yoko, how did you feel about John's becoming a househusband?"

ONO: "When John and I would go out, people would come up and say, 'John, what are you doing?' but they never asked about me, because, as a woman, I wasn't supposed to be doing anything."

LENNON: "When I was cleaning the cat shit and feeding Sean, she was sitting in rooms full of smoke with men in three-piece suits that they couldn't button."

ONO: "I handled the business: old business... Apple, Maclen," (the Beatles' record company and publishing company, respectively) "and new investments."

LENNON: "We had to face the business. It was either another case of asking some daddy to come solve our business or having one of us do it. Those lawyers were getting a quarter of a million dollars a year to sit around a table and eat salmon at the Plaza. Most of them didn't seem interested in solving the problems. Every lawyer had a lawyer. Each Beatle had four or five people working. So we felt we had to look after that side of the business and get rid of it and deal with it before we could start dealing with our own life. And the only one of us who has the talent or the ability to deal with it on that level is Yoko."

PLAYBOY: "Did you have experience handling business matters of that proportion?"

ONO: "I learned. The law is not a mystery to me anymore. Politicians are not a mystery to me. I'm not scared of all that establishment anymore. At first, my own accountant and my own lawyer could not deal with the fact that I was telling them what to do."

LENNON: "There was a bit of an attitude that this is John's wife, but surely she can't really be representing him."

ONO: "A lawyer would send a letter to the directors, but instead of sending it to me, he would send it to John or send it to my lawyer. You'd be surprised how much insult I took from them initially. There was all this 'But you don't know anything about law; I can't talk to you.' I said, 'All right, talk to me in the way I can understand it. I am a director, too.'"

LENNON: "They can't stand it. But they have to stand it, because she is who represents us." (chuckles) "They're all male, you know, just big and fat, vodka lunch, shouting males, like trained dogs, trained to attack all the time. Recently, she made it possible for us to earn a large sum of money that benefited all of them and they fought and fought not to let her do it, because it was her idea and she was a woman and she was not a professional. But she did it, and then one of the guys said to her, 'Well, Lennon does it again.' But Lennon didn't have anything to do with it."

PLAYBOY: "Why are you returning to the studio and public life?"

LENNON: "You breathe in and you breathe out. We feel like doing it and we have something to say. Also, Yoko and I attempted a few times to make music together, but that was a long time ago and people still had the idea that the Beatles were some kind of sacred thing that shouldn't step outside its circle. It was hard for us to work together then. We think either people have forgotten or they have grown up by now, so we can make a second foray into that place where she and I are together, making music... simply that. It's not like I'm some wondrous, mystic prince from the rock-'n'-roll world dabbling in strange music with this exotic, Oriental dragon lady, which was the picture projected by the press before."

PLAYBOY: "Some people have accused you of playing to the media. First you become a recluse, then you talk selectively to the press because you have a new album coming out."

LENNON: "That's ridiculous. People always said John and Yoko would do anything for the publicity. In the Newsweek article," (September 29, 1980) "it says the reporter asked us, 'Why did you go underground?' Well, she never asked it that way and I didn't go underground. I just stopped talking to the press. It got to be pretty funny. I was calling myself Greta Hughes or Howard Garbo through that period. But still the gossip items never stopped. We never stopped being in the press, but there seemed to be more written about us when we weren't talking to the press than when we were."

PLAYBOY: "How do you feel about all the negative press that's been directed through the years at Yoko, your 'dragon lady,' as you put it?"

LENNON: "We are both sensitive people and we were hurt a lot by it. I mean, we couldn't understand it. When you're in love, when somebody says something like, 'How can you be with that woman?' you say, 'What do you mean? I am with this goddess of love, the fulfillment of my whole life. Why are you saying this? Why do you want to throw a rock at her or punish me for being in love with her?' Our love helped us survive it, but some of it was pretty violent. There were a few times when we nearly went under, but we managed to survive and here we are." (looks upward) "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

PLAYBOY: "But what about the charge that John Lennon is under Yoko's spell, under her control?"

LENNON: "Well, that's rubbish, you know. Nobody controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that's just barely possible."

PLAYBOY: "Still, many people believe it."

LENNON: "Listen, if somebody's gonna impress me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Yoko Ono, there comes a point when the emperor has no clothes. There comes a point when I will see. So for all you folks out there who think that I'm having the wool pulled over my eyes, well, that's an insult to me. Not that you think less of Yoko, because that's your problem. What I think of her is what counts! Because... fuck you, brother and sister... you don't know what's happening. I'm not here for you. I'm here for me and her and the baby!"

ONO: "Of course, it's a total insult to me..."

LENNON: "Well, you're always insulted, my dear wife. It's natural..."

ONO: "Why should I bother to control anybody?"

LENNON: "She doesn't need me."

ONO: "I have my own life, you know."

LENNON: "She doesn't need a Beatle. Who needs a Beatle?"

ONO: "Do people think I'm that much of a con? John lasted two months with the Maharishi. Two months. I must be the biggest con in the world, because I've been with him 13 years."

LENNON: "But people do say that."

PLAYBOY: "That's our point. Why?"

LENNON: "They want to hold on to something they never had in the first place. Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist or even as part of the Beatles has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with Yoko. And if they can't see that, they don't see anything. They're just jacking off to... it could be anybody. Mick Jagger or somebody else. Let them go jack off to Mick Jagger, OK? I don't need it."

PLAYBOY: "He'll appreciate that."

LENNON: "I absolutely don't need it. Let them chase Wings. Just forget about me. If that's what you want, go after Paul or Mick. I ain't here for that. If that's not apparent in my past, I'm saying it in black and green, next to all the tits and asses on page 196. Go play with the other boys. Don't bother me. Go play with the Rolling Wings."

PLAYBOY: "Do you..."

LENNON: "No, wait a minute. Let's stay with this a second; sometimes I can't let go of it." (He is on his feet, climbing up the refrigerator) "Nobody ever said anything about Paul's having a spell on me or my having one on Paul! They never thought that was abnormal in those days, two guys together, or four guys together! Why didn't they ever say, 'How come those guys don't split up? I mean, what's going on backstage? What is this Paul and John business? How can they be together so long?' We spent more time together in the early days than John and Yoko: the four of us sleeping in the same room, practically in the same bed, in the same truck, living together night and day, eating, shitting and pissing together! All right? Doing everything together! Nobody said a damn thing about being under a spell. Maybe they said we were under the spell of Brian Epstein or George Martin." (the Beatles' first manager and producer, respectively) "There's always somebody who has to be doing something to you. You know, they're congratulating the Stones on being together 112 years. Whoooopee! At least Charlie and Bill still got their families. In the Eighties, they'll be asking, 'Why are those guys still together? Can't they hack it on their own? Why do they have to be surrounded by a gang? Is the little leader scared somebody's gonna knife him in the back?' That's gonna be the question. That's-a-gonna be the question! They're gonna look back at the Beatles and the Stones and all those guys as relics. The days when those bands were just all men will be on the newsreels, you know. They will be showing pictures of the guy with lipstick wriggling his ass and the four guys with the evil black make-up on their eyes trying to look raunchy. That's gonna be the joke in the future, not a couple singing together or living and working together. It's all right when you're 16, 17, 18 to have male companions and idols, OK? It's tribal and it's gang and it's fine. But when it continues and you're still doing it when you're 40, that means you're still 16 in the head."

PLAYBOY: "Let's start at the beginning. Tell us the story of how the wondrous mystic prince and the exotic Oriental dragon lady met."

LENNON: "It was in 1966 in England. I'd been told about this 'event'... this Japanese avant-garde artist coming from America. I was looking around the gallery and I saw this ladder and climbed up and got a look in this spyglass on the top of the ladder... you feel like a fool... and it just said, 'Yes.' Now, at the time, all the avant-garde was smash the piano with a hammer and break the sculpture and anti-, anti-, anti-, anti-, anti. It was all boring negative crap, you know. And just that Yes made me stay in a gallery full of apples and nails. There was a sign that said, Hammer A Nail In, so I said, 'Can I hammer a nail in?' But Yoko said no, because the show wasn't opening until the next day. But the owner came up and whispered to her, 'Let him hammer a nail in. You know, he's a millionaire. He might buy it.' And so there was this little conference, and finally she said, 'OK, you can hammer a nail in for five shillings.' So smartass says, 'Well, I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in.' And that's when we really met. That's when we locked eyes and she got it and I got it and, as they say in all the interviews we do, the rest is history."

PLAYBOY: "What happened next?"

LENNON: "Of course, I was a Beatle, but things had begun to change. In 1966, just before we met, I went to Almeria, Spain, to make the movie 'How I Won the War.' It did me a lot of good to get away. I was there six weeks. I wrote 'Strawberry Fields Forever' there, by the way. It gave me time to think on my own, away from the others. From then on, I was looking for somewhere to go, but I didn't have the nerve to really step out on the boat by myself and push it off. But when I fell in love with Yoko, I knew, My God, this is different from anything I've ever known. This is something other. This is more than a hit record, more than gold, more than everything. It is indescribable."

PLAYBOY: "Were falling in love with Yoko and wanting to leave the Beatles connected?"

LENNON: "As I said, I had already begun to want to leave, but when I met Yoko is like when you meet your first woman. You leave the guys at the bar. You don't go play football anymore. You don't go play snooker or billiards. Maybe some guys do it on Friday night or something, but once I found the woman, the boys became of no interest whatsoever other than being old school friends. 'Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine.' We got married three years later, in 1969. That was the end of the boys. And it just so happened that the boys were well known and weren't just local guys at the bar. Everybody got so upset over it. There was a lot of shit thrown at us. A lot of hateful stuff."

ONO: "Even now, I just read that Paul said, 'I understand that he wants to be with her, but why does he have to be with her all the time?'"

LENNON: "Yoko, do you still have to carry that cross? That was years ago."

ONO: "No, no, no. He said it recently. I mean, what happened with John is like, I sort of went to bed with this guy that I liked and suddenly the next morning, I see these three in-laws, standing there."

LENNON: "I've always thought there was this underlying thing in Paul's 'Get Back.' When we were in the studio recording it, every time he sang the line 'Get back to where you once belonged,' he'd look at Yoko."

PLAYBOY: "Are you kidding?"

LENNON: "No. But maybe he'll say I'm paranoid."

(the next portion of the interview took place with Lennon alone)

PLAYBOY: "This may be the time to talk about those 'in-laws,' as Yoko put it. John, you've been asked this a thousand times, but why is it so unthinkable that the Beatles might get back together to make some music?"

LENNON: "Do you want to go back to high school? Why should I go back ten years to provide an illusion for you that I know does not exist? It cannot exist."

PLAYBOY: "Then forget the illusion. What about just to make some great music again? Do you acknowledge that the Beatles made great music?"

LENNON: "Why should the Beatles give more? Didn't they give everything on God's earth for ten years? Didn't they give themselves? You're like the typical sort of love-hate fan who says, 'Thank you for everything you did for us in the Sixties... would you just give me another shot? Just one more miracle?'"

PLAYBOY: "We're not talking about miracles... just good music."

LENNON: "When Rodgers worked with Hart and then worked with Hammerstein, do you think he should have stayed with one instead of working with the other? Should Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis have stayed together because I used to like them together? What is this game of doing things because other people want it? The whole Beatle idea was to do what you want, right? To take your own responsibility."

PLAYBOY: "Alright, but get back to the music itself. You don't agree that the Beatles created the best rock 'n roll that's been produced?"

LENNON: "I don't. The Beatles, you see... I'm too involved in them artistically. I cannot see them objectively. I cannot listen to them objectively. I'm dissatisfied with every record the Beatles ever fucking made. There ain't one of them I wouldn't remake... including all the Beatles records and all my individual ones. So I cannot possibly give you an assessment of what the Beatles are. When I was a Beatle, I thought we were the best fucking group in the god-damned world. And believing that is what made us what we were... whether we call it the best rock 'n roll group or the best pop group or whatever. But you play me those tracks today and I want to remake every damn one of them. There's not a single one... I heard 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' on the radio last night. It's abysmal, you know. The track is just terrible. I mean, it's great, but it wasn't made right, know what I mean? But that's the artistic trip, isn't it? That's why you keep going. But to get back to your original question about the Beatles and their music, the answer is that we did some good stuff and we did some bad stuff."

PLAYBOY: "Many people feel that none of the songs Paul has done alone match the songs he did as a Beatle. Do you honestly feel that any of your songs on the Plastic Ono Band records will have the lasting imprint of 'Eleanor Rigby' or 'Strawberry Fields'?"

LENNON: "'Imagine,' 'Love' and those Plastic Ono Band songs stand up to any song that was written when I was a Beatle. Now, it may take you 20 or 30 years to appreciate that, but the fact is, if you check those songs out, you will see that it is as good as any fucking stuff that was ever done."

PLAYBOY: "It seems as if you're trying to say to the world, 'We were just a good band making some good music,' while a lot of the rest of the world is saying, 'It wasn't just some good music, it was the best.'"

LENNON: "Well, if it was the best, so what?"

PLAYBOY: "So..."

LENNON: "It can never be again! Everyone always talks about a good thing coming to an end, as if life was over. But I'll be 40 when this interview comes out. Paul is 38. Elton John, Bob Dylan... we're all relatively young people. The game isn't over yet. Everyone talks in terms of the last record or the last Beatle concert... but, God willing, there are another 40 years of productivity to go. I'm not judging whether 'I am the Walrus' is better or worse than 'Imagine.' It is for others to judge. I am doing it. I do. I don't stand back and judge... I do."

PLAYBOY: "You keep saying you don't want to go back ten years, that too much has changed. Don't you ever feel it would be interesting... never mind cosmic, just interesting... to get together, with all your new experiences, and cross your talents?"

LENNON: "Wouldn't it be interesting to take Elvis back to his Sun Records period? I don't know. But I'm content to listen to his Sun Records. I don't want to dig him up out of the grave. The Beatles don't exist and can never exist again. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey could put on a concert... but it can never be the Beatles singing 'Strawberry Fields' or 'I Am The Walrus' again, because we are not in our 20s. We cannot be that again, nor can the people who are listening."

PLAYBOY: "But aren't you the one who is making it too important? What if it were just nostalgic fun? A high school reunion?"

LENNON: "I never went to high school reunions. My thing is, Out of sight, out of mind. That's my attitude toward life. So I don't have any romanticism about any part of my past. I think of it only inasmuch as it gave me pleasure or helped me grow psychologically. That is the only thing that interests me about yesterday. I don't believe in yesterday, by the way. You know I don't believe in yesterday. I am only interested in what I am doing now."

PLAYBOY: "What about the people of your generation, the ones who feel a certain kind of music and spirit died when the Beatles broke up?"

LENNON: "If they didn't understand the Beatles and the Sixties then, what the fuck could we do for them now? Do we have to divide the fish and the loaves for the multitudes again? Do we have to get crucified again? Do we have to do the walking on water again because a whole pile of dummies didn't see it the first time, or didn't believe it when they saw it? You know, that's what they're asking: 'Get off the cross. I didn't understand the first bit yet. Can you do that again?' No way. You can never go home. It doesn't exist."

PLAYBOY: "Do you find that the clamor for a Beatles reunion has died down?"

LENNON: "Well, I heard some Beatles stuff on the radio the other day and I heard 'Green Onion' ...no, 'Glass Onion,' I don't even know my own songs! I listened to it because it was a rare track..."

PLAYBOY: "That was the one that contributed to the 'Paul McCartney is dead' uproar because of the lyric 'The walrus is Paul.'"

LENNON: "Yeah. That line was a joke, you know. That line was put in partly because I was feeling guilty because I was with Yoko, and I knew I was finally high and dry. In a perverse way, I was sort of saying to Paul, 'Here, have this crumb, have this illusion, have this stroke... because I'm leaving you.' Anyway, it's a song they don't usually play. When a radio station has a Beatles weekend, they usually play the same ten songs... 'A Hard Day's Night,' 'Help!,' 'Yesterday,' 'Something,' 'Let It Be' ...you know, there's all that wealth of material, but we hear only ten songs. So the deejay says, 'I want to thank John, Paul, George and Ringo for not getting back together and spoiling a good thing.' I thought it was a good sign. Maybe people are catching on."

PLAYBOY: "Aside from the millions you've been offered for a reunion concert, how did you feel about producer Lorne Michaels' generous offer of $3200 for appearing together on 'Saturday Night Live' a few years ago?"

LENNON: "Oh, yeah. Paul and I were together watching that show. He was visiting us at our place in the Dakota. We were watching it and almost went down to the studio, just as a gag. We nearly got into a cab, but we were actually too tired."

PLAYBOY: "How did you and Paul happen to be watching TV together?"

LENNON: "That was a period when Paul just kept turning up at our door with a guitar. I would let him in, but finally 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... But, anyway, back on that night, he and Linda walked in and he and I were just sitting there, watching the show, and we went, 'Ha-ha, wouldn't it be funny if we went down?' but we didn't."

PLAYBOY: "Was that the last time you saw Paul?"

LENNON: "Yes, but I didn't mean it like that."

PLAYBOY: "We're asking because there's always a lot of speculation about whether the Fab Four are dreaded enemies or the best of friends."

LENNON: "We're neither. I haven't seen any of the Beatles for I don't know how much time. Somebody asked me what I thought of Paul's last album and I made some remark like, I thought he was depressed and sad. But then I realized I hadn't listened to the whole damn thing. I heard one track... the hit 'Coming Up,' which I thought was a good piece of work. Then I heard something else that sounded like he was depressed. But I don't follow their work. I don't follow Wings, you know. I don't give a shit what Wings is doing, or what George's new album is doing, or what Ringo is doing. I'm not interested, no more than I am in what Elton John or Bob Dylan is doing. It's not callousness, it's just that I'm too busy living my own life to be following what other people are doing, whether they're the Beatles or guys I went to college with or people I had intense relationships with before I met the Beatles."

PLAYBOY: "Besides 'Coming Up,' what do you think of Paul's work since he left the Beatles?"

LENNON: "I kind of admire the way Paul started back from scratch, forming a new band and playing in small dance halls, because that's what he wanted to do with the Beatles... he wanted us to go back to the dance halls and experience that again. But I didn't. That was one of the problems, in a way, that he wanted to relive it all or something... I don't know what it was. But I kind of admire the way he got off his pedestal. Now he's back on it again, but I mean, he did what he wanted to do. That's fine, but it's just not what I wanted to do."

PLAYBOY: "What about the music?"

LENNON: "'The Long and Winding Road' was the last gasp from him. Although I really haven't listened."

PLAYBOY: "You say you haven't listened to Paul's work and haven't really talked to him since that night in your apartment..."

LENNON: "Really talked to him, no, that's the operative word. I haven't really talked to him in ten years. Because I haven't spent time with him. I've been doing other things and so has he. You know, he's got 25 kids and about 20,000,000 records out. How can he spend time talking? He's always working."

PLAYBOY: "Then let's talk about the work you did together. Generally speaking, what did each of you contribute to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team?"

LENNON: "Well, you could say that he provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, a certain bluesy edge. There was a period when I thought I didn't write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock 'n roll. But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs... 'In My Life' or some of the early stuff... 'This Boy.' I was writing melody with the best of them. Paul had a lot of training, could play a lot of instruments. He'd say, 'Well, why don't you change that there? You've done that note 50 times in the song.' You know, I'll grab a note and ram it home. Then again, I'd be the one to figure out where to go with a song... a story that Paul would start. In a lot of the songs, my stuff is the middle-eight, the bridge."

PLAYBOY: "For example?"

LENNON: "Take 'Michelle.' Paul and I were staying somewhere, and he walked in and hummed the first few bars, with the words, you know-- (sings verse of 'Michelle') and he says, 'Where do I go from here?' I'd been listening to blues singer Nina Simone, who did something like 'I love you!' in one of her songs and that made me think of the middle-eight for 'Michelle.' (sings) 'I love you, I love you, I lo-ove you...'"

PLAYBOY: "What was the difference in terms of lyrics?"

LENNON: "I always had an easier time with lyrics, though Paul is quite a capable lyricist who doesn't think he is. So he doesn't go for it. Rather than face the problem, he would avoid it. 'Hey Jude' is a damn good set of lyrics. I made no contribution to the lyrics there. And a couple of lines he has come up with show indications of a good lyricist. But he just hasn't taken it anywhere. Still, in the early days, we didn't care about lyrics as long as the song had some vague theme... she loves you, he loves him, they all love each other. It was the hook, line and sound we were going for. That's still my attitude, but I can't leave lyrics alone. I have to make them make sense apart from the songs."

PLAYBOY: "What's an example of a lyric you and Paul worked on together?"

LENNON: "In 'We Can Work It Out,' Paul did the first half, I did the middle-eight. But you've got Paul writing, 'We can work it out/We can work it out' --real optimistic, y' know, and me, impatient: 'Life is very short and there's no time/For fussing and fighting, my friend....'"

PLAYBOY: "Paul tells the story and John philosophizes."

LENNON: "Sure. Well, I was always like that, you know. I was like that before the Beatles and after the Beatles. I always asked why people did things and why society was like it was. I didn't just accept it for what it was apparently doing. I always looked below the surface."

PLAYBOY: "When you talk about working together on a single lyric like 'We Can Work It Out,' it suggests that you and Paul worked a lot more closely than you've admitted in the past. Haven't you said that you wrote most of your songs separately, despite putting both of your names on them?"

LENNON: "Yeah, I was lying. (laughs) It was when I felt resentful, so I felt that we did everything apart. But, actually, a lot of the songs we did eyeball to eyeball."

PLAYBOY: "But many of them were done apart, weren't they?

LENNON: "Yeah. 'Sgt. Pepper' was Paul's idea, and I remember he worked on it a lot and suddenly called me to go into the studio, said it was time to write some songs. On 'Pepper,' under the pressure of only ten days, I managed to come up with 'Lucy in the Sky' and 'Day in the Life.' We weren't communicating enough, you see. And later on, that's why I got resentful about all that stuff. But now I understand that it was just the same competitive game going on."

PLAYBOY: "But the competitive game was good for you, wasn't it?"

LENNON: "In the early days. We'd make a record in 12 hours or something; they would want a single every three months and we'd have to write it in a hotel room or in a van. So the cooperation was functional as well as musical."

PLAYBOY: "Don't you think that cooperation, that magic between you, is something you've missed in your work since?"

LENNON: "I never actually felt a loss. I don't want it to sound negative, like I didn't need Paul, because when he was there, obviously, it worked. But I can't... it's easier to say what I gave to him than what he gave to me. And he'd say the same."

PLAYBOY: "Just a quick aside, but while we're on the subject of lyrics and your resentment of Paul, what made you write 'How Do You Sleep?,' which contains lyrics such as 'Those freaks was right when they said you was dead' and 'The only thing you done was Yesterday/And since you've gone, you're just Another Day'?"

LENNON: (smiles) "You know, I wasn't really feeling that vicious at the time. But I was using my resentment toward Paul to create a song, let's put it that way. He saw that it pointedly refers to him, and people kept hounding him about it. But, you know, there were a few digs on his album before mine. He's so obscure other people didn't notice them, but I heard them. I thought, Well, I'm not obscure, I just get right down to the nitty-gritty. So he'd done it his way and I did it mine. But as to the line you quoted, yeah, I think Paul died creatively, in a way."

PLAYBOY: "That's what we were getting at: You say that what you've done since the Beatles stands up well, but isn't it possible that with all of you, it's been a case of the creative whole being greater than the parts?"

LENNON: "I don't know whether this will gel for you: When the Beatles played in America for the first time, they played pure craftsmanship. Meaning they were already old hands. The jism had gone out of the performances a long time ago. In the same respect, the songwriting creativity had left Paul and me in the mid-Sixties. When we wrote together in the early days, it was like the beginning of a relationship. Lots of energy. In the 'Sgt. Pepper'- 'Abbey Road' period, the relationship had matured. Maybe had we gone on together, more interesting things would have come, but it couldn't have been the same."

PLAYBOY: "Let's move on to Ringo. What's your opinion of him musically?"

LENNON: "Ringo was a star in his own right in Liverpool before we even met. He was a professional drummer who sang and performed and had Ringo Starr-time and he was in one of the top groups in Britain but especially in Liverpool before we even had a drummer. So Ringo's talent would have come out one way or the other as something or other. I don't know what he would have ended up as, but whatever that spark is in Ringo that we all know but can't put our finger on... whether it is acting, drumming or singing I don't know... there is something in him that is projectable and he would have surfaced with or without the Beatles. Ringo is a damn good drummer. He is not technically good, but I think Ringo's drumming is underrated the same way Paul's bass playing is underrated. Paul was one of the most innovative bass players ever. And half the stuff that is going on now is directly ripped off from his Beatles period. He is an egomaniac about everything else about himself, but his bass playing he was always a bit coy about. I think Paul and Ringo stand up with any of the rock musicians. Not technically great... none of us are technical musicians. None of us could read music. None of us can write it. But as pure musicians, as inspired humans to make the noise, they are as good as anybody."

PLAYBOY: "How about George's solo music?"

LENNON: "I think 'All Things Must Pass' was all right. It just went on too long."

PLAYBOY: "How did you feel about the lawsuit George lost that claimed the music to 'My Sweet Lord' is a rip-off of the Shirelles' hit 'He's So Fine?'"

LENNON: "Well, he walked right into it. He knew what he was doing."

PLAYBOY: "Are you saying he consciously plagiarized the song?"

LENNON: "He must have known, you know. He's smarter than that. It's irrelevant, actually... only on a monetary level does it matter. He could have changed a couple of bars in that song and nobody could ever have touched him, but he just let it go and paid the price. Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off."

(At presstime, the court has found Harrison guilty of 'subconscious' plagiarism but has not yet ruled on damages.)

PLAYBOY: "You actually haven't mentioned George much in this interview."

LENNON: "Well, I was hurt by George's book, 'I, Me, Mine' ...so this message will go to him. He put a book out privately on his life that, by glaring omission, says that my influence on his life is absolutely zilch and nil. In his book, which is purportedly this clarity of vision of his influence on each song he wrote, he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I'm not in the book."

PLAYBOY: "Why?"

LENNON: "Because George's relationship with me was one of young follower and older guy. He's three or four years younger than me. It's a love/hate relationship and I think George still bears resentment toward me for being a daddy who left home. He would not agree with this, but that's my feeling about it. I was just hurt. I was just left out, as if I didn't exist. I don't want to be that egomaniacal, but he was like a disciple of mine when we started. I was already an art student when Paul and George were still in grammar school." (equivalent to high school in the U.S.) "There is a vast difference between being in high school and being in college and I was already in college and already had sexual relationships, already drank and did a lot of things like that. When George was a kid, he used to follow me and my first girlfriend, Cynthia.. who became my wife... around. We'd come out of art school and he'd be hovering around like those kids at the gate of the Dakota now. I remember the day he called to ask for help on 'Taxman,' one of his bigger songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along, because that's what he asked for. He came to me because he couldn't go to Paul, because Paul wouldn't have helped him at that period. I didn't want to do it. I thought, Oh, no, don't tell me I have to work on George's stuff. It's enough doing my own and Paul's. But because I loved him and I didn't want to hurt him when he called me that afternoon and said, 'Will you help me with this song?' I just sort of bit my tongue and said OK. It had been John and Paul so long, he'd been left out because he hadn't been a songwriter up until then. As a singer, we allowed him only one track on each album. If you listen to the Beatles' first albums, the English versions, he gets a single track. The songs he and Ringo sang at first were the songs that used to be part of my repertoire in the dance halls. I used to pick songs for them from my repertoire... the easier ones to sing. So I am slightly resentful of George's book. But don't get me wrong. I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo go on."

PLAYBOY: "Didn't all four Beatles work on a song you wrote for Ringo in 1973?"

LENNON: "'I'm the Greatest.' It was the Muhammad Ali line, of course. It was perfect for Ringo to sing. If I said, 'I'm the greatest,' they'd all take it so seriously. No one would get upset with Ringo singing it."

PLAYBOY: "Did you enjoy playing with George and Ringo again?"

LENNON: "Yeah, except when George and Billy Preston started saying, 'Let's form a group. Let's form a group.' I was embarrassed when George kept asking me. He was just enjoying the session and the spirit was very good, but I was with Yoko, you know. We took time out from what we were doing. The very fact that they would imagine I would form a male group without Yoko! It was still in their minds..."

PLAYBOY: "Just to finish your favorite subject, what about the suggestion that the four of you put aside your personal feelings and regroup to give a mammoth concert for charity, some sort of giant benefit?"

LENNON: "I don't want to have anything to do with benefits. I have been benefited to death."

PLAYBOY: "Why?"

LENNON: "Because they're always rip-offs. I haven't performed for personal gain since 1966, when the Beatles last performed. Every concert since then, Yoko and I did for specific charities, except for a Toronto thing that was a rock 'n roll revival. Every one of them was a mess or a rip-off. So now we give money to who we want. You've heard of tithing?"

PLAYBOY: "That's when you give away a fixed percentage of your income."

LENNON: "Right. I am just going to do it privately. I am not going to get locked into that business of saving the world on stage. The show is always a mess and the artist always comes off badly."

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Alice in Wonderland

"I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then..." - Alice in Wonderland