John Lennon was a closet Republican, who felt a little embarrassed by his former radicalism, at the time of his death - according to the tragic Beatles star's last personal assistant.
Fred Seaman worked alongside the music legend from 1979 to Lennon's death at the end of 1980 and he reveals the star was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self.
In new documentary Beatles Stories, Seaman tells filmmaker Seth Swirsky Lennon wasn't the peace-loving militant fans thought he was while he was his assistant.
He says, "John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.
"He'd met Reagan back, I think, in the 70s at some sporting event... Reagan was the guy who had ordered the National Guard, I believe, to go after the young (peace) demonstrators in Berkeley, so I think that John maybe forgot about that... He did express support for Reagan, which shocked me.
"I also saw John embark in some really brutal arguments with my uncle, who's an old-time communist... He enjoyed really provoking my uncle... Maybe he was being provocative... but it was pretty obvious to me he had moved away from his earlier radicalism.
"He was a very different person back in 1979 and 80 than he'd been when he wrote Imagine. By 1979 he looked back on that guy and was embarrassed by that guy's naivete."


[www.contactmusic.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-06-29 22:25 by mitchflorida.

I always did like John Lennon. Whatever Gets You Through the Night was one of the wisest songs ever written.

Oh Mitch, please take your right-wing propaganda to political sites!

This is complete bullshite and has no place on IORR.

Hopefully, this will get you banned once and for all.

And you didn't even put "OT" in the subject line.

Fred Seaman is a despicable thief, and certainly not trustworthy.

A former personal assistant to John Lennon who was accused of stealing hundreds of the late Beatle's personal photographs and letters, issued an apology to his widow, Yoko Ono, in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday.

"I offer no excuses for my conduct, and ask only that you can find it in your heart to forgive me," Frederick Seaman, 49, said in a statement issued as part of a settlement in a case which offered an unprecedented glimpse into Lennon's domestic habits, his falling-out with Paul McCartney, and the insomnia and fear of stalkers which dominated the last months of his life.

"I now realise how much pain and embarrassment I have caused," said Mr Seaman, admitting that he had violated a confidentiality agreement. He agreed to return and surrender the rights to 374 photographs he took of the family as part of his job, to refund $75,000 (£50,000) from selling Lennon's letters, and to pay undisclosed damages.


[www.guardian.co.uk]

I honestly don't think John gave a freaking F about Reagan or Carter. But I can imagine him having political arguments with others just to provoke them.

I would have to hear it directly from Lennon's mouth to believe any thing like that....

Well, as Churchhill once said, and I'm paraphrasing: when you are young and you are not liberal then you have no heart, when you are older and you are not conservative then you have no brain . . .

Someone with a boatload of money would probably gravitate toward the Republican party. Self interest will usually out...

If you look at most people with $$$ such as in Beverly Hills or in Upper Side of Manhattan, they tend to be liberal Dems.

Barbara Streisand, Mick Jagger, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, anyone who is a hollywood star etc.

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lettingitbleed
Oh Mitch, please take your right-wing propaganda to political sites!

This is complete bullshite and has no place on IORR.

Hopefully, this will get you banned once and for all.

+1

This guy takes every possible opportunity to make right-wing political points on this site. This is at least the second time he has started a thread with the express purpose of doing so.

"Fred Seaman worked alongside the music legend from 1979 to Lennon's death at the end of 1980 and he reveals the star was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self."

Doesn't surprise me at all : I always thought Lennon was a d!ck...

I love talking about political things but not here,,,,,,,,,face to face that;s the way

__________________________

Of course the idea that just because Lennon turned his back on his earlier naive radicalism he necessarily became a Regan Republican is assinine.

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mitchflorida
If you look at most people with $$$ such as in Beverly Hills or in Upper Side of Manhattan, they tend to be liberal Dems.

Barbara Streisand, Mick Jagger, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, anyone who is a hollywood star etc.

But they all vote Republican when no one is looking!

Just kidding, you gotta point. I work for a lot of rich people in Manhattan, I'm not sure who is more obnoxious -- at least the Republican types don't pretend to be something else!

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mitchflorida
If you look at most people with $$$ such as in Beverly Hills or in Upper Side of Manhattan, they tend to be liberal Dems.

Barbara Streisand, Mick Jagger, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, anyone who is a hollywood star etc.

Mick Jagger is British and doesnt live in the US, last time I looked...

I was really affected by John's assassination. He was really the "brains" behind the Beatles.

how were you affected, mitch? did you blame the liberal elite for his death? did you see the light and realize that society is a menace and it lead you down a path of right wing conservatism?

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Gazza

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mitchflorida
If you look at most people with $$$ such as in Beverly Hills or in Upper Side of Manhattan, they tend to be liberal Dems.

Barbara Streisand, Mick Jagger, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, anyone who is a hollywood star etc.

Mick Jagger is British and doesnt live in the US, last time I looked...

I would like to know where the "Upper Side" of Manhattan is, Mitch. I used to live on the Upper West Side, but I never heard of the "Upper Side".

RE: the headline Truths? This is based on someone else's recollections of Lennon.

Lennon wasn't able to vote so this subject isn't valid at all.

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71Tele
Of course the idea that just because Lennon turned his back on his earlier naive radicalism he necessarily became a Regan Republican is assinine.

Which is what the douche from Florida who started this thread is.

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mitchflorida
If you look at most people with $$$ such as in Beverly Hills or in Upper Side of Manhattan, they tend to be liberal Dems.

Barbara Streisand, Mick Jagger, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, anyone who is a hollywood star etc.

Just like anyone who is a republican tends to be a pathetic, racist, moronic, and retarded "christian conservative". Of which mitch is one of the most shining examples.

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71Tele

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Gazza

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mitchflorida
If you look at most people with $$$ such as in Beverly Hills or in Upper Side of Manhattan, they tend to be liberal Dems.

Barbara Streisand, Mick Jagger, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, anyone who is a hollywood star etc.

Mick Jagger is British and doesnt live in the US, last time I looked...

I would like to know where the "Upper Side" of Manhattan is, Mitch. I used to live on the Upper West Side, but I never heard of the "Upper Side".

Consider the source. This inbred redneck doesn't know his head from his ass.

-------------------
Keep On Rolling

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Wry Cooter
Someone with a boatload of money would probably gravitate toward the Republican party. Self interest will usually out...

The candidate who gathered the highest ever funds from all Wall Street banks was Obama right ?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2011-06-30 01:48 by beepee.

When it was pointed out that a Beatles reunion could possibly raise $200 million for a poverty-stricken country in South America, Lennon had no time for it. “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.” It’s a critique of foreign aid readers of P.T. Bauer would be familiar with. “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.”

This was not the ’60s revolutionary who hung out with Yippies and Black Panthers. Not only did Lennon dismiss his earlier efforts, he rejected the entire idea of social change through political action. “I have never voted for anybody, anytime, ever,” he said. “Even at my most so-called political. I have never registered and I never will. It’s going to make a lot of people upset, but that’s too bad.”

“I dabbled in so-called politics in the late Sixties and Seventies more out of guilt than anything,” he revealed. “Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something, or get punched in the face, to prove I’m one of the people. I was doing it against my instincts.” …
Nothing seems less like the popular idea of Lennon, but there was more. In his definitive song, “Imagine”—Yoko Ono has said its lyrics express “just what John believed”—he famously dreams of a world with “no possessions.” The mature Lennon explicitly disavowed such naïve sentiments:

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. … Because I thought money was equated with sin. I don’t know. I think I got over it, because I either have to put up or shut up, you know. If I’m going to be a monk with nothing, do it. Otherwise, if I am going to try and make money, make it. Money itself isn’t the root of all evil.

The man who famously called for imagining a world with “No religion” also jettisoned his anti-theism. “People got the image I was anti-Christ or antireligion,” he said. “I’m not at all. I’m a most religious fellow. I’m religious in the sense of admitting there is more to it than meets the eye. I’m certainly not an atheist.”
Even more shocking to the idea of Lennon as a secular leftist, or a deep thinker, the man rejected evolution. “Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the way,” he insisted. “That’s another piece of garbage. What the hell’s it based on? We couldn’t’ve come from anything—fish, maybe, but not monkeys. I don’t believe in the evolution of fish to monkeys to men. Why aren’t monkeys changing into men now? It’s absolute garbage.”



[bighollywood.breitbart.com]

I came of age when Carter was president. Believe me, that idiot could turn ANYONE into a Republican.

No surprise.

In the book titled JOHN AND YOKO: THE FINAL TESTAMENT (which is an expanded version of his last Playboy interview) John sounds like a Republican preaching the free market system and free enterprise and against government interference.

JOHN LENNON: "It's like the car industry. There is all this talk about the Germans and the Japanese—the `other' is doing it to us.

"Now we were all surprised in the early Seventies when the so-called Arab embargo caught us by surprise like the snow does every year in New York...The big surprise that happens all the time. And they continued making old men's cars. Wishful fantasy fulfillment of the heads of the car companies who are all in their sixties and still designing cars from the Forties or Fifties—the big American car that everybody knew they didn't want. So everybody's buying Japanese and foreign cars, not because they're unpatriotic, but because they're practical.

"So now the car industry is trying to pass laws and it's pointing fingers and making commercials and the old men are coming out of their ivory towers saying, `Buy American' and `We're going to make the car you want.' Don't talk about it, man, just make the damn car, we'll buy it. You don't have to put an American flag on it. If it's good, we'll buy it. It if ain't good, we're going to buy cars from Venezuela.

"In the Fifties, it was the British pointing their fingers at the Germans. It's simply the Germans were making better products. Now it's the Japanese that are making better products, and people are buying them."

Shut this thread down and kick that guy out.






Having the word "Political" in the subject line--after it was made clear that such topics were not welcome here--is incredibly disrespectful.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-06-30 02:28 by loog droog.

OT - the documentary is good - this guy notwithstanding - my friend Seth did it and he spoke to lots of cool people - and even ran into Macca at the gym!