Apple of My Eye

A post of lovely John images for your viewing pleasure...

The first photo is a personal scan of the September 1968 issue of Eye magazine. I had wanted this magazine for a long time, and I finally obtained a copy, buried amongst a large lot of Beatles clippings. It isn't in the best shape, but it's better than nothing. There are some other good pictures of both John and Paul accompanying the article inside. I do believe that Linda McCartney took that cover photograph; it is very similar to the one of John in the Wingspan book.

The other photos of John in the basement flat he and Yoko were sharing appeared two months later in the November 23, 1968, issue of Rolling Stone. These shots were taken by Ethan Russell (who later photographed the Get Back sessions) to accompany a thoughtful interview conducted by Jonathan Cott. Cott gives Lennon the opportunity to discuss the creation of some of the Beatles' most revered songs, as well as his political views. He prefaces the interview with a summation of Lennon's mood:

Any suspicions that John would be ornery, mean, cruel, or brutish - feelings attributed to him and imagined by press reports and various paranoiac personalities - never arose even for the purpose of being pressed down.

When reflecting on his impression of Lennon, Cott quotes Gasset: "Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness."