The Ethics of Lennon

John Lennon and Yoko Ono

“You talkin’ to me?”

And yes, Yoko Ono was talking to her, here in the women’s restroom of a cinema screening “Taxi Driver” in 1976 — “her” being singer-songwriter Carole King.

The two women hit it off, and Ono invited King and her boyfriend over after the movie, which they discovered they would therefore have to leave early.

“You’re not going to stay for the end of the movie?” King asked.

“No, we never do,” Ono replied.

The quartet slipped out of the theatre to a waiting station wagon, and — with the help of two bodyguards and John Lennon lying prone in the back — were away in less than a minute.

Relaxing in a minimalist apartment somewhere on the several floors of the Dakota owned by Lennon and Ono, King and her boyfriend had green tea and Japanese appetizers in white dishes while observing that Lennon seemed “radiantly happy.”

King’s boyfriend would ultimately prove to be abusive and possessive, and surprised King that night by explaining his survivalist plans to Lennon, something he hadn’t bothered to tell King about.

As American society collapsed, the boyfriend explained, he and King would be on their self-sufficient place somewhere deep in the woods, ready to start building a new world when the time came.

King said Lennon “…listened respectfully. When Rick finished laying out his vision for our future, John’s response revealed the innate compassion of this man who had already influenced the lives of so many people.

“’Well, now,’ John said. ‘I couldn’t do that. I’d have me bag of rice, but what about everyone else?’”

“John’s remark not only mitigated my apprehension, but touched me so deeply that for a few minutes I stopped thinking on a conscious level,” King recalled. “I remember only the purity of his compassion and how I felt it envelop me like a warm blanket. Sitting in the glow of his happiness and inner peace, I realized that if John Lennon could ignore what others were saying and live his life exactly as he wanted to with love and compassion, then so could I.”

Source: “A Natural Woman” by Carole King