1972: The year John Lennon gave up on touring for good
When the Beatles quit touring in 1966, they cited the fact that they couldn’t hear themselves playing anymore as one of the key considerations, but, it should also be considered that McCartney, Harrison, Starr and John Lennon had started to have more expansive ideas about the kind of sound they’d like to have as a band, and that sound would not have been so easy to replicate on the stage.
The group spent so much time working on songs in the studio, manipulating the space itself and the technology at their disposal to create their masterpieces in the second half of the 1960s, that you could go so far as to say that Abbey Road’s Studio Two was the fifth Beatle.
By the time the group disbanded in 1970, after one final, famous, rooftop performance together, they’d all moved on to separate musical journeys and gotten back on the road, or at least, on the stage, in some capacity.
George Harrison organised the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, two shows held across the afternoon and evening of Sunday, August 1st, 1971, in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, where he was joined onstage by former bandmate Ringo, as well as the likes of Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston and future Traveling Wilbury Bob Dylan.
Meanwhile, McCartney had formed a new band, Wings, who were really starting to take flight both onstage and in the studio as the ’70s went on.
Lennon didn’t embark on a full-blooded tour himself, but like Harrison, performed at benefit shows and one-off’s through 1971 and 1972. On December 10th, 1971, Lennon, alongside wife Yoko Ono, headlined the John Sinclair Freedom Rally, and then a week later the pair played at a benefit concert in New York’s Apollo Theater in aid of the families of the victims of the Attica State Prison riot. In ’72, he took a leaf out of Harrison’s book and performed a two-session benefit show at MSG himself, in aid of the Willowbrook State School, dubbed the One to One show, which also featured other performers such as Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, Melanie Safka and Sha Na Na.
By that point, it had been six long years since The Beatles’ final tour, and many fans were left wondering if Lennon would ever consistently hit the road again, rather than just making sporadic appearances here and there at shows organised around a cause outside himself.
Those fans didn’t have to wait too long for an answer, but it wasn’t the one they’d hoped to hear. “At the time they were trying to throw me out, I really felt like going on the road”, Lennon said in 1973, in reference to the US government’s attempts to deport him, which began in 1972 and which would take up his time for the next four years, “But having to go to court and go to Washington put me off the idea. I had no time to think about work, which was maybe what they were trying to do to me–wear me down.”
Lennon then mused, “I wouldn’t mind doing it, but the organisation frightens me. I could probably earn a lot of money, which wouldn’t be a bad thing because all my money is tied up in England and they won’t let me have it. I get lots of people wanting me to do things for charity, but usually when I show, it turns out the whole thing is a fiasco and I end up running the whole show. Not many people know how to put a show on properly. Most of them think that if they get a famous name, he’ll call everybody he knows and they won’t have to worry about anything else.”
He added that George Harrison’s recent benefit show had started something of a trend, but in typical John Lennon style, he had something to say about that trend, too. “The Bangladesh show started this big charity thing. Now people ring me and they think that if I say ‘yes’ then Dylan, George and God will appear, too. If Yoko appears anywhere, they automatically expect me to appear, so I now say screw it for the time being”.
Adding, “I’m in no particular hurry, I don’t miss not being on stage and one way or the other I always seem to be performing somehow, no matter where I am. When I did the Madison Square Gardens show, I had a sort of deja vu feeling that I’d done it all before, and this was no better or no worse than it had ever been before. It felt strange and I felt like a robot doing the same thing over and over again.”
“I’ll probably go out on the road again before too long, but it’s just the itty-bitty things about it that I can’t stand”.
He continued, “If something comes up that interests me, then I may do it. I think I’d sooner play the Roxy here than a ballpark, but the complications of someone like me doing a show anywhere are endless. I couldn’t do what Paul did with Wings and just turn up at Bradford University and play. It’d have to be something more organised than that.”
Ultimately, though, Lennon never would get back out on the road again in any major way. His final concert appearance came during a 1975 cameo at an Elton John concert at, where else? Madison Square Garden, which he only agreed to do after making a bet with the other John, stipulating he’d perform with the flamboyant pianist only if their duet ‘Whatever Gets You Thru the Night’ made it to number one in the charts.
After his visa issues had finally been settled in 1976, he might have had time to think about putting a more organised tour together, but cruelly, he only got around to putting the pieces in place in 1980, planning his first major solo tour around his then-new album Double Fantasy.
Having discussed potential setlists with his band, Lennon and Co had even organised rehearsals for the proposed tour, which would have been known as the One World, One People Tour, and which was set to feature shows in America, Japan, Europe and include Lennon’s first return to England in almost ten years, which he was particularly excited about.
