Watch John Lennon discussing American Football in 1974: “It makes rock concerts look like tea parties”
When John Lennon appeared on Monday Night Football in 1974, he was mid-way through his so-called “lost weekend”. Beginning in 1973 and lasting until 1975, the period saw the Beatles member separate from Yoko Ono and start a casual relationship with Apple Records employee May Pang.
The whole thing was organised by Ono, who discussed her decision to set up the relationship many years later: “I was hated and John was hated because of me,” she began. “The affair was something that was not hurtful to me. I needed a rest. I needed space. Can you imagine every day of getting this vibration from people of hate? You want to get out of that. Also, we were so close John didn’t even want me to go to the bathroom by myself. ‘I will come with you,’ he would say. And this would be in public places like the EMI recording studios.”
Pang and Lennon dated for 18 months, with Lennon recording his drug-fuelled Rock ‘n’ Roll album during their time together. Meanwhile, Ono got on with her own life, content with the knowledge that she would return to her husband when the time was right. “I was prepared to lose him, but it was better he came back. I didn’t think I would lose him. I wanted to be sure,” she said.
In March 1974, Lennon and his drinking buddy Harry Nilsson were kicked out of the Troubadour rock club in West Hollywood for drunkenly heckling the Smothers Brothers. By December, he’d started sobering up, and so decided to go and watch a game at the Los Angeles Coliseum between the LA Redskins and the Los Angeles Rams. Someone spotted him in the crowd, so during the intermission, he was shepherded into the broadcasting booth for an interview with Monday Night Football host Howard Cosell.
Five years later, Cosell was charged with breaking the news of John Lennon’s death during a game between The Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots. His commentator, Frank Gifford, set up the announcement: “Timeout is called with three seconds remaining. John Smith is on the line. And I don’t care what’s on the line, Howard, you have got to say what we know in the booth.”
Both knew that Lennon had been shot dead – America did not. “Yes, we have to say it,” began Cosell. “An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City — the most famous, perhaps, of all of The Beatles — shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival.”
