When Miles Davis schooled John Lennon at basketball
Sometimes, when a musician is so busy writing, recording and performing new music, it’s hard to imagine what they get up to in their downtime. It’s probably fair to assume that anyone with a reasonable degree of fame would want to remove themselves from the stress of their hectic schedules and kick back with a relaxing activity that relieves all of the pressure, which is something that even those with a normal job can attest to. John Lennon had a pretty non-stop commitment to the Beatles throughout the 1960s, and by the time he’d gone solo at the start of the following decade, it was understandable that he opted to take more opportunity to relax between his other engagements.
The Liverpudlian was known for having had various hobbies outside of music, and his love for writing poems and short stories, as well as drawing and painting, were two pastimes that his fans were privy to. However, not many people would take a look at the singer’s gawky appearance and consider him to be the athletic type, and it’s possibly not something he would have thought about himself, but there is evidence to suggest that he enjoyed shooting hoops with his celebrity friends when his creative ventures didn’t occupy him.
There exists footage of a candid Lennon with a host of other familiar faces that was taken on his 31st birthday in October 1971, generally soaking up the merriment and enjoying the company of his friends, and one of the activities that appears to be engaging the ‘Jealous Guy’ singer is a relaxed game of basketball with none other than jazz superstar Miles Davis. To see the duo enjoying some restorative time together is a surprise in itself, considering there is little to suggest an overlap between their worlds ever having existed, but to see the two playing ball in each other’s company is another matter entirely.
The video, which was shot by Andy Warhol’s former camera operator, Jonas Mekas, is shaky and grainy, to say the least. Still, there’s enough evidence to suggest that Davis was giving Lennon something of a schooling at the sport, with the Englishman hitting the backboard and rim on multiple occasions. At the same time, Davis netted several throws. Playing the whole time with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, Lennon’s accuracy may well have been hampered by his inexperience or by his being too preoccupied by the rest of the revelries happening around him.
Also in attendance, presumably both for the birthday celebrations and the art exhibition that Lennon and wife Yoko Ono were opening in Syracuse, New York, later the same day, were poet Allen Ginsberg, producer Phil Spector, and fellow Beatle Ringo Starr, although unfortunately we’re not given any form of revealing insight into their skills on the court.
In the background of the full 24-minute film, entitled ‘Happy Birthday to John’, are a handful of tunes that Mekas describes as being “a series of improvised songs, sung by John, Ringo, Yoko Ono, and their friends—not a clean studio recording, but as a birthday singing, free and happy.” We can faintly hear one of these during the short clip of Lennon playing basketball with Davis, although it isn’t clear what is being sung or who exactly is singing.
Speaking in a 2002 interview with the Telegraph, Mekas described his relationship with Lennon and how he was on a personal level during the period when the video was shot. “John was very open and curious,” Mekas attested, “A very quick sort of person, who caught on immediately. He did a lot of 8mm filming himself. At the beginning of Happy Birthday John, you will hear him talking about what he was trying to do”.
