Le Dain Commission of Inquiry into the "The Private Testimony of John Lennon", Dec. 22 1969.

Copyright, Health Canada, 1969, 2003.

Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 2003.

BY LENNON:
Because the only thing I have to say about marijuana -- I can't imagine people going out for a joint in the afternoon any more than I can imagine people drinking in the afternoon. I think it's equally bad, and driving and all the other things, the restrictions on drinks, that's the danger, but the one thing can be said about marijuana is it's non-violent, and if any Government wanted to use it to calm the people, they have got the ultimate weapon, and there wouldn't be any Saturday night crowds and any Saturday night football fights, because that's what it does to people.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Do you think the (inaudible) --

BY LENNON:
They either withdraw because they're too -- it can make you paranoiac all right, and you withdraw, but you
certainly don't have any aggression.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Do you think this is why marijuana has spread so rapidly, because of this non-violent aspect, that it was a drug that was particularly appropriate?

BY LENNON:
Yes, I think it promoted the non-violent movement, including LSD, but marijuana was the main thing that promoted non-violence amongst the youth, because as soon as they have it, they -- first of all you have to laugh on your first experiences. There's nothing else you do but laugh, and then, when you've got over that and you realize that people aren't laughing at you, but with you, it's a community thing, and nothing would ever stop it, nothing on earth is going to stop it, and the only thing to do is to find out how to use it for good, or for the best.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
That would never happen. That's never happened before I because there hasn't been people smoking marijuana before in that vast (inaudible). There's never been crowds like that for anything else but violence or war, even if it's a football match.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
You have undoubtedly seen this thing.

BY LENNON:
Well, I'm biased, you know. I saw in the speech that they have to get people that had -- in between, you know. I am obviously on the other side. I am not fanatic about it.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
Yes.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Have you also come on to this in the sense of how clearly you are one of the people who has influenced young people who have gone to school for a ten-year period (inaudible)? Looking back over those years, do you have any feeling of the way this developed?

BY LENNON:
Do you mean there's a sense of responsibility for that?

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
It's not so much a sense of responsibility. It's just the way you read the development of drugs. You know there's a point about ten years ago where a lot of kids who would have used alcohol and all that started to use marijuana, and this thing accelerates. As you've thought of it, what are the things that strike you as having been important?

BY LENNON:
The non-violent aspect of it.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
The non-violence. Did this come first, do you think, making then marijuana appropriate, or are you implying that the marijuana really comes before the non-violence?

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
It's a bit of both. What marijuana does mildly is what LSD does violently, shall we say, and that gives you some kind of state of awareness, or whatever you call it, where you can see the chase more clearly. You can see your own -- you have -- you see yourself like that, like people say in operations when they have left their body. Well, to an extent, that's what happens when you watch yourself acting, and when you're watching you can decide which part you're going to play and once you decide that violence is uncomfortable and really you're frightened of violence, and we all are, of actually being hurt, it just -- you plump for peace, you go for non-violence, and then you've got -- you're attracted to people who give off the same vibration, and that's why the community smoking and the community people gathering together over the thing happens, because you don't want to be alone. You don't want to be the only white fan waver, and you are attracted to the group. I don't know whether I've answered your question.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Yeah, that's all right.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DR. LEHMANN:
It came at the right time.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
What we have been asked to do is go and say, you know, what the drugs do or how they are used, but the third part of our terms of reference is to set what's happened into social, political, philosophical and cultural context, and this is one of the things that we have really been wrestling with to try and make it fit into a context of the whole society. One of the things that we have to do is to try and explain to the Canadian people what the hell is going on here. One of the things we certainly will try to do is plan greater communication between one generation or one part of the population to another and that's, in a sense, why I was interested in a person who has been tremendously influential with a couple of generations, how he felt about the way this thing has emerged and how he saw it.

BY LENNON:
Well, I can't really say more than I have said there.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
We had that one.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
Yes. I could have sworn we had it before.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
One of the main points is that the media, being encouraged by the Establishment, or whatever way to -- mind you, the Woodstock thing, we learned what really happened through the underground or through the grapevine. I was at the Isle of Wight gathering, at a Dylan concert, and there weren't as many people; so it was the biggest European gathering ever, and it was a beautiful experience, this calm -- there wasn't a breath of air or vibration disturbing the atmosphere from any of the people there. It was written up as if it was a holocaust, and that established in the minds of the people already decided, of the other generation, what's going on. It reaffirmed their fears of this generation with its haircuts, and its nakedness, and its pot smoking. The first thing we have got to do is to break through the media and get them to talk sense, and the only way they'll do that is if they are directed because they are directed on everything else, and they must be directed on what is happening because that's establishing a fear in the adult world that this generation is going to kill them or frighten them or, you know, go insane, like the "Satan" guy, and to make the "Satan" guy -- that killer, to expunge -- as a -- to use him as the leader or the image of this generation is as insane as saying everybody in the thirties was Hitler, and I don't know how we break that.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DR. LEHMANN:
The resultant false note about this very thing, which is, of course, remarkable and unique, that these people can meet without fighting, but the older generation isn't probably so much afraid that they are all going to be Satans and going to kill them, but there are some who are afraid that there will be too much peace which then will become pacifity, and that there will be half a million people sitting in the grass, in the lane, in the mud, and do nothing. (Inaudible).

BY LENNON:
Well, like we say, we try and be an example, or we are one example, of people who have experienced marijuana -- just use that, and are we -- we're pacifists. Are we sitting in the mud? Are we sitting at home just smoking pot in a den of iniquity -- an opium den, which is a different -- that's what people imagine is going on, but, of course, where did all the underground newspapers spring from? Where did the energy source to start the whole communication change -- where does the music come from? Where does the power and the -- where did we get our energy? We certainly don't get it from pot and we certainly don't get it from alcohol. It's made no difference into the energy power I have as an individual and to the amount of work I do. Now, I do more work -- we both do more work than ever, but it has nothing to do with drugs. It's the fact that we are interested in the work we are doing. If you have interest, there's nothing stopping -- and the myths about the drugs making you more creative is a myth, too. There are so many myths about it. It does not make you passive and:- "The will of Allah".

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
It doesn't do that to you, that you sit in the mud and wait for bread from Heaven.

BY YOKO ONO:
.....................(inaudible conversation)

BY LENNON:
I am sure when alcohol first came out, you know, people just lay about in a stupor until they got control of it, and knew how much to take and not to take, and when to take it, and I think there's a bit of that going on.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Do you feel that this will, to some extent, be able to arouse (inaudible). The reason I ask this is:- I suppose two of the more significant documents of this year were "Easy Rider" and (inaudible). Now one interpretation -- this is my own interpretation of both of the documents, and certainly "Easy Rider" --

BY LENNON:
I'm sorry but I haven't seen any of them, but I know vaguely about them.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
One of the ways of seeing (inaudible) saying, "Look, here's American society. It failed you. Here were drugs. You had hope here. It failed you. It wasn't a solution" --

BY LENNON:
Yes.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
"There's bloody well nothing".

BY LENNON:
Well, that's what we're trying to fight at the moment. That's what we're trying to fight at the moment because when we stick posters 'round saying, "War is over if you want it", what we're trying to promote is an awareness in people of how much power they do have and not to rely on Government, or leader, or teacher so much that they're all passive or automatons, and that initial after effect of the drug scene has to be regenerated. They have to have new hope, but everybody's looking for goals and answers, and youth especially, and what we're trying to tell them is that, "You are the goal. Nobody on earth can do it for you. Whatever it is you want, you must do it yourself", and what we've been promoting for just under a year and only now through our contacts is it coming -- people beginning to think, "Oh well, it is my responsibility", again. People were thinking, "This is the answer" -- "Drugs is the answer", but there is no answer, as we know. The answer is within and you've got to get on with it, and that's what we're promoting, and it takes time but there's a lot of people like us and thinking like that and they will be pushing and promoting as well to get the people out of the grass and dropping in to change it, rather than dropping out and expecting rewards for that.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Do you find that the time is right for this? Does your own reading or your own sensitivity --

BY LENNON:
Our intuition --

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:-
-- tally with it?

BY LENNON: Yes, our intuition, which is all we have --

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Yes.

BY LENNON:
-- tells us that this decade was the beginning and it was the end of the old decade and the old machine, and that this is year one. In fact, in our festival we're calling next year "year one" to get home to the kids and anybody else listening that this is only the beginning and not to be conned by Establishment. We'll call it that, whatever. The bully -- the school bully with tweak your nose and push you until you hit him back and then he has every right to kill you and we think what happened to the people that got disappointed and violent, the youth, were the ones that came right across the bully, were tweaked and pushed until they reacted violently and are playing the bully's game and we're trying to get through to those people that they were conned into violence and that violence isn't the answer, and that they mustn't expect peace, or whatever they're looking for overnight, that we're talking about the next two thousand or three thousand years and not about 1960 and 1970 and that's the kind of hope we're trying to arouse in anybody we can come across.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
What is the answer then? To do your thing or to get others to do the right thing, or what?

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
To do your thing in as much as you have to start somewhere and the best place to start is in your own mind and then your relationship with your wife, girlfriend, lover, neighbour or whatever, but there's no --

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Sweep your own back yard properly and then --

BY LENNON:
Yes, and then go out to meet your brother and not just claim we're all brothers but at home living some other kind of life. We believe it has to start with the individual, whatever it is.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Do you see a tendency for violence itself to come....................(Blank in tape)................this, just a tool for desperation for where things are at? That there will be a wave -- quite counter to yours -- a wave of highly nihilistic violence to simply, "Look, this is so goddam rotten. The only thing is simply to tear it apart".

LENNON:
Well, that danger has always been there. It might be more manifest now, but it's not -- it's like saying -- the people that say, "What are you going to do if we wake up and there's a war tomorrow?". We have to prevent that, and we're on a prevention rather than cure kick, like feeding Biafra people. I said, "Why don't we feed Biafra people with the money I'm using for propaganda?", and we are on a prevention kick and this won't happen if we all prevent it, and we won't prevent it with guns . We'll only prevent it by programming people or whatever you call it. We can only judge by the people we meet and the people -- we've literally changed their minds as we speak to them. The ones that are thinking about violence and thinking about -- that -- if it gets underway then it's a wipe-out, but there's only a hard core of really perverted nihilistic, violent people, example the "Satan" guy, really promoting this and until some other direction comes from our leaders, or some straight answers about drugs, then it is a case of:- "What the hell", you know. "What for, and why go to college? Why anything? For what?".

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Oh yeah, well, have you any suggestions what to do with the Establishment? I think they are --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
But they wouldn't be --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DR. LEHMANN:
If you were in the Establishment what would you do to change them? They're an entirely stubborn lot you know.

BY LENNON:
Well, I mean --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
That's why we're not in the Establishment. Obviously people like us are outside of the Establishment and --

BY DR. LEHMANN: There are people in the Establishment who want to change.'

BY LENNON:
Sure, we don't believe it's his fault. We don't believe it's Nixon, or America's fault for the war in Viet Nam. We think they're scapegoats that people use to blame when things are going wrong and to praise when things are going well, and, it's the same as we were saying before:- to make people aware that they're just as responsible in Welsh Wales for Viet Nam as they are in America and -- I lost track there. I'm sorry.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
No, my question was, I know it's unfair, but if you were in the Establishment what would you do? Suppose -- I am well established in the Establishment, now we are --

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
You speak for yourself.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
All right.

BY LENNON:
Well, we haven't fallen into the trap of blaming it on the Establishment. We know the Establishment exists of human beings.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Yeah, but we want to change it, you know.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
You've started. You're here now.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
Mr. Munro's speech, it happened then. It can only start like this. The fact that you've started, that it came from you and that there is a straight speech, even if it didn't get through to all the kids and only maybe politically oriented people listen, it's hope for me to hear that. I certainly will spread it to anybody I know that there's hope for us and that we're not a crazy bunch of misunderstood hippies. It's like this -- I've told this story a million times. We were watching T.V. when we were in Montreal last time and there was a Harvard professor or somebody on from Harvard, or somebody talking about Harvard, but they'd done a test on the kids in class, and the teachers. Not told them what the test was. They just said, "We're going to pick six kids out of your class and at the end of this year they will be A-plus, genius, or whatever. What they didn't tell the teachers was that they picked the kids at random. They didn't pick the kids that were supposedly clever. They picked a random selection of six kids. At the end of the year those kids were top of the class and more so, and the simple fact that the teacher believed in the child and the child believed in himself made it work. Now all we ask from the Establishment, if we're the -- or you're the Establishment, is telling us when we are good and all right and not morons that have to be led through every inch of life. Tell us when we (inaudible). Have faith in us and we will respond to that faith by being A-plus. It was a simple case of telling the child he's all right. Who tells every child that he's not an artist or a poet or a musician? Some freak when you're aged eleven says, "You get into woodwork and you get into metalwork. You're no good and you're good". You never get over that, and that's what is done all the time. All down the line people telling people what they are when they don't know what they are themselves, and it takes a long time to get over it.

BY YOKO ONO: (Inaudible).

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
These are two people on our staff, Dr. Ralph (inaudible) and Dr. Charlie (inaudible).

BY LENNON:
How do you do? Pleased to meet you.
............(Several people speaking at once).............

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
What sort of things would you emphasize? You know, we've got this -- we're to write about what drugs are then -- what they mean socially, and say (inaudible) what we think we should do. What would you --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
You have to write this and give it to the Government?

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
I don't know.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
But they don't do that. It's how to --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
-- how to not frighten the Government.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Yes, that's right. You see, we have to get the Government so they don't see the shade, even if we don't want them to.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
The next thing is you'll all be perverted druggies (inaudible).

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
We had -- this is -- I can't answer you specifically. I mean, when you talk about how to word it to a mass machine.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
It's not the (inaudible) of how you word it, it's just the --

BY LENNON:
How you sell --

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:-
-- the theme.

BY LENNON:
How you sell pot to the Government is to tell them how much they're going to make out of it. We (inaudible) save Britain from (inaudible) that. It may sound simple, but that's where it is. When the machine understands that it can make money from it, that's all it wants to know --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
Right. The money made out of the country -- the country that legalizes pot -- we had an answer to Britain's problem, ha ha. It was to legalize pot and let homosexuals marry and Britain would be the richest nation on earth. It's as simple as that. Why not? What the hell are we pretending about?

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DR. LEHMANN:
They've legalized gambling.

BY LENNON:
Well, gambling I don't know anything about. I don't know anything about gambling. It's another drug, isn't it?

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Then a lot of people would come to Britain and they'd make a lot of money out of it.

BY LENNON:
Yes, sure, but I mean, it's -- the only way to sell the pot to the machine is to let the machine have it. Let it have all the factories. Let it make all the bread in the world. The people only want to smoke. They don't care who makes the money.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DR. LEHMANN:
It's a dangerous kind of a stop-gap I'm afraid.

BY LENNON:
Well, I mean, that's the --

BY DR. LEHMANN:
(Inaudible) away with it.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
I mean the main people who would be fighting it would probably be one of the right-wing factory owners. You know, the people that have got something to fight for, so they think. It's like (inaudible) saying if he became Governor of California, he'd hire Reagan to do the job and give him exactly --

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Did he say that?

BY LENNON:
Sure -- and give him exactly what he wants. Give the police (?) a rise. Give them the lot. Make them happy and -- all they want is money and security, and if that's how they get security, let them have it. As long as they leave the others alone.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Well, perhaps you are right. We'll have to be more optimistic about our own generation and be able to -- and trust them that they are not beyond hope.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DR. LEHMANN:
The real trouble is that they are all terribly scared. Now, what do you do with ninety million people who are scared?

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
It is starting.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
I mean, it's time -- the older generation has to face up to the fact that sooner or later any -- this year, maybe -- that it is a non-violent movement and there is nothing to be afraid of. If we're no longer afraid of the Establishment, the Establishment has to stop being afraid of us. It only takes a few of you. I mean, there's only a few people in any given group that set the tone or the -- influence the others. The waverers -- you will end up with just the ones that have other motives for what they want. You'll have to isolate the Devil and isolate him so as everybody can see him.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
How did they stop public execution? How did they do that? How did they do it?

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
(Inaudible)

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Well, how did they do it? They just stopped it all. There must have been some demand.

BY LENNON:
Yes, but there would have been just as much force against public execution. There must have been a great force to prevent selling alcohol in the States. There must have been a massive group of people to make that ever happen. How did they do it? There are examples throughout history of how we progressed, mankind, one way or the other. I don't know how they did it.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
They just followed on.

BY LENNON:
Yes.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Gave up I suppose.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
You know I suspect that's much more important than even the peace aspect -- I don't know if (inaudible) --

BY LENNON: Yes.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
-- is that to the extent that you are successful, you will be convincing an enormous number of people who ordinarily feel terribly hopeless, that there really is no way that they can do damn all about anything --

BY LENNON:
Yes.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
That, in fact, they can't, and to that extent you succeed in giving a large number of people a reason to stay on earth. I don't know if you'd agree, but it struck me about a lot of people using speed. Let me say two things.

BY LENNON:
Yes.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Five or six years ago in universities I ran into a lot of kids who came in and very simply saying, "My father's a son-of-a-bitch". They were capable of an enormous amount of hostility, direct hostility about their parents. Increasingly during the last five years they weren't saying that. They were saying that, "He used to be -- he was a guy who once upon a time must have had a lot of imagination, who could have had a lot of fun" --

BY LENNON:
Yes, that's so true.--

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
-- "and somehow he's dead".

BY LENNON:
-- because we can see how our parents set in the mold at twenty-one and this awareness that we're all talking about is a true awareness. It's not hallucination. We can see through our parents and therefore we have compassion. It's as simple as that. Once you see that your parent doesn't know where he's at, doesn't know why he says it and just spiels off cliches that he was taught during the war, whether it's a politician or your actual parent, then you stop aggression towards him. You want to help. It's like have a sick child in the house. You don't kick him out. You have to take that responsibility. He's your parent and that's all it is. Once a kid sees his parent for what he is he's got the choice of either laughing at him and saying, "Well, you stupid fool", you know, "You got caught and I won't", or having some compassion for him, because you do have the bond with your parent whether you like it or not. You're stuck with it. You've got to make some -- you've got to come down on one side or the other with your parents and with the Establishment.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
And yet, John, so many can be moved to that compassion, I think also move to say, "Well, there's no way to do anything", and it's led to this terrible sense of futility.  

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
And if you are successful I think this is one way it becomes important in saying, "Look, there is a way".

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
"You can count, you can influence, you can do something".

BY LENNON:
Yes.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
That is --

BY LENNON:
What we say to people is -- say about parents, it's usually a question we get from kids -- is:- "Well, I'm all for peace and everything but I try to convert my parents and they just say, 'War is economically viable, therefore we must have it"', and we give them the answer, "Let one state make balloons and let the other state burst them", because that's the answer to that. That is just complete programming. I got tripped off on that. Sorry.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
Well, that's what I was going to say. It's like the people that were frightened of the Beatles. We had exactly the same reaction as Beatles with long hair, which -- everybody's got longer hair than they used to. It wasn't the Beatles alone, it was a whole movement, but the fact is they had the same reactions to Beatles and "How long are you going to last?", and here am I who made a couple of million out of us, expecting us -- still not sure if we're going to drop out -- every year -- they still don't know that we have a machine and they still think in terms of, "It's going to end", and they're still thinking in those terms, but everybody has got long hair. Every businessman in Britain and Europe and the States has got Beatle haircuts and they've accepted them. They're no longer frightened of Beatles. They're -- all I ever get now is:- "Why don't we go back to the good old days when you were a happy-go-lucky guy with short hair?", you know. What is this? What is this? I mean, we take so long for the older generation to accept something like that. It's always going to be the youth first to catch on to a trend or whatever it is. Other things except Beatle music and Rock and Roll and pop. If you remember, Rock and Roll coming out and the violence in the cinemas and the press playing it up. That's how it happens and the action -- reaction between the press, the public and the kids wanting attention in a cinema and the putting down of Rock and Roll and the mayors and the Bishops and the whole scene going on about music and now they're no longer frightened of it and to every dad of thirty-eight, forty, that's the good old days. It is to me already. It's the good old days when Rock and Roll started. The same fear and reaction happened to Rock and Roll, to Beatles, to every new fad. It's the same old game and that's all. If you can just make parents aware of that even. It's only another craze. It's not going to be the decadent end of the world as you know it. There's not going to be sin, rape and lust on the doorstep.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
If it works out all right how do you see the world in ten or fifteen years?

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
I see it like --

BY DR. LEHMANN:
And different too. Well, for one thing no more (inaudible)

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
We have to talk to China. You can't have the paranoiac person like China in your midst carrying a gun and just try and block him off. Especially when he's so big, and it's only our fear that makes him more fearful. He's only -- if you could think of China as one person -- he's only a completely paranoid guy that's had a tough time from his neighbours for a few years. He is the left-wing revolutionary with a gun. He is the guy that's going on dropping bombs in the street and all we ever do is say, "You make one move and we'll really whip you boy. We'll really whip you", and that's all they ever get, and we have to start talking to each other.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
And I think -- if it's the West that starts talking first, if our kids are the ones that get turned on and we grow up to be the Establishment, which we nearly are -- we're all in our thirties, the early people are nearly the Establishment already, so if you lot don't do it and the bomb doesn't come, because if the bomb comes, well, that's it anyway -- nobody's worried about the bomb any more -- so, if you don't hurry up, well, we'll do it, and if it's the West that says, "Come on now, come on", and trips China out or whatever it is, you must extend a hand to a -- to a mental patient. We mustn't treat them like we're still treating our mental patients, locking them up and torturing them and letting any soft Mick (?) attend them and beat them up and take out aggression, and the world will only change when we talk to each other, and straight.  All that jazz about what sized table.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
And we honestly think a place like Canada looks like the only hope, because the only hope or help we've had is from Canada. The only real help we've had, and the only people like you that we've ever been approached by or the only people we've heard of that are doing anything like this, is going on in Canada, and Canada is America without being American, without that mighty -- we are the mighty whatever scene --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
-- and the only hope is for a country like Canada that has the wealth and all the cars and all the whatever it is that we all seem to think we want, and to show -- lead. This is the opportunity for Canada to lead the world --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
This is it, and the youth are -- just in youth talk it's like -- when you mention Canada it isn't like "What! Australia!". That image is changing. You sell a country on image, like the Greeks, desperate to have an image, you know, and -- image is how we sell our cigarettes and Coca-Cola, and Canada's image is just about getting groovy, you know.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
So, if people have -- let Canada be the hope. Don't take instructions from Britain. Let Canada lead.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Perhaps because Canada hasn't had quite as much colour and character as other nations, that's perhaps the difference that we have.

BY LENNON:
Well, we feel a great love for Canada --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
-- we really do.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
That where we have it (inaudible).

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
We've never been to the East, so we don't know what's going on there really. We certainly don't believe what we read, of course. We'd have to go and find out, but, this is the only country at all where there's ever been any inkling of hope, because America is too paranoiac to do anything, and Canada seems to be the only place left.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
(Inaudible). It's been a good thing hasn't it?

BY LENNON:
It's been beautiful. I hope the thing I said about Britain doesn't upset the (inaudible). I know how they feel.--

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
No, as a matter of fact --

BY LENNON:
-- but all I mean is, forget Britain. Canada is Canada. Show us the way. You are the new country. Instead of us -- the rest and Europe envying America its wealth, let us envy Canada its progression.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Let's try.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Do you people want to eat?

BY LENNON:
No, no, we're in no hurry. We go on as -- till you get tired.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
No, I don't want (inaudible) --

BY LENNON:
Because this is our work. No you're not. This is the most important thing we've done --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Is there a sense in which -- coming right back to drugs -- that drugs like speed -- if marijuana had appropriate use as a peace drug to a generation where peace began to mean something, would it be a right reading of speed to think of it as a drug that's appropriate to the kids with a great sense of powerlessness?

BY LENNON:
I think it --

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
A great sense of depression?

BY LENNON:
Yes.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
I think, first of all when you say marijuana leads to H, it's like saying beer leads to alcoholism. It's no go, but marijuana, if it makes you aware, or peaceful, whatever it does to you, and then you realize how tough reality is, or society, when you are feeling -- it brings that more gentle, or whatever it is, thing that we all claim about it, into you, then it's tougher to go back into society when you know what the game is, when you know what you're up against. Before you didn't know. Once you know then to go out again you need something extra to be able to play the game. That's all it is as far as I can see. It's just that.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Who were the kids -- if you take a generation of kids who've lacked myth, or lacked ideology, or lacked any reason to live in those senses --

BY LENNON:
Yes.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
-- and you inject the idea of drug, and drug becomes a major theme in their lives --

BY LENNON:
Like Selma.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Yes -- is there a possibility of a significant number of (inaudible) not because there's any connection between marijuana and speed, or marijuana and H, but simply going back to what heroin used to be, the "boss kick", that there'll be a significant number who'll go for the "boss kick" just because it's a drug context, in the same way, you know, guys go for cars, and they go for the Jag. or they go for the Ferrari, because it's --

BY LENNON:
Well, those people exist in the other generation. They're the ones that have gone for alcohol and whatever else there is around. I don't know what they use besides alcohol, but it's -- those people would go for that anyway, There'll be no -- the percentage won't grow . . .

JOHN LENNON AND YOKO ONO INTERVIEW
With Dean I.L. Campbell and Dr. Lehmann
SIDE 2

BY LENNON:
. . . something special, you know --

OTHER VOICE:
It would probably be a good idea to take a credit card in (inaudible).

BY LENNON:
You can't use my credit card unless I'm there to sign. You have to take --

OTHER VOICE:
It's okay, we've got cash.

BY LENNON:
Yes, go on.

OTHER VOICE:
I've got to leave (inaudible).

BY LENNON:
I don't know. We'll be here when you come back. Just don't be long. That was about -- the one -- that you think people would go on to it.

OTHER VOICE:
I don't know. I just throw it out (inaudible).

BY LENNON:
Yes, yes, I don't believe that because I believe that those people that need so much -- if we were a peace- orientated group of people, we could attend to those people and their needs. It's only -- it's a -- it's not -- why do people need any kind of drug, alcohol or anything is the problem.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
So I prefer not to use any drug. Now and then I use pot, because I need it just to relax or whatever it is; so why do we need it? It's the pressure, okay, so, if pot was available and -- other pressures would have to be taken off to prevent a wholesale addiction on harder drugs, but I really believe that the people would go into H, like the big car bit and die on hot rods, are the ones that would -- did it when you were kids, whoever they were, those people, that would go for that anyway, and I don't know -- I can't think. That's the only answer for that one. There must be a more rational statement or thing to use for the answer to that one. It doesn't seem to be enough to say, "Well, they would go anyway".

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
The fear of not passing the exam. at eight, the fear of not passing at eleven, or, I don't know how it is over here, the fear of you only are human if you go to be a teacher, the fear of all the time in my life I have been creating music, drawing picture poetry, all my life, but the whole of the first twenty years was trying to divert me to be safe and, "Well, if you're going to be an artist, be a teacher. If you are going to be a musician, do it as a hobby". The whole pressure not to be what you naturally go for, what -- we intuitively choose the career at birth almost, you can channel the energy at that age. It's just that. As soon as you are in school this segregation and humiliation -- "Go for science", is what we were told all the time. We had teachers putting us in for exams. in science just because he could -- so as you could show a list of people that went in for it -- nobody stood a chance in hell of getting it, things like that, that channelling of the child at three and trying to make it into a scientist at fifteen -- the scientists are born. Artists are born. Musicians are born. Politicians are born. They don't -- they aren't produced in factories, and all the people that are repressed automatons that really wanted to do something else, they are the ones with the aggression and the fear of youth. They are the ones that hate us for our freedom, that envy our sexual freedom, all the freedoms we have. The ones that never had a chance at all. You know, they never had a chance. They were always told, "This is your alternative -- that or nothing", the fear of not making it, the fear of not being the top of the class, the fear of not being --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
-- proper or better paid.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Can you imagine a society, a big society, without competitive drives and restrictions?

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
You can compete without fear of losing --

BY DR. LEHMANN:
On your own terms --

BY LENNON:

Yes.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
-- rather than on other people's terms?

BY LENNON:
You can be the best cobbler or you can be -- it's the same as that Harvard test, you know. Don't make street sweepers feel as though they're -- it's like the U.S. thing or anywhere. Everybody -- every son is a President that never made it. Anyone can be a President here. Everybody's a failed President. It's just to switch it over. It's only a thought -- it's only a thought planted in people that, "My son could have been a President, and look what he turned out to be". It's that level. Competitiveness is all right; otherwise, it wouldn't have worked.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
Not to be ashamed of it -- that's why the kids are going back to the land bit. There's no shame in manual labour. There's no shame in not being unintellectual. There's no shame in not being a musician. There's no shame in not being famous. It's just to make people feel happy. It's just as simple as that, to tell them they're all right, that anything they do is valid in the eyes of the law or God or whatever terms of reference we use, that they are a valid part of society, and one doesn't work without the other.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
What do you think people in the future should be ashamed of, if anything?

BY LENNON:
Ashamed of violence, ashamed of hate, but I don't think they should be. I don't know -- I don't like the term, "to make them ashamed". I don't know what to make them ashamed of. I don't want them to be ashamed.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
Raving optimists, aren't we?

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Yes. It's good to know (inaudible).

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
People ask us why we are doing this peace kick. What else? We got the fame and the money and the things that we were supposed to do, and what else is there? We're going to spend the rest of our life doing what?

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
Eating and what? There's nothing else to do. There's two alternatives, war or peace.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Will you turn to some of the other problems? (Inaudible).

BY LENNON:
Oh, yes, we are diet fanatics and we continually talk about, "Read the packet before you eat it", on that level, apart from polluting the air, and we know -- I saw some guy on T.V. here who's invented a detergent that doesn't do whatever detergents do, and how he took it 'round to all the Big Three who were all frightened of each other, just like countries, and didn't do anything in case the other did something, and so this guy's going to do it on his own, you know, and the only way to get the Big Three interested is to make it commercial for them, like I was saying about the pot, you know. Let them have what they want, you know, if that's what they want, but we mustn't be poisoned. It's insanity. We are always talking to people to just read the packet, all that colouring, chemical additive, we think is bad for you. We don't -- we try not to eat any of it. It's pretty hard, but we try not to eat any of it and we are always talking about that, of course, to people, and another myth about there not being enough food.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
There's another myth that must be shattered, because there is enough food and enough -- then the other one -- you say "Well, there might be enough food, but there's no transport". I mean, it's a joke. There is enough food. There's enough food in each city to feed each city in the West. There should be nobody starving in Montreal or Toronto for any reason on earth, or in London, and we can certainly feed India. Instead of handing a few -- the Indian Mafia two million pounds and to give them two handfuls of rice and keep it all, and all the rest of the (inaudible) and the jazz that goes on with all the international charities.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DR. LEHMANN:
But in tonight's newspaper, there was a horrible picture of fifty miles from Santa Barbara, it's all oily again. The oil slicks covering the beaches. Now, there will be more and more of this and if we want to transport people and food around, we need more oil, we are being told. If we want to make things commercial, we need more oil. If we need more oil, we will certainly have to spoil our oceans.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Such is (inaudible).

BY LENNON:
Haven't they got the brains and the capability?

OTHER VOICE:
We have.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
We are too greedy though.

BY LENNON:
But this guy with the detergent invented it himself because he couldn't get anybody to help him with it. He couldn't get any of the big companies interested. I don't know whether he went to any Government people with it, but he couldn't get anybody interested, but there's just as many brains lying around waiting to help us with the oil dumping problem. That isn't the problem. It's the problem of insisting to the companies. If we can insist that people can't kill on the road and can only drive so fast, we can insist that they -- they have two hundred million pounds profit instead of four hundred. They are not going to die. It's not going to kill capitalism. It's not Communism. There has to be a control of the air and the sea because otherwise we will die slowly, you know, which is just as silly.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
(Inaudible) pleasure.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
It's a pleasure, you know, anything else we can do to help, don't hesitate.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
(Inaudible).

BY LENNON:
Because I know it's a difficult --

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
We are sorry to impose on you and yet (inaudible) picture.

BY LENNON:
Well, don't. This is our life, and --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
There's nothing else, but to try and save our own skin and our brothers' skins.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
(Inaudible) you have chosen this to be your life, and, as you say, what else is there to do? It's a tremendous thing, and, of course, just even the challenge, accepting the challenge whether you achieve it or not really doesn't matter so much, but you probably will because there's hardly anyone who has a better chance.

BY LENNON:
So busy with our own thing.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
We say about love:- "The gift is a grace", but it's like a precious plant, you can't sit on it and you must protect it, nurture it and feed it, like an animal; otherwise it changes into something else, and another thing that society does to the married couple, that institution which people are, afraid of dying, is split them straight away. The man-woman joke about the woman make the bread and the man go and hunt the animals. There's no need any more of splitting the family. The family can be resurrected, and marriage, if society was built around a family and not built 'round - if two people are married the man has to go to this place. I know this is a hard thing. This is way ahead, but the fact that they split you as soon as you are together, no marriage stands a chance against those odds of all the goodies around, all the other sexual attractions around, all the people with nothing better to do, and that's, I think, what happened to marriage or "love", or whatever we call it. The family is the greatest thing.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
We saw this documentary in England of a woman native of a tribe in Africa before the Christians got them, and the tribe - pretty peaceful people, non-aggressive. They fight when attacked. They hunt just enough, et cetera et cetera, but one amazing thing was that all the children --

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
-- don't fight, and don't get into trouble Tommy. All the kids followed the parents like ducks and their babies, and the secret was that the mother didn't let go of the child until the child wanted to. Now, this sounds crazy in this situation that we are in today, but the fact that the mother held on to the child until the child itself wanted to explore -- they invented something and she carried it like an Indian. All these kids and -- there was not -- the mother was busy doing her job, and the kids were just playing there and maybe they only showed the good part of the film, but there was something in the fact that the child wasn't brought out of that security and thrown into a little plastic box half a mile down the road. Surely we can invent something that makes room if the mother can't possibly be with it all the time. Surely we can invent an environment for a baby that gives that basic security.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Margaret Mead studied another society like that, the Arapesh (?) in New Guinea. There were a society that -- there could -- one thing -- there were three societies within a hundred miles of each other. There was the Arapesh (?), the (inaudible) and (inaudible). The Arapesh (?) and the (inaudible) differed from us in that they made no distinction between the male and female in temperament. The Arapesh (?), if you compared them to us, we would say they were feminine. The (inaudible), if you compared them to us, would be masculine. The (inaudible), if you compared them to us, the female would be masculine and the male feminine, the female the aggressor (inaudible). The ones that were both, as we define them masculine, the child was sheltered away. The child would be nursed and the mother standing, in a sense holding the child away. The Arapesh (?) on the other hand, the whole of the society was tender. The mother is there to play with the child. Some adult was there. Kids are things you play with all the time, and they grow up this superbly peaceful people, but certainly as able to cope as any of the other tribes. (Inaudible) in fact rather better.

BY LENNON:
Yes, well, that's what the hippies are trying to do.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
You know, but I don't know how well they'll go over -- they'll do it.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
You can't even relate to yourself then.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
To have your own Coca-Cola (inaudible).

BY YOKO ONO:

BY LENNON:
I just thought I would throw that in.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
I hope you will be coming back again to us.

BY LENNON:
Yes, we will. We will be here in July, actually.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
By July, we may be at the point, which we are not at now, of having clarified some things (inaudible). It might be a very good thing for us if you'd try (inaudible).

BY LENNON:
Yes, we're available --

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
We have started to come to the conclusions where we can say, "Look, this is what we are starting to think". "How does it sound?".

BY LENNON:
Yes, we are available any time, anywhere, we would come for that. There's nothing more important.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
It's important for us.

BY LENNON:
(Inaudible) got killed.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Yes, we are --

BY LENNON:
Because it's very important. I think it must have got killed with the help of the media.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Well, yes and no, they were quite impressed with its favourableness --

BY LENNON:
So, how did it happen?

BY DR. LEHMANN:
-- but there may have been an underground swell of the wrong kind, you know -- I don't know. Everybody was
quite put out that it was -- it wasn't even killed. It was completely frozen out.

BY LENNON:
Maybe they needed better P.R. and that's where we can help.

OTHER VOICE (MALE):
(Inaudible) of a Commission as opposed to an expert Committee is the one in which it attempts to get people
who haven't really identified its position publicly before, try to get them to weigh them, and choose people
on their ability to weigh facts and come to a just decision, rather than on their particular biases, and I
think that's -- that's really a good way of doing it, and I think the Commission set up pretty much along a judge
and jury model more than --

BY LENNON:
Yes, but even with the result, how did we get that --

BY OTHER VOICE (MALE):
(Inaudible) the problem and even though I think this would I be the most likely way to get good recommendations instead of having the head of the Bureau of Narcotics (inaudible) head of Justice to come in and discus and criticize (inaudible) problem instead it by-passes all that crowd and get an independent Commission which is not obligated to the government and so on, get people who have not already publicly made themselves experts on a specific point. They are more likely, I think, to make good recommendations, but then what happens is that the people can encounter and say --

BY LENNON:
Their being the head of Narcotics and all the rest.
(inaudible).

BY OTHER VOICE (MALE):
In their opinion they are experts who on the face will be the big experts. They will be the head of the Bureau of Narcotics and so on, and they will say "This is no good", and the same thing happened with the (inaudible) Report in the States and the guys come forward with the people that -- the average person who would say, "If these are the experts why (inaudible) these people who have been saying things all along? They know the most".

BY LENNON:
You'd just have to be as strong as they are and show -- make them prove they are experts, and don't let it lie once the thing's out. Get on and push and push on every T.V., radio, everything you've got and keep the questions going. Don't let it hang in a Report and leave it. Pretend the Report never happened, and just make them prove, you know. Surely we can -- we are -- we can -- if they hike the public with that, where are we at if we can't hike the public with the truth?

BY OTHER VOICE (MALE):
But then, you see, we have to get organized in some other way, because once the Report is in and the Commission is officially disbanded, it no longer has --

BY LENNON:
But they were so committed that they went on with individual citizens because they were so committed.

BY OTHER VOICE (MALE):
I think that might be a worthwhile thing --
.............. (Several voices together).......................

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
Quite truthfully, we don't.

BY LENNON:
Yes.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
(Inaudible) the average to prove. The truth is we bloody well don't.

BY LENNON:
Yes, I am sure you don't. You can't have. How long has it being going?

BY DR. LEHMANN:
Since June.

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
July.

BY LENNON:
Oh yes, I mean --

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
We have another eighteen months. We have to do an interim report next month.

BY DR. LEHMANN:
We have got to go through the other part.

BY YOKO ONO:

BY DEAN CAMPBELL:
You have.

BY LENNON:
Yes, we will give you our whole line, our hot line.