Just hours before his death, John Lennon talked at length with radio personality Dave Sholin about his work and his hopes future
“While there’s life there’s hope” “Lennon said during the three-hour final interview in his New York apartment. His wife, Yoko Ono, also took part.
Sholin, 34 executive producer of RKO Radio specials and Top 40 editor of the Gavin Report, said Lennon appeared intense, but was excited about return to music. His new album “Double Fantasy” was his first in five years.
“You have to give thanks to God whatever it is up survived” Lennon said. “We all survived Vietnam, Watergate – the tremendous upheavals in the whole world.
“We were the hip ones of the 60s but. It’s a whole massive change and we’re going into an unknown future. But we’re still all here. While there’s life there’s hope”
Lennon told Sholin his new album was aimed at the audience that knew him during the 1060s.
“I hope the young kids like it as well, but I ‘m really talking to the people who grew up with me” Lennon said “I’m saying here I am now. How are you? How’s your relationship going? Di you get through it all? Wasn’t the 70s a drag? You know, well, here we are. Ket’s make the 80s good because it’s still up to us to make what we can of it”
Sholin said he found Lennon and his wife very much in love
“The love that Yoko and John had it’s so rare I’ve never seen it before” he said
“I don’t think John Lennon was insincere about anything. He was committed, certainly. And he was so intense, I guess is the word.”
Shollin said the interview covered ” a complete gamut” in their apartment, and he drove them to a studio for recording date before catching and evening flight to San Francisco.
“I felt like I really had made a friend” Sholin said “That’s was told him in retrospect, I’m glad I said that to him.”
Valerie Sullivan
