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1968, December
The Beatles ending the year with the release of the "White Album".
At some point early this year, somebody in authority decided that it would be a good idea to kick John Lennon and Yoko Ono out of the country. John Lennon, of course, was one of the Beatles, the four Liverpool boys who dominated the popular music of Britain and the United States for most of the nineteen-sixties. In addition to winning great popular success as a singer and composer, both with the Beatles and since their dissolution, in 1970, he has been a film actor (in “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Help,” and “How I Won the War”) and an author (of “In His Own Write” and “A Spaniard in the Works,” two collections of idiosyncratic, pun-laden short stories and verse). He is now thirty-two years old. Yoko Ono, who will be forty years old in February, was an established conceptual artist and avant-garde composer when she married John Lennon, in 1969; since then she, too, has become a rock singer and songwriter (and, incidentally, the most famous person of Japanese origin in the Western world). In the controversy over whether or not the Lennons should be allowed to stay in the United States, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has taken the position that it is merely enforcing the law, and that because John Lennon was convicted in a British court in 1968 of possessing cannabis resin, one of the drugs derived from the Indian hemp plant, he and his wife must be deported. The Immigration Service is a branch of the Department of Justice. Under President Nixon and his Attorneys General, John Mitchell and Richard Kleindienst, the Department of Justice has made a practice of bringing charges against people, usually in clumps (the Chicago Seven, the Seattle Seven, and the Catonsville Nine, to name twenty-three), for what many civil libertarians regard as political reasons. The Lennons believe that their own frequently expressed political views—unorthodox from the Justice Department’s point of view, though quite ordinary in Greenwich Village, where they live—are the real reason for the government’s desire to show them the golden door.
The Beatles taking a break today
The Beatles taking a break today
The Beatles enjoying Boxing Day!
Merry Christmas Eve!
The Beatles enjoying the Holiday Season.
The Beatles taking a break from recording.
The Beatles are getting ready for the Holidays.
On December 20, 1968 The Beatles’ Released Another Christmas Album
On December 20, 1968 The Beatles released their sixth Christmas album. It was called The Beatles’ 1968 Christmas Record and was sent to fan club members in the UK and in the US. It included a song by Tiny Tim called Nowhere Man.
The Beatles take a break
At the Roayl Albert Hall in London, John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared onstage in a white bag as part of the Underground Christmas Party. The event was held by the Arts Lab, trying to encourage them to become active participants rather than passive consumers.
Lennon and Ono sat on the side of the stage as other poets and musicians performed at the event. When their time came, they entered the bag, remaining there while a man played a flute. The couple's 30-minute conceptual performance was titled Alchemical Wedding. The bag was, they explained, to ensure "total communication" with the audience. The following year the concept was reintroduced by the pair as Bagism, an attempt to satirize prejudice and stereotyping.
During the performance a protestor ran to the stage, holding a banner about the British government's involvement in the Nigerian civil war. "Do you care, John Lennon? Do you care?" the protestor shouted at the couple.
Again, the Beatles are taking some time off recording
The Beatles taking some time off recording
The Beatles are taking a break today
The Beatles are taking a day off today
The Beatles taking a break on this day 50 years ago
John Lennon and Yoko Ono made an interview today on the Dutch television show Rood Wit Blauw (Red White Blue).
It actually took place in the waiting room of Lennon's dentist in Knightsbridge, London. For the first three reels Ono spoke to interviewer Abram de Swaan while Lennon was being treated.
Yoko discussed her art and her beliefs about it as a functional means for communication. She then discussed first meeting Lennon at the Indica gallery, and how she didn't realise who he was at the time.
Lennon arrived during the fourth reel, explaining that he was feeling odd from the anaesthetic. He then gave a lengthy account of the couple's drugs bust, before discussing their film Smile.
Today John Lennon and Yoko Ono were guests performing on The Rolling Stones' television spectacular, Rock And Roll Circus.
The event was filmed at InterTel, a video facility at Stonebridge House in Wembley, London. The footage was captured on video and film, with sound recorded by Glyn Johns and Jimmy Miller on Olympic's mobile studio.
Guests for the show included Eric Clapton, Jethro Tull, Marianne Faithfull, The Who, drummer Mitch Mitchell, pianist Julius Katchen and blues singer Taj Mahal.
Lennon was part of a temporary supergroup known as The Dirty Mac, which also featured Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Mitch Mitchell. The group played a version of Yer Blues from the White Album.
It was followed by a piece known variously as Whole Lotta Yoko or Her Blues. Yoko Ono emerged from a black bag on the stage, and she and violinist Ivry Gitlis performed an improvised 12-bar blues with the Dirty Mac.
The Rolling Stones' own performance began 2am the following morning. By this time Lennon and Ono had departed to do a BBC radio interview, but they returned for part of the Stones' set. The couple were also filmed at various times offstage earlier in the day, and Lennon and Jagger traded jokes for a link sequence to introduce The Dirty Mac.
Upon viewing the footage, The Rolling Stones felt their performance was not the best, and that they had been upstaged by The Who's A Quick One While He's Away, so decided not to release Rock And Roll Circus. The audio and video footage circulated widely on bootlegs before being released officially in 1995.
The Rolling Stones wanted a television special to rival the Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour". Rock And Roll Circus was their version, intended to mix music with performers hired from Sir Robert Fossett's Circus.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono were among the guest performers on the show. Others included Eric Clapton, Jethro Tull, Marianne Faithfull, The Who, drummer Mitch Mitchell, pianist Julius Katchen and blues singer Taj Mahal.
On December 6th, rehearsals and camera tests began at the Marquee Club, and preliminary recording took place on December 8th at Olympic Sound Studios, both in London.
The Beatles taking a break today.
The Beatles are taking a break
The Beatles are taking a break
The Beatles are taking a break
The Beatles taking a break today
Today George Harrison told his staff at Apple that he had invited a group of Hells Angels from California to stay at 3 Savile Row.
Harrison had met the Hells Angels while in California in Los Angeles while producing tracks for Jackie Lomax's debut LP, Is This What You Want?. The Hells Angels did indeed stay, arriving later in December 1968.
The Beatles taking a break today.
The US release of George Harrison’s Wonderwall Music, the first solo album by any Beatle.
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