I’m always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of my songs aren’t that doable.
I was a working-class macho guy who was used to being served and Yoko didn’t buy that. From the day I met her, she demanded equal time, equal space, equal rights.
I believe Jesus was right, Buddha was right, and all of those people like that are right. They’re all saying the same thing -? and I believe it. I believe what Jesus actually said -? the basic things he laid down about love and goodness -? and not what people say he said.
I don’t mind looking to the camera -? it’s people that throw me.
When I started, rock and roll itself was the basic revolution to people of my age and situation. We needed something loud and clear to break through all the unfeeling and repression that had been coming down on us kids.
I didn’t come after Elvis and Dylan, I’ve been around always. But if I see or meet a great artist, I love ’em.
We’re mostly macrobiotic, but sometimes I take the family out for a pizza.
Happiness Is A Warm Gun not about heroin. A gun magazine was sitting there with a smoking gun on the cover and an article that I never read inside called ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun.’ I took it right from there. I took it as the terrible idea of just having shot some animal.
All music is rehash. There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme. Try to tell the kids in the Seventies who were screaming to the Bee Gees that their music was just The Beatles redone. There is nothing wrong with the Bee Gees.
There is nothing conceptually better than rock ‘n’ roll. No group, be it Beatles, Dylan or Stones, have ever improved on Whole Lot of Shaking for my money. Or maybe I’m like our parents: that’s my period and I dig it and I’ll never leave it.
I’ve withdrawn many times. Part of me is a monk, and part a performing flea! The fear in the music business is that you don’t exist if you’re not at Xenon with Andy Warhol.
Nobody controls me. I’m uncontrollable. The only one who can control me is me, and even that’s barely possible.
As someone from the working class I was always interested in Russia and China and everything that related to the working class, even though I was playing the capitalist game.
I always like the studio best, once I got the hang of it and the control. I like it because it’s complete control.
You can’t give a child too much love and if you love somebody, you can’t be with them enough. There’s no such thing.
Happiness is a good vibe for peace.
If art were to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.
It’s no good having, being with people you can dominate all the time. Or being with someone who can dominate you all the time. Because either one is boring.
Paul and I know each other on a lot of different levels that very few people know about.
I just like TV. I think to me, it replaced the fireplace when I was a child. They took the fire away and they put a TV in instead and I got hooked on it.