‘Love’, from 1970’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band was released as a single on 15 Nov. 1982 to promote the compilation album The John Lennon Collection.

John: I had this dream of this woman coming. I knew it wouldn’t be someone buying the Beatles’ records. The way it was with Cyn was: she got pregnant, we got married. We never had much to say to each other. But the vibrations didn’t upset me because she was quiet and I was away all the time. I’d get fed up every now and then, and start thinking this ‘Where Is She?’ bit. I’d hope that The One would come. Everybody’s got that ‘thinking of The One’. The one what? Well, I suppose I was hoping for a woman who would give me what I got from a man intellectually. I wanted someone I could be myself with.

Yoko: I went to London from New York in 1966, and I met all these English men. And most of them were very feminine. And I thought, ‘Oh, is it going to be all like this?’ And then there was this guy who looked like a guy and we understood each other. He had a very intelligent side that appealed to me, and also a kind of sensitivity. I thought, ‘he understands me’. That’s rare. Most men really don’t. He was awake, but he was a bit unfocused, like a lost soul. And then when we met, he suddenly had a clear vision like he used to have when he was a boy.

John: I went to the Maharishi. Yoko stayed in England. The meditation was fantastic. It was as big as acid trips and changing my whole thing. Suddenly I was tapping this source of power inside myself and vast vistas of creativity, if I could just hold it and get back. While I was in India, she wrote me these letters – ‘I’m a cloud. Watch for me in the sky.’ I’d get so excited about her letters. There was nothing in them that wives or mother-in-Iaws could have understood.

When I got back from India, we were talking to each other on the phone. I called her over. It was the middle of the night and Cyn was away, and I thought, ‘well now’s the time if I’m gonna get to know her any more’. She came to the house and I didn’t know what to do, so we went upstairs to my studio and I played her all the tapes that I’d made, all this far out stuff, some comedy stuff, and some electronic music. She was suitably impressed and then she said, ‘well, let’s make one ourselves’, so we made Two Virgins.

It was midnight when we started Two Virgins, it was dawn when we finished, and then we made love at dawn. It was very beautiful.

I had never known love like this before and it hit me so hard that I had to halt my marriage to Cyn. And don’t think that was a reckless decision, because I felt very deeply about it and all the implications that would be involved. Some may say my decision was selfish. Well, I don’t think it is.

Are your children going to thank you when they are eighteen? There is something else to consider, too – isn’t it better to avoid rearing children in the atmosphere of a strained relationship? My marriage to Cyn was not unhappy. But it was just a normal marital state where nothing happened and which we continued to sustain. You sustain it until you meet someone who suddenly sets you alight.

With Yoko I really knew love for the first time. Our first attraction was a mental one, but it happened physically too. Both are essential in the union – but I never thought I would marry again. Now the thought of it seems so easy. We never planned our relationship, it just happened and it ended up that we’re always together. Freedom is in the mind.

It seems that as soon as a couple gets together, the man is supposed to go somewhere and work and the woman is supposed to be somewhere else; but I don’t think that’s very good for a relationship. It just so happens that that’s the way we all live. Maybe in the past they worked together, or within sight of each other, like she’d be digging the potatoes and he’d be cutting the hay or something, or they split for hunting – something like that. I don’t see why we should be apart, especially as we can work together and have the same interests. It’s not like I’m a mountain climber and she’s an archaeologist. Our interests are the same, so that helps.

Nothing is more important than what goes on between two people, because it’s two people that produce children, two people that fall in love. You don’t generally fall in love with two people at once, I’ve never experienced it anyway. I’m in love and that’s the end of it. She’s now fifty per cent of me. So every time I pick up the guitar I sing about Yoko and that’s how I’m influenced. I am obviously influenced by her ideas and her coming from that other field, the so-called avant-garde or underground or wherever she came from. She came in through the bathroom window. She encouraged the freak in me. We’re a pretty horny couple and we’re artistic and neurotic like everybody else, the kind of people who express themselves sexually a lot. But we’ve both been through the mill and we’ve done it all, so what the hell, now we’ve decided this is what we want. We so satisfy each other that that’s enough.

I’m more myself now than I was then because I’ve got the security of Yoko. That’s what’s done it and it’s like having a mother and everything. That’s it. So I’m secure in my relationship with her, so then I can afford to relax. I was never relaxed before, I was always uptight. The me that you see now was in there, but it only came out at a very intimate party, or with somebody who knew me very well. I could never relax in these kinds of situations, very seldom anyway. I was always in a state of uptightness and the cynical Lennon image came out and the remarks and all that ’bit’.

I’m not uptight so much these days. I still get uptight but less so, because I’m not hiding anything. I’m trying to break away from that ’what have you got to hide’ thing because when you get down to it, I’ve got nothing to hide. I have fear and paranoia and happiness and joy. I’m just like everyone else and I know everybody has the same problems that I have and they’re not something I carry alone. Yoko and I have clashed artistically. Our egos have smashed once or twice. But if I know what I’m doing as an artist, then I can see if I’m being hypocritical in my reactions.

I sometimes am overawed by her talent. I think, ‘Fuck! I better watch out, she is taking over, I better get myself in here’. And I say, ‘Are you taking over?’ And then say ‘all right, all right’, and I relax again. I mean, she’s going to haul 365 legs and make a bloody film about a fly crawling over some woman’s body? What is it? But it’s all right, I know her.

Yoko: An artist couple is the most difficult thing. On the David Frost
programme, some guy was saying, ‘I like to write music and my fiancée likes to write poetry.’ The fact is that we both paint, compose and write poetry, and on that basis I think we’re doing pretty well. I think it’s a miracle that we’re doing all right. But we are doing all right, don’t you think, John?

John: It’s just handy to fuck your best friend. That’s what it is. And once I resolved the fact that it was a woman as well, it’s all right. I’m living with an artist who’s inspiring me to work. Yoko is the most famous unknown artist. Everybody knows her name but nobody knows what she does.

One thing we’ve found out is that love is a great gift, like a precious flower. You have to feed it and look after it and it has storms to go through and snow but you have to protect it.