John Lennon Shared Why ‘The Tonight Show’ Was the ‘Most Embarrassing’ Show He’d Ever Been On
In 1968, John Lennon and Paul McCartney went to New York and appeared on The Tonight Show. The pair were in the city to announce that they had established their company, Apple Corps. McCartney said he had been uneasy for much of the trip, but Lennon said he found the Tonight Show appearance particularly off-putting. He explained why he thought the interview was so embarrassing.
John Lennon said a ‘Tonight Show’ appearance with Paul McCartney was embarrassing
When Lennon and McCartney appeared on The Tonight Show, regular host Johnny Carson was absent. In his place was guest interviewer Joe Garagiola, a former baseball player. This was Lennon and McCartney’s primary problem with the interview. After the pre-show interview, they raised an issue with the fact that Garagiola would be interviewing them.
“I told them who Joe was, all in the most laudatory terms, because I personally like Joe — but they had apparently already made up their minds that they didn’t want Joe to interview them,” former Tonight Show staff member Craig Tennis wrote in his book Johnny Tonight!. “What they wanted, to my horror, was for me to interview them. I spent five or ten minutes trying to explain to them that that was not possible, but it didn’t sink in — at one point they even threatened not to do the show unless I would go on with them and do their interview.”
They eventually agreed to speak with Garagiola, but Lennon didn’t like it.
“It was terrible,” he said, per The Beatles Anthology. “There was a baseball player hosting the show, and they didn’t tell us. He was asking, ‘And which one’s Ringo?’ and all that s***. You’d expect to go on the Johnny Carson show … and then you’d get there, and there’s this sort of football player, who doesn’t know anything about you, and Tallulah Bankhead saying how beautiful we were. It was the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever been on.”
John Lennon liked it when people disliked The Beatles, but not when they didn’t know them
Lennon found Garagiola’s blatant lack of knowledge of The Beatles embarrassing. Still, he claimed he liked it when people disliked the band.
“I don’t mind people putting us down, because if everybody really liked us, it would be a bore,” he said. “You’ve got to have people putting you down. It doesn’t give any edge to it if everybody just falls flat on their face saying, ‘You’re great.’ We enjoy some of the criticisms as well, they’re quite funny; some of the clever criticisms, not the ones that don’t know anything, but some of the clever ones are quite fun.”
He went on The Tonight Show intending on talking about Apple and, instead, answered jokey questions from a guest host. It was likely more frustrating than embarrassing.
The aftermath of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s ‘Tonight Show’ interview was also a mess
According to Tennis, the interview was disastrous.
“He started by asking one or two really silly questions and they went downhill from there,” he wrote. “He just sat there saying things like, ‘Gee, I hope my kids get to see this,’ and ‘Boy, am I going to be a popular guy in the neighborhood,’ et cetera ad nauseam. It was so inane that the Beatles became visibly uncomfortable, and Joe had to actually let them leave. The Beatles left believing that they had been sloughed off by this guy, and in a way, I guess they had been.”
Afterward, though, it was even more chaotic. A group of fans managed to break into the parking garage. Rather than going after them, though, The Tonight Show’s head of security attacked The Beatles’ security.
“The day before their appearance, I brought over the security director to NBC to meet with the head of our security,” Tennis wrote. “The Beatles’ man was about six feet, three inches tall, distinguished-looking in a blue three-piece suit, and, unusual for the times, had huge gray muttonchop whiskers. They discussed the routing for nearly an hour. Then when John and Paul were leaving from the underground garage, we were suddenly mobbed by kids who had somehow gotten in. So, what did the head of security do? He grabbed the Englishman by the muttonchops and banged his head against the limousine! So effective was our head of security that he couldn’t tell the difference between a man he’d spent an hour with the day before and a hundred screaming teenagers!”
This was Lennon’s final appearance on the show.
