John Lennon

"Lost weekend": 1973–1975

As Lennon was about to record Mind Games in 1973, he and Ono decided to separate. The ensuing 18-month period apart, which he later called his "lost weekend" in reference to the film of the same name, was spent in Los Angeles and New York City in the company of May Pang. Mind Games, credited to the "Plastic U.F.Ono Band", was released in November 1973. Lennon also contributed "I'm the Greatest" to Starr's album Ringo (1973), released the same month. With Harrison joining Starr and Lennon at the recording session for the song, it marked the only occasion when three former Beatles recorded together between the band's break-up and Lennon's death.

In early 1974, Lennon was drinking heavily and his alcohol-fuelled antics with Harry Nilsson made headlines. In March, two widely publicised incidents occurred at The Troubadour club. In the first incident, Lennon stuck an unused menstrual pad on his forehead and scuffled with a waitress. The second incident occurred two weeks later, when Lennon and Nilsson were ejected from the same club after heckling the Smothers Brothers. Lennon decided to produce Nilsson's album Pussy Cats, and Pang rented a Los Angeles beach house for all the musicians. After a month of further debauchery, the recording sessions were in chaos, and Lennon returned to New York with Pang to finish work on the album. In April, Lennon had produced the Mick Jagger song "Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)" which was, for contractual reasons, to remain unreleased for more than 30 years. Pang supplied the recording for its eventual inclusion on The Very Best of Mick Jagger (2007).

Lennon had settled back in New York when he recorded the album Walls and Bridges. Released in October 1974, it included "Whatever Gets You thru the Night", which featured Elton John on backing vocals and piano, and became Lennon's only single as a solo artist to top the US Billboard Hot 100 chart during his lifetime. A second single from the album, "#9 Dream", followed before the end of the year. Starr's Goodnight Vienna (1974) again saw assistance from Lennon, who wrote the title track and played piano. On 28 November, Lennon made a surprise guest appearance at Elton John's Thanksgiving concert at Madison Square Garden, in fulfilment of his promise to join the singer in a live show if "Whatever Gets You thru the Night", a song whose commercial potential Lennon had doubted, reached number one. Lennon performed the song along with "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Saw Her Standing There", which he introduced as "a song by an old estranged fiancé of mine called Paul".

In the first two weeks of January 1975, Elton John topped the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with his cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", featuring Lennon on guitar and backing vocals - Lennon is credited on the single under the moniker of "Dr. Winston O'Boogie". As January became February, Lennon and Ono reunited as Lennon and Bowie completed recording of their co-composition "Fame", which became David Bowie's first US number one, featuring guitar and backing vocals by Lennon. In February, Lennon released Rock 'n' Roll (1975), an album of cover songs. "Stand by Me", taken from the album and a US and UK hit, became his last single for five years. He made what would be his final stage appearance in the ATV special A Salute to Lew Grade, recorded on 18 April and televised in June. Playing acoustic guitar and backed by an eight-piece band, Lennon performed two songs from Rock 'n' Roll ("Stand by Me", which was not broadcast, and "Slippin' and Slidin'") followed by "Imagine". The band, known as Etc., wore masks behind their heads, a dig by Lennon, who thought Grade was two-faced.

In 2010, Yoko Ono said that Paul McCartney had helped to save their marriage, "Paul told me he was going to see John in L.A. He asked what it would take for me to go back to John, and I said, 'Well, maybe if he courted me.' I want the world to know that it was a very touching thing that he did for John.... he was genuinely concerned about his old partner. It was so sweet that he wanted to save John. Sure, they were two macho, very talented guys who had strong opinions, arguments, like most brothers. But when it came to the crux of the matter, when Paul thought John was in dire straights, he helped"..

Hiatus and return: 1975–1980

Sean Lennon, Lennon's only child with Ono, was born on 9 October 1975 (Lennon's thirty-fifth birthday). Lennon then largely withdrew from the music industry and took on the role of househusband; he later said that he "baked bread" and "looked after the baby". He devoted himself to Sean, rising at 6 am daily to plan and prepare his meals and to spend time with him. He wrote "Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love)" for Starr's Ringo's Rotogravure (1976), travelling to Los Angeles in May to play on the recording, in what would be his last professional studio session until 1980.

Although he kept an extremely low public profile, Lennon made occasional public appearances and statements. On 19 January 1977, he and Ono attended the New Spirit Inaugural Concert for US president-elect Jimmy Carter at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In October, Lennon and Ono held a press conference at Tokyo's Hotel Okura, where he formally announced his break from music, saying, "we have basically decided, without any great decision, to be with our baby as much as we can until we feel we can take time off to indulge ourselves in creating things outside of the family." In May 1979, they placed a full-page open letter in The New York Times, titled "A Love Letter From John And Yoko To People Who Ask Us What, When And Why", addressing public curiosity about their lives.

During his career break he created several series of drawings, and drafted a book containing a mix of autobiographical material and what he termed "mad stuff", all of which would be published posthumously. He also continued to write songs and make home recordings during this period, including demos of "Free as a Bird", "Real Love" and "Now and Then".

In June, Lennon chartered a 43-foot sailboat and embarked on a sailing trip to Bermuda. En route, he and the crew encountered a storm, rendering everyone on board seasick, except Lennon, who took control and sailed the boat through the storm. This experience re-invigorated him and his creative muse. He spent three weeks in Bermuda in a home named Fairylands, writing and refining the tracks for the upcoming album.

Lennon returned to professional recording in August 1980, beginning sessions for the album Double Fantasy. Promotional interviews followed in September, and in October he released the single "(Just Like) Starting Over". In November, he and Ono released Double Fantasy, which included songs Lennon had written in Bermuda.

The music reflected Lennon's fulfilment in his new-found stable family life. Sufficient additional material was recorded for a planned follow-up album Milk and Honey, which was issued posthumously, in 1984. Double Fantasy was not well received initially and drew comments such as Melody Maker's "indulgent sterility... a godawful yawn".

Brian Epstein

The Beatles were performing at Liverpool's Cavern Club in November 1961 when they were introduced to Brian Epstein after a midday concert. Epstein was homosexual and closeted, and according to biographer Philip Norman, one of Epstein's reasons for wanting to manage the group was that he was attracted to Lennon. Later biographer Mark Lewisohn called the claim unsubstantiated and wrote:

Suggestions that it was only homoerotic fantasy that drew Brian Epstein to the Beatles are distortion [...] and perform a malign disservice to both him and them. It may have been part of the mix, but he was, above all else, simply the latest in an ever-lengthening line of people seduced by the Beatles' singular mix of talents.

Almost as soon as Julian was born, Lennon went on holiday to Spain with Epstein, which led to speculation about their relationship. When he was later questioned about it, Lennon said, "Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But it was a pretty intense relationship. It was my first experience with a homosexual that I was conscious was homosexual. We used to sit in a café in Torremolinos looking at all the boys and I'd say, 'Do you like that one? Do you like this one?' I was rather enjoying the experience, thinking like a writer all the time: I am experiencing this." Soon after their return from Spain, at McCartney's twenty-first birthday party in June 1963, Lennon physically attacked Cavern Club master of ceremonies Bob Wooler for saying "How was your honeymoon, John?" The MC, known for his wordplay and affectionate but cutting remarks, was making a joke, but ten months had passed since Lennon's marriage, and the deferred honeymoon was still two months in the future. Lennon was drunk. He later said: "He called me a queer so I battered his bloody ribs in."

Lennon delighted in mocking Epstein for his homosexuality and for the fact that he was Jewish. When Epstein invited suggestions for the title of his autobiography, Lennon offered Queer Jew; on learning of the eventual title, A Cellarful of Noise, he parodied, "More like A Cellarful of Boys". He demanded of a visitor to Epstein's flat, "Have you come to blackmail him? If not, you're the only bugger in London who hasn't." During the recording of "Baby, You're a Rich Man", he sang altered choruses of "Baby, you're a rich fag Jew".

Julian Lennon

During his marriage to Cynthia, Lennon's first son Julian was born at the same time that his commitments with the Beatles were intensifying at the height of Beatlemania. Lennon was touring with the Beatles when Julian was born on 8 April 1963. Julian's birth, like his mother Cynthia's marriage to Lennon, was kept secret because Epstein was convinced that public knowledge of such things would threaten the Beatles' commercial success. Julian recalled that as a small child in Weybridge some four years later, "I was trundled home from school and came walking up with one of my watercolour paintings. It was just a bunch of stars and this blonde girl I knew at school. And Dad said, 'What's this?' I said, 'It's Lucy in the sky with diamonds.'" Lennon used it as the title of a Beatles song, and though it was later reported to have been derived from the initials LSD, Lennon insisted, "It's not an acid song." Lennon was distant from Julian, who felt closer to McCartney than to his father. During a car journey to visit Cynthia and Julian during Lennon's divorce, McCartney composed a song, "Hey Jules", to comfort him. It would evolve into the Beatles song "Hey Jude". Lennon later said, "That's his best song. It started off as a song about my son Julian [...] he turned it into 'Hey Jude'. I always thought it was about me and Yoko but he said it wasn't."

Lennon's relationship with Julian was already strained, and after Lennon and Ono moved to New York in 1971, Julian did not see his father again until 1973. With Pang's encouragement, arrangements were made for Julian and his mother to visit Lennon in Los Angeles, where they went to Disneyland. Julian started to see his father regularly, and Lennon gave him a drumming part on a Walls and Bridges track. He bought Julian a Gibson Les Paul guitar and other instruments, and encouraged his interest in music by demonstrating guitar chord techniques. Julian recalls that he and his father "got on a great deal better" during the time he spent in New York: "We had a lot of fun, laughed a lot and had a great time in general."

In a Playboy interview with David Sheff shortly before his death, Lennon said, "Sean is a planned child, and therein lies the difference. I don't love Julian any less as a child. He's still my son, whether he came from a bottle of whiskey or because they didn't have pills in those days. He's here, he belongs to me, and he always will." He said he was trying to reestablish a connection with the then 17-year-old, and confidently predicted, "Julian and I will have a relationship in the future." After his death it was revealed that he had left Julian very little in his will.

Yoko Ono

Lennon first met Yoko Ono on 9 November 1966 at the Indica Gallery in London, where Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibit. They were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar. Lennon was intrigued by Ono's "Hammer A Nail": patrons hammered a nail into a wooden board, creating the art piece. Although the exhibition had not yet begun, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a millionaire! He might buy it." According to Lennon's recollection in 1980, Ono had not heard of the Beatles, but she relented on condition that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which Lennon said he replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in." Ono subsequently related that Lennon had taken a bite out of the apple on display in her work Apple, much to her fury.

Ono began to telephone and visit Lennon at his home. When Cynthia asked him for an explanation, Lennon explained that Ono was only trying to obtain money for her "avant-garde bullshit". While his wife was on holiday in Greece in May 1968, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording what would become the Two Virgins album, after which, he said, they "made love at dawn". When Lennon's wife returned home she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, "Oh, hi." Ono became pregnant in 1968 and miscarried a male child on 21 November 1968, a few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was granted.Two years before the Beatles disbanded, Lennon and Ono began public protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969, and spent their honeymoon at the Hilton Amsterdam, campaigning with a week-long bed-in. They planned another bed-in in the United States, but were denied entry, so held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance". They often combined advocacy with performance art, as in their "Bagism", first introduced during a Vienna press conference. Lennon detailed this period in the Beatles song "The Ballad of John and Yoko". Lennon changed his name by deed poll on 22 April 1969, adding "Ono" as a middle name. The brief ceremony took place on the roof of the Apple Corps building, where the Beatles had performed their rooftop concert three months earlier. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon thereafter, some official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon. The couple settled at Tittenhurst Park at Sunninghill in Berkshire. After Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-size bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on the Beatles' album, Abbey Road.

Ono and Lennon moved to New York, to a flat on Bank Street, Greenwich Village. Looking for somewhere with better security, they relocated in 1973 to the more secure Dakota overlooking Central Park at 1 West 72nd Street.

May Pang

ABKCO Industries was formed in 1968 by Allen Klein as an umbrella company to ABKCO Records. Klein hired May Pang as a receptionist in 1969. Through involvement in a project with ABKCO, Lennon and Ono met her the following year. She became their personal assistant. In 1973, after she had been working with the couple for three years, Ono confided that she and Lennon were becoming estranged. She went on to suggest that Pang should begin a physical relationship with Lennon, telling her, "He likes you a lot." Astounded by Ono's proposition, Pang nevertheless agreed to become Lennon's companion. The pair soon left for Los Angeles, beginning an 18-month period he later called his "lost weekend". In Los Angeles, Pang encouraged Lennon to develop regular contact with Julian, whom he had not seen for two years. He also rekindled friendships with Starr, McCartney, Beatles roadie Mal Evans, and Harry Nilsson.

In June, Lennon and Pang returned to Manhattan in their newly rented penthouse apartment where they prepared a spare room for Julian when he visited them. Lennon, who had been inhibited by Ono in this regard, began to reestablish contact with other relatives and friends. By December, he and Pang were considering a house purchase, and he refused to accept Ono's telephone calls. In February 1975, he agreed to meet Ono, who claimed to have found a cure for smoking. After the meeting, he failed to return home or call Pang. When Pang telephoned the next day, Ono told her that Lennon was unavailable because he was exhausted after a hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared at a joint dental appointment; he was stupefied and confused to such an extent that Pang believed he had been brainwashed. Lennon told Pang that his separation from Ono was now over, although Ono would allow him to continue seeing her as his mistress.

Sean Lennon

Sean Ono Lennon was born on 9 October 1975, his father's 35th birthday. Ono had previously suffered three miscarriages in her attempt to have a child with Lennon. After Ono and Lennon were reunited, she became pregnant again. She initially said that she wanted to have an abortion but changed her mind and agreed to allow the pregnancy to continue on the condition that Lennon adopt the role of househusband, which he agreed to do.

Following Sean's birth, Lennon's subsequent hiatus from the music industry would span five years. He had a photographer take pictures of Sean every day of his first year and created numerous drawings for him, which were posthumously published as Real Love: The Drawings for Sean. Lennon later proudly declared, "He didn't come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish."

Former Beatles

While Lennon remained consistently friendly with Starr during the years that followed the Beatles' break-up in 1970, his relationships with McCartney and Harrison varied. He was initially close to Harrison, but the two drifted apart after Lennon moved to the US in 1971. When Harrison was in New York for his December 1974 Dark Horse tour, Lennon agreed to join him on stage but failed to appear after an argument over Lennon's refusal to sign an agreement that would finally dissolve the Beatles' legal partnership. Harrison later said that when he visited Lennon during his five years away from music, he sensed that Lennon was trying to communicate, but his bond with Ono prevented him. Harrison offended Lennon in 1980 when he published I, Me, Mine, an autobiography that Lennon felt made little mention of him. Lennon told Playboy, "I was hurt by it. By glaring omission... my influence on his life is absolutely zilch... he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I'm not in the book."

Lennon's most intense feelings were reserved for McCartney. In addition to attacking him with the lyrics of "How Do You Sleep?", Lennon argued with him through the press for three years after the group split. The two later began to reestablish something of the close friendship they had once known, and, on one occasion in 1974, even recorded music together (later bootlegged as A Toot and a Snore in '74) before eventually growing apart once more. During McCartney's final visit in April 1976, Lennon said that they watched the episode of Saturday Night Live in which Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 offer to get the Beatles to reunite on the show. According to Lennon, the pair considered going to the studio to make a joke appearance, attempting to claim their share of the money, but they were too tired. Lennon summarised his feelings towards McCartney in an interview three days before his death: "Throughout my career, I've selected to work with... only two people: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono... That ain't bad picking."

Along with his estrangement from McCartney, Lennon always felt a musical competitiveness with him and kept an ear on his music. During his career break from 1975 until shortly before his death, according to Fred Seaman, Lennon and Ono's assistant at the time, Lennon was content to sit back as long as McCartney was producing what Lennon saw as mediocre material. Lennon took notice when McCartney released "Coming Up" in 1980, which was the year Lennon returned to the studio. "It's driving me crackers!" he jokingly complained, because he could not get the tune out of his head. That same year, Lennon was asked whether the group were dreaded enemies or the best of friends, and he replied that they were neither, and that he had not seen any of them in a long time. But he also said, "I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo go on."

Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon as a bed-in at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel; the March 1969 event attracted worldwide media ridicule. During a second bed-in three months later at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Lennon wrote and recorded "Give Peace a Chance". Released as a single, the song was quickly interpreted as an anti-war anthem and sung by a quarter of a million demonstrators against the Vietnam War in Washington, DC, on 15 November, the second Vietnam Moratorium Day. In December, they paid for billboards in 10 cities around the world which declared, in the national language, "War Is Over! If You Want It".

During the year, Lennon and Ono began to support efforts by the family of James Hanratty to prove his innocence. Hanratty had been hanged in 1962. According to Lennon, those who had condemned Hanratty were "the same people who are running guns to South Africa and killing blacks in the streets... The same bastards are in control, the same people are running everything, it's the whole bullshit bourgeois scene." In London, Lennon and Ono staged a "Britain Murdered Hanratty" banner march and a "Silent Protest For James Hanratty", and produced a 40-minute documentary on the case. At an appeal hearing more than thirty years later, Hanratty's conviction was upheld after DNA evidence was found to match, validating those who condemned him.

Lennon and Ono showed their solidarity with the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders workers' work-in of 1971 by sending a bouquet of red roses and a cheque for £5,000. On moving to New York City in August that year, they befriended two of the Chicago Seven, Yippie peace activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Another political activist, John Sinclair, poet and co-founder of the White Panther Party, was serving ten years in prison for selling two joints of marijuana after previous convictions for possession of the drug. In December 1971 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 15,000 people attended the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally", a protest and benefit concert with contributions from Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, and others. Lennon and Ono, backed by David Peel and Jerry Rubin, performed an acoustic set of four songs from their forthcoming Some Time in New York City album including "John Sinclair", whose lyrics called for his release. The day before the rally, the Michigan Senate passed a bill that significantly reduced the penalties for possession of marijuana and four days later Sinclair was released on an appeal bond. The performance was recorded and two of the tracks later appeared on John Lennon Anthology (1998).

Following the Bloody Sunday incident in Northern Ireland in 1972, Lennon said that given the choice between the British army and the IRA he would side with the latter. Lennon and Ono wrote two songs protesting British presence and actions in Ireland for their Some Time in New York City album: "The Luck of the Irish" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday". In 2000, David Shayler, a former member of Britain's domestic security service MI5, suggested that Lennon had given money to the IRA, though this was swiftly denied by Ono. Biographer Bill Harry records that following Bloody Sunday, Lennon and Ono financially supported the production of the film The Irish Tapes, a political documentary with an Irish Republican slant. In February 2000 Lennon's cousin Stanley Parkes stated that the singer had given money to the IRA during the 1970s. After the events of Bloody Sunday Lennon and Ono attended a protest in London while displaying a Red Mole newspaper with the headline "For the IRA, Against British Imperialism".

According to FBI surveillance reports, and confirmed by Tariq Ali in 2006, Lennon was sympathetic to the International Marxist Group, a Trotskyist group formed in Britain in 1968. However, the FBI considered Lennon to have limited effectiveness as a revolutionary, as he was "constantly under the influence of narcotics".

In 1972, Lennon contributed a drawing and limerick titled "Why Make It Sad to Be Gay?" to Len Richmond and Gary Noguera's The Gay Liberation Book. Lennon's last act of political activism was a statement in support of the striking minority sanitation workers in San Francisco on 5 December 1980. He and Ono planned to join the workers' protest on 14 December.

Deportation attempt

Following the impact of "Give Peace a Chance" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" on the anti-war movement, the Nixon administration heard rumours of Lennon's involvement in a concert to be held in San Diego at the same time as the 1972 Republican National Convention and tried to have him deported. Nixon believed that Lennon's anti-war activities could cost him his reelection; Republican Senator Strom Thurmond suggested in a February 1972 memo that "deportation would be a strategic counter-measure" against Lennon. The next month the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began deportation proceedings, arguing that his 1968 misdemeanour conviction for cannabis possession in London had made him ineligible for admission to the United States. Lennon spent the next 3+1⁄2 years in and out of deportation hearings until 8 October 1975, when a court of appeals barred the deportation attempt, stating "the courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds". While the legal battle continued, Lennon attended rallies and made television appearances. He and Ono co-hosted The Mike Douglas Show for a week in February 1972, introducing guests such as Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale to mid-America. In 1972, Bob Dylan wrote a letter to the INS defending Lennon, stating:

John and Yoko add a great voice and drive to the country's so-called art institution. They inspire and transcend and stimulate and by doing so, only help others to see pure light and in doing that, put an end to this dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as Artist Art by the overpowering mass media. Hurray for John and Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country's got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!

On 23 March 1973, Lennon was ordered to leave the US within 60 days. Ono, meanwhile, was granted permanent residence. In response, Lennon and Ono held a press conference on 1 April 1973 at the New York City Bar Association, where they announced the formation of the state of Nutopia; a place with "no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people". Waving the white flag of Nutopia (two handkerchiefs), they asked for political asylum in the US. The press conference was filmed, and appeared in a 2006 documentary, The U.S. vs. John Lennon. Soon after the press conference, Nixon's involvement in a political scandal came to light, and in June the Watergate hearings began in Washington, D.C.. They led to the president's resignation 14 months later. In December 1974, when he and members of his tour entourage visited the White House, Harrison asked Gerald Ford, Nixon's successor, to intercede in the matter. Ford's administration showed little interest in continuing the battle against Lennon, and the deportation order was overturned in 1975. The following year, Lennon received his green card certifying his permanent residency.

FBI surveillance and declassified documents

After Lennon's death, historian Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information Act request for FBI files that documented the Bureau's role in the deportation attempt. The FBI admitted it had 281 pages of files on Lennon, but refused to release most of them on the grounds that they contained national security information. In 1983, Wiener sued the FBI with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. It took 14 years of litigation to force the FBI to release the withheld pages. The ACLU, representing Wiener, won a favourable decision in their suit against the FBI in the Ninth Circuit in 1991. The Justice Department appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in April 1992, but the court declined to review the case. In 1997, respecting President Bill Clinton's newly instigated rule that documents should be withheld only if releasing them would involve "foreseeable harm", the Justice Department settled most of the outstanding issues outside court by releasing all but 10 of the contested documents.

Wiener published the results of his 14-year campaign in January 2000. Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files contained facsimiles of the documents, including "lengthy reports by confidential informants detailing the daily lives of anti-war activists, memos to the White House, transcripts of TV shows on which Lennon appeared, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police on drug charges". The story is told in the documentary The US vs. John Lennon. The final 10 documents in Lennon's FBI file, which reported on his ties with London anti-war activists in 1971 and had been withheld as containing "national security information provided by a foreign government under an explicit promise of confidentiality", were released in December 2006. They contained no indication that the British government had regarded Lennon as a serious threat; one example of the released material was a report that two prominent British leftists had hoped Lennon would finance a left-wing bookshop and reading room.