Beatles FAQ

We were first introduced in about 1974 by Elizabeth Taylor.  We were in LA, and one night she had a party to which both John and I had been invited.   David Bowie, 1999 In 1974 David Bowie went to New York to record his  'white soul' album  Young Americans .  In interviews, he gave the impression that his first meeting with Lennon was a chance encounter. Other accounts suggest that he in fact made several attempts to establish contact. What is clear that Bowie had always been an admirer of The Beatles. He had even tried to change label, from Decca to Apple, in 1968. According to May Pang, who was living with Lennon during his estrangement from Yoko, the two immediately men got on well. Other witnesses have reported that they drew caricatures of each other and drank cognac (hopefully in that order). Encouraged by this meeting,  and keen to get a Beatle on his new album - Bowie phoned Lennon to tell him that  he was recording a version of Across the Universe .  Lennon agreed

  'Words are pouring out like endless rain into a paper cup' In 1970 John Lennon gave a series of confessional interviews to Rolling Stone Magazine. Rather ungallantly, he revealed the source of the opening line of Across the Universe as a scolding from his then wife Cynthia in 1967.  I was lying next to my first wife in bed ... and I was irritated. and I was thinking. She must have been going on and on about something and she'd gone to sleep and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream. I went downstairs and it turned into a sort of cosmic song rather than an irritated song, rather than a "Why are you always mouthing off at me?"... [The words] were purely inspirational and were given to me as boom!   The tune also appears to arrived in an unusual way.  Hunter Davies recalls that he was walking (in silence) with John around the garden of his Weybridge mansion.  Suddenly they heard the sound of a siren from passing police car