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Last link with a Legend

As a relatively up-and-coming star of Radio One, Andy Peebles was the envy of many contemporaries at Broadcasting House when it was announced he’d be heading across the Atlantic in December 1980 for a very special assignment. His colleagues’ reaction was understandable. The brief handed to him early in December was indeed from the top drawer. He was to travel to New York to interview John Lennon. 

 

Five years after vacating the public spotlight that had relentlessly followed his life for more than a decade, Lennon had emerged from his self imposed media exile. With his batteries re-charged, and a new album to promote, the former Beatle was finally ready to talk.

 

While recalling that extraordinary trip 20 years ago, Peebles - who these days is based at Manchester’s BBC Oxford Road studios, where he now broadcasts a nightly show across the north of England - explains there was another familiar figure who needed to be convinced before he and his producer could finally secure an audience with the star.

 

" We flew out to New York in the knowledge we wouldn’t be getting the interview until we’d first met up with Yoke, who was known to be an astute and tough businesswoman. She sat behind her desk as we explained why we thought we should be doing it," he says.

 

Fortunately for Peebles, the singer’s wife was eventually convinced and the much-sought after audience with the Lennons was granted for the following day Although interviewing pop stars was not exactly a novel experience for the Radio One regular, he awoke the next morning with an understandable feeling of trepidation.

 

" I was more nervous than I’d ever been, prior to meeting him. I’d interviewed so many people, but I knew this was special. I remember arriving at the Hit Factory studios, and we were ushered into a control room where John was playing back a new song called Walking On Thin Ice. He came over and thanked me for coming. He then said, ‘Have a listen to this, tell me what you think"’.

 

The resulting three-and-a-half hours of conversation that emerged from their encounter has since formed part of rock history Knowing, as we do now, the fate that awaited Lennon just 48 hours later, a strong sense of tragedy inevitably haunts the recording. Yet, poignancy and nostalgia aside, this fateful interview still makes fascinating listening 20 years on.

 

For all the theories put forward about the songwriter since his death, at the end of 1980. Lennon essentially appeared to be a man deeply devoted to wife and young son, genuinely excited by the future, and finally coming to terms with at least some of his remarkable past.

 

Indeed, Peebles confesses that he couldn’t believe his luck as Lennon frankly addressed subjects as diverse his relationships with Yoko air Paul McCartney to watching Fawlty Towers and baking bread.

 

" About an hour in, I started to think that any minute now he’s going to say ‘OK, the party’s over, good flight’ But after two hours he was still going strong. At that juncture, he sent out for a Chinese takeaway which was brought to the studio. But it just went cold, he never looked at it, he just carried on."

 

It was more than three hours into the recording when Peebles asked the question which produced a response that would soon be broadcast across the world under very different circumstances. "I suddenly thought about the big bodyguards, the limos and all the high pressure. Something in my mind made me ask him about his own personal security which received an extraordinarily poignant answer."

 

Lennon began marveling at the relative freedom he’d experienced in the Big Apple, compared to his previous life in the UK. The fact that he could roam the streets without the accompanying frenzy of years gone by. "I can go out of that door right now and go to a restaurant or a movie.

 

Do you want to know how great that is? People ask for autographs, or say hi, but they don’t bug you," he explained. The interview finally concluded, but Lennon wasn't ready to call it a night. He promptly invited Peebles and the crew out to dinner.

 

Over the meal, the endless stream of stories and ideas continued. He talked of plans for a future world tour, his first since The Beatles, and even suggested performing on Peebles' show when he finally returned to England. Of course, the meeting with Mark David Chapman on the night of December 8 saw to it that none of those plans would ever be realised.

 

But the triumphant Peebles, his exclusive interview in the bag, was already flying back home when Lennon was gunned down outside his home in the Dakota apartment buildings opposite Central Park in New York.

 

It was only on his arrival back at Heathrow that he was greeted with the horrific news. "We got back about 6am. My producer Paul Williams called his wife, who told him what had happened. I remember Paul just turned to me and said: ‘John’s gone. He’s been shot. He’s dead.’ I was in shock, I just couldn't get my head together".

 

There was lime time for the distraught presenter to compose himself. With news of Lennon’s murder spreading across the world, Peebles had acquired a unique status overnight.

 

As the last journalist ever to speak to the star he suddenly found himself in big demand, one of the last links to a legend. "The next thing, we were being ushered through the airport, past all these reporters, so that I could be interviewed over the telephone by Brian Redhead on the Today programme."

 

I then had to go over to Radio One to do a programme with John Peel, who obviously had the Liverpool connection. I just wouldn’t have been able to do it on my own. "We obviously knew the recording was something very special, but we decided to hang on to it. So the interview wasn’t broadcast to the public until the following year.

 

But I listened back to some of the tape that day and just felt stunned- It was all incredibly emotional. Later, my boss at Radio One said to me: ‘I think you’d better realise that this won’t go away Whether you like it or not, this will stay with you for the rest of your broadcasting career"’.

 

For all his achievements since, Peebles is the first to admit that the prediction proved to be true. His time with Radio One eventually came to an end some 11 years later, when many of the station’s old guard were being swept away under a new regime.

 

Now, still a familiar voice across the north, Peebles continues to encounter leading figures from show business and politics on a daily basis - but that truly remarkable meeting two decades ago, will forever remain his defining moment on the airwaves.

By Robert Meakin

 

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