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• Thursday, September 14, 2006 07:52 AM

  31 years later.

  For those of you interested in the Lennon – Emerson conversation.

  31 years later Gloria Emerson was referred to the meeting in an interview for "Feed" magazine........

  FEED: There's a rather famous, rather bitter exchange between you and John Lennon, captured in the documentary Imagine [released in 1988].

  Emerson: If he really wanted to stop the war in Vietnam, all he had to do was tell the U.S. Army he wanted to go there to entertain the troops. Many entertainers did. And it would have thrown the army into the most extraordinary panic. I think he could have stopped the war if he had gone.

  FEED: He had that much power?

  Emerson: He had that much power. But I didn't hear a lot of the Beatles in Vietnam. I mostly heard the Supremes and Jimi Hendrix -- and Diana Ross, of course. But I'm sorry I spoke harshly to him. We had had a long exchange, and he was very unhappy to be there, as was I. It was at a studio in London.

  FEED: You were interviewing him?

  Emerson: No! What was I doing there? Someone conned me into coming. [I'd be] the last person in the world to interview John Lennon, who didn't want to speak. So why did he come? No conversation was possible. And he made a scathing remark about writers, and I said, "You are the only writer here." But can you imagine if the Beatles had come to Vietnam to sing to the American troops? I think it would have frozen everything!

  —AGJ
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