Blood On The Tracks

John Lennon’s second wife and creative muse, Yoko Ono, recalls their time as one of the most simultaneously beloved and feared couples of 1970s New York City. Yoko’s tales include drug busts, government surveillance, robbery, extortion, fear, and paranoia. All this and more in the season two premiere of BLOOD ON THE TRACKS: The John Lennon Story.

As John Lennon becomes the most famous political dissident in America, President Richard Nixon becomes increasingly paranoid. Nixon defends his legacy as well as the lengths to which his administration went in order to silence the rabble rousing ex-Beatle. Nixon’s own fears led him to believe that John wouldn’t just sway the youth vote, but that he would violently disrupt the country. Nixon’s tales include wiretaps, riots, and even the Godfather himself, James Brown.

To settle a copyright lawsuit, John Lennon begins a disastrous recording project with one of the most disastrous producers in the biz: Phil Spector. The former “tycoon of teen” attempts to helm John’s rock ‘n roll covers album in Los Angeles, which quickly devolves into drunken hijinks, all while a threatening music executive presents serious challenges. Plus, Spector reveals the reason why John and Yoko wanted to be in the United States in the first place – and it’s not what you think.

Keith Moon, wild man drummer for the Who, has plenty of his own stories to tell, from chopping up hotel rooms with a hatchet to dunking a Lincoln Continental in a Holiday Inn’s pool. He was one of John’s frequent fellow partiers during John’s “lost weekend” in Los Angeles, which was longer than a weekend and even more lost than you’d initially assume. And as Keith Moon explains, the trouble that he and John got up to during that lost weekend was more than fun and games: it nearly got John Lennon killed.

Was Harry Nilsson a bad influence on John Lennon? Or was John Lennon a bad influence on Harry Nilsson? Harry ponders this very question as he takes a very inebriated stroll down a memory lane. It’s on this journey that John and Harry consume far too many Brandy Alexanders, Harry tries to get Paul McCartney to take a horse tranquilizer, Harry literally shreds his vocal cords, and John makes a heroic stand at RCA Records.

Elton John and John Lennon had a special relationship. It very well may have been the deepest and closest relationship that John had with another musician after Paul McCartney. Elton explains how he and John hid out from Andy Warhol in a hotel room; how one of the most legendary bets in rock ‘n roll history led to John making an unexpected appearance at Madison Square Garden; and how John’s brush with UFOs makes us reevaluate just exactly what we think is real.

As the 1970s wore on, John Lennon found himself at a crossroads. Was he a pop singer or an artist? Would he continue to be a musician at all, or instead would he retreat into quiet family life? Enter David Bowie, who managed to find a way to help John be all of those things at once, while at the same time making Bowie bigger than ever in the United States. Bowie’s tales about John involve the usual vices, drugs like cocaine – but also some very unexpected and unorthodox hallucinogens on the backstreets of Hong Kong.

As the 1970s came to a close, John Lennon famously withdrew from the public eye to focus on his family life. He was no longer appearing on television shows and peace rallies to rail against the confusion and destruction wrought by the political powers of the world. But as one of those television hosts, Dick Cavett, attests, John was anything but dormant during this period. He nearly made a surprise live appearance on a late-night TV show. He nearly died when he went on a sailing expedition through the Bermuda Triangle. And as his public profile began to increase again, the private security that he and Yoko hired to protect them began to raise some very valid concerns.

Go inside the mind of the man who received messages from both God and the Devil. The man who thought he would step into the pages of a dog-eared paperback with one unspeakable deed. The man who took a dreamer from the world. Mark David Chapman tells the chilling story of just how and why he assassinated John Lennon.

Holden Caulfield, the fictional narrator of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, comes to life to explain exactly why Mark David Chapman’s plan didn’t work – and exactly why Mark David Chapman is himself one of the greatest phonies of all time. Holden also imagines what the 1980s would have been like with John Lennon alive and well, making more music and marching in more rallies.