Product Description

John Lennon and Yoko Ono's two visits to The Dick Cavett Show stand out from their numerous television appearances as their most relaxed, in-depth interviews. Clearly they enjoyed being with Cavett. They even cast him in one of their films. The September 11, 1971, show is notable as the first American television interview John gave after the breakup of The Beatles. So comfortable were the Lennons that after the show was over they continued talking with Cavett. The additional portions of that first interview were shown as part of The Dick Cavett Show on September 24, 1971. During that visit they'd discussed coming back and giving a live performance. True to their word, for their appearance on Cavett's show on May 11, 1972, they returned with Elephants Memory and each sang one song.

3 complete episodes of the legendary late-night talk show featuring John Lennon and Yoko Ono's most candid interviews as well as rare live performances With New Episode Introductions and the Bonus Featurette Cavett And The Lennons

Three complete episodes: *September 11, 1971 - John & Yoko are Cavett's only guests. They show clips from their experimental films Fly and Erection as well as promotional films for the songs "Imagine" and "Mrs. Lennon."

*September 24, 1971 - Cavett introduces the three additional segments from John & Yoko's appearance on September 11, 1971 and also welcomes Stan Freberg and Robert Citron.

*May 12, 1972 - John & Yoko perform live with the band Elephant's Memory in their second visit with Cavett. John sings "Woman Is The Nigger Of The World" and Yoko sings "We're All Water." Actress Shirley MacLaine is also on hand.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17638 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-11-01
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 210 minutes

Amazon.com
John Lennon devotees (and, to a lesser extent, Beatles fans in general) should be delighted with The Dick Cavett Show - John Lennon & Yoko Ono, which collects (on two discs) his three appearances on the TV talk show in 1971 and '72. It won't be because of the music; there's very little of that, and what there is, frankly, is not great. Of much more interest is the opportunity to see and hear Lennon, then in his early thirties, talk about matters both slight (his new haircut, the state of television in England) and significant (the Nixon administration's efforts to deport him, Lennon and Ono's battle for shared custody of her daughter from an earlier marriage). Always the most verbally agile of the Beatles, Lennon appears here with his rapier wit (on Yoko's chain smoking: "Every time I kiss her, I burn my chin") and penchant for punning (when Cavett appears without neckwear, Lennon calls him "tie-less in Gaza") intact. He also tirelessly plugs his and Ono's various activities, which gets a little old, but his passion for and commitment to their causes are undeniable. Don't expect much Beatles talk; while he evidences no bitterness about the band's demise, neither does he indulge in any sentimentality (although it's poignant, given his murder in 1980, to hear him say that he'd never want to be onstage singing "She Loves You" at age 50). As for the two live performances (there's also an "Imagine" film clip), both coming at the end of the third Cavett show, let's just say that the Lennons' collaboration with the New York band Elephant's Memory, which yielded the album Sometime in New York City and the two songs they play here (his strident "Woman is the Nigger of the World" and her "We're All Water"), wasn't exactly their creative zenith. --Sam Graham

Customer Reviews

Cavett Show with John and Yoko
What can I say about this video?
It brought back many a memory. I remember I skipped classes during the airing of this Cavett Show.
I can't recall exactly but it seems as if John appeared with Chuck Berry on a later episode, perhaps the appearance was on another show during the early seventies. I recall Chuck saying Johnny with Lennon repling Yes? Then Chuck says be good! as they break into Johnny B Goode! Fantastic!

I LOVE JOHN LENNON
This DVD is perfect for any John Lennon fan. It doesn't have much music, but it does give great insight into his personality, his wit and his intelligence. Other than Yoko's singing, she isn't that hard to watch either.

Blast from the past
With his plaid jackets, striped shirts, and longish hair that sort of curled at the collar, Dick Cavett was the epitome of an early 1970's man: influenced somewhat by the hippie culture of the previous decade, but still buttoned-down, respectable enough to be welcomed into five million homes each night. Back then, that was a wimpy figure for a late night talk show in a three network universe, and Cavett's show was always on the verge of cancellation. His guests were certainly more diverse than the showbiz figures who occupied the couch on the more successful competition, NBC's "The Tonight Show," but Cavett was less personable, less warm, and not as sharp as Johnny Carson, despite his reputation as the most intellectual of the talk show hosts. That reputation is apparently what attracted John Lennon and Yoko Ono who first appeared as the sole guests on an episode that aired September 11, 1971.

Known as a wit himself, Lennon might just as well have been a bubble-brained starlet promoting her big dramatic breakthrough in an upcoming episode of "Adam 12." Neither he nor Ono have a hell of a lot to say that's bright or interesting, and they came unprepared to perform a song from either the "Imagine" or "Fly" albums, both of which had just been released. But they were clearly pioneers since they did perform via film clips. Neither called Lennon's performance of "Imagine" or Ono's warbling of "Mrs. Lennon" a "music video," but that's what they would be called in less than a decade when similar clips began to turn up on "The Midnight Special" even before the debut of MTV.

In an interview taped for inclusion in the DVD package, Cavett claims they were on a roll that night, so ABC kept its cameras running after the 90 minute show was supposed to end, and this additional footage was televised on September 24. Again, neither Lennon nor Ono had a lot to say and the questions from the audience weren't terribly insightful either.

"How do you write your songs?"

"What music do you listen to?"

It is Stan Freberg, the legendary satirist who appeared live in the studio that night, who steals the show with an amusing anecdote of how he also appeared with the Lennons on "The David Frost Show." The producers insisted that Freberg sit in the audience once John and Yoko appeared because they believed the Lennons might fear becoming a target of his humor. Instead, Lennon inquired what had happened to Freberg. "I'm in the audience," Freberg said, then repeated the explanation that the producers gave him as to why he shouldn't take offense. "In England, it's a tremendous honor to sit in the audience."

Lennon's excuse for not performing was that he had no band to perform with, but he promised to return at a later date. He kept the promise on May 3, 1972, but by then a live performance by John and Yoko was hardly a coup. Several months earlier, they had spent a full week as co-hosts on "The Mike Douglas Show" where they performed several numbers and Lennon even dueted with Chuck Berry. Nonetheless, the May 11 show found Lennon impassionately pleading with Yoko's former husband to let her see her daughter, Kyoko. He also discussed the government's efforts to deport him in relation to a 1968 marijuana bust in England. But Lennon believed he was actually being targeted for promoting peace. It was then that a previously silent Shirley Maclaine piped up to praise Lennon for doing more to promote "peace and love" than anyone else in the arts. Lennon muttered a brusque "That's very nice. Thank you," while barely looking at the actress, then hurriedly returned to the subject at hand. It was a rather awkward moment. I suspect Maclaine was attempting to ingratiate herself with Lennon, perhaps hoping his "hipness" would rub off on her.

As for the live performances, Lennon's "Woman is the Nigger of the World" was preceded by his rambling defense of the use of such an inflammatory word, and by an "insert," taped later, in which Cavett also defended the song which had almost been deleted entirely until Cavett agreed to the disclaimer which inspired the very kind of complaints that ABC feared the song would when making the decision. Yoko sang, too, introducing "We're All Water" with a plug for "our new album, "Some Time In New York City," which bombed that summer.

These shows are interesting mainly because they show John and Yoko in a more accurate light. Yeah, they promoted peace, but more than that they promoted themselves. Their plugs were so shameless that when George Harrison appeared with Cavett a few weeks later, he couldn't resist starting off his chat with a plug for John and Yoko's upcoming Christmas record since it was recorded after their appearance, and, therefore, they couldn't promote it at that time.

What must Dick Cavett think of these shows being released on DVD? Most of the episodes of "The Dick Cavett Show" being released on DVD are shows that feature, as the title of another disc bears out, "Rock Icons." It's as though he's Dick Clark or Wolfman Jack, and Cavett admits that he doesn't even like rock and roll. In the interview included as a bonus feature, Cavett remembers when he first heard of the Beatles and thinking they were just the latest fad, sure to disappear in a year or two. Only later, after reading a lengthy article by classical composer Leonard Bernstein in which he praised the Beatles did Cavett "not just think of them as something like Elvis who would probably just last a year or two, too." Of course, Bernstein had praised Elvis, too, and in the `80s would embarrass himself when receiving a Grammy lifetime achievement award and kept referring to Tina Turner, then at the peak of her career, in his acceptance speech. He was determined, it seems, to be hip.

Cavett doesn't seem to share Bernstein's insecurities, and might even be a bit embarrassed that he has somehow become associated with rock and roll because he happened to feature several big names from that world on his show at a time when most television talk shows, and most television period, shunned the genuine article, preferring "pop" artists like Helen Reddy or, if they were really hip, the Bee Gees. Cavett's show acknowledged the so-called "youth culture" of the late `60s and early `70s at a time when it was otherwise represented only by "The Mod Squad" and "The Partridge Family."

Brian W. Fairbanks