‘Despite his faults he was impossible not to like’
BOB HARRIS, 74, presented the 1970s TV rock music show The Old Grey Whistle Test. Today he presents The Country Show on Radio 2.
IT WAS the mid-70s and I bumped into E Elton John on the stairs of a London cl club. He said: “I’m off to New York to tomorrow, and I’m playing Madison Sq Square Garden. And – don’t tell anyone – but John Lennon has promised to co come up on stage with me”.
I said: “When you see him, will you tell him we’d love him to do something for the Old Grey Whistle Test?”
The following week the phone rang in the office, our producer Mike Appleton picked up, and I heard: “It’s John Lennon from New York. Is Bob there?” He said: “Why don’t you just come over here. I can’t get out of America at the moment” [he was trying to get his Green Card to live there, and President Nixon wanted him out]. Which is how I came to spend three days with him in New York at a time when Yoko had just discovered she was pregnant with Sean.
He had reached a point where he could be self-deprecating. He was willing to recognise his faults and what he had got wrong particularly the way he’d treated Julian, and seemed to want to start putting things right. Despite those faults he was impossible not to like.
We got on incredibly well. I’m of the same generation as John. There is no way I’m ever going to sit down, put my feet up and just watch daytime TV. I will always want to be out behind a mic and on stage. John would have been no different.
What would have suited the John of today is that he would have been able to take his pick of anyone in the world to play with him on stage. Every door in the world would have been opened. I am sure John would have taken advantage of that. And I’m sure he would have opposed Donald Trump every inch of the way.