When John Lennon talked about his money and investments

The Beatles are one of the best selling bands of all time and all the members made a fortune out their incredible work when the music industry still was highly lucrative. In an interview with Spin Magazine back in 1975 John Lennon talked about where kept his money and if he invested some share.

John Lennon talked about his money and investments:

“I am doing alright. I am rich in England (At the time he lived in New York), and medium well-off in America. ‘Cause a lot of money is stuck in England.”

And you can’t get it over?

‘Til 1977. And then the pound might be worth 2 pfennigs by then. So, we’ll see what happens. You might suddenly see me touring in 1977 … very enthusiastically …”

Why can’t you get it in before 1977?

“Because there is some mad law. The English don’t allow any money out of the country if they can help it. And they always tell me to invest in this and that.”

Do you?

“No.”

So where do you keep the money you have?

“It’s just in a bank. I never invested anything.”

You can see the amount?

“I never look at it. It never changes. They give you an interest now and then. The only things you can invest in are like big fascist things. Like South African gold mines. All those things that don’t … I couldn’t bother with having shares and all that. It’s quite enough to get a chance without watching the shares on Wall Street or in England. I said: Give me a list of things I can invest in that don’t involve exploiting people.”

“And they couldn’t come up with anything. And I am not that fanatical like Joan Baez or not brave enough to pay taxes. I just pay them and I know they buy bonds with them. I just can’t deal with it. Especially in England I can’t deal with it. So, I just leave it in the bank. And it either goes up with the market or goes down with the market. And that’s it.”

John Lennon’s death

The Beatle was killed with four shots by an obsessed fan. The crime occurred on December 8, 1980, in New York, in front of the Dakota building, where Lennon lived with his wife, Yoko Ono, and his son, Sean.

Mark Chapman, the killer, later revealed that he was angry that Lennon had asked the public to “imagine no possession” (in the song “Imagine”) while living a millionaire life. A big fan of the book The Catcher in the Rye, Chapman projected itself into the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, feeling like a pure person among “false” people – what Lennon would have become.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 20 years. Since 2000, he has asked for freedom seven times (two years to wait between requests), but he remains behind bars.