Interview with Laurie Kaye
This is Part 3 of our interviews with the staff who interviewed John Lennon on December 8, 1980 for RKO Radio. Dave Sholin conducted the interview, which was John Lennon’s last interview. He was killed just hours after this interview took place. A new radio program called “John Lennon: The Final Interview” will be broadcast the week of December 3-10. (read here)
My interview with Dave Sholin is in two parts and can be read here: (Part 1) and (Part 2).
This article features our interview with Laurie Kaye, the scriptwriter for the original radio program from the interview called “John Lennon: The Man, the Memory.” It was broadcast December 14, 1980.
Here are Laurie’s memories from that fateful day:
How She Got the Lennon Interview Assignment
LE: How did you get assigned to this job?
LK: I was a journalism student at Berkeley and I was able to get into the newsroom at KFRC in San Francisco. You have to understand, KFRC was #1 in top 40 at that time. So this was huge. I owe everything to Dave Sholin for the opportunities I got there. This job helped get me the opportunities I did in the music world. I helped Dave with musician interviews, and got to write the specials. Dave supported me despite my limited experience at that time. I was only in my early 20s.
It was truly amazing. My most memorable experience in my career was being sent to KHJ to get a bunch of boxes of stuff, when they were cleaning out the offices, and they suggested I come get some things from them. It turned out to be boxes of tapes of their Beatles interviews from the '60s! That was a huge moment in my life. I was a HUGE Beatles fan. When I got ahold of that, the station asked me to write a Beatles special and it was 20 hours long. They paid me $500 and that was a fortune to me. It was great. I got to work with Dave Sholin and Ron Hummel -- tremendous experience!
After that, I was assigned the interview with Paul and Linda McCartney with Dave. And that was like … oh my god, are you kidding?! That was incredible, it was in 1979.
So then I was asked to do the Lennon interview in 1980. By that time I worked for someone else and I had to claim sick time in order to go with Dave to New York to work for RKO. But who wouldn’t have done that?! How do you pass up an interview with John LENNON? So I did it.
John Lennon was my idol. I mean I grew up in LA. I saw the Beatles at Dodgers Stadium! Watched them on Ed Sullivan. There was a radio contest back then where the station gave away pieces of the pillowcase each of the Beatles slept on at their hotel when they played L.A. It was crazy. I loved Paul McCartney because he was so cute, but I loved John Lennon because of the brilliance of his wit. I watched 'A Hard Day’s Night' and I just knew he was the leader, the intellectual.
So this is what I mean. This interview meant a lot to me.
In the end, it was amazing, and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. But in the end, John was killed. It had a terrible impact on me and the entire course of my life was changed.
The Experience of Interviewing John Lennon
LE: What was it like to interview John?
It was incredible. We went into the Dakota and went to this amazing, beautiful room with these plush carpets, and took off our shoes. Again I need to save a lot of the details for the show, but basically, if you can picture … there’s a big grand piano, a big coffee table, and there’s a loveseat and chairs around it; I sat on the loveseat, Yoko sat at the end, and the guys were in the other chairs. So John comes in, and plops himself right next to me!
Of course I nearly fainted. There’s John Lennon next to me! And every time he made a big point, you know, he would tap me on the knee, or he would look at me, and he looks straight into my eyes. And I’d be trying to hold it together and stay focused. But all I could think was, “Oh my God, he’s looking at me.”
I took a copy of Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit to the interview. Do you remember that book? I had an original copy of it from my Berkeley days. Well they just flipped out. They couldn’t believe I had it. They were like, “Oh my God, it’s 20 years old!” So they autographed it for me, and I’ll send you a scan of that.
Meeting Mark David Chapman
I had a totally different experience than the other guys (Dave Sholin, Bert Keane, national promotions director for WB, and Ron Hummel, producer) did because I STAYED in NY after they left. I remember waving at John and Yoko, Dave, Bert and Ron as they drove off in the limo … right? So then I turned around and who is right there, and walks right up to me, but Mark David Chapman.
Yeah … so he starts bugging me and asking me questions -- “Did you talk to him? What did he say?” He was creepy and weird but I was on such a HIGH, that I didn’t care. So I talked to him for a few minutes … then I left to meet a friend and I was literally floating on air all evening.
After the Interview: Hearing About the Shooting
I met my friend after the interview and we happened to turn on the radio around ten minutes to 10:00 and we heard this announcement: “We interrupt this broadcast to report that John Lennon has been shot and has been taken to Roosevelt Hospital.”
You can’t imagine the horror that went through me. My friend immediately drove me to the hospital and I saw through the glass -- I saw Yoko -- there’s a lot of details that I have to save for the radio program we’re doing, and I know you understand that -- I’ll just say now though, that I did see Yoko through the glass -- and I knew he had died.
You have to imagine that at that time, we didn’t have cell phones. I was alone in New York. There was no one to call because the guys were still on the plane. I didn’t know what to do. I called the RKO offices and they said, “Get over here.”
So that’s what I did. I did not go back over to the Dakota. I had to go into automatic mode. I went to the office and wrote pieces, did interviews, I was on the Today show with Jane Pauley and Tom Brokaw. Once I was on the air, then my company of course found out, and I was promptly fired. They were extremely upset. But RKO put me in a hotel to work on the Lennon show and I had a couple of days to crank it out. Remember I thought we were going to have a month. But now we had to get it out in a few days. So I worked around the clock in this hotel. It aired Sunday, and then there was the 10 minutes of silence. (December 14.)
The Healing Aspect of This New Radio Program
Having the four of us get back together now and talk about all these memories … it’s really cathartic and healing. Because the four of us haven’t been together since that day. And there’s a lot of old emotion that’s been buried.
I haven’t listened to the entire interview again, until recently when we were putting this new program together. It brought everything back, and it’s been very emotional. This has been like a reunion for us. I haven’t even seen these guys for years, and it’s been an incredible experience. Hearing John’s voice on the interview, is so clear and present. It feels like yesterday.
I had a lot of healing to do. After getting fired and then sued for my role with the Lennon interview, I also had to deal with the idea that John Lennon was killed right after I left him. I suffered from a weird guilt. Like, “What did I do wrong? Why did this happen? I was with John, and now he’s dead.” One thing the guys don’t even know is that I had just been with a friend in LA before this interview, and we were mugged. I got hurt, but my friend was stabbed and almost killed. So now I’m thinking, what am I? A curse? My life -- I know this will sound melodramatic -- but my life lost all meaning for a long time. I had to completely change my plan.
Bert Keane also had a life-changing experience afterwards. He left the music business altogether. He has a spiritual point of view about it and completely changed his life. So this special that we’re doing is very needed.
(Laurie has now been in TV advertising for over 20 years. She has her own production company called Production Services.)
© 2010 Shelley Germeaux – This article may not be reproduced without permission from the author.
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