SMOKING DOPE WITH JOHN LENNON AND GREGORY CORSO
The best joint I ever smoked was with John Lennon. I’ve been talking about it ever since. The worst joint I ever smoked was with Herbert Huncke and Gregory Corso. I had a headache for four days and misplaced for seven years an edition Gregory signed and numbered. I'm glad marijuana is finally almost legal.
Until that day Corso and I had always made good money with signed limited editions. We met in a bookstore and there were huge bottles of vodka and orange juice on the counter-- and of course Herbert Huncke. By the time Gregory and I got down to my office and Gregory signed and numbered the edition, I was unusually oblivious. He talked me into giving him the money upfront. We then had to traipse back uptown to the OX shelter where they co-wrote an OX check and -- Gregory vanished. The next morning the bookstore owner berated me: "You idiot! You gave Gregory a thousand dollars! He's gone to Atlantic City!"
Sari Dienes' Japanese friends Isamu Noguchi and Yoko Ono were already there when we pulled in. Yoko was nursing baby Sean. A half-dozen partiers walked into the woods and swam nude in a stream beneath a falls: Richard Hayman, John Lennon, Erika Rothenberg, me and two other beautiful women. Julian Lennon watched the adults misbehaving. We dressed and returned to the party and John and I smoked his dope. Neither John nor I had ever before swum naked with so many beautiful women. We had both just received our green cards. America had welcomed us reluctantly. John looked about with mock suspicion, as we smoked, for Federal drug agents.
Until that day Corso and I had always made good money with signed limited editions. We met in a bookstore and there were huge bottles of vodka and orange juice on the counter-- and of course Herbert Huncke. By the time Gregory and I got down to my office and Gregory signed and numbered the edition, I was unusually oblivious. He talked me into giving him the money upfront. We then had to traipse back uptown to the OX shelter where they co-wrote an OX check and -- Gregory vanished. The next morning the bookstore owner berated me: "You idiot! You gave Gregory a thousand dollars! He's gone to Atlantic City!"
Sari Dienes' Japanese friends Isamu Noguchi and Yoko Ono were already there when we pulled in. Yoko was nursing baby Sean. A half-dozen partiers walked into the woods and swam nude in a stream beneath a falls: Richard Hayman, John Lennon, Erika Rothenberg, me and two other beautiful women. Julian Lennon watched the adults misbehaving. We dressed and returned to the party and John and I smoked his dope. Neither John nor I had ever before swum naked with so many beautiful women. We had both just received our green cards. America had welcomed us reluctantly. John looked about with mock suspicion, as we smoked, for Federal drug agents.
posted by Michael Andre at
4:51 AM
2 Comments:
Michael, the Sari Dienes Foundation has the newspaper article about the Lennon's visit to the Land, and also the visitor book with your and Nobuchi, John and Yoko, Paco and Rip's signatures from that visit in 1976
Thank you for your memories....
Barbara Pollitt
curator
Sari Dienes Foundation
PS. I have included your post in our archive of Sari Dienes...
thank you!
As gun violence worsens in the United States on this, the 35th anniversary of John Lennon's murder, we should all thank Yoko Ono for keeping the creep who killed him in prison. She attends every parole hearing and speaks passionately against his release. He killed our wonderful poet and singer hoping to steal his fame. May he therefore enjoy this fame in Attica -- or Sing Sing -- or wherever hard prison time's as hard as it can get. Yoko knows hard punishment best deters hideous, frivolous crime.
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