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misery

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okay it's august 23rd it's 1974. it's a couple of\h
weeks after nixon resigned uh john has just moved\h\h

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back to new york he's not living with uh yoko he's\h
living with maypang who was his assistant that he\h\h

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had spent a little over a year in los angeles\h
with they've got in a penthouse apartment on\h\h

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east 52nd street it's a hot night they uh turn off\h
the ac and they throw the doors open and lennon\h\h

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is going over um you know the album cover artwork\h
and he sees something outside and what he sees is\h\h

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something about the size of a learjet he says\h
later that you could throw a brick and hit it\h\h

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over here up there i saw a ufo and it went down\h
the river turned right at the united nations\h\h

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turned left and then down the river it wasn't a\h
helicopter it wasn't a balloon and it was so near\h\h

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and you look what sort of uh round white just\h
licensed and silent silent and it looked dark like\h\h

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black or gray in the middle and had white lights\h
just looked like light bulbs you know just going\h\h

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off on off on off on blink blink blink blink\h
around the bottom and on top was a red light

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how did that shape the rest of john lennon's\h
uh career as a songwriter as a musician as a\h\h

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personality did that change him at all i think\h
it did change him i certainly if you go by his\h\h

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public statements he almost was obsessed by it\h
i mean immediately after this sighting which was\h\h

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in august of 1974 he told all his friends\h
about it he called people about it he had\h\h

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he got in touch with the police department\h
and and with the journalistic sources\h\h

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and he wrote songs about it in fact his next album\h
that came out after this 1974 sighting was an\h\h

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album called walls and bridges and he even wrote\h
on the album cover about the and and drew in one\h\h

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of his little doodles about seeing the ufo and if\h
you remember literally up until his death in 1980\h\h

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he was working on a song uh that in involved the\h
lyric that said there's ufos over new york and i\h\h

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ain't too surprised so yeah i think it changed\h
his life i i really do if you see a little note\h\h

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on walls and bridges it says i saw a ufo and i was\h
just finished doing all the bridges i've mastered\h\h

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it or something last tape of it and i was really\h
just relaxed and feeling good and it was summer\h\h

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in new york and i had the window open and lo\h
and behold there was this thing just hovering\h\h

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sort of a hundred yards away but i saw it so\h
close it wasn't in the sky or nothing you know\h\h

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and it was like i could have hit it with a brick\h
if i'd thrown a stone at it i couldn't see the\h\h

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colors because it was just it was a good clear\h
summer night you know the sky was very clear\h\h

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and round the bottom of it we're just ordinary\h
looking electric light bulbs blinking off and on\h\h

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alternatively like on a wheelbarrow or something\h
and on the top of it was a red light and the\h\h

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thing i noticed was that there was no noise\h
and i could hear that freeway down below\h\h

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all the cars going so i realized oh it's\h
not a helicopter then it must be a balloon\h\h

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but it was so close to the rooftop that it\h
couldn't be a balloon so all the rational things\h\h

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i went to not a helicopter balloon not a balloon\h
it's too close to the roof and it's maneuvered\h\h

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too well to be a balloon so i just watched it\h
and it was there for about five or ten minutes\h\h

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it went up down the east river and there\h
it was and that's all i got to say about it\h\h

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he calls me paying out she sees it and uh they\h
were astonished by it and according to both john\h\h

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and may they spent at least 10 minutes looking\h
at it before it sort of silently floated down\h\h

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and up the uh the east river past the united\h
nations uh building and finally disappeared wow\h\h

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i mean uh that is fascinating absolutely\h
fascinating you know frank one of the things\h\h

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that fascinates me is that lenin uh did have he\h
called uh his friend uh photographer bob gruen\h\h

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and and they uh had bob called the police uh\h
uh department and they said oh about three\h\h

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people had called in they called daily news they\h
said maybe five to seven people had called in\h\h

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and the thing is i've i guess those the the\h
newspaper uh decided not to write about those\h\h

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people because i've never been able to track down\h
any of those witnesses so i would simply say today\h\h

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boy if there's anybody listening whose\h
grandmother or grandfather saw that\h\h

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uh or they're still alive i'd like to talk to\h
a witness who also saw what john lennon saw

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well everybody's

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and i ain't too surprised

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nobody told me that these days\h
like this no one told me that