QUESTION: Do you condemn civil rights demonstrations?
JOHN: I don't condemn them; I'm with them. I'm just saying: Isn't it about time they thought of something else? There have been marches for sixty years. It's ineffective. Someone asked us what would you suggest we do? I said you've got women, use sex. Every day in the popular papers, they have bikini-clad girls. Use sex for peace!
QUESTION: Do you condemn campus violence and building takeovers?
JOHN: Sit-ins are okay. I don't see why they have to destroy the building to take it over, though. Either sit in and take it over or leave. Take no notice of it. You don't need the building.
QUESTION: The Americans are very interested in what happens in Harvard, Berkley, and City College. Are you condemning them and the methods used?
JOHN: If you're successful, we congratulate you. If not, think of something else. Be like the Indians and retreat. I know they lost and that, but the philosophy was right. Violence begets violence. The successful revolutions were in Russia, France, and England. They were successful and the new people took over power and built up all the buildings they brought down, had more babies, and became the Establishment. So we see where violence gets us.
QUESTION: Some of the people seem to think you're kind of revolutionary and the Establishment seems to fear they won't let you in and give you visas and everything. You're standing right in the middle now between two factions of two opposing philosophies. Have you found this kind of antagonism amoung your previous friends?
JOHN: It's not antagonism, it's just about Yoko and me. We're in two different bags. She was an avant-garde and I was pop. We met, fell in love, but that didn't solve the problems of our personalities and our previous work and all that. We had to destroy each other's games and preconcieved concepts about what an avant-garde was. We had to find out what we really were. That's all we're doing with these people and that's what they're doing to us. They're saying, "What do you think you're doing?" That's the only way to communicate. If two lovers deeply in love still have to destroy each other's games to get through to each other, then we must do it with the world as well.