TONY BARROW BEATLES’ PRESS OFFICER HAD TO BE CAREFUL WHEN SENDING JOHN LENNON TO INTERVIEWS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony Barrow was the Beatles' press officer from 1961 to 1968. He was responsible for managing the band's public image and promoting their music. Barrow was a skilled publicist, but he also had his work cut out for him when it came to John Lennon.

Barrow had to be careful about the interviews he scheduled for John. He knew that if he didn’t pick the right kind of reporter, John might turn on them.
Barrow knew that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr came across as charming and likable. George Harrison, while less chatty with the press, was always polite. John was a different story, making Barrow worry about introducing him to strangers.

“I was sometimes nervous of what impression he would make upon third parties, rather in the same way one sent home sensitive aunts and uncles if John Lennon was due to drop in,” Barrow said in the book Lennon: The Definitive Biography by Ray Coleman.

John didn’t mind doing interviews, so Barrow didn’t worry about facing his wrath when asking him. Instead, he worried Lennon might turn on the interviewer. As a result, he had to pick people he knew John would like.
“I wasn’t wary of asking him to do interviews,” he said. “He was cooperative, although he’d grumble and curse if it wasn’t convenient. But I was selective about the journalists I sent to him. It had to be someone sufficiently worldly, or sophisticated, with a decent and preferably way-out sense of humour, to accept John as he was. The journalist didn’t have to be offended by the guy.”
“John was always asked for someone who shared his outrageous sense of humour, who would come back at him with something as nasty and cynical as he gave them,” he said. “Otherwise he might just turn a bit nasty on an ill-informed or inexperienced journalist. Or he’d particularly turn on one who thought he knew too much or knew all about the Beatles.”

 

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