May
23,24, 2005
LENNON Phase Two, New York City
I flew back to New York City on Monday the 23rd after spending a frantic week in Austin with my family, friends and tool kit (we spent a great deal of time on home maintenance). I landed at Newark Airport and took a train into the city. During the flight I'd gotten through several chapters of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, and in it was a line that stuck with me. "The only people for me are the mad ones," he wrote. One of these mad ones was sitting behind me on the train. He was a light skinned African American, all dressed in white except for a black Abbey Road t-shirt and a ball cap over his light brown hair. Noticing my guitar bag, he started talking to me about Bruce Springsteen until I turned my attention to my book. Then he talked to himself the rest of the way, repeating belligerent remarks like "...cut his head off with a chainsaw, yeah tha's right..." and other stuff I couldn't decipher. I saw him get up and move to another car, come back, then leave again the opposite way. He seemed to have jumped the train, cause he didn't have a ticket or bags, and I wondered if that was what he did with his day. I wondered a lot of things about him - how he chose what to wear, where he was headed, how he made decisions. But I didn't ask him. I just observed. That's why Kerouac is a literary legend. He makes you observe.
Once I arrived at Penn Station I took a cab over to Rona's place in Midtown East, where I'm staying for a few nights. She has a spare room in a nice 11th story apartment that looks out at the U.N. building and the East River just beyond it. After settling in and relaxing for a bit I went with Rona and her boyfriend Dan to see a late screening of Star Wars, Episode lll: Revenge of the Sith. While being really impressive picture and sound wise, it still suffered from the same bland writing and stiff acting of the previous two episodes. And because the story had so many loose ends that needed tying, it was too long. Nevertheless, you can't take your eyes off of it.
Nor can you take your eyes off of Lennon. But the script issues we're facing are different than the ones in the film. Star Wars features an elaborately told story and bland dialogue, whereas Lennon has wonderful lines (straight out of John's mind) but a story line that has some holes. This is the issue we've come back here to tackle. Today we all met at The Ford Center on 43rd St in a third floor studio, one a little less swank than the old place but I still liked the energy and focus of it. As soon as we all greeted and hugged each other (we've never been apart for longer than two days), we sat down with our revised scripts and began a read through. Much of the show as we knew it is still intact, but some of the scenes are switched around to give the story more of a timeline, and John's personal and creative relationships are more closely examined. The goal behind this is to show how John Lennon was shaped by the times as much as he helped shape them for all of us.
With the text changes come other surprises. New songs have been added, others have been cut and previously cut songs have been brought back. Also, a couple of tunes that have been in the script all along will be set up differently (or placed in another scene altogether) and some arrangements and motion will be reworked as well. It's all part of a very complex puzzle we've never seen before, and when all the pieces fall into place, hopefully magic will happen. It already has, in many respects.
So we'll chew on this version a bit and see how it tastes in a few days. Meanwhile, the company is in for some more downtime, which gives me the option to return to Austin for a few days. I think I'll take it. This time I'm locking away the tools!