John Lennon Plays Basketball with Miles Davis and Hangs Out with Allen Ginsberg & Friends

I’ve always had the impres­sion of John Lennon as an aloof fig­ure, and I’ve some­times had dif­fi­cul­ty rec­on­cil­ing the give peace a chance per­sona with the angry young man and his acid tongue. Motorhead’s Lem­my once called him “the ass­hole of the band,” say­ing, “if you read his books, he’s not the peace-lov­ing nice guy that you heard about.” That may be part­ly true (his first wife Cyn­thia might agree), but it needn’t negate his ideals nor his activism and char­i­ty. Lennon was com­pli­cat­ed, and prob­a­bly not an easy per­son to get close to. On the oth­er hand, he may be the most self-reveal­ing of all the Bea­t­les (lit­er­al­ly). Perhaps—as Lennon says in voice-over nar­ra­tion above—his life, like his exper­i­men­tal 8mm films, was “self-edit­ed.”

Though not shot by Lennon him­self (and not tech­ni­cal­ly “home movies” as the YouTube uploader describes them), the can­did films above and below show a relaxed and play­ful Lennon at his 31st birth­day par­ty on Octo­ber 9, 1971, goof­ing off with Yoko and sev­er­al oth­er well-known fig­ures (the same day, an exhi­bi­tion of Lennon and Ono’s art opened in Syra­cuse). Allen Gins­berg, Ringo Starr, and Phil Spec­tor bob in and out of the shaky frame below.

Above, Miles Davis hangs out with the cou­ple and plays bas­ket­ball with Lennon. Keen­er eyes than mine may spot oth­er leg­endary celebri­ties. Avant-garde film­mak­er and one­time Warhol cam­era­man Jonas Mekas shot the footage, call­ing it “Hap­py Birth­day to John.”  Mekas describes the audio track as “a series of impro­vised songs, sung by John, Ringo, Yoko Ono, and their friends—not a clean stu­dio record­ing, but as a birth­day singing, free and hap­py.”  In a 2002 inter­view, he con­veyed his impres­sions of Lennon:

John was very open and curi­ous, a very quick sort of per­son, who caught on imme­di­ate­ly. He did a lot of 8mm film­ing him­self. At the begin­ning of Hap­py Birth­day John, you will hear him talk­ing about what he was try­ing to do.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

How I Won the War: John Lennon’s Absur­dist (Non-Musi­cal) Film Appear­ance, 1967

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness