#or being a hippie artist who thought current social standards were uptight and she shouldn’t have to play by them

[torchlitinthedesert]

Picking up from @thewalrusespublicist’s post on Mike Tree, Yoko and boundaries/possible flirtation, here’s Pete Shotton talking to Hunter Davies from his time as John and Yoko’s PA:

One day at Kenwood, not long after Yoko had moved in, there was a call from the David Frost programme which I took. I went upstairs, knocked on their bedroom door, and John shouted, ‘Come in.’ John was in a sort of alcove, getting dressed, and I could see him and he could see me.

Yoko was on the bed - naked. I didn’t want to stare at her, did I, lying there naked, when she was my best friend’s girl? So I just fixed my eyes on John, not looking at her, and told John about the message and he said OK, he’d ring them later. Then I closed the door and went out.

Many years later, I happened to be reading John’s last interview, the radio one with Andy Peebles. In it, Yoko says how upset she was when she first met John and his best friend ignored her. She said she came into their room once and just ignored her and talked to John.

John then says, ‘That was just Charlie, we’ve been into all that enough times already.’

I knew that he meant me. He just said Charlie because he knew the interview was going out on the radio. But that hurt me, that did. She hadn’t realised how awkward it had been, seeing her naked. I’d just wanted not to do anything which embarrassed her.

Hunter Davies, The Quarrymen