- In January 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono carried out their protest track “Attica State” on The David Frost Present, sparking a uncommon dwell debate with the studio viewers.
- The historic trade, centered on the 1971 Attica jail rebellion, is now featured within the first episode of MSNBC’s new docuseries David Frost Vs.
- In a chilling twist, Lennon’s murderer would later be incarcerated at Attica for greater than 30 years following the musician’s 1980 homicide.
In September 1971, the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York turned the positioning of the biggest jail rebellion in U.S. historical past. After years of brutal residing circumstances, overcrowding and racial discrimination, greater than 1,200 inmates seized management of the maximum-security compound, taking guards and workers hostage and demanding sweeping reforms. The four-day standoff led to devastating violence when legislation enforcement stormed the power — leaving 43 individuals useless, together with each inmates and jail staff. The bloodshed shocked the world, and the phrase “Attica” turned a rallying cry for justice amid systemic brutality within the police system.
4 months later, on Jan. 13, 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared on The David Frost Present, the place they carried out a brand new track mourning the deaths on either side of the battle. “What a waste of human energy, what a waste of human lives,” Lennon sang as he furiously strummed a bluesy riff on his acoustic guitar. “Shoot the prisoners within the towers, 43 poor widowed wives.”
The track fell according to many different protest anthems Lennon had written throughout the interval that tackled hot-button points head on. That very same 12 months, he would handle the battle in Northern Eire with “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “The Luck of the Irish,” decry the imprisonment of Black Panther activist Angela Davis with “Angela” and object to draconian medicine expenses with “John Sinclair.”
Performing “Attica State” ruffled some feathers in Frost’s New York Metropolis tv studio, resulting in an impromptu debate between the well-known couple and members of the viewers. “We’re like newspaper males, ?” Lennon defined. “Solely we sing about what’s occurring as a substitute of writing about it. We’re simply reporters.”
The historic trade is featured in “David Frost Vs The Beatles,” the primary episode of MSNBC’s new docuseries, David Frost Vs, which started airing on April 27. The six-part sequence chronicles Frost’s most well-known interviews from all through his 50-year profession, throughout which he sat down with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Elton John, Jane Fonda and — most famously — Richard Nixon. The debut episode spotlights his quite a few interviews with members of the Beatles, however none have been as fraught as Lennon’s 1972 look.
Tensions within the studio rose after Lennon and Ono, backed by members of their new band Elephant’s Reminiscence, completed the track. One girl shouted her objections from her seat within the balcony. Whereas most hosts might need had the dissenter escorted out for disrupting the taping, Frost as a substitute invited her to the entrance row to “be part of the chat” and interact instantly together with his friends. He then prolonged the identical supply to anybody else who needed to hitch the talk.
“I like ad-libbed conditions,” Frost says through voiceover in an archival interview featured within the docuseries, “since you by no means know what persons are going to ask. And also you by no means actually know what you’re going to say in reply, both. It’s an extension of one thing I take pleasure in, particularly: dealing with the unpredictable.”
Settling into her new seat, the lady boldly criticized Lennon and Ono’s stance on the rebellion. “I agree that Attica State was a tragedy,” she stated. “However you’re making it sound as if the one worthwhile individuals on the earth are individuals who dedicated crimes.” One other man added, “In the event that they hadn’t finished one thing flawed within the first place, they wouldn’t have been there!”
Lennon calmly replies that his track is mourning the human loss on either side. “Once we say ’43 poor widowed wives,’ we’re not speaking about simply prisoners’ wives,” he says. “You see, there’s going to be a rally for Attica prisoners. We’ve been invited to play the track there, and it’s simply to point out that individuals like us care, and we’re not simply residing in ivory towers in Hollywood watching films about ourselves. We care about what’s occurring in New York, in Harlem, in Eire, in England, in Vietnam, in China — all over the place!”
The person within the viewers rolled his eyes at Lennon’s earnestness. “Stroll via a kind of neighborhoods at two within the morning to go dwelling,” he stated. “You wouldn’t be singing in regards to the individuals locked up in jail for mugging you!”
Frost intervened by posing a query to Lennon and Ono: “Don’t you agree that there are individuals who have simply destroyed one other life, and ought, in a roundabout way, to be restrained from destroying yet one more life?”
“I’m unsure about that, however let’s make it human for them whereas they’re in there,” Lennon responded, eliciting a spontaneous ovation from the studio viewers. “Apathy doesn’t depend. Even singing is best than doing nothing.” He then launched right into a second efficiency of “Attica State,” taking further care to enunciate each syllable to make sure his message is heard.
This is able to be Lennon’s closing interview with Frost. Almost 9 years later, on Dec. 8, 1980, the music icon was murdered on the streets of New York whereas returning dwelling from a late-night recording session. Mockingly, his murderer, Mark David Chapman, was incarcerated at Attica State Jail for greater than 30 years, earlier than being transferred to close by Wende Correctional Facility in 2012. Although the jail system doesn’t disclose causes for inmate transfers, it’s been extensively theorized that he confronted threats from different prisoners and was moved for security causes. It was an eerie full-circle second, binding Lennon’s destiny to the troubled legacy of Attica.
David Frost Vs airs Sundays on MSNBC.
