John Lennon

There's a Zen story that Yoko once told me – and I think I might have told it in "Lennon Remembers" or "Playboy Forgets": A king sent his messenger to an artist to request a painting, he paid the artist the money, and the painter said, "OK, come back." So a year goes by, and the messenger comes back and tells him, "The king's waiting for his painting," and the painter says, "Oh, hold on," and whips it off right in front of him and says, "Here." And the messenger says, "What's this? The king paid you 20,000 bucks for this shit, and you knock it off in five minutes?" And the painter replies, "Yeah, but I spent 10 years thinking about it." And there's no way I could have written the Double Fantasy songs without those five years.