John Lennon on Neil Young

Playboy Magazine, January 1981.

Playboy: What are your musical preferences these days?

John Lennon: Well, I like all music, depending on what time of day it is. I don't like styles of music or people per se. I can't say I enjoy the Pretenders, but I like their hit record. I enjoy the B-52s, because I heard them doing Yoko. It's great. If Yoko ever goes back to her old sound, they'll be saying, "Yeah, she's copying the B-52s."

Yoko Ono: We were doing a lot of the punk stuff a long time ago.

PB: Lennon and Ono, the original punks.

O: You're right.

PB: John, what's your opinion of the newer waves?

JL: I love all this punky stuff. It's pure. I'm not, however, crazy about the people who destroy themselves.

PB: You disagree with Neil Young's lyric in "Rust Never Sleeps" -- "It's better to burn out than to fade away..."

JL: I hate it. It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison -- it's garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo. They're saying John Wayne conquered cancer -- he whipped it like a man. You know, I'm sorry that he died and all that -- I'm sorry for his family -- but he didn't whip cancer. It whipped him. I don't want Sean worshiping John Wayne or Sid Vicious. What do they teach you? Nothing. Death. Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? I mean, it's garbage, you know. If Neil Young admires that sentiment so much, why doesn't he do it? Because he sure as hell faded away and came back many times, like all of us. No, thank you. I'll take the living and the healthy.