He and Yoko offer Peel a contract with Apple Records. “We loved his music, his spirit, and his philosophy of the street,” John says. “That’s why we decided to make a record with him.” The record, The Pope Smokes Dope, by David Peel and the Lower East Side, peaks at number 191 on the Billboard 200, but Peel pronounces John an “excellent” producer. “He was deadly serious, but he knew how to have fun,” Peel says, and he expresses his gratitude in music.

“John Lennon, Yoko Ono,” he declares in a song titled “The Ballad of New York City,” “New York City is your friend”—and John returns the favor by namechecking David Peel (and his record) in his own song “New York City,” on his 1972 album with Yoko, Some Time in New York City.

*  *  *

John and Yoko gravitate to Greenwich Village, where, John says, “everybody seems to know everybody.” Though they initially take three hotel rooms (numbers 1701, 1702, and 1703) at the St. Regis in Midtown for themselves and their personal assistant, May Pang, after a couple of months they choose to instead rent a two-room apartment at 105 Bank Street in the West Village, as well as a studio in SoHo for work. Before they leave the St. Regis, however, they are able to film cameos of several celebrities—including Dick Cavett, Jack Palance, and dapper Hollywood dance legend Fred Astaire, who insists on more than one try at his cameo (walking Yoko to a hotel-room window), pleading, “I can do the scene better”—for the film they’ve been making to accompany Imagine.

The Bank Street apartment is where the counterculture activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman (cofounders of the Youth International Party, known as Yippies) come calling. “The close friendship between Jerry Rubin and John Lennon (and Yoko),” Rubin’s biographer says, “can’t be underestimated.” During 1971–72, the activist’s personal calendars show “more often than not” that the three of them are “hanging out.”

Rubin likes to tell the story of this symbiotic friendship: “Yoko Ono told me and Abbie that they considered us to be great artists.” Abbie replied, “That’s funny. We always thought of you as great politicians.” Further connecting them is the fact that when Rubin brings John and Yoko to his own apartment, they discover that it’s in the same building where a decade earlier, as a struggling young artist in the city, Yoko had once been the superintendent. The three of them and Hoffman talk about combining forces, organizing a singing and speaking tour to raise political awareness.