Later in the show, George performs an acoustic duet with fellow musical guest Paul Simon. They open with “Here Comes the Sun,” from the Beatles’ Abbey Road, a song that came to him in April of 1969, when he skipped a meeting at Apple to visit Eric Clapton in his Surrey garden.

The performance resonates for more than a quarter century.

When the White Stripes are invited to perform on the October 19, 2002, episode of SNL, a friend of the band remembers guitarist and songwriter Jack White rhapsodizing “about seeing George Harrison on SNL just sitting down and doing ‘Here Comes the Sun.’ God, it’d be cool to do something like that,” White tells producers, “playing the acoustic guitar.”

Chapter 53

Chapter 53

People say I’m crazy

Doing what I’m doing.

—“Watching the Wheels”

I’m crazy for trying and crazy for crying,” Linda Ronstadt sings onstage at the Kennedy Center, in Washington, DC. John and Yoko are listening to her cover of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” at Jimmy Carter’s inaugural gala. The taped program will be broadcast while politicos and celebrities clad in formal wear, including Cher and Gregg Allman, Loretta Lynn, Aretha Franklin, and Muhammad Ali, mingle at the January 1977 festivities.

Carter, who led his inaugural parade wearing a $175 suit he brought with him from his home state of Georgia, doesn’t recognize John when John steps forward to congratulate America’s thirty-ninth president, even with the prompt, “I used to be a Beatle.”

True to the spirit of the 1971 Plastic Ono Band song “Power to the People,” Carter styles himself as the “people’s president.” Long gone is the armed guard, nearly ten thousand strong, that Nixon marshaled in 1969 for his first inauguration.

“We’re living in a more tranquil period of society,” Don Zimmerman, executive director of Capitol Records, observes to the New York Times. “The average age of the artists is older. Most rock stars are over thirty.”

One of them is thirty-six-year-old John, who says, “I’m talking to guys and gals that have been through what we went through, together—the sixties group that has survived. Survived the war, the drugs, the politics, the violence on the street—the whole she-bang—that we’ve survived it and we’re here. And I’m talkin’ to them.”

John is also talking to the younger generation. The much younger generation. John is not releasing records, but he’s still making home recordings with and for his toddler son, Sean.

“Do you need anybody?” the little boy sings with feeling. “I need somebody to love.”

“Very good,” John says when Sean names the tune as “my favorite song,” the one off Sgt. Pepper that his father has played for him over and over.

“Who’s singing? You?” Sean asks.

“No. Ringo,” John answers, “but Paul and I are singing it with him.”

When Sean asks the name of the song, John has a flash of forgetfulness.