“We were very square people in a way,” Yoko recalls. “We wouldn’t kick it in a hospital because we wouldn’t let anybody know. We just went straight cold turkey.”

In an interview published on August 23, Apple recording artist James Taylor tells Rolling Stone, “John’s gone away for two weeks, just to get away from it all.”

The experience is a nightmare.

The gruesome withdrawal symptoms—fever, nausea, palpitations, sweats, chills, and intestinal distress—crash against them like a powerful wave. We have to do it this way, John keeps telling himself.

During his self-imposed exile, John writes “Cold Turkey,” a song about his intense personal detox battle. “It took courage enough for John to go cold turkey on his own,” Yoko’s friend Dan Richter later comments. But writing a song about it? “To admit it, and tell you everything about it…that took real guts.”

John proposes “Cold Turkey” to Paul and the others as a Beatles single on Abbey Road.

They decline.

*  *  *

“I’m gonna leave the band,” John confides to Eric Clapton high over the Atlantic Ocean.

John had called Clapton that morning. “How would you fancy playing at a rock ’n’ roll festival with the Plastic Ono Band in Toronto?”

Tonight.

Their first-class airline tickets are dated Saturday, September 13, a month after Woodstock, which the Beatles hadn’t played. This Canadian festival will be the first public outing for the Plastic Ono Band. “Nothing’s expected of John and Yoko or the Plastic Ono,” John says. “They would be anybody or perform anything. So with that sort of freedom there’s no hang-ups.”

Except when it comes to preparing for the sold-out show.

In addition to Clapton, John’s recruited drummer Alan White, and his old German pal Klaus Voormann to play bass.

“We tried to rehearse on the plane,” John says, “but it was impossible.”

At Varsity Stadium at the University of Toronto (capacity: 21,000), the Plastic Ono Band is a last-minute addition to a bill that includes the Doors as well as many of the musicians John once idolized, such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent.

John hasn’t played to a crowd this size since the Beatles’ 1966 American tour. He’s pacing backstage, chain-smoking, feeling the pressure of slotting between two of his musical heroes, Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

“The show should be closed, by me, the King,” Little Richard declares. “You know that, Mr. Lennon. You know that, Mr. Promoters. You know that, Mr. Doors. I am the King and I should close the show.”

It’s after midnight when American record producer Kim Fowley makes the new band’s introduction. “Everyone get out your matches and lighters, please. In a minute I’m going to bring out John Lennon and Eric Clapton and when I do I want you to light them and give them a huge Toronto welcome.”