John Lennon Would Rather Have Been in Monty Python Than the Beatles
Comedians would rather be rock stars, goes the old saying, but the opposite is also true — rock stars would rather be comedians. John Lennon admitted as much during a possibly inebriated conversation with British DJ Andy Peebles.
“Part of me would sooner have been a comedian,” explained the notoriously witty Lennon. “I just don’t have the guts to stand up and do it, but I’d love to be in Monty Python rather than the Beatles.”
But why limit his comedic reach to simply performing with Python? Lennon seemed to have a John Cleese fixation overall. “I love Fawlty Towers!” he professed. “I’d like to be in that.” He’d previously named Fawlty Towers as his all-time favorite TV program, according to Far Out, calling it “the greatest show I’ve seen in years. What a masterpiece! A beautiful thing.”
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But if any Beatle were to be the unofficial seventh member of Monty Python, it would have been George Harrison, not Lennon. His production company HandMade Films was the savior of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which couldn’t find a film studio that would put up a few million bucks to finance the comedy.
“The wonderful George Harrison got the script from Eric Idle, who was a friend,” remembered Cleese. “He rang Eric the next day, and said he laughed so much he had fallen out of bed.” Harrison thought the comedy would be a good investment and he was right — it was the highest-grossing British film in the United States the year it was released.
Idle was astounded by Harrison’s generosity. The offer to finance was wonderful but — why? Harrison’s response: “I wanted to see the movie.” He even got a bit part in the film, becoming the Beatle who fulfilled Lennon’s Python dream.
While Lennon never performed comedy with Monty Python, the musician did get a few chances to flex his comic chops. He appeared as sardonic soldier Gripweed in Richard Lester’s dark comedy, How I Won the War, and the Beatles themselves made movie comedies with Help and A Hard Day’s Night.
“If John Lennon hadn’t become a rock star, he might instead have made a very good stand-up comic,” wrote U.K. author and journalist Ray Connolly. “Get him talking and off he would go into a funny, self-knocking soliloquy, in which he was often the butt of his own jokes.”