It consists of a lengthy interview that Wenner carried out with the former Beatle John Lennon in December 1970 and which was originally serialised in Rolling Stone in its issues dated 21 January and 4 February 1971.

The interview was intended to promote Lennon's primal therapy-inspired album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and reflects the singer's emotions and mindset after undergoing an intense course of the therapy under Arthur Janov.

Accompanied by his wife, Yoko Ono, Lennon aired his grievances to Wenner about the Beatles' career and the compromises the band made during their years of international fame.

He makes cutting remarks about his former bandmates, particularly McCartney, as well as associates and friends such as George Martin, Mick Jagger and Derek Taylor, and about the group's business adversaries.

Rolling Stone had included a picture of John Lennon on the cover of its inaugural issue, dated 9 November 1967,[1] and did so again a year later, when the magazine featured a photo of him and Yoko Ono naked, in support of the couple's controversial avant-garde album, Two Virgins.

[2] Jann Wenner, the magazine's editor, also supported Lennon[3] when other counterculture publications were critical of his and the Beatles' pacifist stance in reaction to the politically turbulent events of 1968.

[9] Wenner was finally able to interview Lennon in late 1970,[10] when he and Ono were in New York City visiting friends and filming Up Your Legs Forever and Fly with avant-garde film-maker Jonas Mekas.

[11][12] The interview took place on 8 December in the boardroom of Allen Klein's company ABKCO, at 1500 Broadway,[10] and was intended to promote John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.

[10] According to author Peter Doggett, the interview represents a piece of concept art that matches the raw emotional content of Lennon's Plastic Ono Band album.

[21] He states his satisfaction with tracks such as "Mother", for its sparse sound and unadorned arrangement; "Working Class Hero", as "a song for the revolution"; and "God", in which he disavows his former beliefs and "myths", including the Beatles, before announcing that "The dream is over".

When asked about his former bandmates' recent solo releases, he describes McCartney's self-titled album as "rubbish"[24] and says that Plastic Ono Band will most likely "scare him into doing something decent".

According to Lennon, this genius was similarly belittled or compromised by the expectations of fans and music critics, who favoured the conformist, "Engelbert Humperdinck" side of the Beatles,[19] as represented by McCartney.

They live vicariously through me and other artists ..."[31] He denigrates the band's US fans at the height of Beatlemania, saying that American youth in 1964 displayed a clean-cut, wholesome appearance yet represented an "ugly race".

"[32] Lennon says that the Beatles' image was sanitised by their agreeing to Epstein's requirement that they wear suits and curb the riotous behaviour that had been a feature of the group's stage shows in Hamburg in the early 1960s.

[10][34][nb 1] Lennon says that he himself allowed his Aunt Mimi to remove the "truth bits" about his childhood in Liverpool, but that Davies omitted any mention of drug-taking or the "orgies" taking place during the Beatles' concert tours.

[44] According to Lennon, these individuals represented a false illusion among the staff at Apple, whereby the Beatles provided a "portable Rome" in which Brown, Taylor and Aspinall felt entitled to a position beside "the Caesars".

[32] Lennon attacks Mick Jagger personally, saying that, as the Stones' singer and frontman, he "resurrected 'bullshit movement,' wiggling your arse" and "fag dancing".

[53] Its publication followed the announcement, on 31 December 1970, that McCartney had launched an action against Lennon, Harrison and Starr in the London High Court of Justice,[54] in an effort to extricate himself from Klein[23] and all contractual obligations to Apple.

[50] Time magazine dubbed the combination of McCartney's lawsuit and Lennon's interview "Beatledämmerung", in reference to Wagner's opera about a war among the gods.

[49] By this time, Lennon had rejected Janov[59] and, with Ono, had adopted a new philosophy, focused on political radicalism with New Left figures such as Jerry Rubin.

[62] In early 1972, Lennon and Ono began contributing to a new San Francisco-based political and cultural magazine, SunDance,[63] in an attempt to sabotage Wenner's commercial standing.

[65] In his introduction, Wenner writes that the 1970 Lennon interview represented "the first time that any of the Beatles, let alone the man who had founded the group and was their leader, finally stepped outside of that protected, beloved fairy tale and told the truth ...

"[75] In an interview with Doggett, Derek Taylor refuted Lennon's assertion of him and Aspinall, saying that they had both always respected the boundaries between themselves and the Beatles, and were feeling disconsolate enough with the failure of Apple.

"[81][82] The two former bandmates continued their public feud through the letters page of Melody Maker,[83] with some of Lennon's correspondence requiring censorship by the magazine's editor.

[84] Janov reflected in 2000 that, with Lennon and Ono having left his care in August 1970 due to intervention from US immigration authorities, "They cut the therapy off just as it started, really.

[40] Released in 1972, National Lampoon's Radio Dinner included the track "Magical Misery Tour" in which Tony Hendra parodied the primal therapy-inspired songwriting of Lennon.

[93] The publication in book form aided these developments, in addition to Wenner continuing to present it as an accurate record of events, despite Lennon having contradicted or retracted some of his assertions in the years after the interview.

[98] McCartney believed that this commemorative issue, along with other posthumous tributes to Lennon,[99] afforded his former bandmate a messiah-like status that served to diminish the importance of his own contribution to the Beatles.

He wrote that the "perplexing contradictions" manifested in the book "seem easier to grasp in retrospect ... rock and roll fundamentalism v. avant-gardism; therapy v. politics; and, above all for Lennon, John v. the Beatles and all they stood for".

Harding added that this "self-engrossed, witty, malicious, foolish" Lennon of 1970 was also more appealing to a new generation of listeners than had been the case for the Beatles' contemporary fans.