Mike Douglas Recalls Co-hosting Shows with John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Making its online debut on October 9, 2024, John and Sean Lennon’s birthdays, the following Q&A with renowned talk show host and singer Mike Douglas comes from the book accompanying “The Mike Douglas Show with John Lennon & Yoko Ono” VHS box set, released by Rhino Home Video on May 25, 1998.

The set featured the five 90-minute shows John and Yoko co-hosted with Douglas from February 14-18, 1972, at the height of the Lennons’ counterculture political activity. 

The box set and the book, written by Stephen K. Peeples, are now out of print. However, you can now read most of the liner notes here, and the transcript from the Lennons’ post-taping press conference with Yippee and Chicago 7/8 defendant Jerry Rubin here. This Q&A with Douglas rounds out the notes.

As detailed in the book, guests included rock ‘n’ roll pioneer and Lennon hero Chuck Berry, fast-rising reinvented hip comedian George Carlin, consumer activist Ralph Nader, gospel-soul rockers The Chambers Brothers, straight comedian Louie Nye, filmmaker Barbara Loden, Rubin, Black Panthers Party Chairman Bobby Seale, U.S. Surgeon General Jesse Steinfeld, Asian activist/folk-singing duo Yellow Pearl, Peace Corps Director Joe Blatchford, singer/actress Vivian Reed, and the Ace Trucking Company comedy troupe, plus biofeedback experts, a macrobiotic cook, a women’s rights attorney, student activists, and more.

Douglas died on his 81^st birthday, August 11, 2006. His wife Genevieve was 88 when she died on May 16, 2014. The Lennons-on-Douglas documentary film Daytime Revolution premiered theatrically on October 9, 2024.

Here’s the Q&A’s original intro:

In the years since The Mike Douglas Show left the air in 1982, Mike has enjoyed spending time with his wife Genevieve (also a key player in his business enterprises) and their family.

In 1997, the Douglases moved to a new home in North Palm Beach, Florida, which is where he was when I spoke with him by phone from Canyon Country, California, the day after Christmas.

— Stephen K. Peeples

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SKP: As one of the millions of kids who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s watching The Mike Douglas Show after school, my favorite segments were always the musical ones. The sound quality wasn’t the greatest, but a lot of the bands you had on the show were cool, even if we thought many of the other guests weren’t. The John and Yoko shows were very cool…

MD: I grew up with music — it was my life before doing talk shows. It was all quite accidental, how it happened for me. I don’t know, [musical guests] just felt comfortable. I would get [artists] other shows could not get. And certainly everybody wanted John Lennon.

SKP: Especially in late 1971-early ’72, when he and Yoko were pretty high profile, getting involved with some pretty controversial people and events.

MD: Yes, they were constantly in the news. But we were always after people like that who were not only newsworthy, but…John Lennon was a legend. To have lucked out the way we did…I thought we were very lucky. We were just terribly excited about it.

SKP: Was there a particular reason why The Mike Douglas Show went after the Lennons just then?

MD: Well, I’m not going to say just to garner good ratings, but it was certainly good programming, and it was a step for us.

We were extremely highly rated in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, in fact I think we were the only show at that particular time to be number one in all three of those markets.

I will admit, the week when the shows finally aired, young people were saying hello to me and noticing me. I went out to get a haircut, these youngsters were shouting my name and cheering when I got out of the car, people who probably never would have watched our show. Suddenly we not only had our [regular] audience, which was considerable, but that particular week, the ratings just absolutely went through the roof. I don’t think we’d ever reached those numbers, or that plateau, before.

SKP: So how was the Lennons’ booking handled?

MD: My talent department made the initial contact. I wasn’t personally involved in that, although I was in making the final decision.

SKP: Why do you think John and Yoko chose to do The Mike Douglas Show?

MD: Well, they certainly were aware of it, and had watched it, had seen me often enough to possibly realize that they would be comfortable with me, and that I wasn’t going to put any restrictions on anything they did or said.

SKP: A lot of your viewers must have thought they were pretty extreme, and the fact that they were on your show…

MD: I think people were shocked by that. I’m sure we got some very interesting mail from our regular fans, ’cause not everyone’s thinking was in that direction at the time. I don’t think the country in general was ready for [John and Yoko].

I gotta confess, though, for a man coming from a foreign country and being absolutely fearless in front of the cameras, and saying anything he pleased, John must have known there would be a lot of people who’d certainly be opposed to what he was saying. But he stood his ground, and we brought people with other feelings on the show.

I tried not to think while I was doing something, “Am I shocking the audience?” My outlook about John was that they were certainly aware of him. People certainly knew about him as being part of The Beatles, who’ll probably go down in history as the biggest group that ever happened anywhere in the world. People are still buying their music — you hear it constantly. But I didn’t know if [the audience] really knew what John was all about, if they knew about his feelings and his politics. I think it was kind of educational, myself. It certainly kept me alert.

SKP: What was your take going into first taping, when all you knew about John and Yoko was what you’d read, seen, and heard? And then what did you think at the end of the fifth show?

MD: Quite honestly, I didn’t think it was going to be a very pleasant experience, and it turned out to be very nice, as far as I was concerned.

Yes, I was apprehensive in the first place, I really was. It’s like people expecting you to discuss your feelings about politics on the air, which I tried to steer clear of, because you’d alienate probably 50% of your audience. So I was apprehensive about doing the week at all. And my people around me just assured me that it would be a wise move and wise step on my part to do it.

It really was a trying time. I’m not going to say the week was simple or easy, but [chuckles] it was something I’ll never forget! And I had been in front of a camera for many, many years at that point, but this was the most challenging thing I had ever done.

SKP: How?

MD: If you counted the ways, you wouldn’t have much room left on your page! Just that it was more than I’d anticipated, really. I had naturally read everything about them that you could have read, and I realized they were going to be off the wall, as the kids would say. So I thought I was prepared for everything, but I was thrown a curve or two here and there.

[John and Yoko] were very, very tough on my staff, I will say this.

SKP: In what way?

MD: Because of their demands. “I want this, and that…”

SKP: Can you recall what any of the demands were?

MD: I don’t want to go into detail because I don’t want to bring up the names of people, but this staff of mine meant a great deal to me, and I had people coming to me in tears. They were rough on the staff, but my kids hung in there. They would send a person to talk to Yoko about this and about that, and all of a sudden, they would…she was tough. And they would turn one [problem] around and suddenly there would be something else.

But we all lived through it, and I’m sure our memories in most instances are fond ones.

I’ll tell ya, I haven’t gotten over it yet! It was probably the most memorable week I did in all my 20-something years on the air.

SKP: You taped these five shows over a period of how long?

MD: Five weeks, from early January to early February. The way we did it was not the easiest in the world. They would come down [to Philadelphia] once a week, and at the end of the five weeks, we had the five shows.

Our schedule in those days — we would do seven shows in five days, so there were two double-tape days a week. In the case of John and Yoko, all of those were double-tape days for me. And then I would tape a seventh show, for another week. It’s the only way we could ever get away from the studio. My vacations were very infrequent in those days.

In retrospect, I’m very happy the schedule worked out that John and Yoko could only be there one day a week —  it might have been too much pressure for me to take it in five straight days. I don’t know how I would have stood up under that!

SKP: Tell us more about how the guest lists were put together.

MD: We would always book personal friends of the guest cohost, whether they were nationally known or not, to make it comfortable for that cohost. John and Yoko simply asked — he simply asked — for the Chicago 7!

And we complied, supplied everyone we could. And I imagine [John and Yoko] were as shocked that we agreed to book them as we were when they initially made the request.

SKP: The Day 3 show was the one with Chuck Berry.

MD: We’d had Chuck Berry on The Mike Douglas Show many times, but in this instance Chuck was one of the people John most admired. John was just in Seventh Heaven when Chuck was there. I guess Chuck, like John said, originated the whole thing. John treated him the way people would expect us to treat John Lennon. Chuck Berry was like the return of something incredible.

SKP: Probably the two most controversial guests John and Yoko had on were Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale.

MD: We’d had many controversial guests before, dealt with a lot of controversial issues. We didn’t pass up anything. I’m the fellow who interviewed Shari [Lewis] Finkbine during the Thalidomide scandal. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King…anyone you could talk about, we had them. People don’t associate my show with those kinds of things, but we dealt with them constantly.

SKP: How did you and your audience react to Jerry Rubin, this radical-type urging everyone to “dump Nixon” in the ’72 election campaign. The Surgeon General, Dr. Jesse Steinfeld, was, ah, shall we say, steaming…What was going through your mind?

MD: [laughs] I wondered if [Dr. Steinfeld] was gonna make it through the segment, or would he need medical attention! Seriously, he was steaming. And I’m a compassionate soul — I’d try to be the mediator and try to keep things on course, but that was tough sledding right then. I remember that. But there wasn’t much I could do — Jerry would say these things…

You know, it’s strange looking back at some of the things that people we had on, like the Jerry Rubins, would say. I remember talking with Malcolm X, and I remember many of the things he would say I would totally agree with. But he was very much ahead of his time — people weren’t ready for it. Same thing with Jerry.

SKP: The week’s other controversial guest was Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party chairman…

MD: I’ll never forget that, but because of something else that was going on that day. It might not be too funny to other people, but we also had a guy on named Billy from that wonderful group of kids in Ace Trucking Company, and he was doing a bit called “Ya doesn’t have to call me Johnson,” in this Amos & Andy-type delivery.

And I thought, “Migod! Who booked this? What horrible timing…!” Because Bobby Seale was backstage, and he had an entourage with him as well. And people on the show were cringing as Billy was doing his act, but the man was absolutely hysterical. I had a little thing with my talent department about that. And I hope to this day that [Bobby and his guests] don’t think that we booked Billy to hurt anyone’s feelings in any way. That was very tense, that day.

SKP: There was also some disagreement about when Bobby was going to go on in the show…

MD: I didn’t control that part of the show myself, I had people who did the scheduling. I think he went on late in the show. I honestly don’t recall what the problem was [with Seale].

But generally, over the years, a lot of people objected to [being on] the last 30 minutes. In cities like New York, for instance, the last 30 minutes was the highest-rated part of the show, going into the 6 p.m. news. And they didn’t understand that it’s the strongest part of the show.

SKP: What was the vibe backstage, with this entourage of Black Panthers hanging around?

MD: It was very uncomfortable for my staff and everyone, but mainly because The Mike Douglas Show studio was so small, and Bobby and his group really were in the way of our people — you know, the stage hands who were moving props and things — and they didn’t understand.

SKP: How about some of the performance art pieces — what did you think of them?

MD: Remember the thing [John and Yoko] did on love? They were calling people on the phone and telling them they loved them. All of a sudden they did a whole thing on love, and what love should mean, and that you should love thy neighbor, that you should love everyone. I mean, a lot of people in the audience sat there with their mouths open — they didn’t quite get with it.

SKP: There was also Yoko’s Mend Piece with the broken teacup…Even John remarked [on Day 5], “Hey, I live with her, and I don’t always get it!”

MD: You want to talk about total surprise, I mean, I didn’t know that was happening until [John and Yoko] did it! And I must have had my mouth open a good portion of the time, too, during that week.

The people on my staff knew more than I did. My producers loved to work with me because I could usually pick up the pieces and get out of anything, so they would purposely not apprise me of a lot of things that were happening because they liked the fact that it was new and fresh to me.

SKP: They wanted to see how you would handle it, and it makes for more exciting TV.

MD: Exactly. In most instances I could save the day. Sometimes, though, you just can’t find a way out.

SKP: Another was the little box with the piece of mirrored glass inside, the Box Of Smile… you seemed to enjoy that one.

MD: Yeah, I’m sure a lot of the audience was scratching their heads wondering what she meant by that, too!

SKP: Did you have any sense of what was going on behind the scenes with John and the Government?

MD: No, I don’t think many people did. I’d be surprised if any of my staff were aware of it.

SKP: Well, fast-forwarding to the present — here we are closing in on 30 years since these shows aired.

MD: I got to see some of these shows when they aired on VH1, so that’s kind of refreshed my memory. It was an experience, that week, for me. A wonderful experience.

SKP: What do you think people today will get from viewing them? What do you hope they will get?

MD: Most people are guilty, I think, in some way, that if they hear something that goes against the grain for them, that they don’t want to listen, they don’t want to hear the other person’s side.

I think we’ve learned an awful lot since 1972. People who watch these [videos] will learn an awful lot, too. And I think that they’ll examine their own consciences in many instances and say, “Lennon was right when he said…,” whatever the statement was. And it wasn’t all that bad. And as it turned out, Nixon wasn’t as great as everybody thought he was going to be.

John and Yoko were on the right track…just way ahead of their time.

And a lot of people are going to kind of think back and examine their conscience, and say, “I felt that way then, but I no longer feel that way. He wasn’t as bad a guy as we thought he was.”

There were a lot of people who were up in arms about the things [Lennon] was saying. They’d say, “How dare he come to this country and make statements like that? What does he know?” As opposed to saying, “I think I’ll listen — maybe I’ll learn something.”

By the way, did you know John and Yoko were booked to do my show in Hawaii in December 1980, and had they done the booking, he would not have been in New York City the day he was assassinated?

I remember John called and said, “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m in the midst of finishing an album and I have to get it finished. And I can’t get away.” That’s an absolute fact.

SKP: That’s all the more bizarre given that the deranged fan who murdered John had traveled from Hawaii to New York City just to kill him.

MD: A terrible loss. John was a great artist.

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Special thanks to Mike and Genevieve Douglas, Yoko Ono and The John Lennon Estate.

Stephen K. Peeples is an award-winning multi-media writer-producer and radio/record-industry veteran raised in Miami and Los Angeles by career newspaper journalists and music lovers. Based in Santa Clarita, California, he wrapped a 46-year media career in 2021. Along the way he earned awards as the original writer/producer of “The Lost Lennon Tapes” radio series at Westwood One (1988-1990), and covered the Lennons on Douglas in LLT shows #9, 16, 76, and 84. Peeples also earned a Grammy nomination as co-producer and liner notes writer of the “Monterey International Pop Festival” box set (Rhino/MIPF, 1992). See the “About” page on his website. More original stories and exclusive interviews are posted there and on his YouTube channel.

Article: Mike Douglas Recalls Co-Hosting Shows with John Lennon & Yoko Ono
Category: News and Reviews
Author: Stephen K. Peeples
Article Source: StephenKPeeples.com