Exclusive | John Lennon’s forgotten meltdown at iconic LA club — as Rock & Roll Hall of Fame celebrates its storied past

LA’s world-famous Troubadour will be recognized by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a landmark in music history Wednesday, hours before hosting a tribute to incoming inductee Gram Parsons.

To mark the occasion, The California Post looks back at the night Beatle John Lennon got kicked out of the hotspot as told in the book, “The Beatles in Los Angeles.”

Lennon’s inner demons and rage shook the Sunset Strip on the evening of March 12, 1974.

“He was a bad drunk, if he had two or three or four drinks those inner demons would manifest themselves, a kind of rage would permeate the air,” Lennon’s longtime publicist Elliott Mintz revealed.

“He liked Brandy Alexanders, that was his drink when he drank,” Mintz explained.

Lennon was deep into what’s been called his “Lost Weekend” during which he had left his wife, Yoko Ono, at her suggestion. 

“This was his chance to be ‘Bachelor John’ since his first marriage,” Mintz said.

“As the weeks turned to months, as his drinking increased, as his yearning to get back to Yoko intensified, as he got a little bit out of control . . . he wasn’t all that happy,” Mintz continued.

John and his drinking buddy, singer Harry Nilsson, were among the celeb-studded audience at the Troubadour for a Smothers Brothers show which included everyone from Paul Newman to Peter Lawford to Pam Grier, the sexy rising star of the new movie Foxy Brown.

John, egged on by Harry, would not stop heckling the duo. When the Smothers Brothers’ manager stepped in to stop John, Lennon threw a punch, prompting the club’s bouncers to kick him, Nilsson, and Grier out the door. 

John lost his signature glasses along the way.

Lennon’s outburst against the Smothers Brothers was especially disturbing, considering that just a few years earlier, Tommy Smothers had joined Lennon and Ono to sing in the chorus of “Give Peace a Chance.”

Perhaps more troubling, a photographer claimed John had punched her during the scuffle outside the club, and she went to the police.

The complaint was later dismissed, and Lennon escaped possible deportation, but the Beatle wasn’t without remorse.

“The following morning, he awoke and called me, and he asked that I send flowers and an apology,” said Mintz

Pam Grier received an expensive bouquet from Hahn’s Florist in Beverly Hills with a note: “Dear Pam, I apologize for being so rude, and thank you for not hitting me. P.S. Harry Nilsson feels the same way.”

“The idea of a Beatle being thrown out of a nightclub and behaving so badly was a headline grabber,” said Mintz.

Good for the papers, bad for publicity.

Later, John put the incident into perfect perspective, telling Mintz, “Look, it wasn’t that big a deal. A decade or two decades earlier, if it had been Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin, they would say boys would be boys . . . the only reason it was such a big deal is because my name gets put in the paper.”

He’s right, boys will be boys. The only difference is Frank would have ditched the brandy for Jack Daniel’s.

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