In 1971 a homeless American travelled to the UK to visit John Lennon at his home Tittenhurst in Ascot. John and Yoko chatted with the unexpected visitor Curt Claudio and then invited him in for breakfast.
Claudio had a fascination with Lennon and believed Lennon’s songs were written directly for him. Lennon showed empathy with Claudio when he turned up at his door. He talked to him and invited him in.
The meeting was captured on film and was used in both the ‘Imagine’ and in the BBC documentary ‘John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky’. It is also the topic of an upcoming documentary ‘What Happened To Claudio?’
In the BBC documentary John says, “So last week he turned up at my house and he looked in my eyes and he didn’t get any answer. He thought the whole thing was about him and I said, ‘No, it’s about me.’ It might strike a corresponding chord in your experience because we all have similar experiences but it’s basically about me and if it’s not about me, it’s about Yoko. I said. ‘You better get on and live your own life, you’re wasting your time trying to live mine.’
Yoko owner said that, “At Tittenhurst, there was no particular security and one of our assistants told us that there was this strange guy that was staying in our garden almost every night. John always felt responsible for these people because they were the result of his songs. That’s how he felt.
According to Yoko, “He was no dummy. He was a spiritual person. Claudio was communicating to John on a high level. It’s no bad thing; it was a good thing, actually. We knew he was a spirit and that’s why John invited him in to have lunch with us. The food did it, though. It calmed him down. I don’t think we heard from him again after that”.
Claudio eventually learned how to fly a plane but died in 1981 when the plane he was flying stalled. Neither John nor Claudio lived 10 years after that initial meeting.
A new documentary by Dan Richter uncovers the full story of Curt Claudio. The documentary is expected this year but a release date is yet to be announced.
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