“It Was Like a Smack”: The Time Carole King Confronted John Lennon for His Rude Behavior

When Carole King made the rounds introducing herself to all four of The Beatles at a party at the Warwick Hotel in New York City, the songwriter came face to face with each musician’s unique personalities (and reputations): Paul McCartney was affable and chatty, George Harrison was quiet but polite, Ringo Starr “was Ringo,” and John Lennon was snarky to the point of being downright rude.

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At the time, King didn’t press Lennon to see if his behavior was actually directed toward her or if she was an unfortunate but unintentional victim of one of his sulkier moods. She was hardly a nobody at the party, after all. Even McCartney stopped to tell her what a great influence she and her songwriting partner, Gerry Goffin, were to him. But at 23 years old, getting blown off by one of the biggest rockstars in the world was going to sting, no matter how many hits she had under her belt.

During a 2012 interview at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, King described the memorable moment. Lennon was the last Beatle she had to introduce herself to. “He’s standing with two women, neither of whom was Cynthia [Lennon, his first wife]. He looks high; he looks like he’s totally stoned, whacked out of his mind. I go over to him, ‘Hi, John. I’m Carole King. I’m really glad to meet you.’ Honestly, I cannot remember what he said, but he was so rude. It was like a smack. I’m like, ‘I’m getting out of here.’ I left.”

The moment stuck with her for years until finally, around a decade later, she was able to ask Lennon why he had treated her so coldly at the Warwick.

Carole King Confronted John Lennon in His House

Carole King was in the bathroom of a New York City movie theatre when she ran into Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s second wife, sometime in the mid-1970s. The women started talking, and Ono extended an invitation for King and her boyfriend to visit her, Lennon, and their newborn son, Sean, at their apartment at the Dakota. King obliged, and when she arrived, she met a different Lennon than the one who brushed her off at a hotel party. “He tells us how happy he is,” King said in 2012. “He’s so comfortable being a house husband. And he’s really happy. So, there’s this big elephant in the room that nobody sees but me.”

Unable to hold it in any longer, King asked Lennon if he remembered meeting her at the Warwick Hotel in 1965. “He says, ‘Remind me.’ So, I’m thinking he must not remember. He’s met how many people? I said, ‘Well, you were very rude to me, and I was just wondering, I mean, I was just curious, why? What was going on?’ He says, ‘Do you really want to know?’ So, I’m thinking, he does remember. He says, ‘You and Gerry [Goffin] were such great songwriters. I was intimidated.’ So, I say, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s all right. It’s all right.’”

Interestingly, King wasn’t the only woman with whom Lennon had a rocky first interaction. Joni Mitchell also had an infamously awkward exchange with Lennon upon meeting, during which he called her “over-educated.” She responded sometime later by walking in on one of Lennon’s recording sessions, watching him and “smiling languidly,” much to his great discomfort, according to his then-girlfriend May Pang. We suppose everyone has their go-to method of dealing with rude people.

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