Remembering the Partially Handwritten Letter John Lennon Once Wrote to Waylon Jennings

It was at the Uris Theater in New York City during the Grammy Awards in 1975 when John Lennon and Waylon Jennings‘ paths first crossed. “I met John Lennon, and we were cutting up and everything at one of the Grammy things,” recalled Jennings in 1996 of his first meeting with the late Beatle. “And I said, ‘Man, you’re funny. I didn’t know you were funny.’ I said ‘I thought you were some kind of mad guy or something like that.” Lennon responded: “Listen, people in England think you shoot folks.”

Lennon was referring to the time Jennings brought a pistol into the recording studio and threatened to shoot the fingers off the next guitarist who played any pickup notes during the session. Jennings believed pickup notes were the “easy” way to transition into a new key. “Why not just keep it rolling and rolling and having a good time,” said Jennings, “and then come in where you’re supposed to?”

Shortly after their chance meeting, Lennon sent a partially typewritten letter to Jennings. In his salutation, Lennon mistakenly wrote “Dear Wayland,” which he corrected in writing (“Waylon, Sorry about that”). Lennon also apologized for his typing and spelling at the end. In the letter, Lennon said it was nice to meet Jennings and mentioned his 1973 Mind Games track “Tight A$,” calling it “the HIT,” though he never released it as a single.

Along with mentioning that he had seen Jennings on TV with his band, Lennon also hinted at the outlaw covering “Tight A$”: “It ain’t for someone else.”

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Jennings later reflected on his letter from Lennon, which was later sold at auction many years after the outlaw’s death in 2014 for $7,500. “He wrote me this really nice letter I’ve still got at home that was just all over the place,” said Jennings. “Part of it was handwritten, part of it was typed. I got to meet him a couple of times after that. I was amazed at how much fun he was to be around.”

The two never had the opportunity to collaborate, though they struck up an amiable friendship. Nearly a decade before they met, Jennings also covered two Beatles songs, including a cover of their Revolver classic “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” while he was filming the 1966 Western Nashville Rebel.

“Chet [Atkins] came up with the left-field idea of doing a version of The Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood,’” said Jennings in his 1996 memoir Waylon. “It was this kind of unpredictability that endeared Chet to me. He loved those Beatles tunes, and I did too.”

A year later, Jennings covered the Beatles’ 1965 Help! track “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” on his 1967 album Love of the Common People.

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