I have no idea

amoralto:

January 1st, 1976: John tells Elliot Mintz about a twilight period of doubt he experienced after returning from The Beatles’ first trip to Hamburg in 1960, when he asked himself if he really wanted to live his life as a musician. (Note: Paul and Pete Best were also deported during the first trip for causing a fire, while Stuart stayed behind sick. John and Paul went on their Paris getaway during the second trip, in 1961.)

JOHN: One time, when we’d been thrown out of Hamburg, for – too complicated reasons to tell you, but it was about moving from one place to another, and one owner was upset that we’d left him, and we were pulling the crowd into another club – and he’d arranged for George to be deported, ‘cause he was only sixteen at the time. He was too young to play in those night clubs. Or seventeen. And uh – somehow, they were all deported, and I was left in Hamburg, playing alone with another group of musicians.

I got back to England, and – I didn’t call, or tell the others that I’d come home, for about three weeks. I really sat for a long time, thinking. “Is this – is this what I want to do?” [laughs; nervous] You know? And then when they found out I was home, they were a bit – annoyed at me, because we could’ve been working and earning money, but I really just had to think it over.

And Paul and I also did the same thing, once. We just canceled. We’d made it, in Liverpool. We were making good money, for those days. I can’t remember what it was – maybe a couple of hundred dollars a week – but enough that you’d have a little extra. You’d have it in your back pocket. And Paul and I just— A relative of mine gave me a hundred pounds, for my birthday, which I’d never seen that much money in me life. Paul and I just canceled all the engagements,  and left for Paris… And George was furious, because he needed the money – to work, you know. But that was another time when the group was in debate as whether it would exist or not.

MINTZ: When you were alone, the first time, thinking about whether you should go on, what was – what was the dichotomy? What were the thoughts, pro and con, about continuing?

JOHN: Because… it was quite a shattering experience to be in a foreign country – Hamburg – in these— We were pretty young, you know. I was twenty, I think. Twenty-one, or something. George had been seventeen, he’d been deported. I was left there on my own. I came home on my own, with no money, just carrying amplifiers and guitars, and I thought, “Is— Am I gonna— Is this what I wanna do, man?” I mean, I was always a sort of poet or a painter. But I thought, “Is this – it?” This sort of – night clubs, and seedy sort of scenes, and being deported, and sort of weird people in the clubs… I mean, it was really sort of – nowadays, they call it decadence, but those days it was just in Hamburg, you know? Or in clubs that groups played at – strip clubs, and all the stuff. And I thought – I thought hard about, “Should I continue doing this?” [pause] But I did.