‘I worked with John Lennon – he showed his true colours with one gesture’ | Music | Entertainment

When asked about a memorable cup of tea he had shared on the A Mug of Life YouTube channel, Rod said: “I think when John Lennon made me a cup of tea.” He added: “I recorded with him, I did the Imagine album with him.

“My drummer in the band that I had was clever enough to get himself a job with Brian Epstein. That kind of gave me a latch key to The Beatles. 

“Word had got around that I was quite a hot guitar player. I somehow went along to a session and John Lennon was there and I was sitting around listening, thinking, ‘God I wish I could play with him’, and there was a guitar on a stand quite close to me, an acoustic, and I thought, ‘I don’t think he’ll mind’, so I picked it up and started playing.

“The voice behind me went, ‘Yeah man, you can really play’. I thought, ‘Oh, hello John’.”

Rod says John then invited him along to play with him, leading the guitar to find himself among the likes of Ringo Starr and George Harrison. He continued: “He said, ‘Look, I’m doing a demo session soon, do you want to come and play on it?’

“‘Are you kidding? Do I want to? Yes please’. And it sort of went from there really. Sitting there recording, saying ‘Hi George’ you know, ‘Hi Ringo’. I’m playing with The Beatles for crying out loud.”

Rod, who lives in North London, was originally the frontman of the band Rupert’s People, but never quite made it big. After taking up the guitar he had a single lesson from Ray Davies, the iconic vocalist and rhythm guitarist from The Kinks. 

He previously described The Beatles drummer Ringo as a “hoot” but admits he was fond of all of The Beatles he had worked with. On the Rock Files podcast in 2024, Rod said: “I got to know them and I got on particularly well with John, and George, and Ringo.

“Ringo’s a hoot. Everytime…and I haven’t seen him for ages, but back then in the 70s, I’d see him quite a lot in the studios and what not, and then, I hadn’t seen him for a while and the next time I saw him I said, ‘Ringo, it’s been a long time’, and he said, ‘Yeah, it must be 25 years’, and I heard him say that to me quite a lot because I hadn’t seen him for months at a time.

“He always said the same thing, ‘Must be 25 years’. A lovely man, all of The Beatles were very nice people.”