Everyday we hear rumors, whispers that spread from person to person across a school, a city, or even a country. If someone came up to you and said, “John Lennon was my grandpa’s best friend,” would you believe them? I certainly wouldn’t. Well, someone I know said exactly that. But, in this case, after some research, I found that it was, quite impossibly, true.
Everyone has heard of the Beatles. The band “effectively reinvented the meaning of rock and roll as a cultural form” (Britannica). The legendary Beatle, John Lennon, was friends with Sam Green, the grandfather of Abbey Kelkenberg, who lives in our city and goes to our school. I was lucky to have the opportunity to talk to her.
Kelkenberg told me that Green first met Yoko Ono through her roommate Yayoi Kusama, who was a Japanese artist living in New York in the 1960s. The Lennon and Ono became friends, and when Ono married John Lennon, all three of them became good friends. Kelkenberg says, “Sam and Yoko had known each other due to his career in the art business, but Sam had a lot of exposure to celebrities at the time. He met a lot of actors and actresses, but Sam, Yoko, and Lennon were all super close from the start of his career to the end of his life.” Eventually, the trio’s friendship became so close that in 1976, Green invited Lennon, and his wife Yoko Ono, to President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. Warholstars.org claims that Sam Green was the guardian of Lennon and Ono’s son, Sean, if anything ever happened to either of them.
Not only was Green friends with the famous singer and band member, he was also an art dealer for Andy Warhol. According to the Andy Warhol Museum, “He [Andy Warhol] documented the world around him not only through his paintings and films, but also through his tape recorder and Polaroid photography, capturing his encounters, both mundane and magnificent.” Green and Warhol found each other in the Green Gallery in 1963. The two instantly discovered that they could help each other contribute great pieces of artwork into the new pop movement. When Green became the director at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, he decided he wanted Warhol to help him. Green would eventually display Warhol’s artwork at shows for the not-yet-famous artist. From there on, Warhol and Green’s names became widely known in gossip columns of magazines and newspapers.
Green’s relationship with Warhol, and at times Lennon, could be fraught. Kelkenberg says, “…Andy Warhol didn’t actually like him [Sam] very much as a person, and said he was arrogant. I think he only partnered with him because of the financial stability that he could offer him, not that he respected him as a person.” However, the two of them were still friends, and would continue to be even when Lennon and Ono were married. They may not have had the same ideas and opinions, but they were still close.
Green did seem like the kind of person who went around introducing himself to famous people. His friendship with people that we know of today gave him the reputation of someone who everybody liked. But, instead, his connections with famous people weren’t because of their similarities. Kelkenberg says, “Andy Warhol’s… artwork was based on human feeling and the finding beauty in people, like the human race. And I think that Sam Green didn’t see people that way.”
Kellkenberg believes that perhaps the friendships suffered because the men held such different opinions and perspectives. “I think that they did not get along because Warhol was too connected to people who felt really emotional,” said Kellkenberg, “and I don’t think that Sam could offer him that. I think that he was in it for himself… he was not in it to love art.”
On March 4th, 2011, at the age of 70, Green passed away, with very few obituaries published for him. However, Green’s connections and friendship with Warhol and Lennon help us to see new aspects of these famous figures. Coincidences are unbelievable, but also inevitable. In this case, one of the greatest musicians in the world being connected to a girl in our school? I guess sometimes it’s a small world.
