Skywriting by Word of Mouth

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Skywriting by Word of Mouth

Author	John Lennon
Language	English
Genre	Experimental fiction
Publisher	Harper and Row Publishers
Publication date	10 October 1986
Pages	208
ISBN	0-06-091444-0
OCLC	19560946
Preceded by	A Spaniard in the Works

Skywriting by Word of Mouth, and Other Writings Including the Ballad of John and Yoko, is the third, and last, book written by English musician John Lennon. It was published posthumously in 1986 and included an afterword by Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, whom he married in 1969. Like his other books, it contains miscellaneous writings and cartoons.

The book includes Lennon's autobiography (titled "The Ballad of John and Yoko", also the title of a song), in which he talks about the Beatles' break-up ("I started the band. I disbanded it.") and says that he has no hard feelings against his former bandmates: "Paul, George, and It's Only Ringo. I bear them no ill will." However, he also referred to them as "avant-garde revolutionary thinkers" a statement which could be interpreted as sarcastic in intent and declared "In retrospect, the Beatles were no more an important part of my life than any other (and less than some)."

Lennon mentioned the manuscript in a 1980 Playboy interview: "At one point [during his five-year "retirement" from music]... I wrote about two hundred pages of mad stuff".^[1] The manuscript was stolen from the Lennons' apartment in 1982, and later recovered in 1986, when Ono had it published.