Dan Richter, 87, who lived with John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their Tittenhurst Park estate, has shared his remarkable memories of life inside the couple's inner circle, including witnessing Lennon's decision to leave the Beatles and the recording of his iconic solo album, Imagine.
From Tokyo Streets to Kenwood Mansion
Richter, raised by his artist parents in Connecticut, studied ballet before becoming a lead performer at the American Mime Theatre in New York. During a year out, he met Yoko Ono in Tokyo while busking on the streets to make ends meet. After a brief stint in Japan, he became firm friends with Yoko, spending almost every day with her, but lost touch when he left the country.
Years later, after being cast as Moonwatcher in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Richter reconnected with Yoko in London. They lived in connected flats on Baker Street, where Richter taught mime and poetry. In late 1968, after Yoko had met John, she introduced him to Richter.
Life at Tittenhurst Park
After a temporary move to the US with his then-wife Jill, Richter returned to London with no place to live. Yoko offered them her and John's empty Kenwood mansion in Surrey, which was vacant while the couple waited for their new 85-acre estate, Tittenhurst Park in Ascot, to be completed. Once ready, John and Yoko invited Dan and Jill to move in with them.
Over the next few years, Richter earned a living teaching professional acting and mime classes and publishing poetry, while also overseeing operations on the Tittenhurst estate for free. Reflecting on his time with John, Richter told the ECHO: "John was so much fun to be around. He was endlessly creative. All these ideas and music was just coming out of his head. They say that Mozart couldn't write the music down fast enough, it was coming out of his head, John was like that. He and I used to just joke with each other all the time, because I guess I have a bit of a sense of humour, and we'd play games."
Richter added: "All the rock and roll guys were like 'John Lennon, what is he really like?', but I wasn't a rock and roll guy. I loved his work and things like that, but I wasn't from the rock and roll world, I was from the art world. I felt I had a special relationship with him because of that."
The Decision to Leave the Beatles
Richter recalled one particularly historic conversation from September 1969, during the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival. He said: "When we went to the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival, in September of '69, John had not played separately from The Beatles. He realised that he didn't need The Beatles to perform. He basically decided that weekend that he was finished with The Beatles. He loved the work he had done, he had loved the guys, but he wanted to move on. John wanted to do other things, he wanted to keep making music, but he wanted to do other things, he wanted to explore other things, he wanted to discover what he could do as an individual artist."
While Richter said he can't remember the exact words John uttered that day, it was clear that in John's mind, the Beatles had run their course.
Creating 'Imagine'
Three years later, after the Beatles had formally parted ways, Richter played an important role in one of Lennon's most well-loved solo albums, Imagine. He recalled: "I would go in to see John and Yoko in the morning, I'd bring in the mail, tell them so-and-so called, and John said to me, 'Well, I'm ready to record. I'm going to record tonight'. I said, 'Well, you know, the [Ascot Sound] studio isn't finished, we still have to—' But he said, 'No, I'm going to record tonight, you know, and you—I'll call Mr. [George] Harrison, and Mal Evans, and what not, and you call everybody else, and we're going to record'."
Richter added: "John and Yoko came down, and John had every song completely done in his brain, he and Yoko had worked out everything. And so he knew what Klaus Voormann had to do on every track. He knew what he wanted."
Reflecting on that time, Richter expressed immense pride in what they created together: "I think the acme of all of that was Imagine, which lives on today as an anthem that's much bigger than music. I'm blessed to have been part of that, I'm privileged, because I did a lot of the production on that. And I helped make it possible."
