Now India, India and I Don’t Want to Lose You will be performed in public for the first time in a new musical of the Beatle’s life. Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow and guardian of his estate, has sanctioned the use of the songs in Lennon, the story of the musician’s life told through his music.

Lennon wrote India, India in the late 1970s for a musical of his own writing named after his song The Ballad of John and Yoko. The show was never performed and the track remained unheard, except on recordings smuggled out of his flat.

The song, which has a similar vocal style to Paul McCartney’s voice in Hey Jude, recalls a trip to the sub-continent in search of spiritual enlightenment, but the narrator is unable to forget his home because “I left my heart in England/ With the girl I left behind”. It seems likely that Lennon was writing about his 1968 visit to India, when the Beatles indulged their spiritual side at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

The girl of the song would be Ono, whom Lennon had met two years earlier, rather than Cynthia, his first wife, who divorced him in 1968. Pete Nash, chairman of the British Beatles Fan Club, said that the lyrics were unique, but that Lennon had created the melody from two other songs he was working on at the time, Memories and Serve Yourself.

I Don’t Want to Lose You, known to Lennon enthusiasts as Now and Then, is a melancholy ballad composed at Lennons’ New York flat at the Dakota Building in 1977 or 1978. Ono gave the piano-led song to the surviving Beatles in 1995 so that it could be released on the Anthology album, but Jeff Lynne, the producer, was unable to remove a buzzing noise from the tape and it was left out. The song tells the story of a man on the verge of breaking up with his partner.

A third song, Cookin’ in the Kitchen of Love, was released by Ringo Starr in 1976, but was never recorded by Lennon.

Ono said that she had granted Don Scardino, the writer and director, permission to put on the musical because she approved of its unusual method. Lennon will be portrayed by nine actors to show the diversity of his character. “John is on stage, but he is black, he is white, he is Hispanic,” she said. “That is something he would have loved.”

The show contains 27 songs, including Imagine, Give Peace a Chance and Whatever Gets You Through the Night.

Lennon long wanted to be on Broadway, but his plans for a musical foundered in the late 1970s. On December 8, 1980, he was murdered in New York by a deranged fan. Mark Chapman, his murderer, is in Attica state prison.

Ono said that her husband would have been delighted to be enshrined in a musical. “John would say ‘hurray’, he would jump up and down,” she said.

She also wanted to use it as a way of releasing Lennon’s unpublished material. “People would say: ‘What are you going to do about all of John’s unreleased songs?’ ” she told The New York Times. “And I’ve always said: ‘I will put them out, but I have to find ways to present them in the right way.’

“For these songs, I thought the musical would be a very effective, beautiful way to do it.” She wanted Lennon to be portrayed as a complex character governed by a “rigid honesty”.

Lennon opens in New York on July 28, with previews beginning in San Francisco on Tuesday and in Boston on May 31.

A BEATLE'S LOST WORDS

India, India

India, India
Take me to your heart
Reveal your ancient mysteries to me
I’m searching for an answer
That’s somewhere deep inside
I know I’ll never find it here
It’s already in my mind
I’ve got to follow my heart
Wherever it takes me
I’ve got to follow my heart
Whenever it calls to me
I’ve got to follow my heart
And my heart is going home
Om
India, India
Listen to my plea
I sit here at your feet so patiently
I’m waiting by the river
But somewhere in my mind
I left my heart in England
With the girl I left behind
I’ve got to follow my heart
Wherever it takes me
I’ve got to follow my heart
Whenever it calls to me
I’ve got to follow my heart
And my heart is going home
India ah

I Don’t Want to Lose You

I know it’s true
It’s all because of you
And if I make it through
It’s all because . . . of you
And now and then
If we must start again
Then we will know for sure
That I . . . love you
I don’t want to lose you, oh no
Lose you or abuse you
Oh no...sweet darling
But if you have to go away
If you have to go . . .
Will you be leaving this way?
Now and then I miss you
Now and then
I wander down eternity
I know you will return to me
I know it’s true
It’s all because of you
And if you go away
I know you’ll never fade
I don’t want to lose you, oh no
Abuse you or confuse you
Oh no . . . sweet darling
But if you have to go away
But if you have to go . . .
Will you be leaving this way?

© Lenono Music. Printed with the permission of Yoko Ono. Lyrics will be part of Lennon, the musical

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