The following article appeared in New Musical Express on July 22, 1966, page 2. Written by Alan Smith.
John Lennon is characteristically blunt about his dreams. They used to concern wealth, position - and power.
Most of his sleeping hours are devoted to fantasies about everyday life, Beatles' recording sessions, songwriting, and so on. But there have been times when they have had an obvious and deeper meaning.
He told me: "Some of my most vivid dreams were about me being in a plane, flying over a certain part of Liverpool. It was when I was at school. The plane used to fly over time and time again, all the while going higher and higher.
"There wasn't anything special about the plane, and I don't really remember anything about any other passengers. It was just the being up there.
"For a long time I didn't understand why I had this dream. It didn't seem to make any sense.
"Then it dawned on me. It was probably a subconscious urge to get above people, or out of a rut, or something. I used to mess around at school, but I must have had ambition without realising it.
"Anyway, I got out of my rut; and I try not to fly any more!"
He leaned back on a sofa and shuffled a king-size smoke from an American cigarette pack called "Lark."
"'Ave one," he volunteered. "They're good - American. I 'ave 'em sent in." (All the other Beatles smoke Lark, and occasionally Peter Stuyvesant.)
"The thing is," he went on, "these are dreams of the past, and I don't really remember the ones I have now. I don't know why that should be. Perhaps it's just that they're sharper when you haven't got so much to think about. There were some I used to have repeatedly.
"One really big one about about thousands of half-crowns all around me, and finding lots of money in old houses and just as much of the stuff as you could carry. I could never carry enough.
"I used to put it in my pockets and in my hands and in sacks, only I could still never carry as much as I wanted."
Suddenly he roared laughing, and then he cleared his throat apologetically: "I don't have that old dream any more - so that's solved that, doctor!"
John never gets visions about the future in his sleep, but he is fairly confident about the way he wants to spend his time when there are no tours or films.
He told me: "Songwriting, recording and writing books - that's the way I see it goin'. I'll never just sit back and do nothing.
"And as I like singing and playing," he added with deliberation. "I'll just go on until I drop.
"One thing I luv is readin', and if I'm not doing cartoons or something, then I'm going through about seven books at once. Quite often I'm wading through a story till last thing at night.
"I'm going to have to watch that, because one day one of 'em might bring on a nightmare. And I've never had one of those. Not yet."