Life of Lennon's bodyguard
By Kent Hill
Photos by Chen Lixin

Gary Mair was born in Germany, 1946 and raised in the United States. He has had a colorful life working for big companies like IBM and spending two years as John Lennon's bodyguard. He currently lives on Gulangyu Island relaxing before he starts his work at Xiamen University. 提起甲壳虫乐队的约翰·列侬,恐怕无人不知,关于他的故事,有许多有趣内幕您却未必清楚.来自美国纽约的加里·梅尔曾经是约翰·列侬的一位贴身保镖,如今他就住在鼓浪屿.这位年近花甲的老人精神矍铄,说起和约翰·列侬的故事更是滔滔不绝...

Usually, when you sit down to write an article it's pretty hard to come up with a good introduction. However, when the article you're writing is about someone like one of John Lennon's former bodyguards then it's a different case entirely. He's a tall, sharp dressing man named Gary Mair, with a New York accent and roots trailing all the way over to Germany. His background is extremely interesting and maybe the most interesting part of it is the two years he spent working as the protector and friend of the most famous Beatle in the world.

Gary was born in Germany in 1946 but raised in the US, and maybe traveling so far at such a young age is where his passion for traveling came from. When Gary was in high school he decided to follow his love of traveling in the most practical way possible - by getting a job that would pay him to travel. So he wasted no time enrolling to become an officer of the CID (Criminal Investigation Department) in Texas' Fort Bliss Military Police School, which gave him a huge opportunity to travel all over the world. After working as a CID officer he took the opportunity to join the New York City police force where he stayed for about two years.

When he was working as a police officer he came across two job opportunities, both asking for qualified bodyguards to protect VIPs; the ads didn't mention who the VIPs were however. After making the appropriate phone calls it turned out that one of the ads was for Hugh Hefner (the owner of Playboy magazine) and the other was for John Lennon. Gary was married at the time and chuckled saying, "When my wife found out who the clients were, she said I had to choose John Lennon."

Bodyguard of a VIP

His stint working for Lennon lasted from 1969-71 and left him with a lifetime worth of captivating stories to tell and look back upon.

When Gary started as bodyguard in 1969 he was making USD 1,000 per week. At that time Lennon had already gotten married to Yoko. After being asked about his feelings towards Yoko, Gary said, "I didn't like Yoko at all," and then added, with a quick gesture towards his head, "She was crazy." While he was working for John, Gary was not only his protector but also his good friend. He said that he would help him get away from Yoko and do his own things. He reflected on one example of this saying, "She tried to turn John into a vegetarian, so I would wait until she was asleep and help him sneak out to McDonalds and get hamburgers."

Closer look at Lennon

Being anyone's bodyguard for two years would bring you pretty close to that person and give you an unusually intimate understanding of them, especially in Mair's case since he was around John working for sometimes 72 hours at a time. When questioned about what Lennon was like the first thing Gary said was, "He didn't care about money at all. He used to buy USD 50,000 Persian rugs at auctions and then put them on his castle floor in England for people to step on."
Gary has a lot of stories to tell about Lennon's complete disregard for money.

Something really interesting is that Lennon never actually carried any money on his person at anytime. Anytime he needed to buy something, Gary had to buy it for him. Mair said that one time he was driving John and his friends down the road and as they passed a car dealership one of John's friends mentioned that he liked one of the cars. The star asked Gary to pull into the dealership and buy the car for his friend, just like that.

John used to dress casually no matter where he went. He would wear a sweater and a pair of trousers and never formal dress clothes no matter what the occasion was and refused to dress any differently. One time Gary took John and Yoko to a well-known Italian restaurant in The Village in New York. They were going into the restaurant when the doorman stopped them and told John that he couldn't enter the restaurant without a suit and tie and after an argument still refused to let them enter. So John contacted the owner of the restaurant and purchased the entire establishment for 2.5 million USD, went back to the restaurant as the new owner and tried once again to have dinner there. The same doorman refused to let him in again so John, being his new boss, fired him on the spot. He sold the restaurant two weeks later for 1.5 million USD.

Eventually the questions came to what, unfortunately, is probably the most famous point in Lennon's career - his assassination, December 8, 1980. It turns out that at the time he was killed he had no bodyguard. Gary said, "I told him he needed a bodyguard but he wouldn't listen. He just said, ‘Nobody's gonna do anything to me man. Nobody wants to hurt me.'" This subject inspired the former bodyguard to tell another anecdote about how the work he did for Lennon affected his life afterwards.

At the time of John Lennon's assassination Mair was working at IBM laboratories in Germany. Shortly after the sullen news of the star's murder had spread across the globe, reporters from newspapers, magazines, radio stations and TV shows swarmed his office in Germany. He said, "Actually, my boss at the time was quite upset because there were so many reporters coming to interview me that it was actually disrupting the work there."

After the job was done

In 1972 after he had finished his work for Lennon he attended Yale University where he studied Computer Science and English Literature. In 1976 he received his PHD in both subjects and continued on in his career with computers. However, Gary's work with computers involves mainframes, not PCs and he mentioned while talking about his work, "I like to work with ‘real' computers [mainframes], not the toys [PCs] that are out there."

Most recently Mair worked two years for IBM as a mainframe consultant. After that, Gary's journey finally brought him to China (number 47 on his list of countries that he has been to), which is appropriate considering that he studied Chinese history, tradition and politics for forty years prior to arriving here. The first city he lived in China was Zhengzhou of Henan Province where he met his Chinese girlfriend.

Currently he is living on Gulangyu Island where he will be relaxing for the next three months waiting to start his "at least" one-year contract at Xiamen University teaching IT.

Gary Mair has had an interesting life so far, working for big companies like IBM, spending time as John Lennon's bodyguard and earning PHDs through higher education. Luckily for us though, his interesting life is continuing here in Xiamen, which will surely brighten and enhance the experience of anyone he comes in contact with.

Vocabulary

captivating: 吸引人的
rug: 地毯
assassination:刺杀
sullen: 阴沉的
swarm: 蜂拥而至