John Lennon and the Richard Neville "register to vote" quote 1972

| Martin Sharp | OZ London | OZ Sydney | Politics |

1. John & Yoko TV hosts

During a week in February 1972 John Lennon (1940-1980) and Yoko Ono (b.1933), by then resident in New York, appeared on five episodes of The Mike Douglas Show (1961-1981) as co-hosts and panelists. The gig lasted During one of the episodes, Mike Douglas (1920-2006) brought on Ralph Nader (b.1934) as a guest. Joseph Blatchford, Director of the Peace Corp, was also on the panel during the interview but did not engage. Both Lennon and Ono asked questions of Nader and made comments on topics ranging from student engagement through to the importance of registering to vote.

In December 2024 the Lennon and Ono episodes were made available on video, as a 110 minute long documentary entitled Daytime Revolution. It was released on streaming services such as SBS Australia during December 2025. It was here that a significant comment by Lennon quoting counterculture spokesperson Richard Neville (1941-2016) of OZ magazine fame was brought to public attention in Australia.

Below is an annotated transcript of the Nader interview. The Richard Neville comment is at approximately 27.30 minutes in. Throughout the interview there are interspersed comments by an older, circa 2024 Nader, expanding upon what he was saying back in 1972 and the broader context. A 2024 audio podcast by Brian Lehrer included the Richard Neville quote from the video at the 8.30 minute point:

Brian Lehrer, Revisiting John & Yoko's week with The Mike Douglas Show, The Brian Lehrer Show [audio podcast], 10 October 2024, duration: 15.20 minutes.

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2. Interview transcript

[Ralph Nader enters the studio with Mike Douglas and shakes hands with John and Yoko and the other guest. He then sits down next to Douglas and Yoko and signs Yoko's canvas which features guests and members of the audiences signatures and scrolls.]

L to r: Mike Douglas, Ralph Nader, Yoko Ono, John Lennon and Joseph Blatchford, The Mike Douglas Show, February 1972.

John Lennon: [Points to Ralph Nader, whistles and says] Stop him!

Mike Douglas: Stop him! [Hands the canvas and a pen to Nader] Would you do us the honour Ralph? This is going to be auctioned off at the end of the week, and all the money will go to charity.

Yoko Ono and John: Oh, look at that!

Ralph Nader: That's the Yin / Yang sign.

Lennon: In a line they're positive negative, black white.

Yoko: They make natural balance.

Lennon to Nader: Can I ask you something? Do you know the small book you gave us before the show - [Action for Change] - that book was to help people and students organize, right?

Nader: That's right.

Lennon: It's to show them how they could do it themselves, like.

Nader: Exactly.

Lennon: So what kind of thing do you tell them? I know something about tax and all that?

Nader: Well, first, it makes a very important distinction. Everybody - most everybody - wants peace and justice and equity. However, the most important first step is to develop the instruments that will lead to these objectives. So the first part of the book is devoted to showing, exactly step by step, how they can organize.

Nader 2024: Well, it's one of the reasons I went on The Mike Douglas Show so enthusiastically. We were beginning the drive to organize students in large numbers to contribute, through their student dues, a few bucks each year into a nonprofit group that they would run, and this book came out. It was a manual. It was very detailed by Donald Ross, bless his soul. He showed the students how to do it.

Nader: For example, they spend on the average about $250 a year on soft drinks, cigarettes and candies. If they just spent 3% or 2% of that - 2, 3, 4 dollars a year - they could develop the strongest democratic force in the state. And it could also work with people who aren't students, [such as] retired people who have a lot of time and a lot of talent on their hands.

Lennon: Yeah ... You could tell them to register to vote as well.

Nader: Register to vote? Exactly.

Lennon: Because that's been a great change in the whole Movement. People - our people - were saying that voting is irrelevant a few years ago; and [now] a lot of Movement people have decided that voting is relevant, because it's the only chance they're going to get. Like, if you want to beat the Establishment here on the Right, it works.

Nader: Well, you'll be more likely to want to vote, particularly at a younger age, if you know what the issues are and if you can push for real choice between different candidates.

Lennon: At least if you're registered to vote, it doesn't say you have to vote. At least you have it; and then if somebody comes - if there's somebody around that you can believe in - you got that vote. But if you don't register and it comes and you want to do something, that's [not possible] if you've missed it. Somebody put it very succinctly. Richard Neville of OZ - which is an underground scene in in London - he said:

Richard Neville: "Well, we all made a mistake. We should have voted. We should have registered, because there's one inch in which we breathe - difference between the two parties. And everybody said, they're all the same. They are all the same, but there's a one inch in which they let you breathe."

Richard Neville, circa 1972.

Nader 2024: And if you vote, you broaden out the difference between the parties in the right way, for the next election, and the next election. I mean that was a very astute comment.

Nader: Democracy means, in a word, self government, and any time we delegate our responsibilities, it's for convenience.

Yoko: How about organizing the housewives? You know, they are sort of a very vast amount of silent majority there, you know? And they sort of, they don't have the direct communication [to] society. They [are] sort of isolated people.

Douglas: I've never thought of housewives as a silent majority. [Laughter]

Yoko: Well, maybe at home they might say a lot, but they don't have a chance to say it in the Society. And also, they don't have a direct sort of horizontal contact. You know, they're in the house, they're isolated. If you can get a housewives manual or something, to help the cause, what could they do for pollution, you know?

Nader: Well actually, we're just working on that. What you have to do is step back and start by trying to help organize people and trying to get them to see citizenship as a profession as an expertise and this could be a great country and it can contribute to the world in magnificent ways because we've got the affluence and we've got the intelligence and the know-how, but we're not in effect letting people control their destinies.....

The Richard Neville quote was in hindsight profound, especially for the United States where, compared with his home country of Australia, voting was not compulsory, and remains so. It is one of the reasons that the US voting system remains in many ways dysfunctional, subject to abuse and low turnout rates, and has let to perceptions of political corruption and voting fraud, all of which give rise to lack of faith in the democratic process. Neville's comment is just as relevant today as it was over half a century ago.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono had supporter the OZ magazine editors, including Richard Neville, financially and performance wise during their long, drawn-out OZ obscenity trial in the UK in 1971. As Google AI noted in December 2025:

John Lennon and Yoko Ono supported OZ magazine's 1971 UK obscenity trial by writing and recording fundraising songs, "God Save Us" (also known as "God Save Oz") and its B-side "Do The Oz," with Yoko Ono aiming to defend free speech against charges related to the "Schoolkids Issue". Lennon [and Yoko] performed with the Elastic Oz Band, featuring Phil Spector, and led a large demonstration at the Old Bailey for the jailed editors (Felix Dennis, Jim Anderson, Richard Neville), whose convictions were later overturned on appeal, highlighting a landmark moment for censorship and youth culture.

The origin of the Neville encouragement to vote quote has not been identified. It may, in fact, have been part of a private conversation between he and Lennon around the time of the trial controversy. 

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3. References

Lehrer, Brian, Revisiting John & Yoko's week with The Mike Douglas Show, The Brian Lehrer Show [audio podcast], 10 October 2024, duration: 15.20 minutes.

Nader, Ralph and Donald Ross, Action for Change: A Student's Manual for Public Interest Organizing, Grossman Publishers, New York, 1971, 118p.

Nelson, Erik (director), Daytime Revolution: The Mike Douglas Show, Kino Lorber, duration: 110.17 minutes.

Neville, Richard, Martin Sharp and Richard Walsh (editors), OZ magazine, Sydney, 1963 - 1969.

Neville, Richard, The Return of the Surfie [Conversation between Michael Thomas and Paul Witzig], OZ magazine, Sydney, September 1964.

Neville, Richard, Martin Sharp and David Piper, Surfing Roundabout [satirical documentary], Sydney, 1965, duration: 25 minutes.

Neville, Richard, Martin Sharp, Felix Dennis and Jim Anderson (editors), OZ magazine, London, 1967 -1973.

Wikipedia, John Lennon, Wikipedia, accessed 14 December 2025.

Wikipedia, Mike Douglas, Wikipedia, accessed 14 December 2025.

Wikipedia, Ralph Nader, Wikipedia, accessed 14 December 2025.

Wikipedia, Yoko Ono, Wikipedia, accessed 14 December 2025.

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4. Acknowledgement

Much appreciation to Julie Neville Clarke for bringing the John Lennon referral to Richard Neville to the present writer's attention.

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| Martin Sharp | OZ London | OZ Sydney | Politics |

Michael Organ, Australia

14 December 2025