If you’re wondering when SCREW officially became more than a dirty little paper for dirty little minds — it was SCREW #18 for June 27, 1969, and we’ve got the photo to prove it.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono, sprawled in hotel bedsheets during their now-iconic “Bed-In for Peace,” reading SCREW like it was the gospel of the new world order. That wasn’t a stunt. That wasn’t a plant. That was the truth — captured in real time, in a photo that still flips a middle finger to every censor and square on Earth.
Jim Buckley and Al Goldstein sat bedside with them — not just to observe, but to converse, question, and maybe even corrupt. The full interview from that surreal encounter — equal parts art, politics, and horny humanism — will run separately, uncut and unwashed, the way it was meant to be.
Meanwhile, the rest of SCREW #18 was no slouch.
- Al Goldstein unleashed “Rancid Flesh,” a screed so savage it could strip paint off a church wall.
- Richard Field gave us “Sex Addict,” a diary of desire and degeneration.
- Great Ray’s “Mail Order Muffin” baked sex and satire into a hot mess of a consumerist wet dream.
- And Lige & Jack continued their fearless chronicle of queer life in “Homosexual Citizen,” just days before the Stonewall riots broke out and changed everything.
Hell, even Billy Graham got dragged, because SCREW never missed a chance to violate a televangelist. Just kidding, not THAT Billy Graham but rather the illustrator with the same name (and a better sense of humor).
But it’s that Lennon and Yoko moment that seals this issue in history — the day rock royalty got horizontal with SCREW. Not for clout. Not for scandal. But because we spoke the language: filthy, funny, fearless truth.
This wasn’t just a magazine.
It was a cultural co-conspirator.
And Lennon knew it.
—P.
