Musician and songwriter Steve Tilston. Photo: Ian West/PA WireA musician, who received a letter from John Lennon 34 years after it was sent, has told of his disappointment at not getting the note earlier.
The ex-Beatle penned the message to Steve Tilston after reading an interview with him in ZigZag music magazine, in which he said that getting rich could compromise his artistic integrity.
Lennon told him that “being rich doesn’t change your experience in the way you think” and that “emotions − relationships − are the same as anybody’s. I know, I’ve been rich and poor, so has Yoko (rich-poor-rich) so whadya think of that.”
The story is now the basis of the new film Danny Collins, starring Al Pacino as a former pop lothario who wants to change his life after belatedly receiving the letter.
Tilston, now 65 and a respected musician and songwriter, told Radio Times magazine: “What’s painful is that it’s a road not taken. All of us in our lives are faced with choices of ways to go.
“What I resented, but don’t any more, is that with this one, I didn’t get the choice.”
Tilston received the letter in 2005 “out of the blue” from a US collector, but what happened to it after it was sent is still unknown.
If he had received the note in 1971, “I would have taken my guitar, and we might have ended up playing music together. I’m sure we would have had a great time,” he said.