May 30, 2025 By Brad Hundt 5 min read

Gary Van Scyoc graduated from Waynesburg High School in 1964, just a few months after the Beatles exploded in America’s consciousness and made being a musician one of the coolest jobs around.

As “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” were blasting out of thousands of transistor radios, Van Scyoc had no way of imagining that in just a handful of years he’d be the one playing bass alongside John Lennon and not Paul McCartney, Lennon’s fellow Beatle and songwriting collaborator.

“It was just so cool to work with John,” Van Scyoc recalled during a recent phone conversation from his home in the Poconos. “He never told me one thing to play, I had total freedom.”

Van Scyoc worked with Lennon and Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, thanks to being a member of the New York band Elephant’s Memory. The group mixed radicalism and “a rough sound,” according to a review that appeared in The New York Times in July 1971. It was shortly after that review appeared that Lennon and Ono relocated to New York and immersed themselves in the cauldron of radical politics and avant-garde art that was bubbling in Greenwich Village. They saw Elephant’s Memory play at Max’s Kansas City, what was then one of New York’s hottest nightspots, and invited them to work with them.

“I had seen John and Yoko around the neighborhood,” Van Scyoc explained. “At a Korean deli on the street, but you didn’t run up to people and accost them because they were famous in (Greenwich Village). That was one of the great things about it.”

A night of jamming led Lennon and Ono to ask if they could, in fact, join Elephant’s Memory.

“It just seemed like an impossible thing,” Van Scyoc said. “But they were serious. So we sat down for an hour and talked about how we were going to work it out.”

The collaboration between Lennon, Ono and Elephant’s Memory lasted for about a year. They worked on the album “Sometime in New York City” with them, as well as Ono’s solo album “Approximately Infinite Universe.” Lennon and Ono also produced an album for the band that was released on the Beatles’ Apple label. This phase of Lennon and Ono’s lives is explored in the documentary “One to One: John and Yoko,” which had a brief theatrical run in April and was made available this month on-demand.

Van Scyoc has also been interviewed for a box set and book covering this period that is expected to arrive later this year. “It’s going to be quite a presentation,” the 78 year-old said. The documentary features restored footage from the two One to One benefit concerts that Lennon and Ono headlined at Madison Square Garden on Aug. 30, 1972, and the concerts are expected to be at the center of the box set.

“It’s probably going to be the biggest box set of all time,” Van Scyoc joked. “It’s phenomenal what they plan to put in it.”

It won’t be the first time that the concerts, which were the only full-length concerts Lennon participated in after the Beatles’ split, have been made available publicly. In 1986, portions of the afternoon concert were released on “Live in New York City,” one of a string of posthumous albums that have come out in the 44 years since Lennon’s murder. When “Live in New York City” was released, Van Scyoc and the other members of Elephant’s Memory were initially not paid any royalties, which led them to file a $104 million suit against Ono. It was eventually settled, and Ono paid for Van Scyoc’s house.

“We had to take action to get paid for that,” Van Scyoc said. “She was very generous, as she always was. … I don’t know who was running the show there.”

In the years since, control of Lennon’s archives has largely shifted to Sean Lennon, Lennon and Ono’s 49-year-old son. Van Scyoc said, “I’m so proud of him. His dad would be so proud of him.”

Even as Lennon’s vaults have been opened, one item that remains elusive is “Elephant’s Memory,” the group’s self-titled album Lennon and Ono produced. It was released in late 1972, and contained a song, “Wind Ridge,” inspired by the Greene County community of the same name. The album has never been reissued on compact disc or vinyl, and has never turned up on any streaming service. Van Scyoc wonders if the master tapes for the album and any safety copies have been lost.

“I don’t have a clue,” he said. “It’s a mess.”

After his stint with Lennon, Ono and Elephant’s Memory ended, Van Scyoc turned to teaching. He taught guitar, bass and piano to students up until 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic led him to retire. His brother, Jay Van Scyoc, continues to live in the Washington area and plays bass with the group the Rick K Road Trip.

“I taught him everything he knows,” Van Scyoc said.