The John Lennon song that was inspired by his U.F.O. sighting

29 July 2026, 23:31

The truth is out there...

Maybe? Who knows? At least it seems many people's suspicions of intelligent life out there in the universe might be coming true.

In recent months, the US government has released a vault of footage of supposed sightings of UFO's, or 'Unidentified Flying Objects'.

All sorts of orbs, discs and fireballs are contained in the once top secret footage, with some documents dating back nearly 80 years.

Not long before that, a senior US intelligence officer said he saw "countless orange orbs swarming in all directions" last year, rendering him "speechless".

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There was a time when you'd be branded a fruit loop or a conspiracy theorist if you believed in 'life out there'.

But one music legend was also a self-confessed believer, after witnessing a UFO in New York City.

The musician? John Lennon. The experience impacted him so much, he even reference the sighting in a song of his and the accompanying album liner notes.

Let's set the scene. It's a beautiful balmy summer night in 1974, and John Lennon is spending the evening with his then-girl May Pang.

The 'Imagine' icon had spent the day working on his forthcoming album, Walls and Bridges, which would mark his fourth solo effort since departing The Beatles.

It was during a unique period for Lennon, as he had broken up with Yoko Ono and was dating his assistant and production coordinator Pang.

His relationship with May Pang was known as his 'Lost Weekend', though he might have thought he was losing his mind...

“John said, ‘What do you want to eat? Let’s go for a pizza,’” Pang told New York classic rock station Q104.3 in 2020.

“I’m in the other room, getting dressed, so he’s standing out on the balcony. It’s a nice summer’s night, and it’s Friday… John’s out there, standing – naked, mind you – in the dark…

"We were right by the East River, so you could hear all that. You could hear the helicopters across the river. He told me later, ‘I’m looking downriver, and I see flashing lights.’”

Looking outside the window of his apartment, Lennon caught a glimpse of a strange object – a UFO flashing as it whizzed through the city's skyscrapers.

He wasn't the only person that saw it – Pang said the flying object was clearly visible with “bright white lights around the rim, flashing on and off, and then one solid red light.”

“I look at this thing that is so close to us,” she continued. “No sound. I could see the underbelly of this object. You know when it’s hot and you see these heat waves? I could see clear as day, right underneath…"

"It just cleared the buildings next to us, maybe two to three stories over us. I always said that if Reggie Jackson hit a home run, he could hit this thing.”

John Lennon on witnessing a UFO from his New York apartment in 1974

Pang screamed “like there’s no tomorrow,” but nobody else in their proximity saw the UFO. That didn't deter John from believing what he saw was a real sign of life from across the universe.

“I saw a UFO, and it went down the river, turned right at the United Nations, turned left, and the down the river,” the legendary Liverpudlian songwriter later revealed.

“It wasn’t a helicopter, and it wasn’t a balloon, and it was so near. [It was] silent, and it looked dark, like black or grey in the middle, and it had white lights – just looked like light bulbs – just going off, on, off, on, off, on, blink, blink, blink, blink, ’round the bottom, and on top was a red light.”

“It was like I could have hit it with a brick if I’d thrown a stone at it,” he recalled in another interview.

“The thing I noticed was that there was no noise, and I could hear the freeway down below, all the cars going. So I realised, ‘Oh, it’s not a helicopter, [so] it must be a balloon.’"

"But it was so close to the rooftop that it couldn’t be a balloon…And it’s maneuovering too well to be a balloon.’ So I just watched it, and it was there for about five or 10 minutes and went off down the East River.”

Nobody Told Me (Ultimate Mix)

The pair did attempt to take photos of the bizarre sighting, but nothing came of their handiwork.

Lennon did decide to document the scenario in a different way however – by writing "On the 23rd Aug. 1974 at 9 o’clock I saw a U.F.O." in the inner sleeve of his 1974 record Walls and Bridges.

The sighting clearly played on his mind, as a reference to the mind-boggling incident made its way into the song 'Nobody Told Me' from his collaborative 1984 album with Yoko Ono, Milk and Honey.

“Everybody’s flying and never touch the sky / There’s U.F.O.s over New York, and I ain’t too surprised," he sings in the final verse.

After seeing a U.F.O. in 1974, little would surprise Lennon after that. We can only wonder what he'd have made of the US government's recent release of the secret video files.