On the second episode of “The Real World Homecoming: New York,” Becky revealed a huge secret she’s kept for nearly 30 years. Apparently, during the original season of “The Real World,” there was a secret eighth roommate living in the loft: John Lennon.
Becky (who now goes by Rebecca Blasband) told the other cast members that during shooting of the landmark reality TV series, the then-24-year-old singer-songwriter was in the midst of a decades-long creative partnership with the ghost of the former Beatle.
“In 1987, we were stuck in our dorm room during a bad blizzard, so we were like let’s pick up that Ouija board just for fun,” Blasband said during the second episode of the Paramount+ reunion series. “We ended up talking to a musician who had died … It’s John Lennon.”
“It got more and more real and what happened was we realized that we could hear each other very clearly. And this was the beginning of a very, very long journey,” she continued.
When asked if Lennon was present in the loft during the original season, Blasband said yes, to varying levels of surprise and disbelief from her castmates. Previously unreleased footage showed her using a Ouija board, attempting to divine the future of her then-roommates.
In an interview with American Songwriter, Blasband elaborated on the nature of her partnership with Lennon, describing it as a kind of “telepathy.” She said their creative collaboration was suggested by Lennon, who agreed to teach her about songwriting in exchange for the chance to express emotions that were weighing on him beyond the grave.
“I wasn’t starstruck. He was just John,” she said. “He said he liked my songwriting ability and he liked where I was coming from, and he said, ‘Your thoughts are funny.’ He could tell things that I was thinking, and he said, ‘You remind me of me sometimes.’”
Her relationship with Lennon carried on for several decades, with their last interaction coming in 2000, when they co-wrote her song “Here.”
“I had asked him, ‘Can you share my body?’ He had done that, and it’s like you’re two people in one car seat driving a car,” she said. “You’re still you but there’s somebody right there, and you’re sharing a mind. It’s amazing. And that’s really what happens when two people collaborate on anything. It’s just, we don’t see it that way because we’re looking at the physical.”
The first verse from “Here,” which you can listen to below, seems to directly address their connection with the lyrics “All it takes is a little communication / between the stranger and the strange.”
“When we finished it, he paid me — finally — one huge compliment, and it meant so much to me,” she said. “He said, ‘Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not an artist, kid.’”
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