NEWARK -- A Superior Court judge decides today whether sales of a Beatles album showing Beatle John Lennon and his girlfriend nude should be banned from New Jersey as obscene.
A mini-skirted music critic professor testified yesterday in the last day of a three-day obscenity hearing on the controversial album, "Two Virgins," which shows front and rear photographs of Lennon and his Japanese girlfriend, Yoko Ono, in the nude.
The two witnesses yesterday said the nudity on the cover reflects a "theme of innocence" heard in the music. "Perhaps loosely connected with Adam and Eve," said literature Prof. Albert Goldman.
Miss Ellen Willis, 27, who writes for New Yorker Magazine, said Lennon's nudity is symbolic of a stripping away of his old image as a "celebrity god."
Superior Court Judge Nelson E. Mintz, who took the record home with him for one night, said he took note of a four-letter word sung in the album. A handful of hippies in the courtroom laughed.
Miss Willis replied: "This is a good Anglo-Saxon word -- primitive like the record."
