"I will wear a balloon if somebody is gonna Pay me"

Lennon after changing the leather for suit

hehe

The Beatles Anthology:
JOHN- Outside of Liverpool, when we went down South in our leather outfits the dance-hall promoters didn't really like us. They thought we looked like a gang of thugs. So it got to be Epstein saying, 'Look, if you wear a suit you'll get this much money...' And everybody wanted a good, sharp, black suit. We liked the leather and the jeans, but we wanted a good suit, even to wear off stage. 'Yeah man, all right, I'll wear a suit - I'll wear a bloody balloon if somebody's going to pay me; I'm not in love with leather that much!'
Available here: https://pdfcoffee.com/the-beatles-anthology-pdf-free.html

Lennon put it this way to Hit Parader in 1975: “Outside of Liverpool, when we went down South in our leather outfits, the dance hall promoters didn’t really like us. . . . We liked the leather and the jeans but we wanted a good suit, even to wear offstage.” To which he added, “I’ll wear a . . . balloon if somebody’s going to pay me.”

NoWhere Man by Glenn Frankel:
P4 of 4.... Still, John went along with the process. "We respected his views," he later told an interviewer. "We paid a lot more attention to what we were doing, did our best to be on time, and we smartened up." His attitude: "Yeah, man, all right, I'll wear a suit. I'll wear a bloody balloon if somebody's going to pay me."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/AR2007082101714_4.html