Beatles (57 page)

‘We always come back to ourselves because we never change. We might be A plus One, when One equals grey suits. That would be the grey suit cycle. Then A plus Two, when it’s floral shirts. But we’re always there all the time as A. Then you
finish up A plus Dead. Excuse all the clever stuff. I just get carried away talking.

‘But all the changes, you see, the physical ones, are superficial. You go into a cycle, but you don’t get carried away for ever by it, because the more you know, the less you know. And there’s always each other as safety valves.

‘The thing is, we’re all really the same person. We’re just four parts of the one. We’re individuals, but we make up together The Mates, which is one person. If one of us, one side of the mates, leans over one way we all go with him or we pull him back. We all add something different to the whole.

‘Ringo – he’s got a great sentimental thing. He likes soul music and always has, though we didn’t see that scene for a long time, till he showed us. I suppose that’s why we write those sort of songs for him, with sentimental things in them, like “A Little Help from My Friends”.

‘George – he’s very definite about things and dedicated when he’s decided. It makes the four of us more definite about things, just because of George. We adapt what’s in him to our own use. We all take out of each of us what we want or need.

‘John – he’s got movement. He’s a very fast mover. He sees new things happening and he’s away.

‘Me – I’m conservative. I feel I need to check things. I was last to try pot and LSD and floral clothes. I’m slower than John, the least likely to succeed in class.

‘When a new Fender guitar came along, John and George would rush out and buy one. John because it was new and George because he’d decided definitely he’d wanted one. Me. I’d hang around thinking, check I had the money, then wait a bit.

‘I’m just the conservative of the four of us. Not compared with outside people. Compared to my family I’m a freak-out.

‘We still have the same basic roles, because that’s what we are. But all of us will always appear to be changing, just because we don’t conform. It’s this not conforming, wanting to do something different all the time, that keeps our music different.

‘The last generation worked all the time to attain a status in life, get certain clothes and a certain pigeonhole and that was it. We were lucky that by the age of 25 we realized we could achieve any pigeonhole we fancied. I could now sit back and be a company director till I’m 70, but I wouldn’t learn as much as I would by trying new things. You
can
learn as much about life just by ploughing one furrow all the time, but it tends to make you narrow-minded.

‘We’ve always not conformed. People told us we needed to channel ourselves, but we never believed them. People said we had to wear the school blazer. If you’ve enough confidence, you don’t have to wear a school blazer through life, as so many people think you have to.

‘We’re not learning to be architects, or painters or writers. We’re learning to be. That’s all.’

George has a very long, low, single-storeyed, brightly painted bungalow at Esher. It’s on a private estate, owned by the National Trust, very similar to the estate where John and Ringo live. You enter the estate through a gateway from the main road, then pass into what looks like the wooded gardens of a stately home. You can’t see any houses at first. They are hidden from the roadway, all very secluded and lush looking. They’re named, not numbered, so it’s impossible to find any of them. George’s is the hardest to find. The name of his house, Kinfauns, is not even on his house or in his garden. The driveway to it looks at first to be part of another house.

The bungalow has two wings to it, which enclose a rectangular courtyard at the back. In this he has a heated swimming pool. All the outside walls of the house have been painted by George, or at least sprayed, in bright luminous-looking colours. From his gardens, the house looks like a psychedelic mirage.

Inside, the kitchen area is beautifully done with lots of pinewood furniture and walls and Habitat-type utensils. It looks as if it’s straight out of a colour supplement guide to a 1968 kitchen. The main living room has two huge windows, completely circular. They start at floor level and go up to the ceiling.

He has no Beatle gold discs or souvenirs in sight. The house might belong to a very contemporary young architect or fashion
designer who has spent some time in the East. In the centre of the living room are some very low tables. There are cushions on the floor beside them, for sitting on, Arab fashion. There are no chairs anywhere in sight.

There is an ornate hookah beside one table. George was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, putting new strings on his sitar. He was wearing a long white Indian shirt. A joss stick was burning in an ornamental holder on the table, filling the room with a sweet smell of incense.

‘I don’t personally enjoy being a Beatle any more. All that sort of Beatle thing is trivial and unimportant. I’m fed up with all this me, us, I, stuff and all the meaningless things we do. I’m trying to work out solutions to the more important things in life.

‘Thinking about being a Beatle is going backwards. I’m more concerned with the future, but it would take six months of just talking to tell you exactly what I believe in – all the Hindu theories, the Eastern philosophies, reincarnation, transcendental meditation. It’s when you begin to understand those things that you realize how pointless the other stuff is. To the ordinary believer in God, I know it sounds very far-out.’

The telephone rang. George picked it up. There was a muffled giggling noise. ‘Esher wine store,’ said George, gruffly and impatiently. ‘No, sorry.’ And he hung up.

In the kitchen, Pattie and her sister Jennie, who had just dropped in, were embroidering. They were both wearing Eastern Apple Boutique clothes. They sat half smiling, very quietly and solemnly, working away at their embroidery. The noise of George beginning his sitar lessons next door could be heard. The setting was somehow medieval.

Pattie has the least help in the house of any of the wives, though when she has children she will doubtless have more help. They have a housekeeper, Margaret. She usually has most meals with them, as part of the family.

Margaret does most of the cleaning and Pattie does all the cooking. Pattie usually dries all the dishes and also helps to tidy up. ‘It’s not as big a house as it looks. It’s so full of junk. If I
had any more staff to help, they would just be more bother than their worth.’

Pattie also does all the shopping herself, at a local supermarket. She’d just bought a bar of chocolate, which she said tasted like soap. She’d sent it back with a letter of complaint. She didn’t put her own name on it – she’s at last learned from George to avoid any possibility of publicity. She used Margaret’s. She was hoping for some free bars as compensation.

Of all the wives, she is perhaps the most co-equal with her husband. They’re both very modern in their marriage, the way the magazines are always telling us modern marrieds are. More than the other Beatle wives, she shares her husband’s interests. She was in at the very beginning of the interest in Indian culture and shared all those developments.

But she does retain some freedom and independence on her own, still doing a little bit of modelling work.

Everybody who has been close to the Beatles over the years says that George is the one who has changed most of all. Even fans, who have followed George’s progress over a relatively short time, say he has changed. He was looked upon by many as the most handsome Beatle at one time. Now fans are always complaining about George letting his hair grow too unruly and untidy.

That is a superficial change. The inner ones are much more important. George, through being the youngest, was, for a long time, always considered the youngest in every sense. In comparison with John and Paul, most people who knew all three always looked upon George as just a boy. John and Paul were precocious, physically, sexually, and in their talent. They were writing songs long before George ever thought about it.

George did have a slight inferiority complex, although nothing serious. Cyn remembers him always hanging around when she wanted John on his own. So does Astrid, when she was trying to be alone with Stu.

George wasn’t academic at school and didn’t show many signs of being clever the way Paul did. Taking an ordinary apprenticeship, compared to Paul, the bright sixth former, and
John, the art student, made people unfairly think George wasn’t as good as the others.

Julia, John’s mother, was horrified when John dragged along another baby-faced friend to meet her. She’d already thought Paul just a kid.

‘He was a lovely little boy,’ says Astrid, talking of their Hamburg days. ‘He was just little George. We never judged him in any way, the way we used to work out how intelligent or clever Stu, John and Paul were. He didn’t develop as quickly as the others had done.

‘But he wasn’t stupid. No one thought that for one minute. He made lovely jokes at his own expense, sending himself up for being young. I gave them all their Christmas presents one year, all wrapped up. John opened his first and it was an Olympia Press version of the Marquis de Sade. George picked up his and said, “What’s in mine then, comics?”’

George, of course, always had his guitar, if apparently nothing else. He was even more fanatical about mastering it than Paul or John, and was much better than they were. He hardly smiled on stage, he was so busy concentrating. But he wouldn’t try to do anything else for a long time, such as drawing. He thought he wasn’t clever enough.

But now, since the end of 1966, George is the one with so much. He was the first to rise right out and beyond Beatlemania. They all envied him his new passions in life, when they themselves could find so little. He even became the leader in many things. Not by going out of his way to lead, the way John did in the Quarrymen days. The others came to George, following his interests.

George today is the Beatle who needs the other Beatles least. The others admit they all missed each other, during those go-it-alone post-touring months. ‘I didn’t miss them at all,’ he says. ‘But it was great to get home from India and tell them all about it.’

‘George doesn’t miss anyone,’ Pattie says. ‘He’s very independent and he’s breaking out more and more. He’s found
something stronger than the Beatles, though he still wants them to share it. He’s the source, but he wants them to join it.’

Because George’s abiding passions in life today are Indian religion and Indian music, all the other trappings of being a Beatle pass over him. Yet at one time, he was the most obsessed by all the money and by the business of being a millionaire. He was the one who cross-examined Brian Epstein on all the contracts.

But he can’t avoid some things like autographs and the telephone. When that happens, he is often the only one who can be rude. He forgets for a minute why it has happened, and is simply irritated by perfect strangers interrupting his life. On the train to Bangor he was very angry when his tea was being spoiled by women asking for his autograph. The others, who were resignedly signing away, had to restrain him and tell him not to get angry, however aggressive the fans were.

George is the one who has an absolute mania about any publicity of any sort. Anything getting into the papers about him personally makes him furious, as Pattie knows if she accidentally causes any.

Even after more than two years of marriage, Pattie is still not used to all the publicity and press attention. ‘I keep thinking, this time it will be OK. No one will know and even if they do, they won’t care. That trip to Los Angeles last year, I thought that would be OK. To my horror, there were TV cameras and hundreds of girls screaming.

‘In 1964 when we went to Tahiti, Beatlemania was at its height and we expected it. So we went to great lengths to go secretly. Neil and I flew first to Amsterdam, under assumed names, then we flew back towards Tahiti to meet George. Even then, people still found out.

‘Things are slightly better today, but it always seems to be worse out of England. You might get on a plane fairly quietly at London Airport, but the English press wire the press at the other end and everyone turns out.

‘At night it’s not too bad. We have come out of a restaurant and walked down a couple of streets without being pursued.

‘But I can’t get over the fans always hanging round the house, even now. They come into the garden and rush around. They even come into the house. They got into our bedroom the other day and stole a pair of my trousers and George’s pyjamas.’

Although George has warned her, she has, on occasions, inadvertently caused publicity. She received a letter through the post one day from an old man asking people to send him used spectacle frames. He said he was getting bundles of them to send to people in Africa.

She thought it seemed a good cause, so she went out and searched round the shops and bought up all the old spectacles she could find. She took out the glass and sent the old man the frames.

‘The next thing there was a story in the
Daily Mirror
about what I’d done. The old man even wrote and thanked me. He said the publicity had done his work a lot of good. George was furious.’

Like all the other wives, she has come up against physical danger, purely through being a Beatle wife.

The worst time was the Christmas of 1965. They were doing their Christmas Show at Hammersmith. I went with Terry. I scraped my hair back so that I would look completely different and no one would recognize me. I don’t know how anyone did, but a few did and started punching me. They took their shoes off and shouted, ‘Let’s go and get her.’ I was hemmed in and couldn’t get out. They threw things at me and screamed. Terry managed to drag me towards a side exit, with the girls kicking me as we forced a way through. Some followed me out and started kicking me again. I told them to stop. ‘Who do you think you are?’ they said. Then we all started fighting this time. I punched one in the face and Terry got one against a wall and held her tight. They were all shouting and swearing. Luckily, we got away in the end. They were just horrid little girls. They were so tiny, only 13 or 14 years old. I don’t know where they were from.