John Lennon: The Life (70 page)

For all the Beatles, it was an enforced slowdown from the lunatic pace that had not let up since their departure from Liverpool to Hamburg seven years earlier. Day after day, there was literally nothing to do but sit and think. At first, the effect on John was anything but tranquilizing. No matter how he tried to make his mind a blank, ideas for lyrics and chord changes kept scribbling themselves across it. “I couldn’t sleep and I was hallucinating like crazy—having dreams where you could smell,” he would remember. “The funny thing about the camp was that although it was very beautiful and I was meditating about eight hours a day, I was writing the most miserable songs on earth. In ‘Yer Blues,’ when I wrote ‘I’m so lonely I want to die,’ I wasn’t kidding. That’s how I felt…up there, trying to reach God and feeling suicidal.”

The songs never stopped coming—some of his very best, so he later thought—but their misery quotient dropped sharply as the gentle, reassuring daily routine and the gorgeous weather of northern India’s winter began to take effect. The former hypercritical group leader became content to be just one of a crowd, walking to and from meals and seminars along dappled paths or sitting and strumming guitars with Paul and George in the balmy sunshine. There was even mind-space to think about his fellow students and their own problems in adjusting from the outer to the inner world. Mia Farrow’s young sister, Prudence, for example, became so obsessed with meditating
that she refused to emerge from her bungalow at all for several days. It was John who eventually coaxed her forth by writing her a song, “Dear Prudence,” the most charming of entreaties to come out and play, which he and Paul then sang together under her window.

Amid the droning mantras, orange garlands, and tinkly bells, he remained irrepressibly John. If any long-distance press lens managed to get him in shot, he would obligingly wave, pull a grotesque face, or do a little dance. At his instigation, the four Beatles held a daily contest to see who could meditate longest. Even his reverence for his spiritual teacher could occasionally slip. Leaving the Maharishi’s presence one day, he patted his head, like a whiskery domestic pet, and said, “There’s a good little guru.”

A young Canadian backpacker named Paul Salzman, to his astonishment, became part of the Beatles’ circle and was allowed to take color photographs of them, which the press outside the gate would have killed for. These show a white-clad John with several days’ growth of beard, invariably looking happy and relaxed. In many he is holding hands with Cynthia, whose Indian clothes and simpler hairstyle give her a new beauty and serenity. To begin with, they shared a bungalow equipped with a four-poster bed, but after a few days, John insisted on moving into separate quarters so that he could better concentrate on his meditation. Even so, Cyn felt convinced their marriage was entering a new phase of companionship and mutual tolerance.

All the time, he was receiving postcards from Yoko, which his guardians now had strict orders not to deflect. They were sent to Tony Bramwell in Delhi, who forwarded them to Rishikesh in plain brown envelopes so that Cynthia would suspect nothing. Often they consisted of a single thought, in Yoko’s tiny, arty script: “Watch for me—I’m a cloud in the sky.” John’s Rishikesh songs in lighter vein included one called “India, India,” anomalously written as a calypso, in which he talked of “the girl I left behind me.” During a heart-to-heart with Paul Salzman, the young Canadian mentioned having recently been dumped by a long-standing girlfriend. John’s response indicated just how intently he was watching for that cloud. “Love can be tough,” he said. “But then you get another chance, don’t you?”

What kept him in Rishikesh for these eons beyond his normal attention span was not meditation or beauty or peace or the glorious weather. From the Maharishi, he hoped finally to receive the “secret” or “answer,” that magic key to understanding both the universe and his own place in it that acid had not provided. It annoyed him that others among the Maharishi’s flock already seemed to have been granted this revelation, yet refused to share it. Pattie Harrison, for instance, returned from an early TM meeting to report, “They give you a word, but I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.” John had been the first to write, “Say the word and you’ll be free.” Now everyone seemed to be conspiring to hide it from him. “What sort of scene is this, if you keep secrets from your friends?” he asked Pattie, much offended.

Yet time passed, and still the Maharishi uttered only vague, benign generalities. Finally John decided that if hanging on to his every word did not produce the spiritual jackpot, then guile would have to be employed instead. One day, a helicopter landed at the ashram, lent by one of TM’s wealthy Indian supporters to fly the Maharishi to Delhi for a meeting. The Beatles’ party were offered a quick joyride with their guru, which for space reasons must be limited to one person. John took it, as if by right. “I asked him later, ‘Why were you so keen to get up with the Maharishi?’” Paul would remember. “To tell you the truth,” John said, “I was hoping he might slip me the Answer.”

Ringo abandoned the course after two weeks, unable to stomach the food, and returned to Britain with Maureen amid general goodwill from the others for having given it a whirl. Paul left with Jane and Neil Aspinall two weeks later, but intimated he might come back for more at a later stage. In his place came Magic Alex Mardas, reportedly with plans for a telecommunications system to beam the Maharishi’s message around the world in the tracks of “All You Need Is Love.”

By the fifth week, John and George still showed no signs of flagging. John sent Ringo a postcard with a message for Dot, the Kenwood housekeeper, to have his videotape machine ready for his return, but gave no indication this might be sooner than scheduled. “We’ve got about two LPs worth of songs now,” he wrote Ringo. “So get yer drums out….”

Despite their elevated spiritual state, the Rishikesh disciples were as prone as any small, self-contained community to rumor and gossip. Besides, under an unwritten but immutable law, the Maharishi’s time as a Beatle fad was starting to run out. A story began circulating that, although purportedly a lifelong celibate, he had made sexual overtures to a young woman known to all the celebrity inner circle, a former nurse from California. Although famous Indian holy men would later be exposed as lechers—some on an epic scale—this was the only such accusation ever made against the Maharishi, nor was there ever a scrap of real evidence to support it.

But John’s mood had now changed completely: he still had not received the Answer and was becoming increasingly preoccupied by that “cloud in the sky.” The obvious gusto with which the Maharishi organized constant photo ops made him feel his “good little guru” was a little too interested in celebrity and money. Those rumors of sexual impropriety were a perfect excuse to cut the visit short, especially when even George showed signs of going off the Maharishi and decided to leave for a trip through southern India.

Without the usual retainers on hand to do their dirty work, the two had no choice but to lead a deputation to the Maharishi’s bungalow, where John bluntly announced their decision. “I said, ‘We’re leaving,’” he remembered. “[The Maharishi] said, ‘Why?’ [I said], ‘Well, if you’re so cosmic, you should know why.’ Because all his right-hand men were always intimating that he did miracles…. He said, ‘I don’t know why, you must tell me.’ And I just kept saying, ‘You ought to know.’ And he gave me a look like ‘I’ll kill you, you bastard.’”

When the time came to leave, the Maharishi was seated alone in one of the outdoor arbors where his superstar disciples had so recently clustered so raptly at his feet. He made a last appeal to John to come and sit and talk things over, but received no response. Cynthia was touched by how sad and bewildered he looked, but both John and George feared he might have some sinister retribution up his sleeve. On the five-hour drive to Delhi, John began writing a foul-mouthed lampoon of a song around the word
Maharishi
. George persuaded him to change the title to “Sexy Sadie” and take out the swear words, just to be on the safe side.

But the Maharishi cast no evil spell, nor did he long repine in his arbor. Shortly afterward, he flew to New York, checked into the Plaza Hotel and went on tour with the Beach Boys.

“W
e made a mistake there,” John told the press back in Britain. “We thought [the Maharishi] was something other than he was. But we were looking for it and we probably superimposed it on him. We were waiting for a guru and along he came. But he was creating the same kind of situation…which he’s giving recipes out to cure.” Amazingly, it occurred to none of the international Beatle press corps to pursue the inside story of this speedy disillusionment, or even to coax John into being a little more explicit. So great was the relief that the Beatles had come to their senses, no further questions needed be asked.

George would later regret their behavior, renew relations with the Maharishi, and become one of the TM movement’s most faithful mainstays. For John, there was to be no going back, though in time he acknowledged the positive effects of his stay in Rishikesh. “I don’t regret anything about meditation. I still believe in it and occasionally use it. India was good for me…. I met Yoko just before I went to India and had a lot of time to think things out there. Three months
[sic]
just meditating and thinking, and I came home and fell in love with Yoko and that was the end of it.”

Actually, it was not quite that simple. Returning home to Kenwood meant more than he had expected—sharing Cynthia’s ecstatic reunion with Julian, seeing the little boy’s excitement at the presents they’d brought him, including a set of intricately carved wooden figures from the Maharishi. On the long flight back from Delhi, something had prompted John to give Cynthia a detailed account of all his infidelities down the years—all, anyway, that he could remember. Shaken by the Sears Roebuck–size catalog though Cyn was, she felt comforted that, at least, they seemed to be communicating again. A couple of weekends later, he went on his own to stay with Derek Taylor, who had returned from California to become press officer for the new Apple organization and was temporarily based with his family at a house named Laudate, belonging to Peter Asher, in
Newdigate, Surrey. The sight of the Taylors’ large brood stirred up strange, unfamiliar emotions in John: when he came home, he told Cyn they ought to have more children to keep Julian company. She burst into tears and replied that he’d be much better off with someone like Yoko Ono. He still professed incredulity at such an idea.

He was about to fly with Paul to New York to unveil Apple—which now encompassed a record label as well as films, publishing, retail, and electronics—to the American media. Cynthia asked to go with him, remembering their fun time at the Plaza in 1964, but he refused. Instead, it was arranged that she should go on holiday to Greece for two weeks in a group of former ashram students comprising Magic Alex, Jenni Boyd, Donovan, and his manager, a raffish character known only as Gipsy Dave. Having only just welcomed his parents home, Julian was packed off stay with Dot, the housekeeper, yet again. “John was lying on our bed when I left,” Cyn would remember. “He was in the almost trance-like state I’d seen many times before, and barely turned his head to say goodbye.”

In New York, John faced the American press for the first time since the “bigger than Jesus” furor two years earlier. Paul and he were as effective a double act as ever, explaining how Apple would be the first business aimed at young people to be run by young people and informed by the hippie ideals of love, peace, and sharing, “a kind of Western Communism,” as Paul put it. “We’re in the happy position of not really needing any more money, so for the first time the bosses aren’t in it for the profit. We’ve already bought all our dreams, so now we want to share that possibility with others.”

John was in agreement all the way: “We want to set up a system whereby people who just want to make a film about anything don’t have to go down on their knees in somebody’s office. The aim…isn’t really a stack of gold teeth in the bank. We’ve done that bit. It’s more of a trick to see if we can get artistic freedom within a business structure, and to see if we can create nice things and sell them without charging three times our cost.” Elsewhere, he likened Apple and all its mold-breaking ideals to an old-fashioned spinning top: “You set it going and hope for the best.” The same might have been said of the other, private venture he was about to begin.

When he returned from New York on May 16, Cynthia was still away. To keep him company at Kenwood, he invited Pete Shotton to come to stay for a few days. It was as if he needed the cover of their old “Shennon-Lotton” school partnership for what he was finally daring to do.

Two nights later, after Pete had gone to bed, he screwed up all his courage, telephoned Yoko in London, and asked her to come down right away. The hour was late and the journey a long one, but she kept her resolution not to say no a second time. “John told me he didn’t have the car, so I’d have to come in a taxi,” she remembers. “He said he’d meet the taxi at the gate and pay it off. Usually, he didn’t handle money at all, so I was really impressed that he had the whole thing so carefully worked out.”

She arrived at Kenwood sometime around midnight. Now that the moment was finally here, both found themselves overcome by shyness. “I didn’t know what to do,” John would recall, “so we went upstairs to my studio and I played her all the tapes that I’d made, all this far-out stuff, some comedy stuff, and some electronic music. There were very few people I could play those tapes to. She was suitably impressed, and then she said ‘Well, let’s make one ourselves,’ so we made Two Virgins. It was midnight when we started…it was dawn when we finished, and then we made love at dawn. It was very beautiful.”

Once the top was spinning, all John’s doubts melted way, although Yoko’s were to linger a while yet. “This is going to work,” she remembers him assuring her. “You’re a wonderful creative artist…and I’m rich.”