Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion (28 page)

ROBERT WHITAKER:
I’d shot the Beatles dozens of times, and aside from the time Paul picked me up over his head, then chucked me over to John, who chucked me over to Ringo, who promptly dropped me onto my hindquarters, the sessions had been uneventful and oftentimes fun. The boys were always good for a laugh.

The day of the session in question, they arrived punctually, as always, all wearing matching trench coats. At this point in their careers, they had their fingers on the pulse of the fashion world, so in terms of wardrobe, I let them make their own choices, figuring that they knew better than me what the clubbers were wearing. If they told me trench coats were the rage, then trench coats it was.

While my assistant prepared them some tea, John put his arm over my shoulders and guided me into the corner. He said, “Listen, Robert, we have an idea for how this should be staged. I don’t know if you’ll like it, but trust me: everybody else in the world will.”

Based on how many records they’d sold, I knew that John had a far better idea of what “everybody else in the world” would like than I did, so I said, “Of course I trust you. Do as you wish.”

John said, “That’s lovely, Robert, just lovely. Now, how about you shove off for fifteen minutes while we get organized?” So I shoved off for fifteen minutes. When I returned, I was greeted by a tableau that could best be described as … arresting.

Save for Ringo, who was in his Ninja gear, the boys were all wearing their butcher jackets, but that wasn’t the arresting part. John, Paul, and George were perched on chairs one right next to the other, and Ringo was lying at their feet, but
that
wasn’t the arresting part. What took me aback was what they’d done with their bodies.

All four of John’s limbs were placed neatly on the floor in front of Ringo—the order went right leg, left arm, right arm, left leg. Paul had removed his left leg and was holding it up to his ear as if it were a telephone, and he’d snaked his tongue up the open part of the limb. George had taken off all ten of his fingers and tied them into a bundle with what appeared to be either his own small intestines, or a guitar string; as I walked into the room, he lovingly placed the bundle on his head. All four of the boys were covered with blips and blops of the eggplant-colored goo that courses through a Liverpool zombie’s body.

As a human being, I was repulsed—in addition to the awfulness of the visual, the smell was beyond appalling—but as a photographer, I was thrilled. If these pictures came out properly, this session could be one for the ages. So I held a kerchief over my nose, did everything I could to keep my gorge down, grabbed my Kodak Brownie Auto 27, and, for the next forty-five minutes, took shot after shot after shot. As the afternoon progressed, the boys kept breaking off pieces of themselves, which they piled in front of Ringo. Eventually, John, Paul, and George were just torsos with heads, and Ringo was surrounded by a plethora of body parts. It was quite a sight to behold.

I suggested that they put themselves back together so we could snap a few shots with them fully intact, just in case somebody at the record label created a stink. They grudgingly agreed, but only if they could cover themselves in that purple zombie goo. I told them that would be lovely.

I stayed up all night developing the photos, and they came out smashingly. I still consider it the highlight of my career, so much so that I don’t even mind that my studio, to this day, still smells slightly of wet zombie.

BRIAN EPSTEIN:
I hated the photos, and Neil Aspinall hated the photos, and George Martin hated the photos, and everybody at the record label hated the photos, but it didn’t matter what any of us thought; those boys had enough cache at that point that they could’ve taken a picture of Ringo juggling John, Paul, and George’s detached genitalia while wearing a green-and-pink-checked tuxedo, and nobody would’ve questioned it.

When the record hit the streets in June, the public was less than thrilled.

T
he week after I interviewed Whitaker, I posed a question on my blog: What was your initial reaction upon seeing what came to be known as “the butcher cover”?

[email protected]:
I have a pretty hearty stomach, but when I saw it at the record store, I puked all over the B section. I ended up paying for fifty-six records. Apparently the record store had a “you barf on it, you buy it” policy.

[email protected]:
I’m only fifteen, and I obviously didn’t see a copy of the actual cover, but I saw a photo online. It was nasty, but I still thought it was pretty cool, so I set it as my screen saver. When my parents saw that, they took away my computer for a week.

[email protected]:
I was conflicted. On one hand, I respected them for sticking to their guns, but on the other, that shit gave me nightmares for weeks. It didn’t change my feelings about their music, but I sure as shit wasn’t inviting them to my bar mitzvah.

BRIAN EPSTEIN:
The public spoke, and thank goodness the folks at EMI Records listened. They recalled all the butcher covers and replaced them with another shot from the Whitaker session. The replacement photo was atrocious in its own right—Paul was lying in a trunk, doing a weird vampire impression (God knows why), and the other three were drenched in that awful purple glop—but after its predecessor, it was comparatively tame. The whole to-do didn’t hurt record sales, but I think it cost us a whole bunch of goodwill.

T
he loss of goodwill continued when word of Maureen Cleave’s newspaper article—the piece in which John Lennon claimed the Beatles were on par with Jesus—made it across the pond. In the UK, the interview was taken with a grain of salt—the general feeling was, “Oh my, there goes Johnny again. He must be hungry. Somebody give the poor bloke some cortex to nibble.”—but the American religious right took it a helluva lot more seriously.

Father Jeffrey Jenkins of the Cathedral of the Incarnation Catholic church in Nashville, Tennessee, was already a vocal opponent of the butcher cover, but when he heard of Lennon’s pronouncement, he went over the edge. Jenkins became one of the most impassioned opponents of the Beatles and everything he believed they stood for. He was still bitter about the band when I spoke with him in May 2000.

FATHER JEFFREY JENKINS:
I have no problem with zombies in general, so long as they know their place. There were three zombies in my congregation, and they were all quiet, respectful, and God-fearing, and we welcomed them with open arms. Heck, back in 1998, I even had a zombie over to my house for dinner. So zombies are okay with me.

My hatred for the Beatles has nothing to do with their state of being. Heck, considering their behavior, they could’ve been bogeymen or mole monsters or the starting offensive line for the mighty University of Tennessee Volunteers, and I still would’ve started the movement. I mean, if you put yourself on the same plane as Jesus Christ, which is exactly what that heathen John Lennon did, you deserve to be punished, am I right? When you flood the streets with filth like that horrible record cover, you deserve to suffer, and suffer badly. So I took it upon myself to see that the Beatles suffered accordingly.

I had trouble deciding on a name for our movement. My first choice was Parents, Sons, and Daughters Stomping Out Zombie Musicians from England, but I thought the media might have trouble with that one, and if we wanted to get our word out there, the media was an important ally. After days and days of rumination and prayer, I settled on God-Lovers Against the Beatles, or GLAB. That was easy enough for everybody to remember.

The goal of GLAB was simple enough: make every single person in the United States realize that the Beatles were evil and should be banished from our children’s bedrooms, our retail establishments, and our God-fearing country. Our first step toward accomplishing our goal was to organize what we called Beatle Fires.

Beatle Fires were festive events in which our followers burnt all of the Beatles records and memorabilia they could get their hands on. They were a great success—heck, we probably ridded the world of almost eight thousand Beatles albums and singles in Nashville alone—but the zombie community made it known that they weren’t happy with us. They didn’t appreciate us going after their own, but I didn’t appreciate them going after my God, so no matter how much fuss they kicked up, I wasn’t backing down, no way, no how, no siree bub.

We were attacked during our seventh Beatle Fire. I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened, because when that first zombie came over the hill, I hightailed it on out of there. I could’ve stayed and fought, certainly, but I decided it was important for the leader of GLAB to remain healthy and unharmed, in order to spread the word and carry out the mission, and I still believe that was the correct decision. GLAB suffered some bad losses that afternoon: twenty-six of us were killed, and more than twice that many were injured. However, none were turned into zombies, because the horrible, horrible undead men and women who staged the attack made it clear they didn’t believe any member of GLAB was worth reanimating. I found that hilarious: a stinking zombie telling my followers that they weren’t good enough to become stinking zombies. Give me a break.

After the attack, the Nashville division of GLAB drifted apart—it turned out that the majority of my parishioners were cowards—but the movement picked up steam across the country. Beatle Fires became commonplace, and it did my heart proud when I saw a photo of those gol-darned British zombies being burned in effigy down in Dallas. I also appreciated the group in Biloxi who torched that record shop. Unfortunately, by end of summer, the furor died, and, unfortunately, so did GLAB.

Was GLAB a success? That depends on your definition of success. Yeah, we lost more than two thousand people in various zombie attacks across the country, and we didn’t stop the band from touring, recording, or entering the United States. On the other hand, we helped keep that butcher cover out of stores, and we burned hundreds of thousands of Beatles records, and I personally escaped any harm. So from where I’m sitting, yes, the GLAB movement was a huge success.

T
he Beatles were growing weary of touring, and began spending more and more time in the recording studio, which was a plus for a young up-and-comer at EMI by the name of Geoff Emerick. While Geoff never achieved Fifth Beatle status like his mentor George Martin, he became an integral part of the band’s recording process, so much so that after he suggested that John record a vocal track through a Leslie speaker—an effect that captured his true zombieness for the first time on wax—Lennon and McCartney offered to find Stuart Sutcliffe and have Emerick turned into a vampire. (Apparently, Emerick had a minor nervous breakdown when the topic of zombifying him was broached, thus the vampire offer.) When Geoff nervously pointed out that Sutcliffe was dead, both Beatles clammed up, sprinted down the hallway, and the topic was never raised again.

As much as he enjoyed being in the studio with the Fab Four, nervous breakdowns notwithstanding, recording sessions weren’t without their share of perils—especially, as he told me in November 2002, when the studio was invaded by a certain local zombie killer.