The Beatles (98 page)

It was inevitable that Dylan would show up. While the Beatles had linked themselves musically to Elvis, it was Dylan with whom they would reshape their generation.

Paul had discovered him first
, buying the
Freewheelin’
album before they’d left for Paris at the beginning of the year. That record hit the turntable the moment the Beatles settled into their suite at the George V. “
And for the rest of our three weeks
in Paris we didn’t stop playing it,” John recalled. In fact, George considered the experience “
one of the most memorable
things of the trip,” alleviating the irritation of being cooped up in their rooms.

One can only imagine the impact that Dylan’s music had on the boys. The album itself was the first of many watersheds in his long career. That sure command of language might have drifted by unnoticed were it the work of an older, more experienced interpreter, but from a twenty-two-year-old folksinger, this articulation of self-expression had major resonance. There was plenty to chew on, from the sentimental arguments made in “Blowin’ in the Wind” to the lovesick bitterness of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” to the barbed topicality of “Masters of War” and especially the verbal whiplashing given to “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” “
I’m sure this kind of thing
found its way into our music, and into our lyrics, and influenced whom we were interested in,” Paul explained many years afterward. “Vocally and poetically Dylan was a huge influence.” Certainly, in addition to the obvious effect it had on his language and style, Dylan’s lyrics served to turn John inward as a songwriter. From that point on, he said, “
I’d started thinking about
my own emotions…. Instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would try to express what I felt about myself.”

The revelation was not merely a self-conscious one. In ten years, no other artist, not even one as inventive as the Beatles, had been able to cultivate rock’s literary essence. Paul Simon, one of the more articulate young songwriters to tap into that reservoir, understood just how liberating Dylan’s contributions actually were. “
He made us feel
at a certain time that it was good to be smart, to be observant, that it was good to have a social conscience.”

There is no way of knowing how, or even if, this posed a threat to the Beatles. But John responded to the challenge much as Simon described it, probably because he was better equipped. The older John got, the more experience he acquired and discoveries he made, the less songs about holding hands and sharing secrets kept him engaged. As a songwriter, his perspective had expanded, and he was trying to break out of the mold. In Dylan, John had finally found what was, for him, a new direction. It is no coincidence that John began writing “I’m a Loser” while still in Paris. The song is clearly his attempt at constructing an early self-portrait, with its revealing soft focus on relationships and fame. “
I think it was Dylan
who helped me realize that,” John concluded, “not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work.” John reveled in the new possibilities of substance and character that might free his imagination from the mush he worked on with Paul.

Dylan caught up with the Beatles in their suite at the Delmonico about an hour after their first Forest Hills concert. It was a particularly maddening
night. They were in the midst of having dinner with Brian, Neil, and Mal when he arrived with his road manager, Victor Maimudes, and
New York Post
columnist Al Aronowitz, who had coordinated the get-together as a favor to the boys. Of their initial introduction, John commented: “
When I met Dylan
I was quite dumbfounded,” but within minutes he managed to get over any initial shock. Dylan was eccentric and intense but cool, very cool, in a way that only another pop phenom could appreciate. There was the usual checking-out process, followed by awkward stabs at conversation, until ultimately everyone discovered that they spoke the same language.

It didn’t take long before someone retrieved the communal pillbox from John’s leather bag and Drinamyls and Preludins were offered like after-dinner mints to the edgy guests. The Beatles downed a handful on most nights of the tour as a way of staying up—and
up
—when their bodies ached for sleep. But Dylan took one look at the assortment of gaily colored pills and shook his head. “
How about something a little more organic?
” he suggested. “Something green… marijuana.”

The Beatles recoiled. They were scotch and Coke men, chain-smokers. Granted, there were the pills, but they served a purpose other than getting stoned.

“We’ve never really smoked marijuana before,” Brian interjected, sensing the boys’ immediate discomfort. This, unbeknownst to him, wasn’t entirely true. “
We first got marijuana
from an older drummer with another group in Liverpool,” George recalled. Besides, an acquaintance had shared a joint with the Beatles at the Star-Club in Hamburg, but it was what Neil called “just the sticks,” which probably meant a deposit of stems mixed with dried oregano or some such filler.

“
But what about your song
—the one about getting high?” Dylan wondered. In his inimitable rasp, he sang: “ ‘And when I touch you, I get high, I get high…’ ”

“Those aren’t the words,” John said stone-faced. “It’s ‘I can’t hide, I can’t hide.’ ”

No matter. Rolling “
a skinny American joint
,” Dylan handed it to John, who gave it a dubious look and passed it on to Ringo, dubbing him “
my official taster
.” Ringo was no blushing maiden. Without a word, he retreated to a back room sealed with rolled towels—there was a battalion of New York City policemen on a security detail in the hall—and smoked it down to his fingertips. A few minutes later he emerged with a twisted grin plastered on his face.
As Paul recounted
the experience, “We said,
‘How is it?’ He said, ‘The ceiling’s coming down on me.’ And we went, Wow! Leaped up, ‘God, got to do this!’ So we ran into the back room—first John, then me and George, then Brian.”

The effect it had on the boys was spectacular. “
We were just legless
, aching from laughter,” George told Derek Taylor, who joined them later on in the suite. Paul greeted Taylor by gathering him up in an immense bear hug and revealing “
he’d been up there
,” pointing to the ceiling, and Brian pressed his P.A. to smoke some weed, which he politely declined. The pot had loosened up Brian to a degree that was truly emancipating. He became entranced by his reflection in the mirror. After a moment or two he stood back, then pointed to himself, and blurted out:
“Jew!”
to everyone’s hilarity. Paul noted how that was the first time Brian had ever referred to himself as a Jew. “
It may not seem the least bit
significant to anyone else,” he admitted, “but in our circle, it was very liberating.” And a sign to those not red-eyed of Brian’s deep self-loathing.

Meanwhile, Paul entertained his own moments of mind-blowing significance. For a period of time he frantically crisscrossed the suite in search of pencil and paper to capture the profundities that were leapfrogging around his brain. “
Get it down, Mal
, get it down!” he implored his faithful roadie, appointing the also significantly stoned Evans his trusty Boswell. Exasperated, Paul scratched out his own cogent musings on a slip of paper, which Mal obediently stashed away for safekeeping, or at least until the next morning, when Paul read its contents aloud to the other Beatles. It said: “There are seven levels,” nothing more, which amused everyone to no end.

An unusually gregarious Dylan was delighted by the Beatles’ curiosity and readiness to experiment. They got right into the groove, which relaxed the recalcitrant bard, who lit joint after joint, fanning the fateful flame. “
He kept answering our phone
, saying, ‘This is Beatlemania here,’ ” John recalled. But it was something much more than that, something as close to a cultural milestone as could be determined by academics and savants. “We were smoking dope, drinking wine and generally being rock ’n rollers, and having a laugh, you know, and surrealism. It was party time.”

That it was:
party time.
And nothing would ever be the same again.

Chapter 27
Lennon and McCartney to the Rescue

W
hen do you think the bubble will burst?

It was astounding how many times the Beatles could be asked that question—and in how many myriad ways. The American press had pounded them with it, tossing it out like a beach ball at every opportunity. “
I’ll probably open
my own hair salon,” Ringo predicted in dead earnest. Paul supposed he’d fancy teaching. And as for John and George—they hadn’t a clue. The future: what twenty-one-year-old boy even thought further than two days ahead?

How long do you expect Beatlemania to last?

“Till death do us part,” John muttered through tightly clenched teeth. And what about his ambition, that is, after the bubble burst? “Count the money.”

For all the pissing and moaning about the shelf life of pop stardom, the Beatles were, by all accounts, rock-solid. They’d banked a record $1 million-plus from the American tour (including an astonishing $150,000 for a single show in Kansas City), which seemed a mere pittance in light of the
$5.8 million in U.S. rentals
for
A Hard Day’s Night.
Record sales were soaring, with no apparent letdown.
By October 1964, EMI
had shipped an estimated 10 million Beatles discs—a staggering number, just mind-boggling—accounting for the company’s 80 percent surge in pretax profits. (Capitol followed suit, announcing a 17 percent sales rise “
largely due to Beatle [sic] records
.”) When Elvis was awarded his second gold single (for sales of more than 500,000 units) it was seen as an unsurpassable record, and now the Beatles owned three, with numbers four and five within reach. The
Daily Mail
put their earnings from abroad at $56 million—this at a time when a Cadillac cost $3,600.

Only the year before, according to his autobiography, Brian had considered accepting £150,000 for a 50 percent share in the Beatles.
Variety
also reported
that he was actively pursuing the sale of a quarter interest in the Beatles for $4 million, as a tax hedge.
Now he turned down $10 million
from an American syndicate to buy the Beatles, convinced he’d only scratched the surface of the rockpile.

Still, Brian was all too aware of how abruptly the wheel of celebrity turned, and he therefore wasted no time in planning for the future. There were promises of half a dozen TV and radio appearances, the most important being the American variety show
Shindig!,
which agreed to film a special segment around them originating from London. Another holiday pantomime (still three months off and already sold out for its entire run) began production, along with a new Christmas flexi-disk for their sixty-five thousand fan club members. And by the end of October, they had also concluded plans for their next movie—“
this one in color
… and with a much stronger plot line,” according to Walter Shenson.

The most anticipated project, of course, was a new album for Parlophone; the recording sessions kicked off less than a week after the Beatles returned from abroad.
It seemed ridiculous to try
to squeeze it in so quickly, on top of their other obligations, but EMI had made clear that they “need[ed] another album” out by mid-November, in time for the holiday market, and the Beatles, still ever its faithful subjects, were programmed to comply.

John and Paul had been writing steadily—together and apart—throughout their travels, with about eight songs in good enough shape to record right away. But it had not been a breeze, unlike the previous records. They’d struggled through what John described as “
a lousy period
,” a time when everything they came up with sounded trite, even flat. There were even hints that the album might have to be put off until the material was up to snuff; but before anyone panicked, they’d finally pounded out a few gems that had the earmarks of their very best work. “
Basically,” Paul explained
, they set out to re-create their “stage show, with some new songs” as a bridge to the creative territory they were exploring.