The Love You Make (44 page)

There were two perfect examples to invest in right under their noses: Magic Alex and The Fool. Magic Alex would be given a workshop in which to research and develop all of his wonderful inventions, including the paint that plugs in and lights up the wall. The Fool could design and manufacture clothing on a mass level and sell it in their own store. In September, while filming
Magical Mystery Tour,
the Beatles allocated £100,000 to The Fool to design and open a clothing line and boutique, “a beautiful place where you could buy beautiful things.” It didn’t seem to faze the Beatles that The Fool’s previous experience in the retail business, an Amsterdam barber shop they had converted into a boutique, reportedly went bankrupt because The Fool’s personal expenses ran so high. Magic Alex was commissioned to design the store’s lighting, and he spoke of hanging a sun in the street to light up the night sky for the opening.

The Beatles discovered that their accountants had already purchased for them, as a long-term investment, a building on the corner of Baker and Paddington Streets, on the “wrong side” of Oxford Street, just off the beaten path of shoppers, where the design and construction of the Apple Boutique could begin. In the floors upstairs from the store they opened other Apple offices. Terry Doran was made managing director of Apple Publishing. John’s childhood pal, Pete Shotton, who was running a supermarket John had purchased for him, was asked to apply his retail expertise to the Apple Boutique. When the Oxford Street building became too crowded, additional offices were opened on a large floor of an office building on Wigmore Street. Here Ron Kass, the vice-president of Liberty Records in Europe, was hired away to run Apple Records. Jane Asher’s brother, Peter, was asked to head the company’s talent division. Apple Films was established, to be presided over by Dennis O’Dell, a former associate of Richard Lester’s. Brian Lewis, a prominent entertainment lawyer, ran the legal and contracts department. Stephen Maltz, an accountant from Bryce-Hamner, also joined the firm. Most everyone hired assistants, and the assistants hired secretaries.

The construction of the boutique took a little longer than was expected. A group of art-school students was hired to repaint the five-story exterior of the building in a psychedelic motif designed by The Fool while the interior of the store was being redesigned. Paul would arrive at the store every morning bright and early and ask the workmen to literally move the walls around. The same afternoon John would appear and say to move the walls back the way they were. In the interim tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of merchandise and fabrics began arriving at the cutting rooms upstairs where tailors busily turned out Fool clothing.

The boutique finally opened its doors on December 7, 1967. The all too self-conscious invitation to the opening read, “Come at 7:46, fashion show at 8:16.” Only George and John bothered to attend. Alex had hung no magic lighting in the street; it had proved too complicated, and the lighting in the store was expensive but not very unusual. The painting of a woman’s face with stars in the background and a rainbow swirl of colors below her that had been executed on the building might have been attractive to some, but not to the local business community. The Civic Association started suit to have it removed. As the press and public wandered around the newly opened store, they were clearly confused as what to think. The store was stocked with trinkets similar to those found in any “head” shop. The incense, bracelets, and wild velvet and satin clothing seemed slightly stale, like props left over from last summer’s flower-power vogue. The huge dressing rooms of the boutique were only good for one thing: shoplifting. From the day the store opened its doors, it started losing money.

But losing money was what it was all about, in a way, and the Beatles remained undaunted.

It was in February of 1968,
just as Apple was about to go into full swing, that the Beatles informed me they intended to finish the Transcendental Meditation course they had begun the previous August in Bangor, North Wales. But this time the Beatles had agreed not to just a ten-day course but to go off to Rishekesh in the remote wilderness of north India for three months of serious study. The mastery of Transcendental Meditation, they hoped, would give them the wisdom to run Apple. In Rishekesh, they said, they would live in an ashram—without any drugs or alcohol.

The Beatles’ faith in the tiny Maharishi seemed unshakeable. Through the winter they had remained serious devotees of the guru and visited him frequently in his London digs in South Kensington. They still went to his lectures, and George and John became vegetarians, although John had almost immediately gone back to his regimen of drugs after Brian’s death. The Beatles were even contemplating, as an offshoot of Apple Films, to finance a major motion picture about the Maharishi, the proceeds of which would fund a Transcendental Meditation University in London.

I had my doubts about the efficacy of the Beatles going off to India with the Maharishi in the middle of the formation of Apple, particularly because of certain incidents that led me to believe the Maharishi was using the Beatles’ name for his personal gain. One day I received a call from the lawyers for ABC Television in America. They said that the Maharishi had been negotiating with them for a TV special that he said would include an appearance by the Beatles. ABC’s lawyers were calling me to confirm the Beatles’ cooperation. I told them that the Beatles had no intention of appearing on the Maharishi’s show. But only a week later the lawyers were back on the phone; the Maharishi was insisting he could deliver them.

I called the Maharishi in Malmö, Sweden, where he was lecturing at the moment, and explained the problem to him, but his answers were obscure and indefinite. I decided to fly to Malmö to insist he not represent the Beatles as being part of his projects. In Malmö the Maharishi greeted me warmly but only giggled and nodded and chattered on like a mouse on speed as I laid down the law. The following week in London I was again contacted by ABC’s lawyers, who said the Maharishi was still insisting the Beatles would appear on his TV show and was soliciting sponsors with this understanding. I went to Malmö again, this time with Paul and George in tow. We met with the Maharishi and tried to explain to him that he must not use their names to exploit his business affairs, and that they definitely would not appear on his TV special, but the Maharishi just nodded and giggled again. “He’s not a modern man,” George said forgivingly on the plane home. “He just doesn’t understand these things.”

On February 16 the Beatles set out for Rishekesh. The traveling party consisted of John and Cynthia, George and Pattie, Paul, Jane Asher, Ringo and Maureen, Jenny Boyd, Donovan, and Mal Evans. They traveled first by jet to Delhi, then by taxi and jeep and eventually on the backs of donkeys. When the road became impossible for even the donkeys to navigate, they walked the last half mile, crossing a narrow rope bridge over a muddy chasm before they reached the gates of the ashram. Their luggage followed later on ox-drawn carts. For the first time in years, the Beatles were cut off from the world—and the press from the Beatles. The absence of news of what was happening in the ashram tantalized the public. The whole world seemed to know that the Beatles had gone off to India to discover the “truth,” and millions waited expectantly for them to come down from the mountain and spread the Word. Here, told for the first time, is what really happened in the ashram.

The Beatles were joined at the ashram by Beach Boy Mike Love, jazz musician Paul Horn, American actress Mia Farrow, her sister Tia, and her brother John, plus some twenty other noncelebrated students, an assortment of discontented Americans from California, and some aging Swedish widows.

The ashram turned out to be more like a hotel than the spartan guru’s camp the Beatles expected. The sleeping quarters were in a complex of picturesque stone bungalows with four or five bedrooms in each. The Beatles’ rooms had four-poster beds and solid English furniture. Each was equipped with a modern bath and toilet, and there was even an electric fire for cold nights. Meals were eaten communally at long, hand-carved tables under a vine-covered trellis next to the Ganges. Food was served to them by a large staff of servants and prepared in a completely modern kitchen by a trained chef. The Maharishi’s house, a short distance away from the rest of the compound, was a long, low, modern building with its own kitchen and staff. There was even a woman to give the girls a daily massage. The most eyebrow-raising of all the luxury accoutrements was the landing pad for the helicopter used to ferry the Maharishi in and out of the compound on his appointed rounds throughout India. This was the man whom George had excused to me as “not a modern man.”

Once settled into the ashram they began to study in earnest. They woke at dawn each morning for an early breakfast, then went to long lectures, and spent the afternoons in meditation sessions. A friendly competition started among them to see who could meditate the longest, and there were heated debates at dinner every night about “who was getting it” and who was not. John seemed really into it, others thought he was faking it and that George was the most readily spiritual of the group. They dressed in traditional Indian clothing, and although they had shaved their moustaches shortly before the trip, they let their hair grow. It was the end of the rainy season when they arrived, but in a few weeks it turned warm and balmy, and they were able to bathe in the Ganges River, still clear and clean in the late winter. At night in their bungalows they could hear the river crashing rhythmically on the banks.

Every evening after dinner, without the aid of drugs or alcohol, the boys would take their guitars out under the moonlight and sing and write songs. The quantity and quality of the songs composed in India was staggering, even to those who knew them. Thirty of the songs would comprise their next album. Everyone in the compound seemed touched by the muse. Donovan wrote his most beautiful song, “Jennifer Juniper,” for Pattie Harrison’s sister Jenny. The mood was loving and mellow, and perhaps the best celebration the Beatles had in years was George’s twenty-fourth birthday party, when the Maharishi presented him with a seven-pound cake and a fireworks display.

When they’d first arrived at the ashram, Cynthia had been stung to learn that John had arranged for them to sleep in separate quarters. John explained that the distance would be good for meditating, and anyway they would see each other constantly in the small camp. Despite the unromantic arrangement, Cynthia relished being in Rishekesh. The Maharishi’s retreat was her one last hope for their marriage. Her life with John was in a shambles. He was little more than a frequent visitor to their home, and when he was there the house was filled with drug dealers and other smarmy “international leeches” as she called them.

And recently Cynthia had become aware of the presence of a small Japanese woman named Yoko Ono in their lives. She seemed to be everywhere; waiting in front of the house for them, or sitting in the back of the car. Her little book of instructional poems was left on the night table on John’s side of the bed, like an omen. Although John swore to Cynthia over and over that he had no romantic interest in her, Cynthia was as relieved to get him away from Yoko Ono as she was from the drug dealers.

Little did Cynthia realize that John had considered taking Yoko Ono with him to India instead of her, or even in addition to her, if he could have figured out how to pull it off. It would have been much more fun to go to Rishekesh with Yoko. He felt no guilt about Yoko, because he had not lied to Cynthia; it was an intellectual relationship, not a romantic one. Yoko’s galling wit and gentle craziness titillated him. She was smart and opinionated, a grateful distraction from Cynthia’s cloying kindness. Whenever John was about to tell Cynthia their marriage was over and he had to get away from her, she would look up to him with those sad, blue, believing eyes, and he didn’t have the heart. So off they went to Rishekesh together, while Yoko waited impatiently for John’s return.

Rishekesh gave Cynthia a chance to regain a sense of herself, away from the pressures of Kenwood. She meditated and returned to the easel, where she spent hours drawing and painting. She watched from a distance as John became healthier and stronger without drugs.

For one brief moment the Maharishi was even successful in raising some optimistically romantic sounds from John. Cynthia and John had told the Maharishi that Julian, who was staying with Lillian Powell and Mrs. Jarlett while they were gone, was celebrating his fifth birthday in a few weeks. The following week they were asked to the Maharishi’s house where they were presented with a made-to-order wardrobe for Julian befitting an Indian prince. The young couple was moved by the Maharishi’s thoughtfulness, and on the way back to the student compound they held hands while strolling along the Ganges. John was filled with warm, paternal feelings. “Oh Cyn,” he said, “won’t it be wonderful to be together with Julian again. Everything will be fantastic again, won’t it? I can’t wait, Cyn, can you?”

But the momentary surge of warmth soon passed, and John began to drift further away from her. Even in the small ashram he sometimes managed to avoid seeing her for days. He spent more and more time locked away in his room. Cynthia assumed he was meditating. He was not. He was writing long, rambling diatribes to a Japanese artist waiting for him in London. He got up early each morning and went to the mail drop to collect letters from Yoko, who wrote just as faithfully. “Look up at the sky,” she wrote him, “and when you see a cloud think of me.”

“I got so excited about her letters,” John said. “There was nothin’ in them that wives or mothers-in-law could’ve understood, and from India I started thinkin’ of her as a woman, not just an intellectual woman.”

On the tenth day Ringo and Maureen left for home. They told the reporters who greeted them in London they had to leave because Ringo’s delicate stomach couldn’t take the spicy food, but it was also because they hated the ashram. The clincher was Maureen’s aversion to flying insects. The banks of the Ganges are not a good place to visit if one is afraid of flying insects. Each night before Maureen went to sleep, she would make a hapless “Ritchie” kill every fly and insect in the room and dispose of the carcasses. Back in London Ringo told friends that the ten days he spent in the ashram weren’t as much fun as Butlin’s Holiday Camp.