The Love You Make (50 page)

The same day John was found guilty at Marylebone court, he and Yoko gave the finger to the establishment with the release of their first joint album,
Unfinished Music No.1—Two Virgins.
This was an album comprised mostly of tapes they had made together their first night in Kenwood while tripping on acid. The long, seemingly endless tracks were filled with Yoko’s peculiar screaming and John’s earsplitting feedback. But it wasn’t the album itself that was so controversial, it was the cover. When the photographs first arrived at Apple I thought it was a joke. The photos were so scandalous I locked them away in my desk drawer and didn’t share them with anyone. Weeks later John called to make sure they had been put into production. I tried to convince him that he was making a mistake, that the pictures would cause untold legal problems and general aggravation, but he wouldn’t listen.

The photographs were taken in the basement bedroom of the Montague Square flat by a remote-control camera. The bedroom is a pigsty, a junkie’s haven of rumpled sheets, dirty clothes, newspapers, and magazines heaped all over the floor. In one picture John and Yoko are grinning over their shoulders at the camera, stark naked. In the second shot, they face the camera, holding hands. Yoko is smiling coyly, her breasts sagging toward the floor, a courageous display.
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John, glassy-eyed and heroin-stoned, is grinning idiotically, so proud to be exposing to the world his shriveled, uncircumcised penis. Two virgins indeed.

That this was the Lenny Bruce of rock and roll, that John was a mad-cap yet destructive genius, never crossed anyone’s mind at the moment. No one at Apple was amused. Paul McCartney hated the cover beyond words. He took it as a personal affront, probably just as John had planned it. When Ringo saw the photographs he just rolled his eyes and told everyone not to get upset. “It’s just John being John,” he said. When the cover was forwarded to Sir Joseph Lockwood, he refused to believe that John actually intended to manufacture an album with such a cover. He called John and Yoko and begged them to change their minds. “Why do you want to do something like this?” he asked. Yoko said it was art. “Well, then, why not show Paul in the nude? He’s so much prettier!” Sir Joe’s final decision was that although he deeply regretted turning John down, he could not allow EMI to distribute an album with such a cover—although EMI was perfectly willing to manufacture the record for them at its usual fee. The record was reluctantly released on the Apple label and distributed by Track, a maverick label owned by the rock group the Who. The album cover was wrapped in a plain brown wrapper wherever it was sold, like a piece of pornography, which is how it was treated throughout the world. In America, the New Jersey police confiscated 30,000 copies waiting for distribution in a Newark warehouse. But copies sold quicker than they could be pressed, while people everywhere wondered why John would do such an outrageous thing.

The day the album was released, Harry Pinsker, the sober, waistcoated head of Bryce-Hamner, the Beatles’ accounting firm since the start, resigned his position as financial advisor to Apple Corp. and washed his hands of all Beatles affairs. Now that John and Yoko, in defiance of all moral authority, were involved in drugs and nudity, Pinsker no longer cared to be associated with the group. He was the first of many supporters and friends to break away. Sides were being drawn.

On December 4, 1968,
the Apple staff received the following memo from George Harrison: “Hell’s Angels will be in London within the next week on the way to straighten out Czechoslovakia. There will be twelve in number, complete with black leather jackets and motorcycles. They will undoubtedly arrive at Apple, and I have heard they may try to make full use of Apple’s facilities. They may look as though they are going to do you in but are very straight and do good things, so don’t fear them or uptight them. Try to assist without neglecting your Apple business and without letting them take control of Savile Row.”

It seemed that George’s encounter with Frisco Pete, the Hell’s Angel who had accosted him on the Haight-Ashbury street corner, was bearing nightmarish fruit. Frisco Pete had actually taken George up on his invitation to visit him in London. Fortunately, not twelve but only two Hell’s Angels arrived at Heathrow: Frisco Pete and his swastika-tattoed pal, Billy Tumbleweed. The others were refused visas because of pending criminal charges against them or because they were out of jail on probation. Frisco Pete and Billy Tumbleweed brought with them two motorcycles—which arrived collect at a shipping cost of £250, which Apple paid—and a traveling entourage of smelly, stoned, long-haired California hippies in bells and love beads. These were dubbed the California Pleasure Crew by the press office.

The arrival of the Hell’s Angels and the California Pleasure Crew stopped all activity dead at Savile Row. The employees gathered in doorways and corners and tried not to stare as the contingent marched up the green-carpeted stairs, past the vulnerable gold records on the walls, and into the press office, where I waited with Derek Taylor.

After a slightly horrified pause, I extended my hand to Frisco Pete and said as pleasantly as possible, “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, I’m sure,” and promptly left the room.

Derek headed for his scotch and Coke. “Well,” he said hurriedly, “you are here and so are we and this is Sally who has just joined us and that is Carol who has always been with us and Richard you know and if you’d like a cup of tea then a cup of tea it is but if you would rather have a glass of beer or a bottle of wine or a scotch and Coke or a gin and tonic or a vodka and lime then that it is because it is all here and if it is not then we will come up with something but have a seat or have a cigarette or have a joint and I will be back in three minutes so please don’t go away because there is a lot to talk about and more to find out and stranger days to come!”

Derek had matters of much greater consequence on his hands at the moment. A few months before he had slightly overstepped his responsibilities by promising a monthly magazine that he would obtain for them an original recorded message from John and Yoko. This message was to be pressed as a “flimsy,” a pliable plastic record that could be stapled into the magazine. The text of the message was to be a plea for world peace and an end to the war in Vietnam. It sounded like a stroke of genius at the moment, but throughout the fall, when the recording should have been prepared, Derek was unable to get in touch with John. We assumed that most of the time he was too drugged to come to the phone. Soon, it was the beginning of December, the magazine had been advertising the flimsy for a month, and there was still no message. The magazine’s solicitors had already been on the phone with me, threatening an expensive lawsuit.

After Derck practically begged the household staff, John finally came to the phone. Derek explained the problem to him and the urgency of taping a simple message, even if it was over the phone. John sounded very tired and stoned. “I have a recording for you,” he told Derek. “Have somebody come here and pick it up.”

A few days later Derek invited the magazine editors and their lawyers to 3 Savile Row. Derek asked them to sit in a row of chairs in front of huge, studio-quality speakers. He said, “This is John and Yoko’s contribution for a Christmas message,” and turned on a tape. The room was filled with the sound of a baby’s heartbeat growing fainter and weaker until it slowed to silence. Derek said, “And then the baby died.”

The magazine people were incredulous. “This has to be some sort of monstrous joke,” one of them said.

“No, it’s no joke,” Derek said. “It’s unique, it’s them, it’s authentic, and it’s yours for free. What can I tell you? That’s my story.”

Apple was sued by the magazine for damages. The case was eventually settled out of court. At the time of the settlement, Derek wrote a memo that was circulated throughout Apple. It said: “If I’m to be held responsible for this, take it out of my salary. You know where to find me. Derek.”

That New Year’s Eve
was rather sad. It didn’t really dawn on them that the end was coming yet, but it was obvious that things weren’t what they used to be. It had become a New Year’s Eve tradition for all of us from Liverpool to celebrate together, frequently at Cilia Black’s large terraced flat on Portland Place. These celebrations were befittingly warm, noisy affairs. In the northern tradition, just before midnight the “darkest” member of the house is sent outside with a piece of bread and coal, symbolizing food and warmth, and is then the first person let inside after midnight. The previous year Ringo had been sent out into the snowy London street and we had been having such a good time, we forgot about him for half an hour, until the sound of the doorbell was finally heard over the revelry.

But this year the celebratory mood was subdued. Cynthia was gone. So, of course, was Brian. John and Yoko didn’t show up. Ringo was growing bored with Maureen. And now Jane Asher was missing, too. In her place was Linda Eastman, whose tenacity had triumphed in landing her a Beatle. And now George and Pattie seemed to be having a hard time of it. Rumors were rife that George had lots of girlfriends on the side, while Pattie sat home and played the good hausfrau. The young couple spent most of New Year’s Eve arguing, and at midnight Pattie was locked in the bathroom, crying.

The Beatles’ spirits were not much higher when on January 2 they assembled at a cold and dreary sound stage at the Twickenham Film Studios to begin work on a new album and documentary tentatively titled
Get Back,
later renamed
Let It Be.

Get Back
was once again mostly Paul’s idea. Paul increasingly regretted the Beatles’ decision to stop touring. The Beatles had lost contact with their audiences, and he felt that was a mistake. His creativity was nurtured by the immediate feedback of a live audience. That public adulation was half the fun of being a musician, he felt, and his need for the sound of applause was so strong that one day, high on LSD, he stopped at a roadside pub in Bedfordshire and played the piano for the delighted patrons. Paul had decided that it was important for the Beades to “get back to their roots,” and that’s what
Get Back
was supposed to be.

However, the idea of a huge tour was greeted with great reluctance by the others, and it was whittled down to having a documentary filmed of them making the album, capped by a single live performance. Paul wanted to justify the idea of one show by holding it in some grandiose location. A Tunisian amphitheater was considered but dismissed as impractical, as was holding the concert on an ocean liner in the middle of the Atlantic. John’s personal suggestion was that they hold the concert in a “lunatic asylum,” and perhaps he was right. The Beatles needed their heads examined to embark on such a project.

An angry and tense atmosphere hung over the whole project from the start. Twickenham Studios was an awful place to be in early January. The Beatles were brought there early every morning—while they preferred to meet at night—and put under the scrutiny of two 16-mm cameras filming their every move. “We couldn’t get into it,” John remembered. “It was a dreadful, dreadful feeling in Twickenham Studios being filmed all the time. You couldn’t make music at eight in the morning, or ten, or whatever it was, with people filming you and colored lights.”

Paul played the part of the schoolmarm, coaxing them to work. He took it upon himself to tell John, George, and Ringo just what to play on each song, explaining each drum set, guitar line or vocal. He blatantly treated the others as his backup group. It was all the more insulting because the cameras were rolling all the time. Most of the vitriol among them was cut out, but the finished film captures Paul lecturing, “We’ve been very negative since Mr. Epstein passed away. The only way for it not to be a bit of a drag is for the four of us to think: Should we make it positive or should we forget it? Mr. Epstein said, sort of, ‘Get suits on,’ and we did. We were always fighting that discipline a bit, but it’s silly to fight that discipline if it’s our own. I think we need a bit more if we’re going to get on with it.”

In ten days at the Twickenham Studios the Beatles ran through scores of songs from their roots, most of them, like “Johnny B. Goode” and “Roll Over Beethoven,” dredged up from the Hamburg days. But it soon became apparent they were going nowhere. They all agreed that recording on a mobile unit at Twickenham was impossible and that they’d better move into either EMI’s Abbey Road studio or their own newly built one in the basement of Apple.

When they arrived at the Apple studios to begin recording, they were in for a shock. The 78-track studio that Magic Alex was building wasn’t exactly ready. In fact, not only weren’t there 78 tracks, there were no tracks at all. The recording machines that Alex was purportedly building for them from scratch had not been installed. Not only that, they had arrived direct from a German manufacturer with the manufacturer’s name on them, although Alex had claimed the machines were being built to his specifications. Added to that, the heating and ventilating equipment for the entire building was located in a corner of the studio; it wheezed and hummed so loudly that it precluded any recording in there. Alex had even forgotten to install an intercom system between the studio and the control booth.

A team of acoustical experts and sound technicians were rushed to 3 Savile Row to correct all the problems. To save time a mobile unit was moved in to record on. Once again the cameras and lights were turned on, and the Beatles returned to the studio. After spending another week or two laying down some basic tracks, it became apparent things weren’t going much better than at Twickenham. A kind of hostile lethargy characterized the sessions. One morning Paul stopped everything and said, “We’ve been going round and round for an hour. I think it’s a question of either we do it or we go home.” Then he told George how to play the guitar, and George cracked.

“Look,” he said angrily, “I’ll play whatever you want me to play, or I won’t play at all. Whatever it is that’ll please you, I’ll do it!” When they broke for lunch, George got in his car and went home to Esher. When he walked in the door he said to Pattie, “I’ve quit the group. The Beatles are over.”