by Ken McNab
Klein retreated to the shadows to lick his wounds while Lennon and McCartney were forced to come to the grim and heartbreaking realisation that the songs they had written, the songs that had provided the soundtrack to a generation, were lost to those ‘men in suits sitting on their fat arses in the city’. Songs like ‘Yesterday’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘Day Tripper’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘A Day In The Life’ would now yield a multi-million pound future harvest for faceless stock market speculators, City institutions and one tragic pop star, Michael Jackson, for years to come.
Over the next few months, Klein continued to cling to hopes of brokering a deal with Grade, but the truth was that he had been trumped. Northern Songs had followed Nems out the door. He still, however, retained one vital card that might at least redeem him in the eyes of his clients. EMI and Capitol had signalled they were ready to resume talks over renegotiating The Beatles’ royalty rates. It was the one window of opportunity Klein had been waiting for.
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Throughout May, Lennon remained seriously conflicted over the future direction of his career. Acrimony seemed to leap out of every corner, especially when it came to his increasingly polarised relationship with McCartney. One minute he was trying to rekindle a lost magic in the studio; the next he found himself in a boardroom hurling venomous insults at his erstwhile partner and his new ‘bourgeoisie’ American family.
‘I quite fancy giving some live shows, but Ringo doesn’t because he says, you know, “It’ll just be the same when we get on, nothing different,”’ he told one interviewer early in May. ‘I can’t give you any definite plans for a live show when we’re not even agreed on it. We’ve got to come to an agreement. For a start, there’s too much going on now for us to even talk realistically about going on tour.’
Despite worries about his personal finances, he splashed out a reported £145,000 on Tittenhurst Park, a twenty-six-room Grade Two-listed Georgian pile set in seventy-two acres of lush Berkshire countryside. The house had previously been home to Peter Cadbury, a non-conformist member of the famous chocolate-making family. Lennon commissioned extensive and expensive refurbishment work, including the installation of a state-of-the-art recording studio.
On the music front, ‘Get Back’ remained in limbo, unloved and unfinished; Lennon continued to look to Yoko to provide the creative counterpoint that had once been McCartney; Harrison, having stockpiled a bank of new songs, was already glimpsing a road ahead without The Beatles. Indeed, on 11 May he worked with Cream’s bassist Jack Bruce on a song for his first solo album. Starr, his work on The Magic Christian finally in the can, saw movies as a potential new outlet to put his name up in lights instead of being seen as the lowest rung on a four-step ladder.
McCartney, preparing for fatherhood and getting acquainted with the role of stepdad to Linda’s daughter Heather, headed for Corfu with his wife on a month-long break. Before departing, the couple made a lightning trip up to Liverpool to see his dad. After that, Paul was happy to shut out Apple, Klein and The Beatles.
The ninth of May – the date of the seismic bust-up between McCartney and the others – was the last time they would be in the studio together for the foreseeable future. That particular day also saw the release of two Beatle solo albums; but anyone looking for a Pepper or even a Magical Mystery Tour was browsing in the wrong record store.
Harrison’s Electronic Sound did exactly what it said on the cover. It was no more than two lengthy tracks consisting of beeps and bleeps inspired by his new Moog synthesiser. It reeked of self-indulgence, the kind of arrogance that suggested a Beatle could commit any old rubbish to tape and still think the fans would love it.
Lennon’s Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With The Lions, meanwhile, was the unofficial follow-up to Two Virgins. Side one contained the music recorded in Cambridge in March. The flipside was, by any measure, an even harder listen; it included a track called ‘Baby’s Heartbeat’, which captured in Yoko’s womb the heartbeat of John Ono Lennon II, the child she had miscarried the previous November.
Both albums were released on Zapple, the label that would soon become part of Klein’s kill list. And both had zero commercial appeal. Neither of them troubled the loftier reaches of the British or American charts, and nor were they meant to. But while Harrison stayed off the grid, Lennon was happy to use the record to bring the John-and-Yoko publicity machine out of mothballs.
Since the Amsterdam bed-in, he had been keen to maintain his image – on student campuses around the globe, at least – as the Maverick Beatle, the one most fully in tune with anti-authoritarian agendas. Now he wanted to broadcast his peace message to a transatlantic audience, one he was convinced would take him and Yoko more seriously than did their European counterparts, who dismissed them as eccentric buffoons.
In an interview on 8 May with David Wigg for the BBC Radio One show, Scene and Heard, he said, ‘The Beatles are treated like Britain’s children, you know. And it’s okay for the family to insult us. But you try . . . see what happens if abroad starts insulting us. The British will stick up for us. And it’s just like a family. And it’s all right for them to slap our face, but if the neighbour does it, you watch out, you know. It’s always been like that. And George was very depressed and it is depressing when the whole family’s picking on you, you know. Whether it’s because he did something wrong. I don’t believe in hitting the child, you know. We do get hurt because Britain appreciates us least, you know. But we can’t help that. But at least we can live here in peace you know, really.’
He also touched unflinchingly on a subject most rock stars veered away from: his own mortality. Asked how he would deal with a life shorn of fame and the trappings that come with it, he was characteristically honest. ‘I’d like to live to a ripe old age, with Yoko only, you know. And I’m not afraid of dying. I don’t know how it’d feel at the moment. But I’m prepared for death because I don’t believe in it. I think it’s just getting out of one car and getting into another.’
By May, American universities including Stanford, Harvard and Cornell were a hotbed of political agitation, sit-ins and a source of violent protests over Vietnam, civil rights, apartheid and nuclear weapons. Ranged against them was a five-month-old Richard Nixon Republican administration and a House of Congress in no mood for compromise with ‘those little bastards’, as the American president called them. ‘The time has come for an end to patience,’ said White House attack dog, Attorney-General John Mitchell. ‘I call for an end to minority tyranny – and for an immediate reestablishment of civil peace and protection of individual rights.’
It was precisely the type of David v. Goliath setting that touched on Lennon’s belief in power to the people. Then an opportunity arose for the Lennons to mix business with pleasure.
Starr, along with Peter Sellers, was due on board the newly launched Cunard liner the QE2, sailing from Southampton to New York. The all-expenses-paid trip was a gift from Commonwealth United, the company behind The Magic Christian, as a reward for helping to bring the film in under budget and ahead of schedule.
‘All the sailors were from Liverpool so I went down to their quarters,’ recalled Starr. ‘I was with Terry Southern, who became a good friend, and we were on our way to the Bahamas. The QE2’s crew band had a little stage in their hangout room, so I got up and played with them. They played a Beatles number and I didn’t stop in the right place, where it had a break, so they turned and shouted at me. I said, “I don’t remember them all!”’
The Lennons also tried to book passage on the ship, a bold statement of Sixties Cool Britannia, with a view to holding another bed-in in the Big Apple, but an unexpected hitch scuppered their plans. When he enquired about a US visa, American immigration officials in London vetoed Lennon’s request on the grounds that his 1968 conviction for drug possession made him an illegal alien and an unwanted visitor to the land of the free.
Undaunted, the couple, with John playing paterfamilias to Yoko’s daughter Kyoko, fr
om her marriage to Tony Cox, quickly made alternative arrangements to fly to the Bahamas which, as an oh-so-British colony, imposed no such legal restrictions on their arrival, and which lay just under two hundred miles off the Florida coast. They reckoned it was the perfect place from which to launch a new media blitz on the American mainland.
But the Bahamas largely existed in splendid isolation from the world’s press and could in no way provide the window to the world the Lennons were seeking. That realisation dawned on them after just one night in the Sheraton Oceanus Hotel. The stifling heat also proved too much for Yoko.
So the couple, complete with twenty-six pieces of luggage, a twoman film crew and Yoko’s assistant, Anthony Fawcett, were back in the air and heading north, this time to Canada. Upon disembarking at Toronto they were quickly ushered into a holding room by suspicious immigration officials for two hours. They were haughtily informed that the drug conviction that blocked their entry into the US also applied to Canada, though, commendably, they were granted ten days’ access pending an appeal. That gave them enough leeway to head first to Toronto’s King Edward Sheraton Hotel for an overnight stay before flying on to Montreal at 9.55 p.m. on 26 May where they arrived at midnight outside the equally patriotic-sounding Queen Elizabeth Hotel, and took over three suites on the seventeenth floor.
The Hilton-owned establishment, like the one in Amsterdam, was one of the grandest in the city and no stranger to celebrity. The Queen had already stayed at the hotel that, controversially in the French-speaking province, had been named after her. Other famous names in the register included Fidel Castro, Princess Grace of Monaco and Charles de Gaulle. But no one was prepared for the arrival of the John and Yoko peace circus.
Among the other late arrivals was Apple press officer-turned-minder Derek Taylor, who had flown in from New York after being among Starr’s party on the QE2. For the next seven days, room 1742 was given over to peace as Lennon turned it into a big top for his own circus. This week would do more to shape Lennon’s life – and his legacy – since that fateful summer of 1957 when he first clapped eyes on a fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney.
On the first day alone there were over fifty journalists, photographers, disc jockeys and camera crews all jostling for his attention. Mostly, they were serious and attentive and devoid of the cynicism that had largely accompanied the Amsterdam bedin. Lennon was confident and passionate. His appearance was commanding, almost Messiah-like as he delivered sermon after sermon.
Inside the crowded suite, Lennon and Yoko sat peacefully holding hands, surrounded by pink and white carnations, record players, film equipment, empty glasses and busy phones. Two books lay on a table – Vladimir Nabokov’s The Defence and a personally autographed copy of Jacqueline Susann’s latest voyeuristic masterpiece, The Love Machine. (Earlier, Miss Susann, who had also written Valley of the Dolls, had dropped by to pass on her good wishes and to cash in on the publicity of the Lennon visit.)
Yoko wore a white blouse and cream slacks with no shoes, and Lennon, also barefoot, had on a white T-shirt with a green stripe on the sleeves, cream trousers, white socks with red and blue stripes, and, round his neck, a gold chain, from which dangled a crucifix. A pair of white sneakers lay on the floor beneath his knees.
The couple were at ease with the press. Lennon fielded sceptical questions about his peace-making efforts with adroitness and peppery wit. They were obviously sincere in their campaign for peace and non-violence but bitter about the United States’ refusal to admit John. ‘The whole effect of our bed-ins has made people talk about peace,’ he said as he toyed with a white carnation. ‘We’re trying to interest young people into doing something for peace. But it must be done by non-violent means – otherwise there can only be chaos. We’re saying to the young people . . . and they have always been the hippest ones . . . we’re telling them to get the message across to the squares. A lot of young people have been ignoring the squares when they should be helping them. The whole scene has become too serious and too intellectual.’
What about talking to the people who make the decisions – the powerbrokers, suggested a cynical reporter. Lennon laughed. ‘Shit, talk? Talk about what? It doesn’t happen like that. In the US, the government is too busy talking about how to keep me out. If I’m a joke, as they say, and not important, why don’t they just let me in? We are both artists! Peace is our art. We believe that because of everything I was as a Beatle and everything that we are now, we stand a chance of influencing other young people. And it is they who will rule the world tomorrow.’ The room quickly became the backdrop to a varied cast of visitors that included the serious to the downright curious.
Among those swearing fealty were American comedian Tommy Smothers, civil rights activist Dick Gregory, Harvard professor cum hippie guru Timothy Leary, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and DJ Murray the K – a leftover from the days of Beatlemania. There was a constant drip of open-mouthed students and shaven-headed devotees in saffron robes from the local Hare Krishna temple, whose bell-ringing and intermittent chanting added another surreal aspect to the proceedings. Less starstruck was a local rabbi, Abraham Feinberg, with whom Lennon struck up a brief but respectful acquaintanceship. And in the middle, dressed in the same pyjamas they had worn in Amsterdam. were ‘the world’s clowns’. But there was nothing funny about the message, which by now was daubed on walls, pillows, scraps of paper and piles of doodles strewn on the floor as in Amsterdam.
Derek Taylor said, ‘They made themselves completely available to anybody on Earth who wanted to come into their bedroom, provided they were not carrying a blood-stained axe. Maybe they came in thousands, it certainly felt like it. My job was to be around day and night while they were in bed.’
Across the pond, the Lennons’ peace campaign was accepted with courtesy and a degree of reverence from a more liberal-minded press corps. Instead of sneers and finger-pointing (though one venomous and villainous exception was yet to appear), the message was treated seriously by print and broadcast outlets. Very few of them mentioned the dreaded B-word.
Montreal was only sixty miles from the American-Canadian border, or an hour’s flight from New York, making it fairly easy for media big-hitters to make the pilgrimage. Ritchie Yorke, a young rock writer with the Toronto Globe and Mail, was still earning his journalistic stripes but he knew a good story when he saw one, and he persuaded his editors to let him join the Lennon entourage as it headed to Montreal. Yorke, who would become one of the couple’s closest media confidants, recalled: ‘It was an extremely colourful scene – a potted purple gloxinia plant, signs, placards, and proclamations covering the walls, John’s guitar, candles, other burning objects and an expanding set of lyrics to a new and emerging Lennon song.’
Lennon had already accidentally hit on a simple but affecting new slogan, which scanned so well: ‘Give Peace A Chance.’ Like ‘All You Need Is Love’, it was a lightning-in-a-bottle-moment. Four words that perfectly caught the mood swirling inside room 1742 and the zeitgeist of 1969. Soon it became a rallying cry that was repeated to every newspaper journalist and radio broadcaster within earshot. The message became a mantra – and the mantra became a melody.
To begin with, all he had was a chorus: ‘All we are saying, is give peace a chance.’ At one point he toyed with the notion of keeping the song as lyrically sparse as ‘I Want You’. Reaching for his Gibson guitar, he began to flesh out the text . . . Bagism . . . Shagism . . . Dragism . . . Madism . . . Ragism . . . Tagism. What did it matter if it read like garbage? What really counted was the message.
At one point the word ‘masturbation’ was to be slyly inserted, but he was fed up being burnt by the censors over his lyrics. The ‘Ballad Of John And Yoko’ single was due to be released in the UK on 28 May (complete with Yoko on the cover alongside the four Beatles) and would undoubtedly spark a furious reaction over the line ‘they’re gonna crucify me’. So he replaced the offending word with ‘mastication’, even though he hadn’t a clue what it meant.
The problem now was what to do with the song he hoped would give him the same kind of street cred Bob Dylan had initially enjoyed as a ‘serious’ songwriter and political troubadour. In his heart, he wanted to write a song that would at least match Dylan’s version of the traditional protest song ‘We Shall Overcome’.
He was keen to record right away but a hotel bedroom in Montreal was a long way from Studio Two at Abbey Road. Surely someone, somewhere in Montreal should be able to record it? Calls were quickly relayed to Capitol Records of Canada, which, luckily, had a branch office in Montreal. Eventually, they reached a producer called Andre Perry, the company’s go-to-guy in Canada’s second-biggest city: ‘Would you like to record a song with John Lennon?’
Meanwhile, music was also on the mind of Timothy Leary, the LSD advocate whose hippie refrain telling students to ‘turn on, tune in and drop out’ had made him the unexpected spokesman for mid-Sixties, disaffected American youth and, in turn, the scourge of their parents. In 1966, he had declared Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr to be like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who would usher in a new world order. His precise words were: ‘I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen.’ Proof, if any were needed, of the mind-altering qualities of lysergic acid diethylamide.
Leary had co-authored a book, The Psychedelic Experience, which was said to have borrowed liberally from the ancient Tibetan Book of the Dead. Lennon read Leary’s work and used it as a lyrical and musical jumping-off point for ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, the eerie closure to Revolver that signposted The Beatles’ chemically-friendly future. Three years later, Leary and Lennon found themselves putting the world to rights in a Montreal hotel room.
