by Ken McNab
Pattie came out to wave him off, and spoke briefly to Eric, but Harrison, in his excitement, barely acknowledged her as he boarded the bus – another indication of the faultlines running through his marriage. Right away he sought out the company of Clapton. But he was guilelessly unaware of the feelings that had already begun shaping what would become rock music’s most notorious ménage à trois between his closest friend and his wife of four years.
The tour saw the band play two shows a night as it swung through a number of provincial English towns and cities over the next five days before crossing the North Sea for a couple of shows in Scandinavia.
Harrison made his debut at Bristol’s Colston Hall, where hardly anyone noticed the rhythm guitarist standing almost sullenly at the back, hidden by the stack of amps, his face a mask of concentration. Those who did recognise him were left open-mouthed at seeing a Beatle on stage again.
That first night was followed by Sheffield City Hall, a homecoming at Liverpool’s Empire Theatre, and Croydon’s Fairfield Halls on 7 December. The only show he missed was in Newcastle as he bailed on the band to visit his mother, whose illness was now beginning to give serious cause for concern. But he returned to the fold, which now included Billy Preston, for a wonderful show in Copenhagen on 10 December that was filmed and which managed to trap lightning in a bottle.
Harrison played it low-key, happy to tuck into bacon butties with everyone else at motorway service stations. At one stop, in South Yorkshire, he thought he had been rumbled. But when a waitress stopped and stared, it was at Clapton, not him. ‘He is famous, isn’t he?’ she asked George. ‘Oh yeah,’ Harrison deadpanned. ‘That’s the world’s most famous guitarist, Bert Weedon.’
He was experiencing the kind of musical liberation that he simply couldn’t get any more from The Beatles. No one in the band had the kind of hang-ups that Harrison experienced, specifically with John and Paul. Anonymity suited him fine – and everyone else in the band quickly sussed out that he didn’t expect or want any special treatment. He struck up an easy affinity with Rita Coolidge, who recalled: ‘George was such a profoundly gentle man and at the same time so charismatic . . . almost like a religious leader in a sense. He had such a magnetic kind of energy around him. But he was so soft spoken. To me, he was like a holy man, just his energy, his aura, everything about him was more beautiful than probably anybody else I had ever met. And at that time with his moustache and long beard he looked a holy man. I always felt like I was in the presence of greatness when I was around him. He was so very humble and sweet. Every time I got on the bus he would wait for me and sing “Lovely Rita” to me. It was so fabulous.’
As well as briefly breaking free from the shackles of his old life, Harrison was also able to explore the gospel-tinged music that infused Delaney and Bonnie’s repertoire. As the tour bus pinballed across England, he took every opportunity to soak up their church-hall influences. Hour after hour, he sat with Delaney Bramlett, picking his brains, trading licks and throwing out song ideas. One story suggested Delaney had taught him how to play the slide guitar that in time became his signature instrument, but the man himself denied this: ‘I didn’t teach him anything. George already knew how to play guitar, he just wanted to know my technique, what I thought about it and what I did. All I did was teach him my style of playing.’
But there is no doubt that playing with Delaney and Bonnie changed Harrison for ever. Of course, it worked both ways. On other nights, round an imaginary campfire, everyone sat in rapt attention as Harrison told war stories of being in the eye of the Beatlemania storm. One night after a show the Fabs’ resident mystic pointedly steered the conversation towards the gospel influences that were the bedrock of Bonnie and Delaney’s output. What followed next was an informal discussion, the consequences of which would haunt Harrison for years.
In an interview with Harrison biographer Marc Shapiro, Bramlett alleged: ‘George came up to me one night after a show on that tour and said, “You write a lot of gospel songs and I’d like to know what inspires you to do that.” And so I gave him my explanation. I told him that I get things from the Bible, from what a preacher may say or just the feelings I felt toward God. George said, “Well, can you give me a for instance?” He wanted to know how I would start.
‘So I grabbed my guitar and started playing The Chiffons’ melody from “She’s So Fine” and then sang the words, ‘My Sweet Lord/Oh My Lord/I just wanna be with you’. George said, “Okay.” Then I said, “Then you praise the Lord in your own way”.
‘As it happened, Rita Coolidge, who was on the tour, and my wife at the time – Bonnie – were sitting there and so I told them that when we got to this one part, they should sing ‘Hallelujah’. They did. We ran down the example a few times. George seemed satisfied. He said okay and that was the end of it.’
Except, of course, it wasn’t. Whatever the truth of the matter, it wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, that Harrison would find himself accused of stealing biscuits from another musician’s cookie jar. But Delaney also found himself the beneficiary of Harrison’s generosity in another way. When the tour ended, Harrison handed the American his prized Telecaster guitar as a sign of his gratitude for being allowed to play with a grown-up band. Bramlett later sold it for half a million dollars, though in time it made its way back to the Harrison family.
The tour wound up on 12 December in Copenhagen, the last of three nights in the city. By now tour posters heralded the group as ‘Delaney and Bonnie and Friends with Eric Clapton and George Harrison’, who now felt confident enough to take the odd solo and prove his chops alongside the guitar gunslinger known as God to his fans. But before their amps had the chance to cool down, the band found itself answering an SOS from another Beatle.
Lennon and Yoko had agreed to a request to put together a charity show at London’s Lyceum Ballroom on 15 December in aid of UNICEF. Sensing the opportunity for another publicity coup, Lennon went all out to try to rekindle the spirit of his peace concert in Toronto. He put a call into Clapton who, in turn, had little difficulty in rallying most of the Delaney and Bonnie band to take part. The big surprise was the appearance of Harrison who, normally, would have shunned any musical event involving the Lennons, especially if it meant enduring Yoko’s idiosyncratic performances.
The line-up also included Preston, Keith Moon as well as Plastic Ono Band members Klaus Voormann and Alan White. ‘I went down there in my Mini and went on stage at the Lyceum,’ recalled White. ‘Just prior to The Plastic Ono Band going on, Eric Clapton turns up with the whole Delaney & Bonnie band, so we had to hustle another couple of drum kits. Then, Keith Moon joins me on stage, playing my sixteen-inch tom-toms. It was a thing where somebody would hit one chord and it was a jam.’
Musically, it was a long way from good, despite the stellar ensemble. Playing in front of a massive ‘War Is Over’ poster – the Lennons’ latest peace mantra – they performed just two songs, the Toronto staples ‘Cold Turkey’ and ‘Don’t Worry Kyoko’. The rest of the show quickly descended into an ear-splitting and self-indulgent free-for-all where bum notes flew like empty bottles in a bar-room brawl. In time-honoured fashion, Yoko emerged from a sack in the front of the stage, much to Delaney and Bonnie’s amusement. ‘It was just bizarre,’ recalled Bramlett. Harrison rolled his eyes and discreetly took his leave. It had been a rare, awkward moment of musical détente between the two Beatles. But the pictures, showing a sullen-looking Harrison, spoke volumes. It was the last time he would ever appear on stage with John Lennon.
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And all he had to do was act naturally. Ringo Starr may not have been the most photogenic Fab, but the movie camera loved him. A natural ham, his dry Scouse wit and comedic spontaneity had long marked him out as the Beatle most at ease on a film set. Outwith The Beatles’ own celluloid adventures in A Hard Day’s Night, Help! and the credit-rolling cameo at the end of Yellow Submarine, Starr had also enjoyed a fleeting turn as a voyeuristic Mexican gardener, complete wit
h Zapata moustache, in Candy, the 1968 film adaptation of Terry Southern’s louche novel of the same name. Southern, a buccaneering and unconventional writer, was a pioneer of the gonzo journalism later popularised by the likes of Hunter S. Thompson. The Beatles were big fans, and installed Southern among the all-star cast that adorned the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The UK premiere of The Magic Christian was on 12 December – the same day as a charity album was released featuring The Beatles’ ‘Across The Universe’, and the same night as the last of Harrison’s Delaney and Bonnie gigs.
The film’s cast included a revolving door of Hollywood hotshots such as Yul Brynner, Roman Polanski and Lawrence Harvey, Sellers’ fellow Goon star Spike Milligan, comedienne Hattie Jacques, Graham Chapman and John Cleese (who were asked to carry out extensive, last-minute script rewrites) and Christopher Lee, billed as the ship’s vampire in a satirical nod to his Dracula days. Equally bizarre was the sight of a barely clad Raquel Welsh as a whip-wielding galley-slave dominatrix.
On paper, it looked a surefire winner using the formula of Southern + Beatle = box office bonanza. Somewhere along the line, though, there was a miscalculation. The Magic Christian sank largely without trace, although Starr’s laconic performance was one of its few redeeming elements. His goofy charm spared him the vitriol meted out by many reviewers, who savaged the film’s self-indulgent mediocrity.
More memorable was ‘Come And Get It’, the song gift-wrapped by Paul McCartney to Apple protégés Badfinger back in July that played out during the closing credits.
Encouraged by the reviews, and that his notices were better than Sellers’, Starr was convinced he could build on a twin-track career that carefully leavened music and films, especially given the fact that his day job was now officially in limbo. In fact, he touted himself for the part of Samwise Gamjee if anyone ever came up with a film adaptation of Lord of the Rings, a project that The Beatles had once seriously mulled over during a night of heavy pot smoking.
But there was never any doubt in Starr’s own mind as to which role was the greater priority. ‘I am a Beatle,’ he said ahead of the film’s opening night, maintaining the party line after Lennon called it quits. ‘If it comes to a toss between doing a film and making a Beatles album, I’ll do the album. But I don’t mean the film business is just a hobby to me. I’m deadly serious about it. I hope I’m learning about acting from Peter. I’ve never studied anything and everything’s worked out. I never studied the drums. I think it can harm you to study things because you’re only learning about what other people think about it, instead of what you think about it yourself . . . I’ll pick up some things, but I’ll do them my way, because I am me.’
Joe McGrath, the film’s director, had cut his cinematic teeth by working with The Beatles on A Hard Day’s Night and Help! before going on to direct pioneering promo clips for the singles ‘Ticket To Ride’, ‘Help!’ and ‘Day Tripper’. He said, ‘I thought Ringo was the star of the film. He was extremely disciplined, always showed up on time, knew his lines. He was obviously cast to help the box office but he more than held his own against some of the big names.’
Meanwhile, on 16 December, twenty-four hours after what would be The Plastic Ono Band’s last British performance with John out front, the Lennons flew to Canada. They both felt a special bond with the nation governed by a young and progressive prime minister in the shape of Pierre Trudeau, whose careful nurturing of the youth vote had been key to him winning the country’s 1968 election. The principal aim of the visit was to announce the fine details of an event that, ultimately, would never get off the ground – the proposed Toronto Peace Festival, which Lennon name checked at every media opportunity.
This was their third visit to Canada in ten months. And, as on the two previous occasions, the agenda was driven by global conciliation and by a new soundbite – ‘War Is Over If You Want It’. The Lennons spent a small fortune – the tab was picked up by Apple on Klein’s instructions – plastering it across giant billboards in twelve of the world’s major cities, including Paris, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Tokyo, Hong Kong – and, of course, New York, guaranteeing it would not be missed by America’s Nixon administration, the main target of the message.
The FBI file on Lennon now carried heavy-duty observations, fuelled in no small way by J. Edgar Hoover’s paranoia about rock stars who were looking, he believed, to tear down the pillars of American democracy. To that end, Uncle Sam’s door remained firmly shut to a man who was a convicted drug felon, a threat to the government and probably a secret Communist, according to the US president.
The British press again lined up behind the establishment to target Lennon’s activism. ‘There is an unfortunate image of hippy earnestness directing liberal causes from the deep upholstery of a Beatle’s income,’ sniffed The Times that month. Canada’s more liberal officials, thankfully, took a different view from its neighbours. Over the next seven days, the couple were fêted and fawned over by politicians, TV talk show hosts, Canada’s leading newspaper commentators, and the likes of Marshall McLuhan, Canada’s preeminent media theorist and a confessed supporter of the Lennons’ campaigning.
Flattered by the attention, Lennon was aware that the message, now taken very seriously, was at last transcending the medium – and the image. The visit was, perhaps, the high watermark of his peace activities. McLuhan, for one, got right to the heart of the matter. He told Lennon: ‘That’s the problem, coz the minute you’ve got long hair and the minute you’re popular with the kids, the whole adult on the other side of the gap says, you know, you’re a bunch of left-wing communists and that.’
Lennon replied: ‘Well, the communist fear is that and the American paranoia mainly, it’s not too bad in Europe, it’s a joke, you know. I mean, we laugh at America’s fear of communists. It’s like the Americans aren’t going to be overrun by communists. They’re gonna fall from within, you know. And that’s a point. People say, why have you got long hair or why did, when you gave the MBE back, you know, we . . . I worded it against, I’m returning this MBE because of Britain’s part, in protest against Britain’s participation in the Biafra Nigeria thing, you know, that’s the way I speak. I just wrote it as I speak. And Britain’s policy supporting US in Vietnam and “Cold Turkey” slipping down the charts.’
He continued: ‘A lot of people say, now, if you had only done it straight, it would have been much more effective. And it’s the same as if you’d only get your hair cut and wear a straight suit, you’d be more effective. One, I wouldn’t be myself. Two, I don’t believe people believe politicians, especially the youth. They’ve had enough of short hair and suits saying this is, as if, you know . . . It’s like . . . is every priest a holy man just coz he’s got a dog collar on, you know. Nobody believes that any more. And we do this intuitively. But after we’ve done it for a few times, we always had some irrelevancy or something in the campaign, you know. And Yoko’s telling me about this ancient Chinese book that tells you how to conduct a battle. And it says the castle always falls from within. Never from without, you know, hardly ever, like America. And it also says, don’t have all the doors closed when you’re fighting, you know. Don’t have every door shut. Coz the enemy will put all the pressure on and you might crumple. Always leave one door open and the enemy will concentrate their fire there and then you’ll know where it’s coming. So our door open is long hair, nudism, nudity whatever the word is, mentioning “Cold Turkey” in such a serious thing as Biafra and Vietnam, you know, and let the people point their finger, you know. “Oh, he’s . . . they’re naked,” you know. “They look like freaks.” But it doesn’t interfere with the campaign, you know. Nobody attacks peace.’
During their stay, the Lennons holed up at a farm in Mississauga belonging to Ronnie Hawkins, the larger-than-life Arkansas-born singer-songwriter who had become a mentor to so many of Canada’s artistic elite. Most notably, of course, he was best known for his group, The Hawks, which had
slowly morphed into Dylan’s stellar touring group as The Band. The stay had been arranged by rock journalist Ritchie Yorke, a friend of both parties. The Lennons found Hawkins an absorbing and genial host. Naturally unfazed by their fame, he was happy to turn his property into the nerve centre for their latest media charm offensive. An extra sixteen phone lines were installed to allow Lennon to conduct interviews almost round the clock.
Later, Hawkins was stiffed for a $9,000 phone bill, but he didn’t care. He was happy to indulge the whims of ‘the most famous man on the planet’. During the day, when the lines went quiet, they zipped around his farm on snowmobiles, laughing at the absurdity of their lives. At night, Lennon spent hours signing dozens of erotic lithographs he had drawn of him and his wife in flagrante delicto while enjoying the odd acoustic jam with his host. They talked about everything – except the one thing Hawkins, like the rest of the world, wanted to know: were The Beatles finished?
In a 1996 interview with a Beatles fan website, Hawkins recalled the surrealism of briefly being caught in the matrix of John and Yoko’s manic existence. He recalled: ‘We were sittin’ in the TV room and the thing of the history of The Beatles when they were first arrived in the US . . . they had a little special on The Beatles and John had never seen it. John liked it. But they told me don’t ask anything about The Beatles. This was before the bust-up was known. But I knew John and Paul and them were not talkin’ even then. Everything was through their business managers. John was just nice. Yoko I didn’t understand because she was super intelligent. She was above a bar-act, which I was.
‘At that particular time, I thought I was doin’ them a favour. I didn’t know that anybody was that powerful. I thought The Beatles were an English group that got lucky. I didn’t know a lot about their music. But John was so powerful. I liked him. He wasn’t one of those hotshots, you know, all those other heavy metallers, you know how they act. John was a gentleman. Quiet, humble and polite. He wasn’t out of control.’
