Magical Mystery Tours

by Tony Bramwell

  “Uh, Tone, just going out for a bite,” John would mumble sheepishly, avoiding my eyes if I happened to bump into him. I would stand on the steps, shaking my head in disbelief as he strode off to some discrete local trattoria or the Japanese restaurant just across the road in Christopher Place, Yoko trotting to keep up with him. There was some problem over the Christmas period, which John spent at home with his family. Rumor has it that Yoko arrived at his electric gates at St. George’s Hill in rural Surrey and peered through. Lord and master of the house he might have been, but with Mrs. Powell and Aunt Mimi there for the holidays, not even John had the nerve to open the gates and let Yoko in.

  I don’t know when this seesaw relationship hatched—I can’t bring myself to say blossomed—into an affair. It was a lot sooner than John ever admitted, a lot earlier than the date engraved in the Lennon iconography, the famed Night of the Two Virgins. I believe it was after the fourteen-hour Rainbow event at Alexandra Palace. According to John’s chauffeur, Les Anthony, from that night John and Yoko regularly trysted—or bonked, as Les inelegantly put it—in the back of John’s Rolls Royce. Even though, conveniently, John commissioned a folding double bed in place of the backseat, I couldn’t see why they would need to put themselves to that degree of discomfort when Yoko had a perfectly good flat close to the action. Her husband, a con man she acted as if she despised, was no impediment to Yoko’s bedding arrangements; the opinion of her husbands had apparently never concerned her. Although it seemed that they no longer shared a bed, Tony ran around after Yoko at her every whim. Their friends said he treated her like a princess. After several self-confessed abortions, Yoko didn’t act like a natural mother with normal maternal instincts. It was Cox who looked after Kyoko. As a baby in New York, Kyoko had been left alone in their empty apartment while Cox and Yoko did their art thing.

  Tony Cox had a criminal history in America, going back to before he met Yoko. He had mixed in John Cage’s circles long before Yoko. In fact, he was said to have stolen Cage’s car and changed the registration, though no charges were laid. A drug deal involving the Mafia went wrong. On the run, with both the Mob and the FBI on his tail, Tony Cox got cash from the publishing account of La Monte Young, who published An Anthology, and headed for an aunt’s home in California. He had first heard about Yoko from La Monte Young, who explained that Toshi Ichiyanagi, Yoko’s Japanese husband, was a celebrated, award-winning composer and pianist whom she had met in New York and married, much against her autocratic family’s wishes. Toshi and Yoko were currently in Japan. Yoko came from an ancient and noble family, one of the wealthiest in Japan before the war, and had gone to school as a child with the emperor’s children. Cox surely homed in on one piece of information like an Exocet missile: Yoko’s father was the president of a Japanese-American bank in New York. With the words “bank president” ringing in his ears and believing that Yoko would be a useful contact, Cox used some of the money he’d taken from La Monte Young and set sail for Japan.

  The story continues that, to his dismay when he reached Tokyo, Cox found Yoko was in a secure psychiatric clinic after suffering deep depression and a severe mental breakdown. He still managed to get in to see her. She greeted him like a long-lost cousin and convinced him that she was a prisoner, fed heavy psychotropic drugs and unable to leave—which given the situation, was probably true. She saw in this American a tunnel out to the life she had grown accustomed to in New York. Between them, they hatched a plan to gain her freedom. Cox convinced the hospital director that he was a famous art critic and that he would inform the public of the way in which Yoko was being kept against her will. She was returned to her husband but was still mentally unstable. She and Cox met frequently at a cake shop in Tokyo where they wept over sweet rice cakes and tea as they talked nostalgically of the arty circle they had left behind in New York.

  It seemed like fate when some members of that very circle, including John Cage and David Tudor, arrived for a cultural tour of Japan. Toshi was signed up to play piano for them, while Yoko was to be their interpreter. On that tour, she became rather more than an interpreter. She inveigled herself into the performances and was photographed lying fully stretched on the piano in high heels and cocktail dress, her long hair dangling, while Cage played. By the end of the tour, Yoko was pregnant by Cox. As Peggy Guggenheim, who was also there, wrote in her memoirs: “I allowed Tony to come and sleep in the room I shared with Yoko. The result was a beautiful half-Japanese, half-American baby.”

  Cox moved into the apartment Yoko shared with Toshi and became the one allowed into Yoko’s bed, while Toshi slept on the floor. On November 28, 1962, Yoko bigamously married Cox at the American Embassy in Tokyo. Her family was appalled. They hired a lawyer and the mess was only fixed by Yoko “divorcing” Cox, divorcing Toshi, and then remarrying Cox. It seemed that whatever Yoko wanted, she achieved by any means. As Nixon once said, “There’s no substitute for perseverance.” In New York, just before sailing for London, the relationship between Cox and Yoko was sour because Tony didn’t want to go to London and Yoko did. They had several marriage-counseling sessions with the Reverend Al Carmines. Rev. Carmines was a well-known Greenwich Village celebrity who was as famous for his parties as for the arts events he put on in his church, in which Yoko and Tony were involved. According to him, the counseling sessions were fruitless because Yoko refused to back down. In joint sessions with her husband, at first she gave the impression of being the subservient wife, but when Carmines asked her to come on her own, she revealed her true nature. He said, “Yoko Ono has a relentlessness about her own urges that is almost religious. . . . She is a woman of steel . . . one of the strongest-willed individuals I have ever met . . . I was a little frightened of that . . . and in awe.”

  Now she wanted John Lennon. Sleeping with him in the flat she shared with Tony Cox and their child was nothing new. She was a Bohemian artist, after all. Cox had kited checks on several London banks by telling them that he was a filmmaker expecting funds. The film, proposed as a eulogy to naked bottoms, existed; but the funds did not. However, with a father-in-law who was president of a bank, it was easy to pull off the con but it was risky. Yoko’s visa had expired, and that winter of 1966–1967, a cold wind was whistling at their heels.

  Dan Richter, a brilliant American mime artist who choreographed the start of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and played the part of Moonwatcher, was very tight with Yoko and Tony Cox. He was privy to their furious arguments as well as their financial problems. He had first met the Coxes in Tokyo, where he was studying mime. I met him when he came to London and hung out at Indica. He took an apartment at 26 Hanover Gate Mansions, and told the homeless Coxes when the adjoining number 25 on the same floor became available. He was a close confidant of both of them. He said he heard all their hopes and schemes to hook John, at first as a financial “angel,” then, with dawning excitement, as a lover. What made the three of them even tighter was that they shared a common balcony overlooking the street and freely moved between both of their apartments. Often, Dan said, he would look down and see John’s black Mini parked in the street below. He said to me, “After a while, it was always there.” Eventually he moved to Ascot with John and Yoko and spent four years working with them on their film and music projects, including Imagine.

  According to Dan, Tony Cox actively encouraged the affair between John and Yoko as a means of survival. He said that Cox would tell Yoko to “go get Lennon.” When John proved elusive, as he was at first, Cox told Yoko she wasn’t trying hard enough. For her part, when she saw how close she was to capturing their prey, Yoko told Dan that they’d soon be rich beyond their wildest dreams. Often, when Yoko made love to John in their apartment, Cox would bring Kyoko along the balcony and they’d wait in number 26 with Dan. At some stage, Cox began to feel fragile, thinking he might get cut out. In all seriousness, he drew up an agreement that he insisted Yoko sign. This single-page document—which was drawn up and signed at Dan’s kitchen table—stated that when Y
oko hooked John, they would split any cash she got from the endeavor.

  One afternoon, John sidled furtively into my office and said, “Uh, Tone, are you doing anything?”

  “Right now, do you mean?” I asked.

  “When you’ve got a moment. I need you to do something . . . uh . . . confidential. I mean, secret, like.”

  “All right,” I said, wondering what mess he wanted me to get him out of. This wasn’t unusual. Like many young men of his age in the free and easy sixties, John was a demon for sex and had a contorted love life.

  “I left some . . . uh . . . things at that woman’s flat. I want you to go up there and get them back.” He thrust a brown paper carrier bag at me, the kind with string handles. “And return all this stuff that she’s given me.”

  I peered inside the bag. It appeared to be full of strange items made of cut-up cloth, wire coat hangers, folded paper and toilet rolls. On the top were some handmade cards with poems written in black ink, like black spiders crawling across the cards, and a few small books. It reminded me of a larger version of the kids’ jamboree bags that sweet shops sold, except there was no fizzy sherbet dip or blackjacks, just the booby prize. The penny was beginning to drop, as John said, “Take a taxi. She’s expecting me, so she’ll let you in. You know Hanover Gate Mansions, don’t you?”

  “Of course. Will she have your things ready?” I asked.

  “Well, probably not,” John replied, looking off.

  “I see. So what ‘stuff’ do you want back, John?” I said, sighing and getting to my feet. I wondered what I was getting myself into.

  “Personal stuff,” John said mysteriously.

  “What, like pajamas and things?” I asked. John smiled, relaxing a little.

  “Books,” he said. “And some shirts . . . uh . . . maybe some socks and a sweater. She can keep the toothbrush and razor.” He hesitated. If he’d been a small boy, he would have hopped from one foot to the other. Here comes the whammy, I thought. “And . . . uh . . . letters and written stuff, you know, Tone. That’s the most important. Stuff I’ve written.”

  I said, “Incriminating stuff, you mean? And she’s just gonna give it to me, is she?”

  Against my better judgment, I went to Hanover Mansions, and, like the Grand Old Duke who marched his men up the bloody hill and then down again because he was crazy, I didn’t get anywhere. I didn’t even get through the door. When I explained what I wanted, Yoko looked coolly at me and said, “It’s all mine. Tell him to come and get it himself.”

  It didn’t much matter because I was to have this kind of conversation with John several times where Yoko Ono was concerned, as he slipped faster and faster down the slippery slope that led to the divorce courts in the Strand.

  The production of Yellow Submarine had continued in the background to the confusion in the Beatles’ lives. They still hadn’t been anywhere near the film. They felt it was from a different era in their lives, on a contract with United Artists they’d outgrown and resented. They made their boredom quite obvious. In the end, even their voices were dubbed by various TV soap stars and film actors. However, when it was decided that a couple of minutes of film footage were needed to finish it off, their presence was insisted upon, and reluctantly, they drifted into the studios. They had no interest and even less enthusiasm, apart from when they needed two extra songs. Now, songs were another matter. Songs they could always come up with. (It was a different story at the premiere, which was the first time any of them had seen it. Then, it was “Wow, it’s really good, that! Why weren’t we more involved?”)

  By the beginning of February, the Beatles were hard at work in Abbey Road recording these additional songs. On February 11, they recorded “Hey Bulldog” at Abbey Road, while I filmed the entire process. We didn’t need any promo material for “Bulldog,” but Paul had also recorded “Lady Madonna,” the song he had written in memory of his mother, which did need some promotional film. I cut the “Bulldog” shoot, using the bits of the lads playing and sitting about in the studio, and we used that. Then it vanished, completely disappeared. We thought it had been stolen, as things often were if not nailed down. (Over thirty years later, in August 1999, my original film was rediscovered and used with a reissue of “Bulldog” to go with the revamped digital version of Yellow Submarine.)

  Despite the forays into the studio, John was still in turmoil over Yoko. She was impossible to ignore and seemed to pop up everywhere he turned. Once, she came to the studio. Somehow she conned her way in past the security guard, but at the last door was ejected. Instead of treading on hallowed turf, she suffered the ignominy of joining the Apple Scruffs huddled by the railings outside, among whom she remained silently for hours hoping that John would emerge. When it became obvious that he was in for an all-night session, she departed in a fury.

  “I will never be thrown out again,” she promised John the next time she waylaid him. I have visions of her going home and cooking up eye of newt and toe of frog, or perhaps making a juju doll and sticking in a few long pins, but none of the Beatles could have had an inkling of exactly what that promise meant to their future peace of mind.

  John panicked at the accumulating threats from the Princess of Darkness. That was when he decided to go to India with Cynthia to put some distance between himself and Yoko. If he stayed away long enough, he could hope Yoko would just go away. Maybe she’d go back to America, or vanish in a puff of smoke. Her scissors act might go horribly wrong, or while she was bagged up one day the Royal Mail might frank the bag and deliver it to anywhere but India. Yes, a long trip to the ashram, where he could meditate and learn how to be calm and in control, give up drugs and spend romantic moments with Cynthia and glue his crumbling marriage back together, seemed opportune.

  George, naturally, was very keen to go and had already packed his spice bag and a copy of Chanting without Tears. Paul, who embraced most new ideas, was also keen, although Jane was still as skeptical as she had been at Bangor. Ringo was deeply suspicious, particularly of the food he could expect at the ashram. I knew that he hated tomatoes and onions—the basis of many curries, which he also loathed—as he did yogurt and any fish that didn’t come wrapped in newspaper with chips. As insurance, so he told me, he was going to take a large suitcase filled with Heinz baked beans.

  “It’ll weigh a ton,” I said.

  “They have elephants to carry the stuff, don’t they?” Ringo asked. “If I can’t take my beans, I won’t go.” I smiled. Ringo was going to India for an “English” experience.

  A few days later, promising me a vast supply of 16mm film on their return, which I could edit into the entire Indian experience, the caravan of Beatles and Beatles’ wives and girlfriends flew out of Heathrow. A day or two after that, I got a telephone call from Paul, who was always the most organized one.

  “There’s some kind of embargo here on undeveloped film,” he said. “We’re only allowed a certain amount.” He wanted me to fly out to deal with it.

  I flew to Delhi where I set up an unofficial consulate in the luxurious Taj Hotel as Apple attaché. I wallowed in absolute luxury, pampered at every turn and dined like a king, while they were starving in the retreat at Rishikesh in the remote and beautiful foothills of the Himalayas. Except for Ringo, of course, who was living on baked beans. My most onerous task was channeling hundreds of reels of movie film and rolls of Kodachrome up the mountain so that the Beatles could film everything and take photographs of everything. I would send the film back to London in a nonstop shuttle that would not offend the curious regulations put in place by the Indian government to protect their film industry. I was to find out that India, rather like Russia, made wonderful film stock, top-class stuff, but they used loads of silver nitrate and cyanide in the process. The waste was dumped in the Ganges and had a remarkable knock-on effect on the environment. It killed all the crocodiles that traditionally took care of all the bodies that were floated off to heaven down the sacred stream. The result was that vast blockages of dead cr
ocs and people built up into dams downstream, not a pleasant concept.

  Thankfully, I was many miles away in Delhi, enjoying the cooling fountains and the scented air of the Taj Hotel, taking care of business, which also included sending a steady supply of magazines, music papers and the latest American records to the ashram via a courier. Even while meditating halfway up a mountain with their heads in the clouds, the Beatles wanted to keep in touch. I also forwarded their mail, including dozens of postcards from Yoko, who, even at that distance, still peppered John with her poems on a daily basis. To save any problems, I put these open cards in a plain manila envelope so Cynthia wouldn’t be upset.

  After a week, Denis O’Dell, accompanied by Magic Alex, turned up at my hotel in Delhi. Alex, whose luggage consisted of a small haversack containing screwdrivers and a few electronic bits and pieces, had been sent for by John to help the Maharishi build a miniature radio station that would beam the yogi’s message around the world. With any spare energy generated, they would light up the ashram and neighboring villages. I casually asked how he would achieve that with the few items what he had brought with him. It was like Yogi Bear and BooBoo.

  “Oh, India is very advanced electronically,” he assured me. “I can get everything I need here. I’ve studied physics, you know.” He might just as well have said, “Because I’m smarter than the average bear!” His big thing was that since the Maharishi was also a physics graduate, they would have a lot in common.

  Denis, whose hefty suitcase also contained more tinned treasures to be carried by Ringo’s obliging but nonexistent elephants, complained that the Beatles had left behind in London a stack of scripts under consideration. “But I’ve brought them all with me,” he said, indicating a suitcase that was bursting at the seams. “Stuck up there on top of that mountain, they can’t have much else to do but read.”