The Beatles were eager to make the first book of Tolkein’s Rings trilogy into a film and they were negotiating an option. They had already talked to the director, David Lean, but he was busy with Ryan’s Daughter. They approached Stanley Kubrick, but he didn’t think the books could be scripted. “I’m talking to Antonioni now,” said Denis, filling me in.
“I think you’ll find that the lads’ hands are full, Denis,” I said, but he wasn’t having any discouraging comments.
What we didn’t know—and would discover later on our return from India—was that UA had bought the option of Lord of the Rings behind our backs. Previously, they hadn’t even considered it, but as soon as they heard that the Beatles were negotiating the rights, they slid in and picked it up themselves. They gave it to Saul Zaentz, who would make a nasty dark little cartoon film out of Tolkein’s fabulous fantasy.
Unaware of this skulduggery, Denis left for the ashram, where he discovered that the Beatles were too high up in the clouds, literally, to care about films. George so desperately wanted to believe in this new religion that he called Denis into his hut and made him watch while he sat down cross-legged and levitated. When I asked Denis if he actually saw any space between George’s bottom and the concrete floor, he said evasively, “I’m not sure. George was wearing a robe, and it was very dark in his hut.” Denis was always very diplomatic.
He had planned on shooting a simple documentary at the ashram, but he and the Beatles quickly discovered that the Maharishi’s PR machine had gone into overdrive. The Maharishi had his own film division ready to cash in on his famous visitors and had sold the rights to ABC Television in America—which infuriated the Beatles. Before they had even gone to India, the Maharishi had been beating the drum about his new disciples. Denis had even flown to Sweden, where the Maharishi then was on a lecture tour, to lay down the ground rules: no films, no publicity, no endorsements.
Blithely, the Maharishi acted as if he hadn’t understood and continued to scarf up all the publicity he could, by selling the rights to deals which involved the Beatles, for lots of money. Denis returned to Sweden, this time with George and Paul, to again stress how seriously they felt about the ground rules; but to no avail. Knowing the kind of publicity freak he obviously was, it seemed contradictory of the Beatles to have continued their relationship with him. It seemed to me—and from what they said—that they were very earnest about meditation and Indian music, but found the Maharishi a faintly repulsive figure. They argued about it, but in the end they decided to give him the benefit of the doubt just in case he was some kind of magician and possessed some mystical secrets.
Denis had only been at the ashram for a day before other filmmakers arrived in droves and set up camp. Soon he was under siege, unable to film without fifty other opportunistic lenses zooming in. Probably he should have just had an anxiety attack and stayed home. The Beatles were also under siege and miserable, until they turned it into a game: “How to avoid the cameras.” Drugs also arrived with the newcomers and John at least forgot his intention to give them up. He soon discovered that meditation was a lot easier when stoned.
Then Roger Corman and his brother arrived. Roger had made films with a young Jack Nicholson, and was a bit of a star himself. Joe Massot was there. He made Wonderwall with Jane Birkin, with George contributing to the soundtrack, and would make a film with Led Zeppelin. The Maharishi was the biggest film contender of all because he had so much at stake. His yogi money-gathering people were top-notch, many of them trained at Harvard. He was asserting a lot of pressure on the Beatles as well as being guru. And of course the incredibly “inventive” Magic Alex was there. A disaster on two legs was Alexis Mardas, in that he was convincing, clever with words and apparently a good technician—but he conjured up inventions that weren’t possible at the time (if ever). He also wanted to make films. Naturally. Nothing was beyond Magic Alex’s new film division. As I recall, at the time he had been busy in London building burglarproof force fields with either colored air or compressed air for going around Beatle homes and lots of other “Heath Robinson-Mardas” things that turned out to be useless. He, like Yoko, was very aggressive about his wants and needs. Ringo saw through the whole thing. He knew far-fetched when he heard it and the others would have done well to listen to him from time to time. (Though he believed in Magic Alex at the time, George would eventually acknowledge, “there wasn’t anything he ever did, except he had a toilet with a radio in it, or something.”)
Alex constantly wandered around in the background stirring up things. With his gift for gab and his unlikely inventions, many of us—though certainly not John—thought that he was, to use George Martin’s term for him, preposterous. But then most of the people gathered out there were out to lunch, anyway. As for the film the Beatles shot, most of the footage was useless. There was no plan. It was all, “Hey, look what we did on our holidays, Mum.” When we came to view it, some people uncharitably said that just because it was filmed, didn’t make it sacred.
Ringo and Maureen fled the circus after ten days. It’s not that Ringo ran out of beans, more that he just hated everything, while Maureen had a phobia about insects. As they visibly relaxed in the luxurious surroundings of the hotel, Ringo remarked that John called the ashram “the Butlin’s of Bliss,” but, Ringo said, he was wrong. It was worse than Butlin’s. Maureen rolled her eyes expressively and hinted at worse horrors to come. I saw them to the airport and then returned to the hotel to await these horrors with interest. I didn’t have to wait long.
One evening I was peeling a mango when Paul and Jane turned up in a battered taxi with Mia Farrow and her younger sister, Prudence. The girls, whose glamorous mother, Maureen O’Sullivan, had started out playing Jane to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan, were angry and tearful and wanted to leave.
George and John, who as usual were spaced out on drugs, stayed on until John, caught unstoned for an hour or two, was filled in by his constant acolyte, Magic Alex, who said he had seen some salacious happenings involving candlelit suppers with the Maharishi and disarranged clothing. Alex asked almost ingenuously, “Why would the Maharishi want a double four-poster bed?”
However, a few people thought that Alex had latched onto the sexual rumors as a means of escape because the Maharishi—the physics graduate—had taken a keen interest in the proposed radio station. He asked many searching questions that Alex was unable to answer and the young Greek panicked. It was then that he insisted that they all had to leave immediately over the sexual shenanigans. For some reason, John was always easily influenced by Alex. He turned on the Maharishi and persuaded the others to walk out with him. The Maharishi had toured the world, recruiting the rich and the famous to come to Rishikesh. It wasn’t just the Beatles and their women sitting up there. It was a whole colony of would-be transcendentals, including some of the Beach Boys and Donovan.
In Delhi, discussing how they would present their trip to the world, they decided to simply keep their mouths shut. So on their return to England, the Beatles kept quiet and maintained a closed front about why they left the ashram. Paul told the press that he had gained a great deal of inner peace from the experience, and that he had been given a mantra—a kind of very personal inner voice—that he would always use. George remained a lifelong devotee, as did Pattie, and John, being John, said, “Whatever you do, you can always keep the good bits and throw out the crap,” which he did.
John’s words were ironic, because it seemed to me and to many of his friends that he was about to do just the opposite where the two women in his life were concerned. On the flight back from India, he had gotten very drunk and, for some reason, decided to confess all his affairs to Cynthia. Brutally, he ticked off a very long list, which included groupies, models, prostitutes, the wives and girlfriends of his and Cynthia’s friends and, possibly cruelest of all, Cynthia’s own girlfriends. Cynthia felt totally betrayed. As soon as they reached home, she packed and left with Julian, Magic Alex, Jenny Boyd, Donovan and his side-kick,
Gypsy Dave, to go to Greece, a place where she had been happy cruising the islands the previous summer. Although I could understand why Cynthia wanted to distance herself from John, it was to prove a very unfortunate decision for everyone concerned.
Nothing was lost or wasted of their Indian experience and revenge of a kind was gained when the Beatles started work on the White Album. (It was actually titled The Beatles but got the unofficial name because of its white-on-white sleeve.) “Sexy Sadie,” which was about the Maharishi, was a veiled reference to the goings-on at the ashram. However, the Beatles were keen to stress that they still supported the Maharishi. George never believed the stories anyway and poured millions into the Maharishi’s work in England. He even bought the Rothschilds’ huge mansion for them. He talked to John long and earnestly about the lessons they had learned, and eventually, John’s attitude softened. He agreed that the Maharishi was some kind of a prophet, and he even started using his mantra again. Paul also came round, though it took a lot longer. As recently as the spring of 2004 he went to see the Maharishi in Holland, for guidance.
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Paul was also about to experience a big change in his private life, one none of us saw coming. We all thought he and Jane would get married and settle down. He liked the idea of domesticity, a big happy family and a wife at home, someone who would replace the gap his mother had left by her death when he was so young. Perhaps the recent release of “Lady Madonna,” with its haunting air, had brought his pain back to him. I do think Paul was coming to realize, despite being so recently engaged after a five-year courtship, that Jane’s career was more important to her than he was.
On May 11, 1968, almost a year to the day since Paul had last seen Linda in London at the Sgt. Pepper launch party, he and John flew mob-handed to New York with Neil Aspinall, Ron Kass, Derek Taylor and Mal for four days to launch Apple Records and its associated companies in the U.S. Paul stayed with their New York lawyer, Nat Weiss, in his apartment on East Seventy-third Street. The others stayed in the St. Regis Hotel, where press interviews were held. On the fourteenth, the day they were flying out, they held a press conference at the Americana Hotel, and Linda was there, taking pictures. Paul was more than pleased to see her and made the first approach. “We met in London,” he said.
“Yes, I remember,” she acknowledged.
I was amused when Paul recounted this story. I mean, you would remember meeting a Beatle and hanging out with him, wouldn’t you? But Paul enjoyed her response since he was so tired of American women gushing all over him. Linda was refreshing.
Paul said that they were leaving, and asked her for her telephone number. She scribbled it on the back of one of her checks and, tearing it out, gave it to Paul, under no illusions that he’d keep it. Much to Linda’s surprise, the phone was ringing when she walked into her apartment.
“I’d like to see you tonight, but we’re tied up. Do you want to come along for the ride out to the airport tomorrow?” he asked.
Of course, Linda jumped at the chance. She sat with her camera bag in the middle of the car, between John and Paul, and snapped pictures. When she returned to the city in the limo with Neil Aspinall and Nat Weiss, she wasn’t sure what was happening. “Something was, but who knows what it was?” she said, still reluctant to believe that Paul McCartney was actually singling her out. Besides, with a living to earn and a young daughter, Heather, to take care of, she was far too busy for dreams. Linda was a down-to-earth lady, but she was also quite philosophical, believing in fate. What was intended would be. This was unlike Yoko, who philosophically believed that fate needed a kick in the ass.
While everyone was away, I was going through a very confused time in my private life, so welcomed some space. I was living with Diana Birchmore in a tiny mews house in Kinnerton Yard, the former stables of St. George’s Hospital in Belgravia and now the swish Lansdowne Hotel. Dee was Vic Lewis and Don Black’s secretary at NEMS. We had been together for a while, and were happy most of the time. When we had an argument, she would hop on the bus back to her mum’s in Muswell Hill, hoping I would miss her. I didn’t have the heart to tell Dee that I was also having an affair with a girl named Christine, whom I had met at the Speakeasy. Christine was beautiful in a fascinating way, great fun and very worldly, with a fabulous figure. Her flat was also conveniently close on the other side of Belgrave Square, behind St. George’s Hospital. She lived there during the week, and went home to her parents in Staines on the weekends. When Dee was working, or at her mum’s, Christine and I would have a great time at one of the regular haunts, the Speak, the Revolution or the Cromwellian, and then we’d go back to her place.
Everyone knew me around town. I was “the Beatles’ Tony,” so I had gotten used to the fact that some well-known people who were considered legends would introduce themselves to me in the hopes that I would be with a Beatle the next time we met. Despite this, I was still wet behind the ears because I think I was the last person in London to know that the girl I had been dating for several weeks was quite a celebrity, albeit one of a dubious variety. She had toppled the Minister of War from his post and almost brought down the government.
When we first met, she was just another girl at the clubs we went to. We’d have a chat and a drink and then we drifted into going out together in one of those casual on-off relationships that one had in those days. It was incredible because I just didn’t put her together with the big scandal until one day at the office Jack Oliver (who was an assistant in Apple Publishing), said, “I see you’re going out with Christine Keeler, then?”
I stared at him. “What did you say?”
Jack said, “You know, Christine Keeler.”
I said: “Keeler? Is that who she is?” As the penny dropped with a huge clunk, I said, “Oh, God! No wonder I’ve been getting all those funny looks. I thought my flies were open.”
Jack smiled.
People didn’t talk about many personal things. It was all very genteel back then. They just said to each other, “Oh, I see Tony’s going out with Christine Keeler, then?” Of course I was but nobody talked to me about it. When the writer and columnist Virginia Ironside had her biography out I sent her a note: “Do you remember me?” and she wrote back and said, “Of course I do. You used to pop round and have casual sex.” In her book she says she once made love to about fifty men in as many days. She says her diary went something like, “Tony B, Arthur, Tony B, someone else, can’t remember and Tony B . . .” And I’d thought I was the only one, such arrogance!
Christine suddenly felt too hot for me to handle. I eased out of our relationship and got back together with a girl called Rosemary Frankland, whom I had first met when she had a bit part in A Hard Day’s Night. Now she was Miss World. One morning, once again Jack Oliver—someone with whom I was on the same wavelength—said to me, “Got to hand it to you, Tone. You know how to pick ’em. Call girls, Miss World—wow!”
I said, “What’s up now? Are you jealous?” Jack shook his head sadly as if I were pretty slow on the uptake. He told me that Rose was Bob Hope’s secret mistress in London—except that she was not really a secret, except to Bob’s wife. (It turned out when Bob died that she wasn’t a secret to Bob’s wife, either.) She was on a tour entertaining the troops in Vietnam when Bob met her. He set her up with a nice flat and an allowance in London and when he came over, which was quite often, it was golf all day and Rose all night. It couldn’t have been much of a secret if Jack Oliver knew, but once again I was completely in the dark. The last time I bumped into her it was in California. I was with Bruce Springsteen and Phil Spector and she was with her new husband, Warren Entner, who was in the psychedelic group, the Grass Roots. They had six top-twenty hits in the U.S. between 1967 and 1971. The first was “Let’s Live for Today.” A couple of years ago Rosemary apparently committed suicide with a drink-and-drug overdose. I was sorry: she was a lovely girl.
Paul and John had announced in New York that Apple was signing up new acts and producing records for their
own label. They repeated this mantra on their return to London—and even took out ludicrous advertisements that showed lads with huge cars and saying something like: “If you want to be rich, Apple is looking for your talent.” Not surprisingly, the offices became like a glorified international rock and social club, with people constantly dropping by. Not all of the talent that came our way was good, but sometimes it was outstanding. Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin and many others came in and almost diffidently said that they would love to be on this fresh and original label, but I especially remember the day when James Taylor happened to turn up. I believe “happened” is the right word. He was one of those funny little people who arrived at just the right moment.
At the time, Peter Asher and I had tiny offices next door to each other right at the top of the building, well out of the way of the general melee and madness that was going on all around. Peter was head of A & R and I was Promo/Apple Films. People couldn’t get to us without going to a lot of other places first, in true music-biz tradition, which was the way we liked it. At one stage, I think Peter and I were the only people who actually sat at a desk and got things done and on time. Other people achieved things too; it just took them six days or six weeks.
That day, Peter must have been in a good mood, or bored, because when they rang up from downstairs to say they had this peculiar American who wanted to audition for somebody, Peter said, “Oh, okay, send him up.” Shortly after, I heard Peter say, “And what do you do?”
James Taylor just sat down cross-legged on the floor and sang a lovely song. “The way she moves . . . forever . . .” It was so good that I sat up very straight, stopped working and listened hard. By the time he had segued straight into “Carolina in My Mind,” I was in Peter’s office. James Taylor was dressed in Levis, a black shirt and Greek car-tire-sole versions of the usual Jesus boots. But he had a beautiful guitar, a Martin or a Gibson, which he could most definitely play, and which showed he was serious.
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