Magical Mystery Tours

by Tony Bramwell

  I looked at Peter, my expression saying, “He’s a bit good, isn’t he?” Peter got up and strolled to the top of the stairs.

  “Is there a Beatle in the house?” he shouted down the stairwell.

  Paul happened to be around and he came zooming up. James did a couple more songs and he was signed immediately to do an LP entitled James Taylor. Peter was given carte blanche and an unlimited budget to take James into Trident Studio, and Richard Hewson was brought in as musical director for the strings. We also brought in Richard Imrie to take pictures of James in a tweed suit, lying full-length on the floor for the album sleeve. The layout was perfect, the sleeve notes nicely designed. The ideal package was produced in a very short time. We took it to Bill Cotton Jr., head of BBC TV, and he instantly agreed to a television special, which was unheard of for an unknown performer.

  I organized a couple of promotional gigs, putting James on at the Marquee with the Strawbs, when Dave Cousins was in the band and Rick Wakeman was the keyboard player. We also did a few radio shows, like Country Meets Folk with Wally Whyton and Gordon Giltrap. We took him to Cecil Sharpe House and the Troubadour to sit in so people could see that he didn’t need props. Soon he was getting a bit of respect as word went round that he was for real, not just an overrated, overorchestrated folk singer on this obviously very expensive and ultimately overproduced album.

  We soon discovered that he had a history of psychiatric illness due to his heavy use of drugs, particularly heroin, although at that time, as far as I know, he was clean. Ironically, he had fled New York for England to get away from drugs, believing we were drug-free—and he ended up in the hippie paradise of Apple.

  Everything was going well until James had another nervous breakdown. He went home to recuperate in the bosom of the intellectual, wealthy psychosis that was Martha’s Vineyard—probably not the best choice of environment for him at that time. It was to be some years before he “happened” into my life again.

  24

  Pete Shotton had resigned from the boutique before he sank with it and became John’s personal assistant, in reality his companion. He went to stay with John after Cynthia went to Greece. They sat around, played some music, had had a few joints and some LSD when John suddenly made a spectacular announcement. “I think I’m Jesus Christ. . . . No, wait, I am Jesus Christ!”

  Pete wasn’t all that surprised. John had often made such bizarre pronouncements as a boy while we were all growing up in Liverpool. It was part of his eccentric character. “Oh yeah?” Pete said casually. “Fancy going out? Where shall we go? The Rock Garden, Gethsemane, or do you fancy a stroll across the Serpentine?”

  But John wasn’t joking. He was serious. He talked about the age Jesus was when he died. “They’re gonna kill me, you know,” he said, “But I’ve got at least four years to go, so I’ve got to do stuff.” He insisted that Pete immediately call everyone and set up an urgent board meeting at Apple first thing the next morning.

  It appeared so urgent that the other three Beatles came in, and together with Neil Aspinall and Derek Taylor, a few of us gathered in the boardroom. “I’ve got something very important to tell you,” John said. “I am Jesus Christ. I have come back again. This is my thing.”

  The Beatles were annoyed that they’d been dragged in so early for such nonsense. It was John being John. They’d heard this kind of thing for years. Derek Taylor, who hadn’t been around John from his youth, was the only one who was really surprised and worried. He thought John had flipped. “Right,” said Ringo. “Meeting adjourned, let’s go and have some lunch.”

  John mildly accepted that his messianic announcement had fallen on deaf ears. We drifted across the road to a restaurant and ordered. While we were eating, a man came up to John and enthused over the Beatles, the usual kind of thing. John said, “Actually, I’m Jesus Christ.” Without a blink, the man said, “Well, I still liked your last record.”

  That night at Kenwood, John and Pete hung out, took the usual drugs, gazed into space and did very little. Suddenly, John said he “fancied a woman.” He picked up the phone and called Yoko, telling her to hop in a taxi, he’d pay. Yoko immediately hightailed it out to Weybridge.

  At first, she appeared shy and modest. She sat with downcast eyes and mumbled scraps of her poetry. Pete made his excuses and went to bed. What happened that night can only be left to the imagination, but since it patently wasn’t the coming together of two virgins for the very first time, did Yoko do her hypnotism thing, as some of John’s friends thought she had, or did she have a powerful new drug in her arsenal? Nobody really believed that John fell in love overnight, because why hadn’t he done so before? He’d been kicking Yoko in and out of his life for over a year. Mostly, he had given the impression that he resented and despised her. So it must have been something pretty potent that made John fall headlong out of his casual affair with her into a mad obsession. Perhaps it was that he really was mentally ill and like many schizoid personalities, got religious mania. If he really did believe that he was Jesus, Yoko would probably have convinced him she was the Virgin Mary. A virgin at any rate. John was shortly to tell the world that they spent the night at the top of the house in his bloodred music room, recording the Two Virgins tape. They say that a moose in heat can waken the dead and achieve the impossible with his bellows. John and Yoko spent the night screaming.

  Pete Shotton also found John’s remarkable change of heart hard to stomach the next morning when he got up. John was in the kitchen in a purple kimono, hungrily eating a boiled egg. “I’m starving and had to have something to eat,” he said, “but I’m going back upstairs to Yoko. I can’t bear to be away from her for even a minute.” Pete was further stunned when John said, “I want you to find me a house to live in with Yoko.”

  “Just like that?” Pete said.

  “Yeah, just like that. I’m going to be with her now.”

  The next day, John sent Pete up to town with Yoko to go shopping to get her some new outfits, whatever she wanted, and Yoko moved into Kenwood. By the time Cynthia arrived home that fateful morning from the airport, having made up her mind to forgive John for the sake of their son, Yoko had been installed for four days. As she walked in, Cynthia had some premonition of something being not quite right. The house was too quiet and appeared to be empty. She ran in ahead of Magic Alex and Jenny Boyd and found John and Yoko in the kitchen. Yoko was sitting with her back to Cynthia, in Cynthia’s kimono, a pointed insult, because she must have known that Cynthia was due back.

  “Oh, hi,” John said casually.

  Cynthia was so confused, she startled gabbling brightly about breakfast in Greece and lunch in Rome, and how they would all go out and have dinner in London. John destroyed her with a very disinterested, “No thanks.”

  It was then that Yoko turned and looked at her. It was a look that blasted Cynthia straight out of the water. Horrified, she turned and ran around the house in tears, stuffing a few possessions into bags before getting into the car and driving off. Pete did his best to get on with Yoko—he even said she seemed good for John—but according to him, the minute she had achieved her goal, Yoko turned. She started asserting herself and John meekly obeyed. Overnight, he no longer had a will of his own.

  Yoko had turned thirty-five three months earlier on February 18, 1968, and perhaps she thought she had to do something fast to achieve her ends. Whatever it was that drove her so persistently after John, she finally won. But John did more than open the gates to his estate. He opened the floodgates on the Beatles partnership. Ever since Brian’s death, they had been unsure of their future direction, but they were still together, still best mates. Yoko became a wedge. She went from being “that dreadful woman” to becoming the love of his life, his soul mate. To paraphrase the punch line from a wonderful Tim Hardin song: “The lady came from Tokyo. Got away with love.”

  At GHQ Apple, we only heard bits and pieces of all this as it went down. Most women whose husbands have betrayed them, get on the phone and call
everyone who will listen and then start at the top of the list again. Cynthia was very shy and very private. As far as I know, the only person she fully confided in was Paul, who made her smile and feel better when he said, “Hey, Cyn, how’s about you and I get married?” Paul really lit into John before he sat down and wrote “Hey Jude,” one of his most beautiful and successful songs, to express his love and sympathy for Julian, who was caught up in the middle.

  Paul, who believed strongly in the family and in family values, told me that he felt as if it was the Beatles themselves who were heading for divorce, not just John and Cynthia. I think that perhaps Paul’s anger and everyone’s disapproval drove John further into Yoko’s arms out of his usual sense of defiance. Far from taking Paul’s message to heart, John even said that the words, “You have found her, now go and get her,” in “Hey Jude,” was Paul giving him permission to go get Yoko.

  It was hardly surprising that everyone was confused by the way in which John did a complete somersault and fell madly in love with her almost to the point of obsession. She certainly got through his bullshit detector. “Hey! Here’s a virtual hammer, John. Now why don’t you go up this virtual ladder and bang in a virtual nail?” In the old days he would have just said, “Fuck off you stupid cow and take your ladder with you! I went to Liverpool Art School, I’ll have you know. It may be up north but we’re not that daft up there and if I find out you’re taking the piss I’ll fetch you a meaningful bunch of fucking fives! And what’s more, my mate Paul’s got just the song for you, it goes: “Bang bang Maxwell’s silver hammer came down upon her head. Bang Bang Maxwell’s silver hammer made sure that she was dead!”

  Shortly after this John started using heroin, to which Yoko had introduced him. They were getting very thick, not just as lovers but as heroin joyriders. According to John, Yoko snorted it, but I had no doubt that if she had used a needle, she would probably have said it was acupuncture. It was through heroin that John got closer to Robert Fraser. Robert had just been released from prison and very soon got back into his stride, opening a smart new gallery and throwing celebratory parties. His gallery was in Duke Street, an expensive address between Wigmore Street and Oxford Street, very convenient to our new offices. John was an experimenter, a daredevil by nature, so this new departure didn’t surprise me although Paul was disgusted and we all said it was very risky.

  “It’s okay,” John told me once when he’d had a few drinks, as if it made it better. “I hate needles. I’m too much of a coward. Sniffing’s okay, it’s not addictive.”

  “John,” I wanted to say, “you’re so wrong,” but he wouldn’t have listened. Generally speaking, he was very discreet, though we could all tell when John was using heroin. Paul would say, “Oh John’s being John, he’ll get over it.” I didn’t do drugs, beyond smoking a little pot or doing a few hits of speed as everyone did, and neither—as a rule—did I drink very much in the early days. Generally, a few beers would do me all evening. I rarely got to bed before three in the morning and was always up by eight. But to me, John seemed to be heading down a very dark and dangerous alley.

  The first time John and Yoko were seen in public, before the press discovered that there was a scandal going on, was at the opening of Apple Tailoring in the King’s Road on May 22. The Apple Boutique might have been an ill-conceived shambles, but Apple Tailoring was better. The idea was to make and sell bespoke suits and shirts by John Crittle, an Australian designer, who was the ballet dancer Darcy Bussell’s father. It was lovely gear, but who needed a three-piece suit in a nice shade of yellow? Probably only the Beatles and half a dozen of their friends who could afford it. As John left the opening party, he walked along the Kings Road for photographers, and trotting in his wake, was Yoko. All the reporters and snappers missed a scoop, which John found very amusing. I don’t think Yoko did. She wanted the attention. She wanted to become an official Beatles’ woman. She made such a fuss that John obeyed next time she thought up another happening, which she very soon did, three weeks later at Coventry Cathedral, when they went public as a couple.

  There were reports at the time that Yoko usurped an exhibition of modern art organized by the cathedral, by taking it over and calling it “Acorn Event” after she had a screaming match with the senior staff at the cathedral who didn’t think acorns were art. The cathedral backed down and John and Yoko planted two acorns for peace on the greensward outside the cathedral, before smiling enigmatically for the cameras. Back at the office, they had us packing up dozens of little boxes of acorns—which, unbelievably, we actually dug up like squirrels in Regents Park—and a handwritten message from John and Yoko to be posted to all the world’s leaders. One of the Apple Scruffs, now upgraded to a secretary, with her own desk, had to stagger along to the post office with a big sack to dispatch them posthaste. I’m not sure who did all the research to find out the names and addresses of all the leaders. It certainly wasn’t John or Yoko. From the day Yoko went official as John’s lover, she had another desk and chair moved into his office and started taking over, laying down the law, issuing orders. I have never seen anyone so assured, so completely in control, so much a pain in the ass.

  By now, she was Yoko of Kenwood, much to Mrs. Powell’s despair. She told Cynthia to put up a fight; but Cynthia was too upset and frightened of what she had seen in Yoko’s eyes, and fled to Italy with Julian. With the press camped all around the house, Kenwood was impossible to live in, so John and Yoko escaped the back way and holed up in Ringo and Maureen’s old home when they first came to London. This was a modest ground-floor and basement flat in Montagu Square. Ringo then lent it to Paul as a secret bolthole and studio. At one time, Jimi Hendrix had even lived there, but he had painted the lurid purple shot-silk walls white, wrecked most of the furniture, and made so much noise fighting with his girlfriend the neighbors complained.

  John and Yoko occupied the basement. It still hadn’t been redecorated since Jimi’s occupation, and I doubt the cupboards had even been emptied out. It wasn’t long before the press discovered where the two lovebirds were. With windows opening right onto the street side and no other way in and out, they had no privacy. Within days, they made a run for it to Cavendish Avenue and sought sanctuary behind Paul’s high brick walls. I went to bring in supplies for them as if for a siege, and found Paul fed up and John and Yoko stoned out of their minds. John showed me the avalanche of hate mail directed at Yoko and said, “Why do people treat her like this? Can’t they see we’re just two people in love?”

  Paul was understandably annoyed for another reason. It seemed only a matter of a week or so since John had been complaining to anyone who would listen about Yoko making his life a misery, and now, here she was, actually installed in Paul’s home, where she remained for a month, making Paul’s life a misery. Only now, John declared that he loved her almost above life itself. It was a volte-face that bewildered all of us. What was more, she was always there and she had strong opinions which irritated everyone. Paul decided to seek sanity in work.

  “Let’s get this sorted, Tone,” he said, coming into my office early and flinging open the windows. “What we need is a fresh start.”

  The words “fresh start” became the new Apple mantra around the offices. For some weeks the Beatles had been working on the White Album, or more properly, The Beatles. Oddly enough, like most Beatles’ albums, it had started life with a working title, in this case, A Doll’s House. Later, with a nod to the ashram and India, it was decided it would be renamed Everest. (The working title of Rubber Soul was Abracadabra; but after John’s “Jesus” controversy, it was decided to steer clear of anything too magical. Songs also had working titles: for example, “Yesterday” started life as “Scrambled Eggs.”)

  Notably, Yoko was starting to influence John’s writing and without being invited, was heard screaming on a bizarre unreleased song (one of the batch of demos recorded at George’s home), “What’s New Mary Jane.” (It was said that Magic Alex wrote this, although it ended up credited
to John and Paul.) Even though they were in the middle of recording a new album—a process that would take several months—George and Ringo escaped to California June 10. Ringo said it was a holiday to clear his head. George went to Big Sur where he and Ravi Shankar made a small film and did some recording. This dislocation set the pattern for the way things were to be. The Beatles still worked together, but they had started to drift. Ringo was unhappy and showed it, mostly by staying away and not being his usual funny self. By the end of July, Ringo was back at Abbey Road, recording two songs for the album: “Don’t Pass Me By,” written by him (was this a shot at recognition? I wondered), and one written by John, “Good Night.”

  The White Album was intended for release by EMI, but part of Paul’s fresh-start approach was aimed at their long-held dissatisfaction with this company. The plan was to renegotiate their old, draconian five-into-a-penny contract, and to use the relatively new company of Capitol/EMI as distributors for Apple Records, which was their personal company, outside the EMI deal. It was decided I would produce a twenty-minute promotional film for the Apple launch in Los Angeles. Paul was very involved in this creative process which, it was intended, would show the people at Capitol/EMI the atmosphere at Apple and what it was all about.

  The film we came up with was a little bit arty and airy-fairy. There was a sequence of James Taylor and Mary Hopkin and Paul doing “Blackbird,” which I had filmed in early June; unshown footage that the BBC had banned of the Beatles doing “A Day in the Life” from Sgt. Pepper; a bit about the new Apple shop; some footage on the wildly experimental Indica Art Gallery and finally, the Beatles having a business meeting with “Uncle” Dick James in the new Apple offices in Wigmore Street. John insisted on including footage of Magic Alex in his habitual white coat, fiddling with a pile of junk. Overall, it was a pretty little film when it was finished and everyone said how well they thought it would go down. Ron Kass said it would be a very useful tool to show the record executives at the Capitol convention in L.A. what Apple was all about.