In a discussion we had about the Stones once, I think it was Ringo who said, “You listen to the likes of ‘Honky Tonk Women’ and ‘Brown Sugar’ and tell me it doesn’t make you wanna dance, and I’ll tell you, you need help.”
The Beatles were all fans of great music. Cruising along in the limo listening to “Jumping Jack Flash” blasting out of a little speaker, even Martha started to move. Derek Taylor tried to get up, gave up, and settled for grooving along in the corner, but Paul went nuts. That was the first time we’d heard it and it was a revelation. Mick and Keef may have been short of new songs when they borrowed “I Wanna be Your Man” from J & P, but my God, how they had caught up! The lyrics of “Jack Flash” said it all. “I may have started out as a no-hoper. Born in a storm but now it’s okay! In fact, it’s a bit better than that. It’s bloody great! Let me tell you about it!”
We were just pulling into a gas station when it ended and Paul turned to me. Reverting to type he said, “Bloody ’ell! That’s a bit tasty. ’Ere, Tone, do you think you could go and call up Alan Freeman and get him to play that again?”
“You want me to promote the Stones?”
“Yeah, why not?” There was a very funny look on Paul’s face as I went off to find the phone. As if, not only was the whole world on his shoulders, but now the Stones were about to hit their stride. It wasn’t jealousy as much as admiration. As far as the angels were concerned, the Stones had all the yearnings, and the Beatles had all the sighs.
I called “Fluff” Freeman as directed, and almost immediately, to our surprise, he announced on air, “Tony Bramwell of Apple Records has just called in from some gas station in the middle of nowhere. He’s with Paul McCartney and they’ve made a request to play ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ again.” And he turned to his producer, Dennis Jones and asked, “Can we do that?” Dennis said, “Why not?” So they did. We just sat there in the Daimler in this gas station listening. It was still fantastic. A year later, I was to take Billy Preston’s record, “That’s the Way God Planned It,” to Kenny Everitt to play. Kenny and I were great friends. He was totally zany and a Beatles fanatic. I said to him half-jokingly, “Why don’t you just play Billy’s record a few seconds at a time between all the other records? Then when you feel like it you can play the whole thing?” And Kenny said to his producer, Derek Chinnery, “What about it?” Derek agreed, and so that’s what they did all day. They played a few seconds here and there and then at the end of Kenny’s program they played it all. It went straight into the top ten the next week. It was gratifying. You could suggest those kinds of things in those days but not now.
By the time we reached Bedfordshire, we had been driving for a long time on the A6 and were a bit bored. Paul wanted to let Martha stretch her legs and, to tell the truth, it was such a glorious day I don’t think we were in any particular rush to return to London. Paul got out the road map and opened the page. He stuck a finger on it and we all looked. “Harrold” said Paul. “That sounds nice. Let’s go and visit Harrold.”
We struck lucky. Harrold was a most beautiful little medieval English village along the Great Ouse River. We drove through but all the pubs were closed. On the way out, we spotted a man cutting a hedge around a charming house. Paul said, “Stop!”
We all tumbled out of the car and Paul asked if there was anywhere we could have a snack. “And Martha needs some water,” he said.
The man, a dentist, said, “There’s nowhere open. But it’s nearly teatime. Would you care to join us?”
We all trooped indoors, where the wife was preparing sandwiches and putting a cake or two on plates. She glanced up and smiled. If she recognized Paul she didn’t say. They were far too polite. The children were called in from playing in the back garden. The oldest one, a very pretty little girl of about seven, recognized Paul like a shot, but again, had been nicely brought up and she didn’t comment. However, she did have a guitar that was leaning up in a corner of the room, and after tea, Paul picked it up and, playing left-handed, sang “Blackbird” and “Rocky Raccoon” and a few other songs for the children, who clustered around him as if he were the pied piper.
After a while the dentist suggested that since the pubs would now be open we could have a drink. We strolled out into the dusk and down the High Street, passing a fourteenth-century church with a fine spire. The dentist, who was well informed on local history, told us the village was first founded in the time of King Stephen. The priory dated from about 1150 and there was a thirteenth-century stone bridge over the Ouse. While Martha splashed happily about in the rushes, he pointed over the bridge. “Chellington lies over there, or what’s left of it,” he said. He went to tell us the strange story of a disappearing village. At the time of the Black Death, the houses were pulled down—or burnt down—and the surviving villagers huddled together in the church praying for protection from the plague. When they emerged they said the village was haunted and most of them moved over the river to Harrold.
By the time we got to the pub, the word had spread and it was fairly packed. We drank beer while Paul sat at the piano and played a repertoire of Beatles songs, McCartney songs and a lot of rock and roll until closing time. I think in the back of his mind Paul would have liked to put tomorrow off indefinitely. At least here in the countryside was peace. In London there was none to be had. London was business and all its attendant problems. Lately most of them seemed to be sitting on his shoulders alone.
On the following Monday, John asked me if I would film yet another of Yoko’s expensive events.
“What’s this one called, John?” I asked.
“ ‘Yoko Loves John,’ ” he admitted, a bit embarrassed. “But she might change it to ‘You Are Here.’ ”
I filmed the “You Are Here” event on July 1, at Robert Fraser’s gallery, the same Robert Fraser who said he wouldn’t have one of Yoko’s exhibitions in his gallery over his dead body. In fact, the exhibition was billed as John’s but he didn’t contribute a thing; it was all Yoko’s. I thought probably the only reason she selected Robert’s gallery was to teach him a lesson, and put him in his place—very cleverly, too. She filled the floor space up with loads of plaster-of-Paris charity collection-boxes that you used to see outside shops, life-size cute little begging dogs and crippled Dr. Barnardo’s kids on crutches, embarrassing and tasteless when seen en masse. On the wall, center back, was a six-foot round circle of canvas, with the tiny words YOU ARE HERE handwritten with a black felt-tipped pen dead center like a miniature bull’s-eye. I hid cameras behind two-way glass, like Candid Camera. The idea was to capture people’s expressions when they came in, to see if they put money in the charity boxes, and film them in tight close-up as they read the tiny words on the canvas. John opened the event by launching thousands of white balloons for peace, one or two bearing prize-winning labels: IF YOU FIND THIS, SEND IT BACK TO JOHN AND YOKO, AND CLAIM YOUR FIVER. Very surrealistic, I thought, but I shot it all, and handed over the film without comment.
“What do you think?” John asked.
“Great, John, just great,” I said, also handing him a prize-winning balloon I’d kept back, and claiming my prize, trying to keep a straight face.
“Sorry, Tone,” he said, “I’ve given all my money to Yoko.” I was entertained that John hadn’t seen that I was pulling his leg. But then, when he was around Yoko, he seemed to lose his famous Liverpool sense of humor. Yoko took the films, with one of her little mysterious smiles, and I never saw them again. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine her and John sitting up in bed watching them more than once.
Paul was someone who was also spending a great deal of time in bed. While John’s love life was confusing in a dark way, rather like John’s own personality, Paul was going through some important changes too. His engagement to Jane the previous Christmas seemed to herald the decline in their five-year relationship. No sooner were they back from India, than Jane returned to her work at the Bristol Old Vic, and Paul launched into what was probably the most relaxed time of his life. He
opened wide the doors of Cavendish Avenue and the groupies, who had camped as faithfully outside as they had in Wimpole Street during the years that Paul had lived there with the Asher family, were astonished to find they were now invited in. Not only were they invited into the house, but also into Paul’s bed. Whenever I went up to see Paul, the house was filled with giggling, half-naked girls, cooking meals, walking Martha, or glued to the phone for hours on end, calling the world.
“What’s going on, mate?” I asked Paul. He knew what I meant.
“It’s my bachelor phase,” he told me with a leer.
Sometimes, it did get to him. I remember once arriving when he was trying to get rid of a more persistent American girl, who seemed to think she could move in on a permanent basis as Mrs. McCartney. Paul threw her suitcase over the surrounding garden wall, and locked the front door. But she retrieved the case, climbed back over the wall and in through a window. She was back inside even before he was.
“It’s your own fault,” I told him. “Once you let ’em in, you’ll never get rid of ’em.”
But Paul was rarely without a complex motive, that perhaps even he didn’t understand. Essentially, he was always the very sweet Liverpool boy I had grown up with. Like me, he found it hard to hurt people’s feelings, and he seemed to know that the only way to break his engagement was to make Jane do it herself. Intended or not, that’s what happened. Has anyone analyzed the words in flagrante delicto? It’s supposed to mean, “caught red-handed.” Actually, it means “with the crime still blazing.” In Paul’s case, the bed was still blazing.
The engagement was over. Margaret Asher turned up to regretfully collect her daughter’s belongings because she was very fond of Paul. It seemed Paul regretted falling out with Margaret more than with Jane. He adored that wonderful, motherly figure who had been so kind to him, but now the road was clear for him to go after a woman he could be true to.
The boutique was hemorrhaging money at a fantastic rate. It would have been easier if the Beatles had just walked up and down Baker Street once a week handing out cash. The catalyst to winding it up was an insulting newspaper article that wondered why the Beatles were scrabbling around as shopkeepers. They had become exactly what John had grandly told Clive Epstein they would never be. The boutique had been a mess from the start and had never lived up to their romantic idealism. They were so eager to dump it, they decided to give everything away rather than drag out the closure with an embarrassing sale. Two days before the great giveaway, John and Yoko arrived in John’s unmissable Rolls Royce and they entered the shop. The staff were taken aback when Yoko spread yards of the beautiful silks and velvets on the floor and piled them high with whatever took her fancy, from clothing to bolts of silks and velvets. She knotted the corners and dragged the bundles out to the car like a bag lady. After she had helped herself—I imagine for official use in her theatrical events—everyone from Apple was told to go down and help themselves to the pick of anything that was left before the doors were opened to the public. I selected a weird assortment of a leather jacket, some hideous trousers and some flowery shirts, none of which I can remember ever wearing.
Apple had outgrown Baker Street and then Wigmore Street. For half a million pounds—cheap at the price—the Beatles purchased stylish new offices at 3 Savile Row in the heart of Mayfair, an historic building that had once been Lady Hamilton’s town house while she was Nelson’s mistress. Paul loved both the history and the building, which was very beautiful with spacious, graceful rooms and a sweeping circular staircase. Before we moved in, it was freshly decorated throughout with a scheme of white walls and woodwork and fitted sage green carpets throughout—all except for George’s office. George wanted to chant his mantra in the right atmosphere, so he had it decorated in Day-Glo pink. Prints and fabric tapestries of jeweled elephants and six-armed Hindi goddesses hung from the walls. The finishing touch was to install fake ceiling beams painted gold, and to smother the floor with cushions and thick Indian rugs.
We spent days packing up our old offices and waited for Pickford’s removal vans. It was only a journey of about half a mile, but loads of things just vanished on the way from one of the vans. It’s a total mystery to me where all the stuff went. I lost my personal filing cabinet—and I’m talking about one of those tall metal cabinets with four deep drawers—which was full of films and photos and rare theater programs from years gone by and other irreplaceable items that I had collected. All gone. I was devastated. No explanation was ever given and none of it was ever recovered. The accounts department fared no better. They piled all their paperwork into a taxi, which they never saw again.
Paul was the one who, the previous year, had come up with the word “Apple” for their new corporation, basing it on the first letter of the alphabet: “A is for Apple, like kiddies’ alphabet blocks. Simple and nice and starting at the beginning.” He said it would be easy to remember, while John’s take was that the image was both pagan and arcane with its connotations of forbidden fruit, as in Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. But they all loved the pun on Apple Corp. “Apple core, get it?” John said, laughing wildly.
Paul liked that so much he wanted to call the company Apple Core; but was told he couldn’t; it had to be a properly designated corporation. Some hippie designers were brought in and they came up with artwork depicting an old-fashioned variety of Cox’s orange pippin, all rosy red, green and yellow, which everyone loved because it was so friendly and nice, the kind of apple you’d find stuffed into your Christmas stocking. Initially, this logo was used on things for the Apple shop and for the notepaper. It was all very relaxed and harmonious but apparently not very businesslike. Ron Kass and the lawyers explained that the Beatles had to copyright the name and trademark in order to make it the consistent Apple symbol anywhere in the world, or they ran the risk of being copied without legal redress.
Alan Aldridge and Gene Mahon, from the Beatles’ new advertising agency, declared that they would come up with the ultimate apple, an apple with meaning, an apple that said APPLE, just as Coca-Cola said “Coke” anywhere on the planet. For months, they came in with pictures of apples, paintings of apples, photos of apples of every hue, and apples placed on a variety of colored backgrounds. But none of them had that WOW! factor.
When the English Apple Growers Association launched National Apple Week, Paul immediately saw that as a rare marketing opportunity.
“Yeah, we’re Apple, so let’s promote ourselves as well,” he said enthusiastically.
About this time, an almost unknown Welsh singer named Mary Hopkin had also been recommended to him by the famous model, Twiggy, who had first seen her performing some months earlier on Opportunity Knocks on television. When he telephoned her at home in Wales and said, “This is Paul McCartney,” she was so overwhelmed that she dropped the receiver and shouted to her mother to come and talk. Mary’s shyness was one of her lovely features, like her long blond hair, straight from a fairy story, and her pure voice. Paul called her down to London, auditioned her singing six of her whimsical, pretty folk songs in Dick James’s studios in New Oxford Street, and like everyone who heard it, fell in love with her incredible voice. That was when I filmed her and Paul singing “Blackbird” to an acoustic guitar, which we used in the PR film we showed in Los Angeles.
Paul found “Those Were the Days” for Mary and brought her back to London to record it at Abbey Road. It was decided that we would make a film to promote the record. One hot summer’s day in early August when I was filming Mary down by the folly in the green wilderness at the end of Paul’s garden, Robert Fraser, who was commissioned by Paul to buy paintings for him, dropped by with a special painting, a Magritte entitled Le Jeu de Mourre, in which a green apple filled the canvas. On being told that Paul was down in the wilderness with us, as a surprise, Robert left the picture propped up against a vase on a table in the dining room and slipped away. When Paul came indoors from the brightness of the garden, he saw this cool green apple, almost glowing
in the shade of the room. It was a magic moment. They had found their apple.
All the literature on the Beatles states that EMI refused to release the catalogue number Apple 1. History has it that “Hey Jude” was the first Apple release, with no catalogue number, and “Those Were the Days” was Apple 2. This isn’t so. The truth is far more interesting.
Harrisons was the company who did the EMI labels. They had endless problems with fixing the exact color of the Apple logo. One of the printers, a good, solid English craftsman who took a pride in his work, came up with a solution. He showed us a superior new printing press, which was really a forerunner of a laser ink-jet machine, and was used for luxury, hand-operated work. After fiddling around a while, he came up with some near-perfect blanks, with no label information on them.
“That looks lovely, great, it’s perfect,” Paul said, and passed the labels around.
“Right, then,” said the printer. “Where’s your first record?”
Beatles looked at each other and muttered among themselves for a bit because they didn’t have one ready for this momentous occasion. However, it so happened that it was Maureen’s twenty-second birthday on August 4, and Ron Kass got absurdly excited over the idea of doing something really special for her. He telephoned his friend Sammy Cahn in Hollywood and got him to rewrite the lyrics to “The Lady Is a Tramp” so it related to Ringo and Maureen. Nobody thought Sammy would do it, but he did. Then he amazed us by calling Sinatra and asking him to record it. Off they went to Capitol Studios, in the Capitol Tower in Hollywood. The finished tape was air-couriered to Ron to be mastered. (Frank, a fan of Beatles songs, was to include versions of “Blackbird” and “Yesterday” and “Something” in his stage act.)
Meanwhile, our printer chum at Harrisons had run off a single label that read: “The Lady is a Tramp,” by Frank Sinatra. I’m not sure if it said “Happy Birthday, Maureen” or not. We took the master to EMI’s factory for a test and Apple 1 was pressed, both sides the same. There was a big party and with due ceremony the record was played. It was quite something. Then Ron ordered the master stampers crushed. The tape was cut up and destroyed.
Magical Mystery Tours Page 36
