With the Beatles

by Alistair Taylor

  That appears critical and it’s not really meant to, because he could also be refreshingly down to earth. Once, Lesley’s mother and stepfather were staying with us for a few days. The doorbell went at 10.00pm and there was Paul with his usual question, ‘Has Lesley got the kettle on?’ Paul came in and my in-laws just sat there as Paul casually walked in and said, ‘Hey-up, how are you?’ I introduced them. For a moment, my in-laws froze in the presence of a living legend. He just flopped down and joined us. Afterwards they said, ‘But he’s normal, he’s just like us.’

  It was a treasured moment and no one can take that away from me. Another came very late at night at Abbey Road. It was around 2–3.00am and I was very tired. The boys had taken a break and I went looking for Paul to see if there was anything else he needed before I went home. I found him on his own in Studio 1, sitting at the big white grand piano and picking out this melody virtually with one finger. At first I just heard a few notes but I was instantly enraptured and, as Paul looked up, I said, ‘Hey fella, that’s great, what is it?’

  Paul said, ‘It’s just an idea I’ve been playing around with.’

  I stood and listened and it just got to me. I said, ‘You must work on that melody line. I know someone who would absolutely love it.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Paul, only half-listening.

  ‘Lesley,’ I said. ‘She loves those pure and simple haunting lines.’

  He smiled and carried on picking it out. There was a guy behind the control panel who had just been taping a demo for a song Paul had written for Marianne Faithfull that she never recorded. Paul raised his voice and called up to the guy, ‘Have you any tape left?’

  ‘Yeah,’ came the reply.

  ‘Roll it,’ said Paul. And he began to play this fabulous song. I was totally transfixed. It was a very early version of ‘The Long and Winding Road’ and in terms of lyrics he hadn’t got an awful lot further than the title, but when he started playing it I knew Lesley would love it. He filled in the lyrics with lots of la-la-las but it didn’t matter. When he got to the end I stood and applauded. I said, ‘That’s beautiful, mate.’ And I meant it; at moments like that, I had the best job in the world. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket but thanks to Brian’s advice and long experience I was starting to spot the real winners early on. And I’ve still never heard a song that makes the little hairs on the back on my neck stand up like ‘The Long and Winding Road’. He checked with the sound engineer that we had got that and then said, ‘Great. Now you get home, mate.’

  The very next day, I was sitting at my desk arguing with a hotel manager who seemed unreasonably angry because his garden had been trampled upon by Beatles fans, when Paul arrived. He was wearing his long brown overcoat that he’d bought from Oxfam and he just went into his pocket and brought out this one-sided, white-labelled acetate which he handed to me. He just said, ‘There you go, Al. That’s for Lesley.’ And he took out of his other pocket a 6in length of tape and asked for a pair of scissors. He said, ‘This is the tape I got from EMI last night.’ And he cut it up in front of me. He said, ‘There you go, that is now the only copy in the world and it is not for you, it’s for Lesley. I think we owe her a lot.’

  We treasured that because I think it is one of those very rare occasions when one of the Beatles has been captured actually writing the songs. And do you know, I still prefer it to the finished version.

  They were just four fun guys. They were four perfectly normal Liverpool guys who wanted to enjoy the experience of fame.

  Cynthia Lennon is always seen as the typical Beatles’ victim. But I have to say she never seemed like a victim to me. She was a funny, attractive lady who certainly put up with a lot of ill-treatment both mental and physical from John. But she was no bimbo. Cynthia was beautiful and intelligent in her own right.

  The marriage ended badly for her in May 1968 when John installed this strange little Japanese woman in the house while she was away on holiday. Cynthia returned to find Yoko in her house with her husband. Yoko was even wearing her bath robe. The marriage ended virtually there and then and Cyn has been seen as the most tragic Beatle woman ever since.

  It was never an easy marriage. John slept with hundreds of different women before, during and after his time with Cynthia. He had not wanted to get married in the first place but had gone along with it when Cynthia announced she was pregnant. During their time together, I often visited them at Kenwood, John’s luxurious house in Weybridge, and it was a much more equal relationship than is ever portrayed in any of the numerous biographies. Certainly, Cynthia liked her sleep and used to go to bed early, which left John to go off into London and behave like any self-respecting rock star would.

  But Cynthia was nothing like the clinging wifey that people who have never met the couple seem to imagine. And John was nothing like the rakish, thoughtless, faithless husband. Towards the end of the marriage, John began to suspect that Cynthia was being unfaithful. And like many adulterers he was absolutely frantic with rage at the thought of another man making love to his own wife. But because he was out all the time, and out of his mind much of the rest of the time, it was very hard for him to check up on what Cynthia was up to.

  That is why he used his friend ‘Magic’ Alex Mardas to follow her. I don’t think that Cynthia was unfaithful to John before he humiliatingly ended the marriage by moving Yoko into their home, but I know that John thought she was.

  John quizzed me on a trip to Italy taken by Cynthia earlier in 1968. I hadn’t arranged it, which was unusual but not unprecedented. Occasionally, one or other of the Beatles or their wives would take off on a trip they had organised themselves. But John thought Cynthia was being deliberately secretive about this Italian trip. He wouldn’t tell me why he wanted to know, but he wanted to find out every detail of every conversation I’d had with Cynthia over the recent past. And such details were not the normal subject of John’s interest. He was consumed by jealousy. He might not have loved Cynthia as passionately or as exclusively as he once had, but he sure as hell was not prepared to put up with her loving someone else. He had Alex spying on her and I think it was this obsessive jealousy that sparked him into bringing Yoko in and kicking Cynthia out.

  Yoko received a lot of vilification because she broke one of the Beatles’ unwritten rules. When they were working at Abbey Road, nobody went on the floor with them. Everyone kept out of the studio, even Brian and Neil, and certainly Jane, Maureen, Patti, whoever. We kept back when they were working. Unless they wanted us to hit something or bang something, which certainly happened from time to time. And suddenly this little Japanese lady is sitting at John’s feet. You could almost see the other three shrinking backwards and thinking, Excuse me, we never do this.

  That became one of the real reasons for the break-up. It was well on the cards before then, but it needed a final shove to force the boys into splitting and Yoko provided it. John knew what he was doing when he included Yoko in the inner circle of four. He was challenging the established order and saying that, of course, none of the other Beatles should bring a partner into the studio but John Lennon was different. He did not have to abide by anyone’s rules. She actually took a bed into the studio at one point and the faces of the other three boys were a picture. If Brian had lived, he would have brought some order to this but he had sadly gone.

  John was a bit of a lost soul until he met Yoko. If you looked at her and then at sexy Cynthia, you couldn’t see why any man would exchange a beautiful, warm-hearted blonde who was the mother of his son for an oddball Japanese woman with more hang-ups than a psychiatric clinic. But she challenged John mentally. He told me once that she made him feel more alive than any person he’d ever met. I think because everyone treated her like a threat or a joke, he became extra defensive and she became more important to him than the Beatles.

  When they decided to get married, I organised the flights. I flew over in the private jet to Paris and we parked up away from the main terminals. It was a beautiful mist
y morning and I saw John and Yoko, both in white, running towards the plane to meet me. I had laid on the champagne as always and they seemed so carefree and in love with each other that they ran over. We sat on the plane drinking champagne and I remember thinking that perhaps life was not so bad. It’s a magical memory for me because they seemed so much in love.

  In those days, there was a restriction on how much money you could take out of the country. I had smuggled some extra money for them wrapped in Lesley’s tights down inside my trousers in a stocking. I think it was £500. I forgot all about the money in the emotion of the moment. I got off the plane and was waving goodbye. The jet started up, a little Hawker-Siddeley 125, a beautiful little machine, and I suddenly went, ‘Oh my God, I’ve still got the money!’ I had to stop the plane.

  * * *

  Paul’s ability as a songwriter always mesmerised me. John could never be serious long enough to explain his creative processes. He said, ‘It just happens,’ as if he thought it was such a fragile talent that it might even disappear on too much examination.

  But Paul was more open. I remember once sitting in Abbey Road’s studio 2 with Mary Hopkin and Anne Nightingale. The boys were there recording but they had stopped for a break and Paul had come over to where we were sitting by the piano. He sat down on the piano stool and we all chatted for a few minutes. The conversation turned to composing and Paul asked Mary, who had just recorded ‘Those Were the Days’ for Apple, ‘Do you write songs?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mary nervously, ‘the music is all right but I have trouble with the lyrics.’

  ‘Oh but lyrics are dead easy. Lyrics are all around you,’ said Paul. ‘Let me show you.’

  Paul turned to the piano and lifted the lid, inviting Mary to sit beside him. He played us the first song he had ever written, which was a three-chord number, then he showed how he had progressed to five chords and beyond that. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s write a song here and now. Let’s think of a story – anything at all. Suppose there is a guy who waits every morning at the bus stop and there’s this gorgeous girl who always stands next to him in the queue. But he is dead shy. He can’t bring himself to talk to her, so he feels very frustrated.’

  Paul picked out a tune and started to set the lyrics of the situation to it. We sat in silence, fearful of breaking the spell. ‘Now one night in the darkness,’ Paul went on, ‘he goes out to post a letter at the letter box on the corner. Just as he is putting his hand up to the opening, the girl appears from the other side and does the same thing.’ More lyrics and a stronger, more confident tune emerged. ‘They both jump back in surprise, but they are both startled into talking to each other, which is a good job as she’s as shy as he is. They fall in love and live happily ever after.’ By this time the song was virtually all there. There was a story and a melody and you could hum it. Paul went off to join the boys for a drink and Mary, Anne and I were left looking after him in amazement.

  The boys all took an interest in Mary. One day, Mal Evans arrived carrying a shiny new guitar case. George had thought it was important for her to have a new guitar so he’d bought her a £400 Martinez guitar on a whim and sent it round. Mary was very moved. The only trouble was that the guitar was shiny as well and we had to put talcum powder on it when she appeared on television to stop the lights from reflecting so brightly.

  But of all the boys, Paul had, and still has, the personality to charm the birds out of the trees if he wanted to use it. Paul has an amazing ability to make other people feel important. He has immense charisma and if he looks into your eyes and talks to you it’s a remarkable experience. I believe his song writing ability is a gift. I don’t believe he was a genius like John, but when he demonstrated his talent it was breath-taking.

  Francie Schwartz didn’t last very long, and a bewildering sequence of women processed through his life at that time. But Paul could be a very demanding boss. One weekend in the middle of a frantic recording session, Paul decided that he had to have a sunshine break. ‘Get the jet and get me some sunshine,’ demanded Paul. ‘You decide where we go. There’s my cousin and his girlfriend and me. Oh and I met this fabulous woman at the Peacock Club the other night. I want to bring her.’ Only he couldn’t recall either her name or her address. He just knew that she was a waitress at the Peacock. ‘I want her to come. Find her.’

  I found the club which was by then shut, but mercifully there was a guy there who knew which girl had caught Paul’s eye – a Maggie McGivern – and he gave me her address. So I ended up walking to a flat in Chelsea where the young lady lived. I rang the doorbell and a woman’s head poked out of a window far above me.

  ‘What?’ said a hungover voice.

  ‘I wonder if you’d like to come away for the weekend with Paul McCartney to Sardinia,’ I shouted up, hoping that not too many of Fleet Street’s finest were within earshot. I’d decided on Sardinia while on my way to the flat.

  ‘Who are you?’ she shouted back. Fortunately, I managed to persuade her to come down and examine my credentials and she was then quick to accept the Beatle’s offer.

  I’d arranged flights from Luton in the private jet. In the car to the airport, Paul turned to me and asked where he was going.

  ‘Sardinia,’ I said. ‘You’ll love it.’

  As they got on the plane, Paul said, ‘Come on, Al. Come with us just for the ride. You can wait while they service the plane in Sardinia and come back with it in the morning. Then you can come back in it and pick us up on Monday. Come on, you know you’ll enjoy it.’

  I decided that a few hours in the sunshine sounded quite appealing so I made a quick call to Lesley and hopped on board.

  After an hour or so of airborne champagne, the pilot let us know he was about to land but then we were all treated to a shock as the plane started to bank sharply and go round in what felt terrifyingly like ever decreasing circles. When the glasses started to slide off the tables I decided it was time to talk to the pilot. That is one of the advantages of hiring a private jet – you can go and ask the driver what is happening. The disadvantage is that sometimes you’re better off not knowing.

  The plane began its fifth circuit and I undid my seat belt and staggered down the gangway to the cabin. There I found the co-pilot looking down at the ground through the window beneath him. I tapped him on the shoulder and he removed his headset to talk to me. He explained angrily, ‘The bloody Italians have forgotten to put the landing lights on. We can’t see the bloody airstrip. You look out of the other side and see if you can spot it.’

  Now I’m not normally a nervous flyer. But peering into the darkness of a mountainous island looking for somewhere to land does tend to concentrate your mind a little. At last the lights came miraculously into view and the pilot straightened the plane out and set us gently down on the tarmac. It was 4.00am and I was just happy to be alive.

  A little later, having packed off Mr McCartney, his latest lady and assorted guests off in taxis, I was sitting dozing as the sun came up. The co-pilot tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Come on, I’ll show you why we didn’t want to risk coming in without the landing lights on.’ He took me round the aircraft hangar and there were two very large, very rugged mountains. ‘We had to fly between those,’ said the co-pilot. ‘There’s only about 60ft either side of the wingspan. It’s a little to dangerous to risk without the lights on.’

  Paul was more or less over Jane by then I think. He tried for a time to get back with her but messages were politely returned unopened and his calls weren’t answered. The whole sorry finale to the Jane affair changed Paul McCartney in my opinion. For a few years, he had had just about everything he could ever have wanted. Jane was the first woman to reject him and he did not like the experience. Paul was a little harder, a little more cynical afterwards.

  Linda Eastman set out to get Paul. Since her tragic death I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on my relationship with her. I can’t deny that she made Paul a wonderful wife, to whom he was clearly absolutely dev
oted, and she was a fantastic mother to their children. She cared for Paul like no-one else, I have to be honest and say that we did not see eye-to-eye at all They met in the Bag O’ Nails pub on an evening when the entertainment was being supplied by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. I remember him talking about a female photographer with really long and elegant fingers and he was smitten. Linda came with Heather, her daughter by a previous marriage. She was a charming kid and I used to bounce her on my knee many a time in those early days of their relationship. But I think Linda resented anyone who had been close to Paul, particularly during his period with Jane. It was very obvious at the start that Paul and I had a rapport that she could not quite come to terms with. She never stopped smiling but sometimes there was a glint in her eyes that I did not like. Paul and I had so many shared experiences that it was bound to be difficult for her. I tried to minimise it. I was genuinely happy to see Paul in another sensible relationship, and it also meant a lot less maudlin late-night drinking sessions that ended up going over the same old ground – Jane.

  One of the first things Linda did at Cavendish when she managed to move in was to have the entire ground floor redecorated. Jane had decorated Cavendish Avenue in exquisite taste. Linda, however, wanted to remove every last trace of Jane from Paul’s life. She didn’t want to hear her name. She didn’t want to see pictures Paul and Jane had chosen remaining around the place. It was like a new regime taking over and wanting to wipe the slate a completely clean. So in five days, the first thing I had to organise was the redecoration of the ground floor.