Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - the Definitive Life

by Tim Riley

  Never was a producer, the geek at the dials, more lauded and revered, than Phil Spector was in the UK, both before and throughout the British Invasion. “[His] curved sunglasses made him look like the living embodiment of New York nightlife,” wrote photographer Robert Freeman.8 The Beatles, of course, emblemized everything Spector’s girl group stood for, and as fanatics themselves, they considered Veronica Bennett the style’s queen. Bennett, a twenty-one-year-old who projected sexual wisdom, flaunted a mysterious racial allure: her Native American–black mother had married a white man. Through a mystical haze of dark eyeliner, she unleashed a two-ton voice from beneath a perfectly stacked beehive, as if no man had yet proved worthy of her mythic wiles. Lennon hit on her at a party held by Decca’s Tony Hall, after doing Val Parnell’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium together on January 12. “You were great,” she remembered him telling her. “Just fuckin’ great.”

  “It was obvious that these guys listened to a lot of records,” Ronnie wrote, “because they knew as much about American music as we did. Or more. The Beatles loved all the girl groups, and they knew every Motown song ever put out. They kept telling us how much they loved our long black hair, and how our whole look blew them away.” John, George, and Ringo (Paul hadn’t come along) chatted and danced, getting the Ronettes to show them the latest American moves: the Pony, the Jerk, the Nitty Gritty. Harrison took an interest in Estelle as Lennon zeroed in on Ronnie. The two Ronettes compared notes in the ladies’ room and decided to enjoy themselves. Bennett’s memoirs draw a picture of Lennon the operator (and a rare instance when his moves were politely declined):

  John grabbed my arm and said, “C’mon! Let’s go explorin’!” Before I knew what was happening, John dragged me upstairs to this long hallway where the bedrooms were. Then he started walking down the hall, jiggling all the door handles, hoping to find an empty room. . . .

  We finally found an empty bedroom at the end of the hall, a huge room with a cozy little window seat that looked out over all the lights of London. It was breathtaking. I walked into the darkened room and sat down, staring out the window at this fairy-tale land of lights and towers that seemed to go on forever. “Oh,” I sighed. “It’s beautiful.”

  They talked about how strange it was to be so young and so famous, how much had changed so quickly, and how once you broke through to a certain point, the business let you coast a bit. “I felt pretty close to John right then,” Spector writes, “like he understood all the things I wanted to know. I knew he was one of these heavy brain people, just like Phil.” She could also tell he was moving in fast.

  “When he leaned over and started kissing me, I have to admit he made me forget about Phil for a few seconds. But just a few.” But she insists nothing happened, which was either reverence on Lennon’s part or sheer modesty on hers.

  We kissed for a couple of minutes on that window seat. And for me, that was a pretty big deal. . . . I hadn’t done much more than kiss a guy on the lips up until then, and that included Phil. Romance was everything, and sex was still a mystery. But the way things were going on that window seat, it didn’t look like it was going to stay that way for long.

  Ronnie wound up turning Lennon down, gently. “John didn’t seem too upset,” though, she recalled, “because after we went back downstairs, we danced and had a great time for the rest of the night.”9

  History has given Epstein a reputation as a small-timer, but his approach to the American market was full of daring and resolve. In negotiations with the Ed Sullivan Show producers, who included Sullivan himself, he contracted a groundbreaking three appearances, complete with top billing, all before Capitol had released “I Want to Hold Your Hand” stateside. Sullivan had seen Beatlemania for himself while on a connecting flight at Heathrow the previous October 31. Along with his producer Bob Precht, Sullivan saw the fans screaming as the band returned from a week in Sweden, and decided for himself that this phenomenon, whatever it was, just might translate. If he was wrong, he could boast of exposing Americans to a genuine British spectacle.

  Epstein negotiated a forward-thinking deal: in that era, a booking on the Sullivan show garnered a $7,500 fee for a single appearance. In exchange for three appearances—two live and one taped—Epstein lowered the Beatles’ overall fee to $10,000. All Epstein wanted on top of that was round-trip airfare and hotel bills in New York City and Miami, which Sullivan covered. To Sullivan this was a bargain, but the bigger bargain came through the priceless exposure of the Beatles’ “arrival” in America. It took cunning on Epstein’s part to play this hand as an event, even if nobody expected it to supersede everything that led up to it.

  Once the arrival itself became a happening, other appearances fell into place. Between the three Sullivan shows, Epstein booked the band at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C., and at Carnegie Hall. Only late in December did “I Want to Hold Your Hand” start lighting up American radio switchboards, and deejays argued over who “broke” the record. With this, Capitol Records suddenly had to answer customer demand where they had once shooed away George Martin’s entreaties. CEO Alan Livingston reluctantly decided “Hand” had hit potential in ways “She Loves You” and “Please Please Me” didn’t—his criteria have still gone unexplained. Knowing about Epstein’s Sullivan bookings for February, he budgeted $50,000 for a major marketing campaign, which kept Capitol employees working overtime during the Christmas holiday once the top forty sparked. George Harrison had wandered unrecognized into an Illinois record shop just three months before. The campaign included “The Beatles Are Coming” bumper stickers, posters, billboards, and banners. In Hollywood, an item about Psycho star Janet Leigh wearing a Beatle wig ran on the celebrity wires.

  While Epstein was in New York with Billy J. Kramer in November, finalizing the Sullivan contract, he did an interview in his Regency Hotel room with a New Yorker reporter, which ran as a lead “Talk of the Town” piece in the December 28, 1963 issue. (The magazine had tapped very good British sources about the act and its following.) Reports also ran in Time, Newsweek, and Life the week of November 15, 1963. The condescending tone of these reports brushed off this “moptop” craze as peculiarly British.

  But Epstein’s choice of the New Yorker for his interview signaled the same kind of foresight he had shown about The Ed Sullivan Show. Certainly, he found it gratifying that America’s most prestigious literary weekly took an interest. Did he also suspect his base was broader than teenagers? His other meetings in New York were taken up with Capitol Record executives, planning the promotional campaign. A year ago the Beatles had flown off for a final two-week stint in Hamburg, and now here he was on the precipice of unimaginable exposure, using the Royal Variety Performance as his launchpad for America.

  What’s curious is just how close to the surface all these things seem in his long New Yorker interview, which aligned all the buttons the Beatles soon pushed. Weeks before their national television debut, Epstein told the story of how Ed Sullivan had caved in to British Beatlemania at Heathrow Airport: “At that time, it happened, the Prime Minister was supposed to fly out to Scotland, and the queen mother was supposed to land from a trip to Ireland. But everything was out of whack, because, you see, the Beatles were flying in from a tour of Sweden, and the whole airport was in an uproar because of the crowds that turned up to welcome them. Mr. Sullivan knew a good thing when he saw it.” The Beatles, Epstein continued, had broken “every conceivable entertainment record in England. They are the most worshipped, the most idolized boys in the country. They have tremendous style, and a great effervescence, which communicates itself in an extraordinary way.” He even ventured a few aesthetic remarks (“Their beat is something like rock ’n’ roll but different from it.”) and a running leap at how their charisma ruffled show-business-as-usual: “They have none of that mean hardness about them. They are genuine. They have life, humor, and strange, handsome looks.”

  Finally—and here the average New Yorker reader might have taken pause—Epstein sugge
sted the Beatles were something beyond mere entertainment, exotic and unusual even to Britons: “Their accents are Liverpudlian—of the Liverpool area—and they have been called a working-class phenomenon,” he said. “But I disagree with the sometimes express notion that their appeal is merely to working classes. The Beatles are classless.” Imagine if Colonel Parker had said Elvis Presley was “raceless” or that race mattered less in his music than his audience’s response to it. Knowingly or not, Epstein had stumbled on a juicy conundrum. In America, of course, everybody is classless—Epstein spoke to the U.S. market as only a Brit could, unveiling his entrenched class anxiety, boasting about the crossover they had already made as northerners raiding London’s show-biz establishment. For Americans to embrace a British act performing American music would be the ultimate hat trick, and for this he drew the parallel between class and race the Beatles had unveiled in the sound.

  But Americans, of course, thought of Europe and Britain as cultural dynasties, “where all the history comes from,” as comic Eddie Izzard once said, and all the respectable music and art, too. Epstein’s remarks got at something more universal and, in retrospect, more knowing about how far the Beatles had already taken rock ’n’ roll. “This isn’t just a teenage phenomenon,” Epstein tried to tell Americans. “Mummies like the Beatles, too—that’s the extraordinary thing. They think they are rather sweet. They approve,” he insisted, regaling American parents with how his “boys” outfoxed previous rock ’n’ roll creatures like Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chuck Berry.10 Epstein charmed this American outlet the same way he had won over Dick James and George Martin. The Beatles got little old ladies who drank tea humming their songs and tapping their toes—how could the rest of the world possibly resist?

  PHOTO INSERT 2

  December 18, 1963. BBC Paris Studio, London. The “From Us to You” recording session, broadcast the following week on the Beatles’ own two-hour radio special.

  February 9, 1964. Phil Spector makes sure to get his photo taken with Cynthia and John in first class as the Beatles fly to America.

  December 18, 1965. Alfred Lennon reclines with a cigarette for a photo shoot to publicize his single, “That’s My Life.”

  July 8, 1966. Heathrow Airport, London. The Beatles, with their manager, Brian Epstein, greeted by two hundred fans after arriving in London.

  March 30, 1967. EMI Studios. John listens to a playback in the control room during the Sgt. Pepper sessions, with producer George Martin and technical engineer Ken Townsend (right).

  Summer 1968. “When two great Saints meet, it is a humbling experience. The long battles to prove he was a Saint.” McCartney’s dedication adorns Lennon’s nude self-portrait with Yoko on the cover of Unfinished Music No.1 Two Virgins.

  Summer 1968. EMI Studios. John and Paul enjoy a light moment during the White Album sessions.

  March 20, 1969. “. . . You can get married in Gibraltar near Spain.” John and Yoko pose with their marriage certificate.

  April 22, 1969. Apple rooftop. John changing his name to John Ono Lennon on the site of the concert that closes the movie Let It Be.

  December 15, 1969. Times Square, Manhattan. One of eleven billboards John and Yoko purchased in major cities to deliver their Christmas message for peace.

  February 11, 1970. Studio Eight, BBC Television Centre, London. Taping a performance of “Instant Karma!” for Top of the Pops. Yoko sits blindfolded as Klaus Voormann (with beard) plays bass in the background behind her.

  July 23, 1971. Ascot, England. Posing with an exit sign in the “spare room” at Tittenhurst, readying for a move to Manhattan.

  November 8, 1972. New York. John bows at Yoko’s feet the morning after Nixon’s re-election landslide. At the party the previous evening, Lennon had openly cheated on her in the next room.

  Chapter 12

  One Sweet Dream

  The Beatles so thoroughly revised our ideas about “American” music, its style, roots, and tributaries, that it’s hard to imagine how they ever could have remained a British phenomenon. All through 1963, Capitol Records waved off American release of their hits even as Britain, the far more conservative cultural sensibility, succumbed. This was peculiar not least because EMI, Parlophone’s umbrella company, was, after all, a global conglomerate, and Capitol Records its subsidiary. Capitol’s leverage was sheer numbers: the American music market swamped the UK in terms of sales, and Britain’s track record with pop stars was perceived as terminally lagging, although this was more a matter of perception. And the prevailing myths about the Beatles’ “American moment” tend to get abstracted by the gust of their arrival.

  George Martin’s status as a boat rocker within EMI made it hard for him to exert much influence on getting his band marketing support abroad. Once again, the era’s extreme cultural xenophobia, in both America and Britain, flattened any arguments about potential popularity until Ed Sullivan hitched his wagon to Beatlemania just as the royals had. At each stage of the game, Beatlemania saw the establishment catching on to a youth-driven yet supremely talented phenomenon, not inflating an artificial hype around a manufactured act. Fleet Street figured out how to sell more newspapers than even Profumo through the Beatles, which was good business practice even before it was sincere cynicism. For once, America would have a lot to learn from the British charts—and acquiesce to a new cultural trade imbalance.

  Epstein’s underrated strategy had them in front of the press immediately after landing, and the interviews persisted—in the back of limos, in hotel rooms, over the phone—throughout the visit. “Direct” documentarians Albert and David Maysles, who had just finished shooting Orson Welles in Spain (1966), filmed the entire visit with hand-held cameras for a possible TV special, now an indispensable eye-of-the-storm piece called The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit. Epstein knew the Beatles were unflappable, and he was playing their second-strongest suit to put them over now that they had their first American hit record: their charm. If they could win over the American press the way they had Fleet Street, he reasoned, the music would do the rest. As America greeted them as newcomers, they leaned on a whole year’s experience as gadflies. They held the press the same way they held their audience: through irreverent retorts that skirted vulgarity, and a knowing sense of show-biz politics that made them seem perched on some higher vantage, laughing at the circus erupting all around them. They made the overhyped atmosphere seem ridiculous even as they exploited it. Presley sneered at how easy it was to puncture stale showbiz traditions; the Beatles amplified this with mirthful self-consciousness.

  Ringo Starr ultimately had the simplest explanation for how this final stretch of audience was conquered: “Things used to fall right for us as a band. We couldn’t stop it. The gods were on our side. We were fabulous musicians, we had great writers; it wasn’t like a piece of shit was being helped, and things just fell into place . . . but we were worried about America.”1

  By the end of 1964 the Beatles had become a cultural meteor, a global phenomenon, with hit records from Australia to Ireland, and stars in the runaway movie A Hard Day’s Night, embraced even by doubting critics. The barrage of Lennon-McCartney songs that poured out this year alone made them ruling titans, and they gave a fair number away to lesser acts (Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black, Peter and Gordon), showing astute aesthetic judgment about what they recorded with the Beatles and what they handed off to others.

  Before they crossed the Pond, though, Lennon and Harrison continued courting Veronica and Estelle Bennett with fancy dinners in London as the Ronettes finished up their tour with the Rolling Stones. Ronnie remembered: “ ‘Tell us about the Temptations,’ George would say. Then John would ask, ‘What’s Ben E. King really like?’ So we’d just go down the list, telling them stories about all the acts we worked with at the Brooklyn Fox. And as we’d talk, John and George would sit there like they were hypnotized.”2

  On January 16, the Beatles began a three-week booking at the Olympia Theatre in Paris, staying at
the Hotel George V. Harrison brought along a copy of a new record he was obsessed with, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. On only his second album, Dylan turned in an all-original breakout with meteors like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” Lennon and McCartney sponged it up as only two songwriters could while they hammered out sound-track songs for their movie, which would begin filming in March. Photographer Harry Benson also remembers them working on “I Feel Fine,” and future biographer Barry Miles recalls McCartney playing a working draft of “Yesterday” for publisher Dick James, whose only response was “Do you have anything that goes ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’?”3

  In Paris, Epstein got word that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had shot from its number forty-five debut to number one in America, 1.5 million copies sold in five days. Meet the Beatles was rushed into stores to piggyback on the song and became the fastest-selling LP in history. When they sat down to celebrate the news, somebody snapped a picture of the Beatles with pots atop their heads. Later that night, Benson took photos of a celebratory pillow fight Lennon started back in their hotel room.

  The Beatles gathered up friends to fly with them to New York. Lennon insisted on bringing Cynthia, refuting Epstein’s dictum about pop idols not having wives more firmly than ever.4 But Phil Spector wouldn’t allow the Ronettes to take up Lennon’s invitation to join the flight. He sent them home early, perhaps suspecting Lennon’s designs. Back in New York, Ronnie was watching on television as Phil Spector got off the plane behind the Beatles at John F. Kennedy International Airport. “I wanted to strangle him!” she wrote. “We couldn’t fly back with the Beatles, but there he was, standing in front of all the cameras after the Beatles got off their plane. . . . That’s when I first realized how badly Phil really wanted to be a star himself.”5 Spector, whose pop dynasty had influenced the British groups beyond all description, glommed onto the Beatles. He cast himself as a symbolic protector, shepherding them into his own promised land, as if he were engineering the vast changes beginning to pour in from Britain. Spector’s moment was ending as a new one began.