by Peter Brown
He had arrived earlier in the evening expecting to find a spurned and disconsolate wife and had learned that Cynthia was out on the town with an eligible bachelor. He told Cynthia that John would be very interested to learn this. John had sent Magic Alex with an ultimatum; he wanted a divorce so he could marry Yoko Ono, and if Cynthia didn’t cooperate and made a fuss, he would take Julian away from her and ship her back to Liverpool.
“Suing me for divorce!” she shouted. “On what grounds is he suing me?”
“John is claiming adultery,” Magic Alex said coolly. “I have agreed to be corespondent and testify on John’s behalf.” Alex pointed out he had slept with her, after all, and now, after catching her coming back to the hotel at dawn with Roberto Bassanini, Alex wasn’t so sure he was the only one.
Cynthia rushed back to London to try to explain to John about Magic Alex, but it was two weeks before she could get in to see him, and then they weren’t alone. John insisted Yoko be present during this difficult husband and wife confrontation. While Cynthia choked back tears, mostly at the humiliation of having to discuss the matter in front of Yoko, she tried to explain that Magic Alex had bewitched her with candles and black magic, just as he had hypnotized the American nurse in Rishekesh to lie about the Maharishi. John simply reiterated the terms of the divorce; there was bound to be a lot of bad publicity, and Cynthia should keep her mouth shut and let him claim adultery. He would give her a small settlement and let her go her way. Their meeting ended when John excused himself to go to the bathroom, and Yoko followed him out of the room.
Cynthia kept her mouth shut and let John sue her. I was asked by John to arrange the terms of the divorce. Everything was proceeding smoothly when in early September John confided to me that Yoko was pregnant with his child. I advised him that this should be kept top secret from the press for the moment, but I also explained that with Yoko pregnant, it would make it rather ludicrous for John to pursue his adultery charges against Cynthia. Thus, John’s charges against Cynthia were dropped, and Cynthia was allowed to turn the tables and sue John for divorce. It gave her no pleasure. I’ve rarely seen anyone as distraught. Cynthia was granted a “decree nisi” in November of 1968, which became final six months later. She accepted a settlement of only £100,000, of which she had to use £25,000 to buy a home for herself and Julian and her mother to live in.
Cynthia was amputated from the Beatles and their families with ruthless speed and precision. Few Beatles employees or friends dared to show her support or speak out against Yoko, lest the wrath of John Lennon fall on them. I had tremendous sympathy for Cynthia, but although I was unhappy about the way John was handling it, I knew it was best for both of them. Arranging the divorce was an unpleasant task. The only Liverpool chum who was able to give Cynthia any real support or sympathy was Paul. He drove out to Weybridge in his Aston Martin to visit her and Julian. On the way he made a song to cheer the little boy. It went, “Hey Julian, it’s not so bad./Take a sad song, and make it better.” This was, of course, to become one of the Beatles’ greatest hits of all time, “Hey Jude.”
Cynthia’s best friends became strangers to her now. She bought a house in Kensington and spent a lonely summer packing and moving out of Weybridge. Months later she tried to give a dinner party in her new home for the people with whom she had shared so unique an experience, but her guests were so uncomfortable the party was a disaster. We rarely heard from her until she married Roberto Bassanini on July 31, 1970. Cynthia and Bassanini opened a London restaurant, but it was not very successful. Nor was their marriage. She divorced Bassanini in 1974 and moved to Ruthin, North Wales. Four years later she married restauranteur John Twist, and they opened a small restaurant and inn in Ruthin. Two years later she divorced Twist. She would always believe, up until John’s death, that one day they would be back together again.
Just as I was finished arranging the terms of John’s divorce from Cynthia, I was asked to arrange the terms of Yoko’s divorce from Tony Cox. Charles Levinson, a London lawyer, handled the divorce for us, although most of the negotiations were done in my office at Apple, where John, Yoko, Cox, and the lawyers met amiably to discuss the settlement. John agreed to pay all the joint debts of Yoko and Cox, which came to approximately $100,000. This included back rent, bills from various film labs, and the repayment of personal loans. John also agreed to pay for the cost of the divorce, which included moving Cox to the Virgin Islands, where he could establish residency.
In return, Yoko and Cox’s child, Kyoko, was to be remanded to Yoko’s custody at will.
Months before John and Cynthia had picked out a black £6,000 Italian Revolto automobile at an auto show. When it was delivered, John had it sent to Magic Alex as a token of his appreciation for his troubles. Magic Alex remained a close friend to John for a while—for as long as Yoko let him.
For several months John and Yoko lived out of suitcases, like homeless waifs. “We were shoved around a bit,” Yoko says. “We were basically two illicit lovers without anyplace to go.” They spent a few days at Paul’s house on Cavendish Avenue, but Paul’s presence loomed too large for them. They passed a night or two at my flat and then went on to Neil Aspinall’s for a week. Eventually, they ended up in Ringo’s old flat, the vacant basement apartment on Montague Square.
It was at Montague Square, feeling more than a little bruised and already like outlaws, Yoko says, that they began to take heroin. As Yoko later put it, they took heroin “as a celebration of ourselves as artists.” “Of course,” Yoko says, “George says it was me who put John on heroin, but that wasn’t true. John wouldn’t take anything he didn’t want to take.” Still, many of John’s intimates saw heroin as the way Yoko could gain complete control over John. If there was one single element that was the most crucial in the breakup of the Beatles, it was John’s heroin addiction.
“John was very curious,” Yoko explained. “He asked if I had ever tried it. I told him that while he was in India with the Maharishi, I had a sniff of it in a party situation. I didn’t know what it was. They just gave me something and I said ‘What was that!?’ It was a beautiful feeling. John was talking about heroin one day and he said, ‘Did you ever take it?’ and I told him about Paris. I said it wasn’t bad. I think because the amount was small I didn’t even get sick. It was just a nice feeling. So I told him that. When you take it—‘properly’ isn’t the right word—but when you do a little more, you get sick right away if you’re not used to it. So I think maybe because I said it wasn’t a bad experience, that had something to do with John taking it.”
Whatever it had to do with, it wasn’t a passing fancy, and before long they were hooked. They lay in the basement of Montague Square almost all July that simmering summer, submerged in a self-inflicted stupor.
2
Just as John was taking up with Yoko Ono, Paul McCartney’s five-year romance with Jane Asher was coming to an end. Jane was back at work again, much to Paul’s chagrin, this time touring Great Britain with the Bristol Old Vic. Paul very obviously always needed to be with a woman, and when he wasn’t you could see the unhappiness in his face. In fact, when Paul first played “Hey Jude” for John in the studio without telling him he had written the song for Julian, John mistakenly thought that Paul was writing about the end of his romance with Jane. “Hey,” John thought, “he’s going through the same thing as I am.”
On May 12 Paul and John went to New York to join me and other officers of Apple to officially announce its inception. The trip was basically a five-day publicity blitz arranged by the public relations firm of Solters and Roskin. It included a press conference; a meeting of the board of directors of Apple, which I chaired aboard a Chinese junk in Manhattan harbor; a photo-layout in Life magazine; and an appearance on the “Tonight Show,” with an estimated audience of 25 million.
John and Paul were disappointed to learn that Johnny Carson, the show’s regular host, was being substituted for by retired baseball player Joe Garagiola. Garagiola was a pleasant, strai
ghtforward guy who was obviously pleased to have the Beatles on his show, but just as obviously confused as to what they were talking about. They explained to him in earnest their plans for Apple. “It’s a controlled weirdness,” Paul said, “a kind of western communism. We want to help people but without doing it like a charity. We always had to go to the big men on our knees and touch our forelocks and say, ‘please, can we do so and so ... ?’ We’re in the happy position of not needing any more money, so for the first time the bosses aren’t in it for a profit. If you come to me and say, ‘I’ve had such and such a dream,’ I’ll say to you, ‘Go away and do it.”’
Garagiola grinned at them. He continued to grin as John went on, “The aim isn’t just a stack of gold teeth in the bank. We’ve done that bit. It’s more of a trick to see if we can get artistic freedom within a business structure—to see if we can create things and sell them without charging five times our cost.”
All across America, the word went out. Every dreamer, every crook, rip-off artist, and sham entrepreneur understood just one thing: The Beatles were so rich they were giving away money. All you had to do was come to them with a plan, and they’d say, “Go away and do it!” John and Paul had no idea what they had unleashed that night.
After the show Paul McCartney went off by himself to meet Linda Eastman. Linda had appeared earlier in the day at the Apple press conference and had boldly slipped Paul her phone number. He called her later and made plans to see her that night, but he was afraid they would be photographed together if she came to his hotel suite at the St. Regis, and Jane Asher would see the photos. Instead, he arranged to meet Linda at Nat Weiss’ East Side apartment, where they spent the next few days together.32 One night when Paul told her how fond he was of children, Linda produced her daughter Heather, then six years old. Paul happily babysat for the child while her mother went off to photograph a rock act at the Fillmore. When Paul returned to London later that week, Linda sent him a huge blow-up of himself, lips pursed, on top of which she had superimposed a photo of Heather kissing him.
A few weeks later Paul was back in America, accompanied by Ron Kass. This trip was made expressly for him to speak at a record convention for Capitol Records in Los Angeles. Paul was the only Beatle who would consider addressing a business meeting attended by beer-bellied rack jobbers in polyester leisure suits, but Paul knew the value of good public relations. He also wanted his “western communism” to work, and he knew that as far as Apple Records went, the Capitol distributors were in a position to help them do it. Much to Ron Kass’ amusement, Paul spent the day glad-handing distributors and signing autographs for their children back home. He did everything except hand out cigars.
But all work and no play makes Paul a dull boy, and he found plenty of time to amuse himself in a bungalow of the Beverly Hills Hotel. He staged that weekend what Ron Kass called “The Paul McCartney Black and White Minstrel Show.” In one bedroom Paul installed a beautiful young Hollywood starlet. In the other bedroom he kept one of L.A.’s most famous black call girls. Kass, who was sharing the three-bedroom bungalow with Paul, got to watch his juggling act. He spent the weekend making trips from one bedroom to the other, stopping only to sign room-service bills. On Sunday morning a ringing telephone interrupted the proceedings. It was Linda Eastman. She had flown to California at her own expense and was at that moment in the hotel lobby, speaking to Paul from the house phone.
Paul didn’t skip a beat. He told her to come right on over to the bungalow. She appeared at the door a few minutes later, and Paul brought her right into the sitting room. He knocked on the door of each occupied bedroom and told the girls to dress and split. He and Linda chatted away nonchalantly on the sofa while the Black and White Minstrel Show packed and left in tears. Linda and Paul couldn’t have treated the situation more casually. They seemed just as blase when Peggy Lipton, an American actress who at the time was filming the popular TV series Mod Squad, appeared unannounced on the doorstep of the bungalow to make a declaration of love for Paul. Paul explained he was busy and shut the door in her face. Linda spent the night, and the next day Paul took her sailing with him on the yacht of John Calley, then head of production at Warner Brothers.
It was also Linda Eastman who accompanied Ron Kass and Paul back to New York and brought with her a bag filled with marijuana. This was the first of many of Linda’s pot follies, which would lead to numerous ugly scrapes with the law. Marijuana, it turned out, was one of Linda’s favorite vices. Ron Kass became aware of this while the three of them were waiting in the VIP Ambassador Lounge at the Los Angeles International airport. It was announced over the public address system that because of a bomb threat all carry-on luggage would have to be searched.
Kass immediately turned to Paul and said, “Do you have anything in your bag that would embarrass us?” Paul shook his head. Then Kass turned to Linda Eastman. She seemed surprisingly complacent as she informed him that she had “a couple of kilos” in a Gucci bag sitting at her feet.
Kass went to the airlines supervisor and complained that searching Paul McCartney and his friend in public would cause them great embarrassment. Certainly they didn’t think Paul McCartney was carrying a bomb and could an exception be made? The officials were adamant; everyone would have to be thoroughly searched. However, to avoid embarrassment, Paul and Linda could be searched in a private office. When Kass went back to the Ambassador Lounge to collect them, he kicked the Gucci bag underneath a long row of plastic turquoise chairs and left it there. It went unnoticed during the general search. After Paul, Linda, and Kass were politely searched, Linda retrieved the bag and carried it on the plane. Kass was so furious with her he couldn’t wait until they got rid of her in New York before he and Paul caught a flight home to London.
When Paul arrived home, Linda mounted a transatlantic campaign of phone calls and letters, but there was little any girl could do to keep his attention three thousand miles away.
Still, Paul pined for Jane, wishing she would come home from tour, yet he managed to keep himself distracted. One day that summer an American girl from New Jersey named Francie Schwartz turned up at the Apple office. She wore jeans, no makeup, and her hair needed to be washed, according to Barbara Bennett, the secretary who was at the reception desk at the time. Just like a thousand other girls, she had a letter and a script she wanted Paul McCartney to read. Barbara usually sent these girls on their way, but in some unexplained gesture of kindness, she told Francie Schwartz to come back in the afternoon when Paul was in.
The girl who returned to the office several hours later was completely transformed from the ragamuffin who had come through the door earlier. Francie had spent the day buying a dress and having her hair done. Barbara Bennett introduced her to Paul, who took her into his office. Later they went out for cocktails and dinner, and then she spent the night at St. John’s Wood. Within the week Paul requested that Francie be given a job at Apple, and amidst much resentment she was installed at a corner desk in the publicity department. Three weeks went by as Francie served no special purpose other than being Paul’s bird. It seemed she was firmly ensconced in the house on Cavendish Avenue. Until one night Jane came home unexpectedly.
The regular crew of groupies who stood in front of Paul’s house when he was in residence tried to warn him over the house intercom, but he thought they were playing a joke on him when they told him that Jane had returned from her tour and was letting herself in with her key. Just as had happened to Cynthia before her, Jane discovered another woman in her bathrobe. Jane stormed out of the house a few moments later and drove off in her car. Mrs. Asher arrived later that night to pick up Jane’s clothing, dishes, and pots and pans.
Although Paul and Jane were seen together once or twice after that, and Paul dutifully attended the opening night of her new play at the Fortune Theatre so that questions concerning his absence would not detract from the happiness of the evening for her, they were finished. A month later the public learned of this when Jane casually mentio
ned on the BBC’s “Simon Dee Show” that their engagement had been broken—by Paul.
Jane rarely saw or spoke to Paul again. As the years went by, she began to resent fiercely her public association with him and refused to discuss the subject in interviews. Today she is one of England’s most highly regarded actresses. She is married to political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, and they and their son and daughter live in London.33
Francie Schwartz was soon sent on her way. Back in America she wrote a book about her short affair with Paul, called Body Count, which was published by the Rolling Stone Press.
Linda Eastman kept the calls and letters coming. In early autumn Paul invited her to London to see the house at 7 Cavendish Avenue, and she never left.
3
As the cash flow reports crossed my desk, it became apparent that the Apple Boutique had turned into an enormous drain of money. In seven months the operation of the boutique lost nearly £200,000. Everything about it seemed to be a disaster of poor planning and incompetence. The Beatles and The Fool had since parted acrimoniously. The previous January, John Lyndon, who replaced Pete Shotton as the manager of the boutique, sent angry letters to The Fool and their management threatening to bar them from the shop if they removed any more garments from the premises or charged any further debts to Apple. The Beatles, who felt justified in taking legal action, dropped the whole matter quietly so as to avoid public embarrassment. The Fool subsequently moved to America and signed a recording contract with Mercury Records as a singing group. They were never heard from again.
The local citizens committee had succeeded in having the garish mural that graced the walls of the boutique scrubbed off. The customers seemed to be there only to shoplift or to stare at Jenny Boyd, Pattie’s sister, who was working there as a salesperson along with a self-styled mystic named Caleb. Caleb slept underneath a showcase during one of his many breaks. The store was also sometimes tended by a fat lady who dressed in authentic gypsy costumes. The inflatable furniture with the exaggerated price tags now sagged in the corners, the Hobbit clothing, a nostalgic reminder of the previous summer’s fashions, hung unpurchased on the racks. In the large stockroom on the floor above stood row upon row of unopened bolts of raw silks and lush velvet fabrics that had been ordered by The Fool. In the basement, hundreds of Nothing Boxes constructed by Magic Alex waited in the darkness, having blinked themselves to death.
