Ringo did some Ninja thing and magically appeared behind Mick, then said, “You’re sounding awfully dramatic, Mr. Jagger.” Then he said in a most excellent Mick impression, “Your powers are useless against Ninja Lords, O great zombie hunter! Surrender or feel the sting of the shuriken!”
John, Paul, and George started giggling again. Paul said, “You tell ’em, Rings! Give ’em heck, an’ that!”
George wadded up his napkin and threw it at Mick; it bopped him in the head, and I couldn’t help laughing. Mick said to me, “Quit being a cunt, Charlie. If you’re going to act like that, why don’t you just piss off?”
I told him, “Cheers, mate.” And I pissed off.
RINGO STARR: Jagger weighed next to nothing, so I picked him up, carried him outside, flagged down a cab, and threw him in. I said, “Happy New Year, Mick. And a piece of advice for you: you’re not gonna get all three of them at once. Pick ’em off one at a time. You’ll have a better chance.”
He scratched his head and said, “That’s actually damn good advice, Rings. I never thought of it, what with their ‘All for zombies, and zombies for all’ shite. But why’re you telling me that?”
I said, “I like you, man.”
He said, “Yeah, I like you, too. Hell, I even like them. But I can’t let it go. I have to finish what I’ve started, or else I’ll look like a prat.”
I said, “Gotcha. But like I said, one at a time. If you do it like that, it’ll be less embarrassing for everybody. You’re never gonna beat them, but at least if you go one-on-one, you won’t come off, ehm, looking like a prat.”
Mick said, “Listen, Ringo, one at a time is no problem. All I need to do is give them a single kiss to the chest, and the Beatles will be broken up like no band has ever—”
I interrupted; “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that’s all you need to do, but you’re not gonna be able to do it. Nothing but nothing will ever break up the Beatles.”
Mick rolled his eyes and said, “Now who’s sounding dramatic?”
CHAPTER FIVE
1966
Circa 2008, what was the best way to track somebody down, be it an old girlfriend, an old high school classmate, or an old British reporter? That’s right: Facebook. Thanks to this useful online social tool, I was able to track down Maureen Cleave, former pop culture scribe for the London Evening Standard.
On March 4, 1966, Cleave sat down with John Lennon for an interview that was, without a doubt, the most revealing of Lennon’s Beatles years. In it, John was brutally honest with his opinions on literature, music, the pitfalls of fame, how he best liked to kill humans, and, most controversially, his faith, or lack thereof. (Odd that a few hyperbolic comments about God would create more of a ruckus than an internationally revered undead musician describing the manner in which he liked to murder, but that’s religious types for you.)
Fearing a possible terrorist attack from the religious right or zombie haters in general, Maureen Cleave will never take a face-to-face meeting with a stranger, so I was lucky that in May 2008, she decided it would be okay to participate in an instant message chat session via good ol’ Facebook.
In July 2006, I received an email from the address [email protected]. The first line: “John Smith is not my name.” Mr. Not John Smith went on to write,
There is a ticket waiting for you at the American Airlines counter at O’Hare Airport. It is a direct flight to Washington, Dc. It leaves tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. At 1:00 Eastern Standard Time, you will meet me at a bench on the east side of the Washington Monument. The bench is painted with an advertisement for a local shyster named Zelman Berger. I will be wearing jeans and a red T-shirt with Che Guevara’s face on the front. If you are not there, you will never hear from me again. If you are there, I will elaborate on some information regarding the Beatles and Elvis Presley that you may find very interesting. I look forward to meeting you. P.S.—Lunch is on me.
Being a bit of a conspiracy buff, that was an offer I simply couldn’t refuse, so I updated my will, took out a five-million-dollar life-insurance policy, and hopped a plane to DC.
Smith was true to his word: Che T-shirt, jeans, a couple of turkey subs, and a fuckload of very interesting elaboration.
“JOHN SMITH”: I was recruited by the CIA right out of Stanford in 1962. I was this skinny kid from the Arizona sticks who’d piss his pants if he ever saw a gun, so I couldn’t figure out why they wanted me. Turns out, the Company needed some young recruits because none of those assholes knew shit about shit that happened after 1958. At twenty-four, I was the youngest agent by far, the only one with any concept of pop culture, and probably the only one who knew who the fuck Paul McCartney was.
I don’t remember the exact date I got the memo, but it doesn’t really matter, because the thing could’ve been sitting in somebody’s in-box for a week or a month or a year. I don’t remember the exact wording, either—so much shit came across my desk that one thing tended to blend into another—but the gist of it was, Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, aka, Thomas Andrew Parker, aka, Colonel Tom, aka, Elvis Aron Presley’s manager, had contacted one of our agents in regard to the Beatles. Long story short, van Kuijk wanted the Beatles banned from the United States.
As wacky as that sounds, van Kuijk’s reasoning was almost sound. He claimed that: (a) the government should be concerned about a repeat performance of the Shea Stadium fiasco; (b) the United States wasn’t equipped to defend itself against English zombies; and (c) as there had been whispers of sex slavery coming out of Europe, the Beatles’ presence was a clear and present danger to girls and women between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five.
Now, if I was some asshole who’d been with the Company since Dub Dub Two, I probably would’ve put together an overly complicated plan to keep Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr out of our swell little country here. But I was a kid who knew that (a) Lennon took full responsibility for the Shea riots and swore up and down he wouldn’t do it again (and I believed him); (b) Liverpool zombies were generally ultrapolite—some have said they’re the pussies of the zombie world—and were eminently defensible; and (c) I’d never heard a single complaint about any alleged sex slaves from either a slave, a master, or a parent. It’d take a complete moron not to realize that Colonel Tom was scared the Beatles would wipe the Pelvis off the charts.
So I called van Kuijk and told him to fuck off. Then I got in touch with Brian Epstein. I figured that’s the sort of thing his band might want to know about.
BRIAN EPSTEIN: The lads will always love Presley’s music, but I think they lost interest in him as a person when he refused their invitation to join the undead movement, as it were. That being the case, they weren’t particularly fazed or surprised when I gave them the news about the King’s attempt to banish us from his kingdom. But they weren’t happy. I still don’t know why they didn’t decorate Graceland with his small intestines.
JOHN LENNON: If we’d have wanted to, we could’ve had him banned from the UK. After all, we were Members of the Order of the British Empire. And we have the medals to prove it.
We also could’ve zombified him against his will, but the paperwork on that would’ve been a disaster, so fook that.
No, we took the high road and let it lie, and let him live. We weren’t always right bastards. Just sometimes.
There are myriad stories describing the Beatles’ self-inflicted limb removals and subsequent reattachments, but few outside of the band’s inner circle have actually experienced the joy, the fascination, and the horror of an up-close and personal view of John, Paul, or George calmly tearing off his foot, then even more calmly putting it back on. (I myself have seen several dozen versions of that act, and it never ceases to disgust … especially when George chows down on a French fry he’d just dipped into an open wound.) But that all changed in 1966, when the world was treated to photographic documentation of what many consider to be the Liverpool zombies’ greatest trick.
The date: March 25. The location: a photography stu
dio in the Chelsea section of London. The occasion: a photo session for an upcoming Beatles project to be determined. The photographer: veteran UK shutterbug Robert Whitaker. The outcome: equal helpings of controversy and disgust. The reasoning behind the Beatles’ artistic concept for the session: nobody’s quite sure, but in April 2003, Whitaker offered the story behind one of the grossest moments in the band’s unbelievably gross history.
ROBERT WHITAKER: I’d shot the Beatles dozens of times, and aside from the time Paul picked me up over his head, then chucked me over to John, who chucked me over to Ringo, who promptly dropped me onto my hindquarters, the sessions had been uneventful and oftentimes fun. The boys were always good for a laugh.
The day of the session in question, they arrived punctually, as always, all wearing matching trench coats. At this point in their careers, they had their fingers on the pulse of the fashion world, so in terms of wardrobe, I let them make their own choices, figuring that they knew better than me what the clubbers were wearing. If they told me trench coats were the rage, then trench coats it was.
While my assistant prepared them some tea, John put his arm over my shoulders and guided me into the corner. He said, “Listen, Robert, we have an idea for how this should be staged. I don’t know if you’ll like it, but trust me: everybody else in the world will.”
Based on how many records they’d sold, I knew that John had a far better idea of what “everybody else in the world” would like than I did, so I said, “Of course I trust you. Do as you wish.”
John said, “That’s lovely, Robert, just lovely. Now, how about you shove off for fifteen minutes while we get organized?” So I shoved off for fifteen minutes. When I returned, I was greeted by a tableau that could best be described as … arresting.
Save for Ringo, who was in his Ninja gear, the boys were all wearing their butcher jackets, but that wasn’t the arresting part. John, Paul, and George were perched on chairs one right next to the other, and Ringo was lying at their feet, but that wasn’t the arresting part. What took me aback was what they’d done with their bodies.
All four of John’s limbs were placed neatly on the floor in front of Ringo—the order went right leg, left arm, right arm, left leg. Paul had removed his left leg and was holding it up to his ear as if it were a telephone, and he’d snaked his tongue up the open part of the limb. George had taken off all ten of his fingers and tied them into a bundle with what appeared to be either his own small intestines, or a guitar string; as I walked into the room, he lovingly placed the bundle on his head. All four of the boys were covered with blips and blops of the eggplant-colored goo that courses through a Liverpool zombie’s body.
As a human being, I was repulsed—in addition to the awfulness of the visual, the smell was beyond appalling—but as a photographer, I was thrilled. If these pictures came out properly, this session could be one for the ages. So I held a kerchief over my nose, did everything I could to keep my gorge down, grabbed my Kodak Brownie Auto 27, and, for the next forty-five minutes, took shot after shot after shot. As the afternoon progressed, the boys kept breaking off pieces of themselves, which they piled in front of Ringo. Eventually, John, Paul, and George were just torsos with heads, and Ringo was surrounded by a plethora of body parts. It was quite a sight to behold.
I suggested that they put themselves back together so we could snap a few shots with them fully intact, just in case somebody at the record label created a stink. They grudgingly agreed, but only if they could cover themselves in that purple zombie goo. I told them that would be lovely.
I stayed up all night developing the photos, and they came out smashingly. I still consider it the highlight of my career, so much so that I don’t even mind that my studio, to this day, still smells slightly of wet zombie.
BRIAN EPSTEIN: I hated the photos, and Neil Aspinall hated the photos, and George Martin hated the photos, and everybody at the record label hated the photos, but it didn’t matter what any of us thought; those boys had enough cache at that point that they could’ve taken a picture of Ringo juggling John, Paul, and George’s detached genitalia while wearing a green-and-pink-checked tuxedo, and nobody would’ve questioned it.
When the record hit the streets in June, the public was less than thrilled.
The week after I interviewed Whitaker, I posed a question on my blog: What was your initial reaction upon seeing what came to be known as “the butcher cover”?
[email protected]: I have a pretty hearty stomach, but when I saw it at the record store, I puked all over the B section. I ended up paying for fifty-six records. Apparently the record store had a “you barf on it, you buy it” policy.
[email protected]: I’m only fifteen, and I obviously didn’t see a copy of the actual cover, but I saw a photo online. It was nasty, but I still thought it was pretty cool, so I set it as my screen saver. When my parents saw that, they took away my computer for a week.
[email protected]: I was conflicted. On one hand, I respected them for sticking to their guns, but on the other, that shit gave me nightmares for weeks. It didn’t change my feelings about their music, but I sure as shit wasn’t inviting them to my bar mitzvah.
BRIAN EPSTEIN: The public spoke, and thank goodness the folks at EMI Records listened. They recalled all the butcher covers and replaced them with another shot from the Whitaker session. The replacement photo was atrocious in its own right—Paul was lying in a trunk, doing a weird vampire impression (God knows why), and the other three were drenched in that awful purple glop—but after its predecessor, it was comparatively tame. The whole to-do didn’t hurt record sales, but I think it cost us a whole bunch of goodwill.
The loss of goodwill continued when word of Maureen Cleave’s newspaper article—the piece in which John Lennon claimed the Beatles were on par with Jesus—made it across the pond. In the UK, the interview was taken with a grain of salt—the general feeling was, “Oh my, there goes Johnny again. He must be hungry. Somebody give the poor bloke some cortex to nibble.”—but the American religious right took it a helluva lot more seriously.
Father Jeffrey Jenkins of the Cathedral of the Incarnation Catholic church in Nashville, Tennessee, was already a vocal opponent of the butcher cover, but when he heard of Lennon’s pronouncement, he went over the edge. Jenkins became one of the most impassioned opponents of the Beatles and everything he believed they stood for. He was still bitter about the band when I spoke with him in May 2000.
FATHER JEFFREY JENKINS: I have no problem with zombies in general, so long as they know their place. There were three zombies in my congregation, and they were all quiet, respectful, and God-fearing, and we welcomed them with open arms. Heck, back in 1998, I even had a zombie over to my house for dinner. So zombies are okay with me.
My hatred for the Beatles has nothing to do with their state of being. Heck, considering their behavior, they could’ve been bogeymen or mole monsters or the starting offensive line for the mighty University of Tennessee Volunteers, and I still would’ve started the movement. I mean, if you put yourself on the same plane as Jesus Christ, which is exactly what that heathen John Lennon did, you deserve to be punished, am I right? When you flood the streets with filth like that horrible record cover, you deserve to suffer, and suffer badly. So I took it upon myself to see that the Beatles suffered accordingly.
I had trouble deciding on a name for our movement. My first choice was Parents, Sons, and Daughters Stomping Out Zombie Musicians from England, but I thought the media might have trouble with that one, and if we wanted to get our word out there, the media was an important ally. After days and days of rumination and prayer, I settled on God-Lovers Against the Beatles, or GLAB. That was easy enough for everybody to remember.
The goal of GLAB was simple enough: make every single person in the United States realize that the Beatles were evil and should be banished from our children’s bedrooms, our retail establishments, and our God-fearing country. Our first step toward accomplishing our goal was to
organize what we called Beatle Fires.
Beatle Fires were festive events in which our followers burnt all of the Beatles records and memorabilia they could get their hands on. They were a great success—heck, we probably ridded the world of almost eight thousand Beatles albums and singles in Nashville alone—but the zombie community made it known that they weren’t happy with us. They didn’t appreciate us going after their own, but I didn’t appreciate them going after my God, so no matter how much fuss they kicked up, I wasn’t backing down, no way, no how, no siree bub.
We were attacked during our seventh Beatle Fire. I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened, because when that first zombie came over the hill, I hightailed it on out of there. I could’ve stayed and fought, certainly, but I decided it was important for the leader of GLAB to remain healthy and unharmed, in order to spread the word and carry out the mission, and I still believe that was the correct decision. GLAB suffered some bad losses that afternoon: twenty-six of us were killed, and more than twice that many were injured. However, none were turned into zombies, because the horrible, horrible undead men and women who staged the attack made it clear they didn’t believe any member of GLAB was worth reanimating. I found that hilarious: a stinking zombie telling my followers that they weren’t good enough to become stinking zombies. Give me a break.
After the attack, the Nashville division of GLAB drifted apart—it turned out that the majority of my parishioners were cowards—but the movement picked up steam across the country. Beatle Fires became commonplace, and it did my heart proud when I saw a photo of those gol-darned British zombies being burned in effigy down in Dallas. I also appreciated the group in Biloxi who torched that record shop. Unfortunately, by end of summer, the furor died, and, unfortunately, so did GLAB.
Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion Page 17
