by Bryce Zabel
What started out as an arduous return to New York for Lennon and McCartney had turned into a blast. McCartney never tired of talking about the night, always making himself the audience, and not the star, of the experience. The sixty-eight-year-old did so again for the 2010 edition of Rockstar:
[Paul] “It was magic times magic. The two Johns—John and Johnny—just hit it off, and Ed and I were the two Macks—McCartney and McMahon. Ed seemed like he’d always been happy being Johnny’s number two, but he could see that would never do for me. He told me to show up for myself but to also show up for John and that John would always act like it pissed him off, and that I should ignore all this and show up anyway.”
Because of the delay in the show’s time, John, Paul, Johnny, and Ed were all safely at their table in Danny’s Hideaway when The Tonight Show aired. These two great partnerships watched the episode in the bar, with staff and other customers buzzing at the outer fringes of the action.
Over the evening, the men all signed autographs, took photos with Danny for the Hideaway Wall of Fame, and generally caroused like they were old friends. “We blew his mind out in a bar,” quipped Lennon to Apple’s new managing director Neil Aspinall the very next day. The two Johns and the two Macks stayed out until 2:30 a.m.
As the show aired in different time zones across the country, the reviews came to Johnny from a special phone that Danny had installed for his regular celebrity guests. Everyone who saw the show loved it. What the seventy minutes (the broadcast minus commercials) showed was John and Paul having a great time with Johnny and Ed. It was that rare piece of television—an authentic party in progress, unstilted and impromptu, full of high spirits and camaraderie.
One can only imagine how different the atmosphere might have been had John Lennon and Paul McCartney spent their air time with Joe Garagiola and his scheduled guest that night, Tallulah Bankhead. Rather than being a positive mood lifter in the lives of Lennon and McCartney, the experience could have been remembered as the ultimate downer.
NBC had a policy of recycling the videotapes of their shows, and it is possible that this convergence of celebrities might have been lost to history. Carson writer Dick Cavett, however, realized immediately that this show was different and afterward made certain that the tape was put on a special shelf and saved. The Sunday after the Beatles returned to England, NBC aired the episode in primetime as an edited one-hour special, replacing a repeat of The High Chaparral. It won the time slot against Mission: Impossible on CBS and The Sunday Night Movie on ABC. The edited version did not include John’s comment about their drug use.
The success of the Lennon and McCartney appearance made it clear that Apple Corps, no matter how idealistically conceived, needed a product to sell. Not that there was anything wrong with other musicians being signed, like Jackie Lomax or Mary Hopkin, but the product the world was interested in was the Beatles.
As the American audience watched John and Paul pitch the Apple story, the bottom line seemed to be that the Beatles were now going to use their influence and wealth to help young people reach their artistic dreams without the usual limitations to artistic freedom that they, themselves, had labored under.
That night on NBC television, the Beatles laid down their marker for the world. They were putting their own money on a dream to end artistic suppression and tyranny. And if straights from another generation did not dig it, then so be it. They were not asking for anyone’s permission anyway.
“You sound like a couple of dreamers,” said Carson as he thanked them for a great show.
“We’re not the only ones,” replied Lennon and then made a face to the audience.
The Call of the Shire
Before their trip to New York, the Beatles had done something that seemed oddly dangerous given their sudden founding of Apple Corps. They ran away and tried to forget about it.
In February, all four of the musicians and their respective wives and girlfriends packed their bags and left for Rishikesh, a place in northern India that overlooked the Ganges at the foothills of the Himalayas. They went to attend an advanced Transcendental Meditation training session at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whom the Beatles had first met the year before at a retreat in Wales, only to have Brian Epstein’s death cut short their introduction.
Although this more extensive retreat was George Harrison’s idea, it seemed to make sense for everyone else in a cosmic 1960s search-for-enlightenment way. Off they went over halfway around the world with so much to consider and sort out amongst themselves—only to spend their days trying to clear their minds and let their thoughts float upstream.
Destined to be one of the most prolific periods in the creative history of the Beatles, the majority of the songs they composed on the retreat appeared on the A Doll’s House album. Two appeared on the Everest album, and others continued to be considered for other albums for years to come. Often, at night, John, Paul, George, and now even Ringo sat outside under the stars working on new compositions while their significant others gathered together in one of their rooms, often talking about the challenge of being a life partner to a Beatle. None of the women present, however, would make the final cut. Every single partner who took the trip with their Beatle—Cynthia Lennon, Jane Asher, Pattie Boyd, and Maureen Starkey—would be eventually replaced.
No one was facing that reality as squarely as Cynthia Lennon. Her husband had been continuing his dalliance with the highly educated alternative artist Yoko Ono, who had become a regular fixture in the Beatles universe. Even while in Rishikesh, Lennon would walk down to the local post office every morning to see if he had received a telegram from Ono. On almost every day, she had sent him something.
John and Cynthia had been set up at the ashram with a private room where they could share a four-poster bed. This lasted only two weeks before John asked to sleep in a separate room, noting that he could only meditate when he was alone.
It was during these meditative sessions, however, that John Lennon’s agile and active mind, fueled by over two years of heavy psychoactive drugs, simply would not shut itself off. While Lennon was not opposed to ignoring group issues in the hopes that they would go away or meditating like George Harrison and the Maharishi expected him to, songs would come to him often, and he would try to either fight them off or postpone them, only to surrender and write them down, or pick up his guitar and let them form under his fingers. This was, he told himself, his form of meditation, and anyone who thought it made him a shortsighted, narrow-minded hypocrite could just go to hell.
From a small but growing corner of Lennon’s mind came the insistent reminder that Brian Epstein had gotten the Beatles to sign a three-picture deal with United Artists back in 1964, and they had delivered only two: A Hard Day’s Night and Help! The upcoming animated Yellow Submarine had been one of Epstein’s last negotiations on their behalf, but it existed in a netherworld with lawyers for both UA and Apple arguing whether it counted or not. Given that they had appeared in only one scene in the animated film, the band would likely need to go before camera in a whole movie to satisfy the letter of the legal obligation.
Their 1967 BBC television film special Magical Mystery Tour did not count either, as it was neither a full-length film nor a United Artists project. Even worse, it was a bomb in a business that demands hits above all else, having debuted to nearly universal critical derision in the English press. The project had been all Paul McCartney’s doing from the get-go, and while Lennon enjoyed watching what he saw as his overreaching partner stub his toe, it also meant that the group to which they both belonged needed a hit more than ever. Maybe even a hit with a more conventional foundation—like a screenplay and a professional director.
It was at this moment that John Lennon’s mind turned to the Shire.
Packing at the last minute back in London, John had tossed well-worn childhood copies of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings into his travel belongings. He had never entirely gotten them out of his mind, and now Unite
d Artists, the company releasing Yellow Submarine, had put them front and center again.
At that very moment, UA producers Sam Gelfman and Gabe Katza were in the second year of negotiations with author J.R.R. Tolkien to obtain the rights to The Lord of the Rings. First published in 1954, John had read a borrowed copy of the book when he was fourteen and had told the friend who had loaned him the paperback that he had lost it. It was that very copy that made the journey from England to India.
Executives at United Artists had made approaches to the Beatles about whether or not they might be interested should the film company successfully conclude the negotiations to option the property. The blend of fantasy, myth, and conflict had struck a chord in the ’50s among everyone from scholars to school kids, and, now in the late ’60s, the fans included a whole new counter-culture audience. The head of Apple Films, Denis O’Dell, also felt that this arrangement was the perfect alignment between the Beatles and the kind of material that would appeal to their fans.
John had responded positively and fast to the idea. The trick, said the executives, was that Tolkien was no Beatles fan, owing to a loud garage band in the cul-de-sac where he lived on Oxford’s Sandfield Road. He complained about “young men who are evidently aiming to turn themselves into a Beatle Group.” As for their practice sessions, Tolkien felt “the noise is indescribable.”
Knowing the author’s bias, all concluded that the matter would have to be hush-hush until UA had the rights locked up and things could move ahead in a more open fashion. The producers and the studio pushed the project into the fast lane, expediting a fifty-page contract that gave Tolkien £100,000 for his rights (or a mere 1/40th of the tax burden that caused the Beatles to form Apple).
Now sitting in the ashram, John Lennon meditated about how The Lord of the Rings could become a dream project that would elevate the group from Paul McCartney’s pitiable Magical Mystery Tour. In John’s vision, he would play Gollum, the Hobbit who had been corrupted by the ring and destined to exist in a netherworld of ugliness. He saw Paul taking on the primary character of the plucky and optimistic Frodo, with Ringo playing his warmhearted sidekick, Samwise Gamgee. George, the spirit warrior of the Beatles, would get the same respect in the film, playing the wizard Gandalf.
In other words, each Beatle would play the character in the book with which they (and their fans) were most likely to identify. The fact that the plot revolved around a ring, as did their second film, Help!, was ignored.
• • •
Rishikesh, India, did not convey its blessings on all the Beatles equally. Ringo Starr and his wife, Maureen, left after two weeks, and Paul McCartney and his new fiancée Jane Asher left two weeks after that. They were eventually followed several weeks later by John and Cynthia Lennon, along with George Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd, after it was suspected that the Maharishi had been hitting on female guests, including actress Mia Farrow, for reasons more carnal than what he preached.
When they had all returned from India, they discovered that in their absence, the English press had been hurling torrents of abuse at them for their dalliance with the Maharishi. They had become front-page fodder, and not in a good way.
As if to illustrate that the Beatles umbrella could provide shade to a wide diversity of material, EMI released the last Beatles single ever to debut under that label (with Paul’s roots-rocker “Lady Madonna” on the A-side and George’s spiritually ascendant “The Inner Light” on the B-side) immediately upon the group’s return to England.
Apple press officer Derek Taylor had endured the past months with a certain British stoicism, but even that had its limits. Harrison’s B-side convinced all the skeptics that they were correct—the Beatles were losing their bearings. Everything Taylor knew about journalism and public relations assured him of one thing: the Beatles simply had to change the subject. He reached out to contacts at MGM and convinced them to let John, Paul, George, and Ringo become the highest profile party crashers in film history.
In late March, Taylor wrote a desperate telegram to all the Beatles who remained in India and asked them to please come home immediately. He wanted them to see a movie.
Because of that outreach, on April 2, the Beatles attended the film premiere of Stanley Kubrick’s long-awaited 2001: A Space Odyssey. This allowed them to be seen not so much in the clutches of a high-pitched foreigner, the Maharishi, but walking a red carpet in London, in their finest mod garb, with beautiful women on their arms.
Taylor was correct in his assessment of the situation. The next day, all the papers, especially the tabloid press, had images of the Beatles and accompanying stories that seemed to suggest that their fling with the Indian guru was as much a publicity stunt as anything. Clearly, as seen in these pictures, the Boys of Britain had come home. Even John Lennon arrived with his wife Cynthia, making this the last public appearance they would ever make together, given his new romance with Ono.
That night, however, the most affecting images on the screen were those from the film itself. John couldn’t believe his eyes. “How does a man make a movie like that without taking acid?” he asked more than once at the after-party.
Paul, George, and Ringo, inspired by the mind-blowing nature of the film and its psychedelic ending, began to agree with John that a Kubrick-Beatles collaboration over The Lord of the Rings could be just what they needed to recover from the disastrous Magical Mystery Tour.
“Ah, well, we just got confused with our little film,” said Paul, trying to be diplomatic and funny as always. “Maybe the audience is supposed to be stoned and not the director.”
That same week, the Beatles dispatched the management team at Apple to arrange a meeting with Stanley Kubrick just three days later. “When Mr. Lennon called, I was prepared to say no to this,” he told the Apple team. “I have so many other things on my plate.”
Indeed, at the time, Kubrick had been deeply immersed in his next project, the screen adaptation of A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. He loved the book, to be sure, but he had run into some self-inflicted mental roadblocks in the process. He was tired, frustrated, and stuck. In contrast, the potential adaptation of The Lord of the Rings seemed more straightforward at the script stage, as the director was convinced that the main challenge would only be a matter of deciding what to leave out.
“I do think I might just be able to pull this off,” concluded Kubrick. “I’m probably the only director alive who could.” He told his representatives to work out a deal with United Artists.
With that, the notorious perfectionist began work on a screenplay. When Eastman and Klein later attempted to set a meeting between the director and all four of the Beatles, the request was turned down. “Mr. Kubrick feels that it would be better for him to see the film based on the underlying material rather than the actors who might play the characters,” said his assistant in response. The idea that in Kubrick’s mind the casting had a changeable quality created a measure of unease in the Apple offices but was not conveyed to the Beatles themselves.
As it turned out, the news of this possible collaboration between the Beatles and director Stanley Kubrick had leaked by the summer when Yellow Submarine had its own world premiere on July 17 at the London Pavilion in Piccadilly Circus. Again, all four Beatles and their ladies attended, and it was another mass demonstration of Beatlemania for those who had forgotten its impact. It was notable to Beatles historians, however, that John had substituted Yoko Ono on his arm for his soon-to-be ex-wife, Cynthia.
While press curiosity about The Lord of the Rings project could have stolen some of the thunder from the Beatles’ own film, it had the opposite effect. Everyone stood in awe of the bravura filmmaking of 2001: A Space Odyssey and now everyone loved the mind-blowing creativity of the animated color cartoon fantasy Yellow Submarine. It was destined to turn into an unqualified hit on its own, cementing the myth of the Beatles as psychedelic geniuses. It was both safe and childlike on the one hand, while remaining boldly counter-culture and subvers
ive.
The two films from Kubrick and the Beatles created a convergence of cool at a time when the news of the past months had been horrible, concerned first with the death of Martin Luther King Jr., then that of Robert Kennedy. The very idea of blending Kubrick with the Beatles struck a public nerve and provided a needed distraction, the same way Beatlemania had helped pass depression over JFK’s assassination.
George lingered on the red carpet to talk publicly about the project. He enthusiastically told the press that the film would feature full stereo sound, Cinerama, and a fantastic story. He even saw The Lord of the Rings as having the potential to bring the group together. “We’ve got to a point where we can see each other quite clearly. And by allowing each other to be each other, we can become the Beatles again. Even if we have to put on little Hobbity ears to do it.”
When asked if he agreed, John shrugged. “He’s a grand old wizard, George is. I’m just a smelly old Sméagol, living on cave fish. What would I know?”
Living in a Doll’s House
What all the Beatles understood was that a film of such complexity as The Lord of the Rings could take years to reach the market. They turned their attention to something more achievable—a new, original album from the Beatles. Paul was the most enthusiastic to do so. He loved the Beatles and he loved recording with the group. John was resigned to the work, and he did have a number of new songs under his belt which he thought were all ready to record. Even he, at this point, was not really seriously entertaining a life beyond the band.
So from May through September, the four men worked at Abbey Road Studios on the recording of their first double album, A Doll’s House. It was also the first Beatles album that didn’t try to sugarcoat the reality of the fractured band. Instead, it gloried in the fact that they were almost mythically soldiering on as if marching through the mountains during a blizzard.
