Once There Was a Way

by Bryce Zabel

  What John and Yoko didn’t know was that Linda had made friends with the wives of the other Beatles during the film production of The Lord of the Rings. The women had even come to jokingly call themselves “The Club,” an exclusive group where only women who were romantically involved with a Beatle were allowed to join. There were four of them in total, one woman for every man: Maureen Starkey, Pattie Boyd, Linda McCartney, and Yoko Ono.

  The four members had never spent time with one another on their own terms, which seemed a shame, so they set a lunch at the Cork and Bottle. Ono would only agree to go on a day when John was not in the studio with the Beatles, which meant that every other woman going to lunch had to pay the price of not being with their own Beatle on a day off.

  Linda, Yoko, Pattie, and Maureen had all witnessed some bad behavior from their respective Beatles at the Weekend at George’s. The behavior, and the issues behind it, was deemed too potentially explosive a topic for a friendly lunch. Better to concentrate on the present.

  What the women had in common in the here and now was that their husbands were working men, for the moment, and were involved with the new album project. It soon became obvious what divided them: Yoko thought that it was her job to go be with John, while the other women thought it was their job to respect the fact that their husbands needed to have private space as a band.

  The Beatles had discussed setting aside one day a week where the spouses could come in, or if not one day, then special hours, but Yoko wasn’t interested in any change. “John wants me to be with him.” It was as simple as that for her.

  Linda smiled. “That’s really wonderful,” she told Yoko. “So I’ll be seeing you tomorrow then.”

  Linda explained that it just wouldn’t do for her to be seen as less supportive of her own husband. If Yoko was going every day, then she would step up her own game. Whether she would come every day or not remained to be seen.

  “I’ll come on the days you can’t,” pitched in Maureen.

  “If everybody’s doing this, then I am, too,” said Pattie.

  For a while, Yoko came and stayed all day, as she’d been doing previously. Every day that Yoko came in, however, at least one of the wives did the same.

  Their husbands appeared to be doing their level best to just get through the sessions. Yet each session produced the inevitable artistic and personal tension that set the women on edge. It was clear that John didn’t like having the other wives in the session any more than his bandmates liked having Yoko around. It was a stand-off where everyone was uncomfortable and obligated, and no one knew how to stop it.

  A day came, however, where Yoko never showed up at the studio. Called at home, Yoko claimed to have had her fill of the Beatles anyway. “I’m writing an album of my own,” she said, “and I didn’t want Beatles to take my good ideas.” Paul always claimed that Yoko was kidding when she said that, but Linda maintained that she was dead honest.

  As they had first done with the A Doll’s House album, each of the four arguing Beatles relegated the other three members into sidemen for his own work. They were the best supporting musicians that anyone could ask for, and even while sulking, fighting, and arguing, their tracks were always a cut above anyone else’s.

  • • •

  The force truly keeping the Beatles together was the group’s specific gravity, the undeniable, ineradicable impact they had had on contemporary music and culture. At the end of the day, everyone knew that it might be good therapy for the Beatles to bitch about being Beatles, but nothing they would ever do after this chapter closed could possibly be this significant.

  So they kept at it. They made another great album by each bringing in their new music and picking the best fourteen songs. Then they made sure that every song had at least two of them playing on it.

  In the final mix of And the Band Plays On, McCartney got five songs (ranging from the evocative “Every Night” to the bouncy “That Would Be Something”), Lennon grabbed another five (“Instant Karma!” to “Mother”), Harrison got three, led by the power-hit “My Sweet Lord,” and Ringo placed one barn-burner in “It Don’t Come Easy” (also co-written by Harrison). To some critics, the sides sounded less organic than Everest, but there was no question that it added up to a Beatles album.

  During interviews supporting the release of And the Band Plays On, Paul McCartney sounded the most gung-ho of all the Beatles. “I think we’re all reasonably talented blokes,” Paul said, smiling, “and we might make a go of it on our own, but together we add up to just that little bit more that makes something special. Be a shame to spoil all that.” In other words, two plus two equaled five, a fact the increasingly confident McCartney understood.

  Harrison said, “We’ve got unity through diversity,” and people seemed to accept that.

  The album was originally called Back from the Brink (John’s title). In his mind, the Beatles had been sinking, and he toyed briefly with the idea of calling the record Deck Chairs and using images of the Titanic on the cover. In the end, then, And the Band Plays On became a compromise—it worked on Paul’s level to mean “joyfully soldiering on through a crisis,” while to John it signified “dithering away the last meaningless moment of existence.”

  Released in September 1970, And the Band Plays On became the third most successful Beatles album of all time, behind only Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Everest. The album’s cover art was a call-back to Yellow Submarine—the sub was black instead of yellow and appeared to be sinking to the bottom of the cover.

  Lennon was actually the most pleased of all the Beatles by this work. His “More Doll, Less Mountain” analysis received great coverage in the music press. He explained that the album abandoned some of the pop polish of Everest in favor of a return to the creative anarchy of A Doll’s House. Rockstar’s Bill Friedlander said in his review:

  “The Beatles as we once knew them are gone. Dead and buried beneath competition, jealousy, and too much of a good thing. But the Beatles as we hear them now have their own power. This is a group of young men who will all soon be in their thirties, men who are married and have children, men who have fought addiction, and men who have chased transcendence. Their voices are not so much blended today as they are heightened.”

  The album is notable for another addition. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, with Richard DiLello’s assistance, provided the sensational primal scream tapes recorded during the Weekend at George’s. The recording is of a marginal quality, but it makes an appearance on Side Two of the And the Band Plays On album, between “Working Class Hero” and “The Back Seat of My Car.” In the bridge, Lennon seems to be screaming “Fucking Asshole” and McCartney seems to be screaming back “Bloody Junkie,” although no one would ever confirm either the phrases or the authorship.

  Its family-friendly work environment notwithstanding, And the Band Plays On did not work its magic on all listeners. One, in particular, was Elvis Presley, who had never quite warmed to the Fab Four knocking him from his perch back in 1964. On December 21, 1970, in a bizarre tête-à-tête with President Nixon, Elvis offered to work as a special agent for the Feds and described some of the activities of the four British citizens as being “very anti-American.” The entertainer particularly singled out the “loud-mouthed Lennon.”

  Nixon had a phonograph in the Oval Office. A copy of And the Band Plays On was placed on the turntable by Elvis Presley, who cued it up to “Working Class Hero.”

  “He says some things on this record, Mr. President. Things that, if I’d said them, my mama would have washed out my mouth with soap.”

  The two men saw eye to eye on the potential for further disruption that these arrogant British musicians could bring to America. The president called them “outside agitators,” and the King did not disagree.

  Nixon had never listened to anything by these musicians, preferring more refined music. Indeed, Nixon was an accomplished pianist who played for guests in the White House. After cringing through half of Lennon’s complaint
about how the working class was getting screwed, the two adjourned to the East Room, where Nixon played Christmas carols for the staff, whom he encouraged to sing along with the already-crooning Elvis.

  While Nixon and Elvis conferred during this holiday season, Paul McCartney and John Lennon couldn’t even bring themselves to exchange Christmas presents, despite their long-standing tradition of doing so. They spoke to each other most often through others, with Paul trying not to incite John in the studio and vice versa. In actual fact, and with only two exceptions, they didn’t play on each other’s songs.

  1970 came to an end with a New Year’s Eve party thrown by Ringo at Ronnie Scott’s Club in London, complete with a celebrity jam session that included Eric Clapton, Maurice Gibb, Charlie Watts, and Klaus Voorman. Ringo had invited John, Paul, and George, yet none attended.

  “We’d all had more to do with each other in 1970 than we wanted,” said Ringo. “We all needed to party with some new people.”

  The Beatles had played together and kept everyone happy, but they jolly well did not have to be happy about it themselves.

  Chapter Four:

  SAVILE ROW (1971)

  Shootout at Savile Row

  1971 could have easily turned into the year that the Beatles broke apart for good. Instead, it became their most successful year ever, even eclipsing the explosive first year of Beatlemania in 1964.

  Despite or because of the incredible pressure all four musicians were feeling, the group managed to turn 1971 into a year that changed the music industry forever and changed the culture even more.

  Over a twelve-month period, they created a trilogy of events that, to this day, continues to define the legend of the Beatles. Ever on the brink of self-destruction, they still recorded the top album, starred in the most successful movie, and performed in a groundbreaking concert. All told, the Beatles’ collective endeavors amounted to one studio concept album and two soundtracks, each fantastically different and diverse, admired by critics and embraced by fans.

  The Beatles would accomplish all of this nearly by accident.

  • • •

  On January 9, 1971, the sitcom All in the Family introduced Americans to the squabbling family of Archie Bunker. While his wife, Edith, was comically clueless, the conflict between Archie and his son-in-law, Meathead, was dramatically compelling since they were two men who saw the world from completely different points of view. They were both stubborn and strong-willed, and neither of them was inclined to retreat from a fight.

  The same could be said of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

  Even as the friction between the fictitious Archie and Meathead turned the CBS television series into an instant hit, the real-life acrimony between the flesh-and-blood Lennon and McCartney was playing out far more dangerously in London.

  Fans by now knew full well there was discord in the House of Beatles. The deteriorating dynamic was visible firsthand in the film documentary Get Back. Lennon and McCartney, in particular, had served up healthy doses of human drama with their almost-weekly sparring in the music trades. In fact, for most observers, the only question remaining was how four guys who had been in that headspace then could be now functioning effectively as a group.

  Lord Beeching had been hired because of his experience of making trains run on time, and he continued to believe that Apple could be made to heel the same way the British train system had. Juggling each of the four Beatles individually was a terrible task that was complicated even further by the direct input from Allen Klein and the tag team of Lee and John Eastman. Even so, pink slips, personally signed by Lord Richard Beeching, were going out at Apple at a regular clip, and morale was sagging even as the financial bottom line began to tick up noticeably.

  Lord Beeching drew only one line in the sand. The Beatles must honor their agreement to suppress their growing inner dissent around the upcoming release of The Lord of the Rings film and soundtrack.

  Though they’d agreed to it just a half year ago, the so-called Grand Bargain was being tested daily. During a promotional interview for The Lord of the Rings, Lennon still could not stop himself from analyzing matters in a way that seemed to imply that, in his mind, the Beatles were finished. Speaking from his own impressive estate at Tittenhurst Park, he free-associated his emerging thoughts:

  [John] “It’s just one too many is what it is. Everest should have been the last album, but then we got talked into one more. And the Band Plays On is not a great album, it’s a convenient album. If this is the future of the Beatles, it’s got to end. But the whole Ring-Thing Dream-Team, we’re all just happy to get it out there and out of our own heads. Giving it to the world, and moving on. That’s about the size of that.”

  1970 had been, as Lennon also suggested in that interview, a hard year to be a Beatle, and 1971 looked to be more of the same. Tensions were as high as ever between all four men, and it wasn’t just a grudge match between John and Paul. George, who had been instrumental in brokering the deal with his bandmates, now privately confessed he felt he had made a huge mistake. Only Ringo was prepared to go along, no matter what it was the others decided.

  [Ringo] “I didn’t see it as if it was my decision to make, actually. I liked And the Band Plays On, and it was a considerably better album than I would have made by my lonesome, so to speak. It was not a good dynamic for me. Instead of Paul and John just working it out between them, they added George to the argument. And, yes, I know I was the first one to leave the group back during A Doll’s House, which is part of the reason I just stay out of it now.”

  Indeed, during the first months of 1971, all of the Beatles were giving interviews that held out the possibility that the group had recorded its last album together with And the Band Plays On, which critics considered placing somewhere between Get Back and the exalted Everest in terms of quality.

  After the better part of a year of steady construction, the re-built Apple Records entrance lobby and the new basement retreat of the Apple recording studio were set to open together at Apple Corps headquarters at 3 Savile Row. The disaster of the original studio, designed by Magic Alex Mardas, the con man of Apple Electronics, could only be forgotten when new songs were being recorded in a state-of-the-art studio worthy of the Beatles.

  Unlike the Mardas disaster, this newly designed dream studio featured some standard items, like a working patch bay and a talkback system between the studio and the control room. It also had working central heating and soundproofing. This version now included its own natural echo chamber and a wide range of recording and mastering facilities and could turn out mono, stereo, and quadrophonic master tapes and vinyl discs. It was meant to rival EMI’s Abbey Road, and it did.

  The redesign and rebuilding of the basement to accommodate proper recording facilities had been overseen by former EMI engineer Geoff Emerick. Originally scheduled to take eighteen months at an estimated cost of $1.5 million, construction was instead completed in half the time for twice the money, so urgent was Apple’s need to put on a new face.

  The studio needed to become a second home for Apple Records artists. Klein, in particular, had insisted that the Beatles get in there and show the youngsters how it was done.

  [Allen Klein] “We had good bands, don’t get me wrong. But Elton John was on tour, just starting to break, actually. And Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were such an American band that having them record in London would have seemed wrong. None of the other acts we had signed had their stature, let alone that of the Beatles.”

  Allen Klein called Lennon, Harrison, and Starkey while Lee Eastman called his son-in-law McCartney. Everyone was on the same page. For the good of Apple, the Beatles had to start making new music at Savile Row.

  The McCartneys threw the entire family in a van and drove nearly six hundred miles to London from their home at the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland. “When we heard about it,” said Linda, “Paul’s eyes lit up like it was Christmas and he’d just gotten a new toy. He needed to go play, so we did.”
<
br />   “Everything I was playing around with in Scotland was cool, but very minimal, very home fires burning, if that can be done with rock and roll,” said McCartney. “The kids weren’t in school for another two weeks, so we just got in the car and took off for London.”

  Paul got Geoff Emerick to give him a look at the studio as soon as he arrived in the city. On the spot, he decided to “give it a test run” and got Emerick to help him record a demo of a song that he called “Too Many People.” The song was not supposed to be about John Lennon, Paul would always contend, but he made the connection apparent with a careless and provocative line added in the studio that day, “Yoko took your lucky break and broke it in two.” It was a line he would replace later, he stated.

  It was no lucky break for McCartney or for the Beatles that Lennon was sitting at home at Tittenhurst Park debating whether to finish the recording studio he had started building or to sell the whole place and move to America. He had been avoiding joining Harrison for final tweaking on the soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings because he was sure that his collaborator had gone off the deep end already and “soaked it all up in God juice,” making it overly religious. Now, suddenly, there was a studio to visit where he “wouldn’t have to talk about Hobbits or how they might sound and whether they chant.”

  Lennon went in to sample the new studio equipment two days after McCartney had come in. Informed that Paul had paid his own visit just forty-eight hours earlier, John wondered if he had recorded anything.

  Lennon listened to “Too Many People” three times. The first time he seemed to like it until the Yoko line, which confused him enough to demand that Emerick stop the playback and start over. The second time every articulation seemed offensive, causing him to sum it all up with “Paul’s a fucking little cunt.” The third time he turned off the equipment himself and told Emerick, “I’ll be back tomorrow.” He left the room without another word.