Once There Was a Way

by Bryce Zabel

  The next day, John arrived and recorded his own demo with the eye-raising title of “How Do You Sleep?” With lines like “The only thing you done was yesterday” and “The sound you make is Muzak to my ears” there was nothing subtle about the intended target.

  Lennon was so proud of his response to “Too Many People” that he called up McCartney and forced Emerick to play the song for him over the phone. Lennon picked up the phone after the song was over. “You started the argument, and now it’s finished,” he barked into the receiver. Then he hung up.

  Of course the argument was not over—it had only just begun. Paul and John had accidentally created the conditions for the release of the most controversial album in recording history, the now-famous Savile Row.

  The news that McCartney and Lennon had each gone into the brand-new Savile Row studios separately to record demo songs attacking the other ricocheted through the offices of Apple. The more Geoff Emerick refused to let anyone hear the tapes, the more everyone talked about them and assumed the worst.

  When Emerick told George Martin to explain how explosive he felt the material was, Martin went straight to Lord Beeching and let him know that if things were as described, the company could be in hot water again. The two older men had become friends over the past year, wary but honest with each other. Off they went to hear for themselves what all the fuss was about.

  Under cross-examination, engineer Emerick confessed to Beeching and Martin that Allen Klein had beaten them both to the punch and had just had the songs played to him over the telephone. Even as they spoke, they learned from an Apple secretary that Klein had jumped on a plane to insert himself into the middle of whatever was to come next.

  The songs were powerful, Emerick told Martin and Beeching, acknowledging that Lennon’s attack on McCartney was the most personal one he had ever heard in songwriting. Then they all listened together. After the session was over, the room fell silent.

  “I take it that this kind of behavior does not happen often in the world of modern music,” said Lord Beeching.

  “Do we know what use they intend to make of these demos?” asked Martin, hoping that John and Paul might just forget about them, as if they hadn’t happened. Matters had drifted away like that in the past from time to time.

  There was a brief discussion that if Lennon and McCartney pressed the case, they could release the songs as a single with two A-sides. Then they could do their best to ignore that single from a marketing perspective and let it quietly fade away. Yet it was obvious that could never work. The world had never ignored a single from the Beatles. The songs publicized themselves.

  As it was, Beeching had a group meeting with the Beatles scheduled for the next week. Based on an actuarial account he had commissioned, he had once again been preparing a report on the state of Apple Corps to go along with his always dark assessment of the financial impact the group’s dissolution would have.

  Martin should attend, said Beeching. After the business discussion, he could talk to the Beatles straight ahead about the tiff that had broken out in the Savile Row recording studio. Except that Allen Klein was coming to town. Because he represented Lennon, Harrison, and Starkey, he would want to be in that meeting, too. And if the Eastmans, who watched out for McCartney, got wind of what was going on, they would insist on attending, as well.

  While the Apple leadership dithered, the Beatles acted in a way that some might call precipitous.

  First, George came over to see the new Savile Row facility from his Abbey Road session, where he was working on The Lord of the Rings soundtrack. While he was at Savile Row, he listened to what McCartney and Lennon had each laid down. Harrison got out his own guitar and recorded a demo of what would become his classic “Wah-Wah,” which, he explained, is what he heard in his head when John and Paul were fighting, as they so often did these days.

  Second, Ringo had a private conversation with each of his bandmates about what was going on, and the group reached a surprising consensus. They should keep doing what they were already doing: writing additional songs they felt inspired to create by the most recently recorded track. When they managed an album’s worth of songs, that would be the ideal time to stop.

  Lennon was immediately enthusiastic about such a radical creative concept. “Fuck, yes,” he shouted. “Let’s fucking do an album like that!”

  This reaction elicited an equally strong “Fuck, no” from Paul. But John was like a dog with a bone. The irony, controversy, and in-your-face acknowledgment of the split between the two aligned perfectly with his current feelings about continuing the band.

  Paul, a pragmatist at heart, decided to spin the decision to the group’s advantage. “It’s a concept album,” he concluded. “Like Sgt. Pepper and Everest. It’s a call and response.”

  There was a brief discussion that the album itself could be called Call and Response, but that idea was abandoned in place of the simple designation of where it was recorded—Savile Row. In 1969, the Beatles had toyed with calling Everest by the name of the studio in which it was recorded—Abbey Road—but stuck with their original idea. The actual studio was the organizing principle of the current album, however.

  “Savile Row,” said Lennon. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  The next week, the band presented their new concept to Beeching, Klein and Martin (present in person), and Eastman (present on the phone from New York). Ringo, between drags of his Marlboro cigarette, summed up their thinking as a fait accompli. “We don’t know why particularly, but we just all like the idea.”

  Ringo had already been in the studio two days earlier. He contributed a work-in-progress called “Back Off Boogaloo,” which sounded a lot like he was taking a shot at Paul. The new studios at Savile Row had four songs, and fingers were being pointed. Something primal was being tapped into here, and no one could be certain where the journey would take them.

  “You’re next,” John said to Paul as he left Apple headquarters.

  George Martin, initially a skeptic, found that the longer he thought about the concept of an album that unfolded with one song inspiring the next, the more he liked the idea. He could not argue with Klein’s take that the rebuttal type method squeezed another album out of the group and demonstrated clearly that they need not be getting along to remain a musical force. Martin also felt that the energy behind this concept might turn out to be powerful and would certainly make for something musically unusual. More than that, though, he felt it might “let the boys blow off a bit of steam at each other.” He knew that could not hurt.

  By the end of the day, he had rung up all four of the Beatles and laid down his ground rules. He would only agree to produce the album, if, as per the Grand Bargain, at least two band members (preferably three, ideally all four) would work on every song. He would randomly select the order of the band members’ contributions, supervise the individual sessions, and perform his customary producer duties that he had performed on all the previous Beatles albums.

  Although he kept his opinions to himself, McCartney told Linda that he did not think too much of the idea of airing their dirty laundry for the world to see.

  “Too late for that,” she said. “Maybe you forgot about the Get Back film.” Linda scored that point.

  Paul mused that, of course, he could still revise “Too Many People” to lose the Yoko line. He was not so sure about Lennon’s song, though. Its lyrics left very little doubt about its intended victim.

  “You guys are about to write the strangest album in history,” Linda concluded. “Everyone will have to listen to it at least once.” McCartney didn’t care. That was already the case with every Beatles album that had come before.

  In any case, McCartney was designated next up by virtue of the original rotation, as well as Martin’s direction. “I should think there’s some unfinished business for you after John’s contribution,” the producer told his artist. “Maybe you want to take a shot at wrapping that up, perhaps in a way that opens the door for a new
topic.” A pivot might be just the ticket.

  Paul wrote his rebuttal to the hurtful “How Do You Sleep?” in the form of a song called “Dear Friend.” It was far less angry in tone, but resigned and sad, featuring lyrics such as, “Dear Friend, what’s the time? Is it really the borderline?”

  Lennon opted for the pivot. He could have come straight at McCartney as before, but his passion was spent. He had already begun to tell people that his song was just a song, and it only represented how he felt at the time that he wrote it.

  This time, John Lennon went after what he loved, not what he hated. He named the song “Oh Yoko!” an unabashed love song for his wife, the great partner who had replaced Paul.

  George Martin could have called in George or Ringo next, but he felt the inherent drama that was being played out. He went back to Paul.

  Days later, after McCartney had been in the studio laying down the track for his response song, Martin listened to it with Lennon in the studio control room. It began with a soft little ditty McCartney labeled “The Lovely Linda.” Lennon scoffed, “Christ, he’s not even trying.” The look on Martin’s face was proof that he agreed.

  At that point, McCartney blew their minds when “The Lovely Linda” transitioned into “Maybe I’m Amazed,” a song that clearly belonged in the same league as “Let It Be” and “Hey Jude.”

  Lennon pushed up his glasses and leveled that look of his at Martin. “I’m not following that one. Put George back in.”

  Martin knew Lennon had a point. It was time to put Paul and John back on the bench and get the other players on the field.

  Harrison started off Side Two by going spiritual with “Hear Me Lord.” If John could profess his love to Yoko, and Paul his love to Linda, then George would profess his love to God almighty.

  Lennon wanted back in after that one. He followed Harrison’s religious theme with his scorcher “God” that ended with “I don’t believe in Beatles.”

  McCartney took that thread of disunity and preached about the Beatles’ lack of stability with “3 Legs.” Still, he managed to convey his message in an oblique way by putting it to a jaunty tune. No real harm, no foul.

  Starr was not eager to play this game any longer, but he also had something he wanted to say. He tossed in a musical trifle, “Early 1971,” as his own lament about harmony lost in the band he still loved. He had written an earlier version called “Early 1970” that he’d never shared, and his feelings really hadn’t changed all that much. Ringo just wanted to keep playing music with these guys and wished they could understand just how simple it could be.

  Harrison blew past Starr’s outreach and aimed his own song “Not Guilty” at his bandmates, with no references to God to obscure his meaning. Its pop and jazz vibe was dominated by electric piano and rough vocals, which conveyed a cool distance to his anger. Harrison was restrained in his irritation. It seemed like a great way to end the album.

  For over a week, Apple staff, Beatles, and friends would drop in to the Savile Row studios, put on headphones, and listen to the entire album. Often, they would listen again. Despite the album’s often incendiary vocals, the listeners’ biggest knock against it was that it had not yet pulled all four members into its orbit—there wasn’t a single song on which they all performed together.

  George Martin knew he could turn Savile Row into a hit. He had ideas upon ideas after hearing it. “Strong stuff,” he pronounced. “Full of anger, but not unwarranted.”

  • • •

  While Martin toiled away and staffers speculated, Lennon turned up at McCartney’s home on Cavendish Avenue near St. John’s Wood on a Sunday morning, where he caught Paul wearing Linda’s bathrobe. (He hadn’t been able to find his own when the doorbell rang.)

  “I’ve got one more you should hear,” said John, letting himself in carrying his new custom acoustic guitar, a Yamaha given to him by Yoko.

  Linda, wearing an available raincoat, handed Paul his robe and took back her own. This was all done in front of John, with no trace of self-consciousness. He and Paul and Linda had spent countless hours on the road together, of course, and Linda’s attitude was that family was family, even when you’re not getting along. “I’ll make some breakfast,” she said and headed off to the kitchen.

  Paul and John hadn’t spoken directly to each other for months. The lyrics in the songs each had recorded for the Savile Row album experiment were bitter toward the other. John acted like none of that happened, or mattered, and Paul was experienced enough in their friendship to just play along without comment.

  After tuning up, John played a ragged version of a song that had, as its chorus, the line “It’s better to arrive.” It was the line John had wryly spoken to his friend back in Scotland in the summer of 1969, in the aftermath of his car accident. Even so, the song still had bite to it.

  Paul considered it. “It’s good.”

  “No, it’s not,” said John. “It’s shit. It needs something.”

  Paul agreed that, indeed, it could possibly use a bit of work and asked John carefully what he thought the missing ingredient might be. At that moment, Linda leaned back in. “These peppers are a lot hotter than I thought. If I put in some cheese to cool them off, will you two still eat them?”

  Both Lennon and McCartney agreed that they would. As Linda disappeared again, Lennon shrugged. “I put the peppers in already. What have you got?”

  McCartney smiled. It was a dig within a compliment. “You want a little cheese?”

  McCartney had a thought. He, too, had a song fragment under his belt, a tune he called “Show Up” that was based on the advice Ed McMahon had given him years earlier. He explained that it was McMahon’s advice he was following when he showed up at the hospital in the first place.

  “Let’s just not make it all maudlin. Nobody will believe that crap,” said Lennon.

  And that was it. The advice from Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon had transferred to Paul McCartney and John Lennon, at least for a song.

  Two hours later, they had not only wolfed down a tasty omelet prepared by Linda, but they’d written their first music together in years. The song they composed was not sweet at all, but it wasn’t angry, either. It was pragmatic; they had developed a process from all those years living, playing, and working together. “Show Up” had input from both men, beginning with a verse from Lennon, followed by a chorus from McCartney. The original chorus, “Show up, it’s so easy to do, show up, it could happen to you,” was re-written to sub in a new final phrase “makes it better for you.”

  The idea of showing up was not that it made things better for the other guy, but that it made things better for you. It was not a perfect solution, but, under the right circumstances, it could help.

  Even though loyalty called for doing the work over at Apple’s Savile Row studios, a local band was booked into them, and McCartney and Lennon were keen to capture the energy of the moment and record the song in the same day it was essentially written. They decided to work in the ramshackle garage set-up that Harrison had put together over at Friar Park but that looked decidedly working class. They called up George first and told him they were on the way. Then they called Ringo.

  “You’ve got to come over to George’s now,” declared John. “This has to be done by midnight.”

  Paul thought this was probably a far too literal interpretation of wanting the song to be recorded that same day. On the other hand, he was loath to throw any obstacles in the path of John’s enthusiasm.

  By three in the afternoon, all four of the Beatles had convened in George’s garage, along with Geoff Emerick. Two Apple employees were nabbed, each given a 16MM camera and told to shoot enough to make a short music film. Because the lighting was awful and everyone thought the Beatles would look like pasty vampires in the final cut, the decision was made by Paul to shoot the whole thing without directly filming the face of any of the band members. Even though the video’s official name is “Show Up,” many fans refer to it as the “Headless�
�� video.

  Even without heads, John, Paul, George, and Ringo seem to be into what they’re doing. John takes the verse and Paul takes the chorus, George breaks free with two driving guitar solos, and Ringo pushes the beat strongly, along with Paul’s bass line. In the film, a matchbook from Danny’s Hideaway makes an appearance in an ashtray.

  As it turned out, “Show Up” became the only song on the entire Savile Row LP to have all four Beatles playing on it. That it came to be the last song on Side Two of the album could actually be perceived as hopeful. The Beatles had expressed themselves, gotten it all out, and now were prepared to work together in harmony again.

  That would be an optimistic way to look at it, except that after the group left the Harrison garage that next morning at nearly 2 a.m., it would be another two months before they spoke to each other. They wouldn’t see one another in person until the next August. Recording “Show Up” turned out to be a one-of-a-kind event. Lennon and McCartney did not begin writing together again, nor did they end their feud. They simply found a way to articulate that feuding was now part of their process, and if the fans could not dig it, then that was their problem.

  [Paul] “We wrote it a little oblique, I guess, so we could both do the song and say it wasn’t about us, really. Now people hear it and think it’s about them and their own friend. That’s what makes me think it’s a good song.”

  • • •

  Maybe Martin was right about the collective blowing off of steam, but the sessions to finish up the album had certainly gone much smoother than anyone had expected. True, except for “Show Up,” McCartney did not play on a single Lennon tune, nor did Lennon play on one of McCartney’s. Yet they were in the studio together from time to time, and no one was physically hurt.

  The public seemed to love the story behind the story of Savile Row, and Apple’s Derek Taylor enhanced it upon every telling. “It’s brilliant, you know,” he told anyone who dropped by Apple for a drink and a toke. “They’re completely honest with each other, just like the brothers they are.” When the music reporter from The Guardian pointed out that some brothers go years without speaking over perceived injustices, Taylor shrugged. “I can’t tell you that you’re wrong.”