Once There Was a Way

by Bryce Zabel

  In truth, it was probably the alchemy of all of them. What can be said for certain, however, is that the film won awards, crushed the competition at the box office, and caused Hollywood to come knocking with offers at a time when the group members were not really committed to their musical life together, let alone their film life.

  United Artists had lost their hold on the band by letting 20th Century Fox sign them to star in The Hot Rock, released in the United States on January 26. The film was supposed to premiere during Thanksgiving 1972, but arguments between lawyers for United Artists, 20th Century Fox, and Apple made that date impossible to achieve as well.

  Shot for a budget of nearly $7 million (attaching the Beatles had raised the budget by $2 million), the film went on to make $23 million at the box office in the year of its release. Because of its place in the Beatles’ film canon, The Hot Rock has continued to earn money as each new technology, from VHS to LaserDisc to digital download, changes the market. Its one major distinction is that it’s the only film all four Beatles appear in without contributing or performing a single song.

  When The Hot Rock was released, however, the popular consensus was that it was only slightly better than Help! but inferior to The Lord of the Rings. The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael spoke for many when she put forth the notion that the film was simply a light confection and not a full meal.

  [Pauline Kael] “John Lennon is the straight-man leader of the band, I mean, gang, while Paul McCartney is a nervous lock picker who probably plays a mean bass guitar between jobs. This leaves the door open for George Harrison to deliver an unexpectedly comedic turn as a wild getaway driver and Richard Starkey, better known as Q in the Bond films, to appear here as a loopy bomb wizard. Would using the American actors have been a better movie? It seems unlikely. The sheer fun of seeing the Beatles in these roles turns this wisp of an idea into a charmingly spry little comedy that’s well worth a watch.”

  Even with the split decision on the film, the Beatles were primed to take a break from their own cinematic universe. Production, they realized, took an enormous amount of time and commitment. That was fine when they were making their first movies and spending all their time together. Now they wanted to pursue their own personal lives and interests and record a single album per year as the Beatles to keep their company liquid and alive.

  The exception to the Hollywood bug was Ringo, or, as he was becoming known in films, Richard Starkey. Ringo was the only one who had created an acting career separate from the band, playing “Q,” the Quartermaster of Research and Development, in the last James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever.

  Coming off a highly praised performance in the hit 1972 Christmas film The Poseidon Adventure, Ringo radiated Hollywood “heat.” Originally cast by director Ronald Neame to play the part of Acres, the injured waiter, Ringo had been given the enhanced role of haberdasher James Martin at the insistence of producer Irwin Allen, who hoped to cash in on the success of Ringo’s inclusion in the Bond franchise and his Supporting Actor Oscar in the Kubrick film that followed. In the musical chairs set in motion by this decision, Roddy McDowell got the Acres role, but Red Buttons was bumped, allowing Ringo to play the love-shy, health-conscious bachelor who survives the Poseidon disaster.

  During the New Year’s Eve party scene, Ringo holds hands with Jack Albertson and Shelly Winters and sings a rousing version of “Auld Lang Syne” before the water rushes in from the upended boat. It seemed almost metaphorical. Even if the ship that was the Beatles was taking on water and likely to go under eventually, Ringo would accept what was in store with plucky good spirits and be a survivor come what may.

  With Starkey’s film star on the ascent, the bonds of attachment between the Beatles and UA were still strong enough to cobble together a new deal for Live and Let Die, the next film in the James Bond franchise.

  The film was to star a new actor in the Bond role: Roger Moore. He told producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli that he did not find Ringo particularly credible as a drummer, let alone a genius inventor, and that he wanted the role re-cast with Desmond Llewelyn, an actor whose work he was familiar with. As it turned out, Llewelyn was unavailable due to work in a TV series.

  Not wanting to traffic in the truth, the producers informed Starkey that the role of Q was being cut from the franchise because they felt “too much was being made of the film’s gadgets.”

  This might have been the end of the line for Starkey’s blockbuster franchise film career, had it not been for the fact that the producers approached Apple about the Beatles recording the theme song for the film. John was not much interested, but Paul jumped at the chance—especially because George Martin had been hired to provide the soundtrack score.

  When he learned that Ringo would not reprise his role, Paul threatened to withhold work on the new song. “He was quite good in the last film,” Paul told Broccoli. “If Ringo’s not in this one, I couldn’t really get my mind around a song. Nothing personal, you know.” It was the same tactic that he had seen Lennon practice so successfully on Johnny Carson five years earlier.

  The next day, the screenplay was re-written to include the Q character, and Ringo had a contract to play the part. As it happened, Paul had already composed a version of the soon-to-be classic “Live and Let Die,” which he hadn’t let on about to any of his bandmates. He also wrote a bonus song, a trifle of lightness called “Q-Ball,” that was played out in the scene between Q and Bond. The theory was that a Beatles song might cement the decision of the producers to keep Ringo in the film.

  [Ringo] “When I heard what Paul had done for me, it made me feel like the old days, you know. We could always talk trash to each other back then, and we did, we really did, but we didn’t like it when other people said something bad about one of us. John always said to me that Paul wouldn’t really have walked away if they didn’t keep me in the picture, but I think he’s wrong.”

  “Q-Ball” reached number two in the United States for two weeks running. The song was released on the film’s soundtrack album, but the Beatles retained the rights to include it on their next album, if there was a next album to include it on—although that never came to pass.

  The film premiered at Odeon Leicester Square in London on July 6 with only McCartney, Starkey, and George Martin in attendance. Produced for about $8 million, Live and Let Die went on to earn over $160 million at the box office. What it was not, however, was a Beatles film. The absence of Lennon and Harrison, who had nothing to do with it, gave testament to its status as just a James Bond franchise movie that had a bit of Beatles dust sprinkled into it.

  Apple management implored all of the Beatles to appear together in their next film to avoid this kind of brand confusion. Finding the right roles was not easy. When director Sidney Lumet sent the script for Murder on the Orient Express to Apple for all four of the Beatles to star in, everyone thought that it was no Lord of the Rings but that it might do.

  Lost Assholes

  The big secret in John Lennon’s life was that his relationship with Yoko Ono was even more tenuous than his relationship with the rest of the Beatles. He and Ono had moved into the Dakota apartment thinking that it was a physical manifestation of the profound love they had for each other. In reality, it quickly became a place where the two of them coexisted, more or less silently. Lennon seemed to tolerate this well enough, but Ono now felt at her wit’s end.

  Eventually, she came to the realization that if it had become impossible for them to live in the same space, the only solution was for one of them to move out. She believed it should be John, and she told him so, according to her 1994 Rockstar interview.

  [Yoko Ono] “I hoped by letting John stay in the Beatles that I would not have the whole burden of his neediness. By this time, I was glad he was still in his band because I felt less guilty when I asked him to leave me.”

  Yoko did more than let John stay in the Beatles. In actual fact, she began to encourage the others, under the radar, to fight to keep him in
volved and not let him slip away. This tactic involved meeting privately with Linda McCartney when she was in New York and encouraging Paul to drop by the Dakota to reach out, once again, to John.

  [Linda McCartney] “I know that no one can believe that Yoko Ono and Linda McCartney could have had anything to talk about. But we each had one thing in common—not the Beatles, per se—but men in our lives who needed an outlet outside of their marriages. The band gave them that, and it gave us some peace of mind.”

  In 1973, however, John was in a fighting mood with Yoko and most certainly with Paul. He remained noncommittal about the Beatles, continued to work on that solo album, and encouraged the other Beatles to do the same.

  Yoko was not ready to divorce John, but she was ready for change. She asked him to leave her, but she refused to give up all the ties—co-activist, collaborator, wife—that bound him to her. She dispatched their secretary, May Pang, to go to Los Angeles with him to keep him out of trouble. Pang’s job, incredibly, was not only to sleep with Yoko’s husband (to keep him from straying too far afield) but to report back what she was seeing.

  Next to New York City, Los Angeles was comfortable ground for Lennon. It was where the Beatles recorded their last album, Imagine Another Day. There was a vibrant music scene that boasted one significant plus for John: it did not include the Beatles. It was All-American.

  [John] “New York City and Los Angeles are basically the Sodom and Gomorrah of the United States. Each has its own attraction, I suppose, but both are great places where anything goes. My kind of places.”

  Lennon had two connections that he immediately got back in touch with when he returned to LA. The first was Beatles recording engineer Glyn Johns, who had introduced him to the Eagles when they had flown across the pond to record their self-titled Eagles album in 1972 at London’s Olympic Studios. The other was Peter Asher, the brother of Paul’s ’60s girlfriend Jane Asher and the former head of Apple Records. Asher was then working as James Taylor’s manager, and Taylor remained a superior Apple artist.

  Both Johns and Asher had been taken in by the booming Laurel Canyon music scene, which included everyone from the Eagles to Joni Mitchell, from Frank Zappa to Linda Ronstadt, the female singer whom John had briefly met at a party the year before.

  He set himself up in a small house in the Hollywood Hills of Laurel Canyon, where he and May Pang could live. The bills were sent to New York where Yoko Ono continued to pay them, not out of subservience but so she could keep an eye on him from afar.

  Those bills and receipts, of course, could only tell part of the story. The rest of it Yoko got directly from Pang.

  [May Pang] “It was very confusing to me. I was only twenty-two years old and John and Yoko put me right in the middle of their marriage problems, and then she sent me off to the other side of the country with her husband. Here I was having sex with a Beatle, which was still every woman’s dream, and then calling his wife to tell her about it. But he wasn’t being loyal to me any more than he was to her.”

  Asher, a member in good standing of the music community for several years now, had just been hired to work on Ronstadt’s latest solo album, Don’t Cry Now, with musician John David Souther, as well as John Boylan, who had negotiated her contract with Asylum Records. She had chafed at what she saw as their sexist attitudes and had sought out Asher as someone willing to work with her as an equal.

  Ronstadt was coming out of a period where competition, insecurity, bad romances, and a series of boyfriend-managers had her reeling. Asher became the first major producer Ronstadt had worked with without getting herself romantically involved with him. At least publicly, Asher believed that having a business-only relationship was the only path toward professional success with Ronstadt.

  “It’s harder to have objective conversations about someone’s career when it’s someone you sleep with,” he told Lennon.

  “That’s how Yoko and I did it,” Lennon responded. “Of course, if you ask Paul or George or Ringo, they’d probably take your point.”

  In fact, McCartney, who had a closer relationship with Asher than the other Beatles, had actually called his almost brother-in-law and asked him to set Lennon up with someone, preferably someone who was not Yoko’s designated spy.

  “I never thought that would be Linda Ronstadt,” said McCartney, “but when I heard about it, I thought she might be a bit more pro-Beatles than Yoko, so I encouraged it from afar, you might say.”

  Besides having attempted drunken sex with Ronstadt the year before, Lennon was taken by the fact that she had just recorded her own version of “Good Night,” the song he had written and Ringo had recorded for the A Doll’s House album. He wanted to meet this woman again now that he was “on the rebound.”

  Despite Paul’s urging and John’s willingness, Asher considered talking Lennon out of this set-up but realized it might serve his goals perfectly. A personal relationship with Linda would create room for John to take, briefly, the non-professional role of a friend and advisor to Asher’s client. With Ronstadt about to kick-start a huge career playing arena rock, the question was simple: Who better than a Beatle to talk candidly with her about touring, fame, and the lurking exploiters she would soon encounter daily? He hoped one of the pieces of advice that John could give her was to stick with Peter Asher.

  [Linda Ronstadt] “Obviously John and I were not a match made in heaven. He was a different man when we hooked up in 1973. He felt like he was going to jail if Nixon had his way, and he felt like he was personally tearing apart the Beatles. Both of those things are probably true, by the way, but they made him more human, at least to me.”

  Ronstadt was clearly the diamond in the rough in rock music. There were few “girl singers” on the rock circuit at the time, and they were often relegated to no higher status than that of a groupie, a designation Ronstadt was keen to avoid. She imposed an enormous amount of pressure on herself to compete with “the boys” at every level but still did not want to sacrifice her femininity.

  Lennon was enchanted by this woman, who was apparently just as tough as Yoko Ono. He did his research on Ronstadt, finding a 1969 interview in Rockstar where she noted how difficult it was being a single “chick singer” with an all-male backup band. Ronstadt found it nearly impossible to get a band of compatible backing musicians—it seemed as if all the qualified male musicians in Los Angeles were afraid of being labeled sidemen for a female singer.

  Lennon provided the solution she was waiting to hear. “Fuck them all,” he said. “I never treated Yoko as anything but an equal.”

  Ronstadt was quick with her comeback: “Everyone knew you were the star. I’m more like you.” Indeed she was. What further attracted Linda Ronstadt to John Lennon was that, as a Beatle, he could sleep with practically anyone, buy almost anything, and that he really did not need her. After Ronstadt reached the conclusion that Lennon wasn’t like all the others who wanted something from her, they became friends, and soon after that, friends with benefits.

  Ronstadt, no stranger to the loneliness all traveling musicians experience on the road, was steeling herself for more of the same on her upcoming tour. Lennon told her, “People are always taking advantage of you and everybody that’s interested in you has an angle. So what’s your angle going to be?”

  Lennon spent the majority of his time hanging out at Ronstadt’s home and enjoying the company of her friends. Pang continued to live in the rental property, on call for whenever Lennon needed her to arrange details of his life. He did not, however, need her to sleep with him anymore, a fact that Pang painfully disclosed to Ono.

  That part did not seem to bother Yoko. She knew that John could not maintain a real relationship with an American rock star for more than a short while. She was bothered greatly, however, by the revelation that her husband was entertaining thoughts of abandoning the immigration case (that bound them together) and moving back to Britain.

  • • •

  Ironically, while the world saw John as the wi
ld card who could destroy the Beatles because of his inseparable relationship with Yoko, it was Paul who was finding his joy with his own mate. He and Linda were almost never seen apart these days, blending their personalities with one another as seamlessly as Yoko and John had done. Similarly infatuated with Linda, Paul had just written “My Love,” a song that also spoke of his passion for his marriage. It would go on either the next Beatles album, or it would lead off his first solo album.

  Together, the McCartneys were all about family. Linda had brought her daughter Heather into the marriage, and now they were making kids of their own. Paul and Linda raised their children in Scotland, but whenever they traveled (and they traveled often), they brought the entire brood along with them. When they were met by drivers at airports, Paul would always say, “You get a lot of McCartney for your money with us.”

  Ringo continued to have the most to do when he was not making music with the Beatles. Once it had become clear that Lennon and Ono were locked into their immigration battle for the long haul, he had bought John’s house in Tittenhurst Park and moved his own family there. Although he still spent much time in Monaco and Los Angeles, the home became the new center of his life.

  Lately, Ringo had even begun to frequent the recording facility John had built there but hardly ever used. He was now working on two songs: a song called “Photograph” that George had co-written with him and a song called “I’m the Greatest” that John had given Ringo. Lennon could never have gotten away with singing the song himself, but with Ringo’s charm it came across as a lost gem from the Everest sessions. As for “Photograph,” everyone knew it was pure Ringo and destined for the same kind of hit status that fans and critics had given to “With a Little Help from My Friends.”

  George’s marriage to Pattie Boyd had been getting worse and worse as his twin (and alternating) passions for cocaine and spirituality made her feel increasingly estranged. Their reality was complicated further by the fact that their mutual friend Eric Clapton was not only a regular visitor to Friar Park but also used his time there to try to talk Pattie into leaving George. Clapton was madly in love with his good friend’s wife, and Pattie found it terribly difficult to resist Clapton’s attentions.