Once There Was a Way

by Bryce Zabel

  Then came Harrison with “My Sweet Lord,” a song which, if the audience wasn’t already on its feet, would have gotten them there fast.

  “We were afraid it was going to be all Beatlemania again,” said George, unable to suppress his urge to come across as judgmental when he didn’t intend to. “People were screaming so loud that we couldn’t hear ourselves play, and then everybody just might as well go home. But you actually let us play.”

  Before launching his own song, Ringo offered his own words. “Fate put me in the Beatles,” he told the audience, peering out from behind his drum set. “It’s all gone too fast for me. It wasn’t perfect. We all quit the band at least once. But here we are. Rock on. Peace and love.”

  The song chosen by Ringo, “It Don’t Come Easy,” was a song that he’d co-written with George. The entire group was warmed up now. Both Paul and John had spoken without incident, and they were now ready to play. This was no friendly “With a Little Help from My Friends” but instead the truth that nothing comes without struggle, not even the legendary group, the Beatles.

  “Band on the Run,” “New York City,” “My Sweet Lord,” and “It Don’t Come Easy.” Many critics consider this to be the strongest opening set in concert history. Not a single song in that run would have been a Beatles song if the group had actually broken up in the dog days of 1969 and 1970.

  As the night continued, the Beatles played their share of cuts from across their lengthy careers as bandmates. Long before the concept of the “mash-up” became popular, the Beatles strung together bits and pieces of many of their classic songs in bold new ways, as if to fit in as many moments as possible before they left the stage.

  To conclude the performance, McCartney sat at a piano by himself and played “The Long and Winding Road,” then got up, hugged his lifelong friend Lennon, and offered him the piano seat. Lennon graciously accepted, and as McCartney strapped on his bass, Lennon settled in and played “Imagine.” When Lennon finished, the Beatles left the stage to thunderous applause that continued full-throttle for fourteen minutes before the entire band re-appeared and played their first of two encores, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” a song that gave vocals to both Lennon and McCartney. Then came the last song of the night.

  At the beginning of the song, Lennon told the audience: “You know the words…let’s hear ’em!” It’s fair to say that everyone—including that sober segment of the crowd—was floating higher than the penthouses ringing the park. Men, women, and children smiled and clapped as they sang along, but many also sobbed. Something that they desperately wanted to stay a part of their lives was actually ending.

  Because of those stakes, the Beatles’ performance in Central Park was so much more than a concert. Three babies were born in the park that evening: two to mothers who could not be evacuated through the crowds, and one to a young woman who simply refused to leave, insisting there was no better place for her child to make his earthly debut. (She named the boy John-Paul.) Over two dozen fans were hospitalized from drug overdoses that night, although New York police and city officials shrugged it off as statistically inevitable with so many people gathered in one place.

  A public opinion survey conducted in 1998 concluded that as many as four million Americans claimed to have actually attended the Beatles’ Central Park performance, an obvious impossibility given that the highest estimates have never placed the number at more than one million people.

  However many actually attended, one of them was writer/producer Lorne Michaels, who was just months away from debuting a sketch comedy series on NBC, Saturday Night Live. Michaels liked the way the phrase sounded when Allen Klein shouted, “Live from New York, it’s the Beatles!” and adopted it for his show, which always begins with “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” Klein actually had Apple lawyers draft a request for royalties from NBC but never sent the document.

  Another soon-to-be-famous attendee was a young rocker from New Jersey named Bruce Springsteen, who often reminds fans at his own concerts: “By the time I went home that night, I knew that something extraordinary had just happened to the world, and I was in the studio recording my feelings the very next day.” Those feelings became “Twilight of the Gods,” the classic Springsteen song that is distinguished by its last-minute addition to the Born to Run album, released just thirty-eight days after the Concert in Central Park.

  “It’s an elegy,” explained Springsteen, “and it had to be there, even though it was unexpected and inconvenient.” Mournful, melancholy, and plaintive, “Twilight of the Gods” plays as a poetic lament for the dead, even as it rejoices in the spirit they embodied.

  Rockstar’s Booth Hill famously chided Springsteen in his review: “The New Jersey upstart wants to bury the Beatles so he can present himself as the new incarnation of rock and roll.” If that was true, then it certainly worked. Bruce Springsteen appeared on the covers of both Newsweek (“Making of a Rock Star”) and Time (“Rock’s New Sensation”) in the same week of October 1975.

  The Beatles never took any offense anyway. “Getting all over Bruce, that’s rubbish,” said John Lennon. “The Beatles said goodbye. That’s a death like anything else, and he wrote a song about it. Like we all do when we find something that makes us stop and think. I just wish I’d written the song first.”

  • • •

  The double concert album remains the most successful live album of all time, having continued to sell at a healthy rate every year since it was recorded, now estimated to have sold more than thirty million copies worldwide in over four decades.

  The legacy of the concert can be seen every day by visitors to Central Park. Nearly all go to view the statues of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Richard Starkey. People always pose for pictures, either hiding between the Beatles or kissing their favorites. The Beatles stand frozen in time here, not as very young men in matching suits but as grown men in their thirties, all with different tastes and styles. Yet, as the sculpture makes clear, all of their disparate parts come together as a whole, forming a group for the ages.

  The plaque at the side of the sculpture memorializes the 1975 concert with these words: “The Beatles Say Goodbye in Central Park, July 19, 1975.”

  The soundtrack and subsequent documentary film raised $1.7 million for the Central Park restoration fund, a donation that kick-started private giving and public funding.

  When it was released on April 4, 1976, the documentary film Live from New York: The Beatles in Central Park became a must-see piece of filmmaking, keeping company with the likes of Woodstock, The Last Waltz, the Beatles’ very own Get Back—Live at the Roundhouse, and The Concert for Bangladesh, these being some of the greatest concert film documentaries of all time. As the box office totals for the goodbye to the Beatles continued to mount, the film threatened to overtake Rocky, eventually settling for the year’s second place slot with $97 million in domestic receipts.

  Live from New York was more than a simple concert film. It captured the profound sense of loss about the event but wove it into a shared hope for the future. Directed by documentarian D.A. Pennebaker, the film had everything: size, execution, and emotion. Both the Beatles and UA liked what they saw. The film gave the audience an intimate night with the band as opposed to the unnerving bickering that marked the Get Back—Live at the Roundhouse film.

  All four Beatles actually watched the final cut together with a nervous Pennebaker. At the end, when no one spoke, Ringo stepped in: “Says a proper goodbye, if you ask me.”

  Live from New York: The Beatles in Central Park ends when one of the seven crews shooting film that day catches John Lennon and Paul McCartney exiting the stage into the nearby wings after the last note’s been played. Harrison and Starkey have exited to the other side.

  “Fucking hell, that was great,” said John Lennon to his partner.

  Paul McCartney’s reaction was captured perfectly by the cameras. He spontaneously grabbed Lennon by the arm and dragged him ou
t to the stage area to make one final wave. Just the two of them.

  • • •

  “Beatles Let It Be”

  “At the End of the Long and Winding Road”

  “They Don’t Believe in Beatles”

  Headline writers had a field day describing the creative triumph of the Central Park Concert. In reality, most journalists who thought about the career arc of the Beatles still didn’t believe it was really over.

  “We gave them a slow dissolve,” said Ringo, using the lingo of his new passion, filmmaking. “It could have been a hard cut in 1969, but we coaxed another five years or so out of it all. Let’s just leave it at that for now. Peace and love, fan-people.”

  It had been an eventful time to be sure, one which placed the Beatles squarely in the middle of the political turmoil of the late ’60s and early ’70s, giving them so much more to feel and experience and write about.

  Still, after the concert, they were a spent force. The energy required to keep the group together and to keep their old friendships current was simply not there. All members of the band needed to find new lives and live them as hard as they could. They would stay in touch, but they were men looking to the future.

  George summed up the feelings they all had by that point: “We all need to get busy not being Beatles.”

  John, Paul, George, and Ringo all seemed to shed their Beatles personas almost instantly and fully retreat into their own private lives.

  Lennon and Ono began packing up the Dakota apartment, despite the public display of love for New York shown just that summer in Central Park. Sean Ono Lennon was born on John’s own birthday, October 9. Less than a month later, the Lennons moved their new family to London, wanting to get out of the American limelight. “People ring me up now and say, ‘John, you’re so hard to find,’” he wrote Harry Nilsson in a postcard. “And I tell them not hard enough, ‘You just found me.’”

  After a short vacation, Paul started to audition musicians to be a part of a group that he named Wings. His ultimate goal was to do the one thing the Beatles had kept from him for a decade now—go on tour. “It’s not meant to be the end of the Beatles,” he insisted to rock journalists. “If the ‘Big Band’ comes calling again, I’ll still be able to play the chords.”

  The day after the concert, Ringo was on a plane to New Mexico to join the production of the science fiction film The Man Who Fell to Earth starring fellow musician David Bowie. Ringo played the role of patent attorney Oliver Farnsworth, a part given to him after the Central Park Concert buzz at the expense of actor Buck Henry, and a part that had certain similarities to his gadget enthusiast “Q” persona in the Bond franchise. “I don’t mind being typecast,” he said. “So long as I always get to play myself.”

  George also couldn’t wait to leave New York and immediately retreated to Friar Park, intending to spend the fall gardening. He had become fast friends with Monty Python troupe member Eric Idle, and the two began to hatch plans to make a series of comedy films together. Soon George had fallen for Apple assistant Olivia Trinidad, and there was talk of marriage.

  Throughout all of this, the fans still debated the likelihood of a reunion, as well as the relative strength of the 1960s albums versus the 1970s albums versus the potential of new solo albums. They knew that there was one more Beatles album to hope for. Since Everest and then And the Band Plays On, it had been the continual game. Would this current album be the last? Would there ever be another one? There always was. Hope was alive with the Beatles.

  • • •

  As the 1970s came to a close, no one could deny that the Beatles, actively playing together or not, were now presiding over an Apple that was one of the most profitable companies in the entire world of music. Rather than closing down the shop at the turn of the previous decade, Apple had reinvented itself, growing from a counter-culture experiment to an active media company. Its recording artists were no longer limited to the Beatles and included other names like Peter Frampton and Blondie.

  The changes went all the way to the top. Lord Beeching, Allen Klein, and Lee Eastman were all gone from day-to-day responsibilities after Apple poached Atlantic executive Jerry L. Greenberg to run the company in 1977. He referred to the Beatles as “The Founders” and dedicated himself to working tirelessly to make it clear to artists, distributors, and fans that Apple was far more than a vehicle for the most classic rock band of all time.

  [Jerry Greenberg] “Apple has survived the loss of its greatest act, the Beatles. We have done it by becoming a full-service company that can stand head-to-head with Atlantic, Decca, Warner, EMI, Capitol, you name it. The Founders of this company were and are great visionaries. We do not see Apple only as a recording label. We see Apple as the gateway to the future. Whatever happens in the media, today or tomorrow, we intend to be a part of it.”

  Laboring away in the newly created offshoot department of Apple Computers was Steve Jobs. Having learned its lesson with Magic Alex, Apple management had Jobs draw up specific goals and stick to them. Each benchmark brought new funding for Jobs’s division, which was making fast progress in the world of personal computing, and he was happy to lay out his plan.

  [Steve Jobs] “Music will be a cornerstone of the personal computing experience in the future. Because of new technology that will be transforming the world, selling vinyl records will soon be part of the past, but the Beatles never will be. My goal with the Apple Computer division is to create the digital vehicle that will deepen the user experience. There are so many ways that the Beatles should be a part of that.”

  • • •

  At Christmas 1978, John Lennon called Paul McCartney from Tittenhurst Park in London with what Paul assumed would be the obligatory holiday greeting. He got more than he bargained for. “Yoko and I have been talking about something,” said John.

  Paul prepared for the worst, expecting John’s analysis of the state of their long-delayed freedom. “I heard you were going to take the Wing-Dings on a U.S. tour,” John continued.

  McCartney confirmed that this was true. Wings—as the band actually called itself—was scheduled to rehearse next month and go on tour the next spring. “You’ll have to come and hear us,” he told John. “Sit in, if you want.”

  “What if the Beatles wanted to take those dates instead? Are you locked in with these other guys?” asked John.

  “Are you saying you’d go on tour with the Beatles?” responded Paul, not sure if he was hearing this correctly.

  “Are you going to say ‘I told you so’ and act like Sir Paul?”

  “No, I can hold off on that, I suppose.” Still, McCartney wanted to know if John thought they would be attacked as hypocrites for changing their minds.

  “I’ve not changed my mind, but I can’t bake any more bread here, and me and Yoko, we think Sean needs to grow up in America.” Lennon was more worried about George Harrison than irritated fans. “We’ll have to talk to George. You know how he can be, but I think Richie would be on board right away.”

  McCartney could have been knocked over with a feather, hearing John Lennon tell him he wanted to try touring again. He was not, however, about to let his partner know that right away. “Let me think about it,” he said.

  Ringo was in immediately, as predicted, while George took a week of daily gardening to center his mind and then emerged with his terms: there would be no more than a month of rehearsal and no more than three months of being on the road.

  They had not toured since 1966 as a group, focusing instead on the single appearances culminating in Central Park, and so decided to give the tour a name befitting of their history: “The Beatles Encore.” The biggest difference from their tours in the ’60s was that now they would not travel as four young men sharing hotel suites. Those days were over.

  “Yoko says Sean can travel by the spring,” said John.

  “Linda and I will probably drag along Heather, Mary, and Stella,” added Paul. “Where we go, they go.”

  “You can both d
o what you want,” said Ringo, “but I’m not sharing a room with George just because you’re bringing all those mouths to feed and spending all the profits.”

  As it turned out, the 1979 Encore tour turned into a family affair. The Lennons and the McCartneys traveled as units, and Lennon even invited his now teenaged son Julian to join in for a month when he was out of school. Ringo brought along his girlfriend, Nancy Andrews, for most of the tour, and his three children, Zak, Jason, and Lee, all under ten years old. George and Olivia traveled together and, a month into the tour, got married in front of his fellow Beatles, the spouses, loads of children, and the entire crew.

  The Beatles had turned a corner. The band no longer needed to stay together to avoid catastrophic financial loss for Apple Records, the company the Beatles had founded. Over the past few years, the now mature men, and the women who loved them, had been through so much, not much of which had been easy. Now the Beatles were a group that existed because John, Paul, George, and Ringo had realized something profound.

  They really had taken a sad song and made it better.

  The Rockstar Interview:

  AND IN THE END

  During the final days of the classic 2013–2014 “History of the Beatles” tour, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Richard Starkey, and Eric Clapton sat down with Rockstar’s founder Booth Hill for an interview that was tied to the fiftieth anniversary of the appearance of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.

  The interview took place over January 9–11, 2014, in Chicago, Illinois, and spanned over six hours of conversation. That interview is excerpted here. To note, this is not a complete transcript.

  • • •

  BOOTH HILL: Did you ever imagine that the Beatles could make it as a band that has lasted over five decades?