John Lennon: The Life

by Philip Norman

  In contrast with the crowds on the street and the deejays on the air, the Plaza reacted in horror to its twelfth-floor VIPs, lodging an almost immediate demand for them to settle their account, even making radio appeals for any other Manhattan hotel to take them over. During the endless photo sessions up in their suite, one cameraman requested John to lie on a bed, the better to show off what Americans termed his “pixie boots.” A hovering Plaza official protested this was not the image the hotel wished to project, and besides, the coverlet might be damaged. “It’s all right,” John reassured him, “we’ll buy the bed.”

  One essential ground rule imposed on the Maysles brothers’ documentary was that Cynthia Lennon must be kept out of frame. Although John’s British fans might know he was married, his new American ones were to have their illusions preserved for as long as possible. Now and then, a sequence of him on the phone to some radio show accidentally includes Cynthia, wearing a neat white blouse and dark glasses, never saying a word or having one addressed to her, pretending stoic indifference to the “beautiful, willowy girls” (including Ronnie of the Ronettes) who had surrounded John and the other three from the moment they arrived.

  Apart from hotel suites and television studios, John saw almost nothing of the city that had towered over his imagination since childhood. Capitol Records laid on a brief limo trip of major uptown landmarks, which, at the Beatles’ request, was extended to the safer part of Harlem. Their disc jockey–guardian, Murray the K, organized a night at the Peppermint Lounge, home of the New York twist and Joey Dee and the Starliters, where the house band had already switched to Beatle mimicry. Returning to their Plaza suite in the small hours, John and Cynthia were ambushed by photographers, whom they thwarted by putting John’s coat over both their heads and scuttling round a corner. For those few moments, giggling under cover together as of old, Cyn had fun.

  The Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show of February 9 was to place them in American history in a way that never quite happened back in Britain. Effectively, it signaled the end of mourning for Jack Kennedy, through an event as hugely harmless as the one of November 22 had been hugely horrible—a heartening reminder to the whole nation of its unique ability to give its whole heart; living proof there could be happier ways of always henceforth recalling exactly where one was at a particular moment.

  The events of that Sunday night have passed into national folklore: how some seventy-three million people, the largest U.S. television audience ever known, tuned in at 8:00 p.m. to watch the live show—on which, technically, the Beatles were not even top of the bill. How, just beforehand, a good-luck telegram arrived from the last Sullivan attraction to win comparable Nielsen ratings: “…We hope your engagement will be a successful one and your visit pleasant…. Elvis and the Colonel.” How the crustiness of Ed Sullivan, normally the most misanthropic man ever to host a prime-time TV variety show, melted like puff pastry as he paid tribute to these “fine youngsters from Liverpool.” How New York’s criminal element were so transfixed that throughout all the city’s five boroughs not even a car hubcap was reported stolen. How in those few flickering black-and-white moments, young girls from coast to coast forgot homegrown pinups named Frankie or Bobby, amateur bands stopped playing surf music and began practicing vocal harmonies, and boys with crew cuts could almost feel their hair start to grow.

  The appearance was in two segments, one beginning the show with the Beatles on a set composed of giant white, inward-pointing arrows; the other, with a backdrop of Plexiglas rectangles, at the very end, after appearances by Tessie O’Shea, Frank Gorshin, and the Broadway cast of Oliver. The surprise delivered by an umpteenth watching of the famous videotape is how slight John’s presence initially seems. The opening number, the one that says “Hello, America, we’re here!” is “All My Loving,” sung by Paul with George’s help, followed by Paul’s Peggy Lee ballad “Till There Was You”; then “She Loves You,” which, thanks to a inept sound mixing, again chiefly features Paul and George. The linking announcements, too, are by Paul. At the point when each Beatle in turn is helpfully captioned, JOHN (with the subtitle SORRY GIRLS, HE’S MARRIED) comes last.

  The two-song second segment seems to continue this Paul bias, starting with “I Saw Her Standing There.” Only for the final number, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” as the sound stabilizes, does John come into complete definition. The watching seventy-three million could now fully appraise that splay-legged, slightly hunched stance, those minimally moving lips, that expression under the Beatle bangs which somehow made instant contact with hitherto conformist, literal-minded young Americans in every state of the Union. Among thousands who never forgot the epiphany was singer-songwriter Billy Joel, then aged fourteen and living in Hicksville, Long Island. “I remember noticing John that first time on the Sullivan show,” Joel would say fondly almost three decades later. “He’s standing there, looking around him as if to say, ‘Is all this corny or what?’”

  It was not a tour in the later sense of the word—rather, a cultural mission that became an almost royal progress. In two weeks, the Beatles gave only three concert performances, the two prearranged at Carnegie Hall and an extra one at the Washington Coliseum arena, under conditions the least cosseted modern touring band would not tolerate. For this, their first-ever live American show, they played on a stage like a boxing ring with shrieking fans banked up all around them, yet a security cordon numbering no more than about five. To give every ticket holder a frontal view, the microphones had to be continually repositioned on different sides of the stage, and Ringo’s drum podium rotated laboriously by hand. Keeping up his front-man role, Paul requested the crowd to clap along while a shambling, grimacing John demonstrated how a “spassie” would do it, to spectators both before and behind him. And still no one seemed to take offense.

  Nor would any modern UK rock band in Washington be expected to call on the British ambassador like some visiting trade delegation—let alone endure what the Beatles did at their country’s most prestigious overseas embassy, following their Coliseum show on February 11. The invitation to attend a charity ball was clearly meant to capitalize on their unofficial diplomatic triumph; the four themselves made no protest, even though it would mean exposure on a major scale to the kind of people John most detested. The Maysleses’ film shows disaster already building as he follows Ambassador Sir David Ormsby-Gore down a staircase into the assembled crowd of braying Hooray Henrys and Henriettas. Sucking in cigarette smoke through tightened lips, he glares around him like some Garston Ted, ready for a rumble.

  Soon afterward it transpired that, without consulting them, the Beatles had been scheduled to draw the winning tickets in a raffle. When John showed reluctance to leave the anteroom where he had sought refuge, he was surrounded by young Foreign Office types and officiously ordered to “Come on and do your stuff.” Fortunately, the emollient Ringo was on hand to prevent a major Lennon blowup. In fact, what made John finally lose it was an insult to Ringo: a woman came up behind him with some nail scissors and gigglingly snipped off a lock of his hair. “I just walked out, swearing at all of them,” John remembered. “I just left in the middle of it….” After such an incident today, blame would automatically fall on the temperamental, foul-mouthed pop star; back then, questions were asked at the highest official level about the discourtesies the Beatles had suffered.

  In the Maysleses’ film, too, there is great significance to be read into hair. While Paul’s Beatle cut remains as shapely and glossy as one of Aunt Mimi’s pedigreed cats—indeed, he himself can hardly stop stroking it—John’s already hangs in a tangle on his forehead and reaches downward in shaggy sideburns, Significant, too, is a scene (cut from the final film) aboard the train that took the Beatles back through the snows from Washington to New York. John is being interviewed by the journalist Al Aronowitz, a bulky, black-bearded figure noted for his close friendships with bohemian celebrities such as the beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The talk takes a dangerous turn, which John,
as a dutiful Beatle, realizes may not be welcome to British viewers of Granada TV:

  JOHN: I know, OK, OK we’re all drug addicts.

  ARONOWITZ: I don’t know about you, but I’m one [makes loud inhaling noises].

  JOHN (to camera): Here we have a drug addict—can’t get it off…what is it?…can’t get off a line. [Slightly nervous.] That’s enough about drugs. Let’s talk about Woodbines.

  The only other stop on the itinerary was Miami, Florida, where the second Ed Sullivan Show of their triple commitment went out on February 16 from the Deauville Hotel. (A third, prerecorded in New York, was screened after their return home.) Now John spent no time out on the margins: “This Boy” was number two on the playlist. Before the Beatles’ second segment, their new Uncle Ed read out congratulatory sentiments from another giant of American popular music, the composer Richard Rodgers. The coauthor of songs like “My Funny Valentine” and shows like South Pacific called Beatlemania “harmless” and said it would be “a wonderful thing” if young people “continue all their lives to get that enthusiastic about anything.”

  Paul’s former gosh-thanks solo announcements now became more of a double act, with John ordering the 3,500-strong studio audience to “shut oop while he’s talking” in the accent of some dour old northern music-hall comedian like Robb Wilton or Norman Evans. The 70 million who tuned to this Sullivan show also received a glimpse of the “spassie” routine that the first one’s 73 million had been denied. Yet again, the brief paroxysm of leering and claw-handing seemed to go unnoticed, none dissenting from Uncle Ed’s further eulogy to “four of the nicest youngsters we’ve ever had on our stage.”

  Florida’s gorgeous winter climate, warm ocean, and ubiquitous palm trees seemed like paradise to young men nurtured on the drab, Mersey-washed sands of New Brighton. The Miami visit was treated as a holiday as much as work, with Brian procuring visa extensions to allow them four extra days. George Martin and his fiancée, Judy Lockhart-Smith, also joined the party, having made their own way from Britain to catch the East Coast dates. Brian, rightly considered them a civilizing, stabilizing influence, especially where John and Cynthia were concerned.

  Fans besieged the Deauville as noisily as they had the New York Plaza, their numbers swollen by the more clement weather and the adjacent surf-fringed beach. Even when vacation time officially began, the Beatles remained cooped up for long periods in their suites, increasingly bored with room service and the radio, gazing down almost longingly at the well-wishers’ messages scrawled in huge patterns like crop circles on the sand twelve floors below. Miami’s police department had provided a twenty-four-man, round-the-clock “Beatle Squad,” commanded by a tough sergeant named Buddy Bresner and as much concerned with the hotel’s good name as with its star guests’ protection. Bresner later reported how in his nightly bed check of the Beatles’ quarters, he found “no women in their rooms, no drugs, no way, shape or form…these were the cleanest kids.”

  The Deauville’s owner, Morris Lansberg, lent them his yacht for a day’s swimming and deep-sea fishing away from prying eyes and press cameras; wealthy locals offered free use of swimming pools, convertibles, and Olympic-class motorboats. Their police protector, Buddy Bresner, took them home to meet his family and share a family roast beef dinner (for which John later wrote a polite thank-you letter, as his Aunt Mimi had always taught). These rare tranquil moments, at sea or the poolside, produced some of the most relaxed pictures ever taken of John and Cynthia, even if he is mostly shown asleep or staring abstractedly off into the distance.

  In commercial terms, America was like a courtesan lying back on a couch and murmuring “Take me.” New York promoter Sid Bernstein, who had staged the Beatles’ Carnegie Hall shows, could have booked them into Madison Square Garden and sold out every seat in minutes. From coast to coast, top-flight impresarios were holding out giant venues and sacks of money. Nevertheless, Brian chose to end it here, for the present, amid the sand crop circles and the palms. His boys were due back in Britain for EMI recording sessions and, early in March, to start work on their first film. For Brian, whatever tempting better offers might arise, a deal was a deal.

  The initial phases of shooting A Hard Day’s Night did not impress Richard Lester overmuch with John’s potential as a screen actor. “Paul was the one obviously making an effort,” Lester remembers. “John didn’t try at all. I noticed this quality he had of standing outside every situation and noting the vulnerabilities of everyone, including myself. He was always watching.”

  The film had been set up late in 1963, with little thought of quality or originality. America’s United Artists corporation, the project’s backers, saw it primarily as a way to cash in on European Beatlemania before the bubble burst. For UA, the real moneymaker was the sound track of new Beatles songs, which could subsequently be put out as an album. What went on the screen was intended to be a pop exploitation vehicle in the banal tradition stretching back to Rock Around the Clock, with risible plot and paper-thin characters merely providing an excuse for music. The budget was a rock-bottom £180,000.

  However, in this apparent bargain-basement atmosphere, the Beatles once again got lucky. Rather than some nameless, jaded hack director, they got Lester, a young American who had worked in Britain for several years, building a reputation in the comedy genre dearest to John; he had been responsible for transferring the Goon Show from radio to television and had directed Peter Sellers’s surreal comedy short, The Running, Jumping, Standing Still Film. Equally fortunate casting was the scriptwriter, Alun Owen, a fellow Liverpudlian whose plays, notably the TV drama No Trams to Lime Street, had been in the vanguard of rain-on-cobblestones northern chic. Thus in one package came American know-how, lineage with the Goons, and a reassuring breath of home.

  Alun Owen’s screenplay depicted the Beatles just being the Beatles, perpetually on the run from screaming fans and coming into occasional conflict—always victoriously—with stuffy representatives of the British establishment. The film’s main opening sequence was a train journey, much like the real-life New York–Washington one documented by the Maysles brothers. A press reception crowded with strident upper-class twits (Q: “How did you find America?” John: “Turned left at Greenland.”) clearly owed something to the British Embassy in Washington. As in life, the Beatles were guarded by two roadies, renamed Norm and Shake, and kept virtual prisoners between performances.

  Owen was to win praise for catching the flavor of the Beatles’ private repartee. But to John, the film’s dialogue seemed artificially cute. His very first line is “Who’s that little old man?”—in reality, he said, it would have been “Who’s the old crip?” Although an admirer of No Trams to Lime Street, he became exasperated with his Boswell, whose persona tended to switch between Welsh and Scouse according to the company. “Why should I listen to you?” he once growled at Owen. “You’re nothing but an amateur Liverpudlian.” Owen riposted: “Do you think that’s better than being a professional Liverpudlian, John?”

  Film acting may seem glamorous but is, in fact, an arduous business, involving punishingly early mornings, long periods of waiting around, and strict regimentation and obedience. John began the seven-week shoot apparently as intent on flouting rules as he had been at school and college. In front of the camera, he insisted on wearing his own clothes, including the Lenin cap, thereby playing havoc with continuity. One scene in the finished film shows him running for a taxi in a shirt and tie; the next has him looking back from its rear window in a turtleneck. And his ability to cause laughter where strict silence was needed, and mislay scripts within minutes of receiving them, would have driven a lesser director to despair.

  He had met his match, however, in the elegant, unflappably patient and polite Richard Lester. His attitude changed as he realized Lester’s dedication to putting the Beatles onscreen with the same stylishness and unpredictability with which George Martin recorded them. “It took me a while to get through to John, but after that there was no problem,”
Lester says. “The surprising thing about him was just how normal he sometimes could be.”

  The production called for a batch of Lennon-McCartney songs, some recorded preshoot for the sound track, others afterward for the tie-in album. Somehow finding time in Paris and then Miami, John and Paul had produced a rich crop for Lester and the film’s (also American) producer Walter Shenson to cherry-pick. The half dozen chosen numbers were integrated into the action with a panache that pop video directors would still admire forty years later. “I Should Have Known Better,” a John vocal-with-harmonica, was performed inside a metal cage in the train’s freight compartment while a group of nubile uniformed schoolgirls (a detail no one then thought questionable) gazed rapturously through the bars. “If I Fell”—a plaintive John ballad that made grannies go gooey long before anything of Paul’s—was busked during time-out at a TV studio, to cure Ringo of the sulks. “Can’t Buy Me Love” pealed over the breakout sequence, in which the quartet escape their guards to hold kiddy races on a sports field, speeded up like Cuban-heeled Keystone Cops.

  Each Beatle received his fair share of camera love—Paul the charming, George the laconic, Ringo the sad-eyed, put-upon puppy dog. John’s moments usually came when Lester needed a nonsensical or surreal touch. One sequence, largely ad-libbed, shows him in a bubble bath, still wearing the Lenin cap, playing with a toy submarine and mimicking a U-boat captain in the Heil Hitler accent he loved so well. Called to duty by roadie Norm, he tries to escape by sinking beneath the bubbles. When Norm runs the water away, nothing remains but smears of foam and the Lenin cap. Later in a theater corridor, John is mistaken for someone else by a neurotic-looking woman in a so-1964 cashmere sweater and chunky beads. Though never told whom he’s supposed to be, he plays along just as he would have in real life. “Oh, wait a minute…don’t tell me. No! Oh you are! You look just like him.” “Do I? You’re the first one that’s said that, ever…”