When we listened to the playback, there was a sense of excitement that this was different, this was new. There was none of the feeling that it was too weird for words. To some extent, I could understand what it was that John had said he heard in his head from childhood—the sound of the sea. (When John underwent Janov’s scream therapy a couple of years later, he remembered falling into a hole in the sand on the shore at Blackpool when he was five years old, and it all closing in on him. I wonder if his terror and the frightening sounds he heard from that event came out in “Walrus”?)
John had no idea when he wrote “Walrus” that it was based on a metaphor for capitalism. In Lewis Carroll’s rhyme, the walrus gobbled up the shy little oysters. In his mind, he confused the walrus with a friendly seal. It was symbolic. I watched as John did his weird song and Paul followed with a beautiful one called “The Fool on the Hill.” I felt that at the time that those two wildly different songs summed up the feelings of both writers, confusion on John’s part, and strength and beauty in Paul’s. Looking back, I love both songs equally.
The Beatles and a huge crowd of actors, technicians, journalists and camp followers disappeared around the country in the Mystery bus, like an army on the move. The bus was nothing special, just a yellow and blue one from a bus company, and definitely not luxurious. Nothing special was done to it, other than having bright fliers printed to be stuck on the sides. These were almost immediately ripped off by fans, and Mal spent most of his time pasting on new ones. When it was realized how visible the bus was, drawing hundreds of fans and streams of people following in its wake in dozens of cars—a situation that worried the police—the fliers were removed and not replaced. Not that it made any difference. By then the bus was so famous people recognized it wherever it went.
Paul visualized the film as being the kind of day out we all remembered from our childhood in Liverpool, when our mums would see an ad in the window of the local news agent for “a mystery coach trip.” They were cheap days out to stop us kids from getting bored during the long summer holidays. We nearly always ended up at Blackpool, the traditional northern seaside resort with its piers, its brightly lit fairgrounds and miles of sandy beaches.
“It’s a whole bunch of people, fat ones, thin ones, little ones, mad ones, like you get in real life. It’s what they do, what they talk about, the fun they have, their eccentricities. You can’t script it, it happens,” Paul explained, frustrated when the actors asked, “Where’s the script?”
When someone else complained we were behind schedule, I said, “No we’re not. We don’t have a schedule. The entire film is one big ad lib.”
For me, the most bizarre moments were the two days I spent auditioning a room full of strippers from Raymond’s Review Bar in Soho while John and George ogled them, strictly in the cause of art. Paul Raymond, the emperor of strip clubs, joined in enthusiastically, lining up his best girls and being as helpful as possible. He grew so wealthy he bought the Windmill Theater, famous for never closing during the war. It had always seemed the height of sophistication and sinfulness, the kind of place where sleek men with pencil mustaches and dinner jackets went for fun. This matched the camp style of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band that Paul hired to play to the filmed striptease session. The band—founded by Vivian Stanshall and Rodney Slater, two Royal College of Art students—was originally named the Bonzo Dog Dada band, after a cute 1920s postcard puppy and Dadaism, the antiart movement.
Paul first saw the Bonzos at the Isle of Wight Pop Festival and was very taken with their mocking, louche take on bands like the Temperance Seven—though Neil Innes, one of the original members who went on to be part of the whole Monty Python team, said, “We’re not doing a Temperance Seven, we’re murdering them.” However, John wasn’t as keen on them and openly argued with Paul over hiring them. Revenge was exacted when Rodney wore a T-shirt that stated LUMP IT JOHN in the publicity stills for the film.
During the auditions, we couldn’t decide among a final handful of long-legged lovelies and asked several to come back. We narrowed it down to one: Jan Carson. I got her to repeatedly strip while the Bonzos played “Death Cab for Cutie” over and over again, in camp impersonations of Elvis dressed in silver sequined suits. The shoot itself, with all the male members of the Mystery Tour and John and George sitting slumped center stage gawping, was very funny in a macabre way, given that “Cutie” described the final moments of a pretty young thing and the driver of a cab that jumped the red lights and crashed. This was the final scene in the film; one that played it out to fade and final credits. Paul knew that the BBC would object to the nudity, so in the edit he slapped on a big placard that read CENSORED over Jan’s bare breasts.
The best moment of all in the making of the film was after a day’s filming on a sandy beach near Newquay in Cornwall. During a private little interlude of normality, Paul, Ringo, Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans dropped in to the Tywarhale pub in Perranporth one evening and were delighted to see an old friend, Spencer Davis (the Spencer Davis Group included Steve Winwood), propping up the bar. It seemed that the pub was owned by the parents-in-law of the Spencer Davis roadie. This instantly made them feel at home instead of among strangers.
The regulars couldn’t believe it when Paul sat at the piano and shouted out, “Evening all! I’m the pub pianist and I’m taking requests.” They spent the night in a good old singsong, with all the golden oldies, Paul thumping away on the Joanna and Ringo sometimes joining in on a mandolin with one string. When Ringo stopped strumming he said, “I think I’ve worn away me thumb.” He held it out. They should have filmed that night—but in real life it never happens. The best moments remain the fond memories of a handful of lucky people.
The Beatles would record, then zoom off and film, then record another song, film that, and so on. We’d spend a day at Raymond’s Revue Bar, filming, then it would be down to Maidstone, then back to the studio to finish off “Walrus”—and at the same time, they’d record “Hello Good-Bye,” then it would be the next song, the next scene. It was very piecemeal and higgledy-piggledy, but it didn’t matter. It was action, which was far better for everyone than inactivity.
The Magical Mystery Tour almost completely overwhelmed Denis. He didn’t come into the office but once a week. He was like a lot of NEMS and then Apple men who were upper-echelon management but never invited to party, or to go to pubs and clubs with the Beatles: likable, but not one of the gang. At first, Denis and I got together scripts and books and ideas galore, which we would sift through for Apple Films in order to come up with a potential list of our first projects. One of the first was a film called Walkabout, which Nic Roeg wanted to do in Australia. Jenny Agutter was signed, but I think she only agreed because it was a Beatles’ film. People were sent to Australia to scout locations. For all I know they’re still in the outback because we heard no more from them—though Nic eventually made it with another producer and instead of the Beatles, John Barry and Rod Stewart did the music.
Another project was Traffic Jam, a film about a gridlock throughout Britain, a weird but very powerful early Mad Max type of idea. There were also a couple of Terry Southern projects, Magic Christian and Candy, which Ringo worked on. I was very eager to make the Flashman books into films. I thought if they were done properly they could be bigger than the Bond films. But so much nonsense was talked about who was going to play Flashman. Someone wanted John Alderton to play the lead, which was totally wrong. He was a kind of gentle bumbling comic, with no edge. Someone else suggested Dave Clark, which even Dave found hilarious. There were long discussions about the feel of the books, whether they should be changed in any way. I suppose they were a bit jingoistic, but that was part of what made them so different. Dinners were held with people like Dick Lester, who had made the Beatles films, John Davis, head of Rank, and Malcolm McDowell, who they had finally settled on as Flashman. I thought he was terribly miscast. I said if the right Flashman could be found, another Sean Connery, we would have a major hit. In the end someone else made
Flashman, but it didn’t achieve much.
It had long been John and Paul’s ambition to make a surreal Alice in Wonderland. As writers, they felt that when they finished with pop music they would sit down together and be Rogers and Hammerstein. They bandied ideas about, but nothing much emerged. Mentally, they were ignoring the fact that United Artists were still due one film from the Beatles, the third film in the trio that Brian had signed them up to make. Although Brian was dead, the contract still had to be fulfilled—a situation that depressed all the Beatles except Ringo. Apart from him they had little interest in “Hollywood movies.”
UA could have used up their option by picking up the Mystery Tour, but declined to do so because it was considered too risky and too far-out. Instead, they opted for Yellow Submarine, a cartoon made by King Features, which would show the Beatles as cartoon figures with their speaking voices. It was a bizarre movie, even though ultimately we had almost nothing to do with it. It was made during a period when things were even more confused than usual. George was still desperately trying to rope and hobble Pattie, who refused to act like the other wives and girlfriends. Yoko was still following John around, and Paul and Jane were trying to make a commitment to each other by getting engaged, when it seemed apparent to their friends that both of them had doubts. Little wonder, then, with so much going on in their private lives, that the Beatles had no time or inclination to focus on Yellow Submarine when it went into production.
By now, UA had made it clear that they wouldn’t back any more Apple Films projects. “They think the Beatles are a bit too off the wall,” was one comment I recall. This was all too much for Denis. He was a lovely man, very easy to get along with, but he was a different generation. Mostly he stayed at home and worked on film ideas. He smoked his cigars and drank his brandy. Before coming onto the Apple payroll, he’d been involved with A Hard Day’s Night and Help! and the Michael Crawford film, How I Won the War, in which John had a small role as Private Gripweed. So, while the Mystery Tour rattled its way around the countryside, Denis had stayed at home. He continued to keep away from the office thereafter, and I found myself running the London office of Apple Films single-handed, taking orders from whichever Beatle came along with an instruction.
21
The accountants at Bryce Hanmer in Albemarle Street were still battling with the vast confusion of NEMS and Brian’s accounts and the Beatles’ tax affairs. What they found sobered them. Brian had been using NEMS as a personal piggy bank, advancing himself large sums of money, on which taxes would have to be paid. His personal wealth consisted mainly of his two homes, cars and art. His biggest asset of all, the Beatles management contract, was shortly due for renewal, although, cannily, he still had his percentages of their recording contracts and their publishing, all of which went to his estate. At that moment, EMI alone was holding a million pounds in royalties, due to be paid out immediately. Of that sum, thanks to the draconian 96 percent in the pound tax rate, the Beatles and Brian’s estate would get forty thousand pounds between them.
Bryce Hanmer arranged a meeting with the Beatles and called in a tax expert to be on hand to offer his advice. Where the Beatles were concerned, I can’t remember many meetings held behind closed doors, so we all trooped in to listen. The Beatles, it seemed, would owe a huge tax bill if they didn’t offset most of the money flooding in from their worldwide operations.
Paul, the practical one, asked, “What does offset mean?”
The tax expert said, “In simple terms, it means if you don’t spend the money, the government gets it. You can spend it on anything you want, provided it’s a genuine business expense. You can’t use it on your personal expenses.”
“Anything?” the Beatles chorused.
“Buildings, businesses, investments—”
“Films?”
“Anything relating to what you already do,” the expert confirmed. “Look on it as a tax shelter.”
“How much can we spend?” Paul asked curiously.
“Two million pounds.” The Beatles were speechless as the amount sunk in—about £25 million today.
Brian’s brother, Clive, who had inherited NEMS along with Queenie, suggested that the Beatles should open a chain of retail stores, something he was familiar with. He was very taken with the idea of greeting-card shops. Nothing like them existed at the time and, to give him his due, it was a money-spinning concept.
The idea didn’t appeal at all. The Beatles turned it down out of hand. John, who thought Clive was a second-rater who mentally had never left Queen’s Drive in Liverpool, was very peeved that their business interests were now inextricably bound to this man, who in his opinion had never done a single thing for them. When Brian had been struggling to forge their career, Clive had constantly undermined him by telling Harry and Queenie that the Beatles were a waste of time. It was understandable that John stated flatly, “We don’t want to be in that. We’re not Woolworths.”
Seeing an argument brewing, the accountants soothed, “I’m sure with your creative minds you’ll come up with something. Ultimately, our plan for you is to build up, then consolidate all your companies and go public in about five years time.”
Five years hence was not comprehensible to the Beatles. All they heard and gained from the discussion was the football-pool winner’s credo: “Spend, spend, spend!” They delighted in the notion of thwarting the taxman. They would become the Medicis of the Western world and spread this sudden windfall of spending money around. As John put it, it would be like “playing Monopoly with real money.” After the accountants and the Suits had packed up their papers into their briefcases, there were many group discussions, some at Cavendish Avenue, about how the Beatles would use their vast wealth and patronage to invest in talent and anything else that pleased them. It was like the game we all play as children: “If I were very very rich and could buy whatever I wanted, I would . . .” Now suddenly, they were very very rich—but not a single sensible idea emerged. They hadn’t a clue what they would do.
The idea that they could do anything they wanted was very new to them. They had no education or experience in how to deal with it. Until Brian died the Beatles had never had any freedom. But with no restraints and no one to tell them what to do, George came out of himself and started playing with other musicians. Ringo got more into his own projects, including movies. His first non-Beatles film role was in Candy, which was filmed in Rome in December 1967. A month later, in February 1968, he was even a guest on his own, the first of many appearances, with Cilla on her series for the BBC. Paul grew even more experimental but in an interesting way, while John was now free not to spend all day in Weybridge waiting to go to the studio, which was basically what his life was all about after they decided to give up touring.
Apple was a fresh start. They had always said they would never be record producers, but now it seemed like a good idea. Ron Kass, an American, was recruited from his job as head of Liberty Records in the U.K. to be president of Apple Records. It was one of the Beatles’ more sane decisions. Paul won’t mind me saying that a less sane decision was when he and John went on the Johnny Carson show in New York and said to the world, “Send in yer tapes.” They also placed full-page advertisements in newspapers for ideas. Tapes and manuscripts arrived by the sackful and that’s where they had to stay, because there was nobody whose job it was to listen, or read, and recommend. The Beatles were busy, and no one really knows why Paul made that open invitation because Paul really wanted to sign the Stones, Donovan, the Byrds and all the groups he liked. There were certainly talks between the Stones and Beatles about getting together and forming a company. I don’t think it happened because there would have been too many cooks.
They had always considered NEMS Brian’s offices, but now that they had their own company—Apple—all four of them were doing office hours editing Mystery Tour and going to the pub for lunch like regular workers. They were meeting people without being protected by Mal, or Neil, or even me, or the chauffeur. Pe
ople were going up to them and collaring them and telling them about their life and their ideas and plans and aspirations. This was not only new, it was a revelation. Suddenly they were living the life of Reilly. It was a bit like the kind of weird freedom some people experience in the aftermath of their parents dying, knowing that they are on their own to sink or swim, captains of their fate.
Paul said to me once, “We don’t have to answer to anybody if we fuck up. Don’t have to think, ‘Ooh, what would Brian say?’ ” Even before, Paul had been the only one who went out on his own. Sometimes he would come out of his house in St. John’s Wood, chat to the Apple Scruffs, escape them, get on a bus and go into the West End and walk around. He’d walk his sheepdog, Martha, on the Heath; he’d post a letter or pop into the corner shop to buy a newspaper. The others were chauffeur driven just about anywhere they ever went. In fact, as I write, Paul still acts like a regular guy. He gets on the train down to Brighton and waits in line outside the station for a taxi home. That’s part of his great charm. He’s more or less normal.
But then what’s normal? Brian Epstein absolutely amazed me one time by getting out a very expensive cigarette case containing a row of perfectly rolled joints. He offered them around, saying, “I get one of my boys to do them for me.” Normal is as normal does, and I suppose Brian saw how happy the Beatles were smoking dope and decided he’d have some. He always had huge amounts of LSD in his house—and I do mean loads.
When Apple announced that it was accepting proposals for funding ideas, Yoko struck immediately with a request for five thousand pounds—the equivalent today of about fifty-five thousand pounds—for an exhibition at the Lisson gallery. Considering that what she wanted to exhibit were things painted white and chopped in half, like half a chair or half a table, she could have gotten the lot from a junk shop and got change from a fiver. Rudely, Paul said, “Why don’t you put half a person in?” He wasn’t keen on giving her any money, but said John could if he wanted to. Paul’s sarcastic comment had stuck with Yoko and she turned it to her advantage. She came into Apple and waylaid John to ask him, in a kind of shrugging, dimpling way, for the money. She got to him by saying that he was her inspiration. “I feel like only half,” she intoned. “You are my other half, and I am yours. We have been lost in space searching, and now we have found each other. . . .”
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