The Beatles

by Bob Spitz

  Champagne flowed freely as the press awaited the Beatles’ grand entrance. They were still upstairs in a photo session brokered by Tony Barrow, held captive while a dozen power-driven cameras clicked away without pause. Normally, photo sessions were excruciating ordeals, stiff and phony, but the Beatles felt comfortable with this outfit. All were familiar faces on the clubby British rock circuit, most of them young, long-haired guys about their age who mixed and socialized after the job was done. All except one, that is.

  Linda Eastman was an interloper—an American and a woman—but very much a photographer in her own right. She had been twenty-three years old when, two years earlier, she talked her way into a Rolling Stones press party to strike up a conversation with Mick Jagger. Determined to take advantage of the opportunity, “she pulled out an expensive camera,” a guest recalls, “and flirted gamely with Mick while reeling off several rolls of film.”

  The photos became the foundation of her portfolio, featuring rock stars in candid poses. Not many women had broken into this restricted rock photography circle, but Linda had several things going for her. Tall and silvery slim, with a natural milk-and-honey complexion, she was, despite her height, the kind of strikingly pretty girl who nevertheless put guys at ease with a quick grin and easy, outgoing manner. Her bearing impressed: “You knew immediately upon meeting her that she came from privilege,” says Nat Weiss, a longtime family friend. “There was something about the way she carried herself and dressed that set her apart from the rabble.”

  Privilege descended through Linda’s father, Lee Eastman, a self-styled New York show-business lawyer and cultural aesthete who mixed just as easily with his bluestocking neighbors as he did with the artists and musicians he represented. Handsome and flamboyant, with an imperious manner, Eastman had re-created his persona to suit an upward status, changing the family name from Epstein, thus enabling him to maneuver among the Hamptons and country-club set. Songwriter Jerry Leiber, a client and friend, refers to him as “very Waspish, a real anti-Semitic Jew—yachting in Cape Cod, all the mannerisms picked up on the other side of the tracks.” To her credit, Linda had none of her dad’s pretensions. But she had his ambition and determination.

  Linda had launched a career as a rock photographer on her obvious appeal to male musicians. She caught their eye as much as her eye caught their image. Gamboling around the London club scene or backstage at the Fillmore East, the rock gods gravitated to her with appreciable lust. To call Linda a groupie, as the label connotes, demeaned her attractiveness in the equation—the term groupie presumes a one-sided exchange that turns on debasement and humiliation—but word of her conquests, professional and otherwise, was legendary. She photographed every major rock star, counting many among them as lovers. Still, throughout her precipitate rise, she continued to tease Nat Weiss that her tastes were of a more specific nature. “She always insisted that she was going to marry Paul McCartney,” he recalls, “even before she met him.”

  Nat maintains that he introduced Paul to Linda at his apartment in New York City, but it is more likely that they met four days before the Sgt. Pepper’s launch, at a disco in the West End called the Bag o’ Nails. Paul had stopped there late one night with Peter Brown, downing a few scotch and Cokes in one of the discreetly hidden alcove tables, while Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames banged through an ear-splitting set. Linda was seated across the room near the stage, squashed in a booth with the Animals, with whom she had worked. During an intermission, Paul cornered her with a corny pickup line, winning him a few hours with her and the singer Lulu back at Cavendish Avenue, discussing art.

  Linda, however, had already spent considerable time conspiring to meet her pop crush. A few days earlier she had appealed to Brown, with whom she was somewhat acquainted, for an invitation to the Sgt. Pepper’s launch. This request was not logical at all. Linda’s experience and standing were definite drawbacks (everyone on the guest list was on staff at a major publication), particularly at an event considered “the hottest ticket in town.” Almost all of her work had been published in the United States, where photographers were not yet established as cultural names. Technically she did have an assignment, shooting pictures for a paperback book titled Rock and Other Four Letter Words, but primarily she was in London in an attempt to get her portfolio into the right hands.

  One set of hands, in particular, had sticky fingers. Linda had dropped her book off at NEMS, and Peter Brown confessed that he had “stolen a sexy, teasing picture” of Brian Jones out of her portfolio. Fortunately, he felt inclined to barter an invitation to the party in exchange. “Besides,” he says, “I thought she was cute and fun, and I thought she’d bring a different perspective to the pictures than all these other guys.”

  During the afternoon photo shoot, Paul deposited himself majestically in an armchair by the fireplace, sipping champagne and dispensing opinions on everything from art to artificial intelligence, a subject he’d just read about in one of the underground journals he devoured. It was no accident that Linda Eastman veered into his aura. She’d taken a few polite shots of Ringo and George before “zero[ing] in on Paul,” who couldn’t help but admire her beauty and spunk. Linda had come dressed to kill. Most days she played the typical rock chick, decked out in rumpled jeans and a T-shirt, with little or no makeup and unwashed hair. But today her hair had been carefully blow-dried so that it fell perfectly forward in wing points at her chin. And she was dressed in an expensive double-breasted striped barbershop jacket arranged just so over a sheer black sweater, with a miniskirt that flattered her gorgeous legs. When she squatted down—not so subtly, in what must have been a rehearsed gesture—in front of Paul for an intimate chat, he had trouble keeping his eyes from wandering below-decks. A photograph taken of Paul and Linda during this encounter reveals their powerful attraction. Their heads are less than a foot apart—Linda’s tilted slightly, irresistibly, enticing; Paul’s chin balanced softly on a clenched hand, a cigarette burning between his fingers; four eyes locked in like radar, in a near-mesmeric stare. Anyone standing nearby “couldn’t help but notice that something was happening,” according to Tony Barrow, himself a captivated bystander. “This wasn’t any stage-door infatuation.”

  And yet, like any ordinary breathless fan, Linda was soon herded out of the room with the rest of the photographers, leaving Paul reeling in her wake. The Beatles were needed downstairs, on the double, where Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was already blaring at an unreasonable volume.

  The press was astonished when the four men finally appeared on the stairs. They all knew the Beatles rather intimately, having interviewed and mingled with them regularly over the years. But none of them was prepared for the sight he beheld.

  John Lennon entered first, dressed in a frilly green flowered shirt and maroon cord trousers, with a sporran cinched at his waist and canary yellow socks. But was it John? They weren’t sure, at first. Instead of the familiar smirking lad who traded on mischievous delight stood a ghostly figure, gaunt and guarded—one journalist thought he “resembled an animated Victorian watchmaker”—moving clumsily into the room. He “looked haggard, old, ill, and hopelessly addicted to drugs,” Ray Coleman reflected. “His eyes were glazed, his speech was slow and slurred.” George followed close behind him, grim-faced, fingering one end of a handlebar mustache as though he were worried it might shake loose at any moment. His getup, the centerpiece of which was a maroon velvet jacket, also drew a few openmouthed stares. Paul, in a striped double-breasted suit with a scarf knotted loosely at his neck, looked to one observer “like someone out of a Scott Fitzgerald novel,” and about as affected, while Ringo, bringing up the rear, grinned sheepishly, no doubt because he was embarrassed by the conservative dark suit, white shirt, and perfectly knotted tie that drew an undue amount of attention to him.

  “Gentlemen—the Beatles!” Tony Barrow announced to a sea of stunned faces. Local disc jockey Jimmy Saville, who was heard to gasp audibly, did a comical double-take.

&nbs
p; The Beatles?

  Why, yes, everyone soon realized, it was the Beatles, but… What the hell had happened to them? They looked as though a costume designer had gotten ahold of them for some kind of mystical production. Perhaps, one guest speculated, it was a promo for their next film. Why else would they show up looking like, well, like wizards? Stoned wizards, if their eyes were any indication.

  “The Beatles live!” Paul shouted, hoisting a glass of champagne in the air.

  The guests were mystified by the music as well, which was as strange and exotic as the clothing the Beatles wore. The album played continuously over the several hours that the listen-in stretched on, but, politely or not, no one, aside from a Melody Maker columnist, broached a meaningful discussion of the songs. Instead, they seized on a more tangible aspect; twenty-four hours earlier, the BBC had announced that it was banning “A Day in the Life” on the grounds that it “could be considered to have drug-taking implications.” “Rubbish!” John snapped in terse response. (He’d obviously missed Paul’s point.) There had been so many songs they’d crafted with “drug-taking implications.” Leave it to the Beeb to condemn this one.

  As Brian sat in a deserted corner of the living room with an ankle balanced on a knee, he couldn’t have been happier. But happiness was an anomaly for Brian. He had become disconnected from his own image. Like everything else that year, the party was a painful reminder of his utter insignificance to the Beatles and further proof that he was the disposable part of their success. Nobody would miss him should something fateful come to pass. As if to test this assumption, he slipped out of the flat while the party was still in full swing.

  That last week in May, with the album just hours from release, Brian found himself suffering still another emotional setback—once again at the hands of his beloved Beatles. On April 19, the day before their first recording session for Magical Mystery Tour, the boys concluded the formation of another business partnership that effectively consolidated their interests as a unit, minus Brian. It hadn’t been their idea to incorporate (oddly enough, it was Brian’s), nor were they exploring ways to dissolve their management agreement. This was a tax dodge, short and sweet, to shelter them against Britain’s staggering 94 percent bite out of their income. Brian recommended a financial strategy whereby the Beatles would sell 80 percent of themselves to a holding company, giving them a tax-free capital gain, with generous salaries, and the opportunity to charge their personal expenses to the company. Later, perhaps, they could consider taking the new company public. It made perfect sense. Nevertheless, on May 25, when Apple Music Ltd. was formally registered, the actuality of it sent Brian into an emotional tailspin. “He’d decided this was the Beatles’ first real step toward ending their relationship with him,” recalls Peter Brown, who joined Brian later that evening at Kingsley Hill in Sussex. Nothing Peter said could lift Brian from his despair. Only one group could do that, and they were functioning without him, in London, conducting business that had slipped from his control. There was only one way to reverse that; if he couldn’t be in London with the Beatles, then it was time to bring the Beatles to Sussex. They needed to be there, together, with him. Instantly, Brian knew what to do. “He wanted to have a housewarming and invited all the Beatles, along with their wives and girlfriends.”

  To reconcile his own need to foster a “gang’s all here spirit,” Brian beat the jungle drums, assembling a coterie of friends from the very core of the inner circle—the Beatles’ family—guaranteed to amuse him and his favored long-haired guests: Terry Doran, Lionel Bart, Nat Weiss, the Fool, John Pritchard, deejay Kenny Everett, Klaus Voormann, Lulu, Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Robert Stigwood, Neil and Mal, and even—straight from Los Angeles—Derek Taylor and his very pregnant wife, Joan.

  On Sunday, May 28, John, George, Ringo, and their women, along with Terry Doran and the seriously jet-lagged Taylors, traveled together to Sussex in John’s brand-new £40,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom V—his so-named gypsy caravan—every inch of whose gleaming black finish had been painted in Day-Glo psychedelic regalia. “A Whiter Shade of Pale” provided the frothy soundtrack, blaring over and over from a turntable installed in the partition separating the passengers from the driver. An atmosphere of dreamlike abandon lingered inside the limo. John and George, who had been up all day and night—“perhaps all week,” according to George—in the wake of another LSD trip, wore their new identities unself-consciously. Draped from head to toe in flowing silks and satins, with braided scarves and strands of beads and amulets strung around their necks, they seemed disengaged from the obligations that pressed upon their public personalities.

  Derek Taylor, who’d arrived in a customary white shirt, gray flannel slacks, and a navy blue blazer, was mystified by the Beatles’ transformation. The boys embraced—hugged!—him, kissed both his cheeks, danced around him like tree nymphs. When Taylor shot back quizzical looks, they would laugh good-naturedly and chime: “Too much! Too much!”

  Every facet of the visit seemed touched by mirth. It was a gorgeous, sun-drenched day, warm and redolent of summer. “Everyone was getting along beautifully,” says Peter Brown. “There was lovely food, lots of good wine, and lots—lots—of drugs.” A test pressing of Sgt. Pepper’s played at thunderous volume throughout the day. It was a giddy, gluttonous event, with LSD as the spark plug. “The minute you walked through the door you got dosed,” recalls Lionel Bart. “The boys were making the rounds, serving tea out of a china pot that had been generously spiked with acid. The whole party appeared to be tripping like mad; everyone was dancing around to the flame of a candle.” The whole atmosphere reminded Cynthia Lennon of “the mad hatter’s tea party; everyone was crackers,” as far as she could tell. And yet, the temptation to function on John’s precious wavelength was too powerful to resist. Perhaps it was time to begin tearing down the wall. According to Cynthia, she decided to go against her better judgment and drop acid along with everyone else. In her memoir, she de-scribes it as a “paralyzing” experience, during which she sank into a hollow-eyed depression, withdrew to a bedroom on the second floor of the house, and contemplated jumping out the window onto the stone driveway below. Instead of being drawn into her husband’s grateful embrace, John was furious with her for ruining his drug reverie.*

  By midday a conspicuous absence had left Brian disconsolate. Paul was either late or missing in action. Few guests dared mention his absence, but it stood out in galling contrast. A grand piano had been rolled into the freshly painted living room, earmarked for his attention: a place of honor. It was a Liverpool tradition to have a group sing-along at such an event. Paul, at the old gang’s request, always played the dutiful accompanist, but about 3:00 he phoned to say that Jane needed a lift home from Heathrow. Sorry, hated to do this, he claimed too matter-of-factly, but they wouldn’t be able to attend.

  That was all Brian needed. Leave it to Paul to get under his skin. “Wasn’t that always the case,” he groused. Paul, forever nosy and second-guessing business decisions, always set Brian’s teeth on edge, but this went straight to his heart. Everything about his absence seemed personal, like a slap in the face. Brian’s mood grew darker and more irrational; his drinking got heavier. It wasn’t long before the hand-wringing began. “Paul… didn’t… come,” Brian muttered, trying to express his disappointment. His face unbearably wounded, ashen, his eyes filled with tears, he kept repeating it to anyone who would listen. “This day of all days… he should have come.” Derek Taylor tried to console him, but Brian spun away, bending forlornly over the piano like a spurned lover. “This was to have been for Paul,” he sighed in a quivering voice. “Especially for tonight, but he can’t come. The only one.”

  It sucked the life right out of the party, until John and George stepped in to assure him of their love. Their affectionate hugs and the psychedelic fireworks that followed combined to rescue the evening from certain meltdown.

  Sgt. Pepper played on in the background. It was the Summer of Love.

  [III
]

  For all their bluff confidence, the Beatles anguished over public and critical reaction as the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band drew near. “I was downright scared,” George Martin admitted, “but not half as worried as the Beatles.” The so-called failure of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” was still too fresh in everyone’s mind. Even though the single had sold well—over 2 million copies worldwide—its chart shortfall was regarded as an omen.

  But their worries were groundless. The album’s release on June 1 caused an extraordinary sensation, with critics lobbing paragraphs of unprecedented praise. In the Sunday Times review, Derek Jewel called Sgt. Pepper’s “remarkable” and “a tremendous advance even in the increasingly adventurous progress of the Beatles.” William Mann went even further in The Times daily column: “Any of these songs is more genuinely creative than anything currently to be heard on pop radio stations,” he wrote, “but in relation to what other groups have been doing lately Sgt. Pepper [sic] is chiefly significant as constructive criticism, a sort of pop music master class examining trends and correcting or tidying up inconsistencies and undisciplined work.” Wilfrid Mellers, writing in the New Statesman, crawled out on a limb to label their music as “art—and art of an increasingly subtle kind.” Where once the critics had described the Beatles and their music in terms befitting cartoon characters, now they scrambled to place them in the pantheon of beloved composers and poets. Since Revolver, it seemed, critics had approached the music more seriously, actually analyzing its content instead of treating it like a fad. The fans, too—“They think for themselves, and I don’t think we can be accused of underestimating the intelligence of our fans,” observed George—were quick to recognize breakthroughs in the Beatles’ musical evolution. “Over the last four years Lennon and McCartney have developed into the greatest songwriting team of this century,” wrote a follower from Isleworth. “Some of the tracks on the LP are pure poetry and unbelievably advanced in conception.” Another, from Llandudno in Wales, complimented “She’s Leaving Home” as “one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard.” No ordinary fan but just as effusive in his praise, composer Ned Rorem called it “equal to any song that Schubert ever wrote.”