by Bob Spitz
The Beatles had dropped roughly £40,000 on Magical Mystery Tour—up to that point. Most of the negative expense, if not more, they hoped to recoup from an exhibitor. But who in their right mind would pick up the tab for such a sorry spectacle? Not a cinema chain; it was too short a mess to qualify as a feature. Peter Brown, who “thought it was dreadful,” had been enlisted by Paul to help sell it. Initially, in November, they pitched it to the BBC and ITV as a Christmas holiday special, and he says the BBC “were drooling at the mouths at the very idea of it until they got a look at the finished product.” ITV passed, on the premise of a scheduling problem. Paul Fox, the head of BBC1, recalled: “I saw it four times before I began to understand it.” He admitted that “there were large parts that were unprofessional” but felt “there were also moments of drama and poignancy, which [he] found quite fascinating.” Ultimately, it came down to the Beatles, as sure a draw as anything on TV. Even considering the extravagant mess on the screen, Fox “thought it was worth showing.”
Brown, however, didn’t share his opinion. He worried about the blow it would certainly deal the Beatles’ unblemished reputation and urged Paul to reconsider. “After the lackluster response from the BBC,” he says, “I tried to suggest writing off the £40,000 and moving on. But Paul didn’t know it was a mess and insisted on making the deal.” The BBC agreed to show it twice—in black and white on Boxing Day and again in color on January 5—for the paltry fee of £9,000. Rather than appear insulted, Paul insisted that money was never the issue. “Sod it,” he thought, “that’s not really the important thing.” It was a well-known fact that Boxing Day TV audiences were the largest of the year. The coverage they’d get would be unprecedented. As Paul envisioned it, close to 20 million viewers who had eaten “too much turkey and sherry” would sit around living rooms throughout Britain waiting for the “plum pudding special”: the Beatles in Magical Mystery Tour.
Unfortunately, in this case, all they’d get was more turkey, and it was no surprise that the critics knocked the stuffing out of it. “Appalling!” the Daily Mail harrumphed. “It was worse than terrible.” James Green, who covered TV for the Evening News, stammered over suitably damning adjectives, advising readers to “take your pick from the words: rubbish, piffle, chaotic, flop, tasteless, nonsense, emptiness, and appalling.” Accordingly, the Daily Mirror chose “rubbish… piffle… nonsense!” The Daily Express limited its slurs to “blatant rubbish” and said, “The whole boring saga confirmed a long held suspicion… that the Beatles… have made so much money that they can apparently afford to be contemptuous of the public.” Punishment was demanded of the culprits. “Whoever authorized the showing of the film on BBC1,” wrote the Daily Sketch, “should be condemned to a year squatting at the feet of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.”
But Paul had other things on his mind. During the holiday, “perhaps slightly to [his] own surprise,” he gathered the family together and announced his engagement to Jane.
Chapter 34 An Additional Act
[I]
Throughout the first ten years of the Beatles saga, women knew their place. A fan screamed, wept, engaged in some heavy personal fantasy, and, on the off chance of a close encounter, flung herself recklessly in the general vicinity of one of the Beatles, hoping at the very least for a re-ciprocal smile. A lucky bird might even get to spend the night. But for a girlfriend or a wife, the role was severe. They were at best a prop in the grand scenario; at worst, a handicap. Aside from creature comforts, which were glorious, the disadvantages of pairing with one of the band outweighed the benefits. For one thing, there was no room for a woman in that crowded spotlight. They gave up whatever individuality they had to support the boys’ careers and, as such, were swallowed whole by the monster Beatlemania.
The Beatles were an unconditionally exclusive fraternity—one for all and all for one. Cynthia Lennon, envious of their rapport, called it “a marriage of four minds… [that] were always in harmony.” Always may be too strong a word, but on those occasions when it became necessary to close ranks, the Beatles formed an airtight bond that knew no equivalent; there was nothing and no one capable of infiltrating the core group. Neil and Mal gained entry—at times—but that only made their slavish devotion and loyalty more painful. Perhaps those two more than anyone recognized the boundaries of real friendship; after twenty-hour days that might begin with driving hours on end, then lifting heavy equipment and running what some might view as demeaning errands, a word, even a look, often reminded them exactly who they were and left them outside looking in, just like everyone else.
The Beatles’ women, on the other hand, never got that close. Decisions were routinely made without their input. Their opinions were seldom, if ever, sought. It was unthinkable that a project dreamed up and green-lighted by one of the Beatles, even something as significant as Apple, would be referred to the women for comment. “When it came down to business,” says Alistair Taylor, “the girls were usually the last to be told.”
The same rules pertained to the music. John and Paul might preview a nascent song they’d just written for Cynthia or Jane, but other than a rare special occasion—like the “All You Need Is Love” broadcast—women were barred. No woman had ever been invited into the studio and, as far as can be determined, none had asked. In Paul’s view, the studio was sacrosanct, the Beatles’ relationship to it like “four miners who go down the pit”—and “[y]ou don’t need women down the pit, do you?”
On those nights when the Beatles finished work at a respectable hour, they’d head home to change, collect the girls, and go back out to one of the clubs, where they’d squeeze into a private banquette that functioned as a sort of clubhouse. Conversation revolved entirely around the musicians and their lives. If the women talked at all, it was among themselves. Occasionally one of the Beatles might spot a friend and disappear for the rest of the night—just wander off without a word—leaving his companion to arrange her own way home, no matter how late the hour. Other times one of the girls might sit in the backseat of a limo for a ridiculous stretch of time, waiting until the last fucked-up straggler had paid his respects.
Yet those kinds of sacrifices were made without complaint. In part, of course, this was because it had never been any other way. The Beatles had chosen women—Cynthia, Jane, Maureen, and Pattie—who accepted their offbeat way of life and were willing to put up with the rigors that the role required, without defiance, resentment, or asking too many questions. Nowhere in the Beatles saga do characters appear more selfless. The women surprised even one another by the extent of their thoughtfulness and TLC. Cynthia, who conducted her mornings in monklike silence so that John could sleep until two in the afternoon, marveled at how Maureen pampered Ringo through those all-night recording marathons. “Instead of going to bed,” Cyn recalled, “she would wait up until he came home and serve him a wonderful roast dinner, even if it happened to be five in the morning.” Jane once remarked to a friend how she admired Pattie for filling the house with incense each day, ready for George’s arrival.
And nowhere in the Beatles saga are characters more forgiving. During the boys’ long tenure in the spotlight, the women dealt capably with every curveball that was thrown at them. They’d been through the craziness and idol worship, the marijuana and the LSD, the meditation and the mystery tour. They’d dealt with the fickle, heartless press that robbed their families of any privacy. They’d stayed home alone, rattling around their empty mansions during those long tours and even longer recording sessions, dealing with the isolation that stardom imposed. They’d heard the rumors of infidelities and waved them away like smoke. They put aside all personal ambition because they were the Beatles’ women, and those were the rules.
But after ten years, the rules were about to change.
Of all the plum roles that had come her way, the Subservient Beatles Woman was the only one Jane Asher refused to play.
She had been only seventeen years old when, five years before, Paul McCartney had literally mo
ved into her life as a housemate and a lover, youthful and innocent, perhaps, but hardly naive. Assuming her rightful place in the Beatles’ entourage was never difficult for Jane. “There was something about the way she behaved that put everyone at ease,” says a friend. “Although she was posh, you never got the sense she was pretentious or insincere.”
And yet, she had too much going for her to take a backseat to anyone, much less her mate. From the beginning, Paul had a hard time keeping up with her. Jane’s diary, which she lived by, was a clutter of fascinating appointments and social commitments. “I was amazed by the diary,” Paul admitted. “I’ve never known people who stuffed so much into a day.” There were auditions, meetings with television and movie producers, vocal lessons, acting classes, fittings, gallery debuts, screenings, recitals, opening nights. Paul was also impressed that “Jane knew people in the country,” which he considered a “rather upper-class thing.”
“Paul was clearly in awe of her,” says Peter Brown. “He liked the whole package; it was his ticket in.” But after a time—and well before 1968—Paul found his own foothold in this once-alien world. He was an internationally known figure, sought after as much by strangely dressed freaks as he was by distinguished diplomats and intellectuals. From the banks of the Mersey to the mansions on the Thames, there wasn’t a social circle in which he couldn’t form a connection. If anything, Jane now had trouble keeping up with him. Jane was unfamiliar with the work of de Chirico, de Kooning, or Magritte, to say nothing of William Burroughs, Luciano Berio, Antonioni, or the Fugs. And what of the characters involved in the underground who shared Paul’s idealistic sympathies? She had no reason to be keenly aware of their issues and schemes, nor did she have a working knowledge of their subversive politics. And Jane hated the drug scene.
“Jane confided in me enough to say that Paul wanted her to become the little woman at home with the kiddies,” Cynthia wrote. Another reliable observer says Jane had “clearly decided that she was setting her own terms on how she conducted her career.” There were to be no cop-outs, no compromises, no backseats taken to pop stars.
At the time of their engagement, things were already “very tense” between Paul and Jane, according to Marianne Faithfull, who thought their relationship was more “like an act” than a romance. Peter Brown’s characterization of it as “a companionship” seems more generous, although not entirely on the mark. Still, they had weathered several ups and downs, including Jane’s “traumatic” confession that she intended to leave Paul for a boyfriend in Bristol. They’d gotten past that—but just barely. As far as marriage went, Paul “could not get her to name the day.” However, there was something about making the relationship official, so to speak, that seemed to take the pressure off and allowed them to get on with other things. For Paul and Jane, engagement postponed engagement.
Although no one else knew it—not even Paul, George, or Ringo—John Lennon found himself wrestling with similar emotional issues.
For the past few months, there had been a sea change in his life. First, his father, Freddie, reappeared after a three-year hiatus, this time in the company of a nineteen-year-old student named Pauline Jones, whom he would eventually marry. They spent several weeks as guests at Kenwood, John and Freddie struggling to come to terms with their lifelong estrangement. Various sources indicate that it was a difficult, if not contentious, reunion, hardly the reconciliation either man might have hoped for. John was always on the go, “never available” for his father, to say nothing of his own wife, who, Jones observed, “had begun to establish a social life of her own.”
Much of John’s erratic behavior can be attributed to a situation that threatened to shatter his household routine. Much to his own surprise, he had become infatuated with another woman. She had edged into the picture in late November, following a private seminar with the Maharishi in a London suburb that the Lennons had attended with Pete Shotton and his wife, Beth. As the two couples were leaving the guru’s guesthouse, a tiny raven-haired woman, clad head to toe in black, appeared out of the shadows and asked John for a lift back to the city. Shotton recalls that he treated “this stranger” with the kind of “tactful attention” a pop star would give a favored fan. John shifted uneasily from foot to foot—Cynthia noticed that a look of “pure shock” crossed her husband’s face—then said, “This is Yoko. Do you mind if she comes back with us?”
Yoko Ono had been “particularly persistent” in her pursuit of John Lennon since their first meeting at her Indica Gallery show in 1966. Over the course of several months thereafter, she had tried unsuccessfully to get his attention, first standing at the gates to Kenwood among the horde of groveling fans and haunting the steps outside the Apple offices, in the hope of a “chance” encounter. She once gained admittance to Kenwood for the purpose of calling a taxi, then planted a ring by the phone, necessitating a return visit. Cynthia recalled that afterward, “there were a lot of phone calls [at home] from Yoko, and John also received a constant flow of letters from her,” none of which aroused Cynthia’s suspicion—or his, so it seems. “John read them and left them lying around,” Cynthia said. She took Yoko for another of the endless would-be artists who approached John for assistance, seeking a personal endorsement or money.
Somewhere along the line, John’s attitude toward Yoko Ono changed. Whether it was caused by the end of touring, the shock of Brian’s death, or the effects of meditation, it is hard to determine. A more likely reason suggests that the excessive boredom of his marriage finally prevailed. But between November 1967 and January 1968, something piqued his interest in Yoko. Cynthia sensed that change and said that she confronted John about Yoko, but he dismissed her curiosity with genuine indifference. “She’s crackers, she’s just a weirdo artist,” he replied. “Don’t worry about it.” Nor was there anything to be gleaned from a volume of her poems, Grapefruit, lying on John’s night table. Even after the number of letters and calls increased, he insisted: “She’s another nutter wanting money for all that avant garde bullshit.”
But by January that avant-garde bullshit had an impressive price. John sent Yoko to see Pete Shotton at Apple about underwriting one of her myriad projects. In an office above the boutique, she told Pete, “I want two thousand pounds.” Pete was staggered by the request. It was “an enormous amount of money,” he says, and the magnitude of it took him completely by surprise. Recovering, he asked her what she wanted it for. Only Yoko Ono could have explained a concept as loopy as the one she called “Half-a-Wind,” a roomful of everyday objects, mostly furniture and appliances—“all beautifully cut in half and all painted white,” as John later described it. Shotton was flabbergasted by the description. “I’ll have to talk to somebody about this, Yoko,” he says he told her. “I can’t give you two thousand pounds to cut furniture up.” Yoko flashed an inscrutable smile and told him “it was metaphysical.”
“In the beginning, all those screwy ideas of hers amused him,” says Peter Brown, “then they intrigued him—and then much more.” “She did a thing called ‘Dance Event,’ where different cards kept coming through the door every day saying, ‘Breathe’ and ‘Dance’ and ‘Watch all the lights until dawn,’ ” John explained to Jann Wenner in a 1970 interview, “and they upset me or made me happy, depending on how I felt.” And much of Grapefruit he found infuriating, scattered with outrageous instructional “pieces,” such as “Use your blood to paint. Keep painting until you faint. Keep painting until you die.” John, who loved nothing more than to whip up controversy, saw a kindred spirit in Yoko. She refused to play by anyone’s rules. Yes, there was the “avant-garde crap” that she perpetrated as art, but she was unlike any other woman he’d ever met, a real challenge to figure out. She excited him.
The whole idea of having a secret friend with limitless potential excited John. He believed he had finally met a woman who was not interested in his fame, a woman who insisted that her art and ideas were as important as his own. It was intense—not at all like a one-night stand w
ith a dolly bird, not even sexual. “After Yoko and I met, I didn’t realize I was in love with her,” John recalled. The attraction was purely intellectual, purely creative, a powerful conflux of like-minded rebels. Their talk, in a series of clandestine nighttime calls, was charged with an electric intimacy that warranted something stronger, deeper, more intense.
The trouble was, he was married. And so, it turned out, was she.
[II]
In fact, Yoko had been married for almost half of her young life. She was born on February 18, 1933, into a spectacularly prosperous Japanese family descended from samurai that was as wealthy and influential as, say, the Rockefellers in the United States. Her father, Eisuke, a Christian financier proficient in English and French who headed an institution that would eventually merge with the Bank of Japan, moved his family to America on two separate occasions—once in 1936 and again in 1940, not all that long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Those short tenures in the States provided Yoko with perhaps her most formative impressions; from a pampered and sheltered Long Island compound, she developed a fluency in English and was profoundly influenced by American culture. But the experience was short-lived. World War II almost finished off the Onos. Eisuke was abruptly posted to the bank’s satellite office in Japanese-occupied Hanoi, while Yoko, with her mother, brother, and baby sister, remained in Tokyo. Yoko attended the prestigious Gakushuin School, where she was tutored in all phases of Western culture until the escalating bombings eventually drove her family into the countryside, to a worn-out little farming village near Karuizawa, in the south.
It was a lonely and disorienting episode for such a proud, imperious family. The sense of isolation—of being cut off from their lifestyle—was overwhelming. From the moment they arrived, late in March 1945, there was open resentment toward their rarefied ways. They were treated like outsiders by their own people, taken advantage of and plundered. Yoko’s mother, Isoko, was forced to sell her possessions for food and shelter. According to one biographer, things got so bad that “they actually went begging from door to door.”