The Beatles

by Bob Spitz

  No sooner had Jane removed her things from Cavendish Avenue than Paul’s interest in Linda began to heat up. In September, Paul invited her to London as the Beatles were putting the finishing touches on the White Album. Then, after the record had been delivered to EMI, they flew to New York together, where the courtship turned serious—and seriously fun. “I loved [it in] New York,” he recalls, brimful with lasting memories of those weeks. “Linda had a cool little flat on Lexington and Eighty-third… and we’d go around a lot.” Unlike those surreal New York experiences during Beatlemania, when he was a prisoner in the Plaza and the Delmonico, they trolled the city streets unnoticed, whirling in and out of local galleries and clubs in an effort to take it all in. New York in October was even more magical than he’d remembered. For Paul, life began and ended on those city streets. Together, he and Linda explored every neighborhood, from Chinatown to Harlem, where Paul lingered in local record shops disguised in army-navy surplus and “a big beard, like Ratso out of Midnight Cowboy.” In a way, it was the culmination of a dream. These were among the rare times when he was absolutely relaxed, in a place he considered the music capital of the world. “Linda eventually took me to the Apollo,” Paul recalls. “We just went on our own, took a cab.” It was one of those chaotic Wednesday-night talent free-for-alls with Billy Stewart headlining, and they rooted for a soulful little girl in a gray dress who lit up the jaded crowd.

  One night, wandering through Chinatown, a feeling crept up on Paul without warning. “Linda was showing me around,” he recalls, “and we passed a sign that said, ‘Come in now and get a Buddhist wedding.’ ” He drew a breath and without giving it much thought said, “C’mon, Linda—what about it?” The traffic, the street sounds, the buzz of voices, her heartbeat—everything stopped. He was serious, she gathered. Paul McCartney was asking her to marry him, right now. He watched as she ran through a whole laundry list of emotions, grinned broadly, and said, “No, no! I can’t do that.”

  Later, Paul insisted that he’d only been kidding, but she wasn’t so sure of that. And neither was he.

  In any case, something important had taken hold that week, something that opened a window onto the future. Paul had fallen deeply in love with Linda Eastman: “her womanliness”; her daughter, Heather (from a brief marriage); her extended family; her “slight rebelliousness”; her seemingly normal life—the whole package. She turned him on in so many ways. She was organized, but in a relaxed way, as opposed to Jane’s more rigid manner. There was no pretense, none of the uncertainty. Everything just felt right.

  One unusually cool and crisp October afternoon, after a serene stroll shopping on the Upper East Side, Paul suggested to Linda that she and Heather return to London with him—permanently. It was Linda’s nature to be spontaneous, but even she had to admit this was fairly extreme. It meant packing up everything she had and moving from a comfortable home. She dreaded leaving New York. “It was great living how I lived [there],” she said, recalling how it felt less “restrained” in New York than in stately England. Her career was in New York, as well as her family, her friends.

  By November 1, with their time together rapidly expiring, Linda decided with startling swiftness. She took Paul up on his offer and moved into his house on Cavendish Avenue. A month later the obstacles were ancient history. Prior to leaving for a weeklong holiday to Portugal, Linda discovered she was pregnant and felt “amused” that important decisions were being made naturally for them.

  Finally, on a sunny, windswept beach in the Algarve, straining to be heard above the surf as it crashed against the rocky shore, Paul confirmed the rumors for a gathering of short-sleeved reporters that, indeed, he’d fallen in love with an American girl. What he did not tell them was that it was more than a run-of-the-mill rock ’n roll romance. In fact, they had already decided to get married.

  The White Album sold faster than any of their previous records (in the United States alone, Capitol had shipped 3.5 million copies to record stores, which were still having trouble keeping it in stock). But as Maltz had warned the Beatles, Apple was draining their resources at a distressingly swift rate. There was nothing coming in from the company’s dormant subdivisions: Apple Films, Apple Electronics, Apple Publishing, and Apple Merchandising. The record company struck early gold, but expenses far outpaced future profits. And as far as underwriting dreams went, not a single investment—and there were several hundred—produced so much as a bankable fantasy. “Apple wasn’t being run,” Ringo said, “it was being run into the ground.”

  It was time to take some aggressive, remedial measures. But with nerves from the White Album sessions still badly frayed, none of the Beatles felt like making plans for the future. They were exhausted by the constant bickering, by the demands on them to be productive, by having to justify themselves to the public. For the first time in memory, they couldn’t even bear to spend Christmas together.

  The hang-up, the Beatles agreed, had less to do with music than with their plunging business interests. It infuriated them that the people who worked for them, their loyal entourage—Peter Brown, Alistair Taylor, and Derek Taylor, among others—“were all just living and drinking and eating like fuckin’ Rome.” They were disgusted at the situation and at themselves for letting it degenerate into such an appalling mess. John remained convinced that Apple did not have to rake in vast profits to function as a viable enterprise, but, as he told Disc and Music Echo, “if it carries on like this, all of us will be broke in the next six months.” By his calculations, Apple was costing the Beatles £18,000 or £20,000 a week. The company, he said, was sinking fast. “Somehow,” he said, “[we] needed a firm hand to stop it.”

  John had already consulted the basset-hound-eyed, jowly, and irascible Lord Beeching, an old-school industrialist who had helped reorganize—some say wreck—Britain’s ailing railway system, in the hope of bringing him on to streamline Apple’s sagging fortunes. But Beeching’s initial enthusiasm was short-lived after a few days spent examining the company’s books. Offering only a few words of advice, Beeching warned John to “stick to music.” The Beatles also, according to Peter Brown, courted a handful of unlikely merchant-banking heavyweights—John dismissed them collectively as “animals”—none of whom materialized as saviors.

  Fortunately for the Beatles, Linda Eastman had the inside track on a more-than-suitable candidate. Her father, Lee, specialized in international copyright law and represented a slew of important music publishing catalogues, among other prestigious clients. With his son, John, he ran one of the glitziest entertainment law firms in New York, Eastman and Eastman, with the power and resources to stabilize the Beatles’ affairs. The Eastmans had impeccable credentials and knew the industry front to back, extending into every area of the arts. Lee himself was a force to be reckoned with. Like his future son-in-law, he was an extraordinarily cagey man. He was fond of saying, “I’m just a country lawyer,” to reassure those who just met him that he wasn’t as slick as he appeared. “But you always knew the moment he entered a room that he was a tough character and in total control,” says Peter Brown, “which underscored the fact that he had a brilliant legal mind.”

  Lee’s mistake—and a critical one, as it turned out—was sending his son, John, to lay the groundwork. A recent NYU law school graduate, John dressed informally, in the everyday college uniform of light blue oxford shirt, chinos, and loafers, with a personality to match. “He was this nice-looking all-American kind of guy, very Kennedyesque,” recalls Brown, “a preppy, chirpy person roughly about our age.” What Eastman proposed was a series of simple guidelines: get rid of all the distractions—the side businesses, like electronics and film—and concentrate on building a music empire, for which they’d already shown great skill. He parroted his father’s cardinal rule: do everything you can to control your copyrights and manage your own publishing company. Today, that philosophy is standard practice for most self-sufficient rock artists, but at the time it was fairly revolutionary and undertaken at con
siderable risk. It meant buying out Dick James and the Epstein family, which controlled Brian’s share through NEMS. And while they were at it, Eastman advised them to buy NEMS as well, which collected the Beatles’ record royalties from EMI, pocketing 25 percent off the top. Clive Epstein, desperately in need of cash to pay Brian’s estate taxes and weary of the day-to-day headaches involved with NEMS’ operation, had been dangling the company out to potential investors as a way of gauging its worth. He’d already been offered in the area of £800,000 from Triumph Investment Trust, one of London’s preeminent merchant-banking firms. Eastman proposed the Beatles pay 1 million pounds for NEMS, which EMI agreed to lend them against future royalties.

  The Beatles liked what they heard, and engaged John Eastman’s services as their general counsel, giving him the green light to open negotiations on the propositions he outlined. John, however, remained leery. He didn’t want to be coddled and cultivated by Joe College. And, truthfully, he suspected that the Eastmans would give Paul an unfair advantage over him. Nevertheless, John agreed to go along with the others, if only because he wasn’t “presented with a real alternative.” At the time, John Eastman was the only game in town. But that, too, was about to change.

  [II]

  Nothing defined the Beatles’ discord as clearly as a business meeting among the four musicians that took place toward the end of 1968 in the conference room at Apple. On one side of the yacht-size rosewood table, George, Paul, and Ringo sat puffing impatiently on cigarettes. Across the way, facing them like legal adversaries, sat John and Yoko, characteristically smug and disapproving.

  During the process of reviewing report after report of the company’s blunders, Paul, attempting to stem the rising tempers, made an incredible suggestion.

  “I think we should get back on the road,” he said, “small band, go and do the clubs. Let’s get back to square one and remember what we’re all about.”

  There was an agonizing stretch of silence while everyone, shifting nervously in his chair, waited to hear John’s response. He sat there impassively, glancing at Yoko, their heavily lidded eyes darting back and forth in some wordless exchange, until, at long last, he said: “I think you’re daft. I wasn’t going to tell you, but I’m breaking the group up. It feels good. It feels like a divorce.”

  This little firecracker hit the other Beatles with megaton force. They had weathered the strained feelings during the White Album sessions, although, admittedly, a vestige of resentment still lingered. They had survived the intrusion of Yoko and her destructive airs. It seemed as though they were on the right track when it came to cutting away Apple’s soft spots. But breaking up the Beatles had never crossed their minds. Paul recalled: “Our jaws dropped…. No one quite knew what to say.” They all had their differences, he insisted, but the Beatles were larger than any one of their individual gripes. They were a household name in every free country in the world. It was necessary for them to put aside personal issues. They owed it to one another to do what was best for the group.

  Paul’s cheerleading only made John more indignant. John didn’t have a sentimental bone in his body when it came to the Beatles. Their financial interests were one thing, but nostalgia—nostalgia for “the good ol’ days”—repulsed him. It was so typical of Paul to try to hold the group together, to organize projects, to paint rosy pictures, and to search for easy solutions, like magical mystery tours—or playing clubs!—to make their personal problems disappear. There was no way John wanted to be involved in any more Beatles escapades. The energy was gone, the magic, the motivation. He and Yoko had been all over this already. No, no, no—he wasn’t interested anymore! The group was over as far as he was concerned.

  They went back and forth like that for another hour, and eventually John backed down. He agreed to “give it a couple of months” so that they could work out some kind of strategy and to keep an open mind about the group in general. Everyone recognized how bound together they were by business interests. It was more crucial than ever that they remain unified financially and do something that improved their erratic cash flow. Again and again, Paul hammered away at doing some kind of concert—perhaps to air as a TV special. It would bring them instant income, as well as promote their records. Even though privately he had no intention of remaining one of the Beatles, John expressed a willingness, however grudgingly, to participate in such a performance. Part of it may have been a result of seeing Elvis Presley’s recent “Singer Special,” in which he appeared on TV with a stripped-down band, singing in front of a live audience. “The thing I miss most,” John recalled later, “is just sitting down with a group and playing.” He hated to admit it, but he’d rather enjoyed shooting a promotional film for “Hey Jude” on September 4, in which they’d played in front of a live audience at Twickenham Studios. If the others insisted, he’d go along with them.

  George, however, “scoffed at” the idea of going back onstage. He’d had all he was going to take of the screaming and jelly babies. After Candlestick Park in 1966, that was it, as far as George was concerned. But Paul was adamant. He kept reminiscing about what a great live band the Beatles were. People had forgotten how hot their shows had been in Hamburg, how tight they were as musicians and as friends—and how much fun they’d had bashing about night after night. Beatlemania had killed that part of it for them. And yet, Paul believed they could recapture some of the earlier excitement by going back onstage. If they could no longer communicate as friends, then maybe they could do it as musicians. “I’d hoped that by playing like this in live performance,” he said, “… everything would sort itself out.”

  By the end of 1968, he began circulating stories to the press that it was “virtually absolutely definite” that the Beatles would perform together again about Christmas. But come Christmas, plans to hold the concert were shelved until after the New Year. “It will definitely be free,” Paul announced, “and we may now do the show in a television studio.” But a television studio sounded so exclusive, too contrived. The thrill was gone.

  Frantically, the Beatles scrambled to salvage the situation. To pull the show off at all, it would have to be even more spectacular than promised. Everything from the ridiculous to the sublime was proposed: a spontaneous appearance at a provincial pub, perhaps, or a rave-up in an exotic location. “I think the original idea was… to pick some songs, pick a location, and record [an] album of the songs in a concert,” George recalled. Paul suggested they “go on an ocean liner and get away from the world,” but that sounded too hoity-toity and rendered them inaccessible to fans. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who had directed the “Hey Jude” clip, offered another possibility: a Roman amphitheater in Libya. This appealed to the Beatles’ sense of grandeur and allure. They even envisioned a scenario in which a tribe of Bedouins arrive at the empty arena, followed by people of all nationalities who fill up the seats in a powerful display of brotherhood. But that, too, along with an outdoor extravaganza at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, was scotched by George as “being very expensive and insane.”

  The search for a proper venue was growing increasingly desperate. Banking on the fact that a suitable location would materialize, the Beatles began rehearsing at Twickenham Studios on January 2, 1969, with a film crew shooting enough candid footage in case they wanted to include it as part of a future television documentary. “The idea was that you’d see the Beatles rehearsing, jamming, getting their act together, and then finally performing somewhere in a big end-of-show concert,” Paul recalled.

  Whether out of haste or oversight, Twickenham proved a horrible decision. For one thing, it was too much of a hike for the Beatles and wedged them in a perpetual traffic nightmare around the London airport. For another, the soundstage in January was cold and damp; it was horribly impersonal, like “a big barn,” according to Ringo. It wasn’t conducive to making music—it didn’t have the right feel. The climate inside the studio turned even frostier the moment they began running down songs. Paul, as usual, attempted to run the show,
which angered the others, who began dragging their feet in response. “To be fair, no one had much enthusiasm for this idea,” says an observer, “but Paul was determined to motivate them, which made him come off as controlling and bossy.” For everyone concerned, it had disastrous consequences.

  By the second week of rehearsals, tensions were at an all-time high. A “general disenchantment” had come to pass, no thanks to the circumstances and the two 16mm cameras buzzing like mosquitoes just near their heads. At the best of times, Ringo and George acted bored, but there were moments punctuated by outrage and contempt. Paul, despite considerable cajoling, could not get John to concentrate. Yoko was all over him, distracting him with kisses whenever possible or whispering in his ear. By John’s own admission, he was “stoned all the time… on H” and “just didn’t give a shit.” After all, how could he get behind something that seemed so patently insincere? The music sucked; having not jammed in such a long time, the Beatles were rusty and out of sync. Their conversation was stilted. It disturbed him that they were “going to try and create something phony.”