With the Beatles

by Alistair Taylor

  That evening, he paid us a call. Paul welcomed in this cheery chap with a weather-beaten face and an accent so strong that the three of us dared not look at each other for fear of offending our visitor with laughter. We kept nodding and saying ‘Yeah’ or ‘No’ in the hope that we would be able to penetrate his accent. Jane had to leave the room to stifle her giggles as Paul and I studied Ian’s face intently to see if we could comprehend at least the odd word. Eventually Paul gave in and said, ‘Ian, I’m sorry, but I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’ We all burst out laughing and Ian laughed the loudest of all. Jane came back from the other room still sobbing with mirth and Ian slowed down and straightened up his speech just enough for we foreign invaders to understand. He was kindness itself as he carefully advised us where to walk and where not to walk and promised that he and his housekeeper Isobel would be around if we needed any help.

  We needed something to sit on. We wandered into the barn and up in the rafters was a filthy old mattress and piles and piles of old potato boxes, which had previously held Sharp’s Express potatoes. Paul said, ‘Let’s get that down. The mattress can be our sofa. We’ll have to give it a good beating to get the dust out. We can build the frame from the boxes.’

  I was despatched into Cambeltown by taxi to buy a big bag of nails and a couple of hammers for this millionaire Beatle to start making furniture from the basic raw materials. ‘Get as many felt pens as you can as well because we’re going to doodle all over these horrible chocolate-brown walls.’

  We hammered old boxes into the shape of the sofa base and then crudely hammered on a back. We threw the still filthy mattress on top and lo and behold we had our sofa. Paul instantly christened it our ‘Sharp’s Express’. But we didn’t stop there. The spirit of Chippendale and Hepple-white entered us and we made some cupboards to stand beside the beds and some more for under the kitchen sink, all out of boxes. The next time I went into town, I bought some paint for all the cupboards, but tastefully leaving our Sharp’s Express sofa as raw wood.

  There were no carpets, just bare stone floors. Paul used to have endless battles with the elderly Aga that simply refused to light until he had been fiddling with it for several hours. Even when he got it going, it sent smoke billowing all over the kitchen. But Paul liked the atmosphere it produced so he insisted we always kept it burning. Jane cooked our meals on a horrible old electric cooker which we had picked up for virtually nothing. She was a super cook and you would never tell from the meals she served up what a basic kitchen she was working in. But they were both fervent vegetarians and sometimes it seemed that all we lived on was cauliflower cheese.

  After a day or two, we decided we all needed a bath. We were determined to solve our own problems rather than sneak off to Ian’s house for home comforts. So we decided to use the big old milk tank that stood in the derelict dairy. It was a huge stainless steel tank that stood on a plinth. It was about three feet deep and Paul said, ‘I’ve got it. We’ll rig this up as a bath. All we need is a stepladder!’ The immersion heaters warmed up the water and we filled our enormous bath. We found a stepladder and took turns to go up into our bath. When you were inside you couldn’t see out but getting in was not exactly dignified. There was no one for miles around to see you but in those old-fashioned days Paul and I stood on guard against intruders with our backs to the bath when it was Jane’s turn to get inside. Well, I had my back to the bath anyway. It was a great place for a good old splash and a soak.

  Mind you, Paul was not always quite as squeaky clean as he would have liked Jane to believe. He and I had taken Martha (Paul’s great, daft Old English sheepdog) for a walk in the fields and he turned to me and said, ‘You’ll have to go to the chemists in Cambeltown for me, mate. I’ve got an itch. I hope it’s not crabs. Get me something quick. I don’t want Jane to find out.’

  Goodness knows who’d given him the crabs or whether he ever even had them. I suspect it was his paranoia, because he loved Jane and hadn’t strayed. Even being in love didn’t stop a Beatle from straying from the straight and narrow in those days. In the end, I had to get our solicitor Bob Graham to help me out. I phoned and told him it was for me and he said, ‘OK, mate, I’ll make sure some comes up.’ I’m pretty sure he knew it was for Paul because I had to stress secrecy. Eventually some pills arrived labelled ‘Sheep Dip’, so that Jane would not find out.

  There was a simplicity and an innocence about High Park in those early visits that impressed even an old cynic like me. There were round-the-clock pressures involved in being a Beatle and High Park was a wonderful escape. Jane was famous in her own right as well, of course, and she loved the feeling of freedom that the isolation gave them. At the risk of sounding unbearably corny, I can’t recall ever seeing a young couple happier. It was a privilege to be around such a happy, generous pair. Mind you, they weren’t alone for long as Martha also loved life at High Park. The first time Paul suggested bringing her along, I was horrified. I said, ‘Paul, Martha has never been in a plane in her life. If she goes berserk on a small private plane, we’re in trouble.’

  ‘Don’t be a drag, Al,’ said Paul, ‘she’ll be all right.’

  So off we set, the three of us and Martha. And she just sat there in the plane, bless her. She was as good as gold.

  She might have been a city dog, born and bred in St John’s Wood, but she loved the wide open space and even tried to round up the sheep for dipping with a singular lack of success, as she finished up much more exhausted than the sheep although she did chase one sheep into a hedge.

  I enjoyed many visits with Paul and Jane. Sometimes we would go and help Ian with his sheep, and at other times we’d just wander at random on the unspoilt acres. It was so remote and peaceful it was the perfect remedy from an attack of Beatlemania. There was even a huge stone, which was later used as a title for a classical piece of music called ‘Standing Stone’.

  There was a little lake on Paul’s Scottish estate with a rowing boat tided up at the edge. One day, we decided on a boating trip and the three of us climbed in. Paul took the oars and we started to float slowly round. I dangled my hand in the water as I relaxed in the sunshine and caught hold of a weed. I pulled this waterlily plant out by its roots and I was just about to hurl it casually back when Jane suddenly launched into a fierce lecture. ‘Do you know that plants are living creatures and that you have just killed one?’ she screamed at me.

  None of the other Beatles ever went there. I felt very close to Paul at this time. High Park was very special to him. It was a super-magical place. Once, we heard shotgun blasts. It turned out to be Ian warning off the junior reporter from the local paper. He had spotted him approaching the farm and let loose a couple of cartridges, mercifully well over his head. The poor lad had turned tail and run, apparently unprepared to dodge gunfire for a story. Paul felt so sorry for him afterwards that he gave him an exclusive interview.

  Jane seemed to be the first woman that Paul took seriously. Until Jane, women were there to be had. They were just throwing themselves at the Beatles in those days. What healthy young man would not take advantage? Girls used to queue up for the chance of going to bed with the Beatles. Sex was so frequent and so bereft of any emotion that it became boring.

  John Lennon said to me, ‘When I was a kid, I wanted to shag every attractive woman I saw. I used to dream that it would be great if you could just click your fingers and they would strip off and be ready for me. I would spend most of my teenage years fantasising about having this kind of power over women. The weird thing is, when the fantasies came true they were not nearly so much fun. One of my most frequent dreams was seducing two girls together, or even a mother and daughter. That happened in Hamburg a couple of times and the first time it was sensational. The second time it got to feel like I was giving a performance. You know how when you make love to a woman that the moment you come, you get a buzz of relief and just for a moment you don’t need anyone or anything. The more women I had, the more that buzz would turn into a
horrible feeling of rejection and revulsion at what I’d been doing. As soon as I’d been with a woman, I wanted to get the hell out.’

  The one woman John Lennon was most keen to bed was the French film star Brigitte Bardot. She had been a persistent fantasy figure for all the boys but Lennon being Lennon could not resist attempting to make his fantasy come true. He got Derek Taylor to organise a meeting with Brigitte when she was staying in London. She was interested in the idea and a date was fixed at her Mayfair hotel. But John was really nervous about the whole thing and decided unwisely to increase his confidence with a mixture of drugs and alcohol. He was completely out of his brain by the time he got into Brigitte’s room and by his own account totally incapable of rising to the occasion. The French sex symbol was apparently very let down by the whole incident and John was ribbed mercilessly by the other Beatles for weeks. John was inconsolable afterwards. He told me, ‘I’d been thinking about shagging Brigitte Bardot ever since I was at school. One of the first thoughts I ever had about Cyn was that she looked a bit like her. But when it came to it, I was ridiculously nervous. Getting the chance to shag a woman you wanked over for years does strange things. She was keen enough and we played around a bit but when I needed my biggest erection there was just … nothing. Very embarrassing. I tried to tell her it was nothing personal but what could be more personal than that?’

  Brian could see the potential for disastrous publicity if details of lots of illicit sex hit the papers. They had an image to keep up. But it could be done quietly and covertly.

  Brian’s way was the wholesome image. While The Who were wrecking hotel rooms and smashing things up, we never ever had any of our groups refused accommodation by a hotel. I did all the hotel booking and we never had a problem like that. They didn’t flaunt the fact that they’d had a stream of groupies in their rooms. But, boy, the Beatles could party. It’s just that Brian kept such a tight control on the Press. He had most of the writers in his pocket because there was such a flow of stories coming from his stable of artists that it would have been suicidal for any writer to start stirring up trouble.

  The Beatles hated filming Help! early in 1965. All the endless hanging around waiting for a couple of minutes’ work bored them to tears. A Hard Day’s Night had been fun because it was the first and they did not know what to expect, but by the time Help!, the second of the three-film deal, came around, they knew that this was a directors’ medium which involved a lot of waiting for everyone else. It was at this point that they decided ‘Never again’, and that’s why the third film, Yellow Submarine, became animated. The Beatles had lost patience. As John put it one night, ‘Fuck off. We’re not going through that again.’ But on the bright side, they brought out Rubber Soul, which I thought was a great album.

  9

  THE PALACE

  It was June 1965, and it was obvious that Brian had something special to tell me when he discreetly phoned me at home after work. Could I possibly pop over to his house to discuss something rather delicate? When I arrived, he offered me a drink and then lowered his voice as if the whole place might possibly be bugged. He had just heard from Buckingham Palace that the Beatles were to be awarded MBEs and he was anxious about security.

  ‘Alistair, we have to make sure that the Beatles get in and out of Buckingham Palace safely on the day of the ceremony. We can’t have any mistakes or incidents which might embarrass the Queen. Will you liaise with the Palace and make sure that all the arrangements are absolutely watertight?’

  My heart skipped a beat. Had I heard correctly? Was I, a former humble timber importer’s clerk from the wrong side of Runcorn really being asked to liaise on security with Buckingham Palace? The responsibility was awesome.

  It’s fair to say that the announcement that the Beatles were to receive the MBE did not inspire universal applause. There were widespread protests from various quarters against four long-haired singers and musicians being given this great honour. Several members of the House of Lords woke up for long enough to deliver angry condemnation. Previous recipients of the medal sent theirs back in disgust and a retired colonel exploded with anger, claiming that he was not going to give the Labour Party his £11,000 bequest after all, or his collection of military medals.

  The Beatles weren’t all very keen on the idea either. Ringo was delighted at the prospect at ‘getting a badge’ from the Queen, as he put it. John regarded it as one of the many sell-outs he had been required to undergo as the price of being a Beatle. He said they agreed it was daft and that they thought about turning it down. But there was a lot of pressure from their families and also from Brian who was ecstatic at the accolade. I thought Brian should have got one as well because they were given to recognise the Beatles’ services to British exports and, without Brian, there’s a pretty good chance that they would have never exported a bean. One of the saddest aspects of the whole event was that Brian was not even invited to the Palace.

  When I telephoned the Palace, I was put through to the head of the Buckingham Palace constabulary. I didn’t even know the place had its own police force. But I was invited down to discuss the security implications and, I have to admit, it was a task that thrilled and terrified me at the same time.

  The best bit of the whole day was getting into a car and telling the driver, ‘Buckingham Palace, please.’ By the time I arrived, I had calmed down a little and realised that I had better take this pretty seriously. The top cop gave me a lesson in planning and expecting the unexpected. We would only have done our job correctly if there were no unforeseen incidents. He saw no major problem, but then he didn’t know the Beatles and he had had no experience of their capacity for clowning around, especially when confronted by representatives of an Establishment they did not have a great deal of respect for. And I was thinking of the anarchic Mr John Winston Lennon in particular. The combination of the Queen and the Beatles was about as big a draw as it gets in this country and very possibly in the whole world. Nothing must go wrong.

  In summer 1965, the Beatles headed off on a brief tour of Europe but audiences in France, Italy and Spain were disappointing. The normal sell-out success was missing and Brian was concerned that fans were tiring of the Beatles. But the Beatles were put in such huge venues it was hardly surprising. Sophisticated Italians were not impressed with the prospect of seeing the Beatles from 400 yards away in enormous football stadiums and I know the Beatles longed for the intimate Cavern dates where they could establish a real rapport with their audience. George told me angrily, ‘They could stick four puppets in the distance and produce the same effect. Or maybe that’s what they are already doing.’ He felt more and more manipulated by the Beatles machine that ground relentlessly on.

  Brian had flown to America at the start of the year to tie up another big summer US tour where the Beatles’ popularity was showing no signs of declining. He had lined up some enormous venues. It opened at Shea Stadium in New York in front of more than 55,000 fans. The Beatles could always rise to the big occasion and this was one of the great Beatles nights. But the old enthusiasm was ebbing away. John would cheerfully yell ‘Shut up’ at fans and the Beatles knew that the crowd were making so much noise it didn’t really matter how they played. Indeed, to illustrate the pointlessness of their performances, they took to taking long breaks from actually producing any sound and no one seemed to notice.

  American fans seemed the most determined to get at their idols. In Houston, some 5,000 fans broke down the security fences and surrounded the plane. To get them off, the police had to mount a hostage-style operation springing the Fab Four into a security van from the emergency exit. The Beatles were insured for $5.5 million each at Lloyd’s of London and when they finally flew home on 1 September 1965, they were $1 million richer.

  But they had had enough. John told me over a drink, ‘If Brian thinks we’re spending the rest of our lives living like this, he can fucking think again.’ To Brian’s face, the Beatles insisted the touring was going to have to stop. We had l
ined up a British tour for the autumn and winter but the Beatles said they wouldn’t do it. And they firmly ruled out doing another Royal Command Performance.

  This was the first major rebellion by the group against Brian’s leadership and I know it hit him hard. In his heart, he knew they were talking sense. Only a maniac would have wanted to carry on living the sort of life they had, but in his head he had put together a lucrative string of live appearances. There was a real battle behind the scenes and, typically, I could see both sides of the argument. In the end, common sense and a great British compromise prevailed. The Beatles would do a nine-concert tour.

  But before then, the Beatles were to receive their Membership of the Excellent Order of the British Empire at Buckingham Palace on 26 October. We had planned it like a military operation. The policeman at the Palace explained that on Investiture days it was the custom for all those arriving to be honoured to queue in their cars along the Mall, slowly filtering into the Palace forecourt. I was horrified. The idea of the Beatles waiting in a queue of cars in central London was out of the question. The vehicle would be mobbed and would probably arrive in the Palace with a couple of hundred teenage girls clinging to the roof. Our plan was that the boys’ car would drive round the back of the Palace from Victoria. This way, the fans didn’t get a sight of them sitting in a traffic jam, and the car would enter through the open gate just to the left of the main gate, which would then be smartly slammed shut preventing anyone from following them inside. Fortunately for my reputation as Mr Fixit, the plan worked like a dream. But inside the Palace was another story.