With the Beatles

by Alistair Taylor

  It was a fun time filming Magical Mystery Tour. Paul wanted another scene in a strip club with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, so I persuaded Paul Raymond to let us use his Review Bar early in the morning. We had a young lady ready to perform and things were just getting going when two gentlemen from the technicians’ union arrived to stop us filming without union permission. They said we should have a crew of 32 and we only had about three guys. They were very unhappy. ‘We will black this and it will never be shown if you carry on without the proper manning levels,’ he said. The union sent the cost spiralling by thousands of pounds as we had to pay all these people we did not want and did not use. Paul was very angry.

  It was so much fun but the BBC showed it in black-and-white which was very strange because the whole point of the thing was the colour. I just don’t know why they haven’t shown it again. Afterwards, I was instructed by the boys to organise a party for everyone who had anything to do with it. That turned out to be quite a do. It was at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in Bayswater Road and, as it was heading towards Christmas, they decided to turn it into the Christmas party for all the Apple employees. That meant more work. Then John rang.

  ‘Al,’ he said. ‘We’re making it fancy dress.’

  Great, I thought. I hope that’s the end of the instructions. The invitation list seemed to get longer and longer. Freddie Lennon arrived, and was pissed out of his head before very long. He went up on the stage and fell flat on his face, which just about brought the house down.

  I sat on Paul’s table with Jane and her parents. A couple of weeks later, Paul rushed into the office having seen a ‘fantastic group’. Evidently, they were called the Peake Family and they played fairy music. ‘Al, it’s incredible. See if you can find a record.’ I found that they went into every eisteddfod and folk music concert around and had a really big reputation. They won every contest they entered. They would, in fact, be passing through London on the night of the party, so I asked the leader, who happened to be the grandfather of the family, to bring the group to the party. He agreed and I went and met him and set it all up. The Bonzo Dogs played and then I went on stage and received a massive barracking. I said, ‘Please could you be quiet now because we’re going to have some fairy music.’

  I heard Paul go, ‘Oh my God.’

  They were fantastic. The old man played Uillian pipes which are different from bagpipes because you press a pad on your knee and they make this wonderful haunting sound. John Lennon went mad about the sound and I had to get him a set of pipes afterwards. There was a seven-year waiting list but with a bit of bribery and corruption I managed to get a set for him in about three months. ‘I’ll learn how to play them, Al,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry.’

  I thought Magical Mystery Tour was great, and years ahead of its time. Unfortunately, the critics thought exactly the opposite. There were also an awful lot of private jokes that baffled the public.

  Perhaps my proudest claim to fame from all my years with the Beatles is that I am the co-writer of the number-one hit Lennon and McCartney song, ‘Hello, Goodbye’ – even though I never get any credit for it.

  Shortly after he split from Jane, I was up at Paul’s house one night and there were just the two of us. He’d call me up for a chat and we would hit the scotch and Coke together. Not too hard, you understand, just hard enough to make us relax a little. We never got drunk, just mellow. I was idly marvelling at his gift for song-writing and he was dismissive. Paul said, ‘Have you ever thought about writing a song? There is really nothing to it. It’s dead easy, anyone can do it. Look, let’s write a song together.’ He marched me into the dining room where he had a wonderful old hand-carved wooden harmonium. It was a little organ and you had to pump to get the air into it with big pedals. He lifted the lid of this ancient instrument and said, ‘Right, you get on that end and I’ll be on this end.’

  I think I was on the treble end and he was on the bass end. We both had to pedal like mad to get it going.

  ‘Come and sit at the other end of the harmonium. You hit any note you like on the keyboard. Just hit it with both hands as you feel like and I’ll do the same. Now whenever I shout out a word, you shout the opposite. That’s all and I’ll make up a tune. You watch, it’ll make music.’

  ‘Fire away,’ I said nervously, feeling like someone suddenly asked to be co-pilot of an airliner. We got this rhythm going, just banging away on the keys. I think I had had just enough scotch and Coke to give me the confidence to join in.

  ‘Black,’ he started.

  ‘White,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Bad.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  And so it went on for about five minutes until we ran out of pairs of opposites and went to freshen the drinks. A day or so later, Paul arrived in the office with a demo tape of ‘Hello, Goodbye’. He said, ‘Here’s our new single.’ I don’t know whether it was already going round in his head or if he really did dream it up that night. A bit of both, I suspect. So those were the seeds of a Beatles number one, written, I will always believe, by Taylor and McCartney.

  Another night I was walking with Paul from Abbey Road at around 3.00am after a long session. We were looking forward to a much-needed scotch and Coke at Paul’s house. Two girl fans followed at a respectful distance. High up on the wall at the corner of Cavendish Avenue was an ancient lamp that looks like an old gas light. Paul stopped there and took hold of the acoustic guitar which hung round his neck by a piece of frayed string. He said, ‘I’ve just written a new song. Would you like to hear it?’ He took his guitar and positioned himself in the small cone of light from the lamp and sang this haunting song about a blackbird with a broken wing. It was a lovely still night and just listening to my talented friend singing this beautiful song made me glad to be alive. The two young fans stood back, eternally grateful that their long vigil had brought them such an entertaining reward. Later Paul played me the demo of ‘Blackbird’ and I was terribly disappointed that he had used all sorts of gimmicky production effects which for me spoiled the simplicity of the song he had sung that night. A second demo even had twittering bird noises added. Paul never could resist filling in any quiet holes in a song.

  But at least John Lennon never sent me to prison, which was something Paul McCartney managed in the autumn of 1968. His song ‘Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da’ inspired Paul to call me up and say, ‘I want you to get down to Brixton Prison with £800 in cash and give it to a bloke in there called Scott.’

  Evidently, Scott was in prison for running up arrears over his wife’s maintenance or some such civil debt, and more significantly, when not banged up he ran a band called the Obladi-Oblada band and he reckoned Paul had seen the flyposters and taken the name Obladi-Oblada off that. Apparently, he had got through to Paul about this strange, perceived injustice and Paul had said, ‘OK, I didn’t, but what are you after?’ And Scott had replied that if Paul paid off his maintenance debts he would forget about the whole thing. So Muggins here, Mr Fixit, had to get £800 from nowhere on a Saturday morning and into Brixton nick. It was another case of over to you, you’re Mr Fixit.

  I called on a resourceful guy called Dennis O’Dell who worked for Apple as a film producer. He had done Magical Mystery Tour for us and he seemed the sort of street-wise individual who could lay his hands on a large amount of cash at short notice. He said, ‘Bloody hell, I’ll call you back.’ When he did, he sent me to this second-hand car dealer in east London. ‘Don’t ask any questions, I’ll sort out the repayment,’ was Dennis’s only advice. I expected the Kray Twins, but the guy I met wasn’t that easy-going. He was a huge bloke with cauliflower ears and a bent nose. I just said ‘Thank you’ and off I went to Brixton Prison. There had just been a high-profile escape using a helicopter and all the security had been improved, which meant the nearest the taxi could take me was to some bollards 100 yards from the gate. I had to run through pouring rain an
d bang on the door to be let into the prison. After an interminable wait, I managed to pay, got the receipt and came out for another soaking on the way home. Working for the Beatles was definitely not all glamour.

  If there was one Beatles romance that I thought would really last it was the love affair between Paul and Jane Asher. They did seem very much in love. I thought they were made for each other. Jane was just the most adorable woman you could expect to meet. She was bright and funny and incredibly attractive. I thought she was a wonderful match for Paul. And I think he thought so, too. She was well educated and very successful in her own right.

  When it ended, it was awful. Jane came home to find Paul with Francie Schwartz, a groupie from New York. It was terrible for Jane. Francie was not just in the house but in the bed she shared with Paul. Jane was in a state of shock and her relationship with Paul ended there and then. There were fans waiting at the gate as usual and they tried to warn Paul that Jane was approaching. But Paul thought they were joking. He couldn’t resist another woman.

  Jane’s mother came down later to remove all of Jane’s belongings. I remember she also took all the household things that were Jane’s. There was a set of pans she was particularly attached to. Paul stayed discreetly well out of the way.

  Paul was absolutely devastated. Jane’s departure shattered him. I have never quite been sure if it was because he really loved Jane or because he was so shocked that she had the nerve to turn down Paul McCartney. And let’s not forget, they were engaged by now. She wasn’t just his girlfriend, she was definitely going to be his wife. Afterwards, he had a succession of one-night stands, although often the relationship did not even last that long.

  It’s the only time I ever saw him totally distraught and lost for words. Normally he was so flip and cool and permanently full of confidence in himself. It was then that I realised how close we had become because I was the shoulder he cried on. We spent weeks together after the end of his love affair with Jane. It completely threw him. He pleaded with Jane to forgive him but she was implacable. She didn’t want to know. She is a very strong and highly principled lady. I think she was deeply in love with Paul. And it wasn’t just the Beatle stuff; she wasn’t interested in fame or money. She loved Paul for himself. She loved his humour and his energy and she believed in him.

  Paul literally cried on my shoulder. We hit the bottle together. Hard. He always seemed to feel lonely at night and the phone would go and Paul would say, ‘Al, get a cab and come on up to Cavendish.’ I didn’t mind because he was a friend in pain. Yes, he was my boss in a way, I suppose, in that he was one of Brian’s most important acts. But I thought the world of Paul. He was like the younger brother I’d never had. He was talented, charming and often very kind. I had watched his love for Jane grow from early infatuation into a deep and passionate love affair.

  Paul told me how much he had learned from Jane and her talented family. He wasn’t a yobbo before he met Jane, I’m not saying that. But he was relatively unsophisticated. Jane introduced him to fine wines, art, films and all aspects of culture. Jane’s mother taught the oboe at the Royal College of Music. This was a whole new world for Paul and he loved it. He absorbed it like a sponge. Of course, being a bright bloke he was a very fast learner but I’ve always thought that a lot of Paul’s taste comes from Jane. She taught him what good taste was.

  That’s why he found it so shocking when she dumped him. He went completely off the rails. He couldn’t believe what he’d done and he couldn’t have said that to any of the other three Beatles. Sure, musically they had become almost like one person and they were rock solid then in anything that threatened the Beatles. But individually they never liked to accept weakness. Paul would have hated John to think that he was upset about a woman, even if she was Jane Asher.

  We would sit up at Cavendish Avenue until 3.00am and he would talk about what a prat he had been. ‘I had everything and I threw it away,’ he would say. ‘Jane wasn’t just my woman, she was my closest friend. I’ve told her everything inside me. She knows what makes me tick down to things that happened as a kid. I went right through all the stuff about my mother dying and how I dealt with that. With Jane, I could just relax completely and be myself and that seemed to be what she wanted. With the other women, I’m a fucking millionaire rock star who just happens to be about as shallow as a puddle.’

  Other times he would just turn up late at night at my house. It would be midnight or 1.00am and Lesley and I would have long gone to bed. The doorbell would go and there would be Paul. ‘Has Lesley got the kettle on?’ he’d ask cheerfully, and I would know that I’d be up half the night going through how wonderful life had been with Jane. And he would put his arms round me and cry. Paul was never ashamed about crying. Afterwards, he’d try and crack a joke about it. ‘I thought Jane was the drama queen, but it’s me,’ and he’d laugh weakly.

  One night at Cavendish, Paul and I sat and drank scotch and Coke for so long that the first light of dawn started to appear as we were still putting the world to rights.

  ‘Come on, Al,’ said Paul. ‘I need some fresh air. Let’s take Martha for a walk.’

  We were pretty relaxed but we weren’t drunk. Martha leapt up from the rug by the fire and Paul and I piled into the DB6 and he drove us the half mile or so to the foot of Primrose Hill. We left the car outside London Zoo and went through the fence up the hill. It was very muddy at the bottom and Paul looked at my footwear and laughed, ‘So much for the man with the shiny shoes.’

  We enjoyed the spectacular view in the first light of dawn. There was a real freshness in the air as Martha hurtled off in all directions in search of sheep or, better still, bones, and Paul and I enjoyed a few stolen moments of the day before the rest of London woke up. At 5.00am there was so little traffic noise that we could hear some early morning noises from the occupants of the zoo. It was chilly in the breeze that rustled the kites stuck up in the trees. Paul and I kept strolling around enjoying the experience and keeping warm.

  ‘Look at that dawn,’ said Paul in a whisper. ‘How anybody can say that there is no such thing as God, or some power bigger than us. If you stand and look at that sky, you know there must be more to life than we can comprehend …’ We were totally absorbed in the sights and sounds of the universe in front of us, as if we were the only men in an abandoned city.

  Then, suddenly behind us, a stranger appeared. He was a middle-aged man, very respectably dressed in a belted raincoat and he appeared to have come out of nowhere. One second Paul and I were alone, straining to see which direction Martha would come bounding back from, and the next, this man was there. He said, ‘Good morning,’ politely. ‘My name is John.’

  Paul said, ‘Good morning. Mine’s Paul. This is Alistair and that’s Martha the dog,’ as our four-legged friend returned swiftly.

  John said, ‘It’s lovely to meet you. Isn’t this wonderful?’ and he walked away.

  Paul and I looked at each other and I said, ‘God, that was peculiar.’ I looked round and there was no sign of the man. The stranger had completely disappeared from the top of the hill as if he had just vanished into thin air. There was nowhere for him to go, yet he had just evaporated. Paul and I both felt pretty spooked by this experience. We both thought something special had happened. We sat down rather shakily on the seat and Paul said, ‘What the hell do you make of that? That’s weird. He was here, wasn’t he? We did speak to him?’

  ‘Sure. He was here only seconds ago,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ muttered Paul.

  Back at Cavendish, we spent the rest of the morning talking about what we had seen and heard and felt. It sounds just like any acid tripper’s fantasy to say they had a religious experience on Primrose Hill just before the morning rush hour, but neither of us had taken anything like that. Scotch and Coke was the only thing we had touched all night. We both felt afterwards that we had been through some sort of mystical experience, yet we didn’t care to name, even to each other, what or who we had see
n on that hilltop for those few brief seconds.

  Paul tried to immerse himself in work. And then after some months he said, ‘Do you know any birds?’ I knew a young girl who worked in a bar and I asked her if she’d like to meet Paul McCartney. She certainly did and we went over to Cavendish Avenue together. But Paul just wanted to talk and he wasn’t interested in sex that night. I put her in a taxi home before I left. Paul just wanted some natural contact with someone female. He wanted a woman to talk to.

  Months later, Paul rolled up outside our flat in Montagu Place on a Sunday morning in his two-seater Aston Martin.

  ‘Come on, we’re off to look at a house,’ said Paul. But he already had Francie Schwartz and Martha as passengers. I said there was no room but Paul insisted and Lesley and I somehow got in and we all squeezed up and with him at the wheel we headed off for Kent. When we reached the grounds, Francie and Paul disappeared for about 20 minutes. We had to draw our own conclusions about what they were up to, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t playing Scrabble.

  The tour of the house itself was pretty uneventful, but on the way back down a dual carriageway, Paul suddenly slammed on the anchors and we screeched to a halt. He yelled, ‘Did you see that?’ as he executed an alarming U-turn. ‘There’s a village called Bean down here according to that signpost. We’ve got to go there. Then I can say I’ve been to Bean.’

  Well, he’s the imaginative songwriter; I just wanted to get home. But when we got there we could see that the most exciting thing about Bean was its name. It was the dullest village on earth. But it had a big pub and the doors were just opening. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ said Paul, so we all trooped in.

  There was no one else there, but the expression on the landlady’s face said that she was well aware of who had just walked in. Before you could say ‘Gin and tonic’ her whole family was standing in a line behind the bar. They were clearly in awe and they were even more delighted when Paul decided to have a bash on a drum kit. Paul always fancied himself as a drummer so he did a quick solo and we finished our drinks and left with the landlady’s mouth still wide open. They were fun times. Paul loved to blast in and out of people’s lives in double-quick time. Whatever he said about the agonies of Beatlemania, Paul never really stopped loving the fame.