It was 4.00pm when the call came from Paul. Since Linda had appeared on the scene, our late-night chats had, not surprisingly, been terminated. But there seemed to be a change in Paul’s whole demeanour at this time. He seemed cooler and as careful with his words and his warmth as he had always been with his money. I’d hardly seen the inside of Cavendish Avenue in weeks, so I was happy to answer the call. I had just arranged for Paul and Linda to go off on a five-day mini holiday and I knew they had to leave for the airport at 7.00pm so I knew I wasn’t in for a long session. Paul answered the door himself and immediately said, ‘Right, Alistair. I would like the whole of the ground floor of the house decorated by the time we come back.’
I was shocked and asked if he knew how long it would take to get a good decorator even if he was prepared to wait. But the way Paul had delivered his instructions left me in no doubt that he was serious and not inclined to discuss the matter. Behind him stood Linda with a small, cold smile on her face. And it was an expression which I was to see again.
Paul took me on a hurried tour of the lovely house, which looked exceptionally stylish thanks to the eye for elegance of Miss Jane Asher. Paul had a paint colour chart and I took careful notes as we went. Everything had been planned down to the last lick of paint and the last roll of wallpaper. The carpet in the huge drawing room was pulled up to reveal beautiful woodwork and Paul said, ‘I want that polished and restored, but not to look like your ordinary G-Plan.’ I knew exactly what he meant, but it was like receiving instructions from an impatient drill sergeant rather than a polite request from a man who had become a close friend. I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach, which told me I was not going to be nearly so close to James Paul McCartney for a while. Linda had decreed that the Indian restaurant flock wallpaper in the dining room was to go. The kitchen was to be stripped and the original wood exposed and varnished. The paintwork was all to be renewed and so on and so on until my head was reeling with all the details.
In the end, Paul tried to soften the changes with a flash of the famous smile that has charmed the world. He said, ‘Now then, mate, when we get back I want it to be all done, and I don’t want to see as much as a paintbrush in the house.’
The expression on my face betrayed my incredulity. I tried to suggest as much as I dared that he was asking the impossible, but he was not in the mood for negotiation. ‘You can do it, Al. Never mind the cost. Just get it done.’ I was dismissed.
As I left the house, I knew that our relationship had changed. My friend had turned back into my boss and I decided that, if that was the case, then I was going to be the most efficient employee imaginable. It was a formidable task.
Fortunately, a friend called John Lyndon put me on to a firm called Taverner’s who were luckily based just down the road in St John’s Wood. Ian Taverner listened to my request in deafening silence, right up until the moment when I said all this had to be completed in five days. Then he burst out laughing. ‘It’s absolutely impossible in the time you want,’ he eventually recovered enough to say. ‘Five weeks would be a better bet.’ I pleaded that I really only had five days and begged him at least to meet me in the house and look at the job. He agreed to take a look at 8.00am the next morning, and after a sleepless night I showed Mr Taverner the scale of the job.
He said, ‘What a great challenge. I’d love to have a crack at it.’ I breathed a big sigh of relief but just to make sure he drew up detailed time sheets to organise the workload. It meant working through the nights with decorators operating a shift system but he reckoned he could definitely do it. And Ian Taverner was as good as his word. They didn’t just decorate the rooms, they restored them. Every hairline crack in the plaster and woodwork was made good with filler, every trace of the old wallpaper was stripped off using a wonderful steam machine. Every surface was rubbed down and carefully prepared before it even saw a paint brush. On the fourth day, they even asked my permission to carry on up the stairs to the first floor, just to round off the job. And Paul’s wooden floor shone like marble thanks to some superb workmanship. As the deadline approached, I was still nervous but at the appointed time, just six hours before Paul and Linda were due back, I went up to the house to find the foreman just leaving after completing his last checks. Inside, everything looked immaculate and there was only the very faintest whiff of paint in the air.
Paul seemed very perky when I saw him again so I put down his brusque manner before he’d left to pressure of work. He had certainly been in need of a holiday. He was delighted with the work and even Linda almost managed a thank-you.
I went up to the house with Ian Taverner’s bill, which was actually for an awful lot less than I’d feared. Not that it mattered. Paul had told me not to worry about the cost. I showed the bill to Paul. He was sitting with Linda on the big sofa in front of the fire. Paul looked at it for a few seconds and said, ‘Great. Get the cheque off to them, Alistair.’ I relaxed for the first time in five days and was just about to put the bill back in my briefcase when Linda reached for it. I gave it to her. Well, she is Paul’s girlfriend, I thought. She looked at it hard for about a minute and then accused Ian Taverner of overcharging Paul. Not only that, she looked at me as if I was something she had just stepped in and said, ‘And how much are you making out of the deal?’
I was totally shocked. I could not trust myself to speak. My whole body seemed to go cold and shake with rage and my mouth was too dry to utter a word. I couldn’t believe what she had just said. I just stood up, closed my briefcase and left the room. I can’t ever remember feeling more angry or upset. Paul came after me and tried to act as peacemaker but in the heat of the moment I just didn’t want to know.
‘Linda’s only looking out for me, Al,’ he said. ‘She’s American. She doesn’t know how far back we go. I’m sorry. Come back in and let’s make friends.’
I didn’t stop walking. I think in my mind I was walking out of my job as well as Paul’s house. I was just so shocked that after all this time I could be accused of dishonesty by this hard-faced star-chaser from the United States. Paul was still speaking as I walked out of the house but I couldn’t stop. If I had stayed there any longer I would have smacked him in the mouth. Or better still, her. That was the end of the intimate friendship between Paul and me and, as the car took me slowly back to the office, I thought I had better start looking for another job. I was just so angry because I had never even considered taking one penny that didn’t belong to me. Paul, John, George and Ringo had my absolute loyalty and in years of spending millions of pounds on their hotels and flights and homes and countless other things, I had never taken anything for myself. Brian had inspired that sort of loyalty in people. He certainly did in me.
The following morning, Paul came into the office and tried to smooth things over. I smiled and said, ‘Forget it,’ but I knew I never could. Linda seemed worried about anyone who had been close to Paul. She saw them as a threat to her position. There may have been more singularly manipulative people around than Linda Eastman, but I’ve never met them. She might well have loved Paul but she sure as hell hated anyone who got in her way. I’d been his buddy through some of his recent unhappiness, so I’m pretty sure I was pretty high up on her hit-list. It only occurred to me much later that she didn’t care in the least about the cost of painting a house. She just wanted to push away anyone who was close to precious Paul.
In the crazy Apple days, none of the relationships we’d had in the early ’60s were the same. With Brian gone and the boys struggling to see their future through an increasingly drug-induced haze, the abilities of even the famed Mr Fixit seemed to be in less and less demand.
Paul did try to stay close and he did still need a reliable fixer. He turned to me some months later when he wanted to organise a facelift for his beloved Aston Martin DB6. Paul loved to drive James Bond’s car. It was a fabulous motor and he came to me grumbling that he had been ripped off by his garage after the latest service. Paul said, ‘They call it a full service but nob
ody thinks to clean out the ashtrays.’ I knew what he meant. That was a typical McCartney way of asking why the garage didn’t restore the car to its pristine showroom condition – and ashtrays included.
I took the bait. ‘Next time it needs a service let me organise it,’ I sparked up. ‘And I’ll bring it back to you with more than the ashtrays clean.’ What a big mouth. Soon afterwards Paul presented me with his car and he said, ‘Get me a service done, then, Al. But not only that, I want it resprayed. Get some colour cards and I’ll pick the shade. You get it done, fully serviced and resprayed and I want it to come back as if it has just been driven out of the showroom.’
The garage came up trumps. They seemed delighted to work on such a marvellous machine and the mechanic who delivered the gleaming finished product back to Cavendish Avenue was beaming with pride at the result. Paul and I duly inspected the car. And they had done a wonderful job. Fourteen coats of British Racing Green looked a treat and there was not a speck of dust in the ashtrays. Paul walked round it for ages lost in amazement and eventually eased himself into the driver’s seat absolutely thrilled. He looked like a kid at Christmas and I beamed back in all my reflected glory.
The bill was reasonable and Paul smiled his approval. But Linda strode out of the house to join us and my heart sank. A sense of déjà vu hit me like a flying housebrick. She snatched the bill from Paul, looked me straight in the eyes and asked, ‘How much of this is going in your pocket?’ This time Paul simply shrugged and looked away. I said, ‘I’ll see you then, Paul,’ and walked away. There wasn’t anything I could think of to say to her that wouldn’t have made the situation about a million times worse.
Linda had no time for me. In my naïve and forgiving way, I don’t think it was because of any innate character defect, but simply because I was part of the old guard and I was much, much too close to Paul.
13
SACKING
The popular view in our business is that pop stars who set out as ordinary decent people are corrupted into becoming grasping monsters by fame and fortune. That may be true of some band members or solo singers, but in my experience the Beatles were toughies from the start. That’s not to say they couldn’t be kind or funny or anything else if the mood took them. But when I first met them, they were already a tight unit determined to take on the world and get as much as they could out of it.
I was not just an employee. I was a friend. Of course, it was all because I worked for Brian but through that I thought came a good relationship. I’ve been to their homes and they have been to mine. I’ve worked through the night to make sure some flight or other was diverted to accommodate their travel plans. We were mates and suddenly, just like switching off the lights as you leave the room, it was over.
I had been pushing the Beatles to get someone in to sort out the mess that Apple had become. Money was draining from the company in all directions and no one seemed to be effectively dealing with it. I suggested that they got someone like Lord Beeching in. At the time, he was making himself famous for cutting back British Railways. I really was just using him as an example, but the next time I saw John he told me that he and Yoko had asked him to take over and he had turned the job down. I can’t say I blamed him. By then, Apple was in a mess. The Beatles were drifting apart and I was already expecting the worst.
The American accountant, Allen Klein, took over. He had all the charm of a broken lavatory seat but he did have a reputation for being a ruthless businessman. I only ever once had a conversation with Mr Klein. I met him on the stairs one morning and I said, ‘Good morning, Mr Klein.’ And he grunted. It was not a lot to base your opinion on, I know, but could this curt, unshaven, overweight guy really be the new Brian Epstein? I thought not.
However I decided I could best serve the Beatles by keeping my head down and carrying on with my job. When the axe arrived I was in the Capri, one of my favourite restaurants, lunching with a man from Hawaii who wanted to book the Beatles for a farewell concert. He was offering $1 million, but it might as well have been $100 million. But he was a pleasant chap and he was also a top American football official. As the Beatles had a knack of demanding FA Cup Final tickets just as the teams were travelling down Wembley Way, I thought I would at least try to be prepared. My lunch partner cheerily agreed to let me have four tickets when Gerry the proprietor called me away to the telephone. I heard Peter Brown’s voice and he did not sound happy.
‘Can you come over to the office, right away, Alistair?’ said Peter. I explained the delicacy of my negotiations but he was not interested. It was a crisis and I should return to the office now. When I got back to his office Peter Brown was sitting in his swivel chair and talking on the telephone to Ron Kass. In his hand was a piece of paper with a list of names on it.
‘Yes, Ron, I’m afraid they are both sacked,’ said Peter tersely. All of a sudden, the penny started to drop. I realised why I had been summoned. The expression on Peter’s face confirmed my fears. I asked, ‘Me as well?’
‘Yes,’ he answered. He handed me the list which had over a dozen names on it, all numbered, with mine at the top.
‘When?’ I asked.
‘Today,’ said Peter.
I was shocked, but I was not surprised. ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’ I gasped as I struggled to come to terms with my life being turned upside-down.
‘No, I’m not,’ replied Peter sadly. ‘Alistair, I wanted to tell you myself before one of Allen Klein’s people told you.’
I tried to pull myself together and heard myself responding, ‘Fair enough, Peter, but I’ll tell you one thing. If I go today watch out for the bonfire where I’ll be burning all the private papers and documents I keep for the boys in the safe box in my flat. I’m not coming back in here with them!’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t do that, would you?’ he asked. ‘Anyway the boys have said they want me to take special care of you.’
‘What does that mean?’ I said, starting to feel like a race-horse being put out to grass instead of being shot. ‘Three months’ salary and you keep the flat for three months, while you find something else,’ he said.
The sheer unfairness of it all start to boil up in me. I was suffering from glandular fever brought on by overwork, and I’d booked to go to Ibiza on a trip to try to get over it. I snorted, ‘I am not leaving today, Peter. I will come in tomorrow and clear up all my outstanding work. I will go, but I will go when I’m ready.’
I went back to my office to ring the boys. Not to plead for my job back but just to make sure that they knew what was going on. The whole philosophy of Apple was taking care of people, so I felt sure they would want information. I rang each of them: Paul, John, George and Ringo, in that order. And not one of them took my call. I got excuses from embarrassed wives and secretaries. I heard nervous Beatle voices in the background. But not one of my four famous friends came to the phone. And that hurt a hell of a lot more than getting the sack.
I walked round the building in a daze. Everywhere I went, I kept meeting other unfortunates who had just received their own bad news. Some of them were already clearing out their personal things. Others were staring hopelessly into space. Apple, the company that was going to put the fun back into the workplace, was under a cloud that day.
Like a man on automatic pilot, I somehow got through the rest of the day. I cleared my desk and wondered how on earth I was going to tell Lesley the news. We had some American friends coming round for dinner and I couldn’t spoil the evening. Instead, I drank too much and put on an act to entertain them and said nothing at all about getting the sack. How I got through the meal I’ll never really know, but I did and I went back to the office to do my final clearing up on the next day – Friday. I was determined not to leave anything undone.
When I got home, Lesley was in the bedroom sorting some clothes out in the big walk-in wardrobe. I said, ‘Come here, love, I’ve got something to tell you.’ She knew from the sombre tone exactly what I was going to tell her and said, ‘I know. Yo
u’ve been fired.’
I said simply, ‘Yeah.’
She put her head round the wardrobe door, ‘In that case, we’ll show them, won’t we?’
That was when I broke down and burst into tears. She came to comfort me, sitting on the arm of the chair with her arm around me.
‘Let it go, love. Don’t bottle it up.’
I got the sack in 1969 and it still hurts. It’s not the sacking. Obviously, if you give someone carte blanche to organise your business you have to accept their decisions. I understand that. But after all we had been through, for the Beatles not to even return my telephone calls was very difficult to accept. It sounds like whingeing, I know, but I was only the general manager of Apple anyway because John rang up and asked me to take over.
Neil Aspinall works for Apple full time now – he’s the sole survivor, but he spends some of his time in court fighting to stop unauthorised use of material associated with the Beatles.
After being sacked, I tried to set up my own little management company. It was too late to go back to Robert Stigwood. That was another of my brilliant decisions in life. I found a little Welsh girl singer who appeared on Hughie Green’s Opportunity Knocks, but I didn’t have enough money to do it properly. I rang all sorts of people and nobody would really talk to me. They were all in a meeting. I found out later that they all thought I was earning a fortune so they thought they couldn’t afford me.
Then I went to work for Dick James. He appointed me Press Officer for DJM Records and he put me in this room and said, ‘I’ve got two young lads who are both very promising but listen to their stuff and tell me what you think. One was a guy called Sean Phillips, a very talented American boy, and the other one was this guy called Elton John. Well, to be honest, he was really called Reg Dwight, but both names were completely unknown in those days. I know it sounds glib and smug to say so, but he really bowled me over straight away. Not since I’d first heard the Beatles in The Cavern all those years ago had I heard such an original talent. Sean Phillips quickly moved back to America so I was left trying to get Reg or Elton into the papers. In those days it was very hard to get a break, even with the sort of ability Elton had. He and Bernie Taupin used to sit working together day after day and they were just desperate to make it.
With the Beatles Page 20