Meanwhile, McCartney was living anonymously with Linda Eastman and her almost-six-year-old daughter Heather in Manhattan. He grew his first luxuriant beard and prowled through the city without attracting hysterical attention. He enjoyed acting like a father to Heather, having already astounded Lennon with his carefree ability to entertain his son Julian. Almost casually McCartney asked Eastman to marry him, but she refused, still wary after a short but unhappy marriage in the early 1960s.
What intrigued him was her ability to move in different worlds: she had been raised as the daughter of a successful lawyer and the heiress to a supermarket fortune, and had attended the same prestigious New York college as Yoko Ono; but despite her wealthy background she eased effortlessly through the rock scene, where a combination of looks and unscrubbed talent had gained her acceptance as a photographer. Like McCartney, she had experienced an active love life; but being a woman rather than a Beatle, she was maligned as a groupie, who pursued stars for sex rather than professional reasons.*5 Eastman knew who and what she was, and unlike McCartney she wasn't ashamed about it. What excited him most was her cool resistance to his stardom: it became obvious that she was more attracted by his rapport with her daughter than his membership of the Beatles.
Late in the year McCartney met Eastman's family: her father Lee, stepmother Monique, and brothers, the eldest of whom, John, worked alongside his father in the law firm of Eastman & Eastman. Lee's music business clients had included bandleader Tommy Dorsey and songwriter Harold Arlen. When Linda was three years old her father's friend Jack Lawrence had penned a song in her honour ('Linda', later recorded by Frank Sinatra), which was a chart-topping hit for singer Buddy Clark in 1947. Beyond his dexterity with entertainment law, Eastman prided himself on being able to squeeze 'missing' royalties out of publishing and recording companies. For example, he had championed R & B composers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1964, winning them a royalty payment of $18,000 (but in the process severing their ties to the company with whom they'd enjoyed most success). His relationship with his daughter had been strained since the late 1950s, when it became apparent that she didn't intend to marry for status and wealth. Her friend Robin Richmond recalled, 'She adored her father so much; she was in awe of his intelligence, his success, his confidence. But it was very hard for Linda, because he was cold to her, and disapproved of what she was doing, very obviously.'
Lee Eastman was both impressed and repelled by the idea of his daughter dating a pop superstar. Under the circumstances, it was only natural that McCartney would discuss the Beatles' affairs with his girlfriend's father and brother, who was just a year older than Lennon; and equally natural that they would suggest how they might stabilise Apple's assets. By the time McCartney returned to London – with Linda and Heather in tow – he had agreed that he would invite the Eastmans to disentangle the Beatles' jumbled affairs.
On New Year's Day 1969 George Harrison made his first appearance at Apple for several weeks. He was exuberant: his time with Dylan had fired his creativity, and he was enjoying the frisson of sharing his home with two beautiful women – his wife Pattie and the French model Charlotte Martin, who had just ended her relationship with his friend Eric Clapton. 'She was always flirtatious with George,' Pattie Boyd recalled, 'and he, of course, loved it.' At Apple he spent time with Derek Taylor, who suggested that the two of them should write a musical about life at the company. 'Often this office is like Alice inWonderland,' Taylor commented a week later. 'Since Apple is constantly surrounded and involved in music, it seemed a natural subject to base a musical around. George has already written an outline and some of the music. I'm in charge of ideas and lyrics.'
A day later Harrison and the other Beatles were woken around eight o'clock and chauffeured to Twickenham Film Studios. The set was cavernous, frosty and lacking in atmosphere. 'I don't dig underestimating what's here,' McCartney told his colleagues, suggesting that the scaffolding was more interesting than conventional scenery. But the other Beatles stared balefully around the hangar-like space and adopted an attitude of sullen resentment, which quickly enveloped the project.
For the next week the four Beatles acted out a drama with no movement or character development. McCartney played the boss, haplessly patronising towards his colleagues, desperately trying to prolong the agony in the hope that it might miraculously ease. Wary with Lennon, he focused his awkward encouragement on Harrison, who responded with the undisguised resentment of a persecuted child. Lennon sat virtually speechless and usually stoned, never more than a few feet from the equally uncommunicative Ono. Starkey stared ahead in an appearance of utter gloom, wondering why he was still trying to provide a rhythmic backbone for this divided body. McCartney chivvied the others through fragments of new songs. Lennon diverted them onto the safer ground of the rock 'n' roll standards that had comprised their repertoire a decade earlier. Harrison unveiled an array of freshly composed material, only to be met with polite boredom from McCartney and open derision from Lennon. Fragments of their conversations capture the full horror:
McCartney: I'm only trying to help you, and I always hear myself trying to annoy you.
Harrison: (sarcastically) You're not annoying me. You don't annoy me any more.
McCartney: We've only got twelve more days so we've got to do this methodically. I just hear myself saying it. I never get any support.
(silence)
McCartney: What do you think?
Lennon: About what?
Harrison: Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil.
Starkey: I'm not interested.
McCartney: I don't see why any of you, if you're not interested, get yourselves into this. What's it for? It can't be for the money. Why are you here? I'm here because I want to do a show, but I really don't feel an awful lot of support.
(silence)
McCartney: I feel terrible. (to Lennon) Imagine if you were the only one interested. ( silence) You don't say anything.
Lennon: I've said what I've been thinking.
McCartney: There's only two choices. We're gonna do it, or we're not gonna do it. And I want a decision. Because I'm not interested in spending my fucking days farting about here, while everyone makes up their mind whether they want to do it or not. I'll do it. If everyone else wants to do it, great. But I don't have to be here.
(silence)
McCartney: We should just have it out. If this one turns out to be like [the previous album], it should definitely be the last – for all of us. There's no point hanging on.
Harrison: The Beatles have been in the doldrums for at least a year.
Harrison: Maybe we should get a divorce.
McCartney: Well, I said that at the last meeting. It's getting near it.
Relations had soured to the point that when McCartney sang 'Get Back' Lennon was convinced that he was aiming the chorus at Yoko Ono. After the Beatles attempted Lennon's song 'Across the Universe' McCartney complained, 'There's an oriental influence that shouldn't really be there' and pretended that he was talking about music.
For Harrison, there was no relief from the tension, as his wife had become convinced that he was having an affair with Charlotte Martin. Harrison denied it, but Pattie left to stay with friends. A couple of days later, on Friday 10 January 1969, after another morning of rejection from Lennon and bickering with McCartney, he cracked. He argued violently with Lennon over lunch – the two men supposedly came to blows – and then told him, 'I'm leaving the group.' 'When?' Lennon asked. 'Now,' Harrison replied. 'You can replace me. Put an ad in the New Musical Express and get a few people in.' He drove home to Henley, where Charlotte Martin was ejected and Pattie reinstated. But the bond between husband and wife had been broken. 'George would start to say something, then stop,' Pattie recalled. 'He appeared unable or unwilling to share his thoughts with me. He kept his hurt, frustration, anger, or whatever it was, to himself. At times I couldn't reach him.' He would often sit hunched over his prayer beads, muttering to himself, resolutely ignorin
g anything that was said to him.
Harrison's departure came as a shock to McCartney and Starkey, who debated whether they could continue without him. That afternoon they 'started jamming violently', Starkey remembered. 'And Yoko jumped in, of course, she was there.' While Ono unleashed a series of screams, McCartney rubbed his bass guitar suggestively along his amp, Lennon corralled feedback from his amplifier, and Starkey 'was playing some weird drumming that I hadn't done before'. Later, when a guitar solo was needed, Lennon called out, 'Take it, George,' to Harrison's empty chair. While the Beatles closed ranks to avoid reality, Apple boss Neil Aspinall talked to the film crew about 'the box George is in. A few months of that would be enough for me. But eight years . . .' Lennon wandered into the conversation. 'I think that if George doesn't come back by Monday or Tuesday, we'll have to get Eric Clapton to play with us,' he said. 'The point is: if George leaves, do we want to carry on the Beatles? I do. We should just get other members and carry on.' The suggestion was relayed to Starkey, whose friendship with Harrison was steadfast. But he wasn't prepared to argue. 'Do it,' he said dismissively.
'It was unbearable to me that they should break up,' Derek Taylor recalled. But that was the agenda when all four Beatles gathered at Starkey's home that Sunday. 'George said, "What we need is just the four of us,"' Neil Aspinall reported after the meeting, 'and I think John knew what he was talking about.' But Lennon professed ignorance, telling Harrison, 'I don't understand you.' 'I don't believe you,' Harrison retorted and left. 'George in the presence of all of us said that another reason for walking out was that he could not get on with Yoko,' McCartney explained in 1971. 'Yoko was doing all the talking,' Linda Eastman recalled. 'I'd just tell her to shut up,' Aspinall insisted, though he hadn't when the opportunity arose.
By the time Harrison left, the quartet had already agreed that they should split up but not when it should happen. Starkey and McCartney reported for work the following morning, and in Lennon's absence McCartney felt able to criticise the hold that Ono had established over him. Posterity would find it ironic, he noted, if the Beatles split up because Lennon insisted on bringing his girlfriend to the studio. Lennon and Ono arrived later, but a phone call to Henley established that Harrison had driven to see his parents in Liverpool. So Lennon and McCartney agreed that if unity had not been restored by Friday, then the Beatles were finished. 'It's a festering wound,' Lennon admitted. 'It's only this year that [George] has realised who he is. And all the fucking shit we've done to him.'
The charade continued on Tuesday, though the tedium was broken by a visit from actor Peter Sellers. Lennon boasted to his comic hero about his heroin use. 'Showbiz people need a form of relaxation,' he said. 'It's that or exercise, and drugs win hands down.' 'Shooting [heroin] is exercise,' Ono added proudly. Then Lennon sat down with a Canadian TV crew and promptly vomited on the floor. 'John had escalated to heroin and all the accompanying paranoias,' McCartney recalled, 'and he was putting himself out on a limb. I think that as much as it excited and amused him, at the same time it secretly terrified him.'
Harrison was persuaded by Derek Taylor to meet the other Beatles at Apple on Wednesday. 'Brian Epstein, I knew, would have fought and fought to keep them together,' he explained, 'and so I was bolder than I had ever been or ever would be again, and demanded passionately and at length that George not let Paul carry the weight of keeping the film and the Beatles going. I felt that George's sense of decency could be touched, and it was.' Taylor's reward was a postcard in McCartney's handwriting, with the stamp carefully torn in half and the simple Northern injunction, 'Up yer.'
The Beatles agreed to abandon Twickenham and their live concert, and resume filming the following week at Apple. It was time for Alexis Mardas to unveil his recording studio, which, Harrison recalled, 'was the biggest disaster of all time. He was walking around with a white coat on like some sort of chemist, but didn't have a clue about what he was doing. It was a 16-track system and he had 16 little tiny speakers all around the walls. The whole thing was a disaster and had to be ripped out.' Every account of this episode – with one exception – is in agreement:
Mardas installed the studio; George Martin's team of EMI engineers declared it unworkable. The dissenting voice belongs to Mardas. His memory was that he was in Greece during January 1969, and that someone from Apple or EMI broke into his Apple Electronics workshop and transported his work-in-progress to the Savile Row basement. It was never intended as a working studio, he insisted, but merely as a demonstration of how a multitrack studio might operate. And he claimed, moreover, that the EMI staff had a vested interest in belittling his work, as they were afraid of losing the opportunity to work with the Beatles in the future. Whatever the truth, portable recording equipment had to be ordered and installed.
By then another crisis had emerged. During a heroin-fuelled monologue Lennon had told journalist Ray Coleman that Apple was in deep financial trouble. 'We haven't got half the money people think we have,' he declared. 'We have enough to live on, but we can't let Apple go on like it is.' He admitted that he and McCartney had been foolish to promise artistic liberation before the company was running effectively, and he concluded, 'If it carries on like this, all of us will be broke in the next few months.' He was clearly not in PR mode. He also told Coleman about his obsession with pornography, and his desire to raise chickens on a macrobiotic farm. But his comments forced Neil Aspinall to issue a hasty rejoinder, to the effect that the Beatles were far from broke and were considering a face-saving merger with the Epsteins' NEMS company.
On January 22 the Beatles walked into the basement of their company HQ, gazed suspiciously at the film crew and prepared to rejoin the battle they'd interrupted twelve days earlier. But Harrison, who had least to gain from the reunion, had stacked his own hand in advance. He had invited the American keyboardist Billy Preston, whom the Beatles had befriended in 1962, to visit Apple that afternoon. It was only polite for Preston to be asked to play. 'I think Billy saved the Let It Be album and film,' Derek Taylor commented, 'because he put all the Beatles on their best behaviour. To be difficult with each other after that would have been to abuse their guest. That Liverpool slagging-off would not have been OK in front of Billy. His enjoyment at being there filtered through into the Beatles. I remember thinking, Thank Christ that someone has done something, because the atmosphere at the time was so bad.' Within a few days Lennon was proposing that Preston become a permanent member of the band. 'It's bad enough with four [Beatles],' McCartney joked. 'But with five, it's creating havoc.' Still, Preston remained an honorary Beatle until the end of the month.
He was there on 30 January 1969, when the group solved the riddle of how to end their documentary film by performing on top of the Apple headquarters. 'You had a sense of a rare and odd occasion,' recalled film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. 'You were at a Beatles concert with nobody up there except yourself. And probably because they didn't have the burden of an audience, they really did play for each other.' With Ono sidelined, sheltering by a chimney rather than interposed between Lennon and McCartney, the pair's instinctive rapport was restored, if only for 40 minutes. Then the police intervened to stop the noise, as everyone had secretly been hoping. 'The Beatles,' Lindsay-Hogg reckoned, 'kind of wanted to go to jail. You know, "Police bust the Beatles", that sort of thing. They were very contentious.' A day later the group returned to the Apple basement to tape finished versions of several McCartney songs. 'The next day there wasn't much talk about [the live show],' Lindsay-Hogg recalled, 'other than it had been fun, there was newspaper coverage, and it was better down in the studio because it wasn't as cold as it was on the roof.' The Beatles were no longer impressed by their own mythology. As Derek Taylor noted, 'It was not insignificant that they chose a rooftop, their own private rooftop, out of reach and for the most part out of view, to do their last show together.'
There was little jubilation when the documentary project ended; merely relief that the cameras were going to leave the Beatles in p
eace. Engineer Glyn Johns was commissioned to sift through the countless hours of tapes, most of them desultory and discordant, and translate them into an album. But all his attempts were rejected, and while editors slowly reviewed the accompanying film footage the Beatles did their best to forget that January 1969 had ever happened. Certainly George Harrison backed down from his commitment to leave the group, perhaps because Preston remained on call for the next few weeks. With no clear intention in mind, the Beatles found themselves back in the studio within days, as if drawn by some Pavlovian reflex. And if they were making music, no matter how lacklustre, they could avoid dealing with the latest incursion into their increasingly dented sanctum. The Beatles had barely survived the arrival of Yoko Ono; now, like shop workers arriving one morning to find an unfamiliar logo over the door, they seemed to be under new management.
Klein is essential in the pantomime as the Demon King. Just as you think everything is going to be all right, here he is.
Derek Taylor
There were countless assistants and collaborators in the Beatles' story, and the affection that surrounded the group encompassed almost all of them. Each has his or her role in the saga: Brian Epstein, their naive but loyal guide; Neil Aspinall, their eternally faithful servant; George Martin, their kindly musical chaperon; Derek Taylor, purveyor of dry wit and wisdom; wives, girlfriends, roadies, photographers, sidemen, school friends; each loved by those who loved the Beatles, for enabling them to flourish and their story to become the fairy tale of the age, endlessly repeatable and open to infinite interpretation.
You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle for the Soul of the Beatles Page 8