You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle for the Soul of the Beatles

by Peter Doggett

  raised no immediate objections. Harrison sent Spector a telegram of congratulations; Starkey phoned with the same message. It had taken fifteen months from first arrival in the chilly halls of Twickenham to the high-tension finale at Abbey Road, but it seemed as if the saga of Let It Be was over.

  Throughout this period of Apple intrigue, Lennon and Ono remained under the care of Arthur Janov. The therapist had persuaded the couple that they would only gain lasting benefit from their screaming if they were separated. Reluctantly, they moved into luxury London hotels and were only allowed to communicate by letter. Janov scuttled from one suite to the other, returning Lennon to the pain of separation from his parents, Ono to the turmoil of Tokyo under American air assault.

  McCartney was experiencing his own vision of hell. 'I was going through a bad time,' he recalled, 'what I suspect was almost a nervous breakdown. I remember lying awake at nights shaking.' Six months earlier he had felt bereaved by Lennon's departure from the Beatles. Now his tie to the group that he had joined in 1957 was strangling him. Since the arrival of Klein he had been reacting, not acting. The time had come for him to assert control over his own professional life in the hope that he could also lift the darkness closing around his soul.

  The initial declaration of independence came from Eastman and Eastman. On 7 April they announced the formation of McCartney Productions Ltd. Its first two projects, they declared, would be the McCartney album and an animated film based around the strip cartoon character Rupert Bear. Meanwhile, copies of McCartney were prepared for the press. Derek Taylor rang McCartney to ask whether he was prepared to talk to journalists about the record. He replied, 'I can't deal with the press. I hate all those Beatles questions.' According to McCartney, he suggested that Taylor send him a list of questions, and he would provide answers. 'So he asked me some stilted questions and I gave some stilted answers,' McCartney recalled in 1984, 'that included an announcement that we'd split up.'

  Taylor, however, insisted that the questions were entirely McCartney's invention: 'He was only supposed to write out information explaining how he made his album. Instead he hands us this interview with himself asking questions such as would he miss Ringo. It was entirely gratuitous. Nobody asked him that question. He asked that question of himself.' This edited version of the questionnaire gives a flavour of the topics McCartney chose to raise.

  Q: Will Paul and Linda become a John and Yoko?

  A: No, they will become Paul and Linda.

  Q: Will the other Beatles receive the first copies?

  A: Wait and see.

  Q: Is it true that neither Allen Klein nor ABKCO will be in any way involved with the production, manufacturing, distribution or promotion of this album?

  A: Not if I can help it.

  Q: Did you miss the other Beatles and George Martin? Was there a moment, e.g., when you thought, Wish Ringo was here for this break?

  A: No.

  Q: Are you planning a new album or single with the Beatles?

  A: No.

  Q: Is this album a rest away from the Beatles or the start of a solo career?

  A: Time will tell. Being a solo album means it's the start of a solo career . . . and not being done with the Beatles means it's a rest. So it's both.

  Q: Have you any plans for live appearances?

  A: No.

  Q: Is your break with the Beatles, temporary or permanent, due to personal differences or musical ones?

  A: Personal differences, business differences, musical differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family. Temporary or permanent? I don't know.

  Q: Do you foresee a time when Lennon/McCartney becomes an active songwriting partnership again?

  A: No.

  Q: What do you feel about John's peace effort? The Plastic Ono Band? Giving back the MBE? Yoko's influence? Yoko?

  A: I love John and respect what he does – it doesn't give me any pleasure.

  Q: Were you pleased with Abbey Road? Was it musically restricting?

  A: It was a good album. (No. 1 for a long time.)

  Q: What is your relationship with Klein?

  A: It isn't. I am not in contact with him, and he does not represent me in any way.

  Q: What is your relationship with Apple?

  A: It is the office of a company which I part-own with the other Beatles. I don't go there because I don't like offices or business, especially when I'm on holiday.

  Q: Have you any plans to set up an independent production company?

  A: McCartney Productions.

  Q: What are your plans now? A holiday? A musical? A movie? Retirement?

  A: My only plan is to grow up.

  The script was duly returned to Apple, where Derek Taylor read it, raised a weary eyebrow and sent it to the press. The packages arrived on Thursday 9 April 1970. 'I received one at the Evening Standard,' recalled journalist Ray Connolly, 'but the story was embargoed until the next day, so I didn't print anything. But Don Short at the Mirror did.' The result was a Daily Mirror exclusive under the headline PAUL IS QUITTING THE BEATLES. Early copies were available in the West End of London that evening, and Apple staff were immediately disturbed at home by fevered enquiries from other papers. The result was that the Mirror's report was accompanied the following morning by an altogether more sober story in The Times, MCCARTNEY SPLIT WITH BEATLES DENIED. One of Taylor's assistants, Mavis Smith, was quoted as saying, 'This is just not true.' The paper added, 'She knew that Mr McCartney intended issuing a statement today on the release of a new recording, but denied that any critical statements meant a real break-up of the group. She said she hoped that the group would get together for another recording after the summer.'

  Allen Klein had flown into London on Thursday. He was due to meet executives from the British arm of United Artists the following day, at a board meeting of Apple Films Ltd. George Harrison would attend in his role as company director, and Paul McCartney had also signalled his intention to be there, so that he could raise his misgivings about the deal between Apple and UA. But later that day McCartney informed Apple that he would not, after all, be present at the meeting. It was only when the story of a Beatles break-up appeared the next morning that Klein understood why his opponent had pulled out.

  On Thursday afternoon McCartney called Lennon, who was in therapy with Arthur Janov. 'I'm doing what you did,' he told his colleague. 'I'm putting out an album, and I'm leaving the Beatles as well.' 'Good,' Lennon replied. 'That makes two of us who have seen sense.' The following morning, when Lennon heard about the Mirror's story, he realised that he had been trumped. 'I phoned John,' explained Ray Connolly, 'and told him what Paul had said. He was furious and said, "Why didn't you write the story when I told you?" I said that he'd asked me not to, and he said, "You're the fucking journalist, Ray!" In retrospect, I think he was setting me up. He thought I wouldn't be able to resist breaking the story first, and then he could turn around to the others and say, "I told him not to say anything," and he'd be the innocent party.'

  'John had made it clear that he wanted to be the one to announce the split,' Linda McCartney explained years later, 'since it was his idea.' 'He wanted to be first,' her husband confirmed. 'But I didn't realise it would hurt him that much or that it mattered who was first.' Lennon commented later, 'We were all hurt that he didn't tell us what he was going to do. I think he claims that he didn't mean that to happen, but that's bullshit.' Envy also entered the equation. 'I was cursing because I hadn't done it. I wanted to do it and I should have done it . . . I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which is use it to sell a record.'

  With a mixture of admiration and contempt, Lennon described McCartney as 'a good PR man . . . about the best in the world, probably. He really does a job.' But in the years to come McCartney felt apologetic enough about the statement and the way it was released to spin defensive webs around himself: 'The way it came out, it looked like it was specially engineered by me'; 'It was going to be an insert in the album. But when i
t was printed as news, it looked very cold, yes, even crazy'; 'I figured it was about time we told the truth. It was stupid, OK, but I thought someone ought to say something. I didn't like to keep lying to people. It was a conscience thing to me'; 'It was a nasty little period, all of that. Looking at it now, it looks very callous.'

  A 'conscience thing' that 'looks very callous': by his own admission, McCartney's credibility as a 'good PR man' had been shaken. His clearest summary of what he wanted, and what he achieved, came in 1986:

  I think John thought I was using this press release for publicity – as I suppose, in a way, it was. So it all looked very weird, and it ruffled a few feathers. The good thing about it was that we all had to finally own up to the fact that we'd broken up three or four months before. We'd been ringing each other quite constantly, sort of saying, 'Let's get it back together.' And I think me, George and Ringo did want to save things. But I think John was, at that point, too heavily into his new life – which you can't blame him.

  The circularity of his argument was obvious: I broke up the Beatles because John had already broken up the Beatles, although I wanted to save the Beatles . . . And yet one truth was inescapable: by staging a media event as shocking and effective as anything in Yoko Ono's imagination, McCartney achieved two purposes that did not have to be mutually exclusive. He publicised his new album, and he told the world that the Beatles were finished. Forty years later the question remains: did McCartney actually mean to split up the Beatles? 'Paul told me he was devastated when that was the story that the papers printed,' recalled Ray Connolly.

  Contemporary commentators certainly noticed that 'Nowhere does he actually say he's leaving the group. Or that he will never record with them again.' As journalist Richard Williams observed, 'What else is new? All these facts existed at the time of Abbey Road, but it didn't stop that album being made . . . There's bound to come a time when they won't be the Beatles any more, but no one, probably not even themselves, will recognise it when it comes.'

  Imagine an alternative script. The McCartney album is released, and its creator merely issues a cryptic comment about the Beatles, along the lines of 'Who knows what will happen?' Lennon is isolated in his room of primal screams at the Inn on the Park and says nothing. Later in 1970, with the 'split' still not made public, Lennon undertakes one of the frequent changes of heart that litter his career, and invites the Beatles to help him record the songs inspired by his experience with Janov. The Beatles stumble, or stride, into a new decade, and then . . . ? It's a tempting scenario, which begs a further question: did McCartney capsize the Beatles in a fit of pique because of the letter he received from Lennon and Harrison? Twenty years later Harrison would accuse McCartney of using the rumour of a Beatles reunion to sell his own records. But in 1970 this method seems to have worked in reverse: McCartney publicised his record by making it impossible for the Beatles to reunite. It's true that Lennon had already quit the group, but by not making that decision public he had left room for compromise. McCartney was the last of the four Beatles to leave the group but he chose to take the credit – or, as it turned out, the blame.

  Once his statement was launched, and then not contradicted or clarified, the resulting turbulence had to be navigated. Derek Taylor opted for a denial that spoke more about his personal distress than his grasp of reality. 'Spring is here and Leeds play Chelsea tomorrow and Ringo and John and George and Paul are alive and well and full of hope. The world is still spinning and so are we and so are you. When the spinning stops – that'll be the time to worry. Not before. Until then, the Beatles are alive and well and the beat goes on. The beat goes on.' It was the weakest pronouncement that this strikingly articulate man ever made. As he admitted later, 'The wording was no clearer then than it is now and somehow it had to do. We couldn't write the final words. We didn't want to, and we didn't know they were final, and really it wasn't any of our business, we thought in our escalating insecurity.'

  Taylor then had to face the press in person, alongside Allen Klein. Here he was more realistic: 'They do not want to split up, but the present rift seems to be part of their growing up . . . At the moment they seem to cramp each other's styles. Paul has called a halt to the Beatles' activities. They could be dormant for years . . . It is no secret that Klein and Paul have never hit it off. Paul has been into this building just twice since Klein came here.' Klein did his best to rid himself of any hint of the demonic. 'I like Paul. We've had many meetings, but it's never pleasant when someone appears not to like you. I think his reasons are his own personal problems.' It was a subtle allusion to McCartney's binding links to the Eastman family. As Richard Williams wrote that week, 'On the face of it, Paul's distrust of [Klein] is irrational, and the only visible motive is family loyalty, honourable but scarcely characteristically hard-headed.' Klein added that McCartney's announcement was 'a permanent maybe' and insisted that it merely reflected a situation that had existed for the past six months. For the first time someone was prepared to acknowledge that there had been a decisive move inside the Beatles' camp the previous year, but the protagonist wasn't named. In his only statement on the affair John Lennon certainly didn't admit that he had already quit the group: 'I was happy to hear from Paul. It was nice to find that he was still alive. Anyway, you can say I said jokingly, "He didn't quit, I sacked him!"' His comments exposed the difference between the two men's PR techniques. If the roles had been reversed, McCartney would probably have insisted that 'I did it first.' But Lennon sat back and allowed McCartney to become the focus of the world's anger.

  'I had so much in me that I couldn't express, and it was just very nervy times, very very difficult,' McCartney recalled of the weeks that followed. 'One night I'd been asleep and awoke and couldn't lift my head off the pillow. My head was down in the pillow and I thought, Jesus, if I don't do this I'll suffocate. I remember hardly having the energy to pull myself up, but with a great struggle I pulled my head up and lay on my back and thought, that was a bit near! I just couldn't do anything.' His symbolic severance from the Beatles had done nothing to liberate his spirit.

  A year after McCartney's wedding had brought sobbing fans onto the streets, reporters found it easy to procure equally shocked comments from those who didn't want the dream to end. It was too soon for any claims that this event marked the death of the 1960s; such theorising, applied to any number of apparently epoch-defining moments, would come later. For the moment the response was immediate, a reflex reaction to an unseen punch. Besides the devastated fans, the most obvious victims were the businessmen who feared the end of a financial bonanza. Allen Klein reminded the press that McCartney was 'obligated to Apple for a considerable number of years'. An official announcement followed, insisting that no member of the Beatles was allowed to 'offer his services without the approval of his colleagues'. Back in 1962 the prospect of a split had been built into the Beatles' managerial contract with Brian Epstein: 'The Artists jointly and severally agree that should two or more of them desire to remove one or more of the other Artists, then with the consent in writing of the Manager they shall give notice in writing by registered post.' But that was in the days of innocence, when the Beatles were merely a pop group, not a corporation with dozens of global subsidiaries to feed.

  Those corporations still needed fuel, and while McCartney's statement was being digested, Richard Starkey and George Harrison attended a board meeting of Apple Films, after which Starkey signed a letter to United Artists, informing them that 20 per cent of the Beatles' earnings from Let It Be should be paid directly to Klein's ABKCO company. Over the next week the dramatic focus switched from the Beatles to the soundtrack album that would shortly be issued in their name.

  When he received the acetate copy of Let It Be from Phil Spector, Paul McCartney had grudgingly agreed to its release. Now, with the furore surrounding the Beatles' split filling his ears, he kept returning to the album, like a dog obsessively licking a wound. As he listened again to 'The Long and Winding Road', with its grandiose
arrangement obscuring his original design, he became increasingly disturbed. There was no longer any need to conciliate his fellow Beatles; now truth must speak. But his prevarication was fatal. McCartney was imbued with the spirit of Hamlet, neglecting to act until only failure could follow.

  On Tuesday 14 April, ten days or more after he first heard the album, McCartney rang Apple and demanded to speak to Klein. When he was told Klein wasn't there, he insisted that Apple staff member Bill Oakes take down a letter to the manager. The letter, which was to be copied to Spector and John Eastman, read:

  Dear Sir,

  In future no one will be allowed to add to or subtract from a recording of one of my songs without my permission. I had considered orchestrating 'The Long and Winding Road' but I decided against it. I therefore want it altered to these specifications: 1. Strings, horns, voices and all added noises to be reduced in volume. 2. Vocal and Beatle instrumentation to be brought up in volume. 3. Harp to be removed completely at the end of the song and original piano notes to be substituted. 4. Don't ever do it again.

  McCartney complained to Ray Connolly a few days later, 'No one asked me what I thought. I couldn't believe it. I would never have female voices on a Beatle record.' He had chosen to forget adding his wife's vocals to Let It Be a few months earlier, and indeed the presence of Lennon and Harrison's wives on the White Album in 1968. Yet his central point was impossible to deny: 'It just goes to show that it's no good me sitting here thinking I'm in control, because obviously I'm not.'

  The situation was laced with irony. McCartney had envisaged Apple as an artistic haven, but now the company had restructured his own work without his permission. Worse still, it was McCartney who had recognised the need to bring in a manager to trim the company's wildest excesses, and now that manager was committing excesses of his own in the one area that McCartney had imagined was safe from interference. Under the circumstances, his letter was comparatively mild. He made no threats, delivered no ultimata; he didn't even ask for Spector's overdubs to be removed, merely reduced in volume; he seemed to assume that, at some level of Apple, the McCartney name would still be powerful enough to ensure that his wishes were satisfied. Yet he was wrong.