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

by Peter Doggett

  Though it was only four months since the Beatles' disunity had been exposed in the High Court, many fans assumed that they would be the 'Friends' promised on the concert posters. It was a bittersweet moment: was Harrison prepared to be overshadowed by the Beatles when he had just established himself as a viable solo artist? 'George lacked confidence,' recalled his friend Leon Russell. 'I worked on some of his records, and it was not uncommon for him to do 180 takes of a song before he felt he'd got it right. He never thought what he was doing was good enough.' For reasons of self-protection, or simply to boost the impact of the concerts, Harrison eventually asked all three of his ex-colleagues to perform. Starkey immediately agreed, as did Russell, Eric Clapton and Billy Preston. Harrison entered into lengthy negotiations with the recalcitrant Bob Dylan which resulted in his first major appearance in two years. 'Everyone wanted to play,' recalled Apple Records' US head Allan Steckler. 'I had to turn down Crosby, Stills and Nash, and the Rolling Stones.' But neither Paul McCartney nor John Lennon was able to place the lives of starving people before their own egos.

  'Klein called a press conference,' McCartney complained, 'and told everyone I had refused to do it for the Pakistani refugees. It isn't so. I said to George the reason I couldn't do it was because it would mean that all the world's press would scream that the Beatles had got back together again, and I know that would have made Klein very happy. It would have been an historical event, and Klein would have taken the credit. I didn't really fancy playing, anyway.'

  Lennon's rationale was strikingly similar: 'I told George about a week before that I wouldn't be doing it. I just didn't feel like it. I just didn't want to be rehearsing and doing a big showbiz trip. And anyway they couldn't have got any more people in, if I'd been there or not. I get enough money off records and I don't feel like doing two shows a night.'

  Neither man had grasped that there was more at stake here than the balance of power between the ex-Beatles. What did McCartney or Lennon's feelings matter alongside the chance to rescue people's lives? It was an ethical dilemma that haunted them for the rest of the decade: how could the Beatles refuse to play together for just one night, when they knew that they could help to feed the hungry and cure the sick? The group had never wanted to be messiahs, but did that entitle them to refuse the role? Did the Beatles have a moral duty to save the world?

  Still caught up in the drama of their own lives, they were preoccupied with pettier concerns. It was only after Lennon's death that the real reason for his absence from the Bangladesh concerts was revealed. He insisted that he would not perform without Ono; Harrison told him that this was a gathering of rock superstars, not an avant-garde festival, and that she couldn't appear. Lennon was outraged, and decided that Harrison's inability to appreciate Ono's genius was symptomatic of his limited intelligence. 'There's no telling George,' he said. 'He's very narrow-minded, and he doesn't really have a broader view. Paul is far more aware than George . . . he's got an inferiority complex working with Paul and me . . . George doesn't really know what's happening.'

  At a press conference Harrison was asked, 'Are there ever times when you wish you were back together again as a group?' It would become the opening gambit for every journalistic encounter with an ex-Beatle. Harrison handled it diplomatically: 'Yeah, there are times. But there are times also when we all appreciate not being together.'*24 Lennon was asked the same question in London. 'I never wanted them [the Beatles] to slide down and sort of make comebacks and things like that. I said, when I was 20 [ sic] in the Beatles, that I'm not going to be singing "She Loves You" when I'm 30. Well, I was 30 this year and I didn't force it to happen. It just happened naturally. I guessed that by the time I was 30 I would have just grown out of it. And I have, you know.'

  But the world wasn't ready to grow out of the Beatles. When the Bangladesh concerts took place, much of the media attention centred on the 'reunion' of Harrison and Starkey. The shows were a personal triumph for Harrison, who appeared serious, almost stern, in his crisp white suit and guru beard, but who delighted the crowd by dipping briefly into his Beatles repertoire. Starkey's appearance also rekindled the past. Shaking his head to the rhythm as he had in 1964, he seemed like a living incarnation of the Beatles of old, spreading their ageless magic throughout the hall.

  The Bangladesh concerts confirmed Harrison's elevated status among the rock aristocracy. Bob Dylan might wield more enigma, and the Rolling Stones more charisma, but Harrison had proved himself the most successful of the solo Beatles and arguably music's most influential figure. His charitable gesture – $243,000 would reach UNICEF from ticket sales alone, with much more to follow – raised hopes that the rock elite might display a deeper sense of maturity in the decade ahead. For years rock had been interpreted as the soundtrack of dissent, channelling the political ideals of the counterculture and providing anthems for the revolution that would surely follow. But the heroes of the new decade, from Grand Funk Railroad to Led Zeppelin, showed little interest in politics and no messianic zeal. Where their predecessors had sparked opposition to the status quo, the icons of the new age were selling nothing more significant than their own stardom. Harrison's efforts suggested another way for rock to progress, as a standard bearer of idealism that wasn't tied to a strict political manifesto.

  Yet just as rock was shedding its radical agenda, Lennon chose to remodel himself as a revolutionary. To prove that the 'Power to the People' single was more than a gesture, he had appeared at political rallies in aid of everyone from the postal workers' union to the underground magazine Oz, then facing trial on censorship charges. His campaigning soon crossed the Atlantic. On 1 June, the Lennons flew to New York to complete the album he had begun in February. Within 24 hours they were contacted by Jerry Rubin, from the anarchist protest group the Yippies. Like his comrade Abbie Hoffman, he had viewed Lennon as a traitor after 'Give Peace a Chance', but then he studied the Plastic Ono Band album, and found that it soothed his despair at the decay of the revolutionary American left. That weekend, Rubin, Hoffman and the Lennons met in Greenwich Village, where Lennon had stumbled across David Peel, a hippie street singer who had become a local legend, and promised to attend one of his recitals in Washington Square Park. 'I really didn't think they would come,' Peel recalled. 'But there they were. I sang them "Have a Marijuana" and a new song I'd written called "The Pope Smokes Dope".' The troupe of radicals strode around the East Village, singing the simple refrains of Peel's dope anthems. Lennon had found a peer group that represented rebellion and danger, and also a new musical direction. 'I'm pretty movable as an artist,' he recalled later. 'They greeted me off the plane, and the next minute I'm involved.' Rubin, Hoffman and Peel believed that the revolution could be reborn with a Beatle at the helm, and for the next year Lennon played the role of a radical activist with such zeal that he persuaded both them, and the US government, that he was in deadly earnest. Meanwhile he was withdrawing large sums from Apple's Swiss bank accounts to finance his bohemian lifestyle.

  While Harrison and Lennon confronted the outside world, and Starkey pursued a career as a movie actor, McCartney seemed to be floundering. 'He disappoints me on his albums,' Starkey said. 'I don't think there's one tune on the last one, Ram. I just feel he's wasted his time. He seems to be going strange. It's like he's not admitting that he can write great tunes. I just feel he's let me down.' Under assault from his colleagues and the critics, McCartney could not even trust his fans. Insulting graffiti appeared regularly on the wall around his London home. 'Someone had written the words "Fuck Linda",' one innocent admirer recalled. 'Just as we decided to leave, a car started up and the doors to the yard opened. There we were, face to face with Paul and Linda. We all smiled and waved, and he pulled out of the driveway like a madman and gave us all the finger.'

  In late July McCartney was at Abbey Road Studios with drummer Denny Seiwell and singer/guitarist Denny Laine. 'I missed playing in a band,' he explained. He chose not to dip into the same pool of session men as the other Beatle
s: 'I felt that it was a bit too predictable, that everyone would leave the Beatles and go with old Phil Spector, or the drummer Jim Keltner. It was like a clique, and I just didn't want to join that clique.' Instead, he opted for Seiwell, who had proved himself on Ram, and Laine, a reticent underachiever who had sung one major hit ('Go Now' with the Moody Blues) and written another (Colin Blunstone's 'Say You Don't Mind') without establishing a public profile. Laine offered his boss undoubted musical talent and no risk of competition. Yet safety was forgotten as McCartney completed his new band with someone who had no musical experience: his wife. Comparisons with Lennon and Ono were inevitable, but Ono had classical piano training and a history of avant-garde musical performances to her name. Forcing his wife to carry one quarter of the burden of Wings, as McCartney named the band, was an act of enormous courage, defiance and possibly folly. The reaction from his peers was incredulous laughter. 'Everybody can be artists,' Lennon had said a few days earlier, but he drew the line at Linda McCartney *25.

  To symbolise that the past was past, McCartney became the first Beatle to withdraw from the group's official fan club. 'I don't want to be involved with anything that continues the illusion that there is such a thing as the Beatles,' he announced. His three former colleagues echoed his thoughts by disputing EMI's right to issue an album of the Beatles' 1964 concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Apple claimed they owned the tapes; EMI insisted that they had paid for the recording and could do what they liked with it. This was not the moment for a public display of nostalgia: Neil Aspinall completed a rough cut of the Beatles documentary movie that he'd begun the previous year, but shelved the project after sending each of the group a copy. Meanwhile, Harrison insisted that the story of Apple was 'only just beginning'. To prove the point, the company's recording studio was now open for business, nearly three years behind schedule. Harrison admitted, 'It's a bit sad now that Apple is in the position all four of us planned three years ago. I just wish Paul would use the studio. It's silly not to.' But neither Lennon nor McCartney would ever set foot on the premises.

  Indeed, Lennon was about to leave Britain for the last time. In August 1971, he recalled the abuse that he and Ono had received from the British public, and said, 'If I hadn't bought that fucking house, I'd leave – I'd go and live in New York. It's fucking great over there, the people are as hip as shit. Britain is at least 200 years behind.' On 3 September the couple flew to America for what was intended as a short visit. 'I only decided to live there after I'd moved,' he later said. 'I left everything in England. I didn't even bring any clothes. I just came for a visit and stayed. I should have informed the British government: I'd have got an amazing tax refund. If I'd only thought of it, I would have made a million pounds or something.'

  In New York the Lennons took a hotel suite for six weeks and then rented a loft in Greenwich Village, home of the city's artists and radicals. Among them was David Peel, who had recently formed an organisation called the Rock Liberation Front with A. J. Weberman, a Village eccentric who had devoted himself to 'proving' that Bob Dylan was both a junkie and an enemy of the people. Now Weberman and Peel widened their sights to include 'rip-off people in the world of rock'. To Lennon's delight, their first target was Paul McCartney. 'We figured McCartney could use some liberating,' Weberman explained. 'It was around the time he released that album that was really inane and said nothing about what was happening on the street. He was supposed to be a representative of youth culture, but he was just a businessman. We reckoned he could use a wake-up call.' Weberman, Peel and a dozen supporters staged a mock funeral outside the Eastmans' law office. As Weberman proclaimed afterwards, 'I felt he's a good example of the capitalist, non-involved egotistical rock star which seems to dominate the hip culture.' 'I hope they're not after me,' Lennon quipped.

  He was soon sporting a Rock Liberation Front badge and spouting their propaganda. 'I don't want that big house we built for ourselves in England. I don't want the bother of owning all these big houses and big cars, even though our company, Apple, pays for it all. All structures and buildings and everything I own will be dissolved and got rid of. I'll cash in my chips, and anything that's left I'll make the best use of.' It was two years since he had promised to give all his future royalties to peace, only to renege on his pledge immediately. 'John was not trying to make money out of the revolutionary movement,' insisted his friend film-maker Steve Gebhardt. 'He was not trying to turn it into a Rolls-Royce.' Indeed, Lennon now determined that his life and work would be devoted to the overthrow of the capitalist system that had made him rich.

  'Imagine' became a hit single, although not yet an anthem. The album included songs of unfocused political anger, alongside declarations of love for Yoko and his demolition of McCartney's reputation 'How Do You Sleep'. The cover of Ram had featured McCartney holding a sheep; Lennon included a postcard-sized photo of himself wrestling with a pig. It was noticeable, however, that the Imagine LP represented a significant move towards the commercial mainstream. ABKCO's promotions manager Pete Bennett, who was a staunch supporter of US President Nixon, explained: 'We told John he had to go more commercial if he wanted to get a big smash. An artist has to put out what he feels, but I'm sure an artist wises up, and that's why John put out this new type of album.' Conceding the point, Lennon later told McCartney that Imagine was '"Working Class Hero" with sugar on it for conservatives like yourself '. The album duly followed All Things Must Pass and Ram to the top of the American charts.

  The clash of ideology between radicals such as Rubin and Hoffman and Klein's team at ABKCO merely amused Lennon. He'd already warned Klein that he might be earning '20 per cent of nothing' if the Lennons kept to their plan of 'taking a really far-out show on the road, a mobile, political, rock and roll show'. Klein replied, 'I don't mind,' though as Lennon noted, 'Maybe he thinks he'll sell some comics on the side. He'll have thought of something.' He knew that

  McCartney was planning to tour with Wings. 'When Paul's going out on the road,' Lennon explained, 'I'd like to be playing in the same town for free next door! And he's charging about a million to see him. That would be funny.'

  None of the three Beatles under Klein's supervision doubted his abilities, and they relished his reputation as a troublemaker. At worst, they saw him as someone who in Lyndon Johnson's immortal phrase was safer 'inside the tent pissing out'. So they weren't troubled by the $29 million lawsuit filed against their manager by the Rolling Stones on 1 September 1971 that alleged he had 'made false or fraudulent representations with intent to deceive and defraud'. Klein complained that the Stones' claims were 'at best ludicrous and at worst malicious', and 'an attempt to rewrite history'. (The case was settled out of court in May 1972.) Yet by November Paul McCartney was able to suggest that although 'the others really dig [Klein] . . . I think they might secretly feel that I am right'.

  McCartney's comments followed three months of delays that threatened to sabotage Harrison's charity crusade. The principle was simple: all the proceeds from the Bangladesh benefits should go directly to the victims of famine and civil war. But between cause and effect was a landscape of obstacles. For example, Klein and Harrison had neglected to apply in advance to the US government for the concerts to be given tax-exempt status. Now the proceeds were automatically liable to tax, unless the government agreed to set a precedent. There were problems in Britain as well. Before the concerts Apple's official receiver wrote to Harrison, noting that he was planning to donate all the profits from the live album (and his 'Bangla Desh' single) to charity. 'This does place me in some difficulty,' the receiver explained, because 'the court order imposed on me the obligation to hold for the court the royalties not only on Beatle group recordings, but on any individual recordings made by individual partners.' Harrison needed to obtain the approval of the other Beatles before any donation could be made. Lennon and Starkey were in agreement, but Peter Howard at ABKCO suggested that the receiver should ask McCartney himself – evidence of how strained relations between the two ex-Bea
tles had become. McCartney eventually consented five weeks later, whereupon the receiver raised the possibility that Harrison might be asked to pay income tax on the proceeds, even if he immediately gave them to charity.

  Harrison expected that the concert record would be released by October, and the film by Christmas. But the British government was now claiming its own share of the proceeds. In late September Harrison met the financial secretary to the Treasury, Patrick Jenkin, and asked 'if it would be possible to reduce, or even scrub completely, the purchase tax on the record. Unfortunately, he seemed to think that it was more important for this country to get the tax on the record than for the extra money to go to the starving people of Bangladesh.' Harrison even threatened to become a tax exile from Britain, but Jenkin could not be swayed.

  By now almost everyone's motives were open to suspicion. It was reported that ABKCO/Apple 'picked up the approximately $100,000 tab' for staging the concerts, presumably as a charitable donation. But soon it became clear that the money would be reclaimed from the profits of the record. (Klein did make a personal donation of $50,000 to the relief fund, however. 'Has Eastman ever donated?' Lennon asked McCartney.) Record companies were also jostling for the small change. Klein entered lengthy negotiations with Capitol Records president Bhaskar Menon about distribution fees, while Columbia Records (who owned Bob Dylan's contract) also wanted a share. By the time the two labels and Klein had cut a deal, wholesalers were complaining that their margins had been sliced so savagely that they would lose money on every copy they shipped. So the album was delayed again, while illegal bootleg recordings of the concert went on sale without any charitable benefit. The Concert For Bangla Desh – Harrison's second three-record box set in twelve months – finally reached the stores at Christmas 1971. Radical journalist Mick Farren greeted it as 'the greatest achievement ever by its organisers – a group headed by George Harrison, Ravi Shankar and Allen Klein'. It would be the last time the press referred to Klein in such heroic tones.