As Professor Jon Wiener's detailed research has demonstrated, several arms of the US government were now keeping Lennon and his comrades under surveillance, with a view to securing his deportation.*29 Fortunately for Lennon, they worked in competition rather than concord, ensuring that – despite strong rumours about his heroin use – they could never catch him in possession of illegal substances, even though a simple bust would have meant immediate deportation. As spring became summer, Lennon gradually eased back from active participation in the revolution. But the flow of money continued. Besides the Rock Liberation Front, Weberman and Peel were also prominent in a group called the Zippies. In June 1972 Apple issued Peel's album The Pope Smokes Dope, which Lennon and Ono had produced, and took out an advert in the Zippies' news-sheet BeachBlanket Struggle. They could probably have booked the space for $50, but instead Lennon arranged to pay the paper $50,000. 'I told him we were going to have a riot at the Republican Party convention in Miami,' Weberman explained, and that we needed money to get buses and bring in the demonstrators. John gave us a couple of thousand dollars in cash, and the rest came from this ad. He had some idea what was going to happen – he knew there was a chance that it would turn out not to be a peaceful event, but he still gave us the money. You can't tell me that he didn't believe in violence. He helped to pay for it.
Once again the combined resources of the FBI and the INS failed to spot this evidence of subversion. But one political gesture was impossible to ignore. In June 1972, as his lawyers were advising him to keep a low profile, Lennon issued Some Time in New York City, an album of radical political anthems. *30 The production (by Phil Spector) and vocal performances were exhilarating, but the simplistic content of the material, which sounded like a precocious child's guide to revolution, was severely damaging to Lennon's reputation. One of his staunchest supporters in the British underground dismissed the record as 'irritating, embarrassing and, finally, just plain unpleasant'. SomeTime in New York City not only failed to match the commercial impact of McCartney's Wild Life, but was outsold by Starkey's SentimentalJourney and Beaucoups of Blues. The man widely regarded as the leader of the Beatles was once again their weakest commercial asset.
The record's failure was symptomatic of a wider feeling that the four Beatles were yesterday's men. It wasn't just that Lennon was the only one of the quartet to issue an album in 1972, or that two of the group (Harrison and Starkey) had effectively vanished. The outside world had been entranced by the human drama of the Beatles' split and the almost weekly sparring between Lennon and McCartney during 1971. Now the saga seemed passé; and so, in every dimension but nostalgia, did the Beatles. For fellow musicians, their influence had been inescapable during the 1960s: everyone seemed to be following the Beatles or, if they were courageous, reacting against them. Now there were new stylists in town, and nobody wanted to be caught in last year's designs. Acts who consciously maintained the Beatles' tradition, such as the Electric Light Orchestra, Badfinger and Raspberries, endured jibes about their outdated, 'retro' sound. It was as if the Beatles were the hangover from a decade that the world was already embarrassed to remember.
Lennon's battles with US immigration officials ensured that he remained newsworthy, but his former colleagues were less visible. While Lennon mixed with revolutionaries, Starkey appeared at events such as Elizabeth Taylor's 40th-birthday party, where Hollywood celebrities and minor European royals welcomed him into their exclusive milieu. He released one single in 1972, 'Back off Boogaloo', the lyrics of which seemed to echo his disappointment with McCartney's recent output: 'Everything you try to do, you know it sure sounds wasted.' The title was a gift from Britain's pop phenomenon of the moment Marc Bolan, and when his band T. Rex performed at Wembley in the summer, before an audience exhibiting 'Bolanmania', it seemed appropriate that Starkey should be there to document the occasion for an Apple Films production. Reporters noted gleefully that he was able to pass through the pre-teen crowd without being recognised.
For Harrison, 1972 was a year of recuperation and retreat after the exertions of the Bangladesh benefit. But there were always meetings to determine which department of which government was now stalling the funds needed so desperately in the newly independent nation. They drained Harrison's already depleted creativity, ensuring that if he did feel inspired to write a song, it was usually tinged with despair at the failings of humanity. At home he grew increasingly estranged from his wife. When he made a rare appearance at Apple, he could seem tense and removed. Geoff Emerick was running Apple Studios at this time. 'George could be infuriating on occasions. Every now and then he would get into his Hare Krishna thing, and he'd walk around with this little bag that resembled a sling: he looked as if he'd broken his arm. You'd go up to him and ask him a question, any question: "Do you want to do your vocals now?" or something like that – and he'd start to answer you but then begin mumbling away, chanting his mantra.' Everything connected with the physical world seemed to annoy him. When EMI failed to offer an appropriate advance for his next album, he sent an angry postcard to the managing director: 'How much did EMI make from All Things Must Pass/My Sweet Lord?' He addressed the card symbolically to 'EMI Wreckords'.
Meanwhile the negotiations about the Beatles' partnership simmered expensively. But another item of business forced its way to the top of the agenda. In May the third year of Allen Klein's three-year management contract came to an end, and both sides had the option to call a halt. Harrison had become alarmed by the morass into which the Bangladesh project had fallen; Lennon felt personally betrayed by Klein's apparent distaste for his political campaigns; Starkey would do whatever the others agreed. But none of them was yet prepared to crawl back to McCartney and admit that perhaps he had been right. Neither did they wish to endure the very public humiliation of looking for a new manager. So they compromised, and agreed that because Apple was effectively dormant and consequently required very little management, they should renew Klein's contract for two or three months at a time, rather than a full year. Lennon, however, had a more sinister agenda. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who had recorded an album for Apple at Lennon's request in December 1971, explained: 'Lennon had realised he wanted to cut off from Klein, and he had to do it in a ruthless way, the same way that Klein worked. So he was not able to tell anybody. He just started legal proceedings secretly, and then he was ready to pull the trap when the moment came.'
Maybe Klein guessed what was happening; maybe he still had faith in his personal rapport with the three Beatles. Either way, it was now in his financial interest to find a project that would emphasise his importance to Apple, and reinforce his grip as the company's manager. After suggesting to Harrison that he should look for an offshore tax haven to safeguard his income, he focused his attention on the documentary movie that Neil Aspinall had assembled a year earlier. The film had been shelved, but Aspinall remained hopeful that one day all four of the Beatles would agree to its release. He intended to accompany it with an album of the group's greatest hits, guaranteed to sell in millions. Aspinall was aware of Klein's waning popularity among his clients, however, and also realised the financial implications of allowing the American to take credit for the project and claim a share of its earnings. To ensure Klein could not seize the film, he dismantled the master reels kept at the Apple office. Around the same time Aspinall formed his own company, Standby Films, which meant that he could retain control of the Beatles film as a personal project. Its name reflected his subservient role in the Beatles organisation: waiting until he was needed.
One problem confronting both Klein and Aspinall was McCartney's reluctance to become a museum piece. 'It's rather like an obituary to me,' he complained in May 1972. 'I don't like these old "remember when" things. I don't like talking about the old thing when inevitably anything I say I'm doing now won't match up to all the glorious things they'll show happened in the past.' He was talking on the occasion of a nostalgia trip over which he had no control: a lengthy BBC Radio series, The Beatles Story
. The corporation secured interviews with Lennon, McCartney and Klein, but none of them was in the mood to glorify the past. 'So much emphasis is put on "Oh, the Beatles have broken up,"' Klein said. 'I don't think it was a tragedy. They haven't died. Maybe it was time they had a chance to live their own lives.' Lennon concurred. 'We were friends, and we had a function,' he said, 'but the function ended and the relationship had nothing to last on but memory, and it broke down. I know a lot of people were upset when the Beatles finished, but the circus has to come to an end. The Beatles were a monument, and had to be either changed or scrapped.' As if to acknowledge the point, Lennon, Harrison and Starkey withdrew their support from the Beatles' Fan Club, and it folded that spring – its membership reduced from a 1963 peak of 350,000 to just 11,000.
McCartney's reluctance to be judged against his past achievements reflected insecurity about his latest venture. Wings became a quintet in January, in time to record their 'Ireland' single. Briefly, McCartney could luxuriate in the kind of controversy that had been Lennon's domain, as radio stations refused to broadcast the record. In its Top 40 countdown, the BBC would only refer demurely to 'a record by Wings'. In early February McCartney fulfilled the fantasy rejected by the other Beatles in 1969, when Wings performed unannounced concerts at British universities. The novelty of seeing a Beatle in the flesh overshadowed any qualms about the group's music, which sounded under-rehearsed and inchoate. 'We all wanted to play Beatles tunes,' recalled drummer Denny Seiwell, 'but Paul wanted to start a whole new world for himself – rightly so. He wanted the world to get to know us, like they knew John and Ringo and George, but we could never be Beatles.' The closest that McCartney came to his past was a rousing finale of Little Richard's 'Long Tall Sally', which had closed the last Beatles concert in 1966.
Gradually, however, he began to build the skeleton of a new career. His decision to update the nursery rhyme 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' for his next single attracted derision from critics, but the record became an instant children's favourite. Like Starkey's attempt to confound public opinion by switching from country to electronic music, McCartney appeared to relish puncturing expectations. He continued to encourage his wife's musical ambitions, agreeing a deal with Northern Songs that would let her composing credits stand, in return for McCartney's agreement to make a TV special for Sir Lew Grade. In July Wings undertook their first scheduled tour, though they avoided major cities and concentrated on small towns in Europe. When the press tracked them down, they found McCartney bullish. 'The Beatles have definitely ended,' he repeated like a mantra, as if repetition would bring acceptance. 'The man from the record company said, "Would you play just once a year, lads?" like a sort of memorial tribute. Well, I'm not going to get into that, because I'm not dead yet. It's no good for me now.' His wife complained, 'We have no income, it all goes to Apple. We are stuck, let me tell you.' 'What annoys me is the other three and their preaching,' McCartney added. 'John goes around saying, "Join Rock Liberation – give the people what is theirs," and he could get us out.' But the partnership remained intact, despite Klein's claim that Lennon, Harrison and Starkey were ready to buy out McCartney's 25 per cent share and then let ABKCO assume complete control of the Apple empire. 'I don't really see them much,' McCartney said, 'and I don't really see why I should see them. We had a bit of trouble, and that trouble is still on.'
Lennon could have echoed that sentiment. By late summer his anxieties about Apple and the Beatles paled alongside the pressure he was enduring from the US government. He was convinced that FBI agents were shadowing his movements and taping his phone calls. A. J. Weberman scoured his underground connections to secure Lennon a telephone that couldn't be bugged. In return, the Lennons – who, after Ono's film Fly, had some experience with insects – helped Weberman procure 500 flies, which he released into the Republican Party national headquarters. But constant meetings with lawyers and their insistence that Lennon should do nothing to antagonise the authorities gradually forced him and Ono away from their comrades. 'I know we haven't got many friends,' he admitted that summer, 'but I never did have.'
During a visit to rehab in San Francisco earlier that year the Lennons had met investigative TV reporter Geraldo Rivera, who had uncovered a scandalous history of abuse in a New York State children's institution. In July Rivera asked Lennon if he would consider a Harrison-style fundraiser – which expanded to two shows at Madison Square Garden, the same venue where Lennon had originally planned to perform for Irish civil rights. 'Geraldo wanted to help John stay in the USA, so he arranged this benefit concert,' recalled Steve Gebhardt, who filmed the event for the Lennons. David Peel had introduced them to a local bar band, Elephant's Memory, who had been put on retainer the previous Christmas on the assumption that they would be touring the world in 1972. Aside from the Some Time in New YorkCity sessions and an occasional TV appearance, the One To One concerts on 30 August represented the sum total of their work together. Embarrassingly, tickets for the event sold far more slowly than Harrison's a year earlier, reflecting the toll that Lennon's political activity had taken on his popularity. He was reduced to recording radio ads guaranteeing a splendid time for all. When the tickets still didn't sell, he swallowed his pride and phoned Paul McCartney to see if he would join him on stage, but McCartney declined. Klein discreetly gave the remaining seats away.
This time there was no confusion about the charitable status of the concerts, and the money swiftly reached its target. Moreover, Lennon delivered a performance worthy of the occasion. 'The weird thing was turning left and right and seeing different faces,' he recalled. 'It didn't matter what I was singing – I'd see Yoko or one of the Elephants or [Jim] Keltner on the drums, and feel little flashes of, Oh, it isn't one of them, this is different. I've got to sing all the damn numbers.' If he lacked the stage polish of McCartney or the finesse of Harrison's Bangladesh big band, Lennon compensated with a quality that was his alone: passion. So intense was his focus that when he revisited the primal pain that had inspired him to write 'Cold Turkey' or 'Mother', he screamed and writhed like a man possessed, a living emblem of Arthur Janov's therapy. Yet the audience reserved its most fervent reaction for the moment when Lennon promised to 'go back, just once' and delivered a compelling rendition of the Beatles' 'Come Together'. He forgot the lyrics, but the spectacle was vivid enough to suggest that the spirit of the 1960s was still alive. The shows closed with a mass chorus of 'Give Peace a Chance', for which the crowd were given percussion instruments. After the performers left the stage, fans streamed out onto the streets of New York, still chanting, still banging their tambourines joyfully. It seemed like one last sunlit gathering of the tribes before the clouds descended and the hippie dream faded to dusk. Lennon was ecstatic, and began to talk again about the world tour he'd imagined a year before.
There were excitable suggestions that Lennon might share the bill at another Madison Square spectacular with Wings and a Harrison/ Starkey big band. But the Beatles were otherwise occupied. Harrison was at Apple, recording an album with the hubristic working title of The Magic Is Here Again. Starkey was engaged in his most challenging and fulfilling film role, playing a version of his teddy boy past in That'llBe the Day. McCartney was at Abbey Road, completing the Wings double album that had been in preparation since the spring. And at the Record Plant in New York Lennon was watching his wife record her own double album of feminist songs with the bar band who were supposed to be his. 'When I decided to make a double album, their faces all became very long,' Ono complained of the Apple/ABKCO staff. 'But I decided to do it anyway, because I figured that if George Harrison can put out a triple album then I can put out a double album. Later I began to think that if George Harrison can put out a triple album, then I should be able to put out a triple album. But I decided to stop at 22 songs.'
That was precisely 22 songs more than Lennon had completed in recent months. The more creative Ono became, the more Lennon faltered. 'It is very difficult for two composers to be living together,' Ono said, ad
mitting that she rose several hours earlier than her husband so that she could work undisturbed. Were they happy, she was asked? 'Not necessarily. Sometimes we're very happy, sometimes we're not. We're human. There was a negative situation at one time, like Scott and Zelda [Fitzgerald], but we overcame that because we were a bit more aware, thank God.' Lennon's awareness was coming under extreme pressure, however. On election night in November the couple attended a party at Jerry Rubin's apartment in SoHo. The revolutionaries had opted to support the Democratic Party candidate, George McGovern, who had promised to end the Vietnam War. They had gathered – Rubin, Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg and their comrades – in the expectation that righteousness would seize the day. But McGovern lost to Nixon in the biggest electoral landslide yet recorded.
When the Lennons arrived the party was soaked in despair. Lennon was drunk, artistically blocked, jealous of his wife's creativity, harassed by the US immigration authorities. Now he saw the radicals on whom he had staked his reputation, and whom he blamed for his persecution by the government, weeping for their own lost dreams. He ripped into Rubin and Hoffman, calling them 'middle-class Jews' and 'pigs'. When theatre director Judith Molina tried to calm him, he screamed at her, 'I want to cut you with a knife.' Others remember him threatening to go outside and shoot a cop. The only person who could quell his anger was Carol Realini, Rubin's roommate. In full view of Ono, Lennon and Realini began to talk, and then kiss, before he led her into the next room. She told him that she couldn't make love while his wife was outside the door. 'We're getting divorced,' he told her. Soon Ono and the remaining guests were forced to listen to cries and groans of sexual pleasure. Then Lennon re-emerged, gestured silently at Ono and headed for the door.
You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle for the Soul of the Beatles Page 24