There were other methods of wealth creation available to the ex- Beatles, especially Paul McCartney, the one member of the group who retained a work ethic that bordered on the obsessive. In 1978 his solo contract with EMI/Capitol expired. After a bidding war, the Eastmans secured him a lavish set of deals that involved his signing to Columbia Records for North America with a contract that involved the transfer of one of Columbia's richest publishing catalogues to MPL. The deal allowed McCartney to record for another label under one specific circumstance: a reunion of the Beatles.
Elsewhere in the world, McCartney remained with EMI. As a reward, the company agreed the 'McCartney override', a slight but significant amendment to the Beatles' royalty structure. The group's existing deal – based on a long-standing verbal agreement between the quartet – ensured that their earnings were split into four equal portions. The McCartney override, which operated from 1 January 1979, destroyed that agreement.
His bonus apparently ensured him an additional royalty believed to be about 2 per cent. As a comparison, the four Beatles shared a 2.5 per cent royalty on the Please Please Me album; 5 per cent on With theBeatles, A Hard Day's Night and Beatles For Sale; and 15 per cent on all their albums after that, although all these figures were based on 90 per cent of the gross income, to allow for the proverbial 'breakages'. If this estimation of the override were correct, Lennon, Harrison and Starkey would each receive 3.45 pence from each pound earned by Sgt. Pepper, against McCartney's 5.45 pence. The difference would be more dramatic on Please Please Me: three of the Beatles would earn just 0.56 pence apiece, while McCartney's take was 2.56 pence, almost five times as much. The arrangement remained a secret – guarded most carefully of all from Lennon, Harrison and Starkey. It represented a major triumph for the negotiating skills of McCartney's family financiers but a departure from the mutual trust that had once fired the band. McCartney, however, could have retorted that all trust had vanished when his fellow Beatles signed with Allen Klein. There was a solid case for arguing that he was merely compensating himself for the $5 million deal with Klein that Ono had secured two years earlier.
EMI certainly had no qualms about favouring McCartney, the only Beatle who demonstrated loyalty to the company. In late 1977 he had released 'Mull of Kintyre', a Scottish folk ballad that became the bestselling single in UK history, supplanting the Beatles' 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' and 'She Loves You'. Two years later the publishers of the Guinness Book of Records awarded him a unique rhodium disc to commemorate his stature as the most successful musician of all time. The quality of his output remained erratic, and so did his ability to maintain a stable band – the Wings line-up that toured the UK in 1979 was the sixth in eight years – but his commercial instincts were undimmed.
His final live appearance of the decade was a London concert to raise money for the suffering people of Kampuchea. Three months earlier United Nations secretary general Kurt Waldheim had begged the Beatles to reunite for the related cause of the Vietnamese boat children. The New York Post exclaimed, 'The Beatles Are Back! Exclusive: Fab 4 Reunited For Big UN Concert In NY'. Other newspapers suggested that three of the Beatles had agreed to take part, and that only Lennon was reluctant. The speculation continued in London, where there was general disappointment that McCartney was only joined by the assorted stars who had performed at his 'Rockestra' sessions the previous year – none of them a fellow member of the Beatles.
The following month Wings prepared for their first tour of Japan. Two days before his departure, McCartney is alleged to have phoned the Dakota and told Ono that he wanted to offer Lennon 'some dynamite weed'. As usual, Ono kept him at bay. At Tokyo airport customs officials found the 'weed', barely concealed in McCartney's baggage. His fellow band members had been told 'to keep our pockets clean and to have no telltale signs' of drug use, as guitarist Steve Holly recalled. Either McCartney believed he was too famous to be searched, or subliminally he wanted to sabotage the tour – which turned out to be Wings' bathetic swansong. He was held in jail for six days, under threat of a decade's imprisonment, before being deported without charge. Some chroniclers have suggested that the Lennons tipped off the Japanese police because they didn't want McCartney to stay in their favourite hotel suite; others that Ono interceded on McCartney's behalf with the Japanese authorities. Both stories rely on a ludicrously far-fetched notion of Ono's power. In any case, McCartney confirmed that both Harrison and Lennon had sent messages of support, though Starkey didn't, explaining, 'I didn't even have his phone number.'
With Wings sidelined, McCartney issued a lacklustre solo album, donning his 1963 stage costume for a promotional video, as Harrison had done four years earlier. When, inevitably, he was quizzed about the reclusive Lennon, he said, 'The last time I asked John to write a song with me, for old time's sake, he said he was too rich to bother.' It was widely reported that Lennon was keen to sell his 25 per cent stake in Apple, abandon his multiple properties and sail around the world on a yacht called Isis. Instead, he set out on another numerologically approved journey, to the apartheid citadel of South Africa, from where he contacted his old flame May Pang. A decade earlier he had campaigned for political freedom; now he was happy to vacation in a country built on racial discrimination. A month later he sailed to Bermuda, where he was joined by his son Sean and his assistant Fred Seaman, who brought portable recording equipment, and Lennon began to assemble the songs for his first album in five years. Seaman alleged later that Yoko Ono was about to tell Lennon that she wanted a divorce, but changed her mind – perhaps because she glimpsed the possibility of a return to the limelight via her husband's new project. Jack Douglas, chosen as the album's producer, recalled Ono telling him, 'I'm going to have a few songs on it, and John doesn't know yet.' A few days later Lennon sent Douglas a demo tape of his new material, with a note that read, 'I think it's kind of the same old shit,' and a spoken message that the songs could always be given to Starkey if they weren't up to scratch.
Although Lennon claimed that the album had come to him in an intense flurry of inspiration, that description only applied to one song, the poignant ballad 'Woman'. The rest betrayed years of agonised patchwork, reshaping melodic and lyrical fragments until Lennon could finally bear to present them to the world. 'He wasn't sure if he could do it,' Douglas recalled. 'He was very, very insecure about this stuff. He didn't think he had it any more. He thought he was too old. He just couldn't write. He couldn't sing. He couldn't play. Nothing.'
His feeling of emptiness, his fear that his life had been meaningless, was enhanced when he read I Me Mine, a leather-bound anthology of George Harrison's lyrics accompanied by a brief and decidedly spotty memoir. Lennon complained that Harrison had omitted him from his life story, but neither McCartney nor the Beatles made more than cameo appearances in the text. 'George's not disowning the Beatles,' explained his ghostwriter, Derek Taylor, 'but it was a long time ago and actually a short part of his life.' It was hard enough, Taylor recalled, to persuade Harrison to mention his first wife, Pattie Boyd, let alone acknowledge an era that he wanted to forget.
When he entered the recording studio in August 1980 to record the aptly titled Double Fantasy, Lennon was embarrassed to discover that 'Woman' sounded like an old Beatles tune, 'because I'm still feeling that I'm supposed to be macho, Butch Cassidy or something, tough Lennon with the leather jacket and swearing and all that'. Little of that attitude translated to his new music, which was dominated by love songs for Ono, confessions of marital guilt (one with the marvellously self-abasing title 'Forgive Me My Little Flower Princess'), with just one revelatory lyric ('Watching the Wheels'), in which he mustered an unapologetic defence of his five-year seclusion.
Lennon's insecurity was almost instinctive, though the persona he offered to his fellow musicians was confident and commanding. But there were limits to his power. Two compelling performances with the band Cheap Trick were vetoed by Ono, who – ignorant of the group's commercial profile – complained, 'Why should they get a free
ride on John's coat-tails?' As Jack Douglas explained, 'John loved [the tracks], but he was not one to argue with Mother. Plus he was trying to get laid at that time, and he was having a hard time, so John wasn't going to argue with her.'
Douglas claimed that 'very rarely did I ever have [the Lennons] in the room at the same time. It just didn't work. John always wanted to get into Yoko's stuff and she could not bear it. There was already too much competition between those two.' Ono was definitely present, however, on the day Paul McCartney phoned the studio, asking to speak to Lennon. Instead, he reached Ono, who told him that Lennon could not be disturbed. 'John was looking to get hooked up with Paul, to do some writing,' Douglas said later. 'I can't speak for Yoko. Maybe she thought it'd be a distraction. I don't think it would have been.' One more opportunity for a Lennon/McCartney reunion had passed.
The couple allowed reporters from Playboy magazine – its ethos at odds with their feminist stance – to shadow them during the sessions. Then they ruined Playboy's exclusive by talking to Newsweek, who published the Lennons' first interview in five years. Ono confirmed that they were planning to shed their shares in Apple; Lennon spoke eloquently about how his retreat from fame had enabled him to regain touch with his inner self, beyond the Beatle image. In 1970 his RollingStone interview had complemented his Plastic Ono Band album. Ten years on, his rhetoric outstripped Double Fantasy. Where his music sounded hesitant and forced, his conversation was vivid, witty and focused. And once again he used the press to denigrate his former colleagues and their music, and to promote the image of his choice: a loving husband and father who had a clear vision of his own humanity and the pitfalls of celebrity, and who had been seized by a gloriously uncontrollable spasm of creativity.
In mid-September 1980 Lennon and Ono agreed to sign with Geffen Records. Lennon told David Geffen that he didn't care about his own success; this was Ono's moment to shine. And most critics agreed, reckoning her contributions more contemporary (and hence relevant) than her husband's. Charles Shaar Murray, who had recorded with Lennon in 1971, noted that 'all the most interesting material on DoubleFantasy is Yoko's . . . I wish that Lennon had kept his big happy mouth shut until he had something to say that was even vaguely relevant to those of us not married to Yoko Ono.' But Lennon's fans were simply delighted that Double Fantasy existed, and it was soon selling in respectable, if not incendiary, style.
The album was presented to executives at Geffen's distributor, Warner Brothers, in late September. That afternoon Lennon's old friend Derek Taylor arrived at Warners with the master tapes of a George Harrison album, Somewhere in England. 'Later I found that John's album had been much the better received,' Taylor recalled. Warners president Mo Ostin told him, 'If George wants a million-seller, it's not on here. It's not current, and it won't sell.' Ostin invoked a clause in Harrison's contract whereby Warners could reject a maximum of four songs, and asked for changes. 'If that's what they want, they can have it,' Harrison told Taylor, and he returned to the studio in November with four new songs, including an assault on the shortsightedness of record executives entitled 'Blood From a Clone'.
First another project had to be completed. That summer Richard Starkey had approached his three former colleagues for assistance in making a record. McCartney was the first to agree, supervising a series of sessions in July. Four months later Starkey visited Harrison's home studio before flying to New York with his girlfriend, actor Barbara Bach, for dinner with the Lennons. It was the night after Thanksgiving, and the two couples celebrated in style. Lennon promised to work with Starkey in January, and handed over a tape of several new songs. 'He was really up,' Starkey recalled.
That morning Paul McCartney had appeared on TV's Good MorningAmerica. He was asked why Lennon seemed, in his Newsweek interview, to resent him. 'I don't know,' McCartney replied. 'I actually keep a bit quiet now because anything I say he gets a bit resentful. It's a weird one. I don't quite know why he thinks like that. I really just shut up these days.' If there was an edge to McCartney's voice, it was because he was feeling jilted. According to Jack Douglas, McCartney and Lennon had agreed to collaborate on material for Starkey to record. 'There was a writing session that was cancelled by a third party,' Douglas claimed. '[John] was waiting for Paul to show up. He was told that Paul did not show. Paul was told John was too busy.' At least McCartney could relish his memory of their final phone call: 'It was just a very happy conversation about his family, my family . . . I remember he said, "Oh God, I'm like Aunt Mimi, padding round here in me dressing gown . . . This housewife wants a career!"'
The next day Lennon visited Apple's New York lawyers, who were preparing a court case against the producers of Beatlemania. He swore an affidavit, which included the startling statement: 'I and the three other former Beatles have plans to stage a reunion concert, to be recorded, filmed and marketed around the world.' The claim was obviously designed to reinforce the case against
the imitation Beatles by suggesting that their activities might impinge on the authentic version of the group. But it amounted to little less than perjury as there was no definite plan for a reunion. One of Lennon's staff attempted to contact McCartney at MPL to ask him to support the deposition, but without success. *36
Between 5 and 8 December Lennon and Ono undertook a second wave of promotional interviews for their album, taking in the BBC, RKO Radio and Rolling Stone magazine. He talked excitedly to Jack Douglas about his plans to return to Britain after New Year as part of a world tour, and admitted that he was looking forward to rearranging Beatles standards such as 'She Loves You' and 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'. On 6 December he phoned his Aunt Mimi to tell her he was coming home.
Two days later Lennon rose early after a late-night session with Douglas working on Ono's eerie rock-disco track 'Walking on Thin Ice'. He ate breakfast around the corner from the Dakota and had a haircut, while Ono phoned journalist Ray Connolly in London to invite him to interview Lennon the following day. His cheeks rash-raw after a clumsy shave, Lennon posed for a photo session with Annie Leibovitz, looking skeletally thin but controlled and intense. 'This is the way we used to wear our hair,' he said proudly of his 1950s hoodlum cut, 'but it takes a lot of keeping up.' He undertook a lengthy radio interview, dismissing the spirit of the 1960s with an intensity that suggested a man high on adrenaline or more artificial stimulants. Then he signed a copy of Double Fantasy for a chubby, strangely reticent fan in the entrance to the Dakota and rode downtown in a limousine with Ono to the Record Plant studio.
'We were really celebrating, the three of us,' Douglas recalled a few days later. 'Everything was going right at that point.' In retrospect, however, he confessed to a more chilling memory of Lennon's final session: 'There were some strange things said in the control room. I don't want to talk about it. I erased the tape because it was a real painful tape.' To this day he refuses to discuss the subject further, leaving boundless scope for speculation about what he heard – Lennon predicting his imminent death, perhaps? There have been rumours that Lennon was seriously ill; that his pale, tightly etched features owed less to a careful dietary regime than to the onset of cancer or an equally brutal disease. Douglas's enigmatic comments lend an enduring sense of mystery to the final hours of Lennon's life.
When David Geffen arrived around 9 p.m. that night, he found no hint of doom: 'When I walked in, John was smiling and jumping around, dancing. He said, "Wait'll you hear Yoko's record. It's a smash!"' Geffen suggested they have dinner the following night, though they didn't need to decide yet where they were going. 'He said, "Yeah, that's right,"' Geffen recalled. 'And we said goodbye.'
'They wanted to get something to eat,' Douglas recalled. 'John was going to head over to the Stage Deli and get some sandwiches, and then go home. Normally I rode home with them, but I had another project to do. The last thing John said to me was, "See you tomorrow morning, bright and early" . . . I saw him with his new leather jacket that he'd gotten at the Gap a few weeks
earlier, which he
loved, and just this big smile on his face.'
Lennon and Ono walked outside to the limousine, and during the journey they talked briefly about where they could get some food. They arrived home at 10.54 p.m. EST; six minutes later and the entrance to the Dakota would have been locked against intruders. Their driver could have taken them inside the safety of the courtyard, but Lennon asked him to stop at the kerb. He got out of the car first, and strode towards the entrance, clutching cassettes of Ono's song. As he neared the cubicle where the night guard was sitting, a voice called from the shadows: 'Mr Lennon?' Then there was only a barrage of noise that echoed through his head. He stumbled forward a few paces, out of the instinct to survive, and fell to the ground. A torrent of blood, fragments of bone and fleshy tissues surged in his chest and was propelled out of his mouth, and oozed from the wounds torn in his torso and neck. His face was grotesquely squashed against the floor. There was a gurgle, which might have been a word lost in the ebb of his life force, and slowly his body rolled onto its side, having served its final purpose. Then the scene reels away, as if in horror, to a world from which John Lennon would always be absent.
Chapter 9
It doesn't matter how many times we deny the reunion stories, it'll still go on. Even if there's only one of us left, they'll say he's getting it together with himself.
Richard Starkey, 1981
'We had talked about living until we were 80,' Yoko Ono told a reporter two days afterwards. 'We even drew up lists of all the things we could do together for all those years.' 'Three or four days after it happened,' recalled Jack Douglas, 'Yoko and I went back into the studio and put together some collages with John's voice and music. We did that for two nights. That seemed to provide some kind of therapy or release.' By then the body had been cremated and the ashes returned to the Dakota. The final picture of John Lennon was obtained by the NationalEnquirer: his body lay on the mortuary slab, showing obvious signs of the autopsy knife. 'I kept telling my staff, who were hiding razors and newspapers from me, to show me everything,' Ono revealed later. 'I saw the death photo. John looked peaceful, like in the back of the Imagine cover.' But rumours persist that the autopsy was filmed and that mortuary attendants posed for grotesque pictures with the corpse.
You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle for the Soul of the Beatles Page 33