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

by Peter Doggett

  Twenty years earlier Harrison had dreamed of joining a collaborative, fully democratic unit like Bob Dylan's former backing crew The Band. Now his wish was fulfilled. 'We wanted it to be something that warmed the heart,' Petty explained, and their album – apparently effortless, spontaneous, mischievous and instantly attractive – did exactly that. McCartney raised a dissenting voice: 'I don't really see the point,' he said later, admitting, 'I'm not really in with a crowd like that.' But he was out of sync with the widespread sense of joy that the Wilburys engendered – only tarnished by the death of Roy Orbison soon after their album was released. There was a second album in 1990, rougher and less tuneful than the first, and, as Petty recalled, 'There was always a lot of talk about the Wilburys doing a performance. You know, George often talked about it. Especially when we'd have a few drinks he'd get very keen on the idea. And then the next day he'd not be so keen on it.'

  Faced with the choice between a partnership of equals and the renewal of a relationship that had no history of equality, Harrison's decision was easy. In November 1989 McCartney again raised the possibility of collaborating with his younger colleague. Harrison's response was rapid, and curt: there could be no reunion of the Beatles, he stated, 'as long as John Lennon remains dead'.

  Chapter 10

  We are the only ones who know each other. We knew what it was like. They are the only two that don't look at me like I'm a Beatle. They look at me like I'm a Ringo, and I look at him like he's a Paul or a George.

  Richard Starkey, 1992

  When Albert Goldman published his 600-page biography The Lives of John Lennon in August 1988, Paul McCartney was outraged. 'Boycott this book,' he told Lennon's fans. 'It's disgusting that someone like Goldman can make up any bunch of lies he sees fit, and can be allowed to republish them without fear of repudiation.' 'He ought to be ashamed of himself,' Goldman replied. 'The generation of the sixties were scathing in their criticism of everybody. Now, suddenly, they've become very prissy and moralistic when someone says something they don't want to hear about themselves. They can dish it out, but they sure can't take it.'

  Goldman portrayed Lennon as mummy-fixated, drug-riddled, instinctively violent, psychologically flawed, a bully who might have been responsible for the death of his friend Stuart Sutcliffe, a closet homosexual and the assaulter of his baby son. Even at his most affectionate – and Goldman claimed above all to have been an admirer of Lennon's work – the writer employed terms such as 'genetic brain damage', 'violence' of 'an epileptic character', 'extreme passivity', 'gullible', 'very intimidating' and 'threatening'.

  The Lives of John Lennon was lousy with errors of fact and interpretation, speculative in the extreme, ill-willed and awash with snobbery. Yet Goldman pinpointed Lennon's almost clinical need for domination by a strong woman; the dark ambiguity of a man of peace being governed by violence, either vented or repressed; the unmistakable decline in his work after he left England in 1971; and the instinctive need to believe in a force greater than himself, which led him from guru to guru, each obsession spilling into disillusionment and creative despair.

  Ironically, the book – a global best-seller, which nevertheless vanished from history after Goldman's death in 1994 – provided a cause around which Ono and McCartney could unite. Their rapprochement was aided by the efforts of their lawyers to settle the lawsuits that divided them. After motions were granted and denied, appeals heard and overturned, all the parties in their various disputes finally realised that extravagant legal costs were threatening to outstrip their potential earnings. The most obstinate of their disagreements concerned the McCartney override and the associated wrangles over EMI's royalty payments. After more than a year of discussions, Apple, the Beatles and EMI were finally ready to settle. The documents were officially signed on 7 November 1989, and the terms were kept secret, though EMI would no longer be able to proceed with Beatles projects without the express approval of Apple and its four owners. 'The settlement was about ten feet thick,' Harrison complained. 'I don't think anybody but the lawyers read it. It's a good feeling to be done with it. The funny thing is, most of the people who were involved with the reason that lawsuit came about aren't even in the companies any more. So the people at Capitol and EMI had to take on the karma of their predecessors, and I'm sure that they're relieved too.'

  Under the agreement all four Beatles would now benefit from the improved terms that had been enjoyed by McCartney. But as Harrison noted, 'It doesn't wash away the politics of it. Some of the original causes can't go away, in my mind. Because there are certain things that never should have happened in the first place. If I stab you in the back and you happen to get to the hospital and don't die . . . you may not want to see me in case I do it again.'

  During the final year of negotiations Richard Starkey's life was transformed. His alcoholism had spiralled out of control in the late summer of 1988. 'Years I've lost, absolute years,' he recalled. 'I've no idea what happened. I lived in a blackout. I don't know how I'd get to bed every night. We didn't know. That's how crazy it gets.' By early September he was drinking and snorting cocaine to violent excess. Finally, Starkey and Barbara Bach realised that they needed help, and booked themselves into an Arizona rehab clinic. 'Heading for the detox centre,' he confessed, 'I was as drunk as a skunk. But after the detox I felt things had to change. I didn't know it then, but I can survive without alcohol and drugs.' After six weeks the couple flew home to England, determined to live without the stimulants that had protected them from reality. 'I get bewildered and frightened,' Starkey admitted. 'If I live day to day, I usually have a great day. If I start living in the future or the past, it gets silly.' As one observer noted, 'He is resentful of the past, frightened of the future.' 'God watches out for me,' Starkey said, 'and he laughs when I make plans.'

  Yet plans were his chief defence against his illness. In July 1989 Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band began their first tour. Like the Traveling Wilburys, Starkey's was a gathering of veterans, but unlike Harrison's project, his band was rooted firmly in the past. There was scepticism when the initial line-up was announced, as it featured some notorious excessives, such as Rick Danko of The Band and Billy Preston. But Starkey resisted all temptations, and his self-esteem grew as he discovered the affection with which he was still regarded, by musicians and fans alike. The All-Starr Band became his regular touring vehicle for the next two decades, its line-up gradually declining in quality but its purpose – keeping its star out of trouble – steadfast. The consistency on which the band was built could be irksome for its members, though, as Todd Rundgren recalled: 'Maybe on a good night I was only bored half the time, while on a bad night it was all the time. They only knew a couple of my songs, so I had to play the same damned song every night. But there's a karmic aspect to it. I wouldn't be in the music business if it weren't for the Beatles, so when Ringo Starr calls, you have to answer!'

  One casualty of Starkey's reformed lifestyle was the album on which he had been working with Chips Moman. 'He wanted to put it on hold,' Moman complained. 'That didn't seem fair because I'd been working for months on this album and put a lot of my money into it. I'm not as rich as Ringo! It went on for months. Finally I said, "Ringo, I'm gonna put this album out. It's taken me a year to get you on the phone. Send me your picture. If not, I'll just have an artist draw one." Now, I wasn't really about to do that, but I had to draw matters to a head.' Lawyers were summoned, and everyone else ended up out of pocket: Starkey paid Moman compensation, which according to Moman amounted to less than his studio costs. All that remained of the album was a pile of tape boxes in Moman's barn which he was legally barred from playing to anyone.

  The guardian of Starkey's new career was his business manager Hilary Gerrard. The son of a European émigré to London who adopted the surname after finding himself in Gerrard Street, he is perhaps the most enigmatic character in the entire Beatles' story, and has rarely been photographed. Charming or abrupt as the occasion requires, his manner has been compared to a
n East End cabbie, albeit with the discreet ponytail and ear stud of a music business maverick. It was Gerrard who supervised the formation of Widgeon Investments in 1989, to handle the money that would accrue from Starkey's adventures in sobriety and send it on vacation to the Caribbean. This was a time of corporate consolidation. Through the 1980s Paul McCartney had launched a series of British companies using his trademarked juggler logo, each handling a specific interest in his creative and business portfolio. Now his empire expanded again, with the formation of companies such as McCartney Enterprises and MPL Tours. After a decade in which his appearances had been restricted to charity events and his nerve profoundly shaken by Lennon's murder, McCartney was ready to return to the road.

  He had last toured in 1979, with Wings and a repertoire that touched only gently on the Beatles. Now, at last, he was prepared to acknowledge his lifetime's work. Buoyed by the reception for his inventive Flowers in the Dirt album, he fashioned a schedule that would eventually involve 87 concerts around the globe across the course of six months, in venues ranging from a 5,000-seat arena in Norway to a world-record stadium crowd of 184,000 in Brazil. Few, if any, of his peers could have conceived such an ambitious project or fulfilled it with such panache. His lack of spontaneity was apparent – even his ad-libbed introductions were carefully scripted – and sometimes his voice displayed signs of weariness and age. But any misgivings were outweighed by the sheer daring of the enterprise, which involved a set of 30 songs or more, equally divided between his solo career and his Beatles catalogue. McCartney supervised everything with his customary attention to detail, from the film presentation that preceded him on stage to the arrangements of such unexpected delights as the closing medley from Abbey Road, delivered with stunning fidelity to the original record. The tour virtually defied criticism, and it established McCartney as arguably the most popular touring attraction in the world.

  Facing a press conference in every city, McCartney inevitably annoyed the ever-sensitive George Harrison. A casual admission that he would be interested in working with Harrison brought a swift and sarcastic response. As the tour ended, Harrison was still muttering discontentedly, 'He's left it a bit late, is all I can say to that. I'm entrenched with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, and I don't see any reason to go back to an old situation.' So McCartney was forced to defend himself once more: 'George has taken the liberty of answering that question with shocking regularity for you media guys. He's had a field day getting publicity from his negative responses. So obviously it's never going to happen, no matter what I think.'

  Beneath this machismo, a healthier line of communication had been opened. The Beatles' wives had been blamed unfairly for provoking the group's demise 20 years earlier. Now they became a means of reconciliation. When the organisation Parents For Safe Food was launched in 1989, Barbara Bach and Olivia Harrison became active campaigners, and the loyal Derek Taylor wrote the campaign's handbook. A few months later Olivia Harrison enlisted Bach, Yoko Ono and Linda McCartney to raise money for starving Romanian orphans. The Traveling Wilburys contributed a single to the cause, and a charity album followed featuring both Harrison and Starkey.

  Other well-intentioned projects proved more divisive. Early in 1989 Cynthia Lennon was approached by promoter Sid Bernstein, who wanted to stage a charity concert to mark John Lennon's 50th birthday in October 1990. Cynthia lent her support, and secured the tentative involvement of Michael Jackson, Ravi Shankar and Paul McCartney. Later that year Cynthia attended a concert by her son Julian Lennon at which his half-brother Sean made an emotional cameo appearance. Backstage, Lennon's two wives discussed Bernstein's plan. Cynthia Lennon returned home believing that Ono would co-operate, only to hear that Ono had withdrawn her approval and was planning her own anniversary event.

  On 5 May 1990 Ono staged her tribute to her late husband in Liverpool. The attendance was disappointing, and an occasion that was intended to generate a vast sum for Ono's newly incorporated charity, the Spirit Foundation UK, collapsed into financial controversy. Meanwhile, Bernstein continued to dream, his next fantasy involving a Beatles reunion with Julian Lennon at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. As United Nations adviser Hans Janitchek said, 'The significant thing is to bring the Beatles together. If they played "Happy Days Are Here Again" at the Berlin Wall, wouldn't that be terrific?' Twenty years after their dissolution, the Beatles were still carrying the weight of the world's expectations.

  Maintaining a safe distance, McCartney and Starkey contributed videotaped performances to Ono's concert – Starkey revisiting the Beatles' 'I Call Your Name' with gusto, and McCartney offering a banal medley of the songs from the group's first single. But Harrison refused to participate. 'I don't think John would like it, and I don't want to keep dabbling in the past either. Personally, I've made a pact with myself not to get involved in anything to do with ex-Beatles. The Beatles ceased to exist in 1969. They meant whatever they meant to various people across the world, and it was fun at the time, but it has affected the rest of our lives. Let sleeping dogs lie.'

  Some dogs were reluctant to snooze. Having secured an undertaking that Apple Computers would never become involved with the music business, Neil Aspinall and Apple's lawyers discovered in late 1988 that the American firm was planning to add a sound chip to its computers which could produce melodic content. On 29 October the Apple vs Apple dispute reached Court 53 of the London High Court, starting a hearing that ran for 116 days, plus ten days more at the London Court of Appeal and another at the European Court in Brussels. The two sides had gathered evidence from dozens of witnesses prepared to testify either that nobody could confuse Apple Computers with the Beatles, or that Apple Corps was a world-famous company whose trademark was being abused by an American upstart.

  It was now fifteen years since Apple Corps had last actively functioned as a record company, and it was a moot point whether its name and logo were more associated with the Beatles or with pioneering computer technology. But suddenly Apple Corps announced a global relaunch. Now it was once again a record label, and to show how seriously it took its responsibilities it launched a salvo of court actions in a bewildering variety of directions. It won a High Court injunction against EMI, who had been preparing to release the 1973 compilations by the Beatles (1962– 1966 and 1967–1970) on CD without securing the necessary approval. Apple also targeted Sony, which via a complex series of sub-licensing deals had emerged – as much to its own surprise as anyone else's – with a CD of the Beatles' legally contentious Star-Club recordings from 1962. The record was swiftly withdrawn. But the Beatles' most ambitious move was effectively to sue themselves, in a move worthy of the satirical genius of Eric Idle's Rutles film. Apple had approved the release of a video documentary about the Beatles' 1964 arrival in America entitled The First US Visit. The UK rights were licensed to Richard Branson's Virgin company; but Apple then served Virgin with a writ to cancel the release – for motives that only became clear when the Anthology project was announced a few weeks later.

  On 11 October 1991, just as it threatened to become the longest hearing in British legal history, the battle between the rival Apples came to an unexpected halt when the two sides announced that they had reached a settlement. The long-suffering Mr Justice Ferris noted wryly, 'I do not know whether my surprise at this development at this stage outweighs my relief at not having to write a definitive judgement.' The terms of the agreement were believed to include a payment from Apple Computers of some $29 million and a pledge not to stray into music again. It seemed a comprehensive victory for Apple Corps, and it was surely a strange coincidence that its rebirth as a record company was forgotten soon after the lawsuit was won.

  The Apple empire was now secure for the final decade of the century, with Neil Aspinall still controlling its activities with an eye for detail and a tenacious refusal to give ground to any opponent. The company's ethos now represented the polar opposite of its original philosophy – unless, that is, one remembered that Apple was originally envi
saged as a method of creative tax reduction. Each Beatle was still represented by a director on the board, which comprised Yoko Ono Lennon, John Eastman (replacing his father Lee, who died later that year aged 81), Denis O'Brien and Hilary Gerrard. The same personnel controlled all the other surviving Beatle companies: Apple Electronics Ltd, Apple Management Ltd, Apple Publicity Ltd (all three effectively extinct), Subafilms Ltd, Apple Publishing Ltd, Python Music Ltd and the mother of them all, The Beatles Ltd. And each Beatle/director combination could boast his/her individual corporate maze to keep the accountants occupied.

  Nobody's maze was more circuitous than George Harrison's. The 'money-go-round' (to borrow a phrase from Ray Davies) invented by Denis O'Brien had already scared the Monty Python troupe. Michael Palin remembered O'Brien showing them 'a blackboard, with all these various companies here, there and everywhere, and it was very good, real state-of-the-art tax avoidance, mentioning lots of countries in the world and various names of people there who would run our affairs in the Bahamas or the Caymans or Panama'. For a while each of the comedians was too embarrassed to admit that he didn't understand O'Brien's explanation; when they realised that they were all equally bamboozled, they decided not to sign up for this financial mystery tour. 'I'd observed him quite a lot,' said Eric Idle, 'and I also knew George really, really well, and I said, "You know, you want to be very careful. There's something going on."'