Paul thought it was a good idea, but said Brian would have to agree to it. He would help me write a letter to Brian Epstein, their manager. There and then he sat me down and suggested points to mention, such as my Sunday Times position, which would impress Brian, that I had done three books and this would be a serious, big book.
My appointment with Brian was for 25 January 1967, but he cancelled at the last moment. I saw him the next day, at his house in Belgravia, 24 Chapel Street. A butler let me in and I sat around for a while, admiring his fine furniture and noticing two oil paintings by Lowry. Despite having met Lowry, briefly, I had at the time not really been aware he painted in colour, in oils, not just matchstick pencil drawings.
Brian appeared looking smooth and healthy, with rather chubby pink cheeks, immaculately dressed and coiffured, very much a successful London impresario, if perhaps of a slightly bygone age as opposed to what we liked to think were the fashionable sixties.
It’s hard to believe now that he was only thirty-two, just two years older than me. Until relatively recently he had been working in a record shop in Liverpool. Now his habitat was Belgravia and Mayfair and the West End, a sophisticated man of the world, so at home in the best parts of London.
He seemed a bit distracted, as if his mind was elsewhere, but he got out some tapes of ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields’ and played them to me, watching my face with paternal pride. I was astounded by ‘Strawberry Fields’. It was so discordant, avant-garde, experimental that I wondered what on earth the fans would make of it. It was clearly their biggest leap forward so far. If I got agreement for the book, I felt my belief would be correct – that the Beatles were still breaking boundaries, which not everyone was currently thinking.
I asked Brian what ‘Strawberry Fields’ meant, but he had no idea. He appeared to have little knowledge of the background to either song. He then quickly packed them away in a safe saying he couldn’t be too careful. Some earlier tapes had been stolen and ended up on pirate radio.
We eventually got round to my project. He seemed to think it was a good idea, but would have to talk to all the Beatles, so we arranged another meeting.
At this next meeting, Charles Pick from Heinemann came with me. He had done my first two books and I already had a contract from him for The Class of ’66. I had expected Richard Simon, my agent from Curtis Brown, to meet us there as well, but in walked a tall elderly gentleman who said he was Spencer Curtis Brown. He was the founder of the firm. I did not know he was still alive. Having heard about the meeting, he was keen to meet Epstein, a man of the moment, and get into his house.
I let Spencer discuss the details of the contract, which appeared to be going ahead, though nothing officially had been said. Brian then offered a clause in the contract none of us had suggested. He said he would give no access to the Beatles to any other writer for two years after my book came out. We were talking in early 1967. The book would come out in late 1968, if all went well. So we would be given till 1970 to have a clear run, with no rival author being able to have access to the Beatles.
It was a nice offer, but at the time, I did not really think of it as particularly important. The Beatles would surely be with us for decades to come, so they would obviously in the future allow other biographies.
Never for one moment, during the whole of the next two years while working on the book, did I envisage that I would end up as the only ever authorised biographer.
Charles was willing to transfer the contract for The Class of ’66 to the Beatles biography, paying the same advance, which was £3,000. Not a huge amount, in fact it turned out I got less as we agreed with Brian that a third of the Beatles biog would go to the Beatles. I would also have to do a bit of foreign travelling, which might be expensive. But I was very happy, thrilled at the prospect of talking to the Beatles, visiting all their homes, watching them at work. Not all the directors at Heinemann were as thrilled. ‘We know everything we want to know about the Beatles,’ said one, ‘and anyway their bubble will burst, like all pop groups.’ I said they were more than a pop group – this book could be a piece of social history. ‘Who needs social history?’
I started work on the book on 7 February 1967 – and that same day I got a call from a funny-sounding woman who said she was called Yoko Ono. She had been told I was the most eminent columnist in London and she wanted me to appear in a film she was doing about bare bottoms. I told her to piss off. I assumed it was some joker from the Observer winding me up. She convinced me it was serious, so I decided to go along and watch the film being shot. It might give me a funny story. But I said no, I would not appear in it. How kind. But my agent would not allow it.
She had put an advert in The Stage – the actors’ newspaper – asking actors if they would like to be in a film, their appearance guaranteed, but there would be no money.
When I arrived at the address off Park Lane, they were queuing down the pavement. One by one they were let in, through an ordinary front door of an ordinary-looking house, told to drop their trousers and knickers. They then stood on a children’s roundabout where a fixed camera focused on each bare bottom as it went round. Once round, they stepped off, put their pants back on, were ushered out of the door and back on the pavement again, all a bit bemused.
I wrote a fairly amused, mickey-taking piece about it, trying not to ridicule it too much, in case Yoko might object. She rang me afterwards and said thanks, it was great publicity, and the first time she had made it into a UK publication.
I did not meet her again in the flesh till one day in 1968 I walked into Abbey Road studios, working on the Beatles book, to listen to their latest efforts. There she was, entwined with John. Both of them appeared to be in a transcendental state. The other three Beatles were staring at them, clearly thinking, ‘Who the fuck is this?’
Meanwhile, back in 1967, with the contract signed, I don’t know how I imagined I was going to cope with doing a major biography and still running Atticus, though I had managed so far to balance books and journalism, a film script and a BBC play. Over the last five years, in fact during most of the last seven years since we were married, we had both been writing away in all of our spare time. Even when Margaret had two children, and gave up teaching, she was clearing the kitchen table every evening when they were in bed, getting out her pen and ink and sheets of blank paper.
I didn’t really want to give up the Sunday Times. I had yearned for so long to be Atticus, and it still gave me such pleasure. I always thought, and still do, that I can’t really turn anything down because very soon no one will be offering anything, so I have to grab everything while I can.
But with the Beatles book, I realised I would have to spend a lot of time in Liverpool, going to see their parents and friends, and to Hamburg of course, where their career had really begun, and probably to America.
I was still wondering what to do, to leave the paper or not, give up journalism, when Harry Evans arrived. He had gone to the same Durham college as me, but was eight years older, and I had first met him in Manchester. I had last heard of him in Darlington, where he was editor of the Northern Echo. Out of the blue, he rang me up, saying he was down in London for an interview on the Sunday Times. I was the only person he knew on the paper. Denis Hamilton was offering him the job of managing editor. I suppose Hamilton was impressed by the job Harry had done on the Northern Echo and also attracted by his northeastern connections.
On cross-examination, Harry had to admit that being offered the position of managing editor meant nothing. He had no remit, no staff and no department he would be in charge of. Being a space baron, controlling pages and journalists, is the only vital thing for any newspaper executive. I said it sounded a non-job. And anyway, he was a provincial editor; they would eat him alive in London at the Sunday Times. My advice was not to take the job.
But he did. He and his wife Enid rented a house near us on Highgate West Hill and then bought a house, also nearby, on the Holly Lodge estate.
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bsp; Harry spent about six months moving around various departments, knocking them into shape. Unlike almost every other journalist I have ever met, Harry could do everything – write leaders, economic analysis, political columns, sports articles, crop photographs, lay out pages, sub edit, encourage and enthuse the troops. But of course as Managing Editor (Fuck All), which was roughly his title, according to the sceptics, i.e. me, you get taken for granted, get landed with all the rubbish jobs, have to sort out the awkward squad, don’t appear to have achieved anything.
But then he had the most amazing stroke of luck. In 1967 Roy Thomson bought The Times. Denis Hamilton became editor-in-chief of both newspapers. William Rees-Mogg, who had been deputy to Hamilton on the Sunday Times, became editor of The Times. And Harry became editor of the Sunday Times. So much for me telling him to go back to Darlington and be happy as a provincial journalist.
I was by then well into the Beatles biog, which of course I had told Harry about. As the new editor, he was very keen to acquire the serialisation rights for the paper. So we did a deal. I promised him he could have it for the paper. He would let me give up Atticus, but stay on the staff as chief features writer. It meant I had a roving brief, able to go abroad when I wanted, at the paper’s expense, as long as I was doing some interviewing or features for them.
In August 1967 I went to New York to interview U Thant, Secretary General of the UN, and then up to Toronto to interview Marshall McLuhan. Both interviews made the front page of the Review section of the paper. So I had fulfilled my part of the new arrangement.
What I remember of U Thant was being allowed into his private flat in the UN building. When he was called away, I peeped into his bedroom. Around the room were loads of unopened boxes, presents to him from world leaders. One was from the Pope, which clearly he had never opened.
Marshall McLuhan was an internationally known academic and professor. His work on the media is even more relevant today than it was then, as it he was he who coined the phrase ‘The Medium is the Message’.
He started boasting about the research he always did for all his books and lectures, so I asked if I could see it. He took me into a room in his house filled with cardboard boxes. In each of them he had shoved in newspaper cuttings, just torn out, unfiled, unmarked, unorganised. That was his research material.
While in New York, after I’d done U Thant, I spent most of my time working on the Beatles book. I went to the stadiums where they had played, meeting the organisers of their various concerts, such as Sid Bernstein, met record company executives, and also American Beatles fans who had been there, screaming when they first arrived, still talking about their Carnegie Hall performances or seeing them on Ed Sullivan. Their memories were all fresh, as their American debut had been only three years earlier.
I managed to organise a trip to Hamburg, going to visit a state-registered brothel, which had just become legal, and did a feature about it for the Colour Magazine. But mainly I was following the Beatles’ tracks, visiting the clubs they had played at.
I secured an interview with Astrid Kirchherr, who had been engaged to Stu Sutcliffe, the Beatle who died of a brain tumour. She was sitting on a portfolio of what I still think are the best ever photographs of the Beatles – yet she was refusing to capitalise on them. Instead, she was working as a barmaid in what was partly a lesbian bar, dancing with customers when required.
I suppose the best fun, the most exciting part of doing the Beatles biog was sitting for months in Abbey Road, watching them perform. Along with of course visiting them at home, interviewing each of them on their own, one to one.
I was keen for them to meet Margaret, so she could see what I was spending all my time doing, rushing round the world. Margaret was not at all interested in their music, having no interest in music at all. And she did not really want to meet them. She suspected it would reveal the worst parts of my character – i.e. arse licking, hanging on their words, charming for England, being a total creep, hero-worshipping them. I always denied this. And was rather upset by her accusations.
In my mind, interviewing people for the previous ten years or so, I had always treated so-called stars as ordinary people. I liked to believe that had helped me get so much out of them. I always tried to put myself in their shoes, working out their worries and problems, their jealousies, as of course all apparently hugely successful people have chinks, deep down worried they are not getting the high-class acclaim or the mega sales figures of some of their rivals. You have to think hard to work it out, decide what might be bugging them. My other self-taught rule was never to ask a question which must have been asked a hundred times already. Answers to the obvious questions will be somewhere in the cuttings. Always try to ask something new, bring up a new topic.
But Margaret did meet them in the end. After a bit of arm twisting, she agreed I could invite them home to NW5 and she would make something for them. I had by now taken a lot of hospitality at their homes, having endless meals, especially at Paul’s. Not to a dinner party with other guests, she put her foot down about that. That would be appalling, unbearable, and just showing off.
Paul, George, and Ringo, with their respective partners, came home for tea or supper. John cancelled, when he had said he was coming with Cynthia, but Margaret did talk to John for some time at the Magical Mystery Tour private party to which we were both invited. So she did meet them all, and their wives.
Oh, if only I had used a tape recorder during the almost two years I was hanging around with them. I never did have a tape recorder, even for journalistic interviews.
Back in 1963 I was sent to interview W. H. Auden, who was staying at Stephen Spender’s house in St John’s Wood. It was fixed up by Leonard Russell, the literary editor, who gave me an envelope to give to Auden. On the way there, I opened it, unable to resist it – to find £100 in notes. I quickly sealed it up again.
After some idle chat, Auden asked if I had anything for him, so I handed over the envelope. The minute I did so, he seemed to lose interest in the interview.
Meanwhile I was struggling with a tape recorder. I had borrowed it from someone in the office, an early Grundig, about the size of a Mini Minor. It was the first time I had used one and was so worried I wouldn’t be able to work it.
It did, after a fashion, but the interview never made the paper. I got nothing of interest out of him. I blamed the tape recorder. And vowed never to use one again.
I always think tape recording doubles your work. You have to listen to it all over again, and most of what anyone says is boring, and will never be used. With a tape recorder, you can’t capture all the extraneous things that happen, or the atmosphere. Which you can do when you are writing down notes. When they are being boring, you can write down what the room looks like, the wallpaper, what their wives or husbands or children said when they came into the room.
When they say this is off the record, and then tell you something juicy, you nod and put down your pen. Then later, when they say they love children and always help old people across the road, instead of writing that down you write down the juicy bit they came out with earlier.
If I had used a tape when doing the Beatles, I would not only have had historic material from them, talking about their own work, at the time it was happening, but I interviewed so many associated with them who are now long since dead – such as John’s Aunt Mimi, Paul’s father Jim, George’s parents, Ringo’s parents.
I even managed to track down Ringo’s real father, who had split from Ringo’s mother when Ringo was very small. He was working as a window cleaner in Crewe and had so far refused all interviews and publicity. He had never come forward when Ringo became famous, unlike John’s father Alfred. John had refused to see Alf for several years but I tracked him down, washing dishes in a roadside pub, not far from where John was living. He was a great talker and very funny. I told John about him, and John decided he would meet him, but secretly. It would have been good to have had Alfred on tape, a spoken record of his memori
es of meeting and marrying John’s mother, and then abandoning John when he was young. I do have it all in my countless notebooks, but it would have been good to have captured his actual voice.
Then of course there were their road managers, Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans, both now dead, and Derek Taylor, their PR and close friend, and also more recently George Martin. Brian Epstein died many years ago, back in August 1967, while I was with them. I spent quite some time with Brian Epstein, in London and at his country home in Sussex.
I got so much material from all these people, some of which in the end I could not use, as the book was getting too big. I didn’t actually want to stop interviewing the Beatles themselves. Every week they were into something new, still developing, and I didn’t want to miss the next interesting or potty thing they might be getting into. But the publishers were desperate for me to finish.
At the proof stage, there was a bit of moaning and messing around, not from the Beatles, but from some of their management figures. Then John’s Aunt Mimi somehow got a copy of the manuscript, began moaning to John, so John asked me to deal with her. I went to see her and it turned out she wanted me to take out John’s bad language. I refused to do so. Instead, I kept Mimi quiet by putting in an extra quote from her at the end of an early chapter, quoting her as saying that John as a boy was ‘as happy as the day was long’.
The book came out in the UK in September 1968. By which time I was not there, having left the UK.
9
ABROAD
I was always rather ashamed of going abroad, and would deny for years what all my reasons were. I probably lied to myself, trotting out loads of different reasons, hoping that one of them would convince me, that I wouldn’t be considered as just another nasty, two-faced tax exile, the sort I had always criticised.
A Life in the Day Page 9