by Steve Turner
Browne was driving down Redcliffe Gardens in Earls Court after midnight, when a Volkswagen emerged from a side street into his path. He swerved and his Lotus Elan ploughed into a stationary van. He was pronounced dead on arrival at a local hospital. The autopsy revealed that his death was the result of “brain lacerations due to fractures of the skull”. His passenger, model Suki Potier, escaped with bruises and shock.
Tara Browne, great grandson of the brewer Edward Cecil Guinness and son of Lord Oranmore and Browne, was part of a young aristocratic elite who loved to mingle with pop stars (but he wasn’t a member of the House of Lords). Although only 21 at the time of his death, he would have inherited a £1,000,000 fortune at the age of 25 and was described on his death certificate as a man “of independent means” with a London home in Eaton Row, Belgravia. After schooling at Eton, Browne married at 18 and fathered two boys before separating from his wife and taking up with Suki Potier. He frequented London nightspots such as Sibylla’s and the Bag O’Nails and had become particularly friendly with Paul and Mike McCartney and Rolling Stone Brian Jones. For his 21st birthday, he had the Lovin’ Spoonful flown to his ancestral home in County Wicklow, Ireland. Mick Jagger, Mike McCartney, Brian Jones and John Paul Getty were amongst the guests. Paul was with Browne when he first took LSD in 1966.
Paul’s unfinished song, a bright and breezy piece about getting out of bed and setting off for school, was spliced between the second and third verses of John’s song. “It was another song altogether but it happened to fit,” Paul said. “It was just me remembering what it was like to run up the road to catch a bus to school, having a smoke and going into class…It was a reflection of my schooldays. I would have a Woodbine (a cheap unfiltered British cigarette) and somebody would speak and I would go into a dream.”
The references to having a smoke, dreams and ‘turn-ons’ meant that the track was banned from the airwaves in many countries. There were even some who were convinced that the holes in Blackburn, like the holes Paul had been keen to fix, were those of a heroin user.
In 1968 Paul admitted that ‘A Day In The Life’ was what he called ‘a turn-on song’. “This was the only one on the album written as a deliberate provocation,” he said. “But what we want to do is to turn you on to the truth rather than on to pot.” George Martin comments: “The ‘woke up, got out of bed’ bit was definitely a reference to marijuana but ‘Fixing A Hole’ wasn’t about heroin and ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ wasn’t about LSD. At the time I had a strong suspicion that ‘went upstairs and had a smoke’ was a drug reference. They always used to disappear and have a little puff but they never did it in front of me. They always used to go down to the canteen and Mal Evans used to guard it.”
MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
With Sgt Pepper behind them, the Beatles immediately plunged into recording soundtracks for two very different films – Yellow Submarine and Magical Mystery Tour.
Yellow Submarine, a feature-length animation project, wasn’t initiated by the group but they took a keen interest in its development. The Beatles were happy to see themselves turned into cartoon characters and contributed storylines as well as four original songs. The script was by a team of screenwriters, one of whom was Erich Segal, author of the best-selling novel, Love Story. A psychedelic fantasy, Yellow Submarine concerns a happy kingdom called Pepperland, which is taken over by the villainous Blue Meanies. The fab four ride to the rescue in a yellow submarine from Liverpool, eventually conquering the Meanies through the combined power of Love and Music.
Magical Mystery Tour was an experimental 50-minute colour feature for television. It started off as Paul’s project but the whole group was heavily involved in all aspects of production. They financed, directed, cast and scripted the film, as well as appearing in it themselves.
Along with the single ‘All You Need Is Love’/’Baby You’re A Rich Man’, the songs from this period are the most psychedelic of the Beatles’ career. Magical Mystery Tour was released in America as an album in November 1967 and in Britain as a double extended-play disc in December. The Yellow Submarine soundtrack, which included an orchestral side from George Martin, wasn’t released until January 1968, shortly after The Beatles.
This eclectic bunch of songs would make a fitting farewell to 1967, the year of the Summer of Love, before the more sober reflections of 1968. The new year marked a fresh period in the Beatles’ songwriting, when cleaning up, straightening out and getting back to basics became the order of the day.
Magical Mystery Tour, which was first seen on British television on December 26, 1967, was a critical failure, which consequently received only limited exposure in America. The music was much more successful; the British double EP reached Number 2 in the singles charts and the American album went to Number 1.
The Yellow Submarine film was released in July 1968 and was a commercial success in America, although it was never put on full release in Britain. The album, which featured other artists as well as the Beatles, reached the Number 3 spot in Britain and Number 2 in America.
ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE
Early in 1967, the Beatles were approached by the BBC to take part in what would be the first-ever, live global television link: a 125-minute programme broadcast to 26 countries with contributions from national broadcasting networks in Europe, Scandinavia, North America, Central America, North Africa, Japan and Australia.
To mark the occasion, the Beatles were asked to write a simple song that would be understood by viewers of all nationalities. Writing began in late May, with Paul and John working on separate compositions, until John’s ‘All You Need Is Love’ emerged as the obvious choice. The song was not only musically and lyrically uncomplicated but also it perfectly captured the aspirations of international youth in the summer of 1967. This was the time when the war in Vietnam was at its most intense and the ‘love generation’ showed its opposition by staging a number of peaceful protests. “It was an inspired song and they really wanted to give the world a message,” said Brian Epstein. “The nice thing about it is that it cannot be misinterpreted. It is a clear message saying that love is everything.”
In calling for universal love, ‘All You Need Is Love’ extended the message that John had first tried to put across in ‘The Word’ in 1965. He was fascinated by the power of slogans to unite people and was determined to create something with the timelessness of ‘We Shall Overcome’ (a labour union song popularized in the Sixties by folk singer Pete Seeger). When asked in 1971 whether songs like ‘Give Peace A Chance’ and ‘Power To The People’ were propaganda songs, he answered, “Sure. So was ‘All You Need Is Love’.. I’m a revolutionary artist. My art is dedicated to change.”
The viewers of Our World on June 25, 1967 saw a re-creation of a Beatles recording session: rhythm tracks had been laid down on June 14 and the live input was instantaneously added and mixed for transmission. A party atmosphere was created in Abbey Road’s Studio One by inviting Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Eric Clapton and Keith Moon to hold balloons, wave placards and join in on the chorus. George Martin accentuated the message of international unity by opening the song with bars from La Marseillaise (France), and closing it with snatches from ‘In The Mood’ (America) the Brandenburg concerto (Germany) and ‘Greensleeves’ (England).
The single was released on July 7, and became the anthem of the Summer of Love, a paean to peace, love and understanding. “We had been told that we’d be seen recording it by the whole world at the same time,” said Paul. “So we had one message for the world – love. We need more love in the world.”
BABY YOU’RE A RICH MAN
As with ‘ A Day In The Life’, two unfinished songs were sewn together to create ‘Baby You’re A Rich Man’, which opens with John’s section, originally titled ‘One Of The Beautiful People’, and then moves up a gear for Paul’s ‘rich man’ chorus.
‘The beautiful people’ was a term applied to the hip in-crowd who, with their long hair, free love and dope, created an
alternative to ‘straight’ society. They used the word ‘beautiful’ freely in their conversations to describe anything of which they approved. “At the back of my mind somewhere…there is something which tells me that everything is beautiful,” said Paul in a stoned interview with International Times in January 1967. “Instead of opposing things like ‘Oh, I don’t like that television show’ or ‘No, I don’t like the theatre’ I know really that it’s all great and that everything’s great and there’s no bad ever if I can think of it all as great.”
In 1967, San Francisco was regarded as the city of the beautiful people because it was here that the hippy movement was first spotted by the media and where the first psychedelic ‘happenings’ and open-air ‘tribal gatherings’ had taken place. Although the Beatles played San Francisco in 1964, 1965 and 1966, they didn’t really get to explore the city until 1967. Paul was the first to visit, on April 4, when he dropped in on a Jefferson Airplane rehearsal and jammed on guitar. George was next, on August 7, when he came to Haight Ashbury, the San Francisco district that had given birth to underground newspapers, psychedelic poster art, communes, crash pads, head shops, free clinics and legions of exotic street people. Pattie’s sister Jenny was living in the area. “You are our leader, George,” one hippy shouted as he set off walking from the corner of Haight and Masonic with Pattie, Neil Aspinall and Derek Taylor beside him. “You know where it’s at.”
George was taken aback at the drug-glazed adoration of those who pushed flowers, poems, posters and drugs at him. “It’s you who should be leading yourself,” he told his would-be followers. “You don’t want to be following leaders – me or anyone else.” When he arrived at a park, George sat on the grass, listened to other people’s songs and then started to sing ‘Baby You’re A Rich Man’.
The rich man in Paul’s section is reputed to be manager Brian Epstein and in a demo version of the song, John maligns him by singing ‘Baby, you’re a rich fag Jew’. “The point was,” said John, “stop moaning. You’re a rich man and we’re all rich men.”
HELLO GOODBYE
Alistair Taylor, Brian Epstein’s assistant, remembered once asking Paul how he wrote his songs, and Paul took him into his dining room to give a demonstration on a hand-carved harmonium. He told Taylor to shout out the opposite of whatever he sang as he struck the keys. And so it went – black and white, yes and no, stop and go, hello and goodbye. “I’ve no memory at all of the tune,” Taylor later recounted. “You have to remember that melodies are as common around the Beatles as bugs in May. Some grow into bright butterflies and others shrivel and die. I wonder whether Paul really made up that song as he went along or whether it was running through his head already. Anyway, shortly afterwards, he arrived at the office with a demo tape of the latest single – ‘Hello Goodbye.’”
The last part of the record, where the Beatles repeat the line ‘Hela, hey, aloha’ came about spontaneously in the studio. (‘Aloha’ is an affectionate form of Hawaiian greeting.)
If ‘Hello Goodbye’ was nothing more than a word game set to music, in the mystical climate of 1967, Paul was expected to offer a deeper interpretation. In an interview with Disc, he gallantly tried to produce an explanation: “the answer to everything is simple. It’s a song about everything and nothing…to have white. That’s the amazing thing about life.”
‘Hello Goodbye’ was released as a single in November 1967 and topped the charts in both Britain and America. The final ‘aloha’ chorus was used in the Magical Mystery Tour film.
ONLY A NORTHERN SONG
Originally recorded in February 1967 as George’s contribution to Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, ‘Only A Northern Song’ first saw the light of day in Yellow Submarine.The song was a sly dig at the business arrangements of the Beatles. Their songs had always been published by Northern Songs Ltd, 30 per cent of whose shares belonged to John and Paul, with Ringo and George owning only 1.6 per cent each. This meant that John and Paul, in addition to being the group’s main songwriters, were benefiting again as prime shareholders in the publishing company. As far as Northern Songs was concerned, George was a merely a contracted writer.
In ‘Only A Northern Song’, George complained that it didn’t really matter what he wrote because the bulk of the money was going into other people’s pockets. Underlying this was his feeling, only expressed publicly after the group had broken up, that his songs were being ignored and that he his contributions were used as mere tokens.
“At first it was just great (to get one song on each album), it was like, hey, I’m getting in on the act too!” George commented. “After a while I did (come to resent this), especially when I had good songs. Sometimes I had songs that were better than some of their songs and we’d have to record maybe eight of theirs before they’d listen to one of mine.”
It’s not surprising that George, who in 1964 claimed “security is the only thing I want. Money to do nothing with, money to have in case you want to do something”, ultimately became the Beatle least keen to resurrect the Beatles.
ALL TOGETHER NOW
‘All Together Now’ was written in the studio in May 1967 with Paul as main contributor. It was intended as another ‘Yellow Submarine’ and John was delighted later when he heard that British soccer crowds were singing it.
One of the effects of psychedelia was a renewed interest in the innocence of childhood and nursery rhymes would begin to affect their post-Pepper work. Folklorist Iona Opie, editor of The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, believes that as the lines sound so familiar, it draws more on a shared memory: “I can’t distinguish any particular influence on ‘All Together Now’,” she says. “So many ABC rhymes exist and there are counting rhymes like ‘One, two, three, four, Mary at the cottage door..’ which come pretty close. The song seems to come out of a universal subconscious.”
Paul has confirmed that he saw it in the tradition of children’s songs (“It’s a Play Away command song”) but that he was also playing with the dual meaning of ‘all together now’ which could be either a music-hall-style invitation to participate or a slogan for world unity. Paul Horn remembers the song being sung while they were in India but instead of singing ‘H, I, J, I love you’ they would sing ‘H, I, Jai Guru Dev’ in honour of Maharishi’s spiritual master.
HEY BULLDOG
‘Hey Bulldog’ was recorded on February 11, 1968, when the Beatles were at Abbey Road to make a promotional film for ‘Lady Madonna’. Paul suggested that instead of wasting time pretending to record ‘Lady Madonna’, they should tape something new and so John produced some unfinished lyrics he’d written for Yellow Submarine. John explained to the others how he heard the song and they all threw in suggestions for the words. One line John had written – ‘Some kind of solitude is measured out in news’ – was misread and came out as ‘Some kind of solitude is measured out in you’. They decided to keep it.
The bulldog of the title never existed before the recording. The original lyric mentioned a bullfrog but, to everyone’s amusement, Paul started to bark at the end of the song. Because of this, they retitled it.
Erich Segal, the author of Love Story, was one of the screenwriters on Yellow Submarine. Years later, he claimed that ‘Hey Bulldog’ had been written for him because the bulldog was the mascot of Yale University where he was a lecturer in classics!
IT’S ALL TOO MUCH
George was the Beatle who most often spoke in spiritual terms about his experience of LSD. ‘It’s All Too Much’, recorded in May 1967, was written, George said, “in a childlike manner from realizations that appeared during and after some LSD experiences and which were later confirmed in meditation”.
Through images of silver suns and streaming time, the song attempted to articulate the feeling of personal identity being swallowed up by a benign force. Three months after this recording, George met the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and began to view his LSD experience as a signpost rather than a destination. “LSD isn’t a real answer,” he said in Septembe
r 1967. “It doesn’t give you anything. It enables you to see a lot of possibilities that you may never have noticed before but it isn’t the answer. It can help you go from A to B, but when you get to B you see C, and you see that to get really high, you have to do it straight. There are special ways of getting high without drugs – with yoga, meditation and all those things.”
MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
Flying home to London on April 11, 1967, after visiting Jane Asher in Denver for her 21st birthday party, Paul began to work on an idea for a Beatles television special. The group felt that they had outgrown the ‘caper’ format which had made them such a big hit in the cinema and now Paul was keen to make films himself, working with an 8mm camera and composing electronic soundtracks.
Encouraged by the experimental mood of the times, Paul envisaged making an unscripted film where characters and locations were chosen in advance , but the story was improvised on camera. His plan was to put the Beatles alongside an assorted collection of actors and colourful characters on a strange coach journey through the English countryside.
As Hunter Davies reported in the Sunday Times the day before Magical Mystery Tour was shown on British television: “(They had decided that the film) would be Magical, so that they could do any ideas which came to them, and Mysterious in that neither they nor the rest of the passengers would know what they were going to do next… ‘The whole thing will be a mystery to everyone,’ Paul told the rest of the Beatles, ‘including us.’”
There were two main inspirations behind Magical Mystery Tour. The first was the British working-class custom of the ‘mystery tour’, an organized day trip by coach, where only the driver knows the destination. The second was American novelist Ken Kesey’s idea of driving through America on a psychedelically painted bus. The sign on the front of Kesey’s bus read ‘Furthur’ (sic) and the one on the back – ‘Caution. Weird load’. The bus was full of counter-culture ‘freaks’ who Kesey fed loud music and copious amounts of drugs just to see what would happen. His driver was Neal Cassady, the model for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road.The story of their adventures was eventually told in Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.