Fab

by Howard Sounes

  24

  A THREE-QUARTERS REUNION

  THE ANTHOLOGY

  For years the press had speculated about a Beatles reunion. The boys themselves said it would never happen, and indeed how could it with John dead? Yet the impossible now came to pass, in a partial sense at least, thanks to the band’s old friend and servant, Neil ‘Nell’ Aspinall, who ran Apple on their behalf.

  Since the Sixties, Nell had been collecting footage of the Beatles for a documentary film. He first edited the clips together after the band’s break-up, creating a 16mm flick he called The Long and Winding Road. ‘But then the Beatles’ manager, Allen Klein, wanted to take it to America. He wanted his own in-house people to expand it into a social commentary of the Sixties. So I took it all to pieces again,’ Aspinall recalled. ‘I remember him coming into the editing suite in Savile Row and saying, “Where is it?” I pointed to the whole library, and said, “It’s all those cans.” Was he furious? Yeah.’ After the Beatles parted company with Klein, Aspinall remade the film and sent copies to the individual band members for old time’s sake. Nothing more was done on the project for two decades, during much of which the Beatles were arguing between themselves over money, most recently the extra one per cent royalty Paul was being paid by Capitol Records.

  When all lawsuits were resolved, around 1990, Aspinall raised the idea of a definitive television history of the Beatles using the old footage he had collected. The unique selling point would be that the Beatles would tell their own story. ‘I said to the guys, “Well, we’re going to have to interview you,”’ notes Aspinall. ‘There were varying degrees of enthusiasm for that suggestion.’ The three surviving Beatles were like brothers who have grown up and left home, still seeing their siblings occasionally, feeling affection for their brothers naturally, but quick to be irritated by them. Relations between Paul and George were particularly prickly, George being the least inclined to look back on ‘the mania’. The excessive devotion of the fans in the Sixties had genuinely freaked him out, and he had never forgotten Paul’s condescension towards him. Although the men still saw each other socially, George had a tendency to snipe at Macca in interviews, complaining about him to others, and ignoring Paul’s calls and letters. Nevertheless, Harrison now had a compelling reason to work with Paul.

  Although he’d made millions, George Harrison never earned as much from the Beatles as the two principal songwriters, and while his solo career got off to a promising start in 1970 with the acclaimed triple album All Things Must Pass, flop records followed, with George suffering the indignity of being sued successfully over his biggest solo hit, ‘My Sweet Lord’, which infringed the copyright of the Chiffons’ ‘He’s So Fine’. The latter song belonged to Allen Klein, to whom Harrison had to pay a humiliating $ 587,000 compensation (£383,660). Harrison’s one major tour, his 1974 jaunt across North America, had been a failure, after which he retreated behind the high walls of his Oxfordshire mansion, becoming a hermit gardener. In addition to the upkeep of Friar Park, George had expensive tastes for cocaine, motor racing and movie-making. In 1978, he bailed out his friends in the Monty Python troupe when EMI withdrew financial support from the heretical comedy Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Harrison advanced the Pythons the money to make the picture, which proved a commercial and critical hit, encouraging George to invest in more movies via his company HandMade Films. He enjoyed further success with The Long Good Friday (1980) and Withnail and I (1986), but lost big money on Water (1984) and Shanghai Surprise (1986), with the result that HandMade Films was mired in debt by 1989, undermining George’s financial security and leading to an expensive legal battle with his business advisor. A Japanese tour with Eric Clapton raised some needed cash, but George’s best chance of a substantial pay day lay in the Beatles.

  Ritchie could always do with a little extra. He’d earned far less in royalties than John, Paul and George, and had the least successful solo career, yet he pursued a relentlessly expensive jet-set life, moving so frequently even he found it difficult to keep track of his homes. Cautious, hard-working, consistently successful Paul was far richer than George and Ritchie combined, and those close to Paul talk of him agreeing to a three-quarters Beatles reunion partly to give the other two some of what he already had: ‘serious money’. Despite being the Beatle who most needed the favour, George’s old niggles about Paul resurfaced almost immediately. Harrison vetoed The Long and Winding Road as a title for the documentary project, because it was a Paul song, with the result that the reunion gained the unimaginative umbrella name of the Anthology.

  After considering a range of directors for the documentary, the Beatles selected a big, bearded Geordie named Geoff Wonfor, who had worked with all three previously, most recently with Paul on a film of his Liverpool Oratorio. A production office was established, with the band’s old PR man Derek Taylor (now white of hair and reedy of voice) brought in to advise the film-makers; another old friend, Klaus Voormann, was commissioned to create artwork for the packaging; while the musician and broadcaster Jools Holland was engaged to interview the Beatles. The interviews would also form the basis of an Anthology book. It was decided almost as an afterthought to compile a series of complementary CDs containing rare and unreleased Beatles recordings, out-takes, rehearsals, live performances and demos, starting with what George Harrison described as ‘the most ancient Beatles music possible’, which was the shellac disc Paul had recently bought back from John Duff Lowe. The ageing George Martin - now in his late 60s - would take charge of this aspect of the project, listening to the significant takes of every Beatles track recorded, 600 items in all, with Geoff Emerick at his side.

  Work on the Anthology began in earnest in 1991, with Paul, George and Ritchie interviewed multiple times over the next few years, with the result that their appearance varies considerably during the series. Hair changes colour and length. Beards come and go. The men age before our eyes. Paul proved the most consistently entertaining interviewee, whether reminiscing at sound checks, in the studio, sitting at a camp fire on his Sussex estate or piloting his boat, the Barnaby Rudge, on the water near Rye. He enjoyed indulging in nostalgia, especially about the early days on Merseyside, and though he had told his stories until they were worn smooth as river pebbles, they were still good to hear. George was less inclined to look back and was more sardonic in his comments, but exhibited a wry sense of humour and had a knack for a good phrase, while Ringo unfortunately felt the need to hide behind dark glasses and suffered memory lapses. They all forgot things to a degree. Moreover, as Jools Holland questioned the men, it became apparent that each Beatle remembered their story differently, not necessarily because drugs had addled their minds, or they were dissembling, but in the same way that any group of people interviewed after an event will give contradictory accounts of what they did, said and heard.

  Work on the Anthology reached a peak in 1994, which Paul began by inducting John Lennon into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, making Lennon one of the first artists to be inducted as both a band member and a solo artist, which the McCartneys’ friend and nominating committee member Danny Fields considered a mistake as it set a precedent for other multiple inductees.56 Paul’s induction speech was in the form of an open letter to his old pal: ‘Dear John, I remember when we first met, in Woolton, at the village fête,’ he began, telling the audience how John had made up words to ‘Come Go with Me’. Later they sagged off school to write new songs together. George joined the band, they played the Cavern, went to Hamburg, and became stars in Britain and the USA, where they met Elvis, ‘the first person I ever saw with a remote control on a TV. Boy!’ Paul recalled the excitement of that LA visit. Then came drugs. ‘I remember writing “A Day in the Life” with you, and the little look we gave each other as we wrote the line, “I’d love to turn you on.”’ John met Yoko, the Beatles went through ‘all our business shit’, eventually reaching a point, in the late 1970s, where ‘we were actually getting back together and communicating once again …’ Th
at gave Paul ‘something to hold onto’ when John was killed in 1980. ‘So now, years later, here we are … John Lennon, you’ve made it. Tonight you are in the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. God bless you.’

  Yoko came on stage and Paul hugged her, as if they were great friends. Apart from honouring John, Paul may have had one or two other motives for helping his former partner into the Rock’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Almost immediately the McCartneys got back to England, Danny Fields started receiving calls from Linda asking when Paul was going to be brought into the Hall of Fame as a solo artist to gain parity with John. ‘All the time she was saying, “What do you think Paul’s chances are this year?” They were asking Jann Wenner the same thing.’

  There was another reason for Paul doing John’s memory a good service: he, long with George and Ritchie, wanted Yoko to give the Beatles some music. In working on the Anthology, the three surviving Beatles decided it might be fun to record some incidental music, but it didn’t seem right without John. ‘If we were to do something, the three of us, as interesting as it may be, and as nice as we could make it, to have John in it is the obvious thing,’ George said. So Yoko was asked if she had any recordings of songs John had been working on which the other three could complete as a ‘new’ Beatles record. When they met in New York, she gave Paul a demo tape of ‘Free as a Bird’, an unfinished song from the late 1970s. The following month the surviving Beatles reunited discreetly at Hog Hill Mill to complete it. The men who met at Hog Hill almost a quarter of a century on from the break-up of the Beatles were naturally changed. George Harrison, the youngest, turned 51 during the reunion and looked the oldest of them all, having allowed himself to gain a few pounds in a life spent mostly away from the spotlight, and his hair having grown long and grey. Scruffily dressed, he looked like what he was these days: a gardener. Paul had also gone grey in the 1980s, but had cheated time by having the grey dyed out of his hair, with the result that four months before his 52nd birthday he possessed a thick mane of light brown locks. Still, the lines around his eyes gave his age away. At 53, Ritchie continued to hide behind dark glasses, longish hair and a beard, which he too must have had coloured, for he’d had a streak of white as wide as a skunk’s when the Beatles met him, and yet there was no trace of it now. To help deal with the fact that they were making music without John, the trio told themselves that Lennon had already recorded his part of ‘Free as a Bird’ and then popped out of the studio. ‘And once we had agreed to take that attitude it gave us a lot of freedom, because it meant that we didn’t have any sacred view of John as a martyr, it was John the Beatle, John the crazy guy we remember,’ Paul commented. ‘So we could laugh and say, “Wouldn’t you just know it? It’s completely out of time!”’

  Building the song up from John’s scanty demo tape was a production challenge, not one that was overseen by George Martin, surprisingly, even though George was in overall charge of the Anthology CDs. The Beatles turned instead to Jeff Lynne, Birmingham-born leader of the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) who co-produced Harrison’s 1987 album Cloud Nine, and its hit ‘When We Was Fab’, going on to join George in the Traveling Wilburys, whose records the musicians co-produced, achieving a smooth, commercial sound. ‘I think George Harrison wanted Jeff Lynne to do it … because he had been working with Jeff in the Wilburys,’ ventures Geoff Emerick. Martin insisted he was not unhappy about being passed over in this way, saying in polite explanation: ‘I’m now quite old.’57

  When Lynne had fixed the underlying tape, Paul and George added acoustic guitar to ‘Free as a Bird’, Paul doubling John’s piano part and adding the bass, Ritchie playing drums, naturally, and George slide guitar. Paul risked another Let It Be-style row by saying he didn’t want George’s guitar to sound like ‘My Sweet Lord’. It had to be Beatley, so Harrison was prevailed upon to play a simpler blues lick. In return, Paul allowed George to cut some of the words he had written to pad out the unfinished middle-eight. At times it all ‘got a little difficult’, as McCartney later conceded.

  On a gorgeous summer’s day two months later, Paul and Ritchie came to Friar Park to talk with George on camera about the old days, McCartney clearly being careful not to say anything that would upset his touchy friend. Footage was shot by George’s lake and in his home studio, the boys trying to recreate the repartee of their early days, but appearing awkward in each other’s company, and again forgetful. Stories were begun, then trailed off into silence. As with Let It Be, it was when the men started playing old tunes, like ‘Raunchy’ and ‘Thinking of Linking’, that they looked happiest, smiling at each other in enjoyment of their musical youth.

  BACK AT THE FARM

  Hardly a year had passed since Paul signed with EMI that he hadn’t put out a record, with multiple releases some years. Now came a sabbatical. Following the release of Paul is Live and the first Fireman album in 1993, Paul didn’t release a new record for three and a half years, partly to avoid competing with the Anthology. Yet once Paul had recorded ‘Free as a Bird’ and filmed his interviews for the documentary, there wasn’t a great deal for him to do on the Anthology except wait and see what Geoff Wonfor and George Martin came up with. Along with the other Beatles, Paul viewed early cuts of the documentary programmes, sending the production office meticulous, typewritten notes of comments and changes. If any Beatle was unhappy with any detail, it was excised. There were inevitable clashes with the programme-makers, who found it virtually impossible to win an argument with a Beatle, and the Beatles themselves clearly still had unresolved issues. Recalls series director Bob Smeaton, who admits he found the project so frustrating at times he almost quit:Paul and George sat in the editing suite with Ringo looking at the last programme. George was on the screen, talking about the split, and Paul turned to George sitting next to him and said, ‘I didn’t know you felt like that. Is that really how you felt?’ George said, ‘Of course it was.’

  Watching the Anthology footage proved emotional for Paul. ‘I get to see my dad again. I get to see my mum again, I get to remember what she did again,’ McCartney explained to readers of his fan magazine, Club Sandwich, still hyper-sensitive about anything to do with his parents. Listening to the tracks selected for the Anthology CDs also brought back memories, not always pleasant ones.

  In volume one there are a few songs that I would have preferred not being there, like ‘Besame Mucho’ which portrays me as a cabaret artist, whereas in my soul I am a rock and roller … But because the others wanted it in, because George Martin wanted it, I could put down my slight reservation and say, ‘Cool. If you guys like it, then it’s got to be alright.’ And it’s a very nice feeling to be on a team like that. The minute a thing is done and it’s the Beatles, I’m happy with it.

  With no touring commitments in 1994, and no new solo album to worry about, Paul used his free time to enjoy life with Linda at Blossom Farm, the couple celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary in March. He wrote some new songs and composed some more orchestral music, sat for interviews with Barry Miles for their forthcoming book, and did lots of painting, a hobby Paul had become increasingly passionate about, spending many afternoons in his Sussex studio and working on pictures when he was in the United States on holiday. During his annual summer break in the Hamptons, Paul took inspiration from visiting the elderly artist Willem De Kooning, a Long Island resident and fellow client of Eastman & Eastman. Fired up with enthusiasm after his meetings with ‘Bill’, Paul bought art materials from the same local store De Kooning used, then went home to paint. His pictures were often inspired by objects he picked up on the beach.

  Stories about Paul’s painting got into the press and in response he was contacted by a German curator, Wolfgang Suttner, who said he wanted to show Paul’s pictures at the municipal gallery he ran in Siegen, the birthplace of Rubens. McCartney invited Suttner to Sussex to discuss the idea, meeting him in the estate house he used as his art studio. The German found room after room of the farmhouse filled with Paul’s pictures, stacked up and hung on th
e walls. Paul explained that he’d always drawn and painted pictures, from when he was a boy, that he had won prizes for his artwork at school, but he suppressed this side of himself when he met John because John was the art student. After the Beatles broke up he had made one or two pictures. Paul showed Wolfgang a 1971 drawing, Hooray for Stella, which he made to celebrate the birth of his youngest daughter. He also revealed that he’d covered the kitchen door at High Park in Scotland with pictures. But it was only after John had died, and Paul himself had turned 40, that he began to explore this side of himself properly, painting large, colourful semi-abstract portraits and landscapes. Paul was wary of showing these in public in case he was mocked. To make him feel more relaxed about the idea of putting on a show, Suttner invented a fiction whereby Paul was a young artist named Paul Miller whom Suttner had discovered and was going to introduce to the German public via his provincial gallery. That way there was less pressure. McCartney fell in with the idea and began to talk with enthusiasm to Wolfy, as he addressed his new friend, about staging their exhibition, though, as with many of Paul’s projects, there would be a time-lag before he got around to mounting the show.

  Linda, who regularly staged exhibitions of her photographs these days, as well as publishing books of her pictures, was increasingly busy with her vegetarian food empire in 1994, opening a dedicated veggie factory in the UK, and going to the USA with Paul to try and sell veggie meals to Americans, who proved more resistant than British consumers.

  Paul’s parallel pet project continued to be the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, which was at last under construction, Mark Featherstone-Witty having lined up the necessary £12 million ($18.3m) funds. Roughly a third of the money was coming from the European Union, a third from the British public sector, the final third, including Paul’s £1 million, from private donations. ‘And then we discovered we got the figures wrong,’ groans Mark. ‘It was a very sticky moment.’ The problem was that putting a new roof on the Inny proved more expensive than expected, prompting a lecture from Paul about financial prudence, not long after which Mark had another in a series of angry confrontations with his Lead Patron.