GEOFF EMERICK: After John gave his little speech to the orchestra, he turned to Paulie and said, “What do you think, mate? Are you with me or not.”
Paul said, “Not. You’re on your own.”
John said, “No, I’m not on my own. You’re with me. I was being rhetorical. It wasn’t a question.”
Paul said, “Yes it was. You said, ‘Are you with me or not?’ You started your sentence with the word are. By definition, any sentence with the word are at the beginning of it is a question.”
John said, “That’s not necessarily true. I didn’t upturn my voice, and if there’s no upturn, there’s no question. Like if I say, ‘Paulie’s a git?’ and I upturn my voice, it’s a question. But if I say, ‘Paulie’s a git,’ without upturning my voice, it’s a declarative statement. Get it? ‘Paulie’s a git.’ Statement. Period.”
Paul said, “Are you saying I’m a git?”
John said, “No. I’m explaining that if I say, ‘Paulie’s a git,’ without upturning my voice, it’s a statement. Ipso facto, ‘Paulie’s a git’ is not a question.”
Paul said, “You are saying I’m a git.”
John said, “No, I’m saying it’s not a question that Paulie’s a git. Now, are you gonna help me murder the orchestra, or what?”
Paul said, “Now that’s a question.”
NEIL ASPINALL: Three years earlier, John would’ve been able to do the whole lot all by himself, but now he needed Paul, and he probably knew that. However, that didn’t stop him from diving in solo.
GEORGE MARTIN: John went after the violinists first. He didn’t transform them individually but, rather, three at once: chomp, chomp, chomp; suck, suck, suck; tongue, tongue, tongue; spit, spit, spit; glue, glue, glue. It was a veritable zombie assembly line. The problem was, he bit off more than he could chew, so to speak, and he wasn’t plugging up the neck holes quickly enough, and there was blood everywhere.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: I dunno what it was about those violinists, but they were gushing. It was like their veins were jet-propelled. Within seconds, the floor was covered, just covered.
GEOFF EMERICK: The pools were getting bigger and bigger, and our microphone cables were getting closer to being in harm’s way, so instinct took over, and I ran out of the control room and into the studio, where I promptly slipped and fell face-first into a blood puddle. I bloodied my nose … or, at least, I think I did. Everybody was leaking red, so the blood covering my face might’ve come from the cello section.
GEORGE MARTIN: Paul ran to the corner of the studio and grabbed his bass, then placed it on top of an amplifier; then he said, “Sod it,” and jumped into the fray. I know Paul didn’t want to be part of zombifying this truly talented batch of orchestral musicians, but I suspect he went to help because he thought John wouldn’t be able to seal the wounds himself, and the tidal wave of blood would destroy every piece of equipment in the place.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: We were now ankle-deep in the red stuff, and it was only gonna get worse. Once I knew my Höfner was out of harm’s way, I came to John’s rescue. No way he could’ve handled it himself. He’d lost a step. Hell, we’d all lost a step.
JOHN LENNON: I was faster than ever, and I absolutely could’ve handled it myself.
GEOFF EMERICK: Once Paulie got involved, the massacre ended pretty quickly. All in all, Lennon and McCartney created sixteen zombies, all of whom are still with the London Philharmonic, so it was win-win. John and Paul got brains, and the local orchestra got a killer string section for life.
The only piece of equipment that was permanently damaged was Ringo’s kick drum; he was able to play it, no problem, but it was stained dark red, and it looked hideous. But we weren’t going to be performing in concert anytime soon; thus, we were the only people who would see his bloodstained drum, so nobody was too concerned. Except, y’know, Ringo, but he was in a bad mood to start with.
RINGO STARR: John and Paul were experimenting musically and multitracking and killing off our guest musicians, and George was off messing about with his skintar, so they were all in their element, which left me with a lot of free time. So what did I do with myself? Write some of my own tunes? Nah. Work on drumming technique? Nope.
I called and scheduled a meeting. I was gonna make Eighth Level if it killed me.
: Richard Starkey was disciplined. Richard Starkey had a good heart. Richard Starkey was a spiritual being who was in touch with his inner everything. But Richard Starkey was, is, and always will be a Seventh Level Ninja Lord. Nothing more, nothing less. And there is nothing wrong with that.
RINGO STARR: I trekked over to ’s dojo on Molyneux Road back in Liverpool and was greeted with a reception worthy of a Fifty-fifth Level: streamers, balloons, and hundreds of shuriken stuck in the wall in a pattern that spelled out beatles 4-ever! I almost wept. wasn’t one for public displays of respect, so that was special.
guided me to a seat in the middle of the room, clapped his hands twice, and, out of nowhere, in an impressive display of cool Ninja skills, two dozen of his students materialized. They put on a private show that would’ve had the Shaolin monks on their feet: astounding choreography, mind-blowing feats of strength, and disappearing and reappearing. It went on for two hours, and as far as I was concerned, that wasn’t long enough.
Once the twenty-four Ninjas packed it in, stood me up and guided me to the door. He said, “Young Starkey, you are a credit to Ninja Lords throughout the planet. Speak to the masses. Show them your skills. Make the public aware that Ninjas are a singular breed that deserves the respect of the world. I love you. I know you love me. Now spread love, because love is all you need.” Then he kissed me on the cheeks, and next thing I knew, I was out on the sidewalk. After I heard the front door click shut behind me, I hopped into the car and drove back to Abbey Road. What else could I do?
: Quality drummer, passable Ninja. I did not want to put him through another Eight Level test. It would have been shaming for everybody.
RINGO STARR: I showed up at the studio around dinnertime, and there’re George Martin and Geoff Emerick crawling around the lawn on their hands and knees, clearly in search of something. When I asked what was going on, Mr. Martin gave me a disgusted look and said, “Go up on the roof and find out for yourself.”
GEORGE HARRISON: We were in the midst of a playback, and suddenly, John said, “It appears the walls are growing tentacles. Gotta go,” then he ran all the way up the stairs. Having seen our fair share of tentacles, Paul and I figured out pretty quickly that somebody’d dosed John. We never found out who, we never found out how; best we could figure is that one of the groupies who were parading in and out of the studio snuck a tab in his Corn Flakes.
I found John on the roof, sitting on the edge, farting up purple clouds and screaming, “Come back! Come back! Come back!”
I called out, “Oi, Johnny, what is it you want to come back?”
John said, “My fookin’ fingers!”
GEOFF EMERICK: Harrison yelled down to us from the top of the stairs, “Emerick and Martin, please go find John’s left pinkie and right thumb. They should be somewhere on the lawn out front. McCartney, please join me on the roof.”
John’s fingers had fallen onto the street side of the studio, and our primary concern was that they’d rolled into the street and gotten splatted by an oncoming bus. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic, and we didn’t see any flattened digits on the street, so unless one of the fingers somehow jumped into somebody’s tailpipe, they were around there somewhere.
So, George Martin and I—while wearing ties and nice trousers, mind you—got on our hands and knees and poked through the bushes. Nothing. Then we went through the front lawn. Nothing. I asked George if he wanted to run to the roof and make sure John wasn’t messing with us. He told me that, as I was the junior member of the team, it was my job to handle the talent, so I should get my arse up there.
As I headed upstairs, I worried about how the talent would handle me.
PAUL MCCARTNE
Y: John was inconsolable about the potential loss of his fingers. He said, “How’m I gonna play guitar? How’m I gonna play keyboard? How’m I gonna fix my hair so I don’t look like a prat?”
Harrison and I tried to calm him down, but when a zombie’s on acid, there’s no talking to him, y’know. He went on and on, and his moaning was getting more zombie-like and starting to attract attention. Right then, Geoff shows up, and says, “Good news, boys: we found the fingers!”
GEOFF EMERICK: We hadn’t found the fingers.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: John sprang up—almost falling off the roof in the process—jumped at Geoff, and tried to give him a kiss on the neck. Not an undead kiss. Just a kiss kiss.
GEOFF EMERICK: I ducked, and he sailed right over me and crashed headfirst into the door. No way I was letting John Lennon get anywhere my neck.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: John popped right on up, shook out the cobwebs, gave us a big old smile, and said, “Right, then. I’m heading downstairs. And the next time you see good ol’ John Winston Lennon, he’ll have ten fookin’ fingers, just like the rest of you cunts.” He paused, then said, “We should do a concert up here someday. It’d be a larf.”
GEORGE MARTIN: Geoff yelled at me from the roof, “Get a move on, mate! Johnny’s on his way down! He thinks we found his digits!”
I’d come up empty-handed, if you will: no pinkie, no thumb, bugger-all. Thinking fast, I went over to the nearest tree, ripped off a branch, and broke off two finger-size pieces. It was dark. John was high. At the very least, it would buy me some time.
When I gave John the sticks, he wept with joy. While he embraced me, I patted him on the back and told him, “Don’t reattach the fingers just yet, John. You’re a bit addled, and you don’t want to do something that serious until you’re in a good headspace. Go have a lie-down on the cot in the control room. I’ll be back in a few.”
It took me two more hours to find his fingers. Turned out they’d landed in a robin’s nest. The mother bird took a nice chomp out of the pinkie, but otherwise, they were in fine shape. Paul reattached them while John was asleep on the sofa, and he was never the wiser, and Mr. Lennon’s hands lived happily ever after.
GEORGE HARRISON: Brian had initially wanted the press and the general public to know we were experimenting with the dreaded lysergic, but the results of said experiments were such failures that we decided to keep it amongst ourselves. Or at least, John, Ringo, and I did.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: The writer asked me a question, y’know. I answered it. I told the truth. Who knew it would lead to what it led to?
BRIAN EPSTEIN: After Paul told that newspaper reporter that the boys had tried acid, a lot of our American fans went a little bananas. The English press wasn’t particularly concerned—it seemed like everybody in London was tripping that summer, so who cared if a few rock stars were messing about with the stuff?—but in the States, it was another story. Especially for tens of thousands of teenage girls.
The lone zombie psychiatrist in the entire state of Wisconsin, Dr. Jennifer Everett, wasn’t the first young woman to join one of the so-called Beatles suicide acid cults that popped up across the United States, nor was she the last. But she is one of the few who escaped both alive-ish and with her mind more or less intact.
Jennifer’s cult leader—a zombie who tried to pass as a man and went by the snappy moniker of Reverend Starkey Best von Pollywog—did a superb job of brainwashing his followers, so Dr. Everett’s memories of her two weeks as a member of the Merry Undead are iffy at best. But in January 2000, she told me enough to paint a picture that was, at the very least, disconcerting.
DR. JENNIFER EVERETT: Considering how crappy the modern music scene is, people who weren’t around when the Beatles were in their prime will never understand how a little rock group from England could wrap me so tightly around their little finger. And since that cult had an irrevocable impact on my life, and I wouldn’t have joined the cult had it not been for the Beatles, I think about that constantly. Was it their songs that roped me in? Their voices? Their look? The era? No clue. Still haven’t been able to figure it out. All I know is that there hasn’t been a single band either before or since who could get me physically, emotionally, and sexually aroused by simply being.
I would’ve followed the Beatles anywhere, but by ’67, they weren’t touring, so the only way I’d be able to be with them would be to move to England, but little girls from the Wisconsin heartland didn’t move to England, especially when their parents vehemently despised both rock ’n’ roll and zombies. So when I heard about Reverend Pollywog, well, the Merry Undead seemed to be the next best thing.
At the time, the Merry Undead was very shrouded in mystery, but if you took away the rainbow-colored school bus, the dashikis, and the copious amounts of acid, it was just a cover for a random nut job trying to fuck as many young girls as he possibly could. The reality was more nasty than mysterious.
Reverend Pollywog was a marketing genius. He somehow got all the hippie girls in the streets to talk him up—“Oh, the Merry Undead are soooooo beautiful, and they’ve got the best drugs, and they hang out with all the coolest zombies”—so when the bus rolled through Milwaukee that summer, Pollywog didn’t have to do any recruiting. He had his pick of the Beatle-loving litter. He thought I was cute. I was in.
I have vivid memories of getting on the bus, but after Pollywog shoved his tongue down my throat, it gets hazy. I remember the other twenty-three girls and I were constantly naked. I remember eating lots and lots of Corn Flakes—and to this day, when I walk down the cereal aisle at the grocery store and get a glimpse of that white Kellogg’s box, I get the heebie-jeebies. I remember a lot of tambourines. Oddly enough, I don’t remember listening to much music.
In the end, only two of us were actually turned into zombies—me and this seventeen-year-old from St. Louis named Annie—but I’m pretty certain that wasn’t the game plan. I think Pollywog wanted us all undead, but for some reason, the other girls never got reanimated. We never got an explanation, because when we woke up in a back alley in Taos, New Mexico, the Reverend was long gone. We pieced it together as best we could and decided that Pollywog had gotten a lousy batch of acid that had killed everybody so quickly, he had time to zombify only the two of us. I was happy to not be six feet under, but on the minus side, zombies weren’t welcome in my part of Wisconsin, so I haven’t seen my family since.
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft—aka, John Peel—was one of the UK’s most in the know disc jockeys, always presenting the hottest and hippest tunes on his radio show, always seen at the hottest and hippest musical gatherings throughout London. On June 25, 1967, Peel wasn’t yet an employee of the British Broadcasting Corporation, but he managed to sneak into the BBC studios, where the Beatles were scheduled to perform a tune to be shown via satellite to a worldwide audience. (The Beeb, who’d commissioned the number, nixed the first draft of the song, which Lennon had entitled “All You Need Is to Die a Painful Death.” It still hasn’t been established whether or not John was yanking some Beeb chain.) When I spoke with Peel in June 2004, only four months before his death, he explained that he wasn’t the only music-biz luminary in the studio audience that viewed the event The Sun dubbed “the literal and figurative definition of a bloody mess.”
JOHN PEEL: The joint was crawling with stars: Eric Clapton, Keith Moon, Marianne Faithfull, Graham Nash, the works. I was so uncool that I wanted to run around and get autographs, but I was cool enough to not actually do it.
Some of the lot were perched in their seats, while some were on the floor, when the director gave the go-ahead. But before John could even get through the first verse, who bursts through the door and jumps right into the fray, lips a’kissin’ and hips a’wigglin’? That’s right, kids, everybody’s favorite zombie hunter.
Mick Jagger strode right up to John, raised his arms to the sky, and said, “O zombie Lennon! It ends here. In full view of a worldwide audience, you shall taste death.”
John said, “You
’re right, Mick. It ends here.” And then he ripped off his headphones. And then the madness began.
If I hadn’t seen the videotape in slow-mo, I wouldn’t have believed it went down the way it did. It was one of those things so utterly inhuman and wrong that my mind couldn’t even process it. What happened was, John ripped Paul’s bass from his hands and pulled off the neck—it was a shiny new Rickenbacker, which is probably why Paul got so pissed—then gnawed the end with his teeth until it was as sharp as a knife. He then lifted it above his head and brought it down through Mick’s right shoulder. Mick’s arm detached and flew across the studio and fell right at Eric Clapton’s feet, staining his nice hippie-dippy outfit bright red, and let me tell you, Slowhand wasn’t pleased. John grabbed Mick by the back of his neck, then wrapped his entire mouth around Jagger’s gaping arm wound; his cheeks puffed in and out for a bit, then Mick collapsed on his arse. From where I was sitting, Jagger looked deader than the Big Bopper.
John yelled at Eric, “Oi, Clappy, toss that arm over.”
Clapton yelled back, “Are you a fookin’ nutter, mate? I’m not touching this thing!” He then kicked Mick’s arm—which flew smack into the side of Marianne Faithfull’s noggin—then stood up, and sprinted out the door.
Marianne shook her head and said, “What a pussy,” then, as John requested, she tossed Mick’s arm across the room. I should note it was a perfect throw. That Marianne was a keeper.
John caught it neatly with one hand, then said to McCartney, “A little help, Paulie?”
Paul, who was staring at the remnants of his bass and practically weeping, said, “Not today, John.”
Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion Page 20