Sound Pictures

by Kenneth Womack

  Meanwhile, back in the United States, Capitol had released Magical Mystery Tour on November 27 as a long-player, filling out the nonsoundtrack cuts with “Hello, Goodbye,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Penny Lane,” “Baby, You’re a Rich Man,” and “All You Need Is Love.” As on previous US releases, Capitol’s production folks saw fit to tamper with Martin’s work, treating the latter three tracks with the simulated stereo of Duophonic sound. The Magical Mystery Tour LP enjoyed an eight-week run at the top of Billboard’s album charts, sold some 1.5 million copies before Christmas, and earned rave reviews from the likes of Hit Parader, which proclaimed that “the beautiful Beatles do it again, widening the gap between them and 80 scillion other groups.” In a nod to George, Hit Parader lauded the LP as “a supreme example of teamwork.” The newly minted Rolling Stone magazine, which featured a film still of Lennon in How I Won the War as the cover of its inaugural issue in October 1967, offered a one-sentence review, quoting Lennon’s August 1966 remark to NME’s Keith Altham: “There are only about a hundred people in the world who really understand what our music is all about.” The American Magical Mystery Tour long-player was so popular among fans that it managed to notch a number-thirty-one showing on the UK album charts as an import.24

  On December 21, the Beatles held their annual holiday party, which John had helpfully themed as a Magical Mystery Tour costume ball in order to celebrate the recently completed television movie. Not surprisingly, the bandmates and their entourage, including George and Judy, were costumed to the nines. As George later recalled, it was a party that Brian, had he lived, would have adored, given his well-known penchant for high-styled revelry. Held at the Royal Lancaster Hotel on Bayswater Road, the lavish affair began with pomp and circumstance only to end in a scene of drunken embarrassment. Given the exclusivity of the soiree, security was tight, with elaborate psychedelic invitations serving as the sole means of admittance. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band provided the entertainment. As George later wrote, “Judy and I went as the Queen and Prince Philip, which was an ‘in’ joke. The boys always thought she sounded just like the Monarch, and whenever they saw her would ask: ‘How’s your husband and you?’” For his part, George “acquired an Admiral of the Fleet’s uniform from one of the naval outfitters; since they wouldn’t let me have a sword, I put my old observer’s wings on the sleeve, out of sheer cussedness. Judy had a lovely tiara and silk ball dress, a blue sash with some star-and-garter type of apparatus draped across her bosom, and a handbag a-dangle from her left wrist.” George and Judy played the scene to the hilt, making a grand entrance into the hotel ballroom and briefly stealing the show from the Fab Four. “People formed themselves into a line, bowing and curtseying,” George recalled, “while Judy and I gave limp handshakes to one and all. In the background, someone said loudly: ‘My God! I didn’t think they’d get them.’”25

  As it happened, the Beatles didn’t disappoint in the costume department. Lennon dressed as an Elvis-styled rock ’n’ roller, while Cynthia Lennon fashioned herself as a Victorian lady. Paul and Jane Asher adorned matching regal outfits, and Ringo played the part of a regency gentleman while his wife Maureen affected the look of an Indian maiden. Harrison dressed as a swashbuckling Errol Flynn type, with his wife Pattie donning a slinky belly dancer getup. Press officer Derek Taylor was costumed as Adolf Hitler, complete with Nazi uniform, while Peter Brown dressed as King Louis XIV. They were joined by nineteen-year-old Lulu, the AIR recording artist who had recently landed an international hit with “To Sir with Love.” Dressed as Shirley Temple in a blond wig, Lulu’s costume was complemented with a giant lollipop, which she eagerly clutched throughout the affair. Meanwhile, Cilla was costumed as a Cockney laborer, with her fiancé, Bobby Willis, dressed as a nun. For all of the good-natured merrymaking and frivolity that night at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, the party came to an unhappy end when a drunken John pointedly ignored his wife and openly leered at Pattie Boyd, arrayed as she was in her sexy costume. Never one to shrink from a scene, Lulu came to Cynthia’s rescue, loudly calling out the inebriated John on the carpet in front of his guests. Scolding him loudly in the ballroom, she gestured wildly with her lollipop prop, which she waved back and forth in rhythm with her harangue. For his part, John stood quietly and accepted Lulu’s rebuke. As Cynthia later wrote, “It was such a lovely sight, Lulu cornering John and giving him what for. John was much taken aback by Shirley Temple’s serious lecture on how to treat his wife.”26

  After the party, George wasted little time in getting back to work. As he packed in a few more sessions with Cilla before settling in for a much-deserved holiday rest, the Beatles forged ahead with the upcoming broadcast of the Magical Mystery Tour television movie. George had purposefully distanced himself from the film project, preferring to concentrate on producing the soundtrack. But other members had seen the writing on the wall. Having viewed the finished product and sensing imminent disaster, Peter Brown recommended that the Beatles mothball the Magical Mystery Tour movie and cut their losses. “I tried to suggest writing off the £40,000 [in production expenses] and moving on,” Brown later remarked. “But Paul didn’t know it was a mess and insisted on making the deal” with the BBC. Had McCartney simply become far too enamored with the bandmates’ home movie, which he had been editing for the past several months? Or had he fallen victim to exactly what Lennon had feared—the seemingly inevitable “misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music”? In any event, it was an artistic gamble, however well intentioned, that failed miserably. As perhaps the Beatles’ single greatest artistic failure, the Magical Mystery Tour television movie depicted the band members in a beguiling series of burlesques that are memorable solely for their utter disarray. The film reaches its ridiculous nadir in a variety of nonsensical skits—set in, of all places, an army recruiter’s office and a strip club—that attempt to recall the zany vignettes inherent in A Hard Day’s Night and Help! To make matters worse, the BBC premiered the film on Boxing Day (December 26) in black and white, thus depriving the movie of its multicolored virtues. NBC Television, which owned the rights to broadcast Magical Mystery Tour in the United States, opted not to air the film at all.27

  Like so many other Britons, George watched Magical Mystery Tour at home, and he knew that the Beatles were in for it. “Magical Mystery Tour was not really a success—in fact, that’s putting it mildly,” he later recalled. “It looked awful and it was a disaster. Everyone said it was pretentious and overblown, but it was a kind of avant-garde video, if you like.” As it turned out, George was far more generous in his assessment of Magical Mystery Tour than the reviews, which were swift and merciless. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And what a fall it was,” James Thomas wrote in the Daily Express. “The whole boring saga confirmed a long held suspicion of mine that the Beatles are four pleasant young men who have made so much money that they can apparently afford to be contemptuous of the public.” Meanwhile, the Daily Sketch couldn’t help poking fun at the Beatles’ recent forays into Eastern mysticism: “Whoever authorized the showing of the film on BBC1 should be condemned to a year squatting at the feet of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.” For its part, the Daily Mirror condemned Magical Mystery Tour as “rubbish . . . Piffle . . . Nonsense!”28

  For the Beatles, it was a critical drubbing that had proved difficult to stomach—especially after enjoying the artistic heights of Sgt. Pepper. As Hunter Davies, the band’s authorized biographer, commented, Magical Mystery Tour marked “the first time in memory that an artist felt obliged to make a public apology for his work.” Indeed, McCartney later remarked, “We don’t say it was a good film. It was our first attempt. If we goofed, then we goofed. It was a challenge and it didn’t come off. We’ll know better next time.” Paul added, perhaps unadvisedly, “I mean, you couldn’t call the Queen’s speech a gas, either, could you?” While Martin could rightly see himself as being blameless in the awful chain of events that played into the production of the Magical Myste
ry Tour television movie, the Beatles were undeniably his artists—a reality that he had come to know all too well in the months since Epstein’s untimely demise. He had also begun to understand the root of their malaise, recognizing that Brian had been “the fulcrum of the Beatles’ existence, and suddenly he was no longer there. Quite out of the blue, the boys no longer had anyone to tell them what to do, and there was a vacuum. Paul tried to organize things and get them all working together, and that unfortunately created the beginning of some resentment within the group.” George had weathered the Beatles’ highs and lows before, and he reasoned, with a certain degree of confidence, that he could weather these latest setbacks as well. After all, Magical Mystery Tour wasn’t merely a humiliating “disaster” of a film production; it had also been a blockbuster soundtrack. And George could work with that. As 1967 rolled into the new year and his memories of the Beatles’ very public flop began to fade, George started to gain a more measured perspective, later writing that “the basic idea of the film was a bit thin, but the music was jolly good.” In this way, the Beatles’ producer began to see his way clear toward righting the band’s increasingly unsteady ship. “They were at a major crossroads,” he observed. “It was time to take stock, time to go back to their first love: making music.”29

  16

  All That and a Bar of Chocolate

  * * *

  ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1968, the Cilla variety show finally made its debut, fulfilling Brian Epstein’s long-held dream of making the Liverpool chanteuse a bona fide TV star. He hadn’t lived to see it, of course, but even the manager’s lofty expectations had been exceeded by the show’s success. During the show’s first series, Cilla attracted some thirteen million viewers per episode. For Cilla Black, it was a bittersweet triumph. As she later wrote, “The first time I saw the mug-shot of myself on the cover of the Radio Times, accompanied by the words ‘Cilla Black in her own show on BBC1,’ was one of these Brian moments.” For his part, George was ecstatic. The Cilla show represented a key opportunity to change the singer’s professional fortunes for the better. By this juncture, Cilla’s 1964 consecutive number-one songs with “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and “You’re My World” were beginning to seem like a distant memory, and George was determined to change her fortunes for the better. George’s fingerprints were all over the show, with Cilla’s guests ranging from the likes of Ringo Starr and Spike Milligan to Dudley Moore and Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway. The show’s theme, the Lennon-McCartney number “Step Inside Love,” was released in March to take advantage of the regular face time that Cilla was enjoying on BBC One. While it didn’t attain the heights of her mid-1960s efforts, “Step Inside Love” backed with “I Couldn’t Take My Eyes Off of You” registered a top-ten UK hit, setting the table for the long-player that George had been preparing since autumn.1

  Under George’s supervision, the ensuing album, titled Sher-oo!, was carefully marketed to take advantage of Cilla’s newfound TV fame. In addition to “Step Inside Love,” Martin produced a number of tracks penned by Cilla’s favorite composers, including Bacharach and David’s “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” which had originally been popularized by Jackie DeShannon in 1965, and “This Is the First Time.” For Sher-oo!, George was pulling out all of the stops, even going so far as to record an Italian-language version of “Step Inside Love” with Cilla. Produced from a translation by Mogol (Giulio Rapetti), “Step Inside Love” was targeted to the Italian marketplace, where Cilla had enjoyed a substantial audience dating back to the global success of “You’re My World.” The album also afforded George with the opportunity to work with Mike Vickers, who arranged and conducted the orchestration. For the cover, the long-player featured a photograph by John Kelly. “I was sporting a hairstyle I had never had before,” Cilla later wrote. “I was transformed by a perm that produced masses of big sausage-like curls. It lasted all of a week.” When Sher-oo! was released on April 6, 1968, the long-player quickly did its work, netting a top-ten showing for Black on the UK charts. With a hit single and album in the record shops, Cilla’s dry spell was clearly over.2

  In addition to the success that he and Cilla enjoyed with Sher-oo!, George was delighted to see a certain degree of professional order returning to the singer’s life. In the days following Brian’s death, Cilla had been at sea. But in recent months, her fiancé, Bobby Willis, had assumed a managerial role, and his guidance and devotion to her career were already paying off. As far as George was concerned, working with Bobby suited him just fine. Martin had been friendly with Willis since 1965, even cowriting a song with him at one point. By this juncture, George and Judy had even begun socializing with Cilla and Bobby. As George later recalled, “We hit it off pretty well and liked each other from the word go. I’ve always been friends with the people I record with, and some people you get more friendly with than others. The age difference—about 17 years—never meant anything. As for the great cultural divide, Britain is Britain and I get on fine with people no matter where they come from. Quite often after a recording session, Judy and Bobby would join us and we’d go and have a bite to eat. It became a social thing. Then we started going on skiing holidays together; we had riotous fun. We went to Lech in Austria for quite a few years running.”3

  During this same period, George had also begun preparing a new long-player of his own to fulfill his standing contract with United Artists. Working under the moniker of George Martin and His Orchestra, he recorded the follow-up album to George Martin Instrumentally Salutes The Beatle Girls. The resulting album was titled British Maid, a punning title on the “British-made” nature of the LP’s regular helping of instrumental cover versions, including Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” the New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral,” and the Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park,” among others. As usual, George included a healthy dose of Beatles covers, including “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “I Am the Walrus,” the song that he had originally loathed, only to see it in a different light after composing its orchestration. Not to be outdone, he also featured “Theme One,” his jingle for the BBC’s Radio One. Like George Martin Instrumentally Salutes The Beatle Girls, British Maid was targeted at consumers of easy-listening music. But also like its predecessor, British Maid accented sex and youth as the core of its media campaign, with the LP’s cover art depicting a comely model swathed in a Union Jack bathing suit and clutching a sitar.

  In the new year, George also caught up with the Scaffold. The producer had been truly taken with the novelty act’s “crazy songs” like “2 Day’s Monday” and “Goodbat Nightman,” but he couldn’t seem to find a vehicle to drive them up the charts. In the case of the latter composition, George had been disappointed that the comedy number failed to find an audience, especially since “Goodbat Nightman” cleverly appropriated the current superhero craze. With McGear, McGough, and Gorman singing the hyperbolic lyrics—“God bless all policemen and fighters of crime. / The thieves go to jail for a very long time”—the Scaffold reels off a litany of superhero couples before hitting upon the whereabouts of Batwoman, who seems to be missing in action. The song’s spoken-word middle section, in which the bandmates speculate about Batwoman’s demise, is vintage Martin in his comedy heyday by way of the Scaffold. But as for the bandmates, the Scaffold—and McGear in particular—were in a furor over what they considered to be their maltreatment by Epstein, whom they blamed for the failure of “Goodbat Nightman” to climb the charts. In the months before his death, the bandmates felt that Epstein had been stalling in terms of releasing the single, when in fact Epstein’s ineffectiveness during that period might reasonably be attributed to his post-touring malaise after the Beatles’ Jesus Christ tour. But as far as McGear was concerned, the only thing that mattered was that “Goodbat Nightman” was “released too late. Died a death. We got disillusioned with Brian after that. I went out with him in Wheeler’s in London and said, ‘Brian, it’s like a racetrack and we’re on the outside. All your he
avyweights, the Beatles and Cilla and Gerry, are on the inside. It’s just not working for us.’ He says, ‘Oh, I quite agree, Michael.’ I felt like hitting him, to tell you the truth. So we left.” In many ways, the Scaffold’s interactions with Brian were very much like Cilla’s during the fall of 1966, when the manager had to lure her back into the fold. In another sense, the Scaffold’s disillusionment was not unlike the experiences of other NEMS and Parlophone artists during the early years of Beatlemania. Like Shirley Bassey and the Fourmost in years past, the Scaffold felt neglected by George and Brian, who understandably—at least from their point of view—tended to the premier artists in their stable.4

  After “Goodbat Nightman,” George and the novelty troupe had regrouped to record “Thank U Very Much,” which proved to be their breakthrough number. Released in November 1967, “Thank U Very Much” backed with “Ide Be the First” had been McGear’s brainchild. As he later recalled, “There was this other song I’d written where we’d thank the audience for coming along: ‘Thank you very much for keepin’ the seats warm,’ and so on, just to close our show. So we recorded ‘Thank U Very Much,’ a good strong track. We had a hit there—it was Harold Wilson’s favorite record, and it got us on the telly in a major way. Top of the Pops!” While “Thank U Very Much” notched a number-seven showing on the UK charts, it was also, alas, the end of the Scaffold’s association with George. During the summer of 1967, as the Beatles’ producer had been taking a breather and trying to make sense of the Yellow Submarine and Magical Mystery Tour projects, Gorman stood aside while McGear and McGough toiled away on a long-player of their own—and often in the company of McGear’s older brother, Paul McCartney, who had been on hand during the recording session for “Thank U Very Much.” With McCartney sharing his instrumental talents and occasionally standing in as producer, along with McGear and the Yardbirds’ Paul Samwell-Smith, the comedy duo were joined by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Dave Mason acting as their session men. By the time that the Scaffold reunited to record their follow-up to “Thank U Very Much,” George was out of the picture. Their next single, “Lily the Pink,” produced by none other than George’s old nemesis Norrie Paramor, landed the Scaffold’s only UK number-one hit in December 1968.5