Once There Was a Way

by Bryce Zabel

  Woodstock remains, to this day, not only a seminal cultural turning point for rock music but yet another redefining moment for the band. Not only were the Beatles the biggest attraction in the world, but they had performed under extremely dangerous circumstances. Their legend was not growing smaller with time, but larger.

  Today it’s impossible to think of Woodstock without remembering the Beatles on that stage, helping the counter-culture say goodbye to the 1960s.

  Climbing Everest

  When the Beatles returned to England, they met with reporters at Heathrow. John opened with, “We’re all glad to be alive. Love to Yoko.”

  “We’re all going to take a few days, but not too many,” Paul said, “because we have an album to finish called Everest, and we’ll be getting back to Abbey Road to work on it.” When asked what the Himalayan mountain had to do with anything, he said, “Because you have to nearly kill yourself to get there, man, and, when you do, you can barely breathe.” It was a dark snapshot of his own mind.

  Ringo was eager to get back to work. “Playing drums all day may be the only way to calm me down,” he said, lighting one cigarette off his last one.

  George spoke little, primarily serving to confirm exactly what he had said to his bandmates before they took the stage: “The way out is the way in.” Asked to explain it further, he answered the reporter testily, “You know exactly what it means. It means what it means.”

  The usual witty banter of the Beatles was in short supply this day. They answered questions for just six minutes before John walked out. Soon he and Yoko were reunited at their new Lennon estate at Tittenhurst Park at Sunninghill, Berkshire. The Lennons then went to bed in their early-Georgian country house, refused all calls, and emerged four days later. Both of them went to the Abbey Road studio together, and the conflict the band felt toward Yoko’s presence resumed to the level it had been a month earlier with one difference.

  [Yoko] “I could have stopped John from going to Woodstock with them. Since what happened, I wish I had. But they knew I gave John to them for what they wanted, but now they had to give us something back that we wanted.”

  The sessions went on, with Yoko often knitting quietly in the studio, occasionally giving John a note about what the band was doing. Linda McCartney actually dropped by twice and the women—both newlyweds—talked about something else they had in common. They weren’t going to let the Beatles play in public again unless security was elevated dramatically.

  “We called John and Paul out of a session and told them they were taking us to lunch,” said Linda to her biographer before her death in 1998. “We explained that we weren’t okay with what had just happened, and we weren’t going to sleep with them anymore until they fixed the situation.”

  The next day, Apple’s Allen Klein signed a contract with the security consultants he’d worked with while managing the Rolling Stones.

  The actual recording sessions for Everest continued to be marked by a certain civility between the participants. After the final music was on tape, they all returned to Lennon’s Tittenhurst estate to shoot the album cover. They dutifully posed in a variety of locations, standing in weeds, outside of buildings, and in the beautiful garden area.

  They even posed for an alternate cover that was created by a team of set designers and was built to display John, Paul, George, and Ringo against a photo backdrop of the peak of Mount Everest. For this version, they posed in cold-weather gear and mocked planting the Union Jack in the snow.

  After the photos had been taken, Lennon presented a catered lunch with food for everyone from George’s favorite Indian restaurant, including selections from a special non-spicy menu for Ringo’s stomach problems.

  It was just a month since Woodstock, and they were celebrating the imminent release of their most ambitious album yet. Klein had shown up for the lunch with signature copies of the new deal he’d struck with Capitol Records that let the Beatles determine the ways in which their music could be manufactured and sold.

  The contracts were signed, and the party was breaking up. “Just one more thing before you go,” said John.

  “It was the way he said ‘just one more thing,’” said George. “I knew what he was going to say before the words got out of his mouth.”

  “I think we’re all daft, talking about the rules for playing on stage again, and it’s not just Woodstock,” said John. “It’s playing at all. I’m done, boys. I want a divorce, and this seems as good a time as any to do it.”

  Klein immediately said that it was the worst possible time. The people who had just put so many more dollars in their pockets with the new contract would not be happy to hear that the band had signed and then broken up the same day.

  “It’s always the worst time for you, Allen.”

  “Except that this time, it really is.”

  John was only too happy to enumerate his complaints: He wanted to spend all his time with Yoko. He thought Paul wanted to run the band and he was ready to let him, finally. Neither Allen Klein nor John Eastman could measure up to Brian Epstein. He found himself caring more about politics than music anyway.

  To each complaint, there was an answer, usually one that Paul was forced to put forward. It was not either-or, he said. John could spend time with Yoko like he had been doing for nearly two years now and still record with the Beatles.

  “I don’t want to record with the Beatles, Paul,” said John. “It’s been a romp and a half for longer than we all thought and now we’ve all got to let it go, don’t you see?”

  Paul—gung ho, pro-band, believer in Beatles Forever—did not see. “This was your dream, John,” he shouted, jabbing his finger forward. “It wasn’t easy then and it’s not easy now. But nothing else in your life is ever going to touch this.”

  “Thank God for that,” said John.

  John and Paul went at it, sending words spewing out of their mouths that they couldn’t possibly want anyone to remember. George could go either way, he said, and delivered that message with the surly attitude he had been wearing since the Kubrick disaster. Ringo said it wasn’t his call, given the givens, so he had no opinion. If they wanted to play, he would bring his sticks.

  The solution for the moment was to grant John Lennon the reality that he so wanted others to ratify—that he was no longer in the Beatles. In exchange, Lennon agreed that for the moment, the demise of the group would remain a secret until the timing was better.

  • • •

  When Everest was released on September 26, 1969, fans immediately declared the album a masterpiece and bought it in record numbers. Ironically, the cover used neither the band’s conventional rock group photos that were taken in the gardens of the Lennon estate, nor the ones that they posed for in front of the Mount Everest backdrop with the fake snow.

  Instead, the album cover featured all four of the Beatles walking briskly, legs outstretched as if in choreography, to the Woodstock stage area. Despite the seriousness of the moment, Paul McCartney appears to be laughing at something that John Lennon has said to him.

  Whatever the source of the magic, the picture leaves an indelible impression. The fact that it was taken at Woodstock and, therefore, had nothing to do with the album whose cover it graced was simply ignored. It demanded to be used.

  “John told us to step lively,” Paul explained later about his smile. “He said we wanted to look good marching off to our executions. It was quite absurd.”

  John was about to place a new absurdity in the Beatles equation. Within mere days of the release of Everest, he had recorded another controversial single, this one about his struggle with heroin addiction.

  Lennon, never one for halfway measures, decided to quit heroin all at once. He would go cold turkey, stop using, and ride out the storm. When he came out the other side, he did exactly what a great artist who has experienced a monumental life event might be expected to do. He wrote a song about it. Fresh off his rejection of the Beatles as a viable group, he recorded the song with Eri
c Clapton and Klauss Voorman, with only Ringo representing the band.

  “Cold Turkey” was more of a Beatles song than “Revolution 9,” but it made the heroin-inspired “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” feel like pop music by comparison. This one went beyond the personal pain of addiction and into the sheer agony of withdrawal.

  Lennon was proud of the song. He was ready to release it as a solo with Ono’s “Don’t Worry Kyoko” on the B-side and planned to give the credit to his Plastic Ono Band concept. The problem, of course, was that doing so would make the current split that much more public.

  Hearing about the brewing impasse from their respective Beatles, Allen Klein and John Eastman realized they would have to speak to each other and work something out. The only problem was that Klein and Eastman were no longer speaking to each other. Paul back-channeled to Lord Beeching, the man who had come closest to being named the leader of Apple earlier in the year, and asked him to introduce himself into the situation as a necessary “layer of separation.”

  At a hastily arranged meeting of the Beatles and their representatives, Lord Beeching was presented as a consultant who had been brought in by Klein and Eastman to review the overall financial condition of Apple and, of course, the group itself.

  [Lord Beeching] “While the solo ambitions of each member of the Beatles should be respected long-term, for the immediate future and the viability of your company, you simply cannot let that division in your ranks be visible as you seek to instill solvency and discipline to Apple Corps. The Beatles must remain the priority of this company if your goal is to save the company, on this we cannot compromise.”

  Lennon stared at Beeching for the entire monologue and, when it was finished, innocently asked, “Who are you again?” Lennon felt he was being ganged up on, and he complained to Klein, loudly.

  Beeching told everyone that the question was greater than what should happen with “Cold Turkey.” He believed that any singles that came out should be released as Beatles records, no matter who wrote them or recorded on them. Although this was clearly directed at John, Beeching took aim at Paul as well.

  He demanded that all songs written by a Beatle be recorded by the Beatles. Paul’s current work on “Goodbye” for Mary Hopkin had given her an international hit. The same was true for “Step Inside Love,” which had been a hit the year before for British singer Cilla Black, and “World Without Love” back in 1964, which had been a number one hit for Peter and Gordon. Most recently there was “Come and Get It,” written by McCartney, slated to be recorded by Apple’s Scottish protégés, Badfinger, and used in The Magic Christian film. That, Beeching said, needed to be reversed immediately. He demanded the song be placed on the next Beatles album.

  Beeching slammed his palms on the fine wood conference table.

  [Lord Beeching] “These are bad business decisions. They must stop. Apple artists should not require the Beatles working for them as songwriters. They do need a company that operates as a professional business, and allows them to pursue their artistic ambitions and seek financial reward for them. They deserve that, and nothing more.”

  “I was prepared to walk out because they were obviously there to kill ‘Cold Turkey,’ but then Old Man Beechfinger started yelling at Paul more than me,” said Lennon. “I started to like him a lot more, honestly.” Beeching did leave room for an exception to the rule, which allowed a member of the Beatles and another artist to perform a kind of music that was clearly not the music of the Beatles. This was aimed to not only give Lennon the wiggle room to continue to record and produce avant-garde material with his wife but also to let Harrison do an Indian sitar album if he wished. As for “Cold Turkey,” the song could easily exist in the Beatles catalog, and that’s where it belonged, even if it was about drugs.

  “You think you can all just ignore what I told you out at my house and I’ll forget about it,” Lennon told the room. “I’ll agree, for now, you buggers, but the day is coming.”

  The agreement that Lennon signed on was simply that “Cold Turkey” would be released as a Beatles song on the A-side. Yoko’s song was moved from the B-side and placed on the Lennon-Ono experimental Wedding Album, a similar solution to the “Revolution 9” impasse. McCartney was not eager to contribute a B-side to a piece that was about heroin withdrawal, so he stepped aside, opening the way for Harrison to get a song of his that had been passed over in the Everest sessions to take the spot. His “All Things Must Pass” would be the flip side, both musically and spiritually to Lennon’s painful lament.

  Though Lennon’s open-mindedness on the subject of tolerating the Beatles a while longer was something that Paul, George, and Ringo did not expect, it did not come as a surprise to Allen Klein. He knew how shaky his number one client was, and he was doing something about it.

  Klein heard the news out of Hollywood first. It seemed that United Artists was exploring an animated Yellow Submarine-style film for The Lord of the Rings. Based on signed contracts, UA had the right to do this irrespective of the Beatles’ cooperation.

  Not wanting to see the Beatles re-cast as cartoon characters, Klein reached out to UA to begin high-stakes negotiations between Kubrick, United Artists, and Apple to discuss whether an agreement could be reached to complete the live-action film version of The Lord of the Rings.

  Given that Kubrick and Lennon had spent the better part of 1969 ridiculing each other to anyone who would listen, this was surprising news to Lennon, who couldn’t understand why Kubrick would change his mind and why he should care if the director did.

  “You and Kubrick have gotten great publicity out of your fight,” said Klein. “Now two world-class pricks are coming together to make the movie of the century. I can sell that.” Only Allen Klein could have gotten away with calling John Lennon such a name, but he knew how Lennon thought.

  Both John and Paul were mired in controversy as 1969 ended—John, for his full-frontal nudity on Two Virgins, his acknowledgment of drug addiction, and the return of his MBE medal, and Paul, for literally having to defend his life after an American disc jockey started a rumor that convinced fans that “Paul is dead.” Among the proof offered was the fact that McCartney was the only one smiling in the Everest cover photo, which could only mean he was laughing in the graveyard.

  “I’d been looking for a sign, a way to keep the Beatles alive,” McCartney said to Look magazine. “Having people out there saying I was already dead feels like a bit more than I was expecting.”

  At Christmas time, John and Yoko planned to finish up their Bed-In year with a shocking billboard campaign, featuring giant white spaces in Times Square and London and eight other global hot spots. The signs would read, “War Is Over! If You Want It. Happy Christmas from John and Yoko.”

  Trying his own strategy to keep John in the band, Paul suggested to the Eastmans that Apple should pay for the campaign and that the signs might even be funded by the Beatles. John reacted to this news as if Paul was trying to steal his grand idea. It was Yoko, however, who showed him what the campaign cost might be and actually suggested that this time Paul just might be right. John signed off on the idea.

  “If John thinks war can be ended just by changing your mind and thinking differently,” Paul said to Ringo, “then maybe he’ll change his mind about the band.”

  Ringo considered this over a cigarette before offering his opinion. “Don’t count on it,” he concluded. “Wars are simple things. The Beatles have real issues.”

  Chapter Three:

  AND THE BAND PLAYS ON (1970)

  No Part Harmony

  As 1970 dawned, everyone knew that whether the group survived or not was up to the capricious moods of John Lennon more than anything else. These days, he seemed to feel as if the Beatles were no more real than an LSD experience after you’ve crashed, slept it off, and started a new day with a jolt of strong coffee.

  Lennon and Ono had stayed in Denmark over the holidays to be with Yoko’s daughter, Kyoko. It was here, in Aalborg, that Lennon and Ono ann
ounced plans to shave off most of their shoulder-length hair, pledging to auction the shorn locks for a charitable cause.

  On the other side of the world, in America, the ploy was noticed by Bernardine Dohrn, the radical Weather Underground leader, and her boyfriend William Ayers. As busy revolutionaries, they filed the memory away and went about their work supervising bomb-making and writing manifestos. Their attention would haunt John Lennon in years to come.

  In the present, however, Lennon’s publicity stunt was in clear violation of contracts that stated The Lord of the Rings would require all four Beatles to be on the set in early March with “no significant changes to their current appearances.” Even so, Lennon mailed director Stanley Kubrick a lock of his hair with a doodle inscribed “sorry, luv, johnandyoko.”

  Kubrick immediately sent the lock of hair to Apple offices with his own handwritten note:

  Please advise your client, Mr. Lennon, that he will need to submit to the shears once again, as I have now determined, based on his current actions, that the role of Gollum will need to be played with a bald head. Best wishes, Stanley Kubrick.

  Not that John Lennon cared much about contracts of any kind. He and Ono had recently performed at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, singing several new songs, even though, technically, under the current Beatles operating agreement, playing outside the group was not allowed. Lennon didn’t ask for permission then, nor was it granted.

  • • •

  George Harrison had been on a recent creative tear, touring with Eric Clapton and Delaney & Bonnie, basking in the creative equality he felt was so missing in his experience with the Beatles. If Lennon went ahead with his Plastic Ono Band solo project, Harrison reasoned, then he would pull together all his songs that had been rejected by Lennon-McCartney into his own solitary declaration of independence to be called What Is Life. While his mind was still technically open to new Beatles collaborations, he knew that if the solo years arrived, then he would be out of the gates with new material as fast as any of them.