by Bryce Zabel
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While there was much to squabble over, there was also the simple fact that all of the Beatles agreed that their legacy could not end with Savile Row. If they were to close down the band for real, they would have to do what they had done with A Doll’s House and Everest. They needed to show critics and fans the musical power of the group and not the personal pain of its disintegration. This urge to end on a high note was where Imagine Another Day was born.
The biggest impediment to actually producing the album was logistics. Lennon was still locked into staying put in the United States on the advice of his own lawyer, while the rest of the Beatles were scattered. Paul preferred Scotland, George hungered for the tranquility of Friar Park, and Ringo preferred Monaco when he was not jet-setting about the rest of the world.
Yet all four of the Beatles had been in America to film The Hot Rock at the beginning of the year, and they had lingered to attend the Oscars and the Grammys. Even Nixon’s INS could make no argument that they had not been well behaved. Applications for Paul, George, and Ringo were filed, and the INS granted them permission to return to America in the spring.
While Lord Beeching lamented not being able to properly monetize the assets of the Beatles by recording in England, the axis of Beatles music, because of John’s legal woes, thus tilted from the United Kingdom to the United States.
Plans were made to record at LA’s Record Plant for the month of May. What the Beatles team did not foresee at the time was how politics would supercharge those sessions.
In the battle for the Democratic nomination, Senator George McGovern, running as the anti-war candidate, had to defend his political left flank when Senator Edward Kennedy entered the race. Lennon always took credit for persuading the Massachusetts Senator, but Kennedy insisted to historian Theodore White that he had entered in spite of the Beatle’s entreaty, not because of it.
McGovern’s support withered away with a Kennedy in the race, so powerful was the family pull. By March of 1972, McGovern had endorsed Kennedy in exchange for a promise that he would be named Secretary of State, only to have former vice president and now senator Hubert Humphrey jump back in the race and challenge Teddy from the political right.
At the exact same time that the Beatles were recording at the Record Plant in May, Kennedy found himself fighting a bitter struggle to earn the Democratic nomination over Humphrey, and the entire campaign seemed to be coming down to California. Kennedy and Humphrey staged a series of three debates, each within a few days of the other, in the final week of the California campaign.
The first debate came on May 28, just a week before the June 6 winner-take-all California primary election and its mother lode of 271 delegates. Lennon was far more taken with the primary duel than McCartney, Harrison, or Starkey, and broke up the session to watch the debate in the lobby of the recording studio, on a black-and-white television with a metal hanger for its antennae.
Seeing Humphrey come out swinging against Kennedy had one impact on the Imagine Another Day album in that it caused Lennon to revise his earlier “Gimme Some Truth,” a song that first took form in 1969 but had never made it to any Beatles album since then. John was also inspired to push for the inclusion of “Power to the People,” a song he had written a year earlier. John’s passion for political change was at its peak, fueled by his perception that he was “Public Enemy #1” to the Nixon Administration.
The Beatles converged on the Record Plant studio in the early afternoon of June 4. Lennon had convinced them that they should all get there in time to do a little work before taking a break to watch the final Kennedy/Humphrey debate. By this point, even the dismissive Harrison had to admit that it all had turned quite dramatic. If Kennedy could win California, then the nomination was his. If he lost, then it seemed obvious that Humphrey would be the Democratic nominee for president, as he had been four years before, and would face President Nixon in a November election repeat of 1968 when they had run against each other. Even the apolitical McCartney could see the problem with that. “It’s like watching a re-run of a show on the telly that you didn’t much fancy the first time you saw it.”
Lennon thought it was even more apocalyptic.
[John Lennon] “I thought Nixon was the Devil, I really did. But I didn’t think anybody named Hubert could beat him, and this particular Hubert had already had his chance. But Teddy, you could see him doing it. His brothers were about the only other humans on the planet with the sizzle the Beatles had, and both of them were dead. The little brother was the best we could get, but it might just be enough. Of course, Yoko thought I was daft; she thought all politicians were phonies. I said, ‘Of course, he’s a phony, dear, but he’s our phony.’”
What none of the Beatles knew that day as they worked on a McCartney tune called “Monkberry Moon Delight” was that legendary journalist Hunter S. Thompson was straddling his new Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle and heading at extreme speed in their direction. Writing for Rolling Stone, Thompson knew that if he could weave the Beatles into his narrative, editor Jann Wenner would eat it up.
Thompson was in town with all the other political reporters, but he had taken a side trip up to Ventura, where he had purchased what he described as a “genuinely hellish bike” with a top speed of 140 miles per hour. He was riding it in their direction in second gear, where he claimed the vibration nearly fused his wrist bones and the boiling oil from the bike turned his right foot completely black.
By the time he found his way to the Pacific Coast Highway, Thompson had also gobbled up a hit of LSD that he had gotten from some hardcores in a Ventura bike gang. He had both high speed and a mind-scrambling drug in his system, and he was having the time of his life.
It was in this pre-high buzz that he showed up at the Record Plant. No one knew he was coming. Not the engineers, nor the staff, and certainly not the Beatles. Yet there he was in the lobby, smoking a cigarette, twisting the black-and-white TV’s hanger antennae, and shouting, “Tell Lennon and his boy toys that there’s a real man here that needs to talk to him!”
Up until this point, the fact that the Beatles were in Los Angeles recording a new album had been kept a secret. Thompson said he had found out the way any good reporter would—he’d heard about it from someone in a bar and then bribed a police officer providing security for the Kennedy campaign with Dodger tickets and the name of a willing call girl in exchange for the actual location.
The other three Beatles had already had enough of McCartney’s song and happily took a break to greet Thompson. George, in particular, needed to reassure himself that the fringe journalist and motorcyclist had not brought any Hells Angels with him.
“Hell, no,” said Thompson. “They can’t keep up with a Shadow.” He explained that the days when he wrote about outlaw motorcycle gangs were long gone and that his new book was about this year’s election. “It’ll be better because politicians are even more venal than bikers.”
Ringo wanted to know if he intended to put the Beatles in that book. “Only if I remember any of this,” was Thompson’s answer.
That was good enough for the Beatles, and they retired back into the studio with the demented journalist. By now, Thompson was starting to trip in a way that made him seem amiably incoherent when he demanded an encore of “Honey Pie” from the A Doll’s House album.
Lennon looked like he was ready to murder his guest, who broke into a loud laugh. “I’m fucking with you! Play ‘Glass Onion.’” The fact that he knew enough to pick a Lennon song won him an instant friend in John and a puzzled reaction from Paul.
Thompson offered to share some of his biker LSD with the band, none of whom had taken the drug in years. John had replaced it with heroin; Paul had returned to his old standby, marijuana; George was experimenting with cocaine; and Ringo’s drug of choice was alcohol.
George pushed back immediately, reminding everyone that he had not taken that specific drug in years and was seeking the positive effects it sought to convey thr
ough spiritualism instead. In fact, none of the Beatles had dropped acid since before the Everest sessions. Besides, on the off chance that you were looking for someone to get high with, Hunter Thompson seemed risky.
It was Ringo, however, who shrugged at his friends and smiled. “Sounds like it could be fun, just this once,” he said. “I mean, if we all do it together, like the old times.”
Like the old times. In other words, everyone was going to be in or everyone was going to be out on this one.
Next up, Paul. “Old times. Why not?”
Lennon pushed back his glasses. “I’ll do it, but I have to call Yoko first.”
Then George. He was obviously the most conflicted. “Let’s not make a habit of this, shall we?”
Now that the group-mind had spoken, each man received a dose contained in a small blue pill that Thompson called “Thunder Road.”
They continued to play while waiting for the drug’s effects to kick in. By this point, Thompson was scaling new heights of being stoned when he asked, “Wait, what day is this?”
Told by George that it was Sunday afternoon, Thompson stood up on the piano bench and announced in his trademark staccato style: “Today we all have to go into the rancid belly of the beast despite the ominous possibility that the speedy free-falling Super Bowl swagger of the evil bastards and their underdog trip will be the lowest goddamn jerk-off perpetrated on the drunken lapdogs they have let loose on the people of California.”
The Beatles, only partially accountable by the impending rush of their own acid trips, would later admit they had not the faintest idea what the so-called gonzo journalist was talking about. But Thompson had just realized that he had less than an hour to get from the Record Plant location on Sycamore Avenue in Hollywood to the ABC Television Studios on Prospect, a distance of about four and a half miles. Kennedy and Humphrey were due for their final debate, and Thompson was supposed to watch it live from the press room and write it up for a special edition of Rolling Stone.
Thompson said that he would get all the Beatles into the press room if they would get him to the studios. He no longer felt up to “taming the raging beast of the Black Shadow.” As it turned out, there was a limo standing by for the Beatles that could be called into service.
Ringo wondered if the press room for a national political debate in the United States might be a party that was more than a little difficult to just crash. Wouldn’t they need identification or some kind of press pass?
“Mother of God,” declared Thompson. “You identify yourselves.”
With that, the limo, driven by surprised driver José Escamilla-Santos, was called into service.
[Hunter S. Thompson] “By the time I got into the limo, I saw four Beatles heads, but there was only one body that seemed recognizable, and it was wearing some kind of psychedelic tunic made out of tie-dyed blue jeans. I could taste the music coming out of their mouths by this time, some kind of fantastic, oozing mess of melody that made my own head feel like it had floated through the open roof and was escaping to the moon. And even when I tried to speak, to explain this unholy unhinging of my mind and body, all that came from my mouth was some kind of screech that sounded like koo-koo-ka-choo from the beak of a crow. This was before the full effect of the drug had kicked in and it made me nervous that perhaps this time I had actually gone too far.”
In order to calm everyone down and make them presentable before the national press corps, Thompson advised a stiff drink or two of Wild Turkey straight bourbon whiskey, chased with a freshly cut grapefruit, two of which he had carried with him in his backpack during his harrowing motorcycle ride just a few hours earlier. Even though it may seem ludicrous on the face of it that Hunter Thompson and all four of the Beatles could arrive at a network studio to see a presidential debate while stoned on acid and reeking of whiskey, no one seemed to offer any resistance to the idea. And so off they went.
The limo with the Beatles and Hunter Thompson made it to ABC Television Studios with seven minutes to spare before the debate began. Thompson told the security team at the ABC gate that he was bringing the Beatles with him. Highly skeptical, they inspected the limo, only to have Paul McCartney tell them, “We’ve just come along for the ride, so to speak. Let’s keep it our little secret.”
As Thompson, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starkey entered the press room, it is fair to say that all eyes went from the monitors, where Kennedy and Humphrey could be seen sitting around a bright red rug, waiting to be questioned by Sam Donaldson for a special edition of “Issues and Answers,” to the spectacle that now appeared before them. These were hardened reporters, the so-called “Boys on the Bus” of campaign journalism, and yet they all dropped what they were doing to gawk at John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Among those stopped in their tracks was David S. Broder of the Washington Post.
[David S. Broder] “You have to understand that we had followed these politicians around for so long that we could have delivered their own speeches for them without missing a beat. We had seen more of them than our own spouses for nearly six months. Speaking for myself, I had never met a Beatle. And yet, there they were. I shook John Lennon’s hand and mumbled something about his immigration troubles, and he said, ‘It’s all pie in the sky to me. I’m afraid you’ll have to speak English now.’ I’m not sure what he meant exactly, but he sure made more of an impression than Hubert Humphrey, I’ll tell you that.”
The debate began minutes later, and the attention turned to the see-through glass that looked down on the studio floor. From a straight journalism point of view, it can only be said that the four Beatles seemed to be taking it all in stride, watching quietly, smoking cigarettes, and laughing at the oddest statements about tax policy and the like. Given the nature of it all, perhaps it is best to let Thompson’s own words from his Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 tell the story.
[Hunter S. Thompson] “This was madness in every direction. The Beatles were no longer Moptops if they ever were, but instead were bearded men with wild eyes that knew no good could come of this. They looked afraid, and they should have been, since the two white men sitting on the stage, lit up by red shag carpet that caused even the most advanced cameras to shimmer and jiggle, were the best that America could offer to a world choking on its own bile. When Humphrey spoke, flames poured from his throat like the hot, glowing fire that Uncle Sam had used to light up the Japs on Okinawa back in the day when America really could kick serious ass in the Eastern world, before the Viet Cong showed the world what a pussy we could be, even if we did have Agent Orange now. Kennedy could only smile, those white teeth beating back the heat, his eyes shifting, wondering if the next bullet out there in this goddamned hellish cartoon of a nation had his name on it. The Beatles, these British interlopers, were just as high as I was, only I knew we were doomed, but they were just seeing it for themselves and it tasted like curdled milk that had been swallowed quickly and spit out like vomit.”
Whether or not this was a true summary of what the Beatles were feeling at that moment can be argued. What was true, according to at least a dozen accounts of reporters in the room, however, is that they lasted only fifteen minutes into a debate that went on for an hour and a half. By the time that consensus in the press pool awarded the victory to Kennedy on style points, the Beatles were long gone.
Before the night was over, the entire group, including limo driver Escamilla-Santos, was partying in LA’s Laurel Canyon, at the home shared by Don Henley and Glenn Frey. Guests included David Crosby and Graham Nash of the Apple band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Apple’s Glyn Johns and Peter Asher, Lennon’s good friend Harry Nilsson, and two women everyone seemed to know, Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt.
[David Crosby] “It was a scene, man, just a scene. I didn’t want to be left out, you know, so I dropped acid, too. But I was so far behind them that by the time they were coming down the next morning, I was still flying high. George Harrison and I had a moment in the middle of the night when we both t
hought we could read each other’s minds. Don’t ask me what he was thinking, though, because I have no idea.”
Lennon woke up the next morning in the home of Ronstadt. He had obviously slept with the emerging rock star and now remembered nothing about it. “If I’d known we were going to have sex,” he said, “I’d have held off on the last drink.”
“We only tried to,” she said, correcting him.
“Should we try again?” he asked.
Ronstadt passed on the opportunity and instead fixed him a breakfast of bacon and eggs. Afterward, she drove him around Hollywood in her 1970 Buick Skylark before delivering him to the Record Plant. In what may have been a first, John Lennon was on time for a recording session that all three of his bandmates were late for.
In the years to come, all of the Beatles have denied most of these events happened, particularly the drug-taking, leaving the impression that Thompson made up or imagined the entire LSD angle after sharing dinner and some high-quality reefer with the group following a recording session. The other alternative, of course, is that Thompson’s version of events was true, but the Beatles made a pact never to acknowledge it, hoping to avoid the debate that their new music was drug-inspired.
Whatever part is true or false, it seems clear that John, Paul, George, and Ringo created a new group memory out of the chaos with rebel journalist Thompson. “From what I remember,” George has always maintained, “it was a bit like the old days, which we all thought we’d never see again.”
More Doll, Less Mountain
After their 36-hour bender, the Beatles went back to the Record Plant to complete their next album. It’s not surprising that, after a revelatory acid trip, each man now saw the endeavor through somewhat new eyes.