Once There Was a Way

by Bryce Zabel

  None of this, however, could have been as threatening to the future of the Beatles as what George did next. He professed his love for Maureen Starkey in front of her husband and his longtime friend and bandmate, Ringo. Ringo had not been any more faithful to his own wife than George had been to his, but the expectation that their own wives were off-limits to each other had never been broken. The circle of dangerous liaisons was complete.

  Soon, Ringo’s marriage to Maureen would end, with George’s separation from Pattie not far behind. But somehow, George Harrison and Richard Starkey managed to remain in the Beatles and make music together during these tumultuous months.

  [George] “I suppose we could have said, ‘Well, that’s it, no more Beatles.’ But the Beatles were hanging together on only a few months each year as it was. I think both Richie and myself felt like if anyone was going to break up the band, for real and for good, it would be Paul or John. Not us. We didn’t need another guilt trip.”

  By September of 1973, tabloids and newspapers seemed to have no clue about either George’s marriage or Ringo’s, but they continued to focus on the Lennon-Ono relationship. Both John and Yoko continued to portray it as one of the great love affairs in history. But as that image began to crumble, John Lennon, feeling he had nowhere to hide, became more withdrawn, and, with good reason, even more paranoid.

  Enemies List

  President Richard Nixon and his political lieutenants knew that the Beatles weren’t being paranoid about being followed and having their phones tapped. Ever since his meeting with Elvis Presley and the warning from Strom Thurmond, the president had held his own paranoid grudge against John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Richard Starkey. He had gone so far as to have them targeted by the FBI for surveillance and by the INS for deportation.

  The Beatles, however, weren’t Richard Nixon’s biggest problem—not by a long shot. In the summer of 1973, the Nixon White House was falling apart, unraveling over the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters by men working for the White House itself. As the constitutional crisis deepened over the cover-up orchestrated within White House walls, there was a steady drip of scandal.

  Even so, no one had a real understanding that the world’s most popular rock band had been targeted by the Administration. That changed in July, when former presidential lawyer John Dean, in testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee, confirmed the existence of a Nixon White House “Enemies List,” which contained the names of all four of the Beatles.

  [Senator Ervin] “Mr. Dean, what are you saying here? That the president of the United States of America turned both the FBI and the INS loose on a rock band?”

  [John Dean] “Yes, sir. He took the political activism of Mister Lennon quite seriously.”

  [Senator Ervin] “Why on Earth would he do that?”

  [John Dean] “Because his own government was telling him that he should.”

  That was shocking enough, but Dean had more. He remembered a conversation that was supposed to have taken place between Nixon and his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, on June 20, 1972, just three days after the break-in at the Democratic headquarters. The conversation reportedly turned to the plan for the Beatles to play a protest concert in Miami Beach during the upcoming Republican convention (although such a concert never took place).

  That day’s tape recording was among eight others subpoenaed by both the Senate Watergate Committee and Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox to confirm Dean’s testimony. Initially, Nixon refused to turn them over, and the matter ultimately went to the Supreme Court the next year, and produced a ruling ordering Nixon to do as he was told. Before that, however, Nixon produced edited transcripts of the tapes.

  This is the section that included references to the Beatles.

  TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDING OF A MEETING BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT AND H.R. HALDEMAN IN THE OVAL OFFICE ON JUNE 23, 1972, FROM 10:04 TO 11:39 a.m.

  PRESIDENT: They’re coming at us from everywhere, Bob. This is not what we bargained for. Not by a long shot.

  HALDEMAN: No, sir, Mr. President. It certainly is not.

  PRESIDENT: You know it’s exactly two months until our convention, down in Miami. Two months today.

  HALDEMAN: [Unintelligible].

  PRESIDENT: I’m not worried about the homosexuals. It’s those goddamn outside agitators that Elvis Presley warned us about. I thought we told the INS to get them deported.

  HALDEMAN: You’re talking about the Beatles?

  PRESIDENT: [Expletive deleted] leftists. We should squash them like the bugs they say they are.

  HALDEMAN: Well, the thing is that this Lennon, he’s got a fancy New York lawyer, and they’re fighting it. Plus, the others aren’t here to deport, but we had to give them work visas for a movie they were shooting.

  NIXON: They’re not even Americans.

  HALDEMAN: They, uh, well, apparently, they’re planning to hold a concert of some kind in Miami at the same time the convention will be nominating you.

  PRESIDENT: [Expletive Deleted]

  HALDEMAN: How do you want us to play it?

  PRESIDENT: Tough as nails. That’s the way the Left plays it and that’s the way we’re sure as hell going to play it. Tell Gray to get the FBI on it.

  HALDEMAN: Of course. To do what, exactly?

  PRESIDENT: To make them sweat. Put the heat on them.

  HALDEMAN: Okay.

  PRESIDENT: [Expletive Deleted] [Inaudible]

  The conversation continued, but the long and the short of it was that Nixon explicitly instructed his chief of staff to have the FBI continue its targeting of the Beatles as left-wing radicals and to use the INS to stop them from getting into the United States in the first place.

  Nixon ordered the illegal use of government agencies to target and harass the Beatles simply because they intended to participate in the expression of free speech at a U.S. political convention, organized by American citizens who would publicize their message. Still, the Beatles were not American citizens, and their civil liberties fell in a gray area.

  This transcript and the subsequent audiotape evidence were eventually included in the Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Justice articles that led to Nixon’s impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives.

  By mid-summer 1973, when John Dean was delivering his explosive testimony about the Beatles having notched places for themselves on Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List,” the reality was that the band was hardly functional. By this point, all four of its members were working on solo work, more or less acknowledging that the group would end with no fanfare whatsoever, unless something drastic happened to change the situation.

  The dirty little secret of 1973 turned out to be that Richard Nixon, who by his own account loathed the Beatles, was the force that kept them together a bit longer.

  Like the rest of America, John Lennon was finding it impossible to ignore the summer’s televised Watergate hearings. He watched them from start to finish on either the modest color TV set in Linda Ronstadt’s home or on all three televisions in the home he was supposed to be sharing with May Pang. On the day in question, he was watching TV with Harry Nilsson and a bottle of vodka when he heard his own name uttered by the man who had been the lawyer to the president of the United States of America.

  “I fucking told you!” he screamed. While many would be terrified to be on anyone’s “enemies list,” let alone the president’s, Lennon saw it as vindication. He was not paranoid. Nixon really did have it in for him.

  “All the Beatles are on the list,” corrected Nilsson.

  “But they got on because of me!” To John Lennon, this was as much a badge of distinction as it was something to fear.

  As soon as Dean’s testimony for the day ended, Lennon picked up his guitar and went to work on “Enemies List,” a song that is now universally acknowledged to be in the lineage with “Power to the People,” “Give Peace a Chance,” and “Gimme Some Truth” and considered by some to be the best of all four.<
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  The next morning, Lennon called his attorney Leon Wildes and played him the song. Wildes did not know much about rock music, but he knew that what had just happened on TV, combined with this song his client had just played him, had the power to change the legal situation—whether for better or worse, Wildes couldn’t be sure.

  As it turned out, Wildes’s advice inspired the first Lennon-McCartney songwriting credit since “Show Up.”

  [John] “I wanted to write it myself. But Leon said that if I wrote it with Paul, it would prove that I was a working musician in a band that was being illegally harassed by the Nixon Administration. That way Nixon and his criminals wouldn’t be able to use it to portray only me as anti-American. I would have ignored old Leon, I think, except that I thought Paul could put some melody in to go along with my all my piss and vinegar.”

  [Paul] “Even John knew that if you’re going to write a song that gives the finger to the president of the United States, it better be a good one.”

  The process that created this classic Beatles protest song was enormously time-intensive and confusing. First, John sent his original take to George Martin, who made some notes and sent it to Paul, who recorded his own version. Martin made some more notes. Paul and John got on the phone together to hammer out the differences, and the conversation became so heated that had they actually been in the same room together, they might have come to blows. In telling the tale, even today, both men remember hanging up on the other first. In the end, the matter got dumped back on Martin, who managed to cobble a coherent track together and bring both George and Ringo into the studio to add their own parts.

  Somehow, though, it worked. “Enemies List” is on anyone’s list of protest songs to this day, right up there with Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” Its passion transcends the time and circumstances that gave birth to it, and it now plays as an attack on corrupt leadership that devotes its energies to its survival rather than helping the people it is supposed to serve.

  Not to mention that it kick-started one of the most storied Beatles albums of their entire time together.

  If We Ever Get Out of Here

  Complicated as it was to make, within ten days Apple had a hot new song that was highly relevant to everyone, and, miraculously, had all four Beatles playing on it with a Lennon-McCartney writing credit. The problem was getting it to market. Even if the Beatles started work on a new album immediately, it would be months before anyone could buy it.

  “I’m just the drummer,” said Ringo, “but even I know we have to get this into record stores before Nixon gets out of Washington.”

  All four Beatles agreed to release “Enemies List” as the A-side on a single and get it out ASAP. The one remaining question was what to put on the other side. The only other song recently produced under the Beatles banner was “Live and Let Die.” It was due to be released on the film’s soundtrack album on July 2, a mere four days after John Dean concluded his Senate testimony.

  Lawyers called lawyers, and a deal was struck that would allow the song to be included on a new single from the Beatles. The writing credit on the film’s soundtrack version was given solely to McCartney, but that would be changed for the single to McCartney-Lennon, to balance out the Lennon-McCartney credit on the A-side.

  With egos assuaged and the Senate Watergate Committee still in session, the “Enemies List/Live and Let Die” single hit the stores. It received massive airplay on FM stations and gave anti-Nixon partisans something to do to show their disapproval—they could buy a Beatles record. As a bonus, they got a hit song from the new James Bond film.

  With another hit single, there was renewed energy from the Beatles to make a full album. Once again Leon Wildes, the man who did not even know who John Lennon was when he accepted him as a client, altered the course of rock history. He explained his thinking to the Princeton Law Review years later:

  [Leon Wildes] “I became convinced that the Dean testimony changed everything. Nixon was not only on the run, but anything bad that happened to John Lennon or any of the Beatles was the kind of publicity that the Administration didn’t need and could no longer afford. I decided against caution, and to roll the dice instead. I told John to leave the country and make that album with the Beatles, but to make sure Yoko stayed in New York. Then, when he tried to return, if the government tried to stop him, we would have the additional argument that they were preventing a husband and wife from being together.”

  Of course, the husband and wife team of John Lennon and Yoko Ono were not currently together, a detail that was simply ignored in the legal thinking. They had a valid marriage certificate going back to 1969. To all interested parties, so long as they showed up at court together, they would look like they were together, and that was enough.

  On a more practical level, the band had yet to address the major detail of where to record this new album. Beeching was strongly in favor of the Beatles returning to Savile Row to record, as were George Martin, Allen Klein, and Lee Eastman—Savile Row was certainly the more controllable environment, they reasoned. McCartney, however, was still in favor of recording at an EMI studio in another country, feeling that the exotic locale would energize the songs. “Just get me out of the U.S. for a while so I can go back,” Lennon responded.

  In the end, McCartney got his way, mostly because he had the strongest convictions, and no one else seemed to care as passionately for any alternative. As a result, after receiving a list of all of EMI’s international recording studios, John, Paul, George, Ringo, George Martin, Allen Klein, and Lee Eastman selected the one in Lagos, Nigeria.

  There was no opportunity in those days for someone to perform the quick Google search that would have swept away the band’s vision of this exotic location, in which they would sunbathe by day and record music at night. The reality on the ground was that conditions in Nigeria were tense and difficult. The country had only just emerged from a civil war in 1970 and was now being run by a corrupt military government. August also marked the tail end of the West African coast’s monsoon season, when heat and humidity peak. To round out the complications, cholera was at near epidemic levels, which the Beatles and their entourage did not know until they were in the country.

  Upon arriving early in the month, the musical expedition also discovered that the studio was equally not up to expectations. Located in the Lagos suburb of Apapa, the building was really a ramshackle tin shed, and an under-equipped one at that. Producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick quickly discovered that the control desk was faulty, the microphones second-rate, and there was only a single Studer 8-track on which to record the output of the most popular band on the planet.

  The Beatles rented houses near the airport in Ikeja, a full hour’s drive from the studio that included some rough roads in both construction and neighborhoods. Paul, Linda, and their three children stayed in one house; John and Ringo shared another; and George crashed with Emerick and Martin.

  “It’s so glamorous out here,” said George. “I don’t know how we can ever go back to the way we used to live.” He said it in jest, but the truth was that the four Beatles had stayed in much worse conditions during their early club and touring days. The sense of deprivation and danger in Nigeria actually helped them bond again.

  They established a routine of recording during the week and playing tourist on the weekends and temporarily joined a local country club where everyone but John and Ringo, who preferred to sleep in, spent most mornings. In the early afternoon, a trio of four-wheel-drive vehicles would pick everyone up for transport to the studio, where recording could last into the early evening and, when the energy was good, until early morning.

  The sessions became a reverse of earlier days when John and Yoko were inseparable. Yoko was nowhere to be seen this time, and it was Paul and Linda who seemed to be never apart.

  [Linda McCartney] “I wasn’t comfortable taking the kids to many places by myself so we ended up hanging aro
und the studio. A lot. It wasn’t very big and there were times when we were all on top of each other. Everyone treated us nice, though, maybe because I made sandwiches and tea and did a lot of the shopping. There were times when I’d feel John just staring at me and I always thought he was thinking about Yoko. Or maybe he was just thinking about how the others felt when he brought Yoko in all the time. He was nice enough, but he didn’t talk to me much, or anyone else, except for Ringo. They were pretty tight.”

  The album’s working title of A Band Apart was changed almost immediately to Band on the Run, given the band had actually come together, albeit in a scary foreign country. Soon McCartney had a working song structure for an opening tune to be called (no surprise) “Band on the Run.”

  Lennon, feeling lonely and lost, began to fantasize about a reunion with Yoko when he returned to America. He wrote her a note on a napkin that included the first line Paul had been playing with, “Stuck inside these four walls, sent inside forever,” and added his own, “Never seeing no one nice again, like you, Mama, like you.” The mash-up of lyrics got the song rolling and was followed by an indirect contribution by George based on Paul remembering him complaining in 1969, during a contentious Apple meeting, “If I ever get out of here, I’m thinking of giving it all away.”

  Even with contributions, McCartney was surely the architect of both the song and the album, at least initially. He told Linda, who let George Martin know, hoping that Martin would inform the others that he thought all four Beatles should share the writing credit on “Band on the Run.” McCartney believed this would encourage a sense of collegiality often missing in their latest sessions.