by Bryce Zabel
“I’ll have to hear the final version,” Lennon told Martin, “and then I’ll let you know if I’ll accept it.”
The Lagos sessions were plagued by an escalating number of troubles. The first came about just after the first week. Ringo, John, and George were all smoking nervously while Paul (also smoking) was laying down a vocal track. In the middle of the work, Paul turned white as a sheet and said he couldn’t catch his breath. Linda escorted him outside for fresh air, but the blazing heat made him keel over, and he fainted dead away. Linda began screaming hysterically, convinced that he was having a heart attack. McCartney was packed into one of the four-wheel-drive vehicles and spent the afternoon in the hospital.
Lennon actually showed up and sat by his partner’s bed, noting “Now we’re even,” a reference to the time when McCartney showed up for him in Scotland after the car accident. By the end of the day, the official diagnosis was bronchial spasm from all the smoke, both Paul’s and the secondhand variety from his bandmates.
Next up was a confrontation with Nigerian musical star and political activist Fela Kuti. With no proof, and without hearing any of the songs they were writing, Kuti publicly accused the Beatles of being in Lagos to steal African music after John, Paul, and Ringo had visited his club a few days earlier. The accusation was false, but the facts didn’t seem to matter in such a volatile political climate, where the poor could still view the Beatles as British colonialists. In the end, Lennon brokered a deal where Kuti played on several of the songs. The Nigerian was paid for his work, which was always considered a bribe by everyone else. Yet his work was so original that he appears on two songs on the album.
One night, toward the end, Linda went home early with the kids because Mary had a fever. George and Ringo left an hour later to get home in time to watch an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, George’s favorite new TV show.
Only John and Paul remained, working on a musical bridge that was stubbornly resisting solution. Finally, they, too, decided to call it a night. The vehicles were all out, and rather than making someone come back to get them, they decided to walk to a nearby taxi stand. It was a bad decision.
They realized they were being followed by a car with a number of men inside. The man in the passenger seat kept calling out, asking if they wanted a lift. They said “no,” but the car kept following.
“Nice move, McCartney,” Lennon said. “Great night for a walk, it is.”
Suddenly, the car pulled ahead, and six men jumped out. At least one of them was holding a small knife, brandishing it like he was ready to use it.
If it did not involve two members of the Beatles, it would have been a garden-variety robbery. The bandits relieved both John and Paul of their watches, a camera, and their wallets. Even as he handed over his valuables, Paul told them: “We don’t see you, man…we’re not looking at you…we don’t know who you are.”
At that point, the man with the knife demanded the bag that Paul was carrying. “You don’t want this, mate. It’s got nothing valuable, nothing you can sell.”
That, of course, was not quite the truth. The bag actually contained a notebook full of handwritten and unfinished song lyrics, as well as cassettes for demos of songs to be recorded in the days ahead. To the right person, it might be worth a great deal. In any case, Paul telling him it was of no value only made the man want it more. He went through the contents in front of them. “What is all this?”
“We’re the fucking Beatles, you know,” said John. “It’s our new fucking album.” The bandits took a good look at their prey—two men, each with scruffy beards, dressed like a couple of broke travelers. Hardly rock royalty.
The man laughed at the impossibility of Lennon’s statement, that the most famous musicians in the world could actually be standing before them in Nigeria. He motioned to the others, and they all got in the car and took off.
The next day, at the recording studio, it became clear what had been lost. At least six songs were missing in full, the only trace of them residing in the minds of the four different Beatles, with each one having only partial memory of how the tunes and the lyrics went and disagreeing among themselves about even that.
It was an awful loss, but there was little that could be done. The Beatles reconstructed their stolen songs as best they could and tried their hardest to move forward. In the end, despite the obstacles, they completed recording for the majority of the album’s basic tracks after a month and a half in Africa.
Everyone felt that flying back to London toward the end of September sounded like a great idea. After the band’s return to England, final overdubs and further recording were carried out at the Savile Row studios, which made everyone from Beeching on down very happy.
The album cover's photograph was taken at Osterley Park, in west London, by photographer Clive Arrowsmith. It depicts the four Beatles dressed as convicts caught in a prison searchlight. The low potency of the light that Arrowsmith used meant that everyone had to stand still for two seconds for proper exposure.
No sooner had the photo shoot wrapped than John was back on a plane to America. He stopped in New York with plans to stay with Yoko, but she would only agree to meet him at the airport. She told him that it was not yet time for him to return.
Passers-by who saw the two of them reported that Lennon alternated between begging to be taken back and threatening consequences if he wasn’t. “I’ve done exactly what you want,” he pleaded. “But if it’s not enough, well, it’s never enough for you, is it?”
Yoko got him on a plane to Los Angeles and kissed him goodbye at the gate. The evocative picture made the front page of the New York Post with the headline “JohnandYoko Need More Than Love.”
Meanwhile, the Apple offices received a strange message, opened first by a secretary who then immediately passed it on to Peter Brown. It was from an anonymous sender, written in letters cut out from a magazine, and it spelled out an attempt at ransom:
ATTENTION BEATLES
WE HAVE YOUR MUSIC. WE WILL GIVE IT TO YOU FOR ONE MILLION BRITISH POUNDS IN CASH.
DO NOT TELL THE POLICE. YOU WILL BE CONTACTED.
Brown admitted that this was outside of his job experience and he passed it to Allen Klein, who stepped in to fill the vacuum. He called Interpol, reported the theft of the lyrics and demos in Nigeria, and showed them the blackmail message.
[Allen Klein] “I thought we could get it all. I wanted to get the tapes and lyrics back so the guys could use them in the new record. I thought it would be one of the greatest stories ever and would sell an extra million copies worldwide. And I wanted to put the sons-of-bitches who stole it all in jail.”
Interpol’s working theory was that the Nigerian bandits had eventually looked in the wallets, listened to the tapes, and come to realize what they had. Somehow they had made deals in a criminal network that resulted in the ransom note. The Nigerians were one matter, but the main culprits everyone wanted were the people who were trying to score the money.
The four Beatles were summoned to Apple to be informed of the situation. McCartney, Harrison, and Starkey came in person, while Lennon was put on a speakerphone. Already in a dour mood from his encounter with Yoko in New York, Lennon immediately blamed McCartney: “Looks like your little field trip to Africa is the gift that keeps on giving, Paul.”
McCartney went off on Lennon with equal venom, but Klein wisely and surreptitiously hit the “mute” button. When Paul was finished, Klein put the line back in play and said, “John, we’re getting a lot of static here. You know these damn British phones.”
In the aftermath, Klein and Interpol responded, and after some back-and-forth, the two parties arrived at a plan that involved Klein, accompanied by at least one Beatle, carrying a briefcase with the money into a train station in Brussels, Belgium. Assured that there would be decent security, McCartney volunteered. Although he didn’t like Lennon blaming him, he did actually feel responsible.
To this day, the idea that Paul McCartney and A
llen Klein, two men who had never, ever trusted each other, would agree to be bait in an Interpol sting seems outrageous. And yet, they did, and with little convincing.
Interpol’s tactics have never been clearly revealed. It appears, basically, that McCartney needed only to make an appearance at a kiosk in the train station to guarantee authenticity. Having met Klein there and patted him on the back, he walked out the front door into the waiting arms of a security team, who hustled him into a protected car and sent him to a safe house location. Back at the train station, it was Klein who gave a man the briefcase, risking his own life in an exchange with a blackmailer who could have been armed with a knife or a gun.
Folks were more naïve then than they are today. Interpol had arranged for the bills to be all marked and coded, although with cash paid for from an Apple wire transfer. The man to whom Klein gave the money was followed by Interpol agents for days and eventually ended up in Brussels, Belgium, where he gave the money to a British citizen called Winston Fourney.
Fourney turned out to be a confidence man with a rap sheet even more extensive than the Beatles’ song catalog. Ironically, he had met a handful of his confederates in prison, not unlike the set-up from The Hot Rock. Fourney insisted on his innocence, despite all the evidence to the contrary, forcing a trial, and the testimony of Paul McCartney. During McCartney’s testimony, Fourney beamed, as if compelling a Beatle to be in his presence was victory enough. Indeed, it was. After Paul had been excused by the judge and thanked for his testimony, Fourney tendered a confession through his attorney.
Fourney spent fourteen years in prison and died just two years after his release. His associates received lesser sentences. The Nigerians were never identified, although an investigation went on for the rest of the decade.
The one upshot was that the Beatles came back into possession of their stolen creative material after they’d attempted to duplicate it in the Lagos studio. For an entire week, George Martin, Geoff Emerick, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison went back and forth between what was recorded and the demos and lyrics that had preceded it.
[George Martin] “At first, we were all so relieved. We thought that we could go back to the gold that we had and restore the songs to their rightful state. Song by song, word by word, note by note, we came to realize the opposite. The songs that had been re-constituted in the aftermath of the robbery were stronger. There were a few minor adjustments made, of course, but overall, we stayed with what we had.”
Years later, those original demo tapes were pulled out of the Apple vaults, cleaned up, and released for fans as Band on the Run Naked, letting listeners hear the first versions and judge for themselves. Even in the aftermath of the crime’s resolution, there was still money to be made.
In the end, though, the original Band on the Run album was hailed as an example of an honest collaboration between Paul, John, George, and Ringo. When they had recorded in London and in Los Angeles, they were surrounded by inspired, driven teams, making the recording sessions feel like a day job with talented and creative colleagues. Conversely, Lagos, Nigeria, for all its hassle and difficulty, had created the opportunity for the four Beatles to hang out with only each other—there was not much else to do. They blended their talents, voices, and instruments to make an album that’s still lauded as the most polished piece of work they put forward since Everest back in 1969.
[John] “I don’t want everyone to get all, ‘Look, the Beatles like each other again.’ It’s not that at all. We’re professionals; this is what we do for a living. So we’ve gone and done it again, maybe a little better than the last couple of times, but it doesn’t mean a miracle has happened. We just made a record, like we always do, that’s all.”
Band on the Run maintains another distinction in the intensive discography all Beatles albums have been subjected to—both the band members and the album’s producers found it difficult to ascribe a singular songwriting credit to several of the songs because, regardless of their point of origin, they had become group efforts.
It is still generally accepted that Paul and John had four songs each, followed by George and Ringo with three each, and within that breakdown each Beatle had standouts. Paul opened the album with the titular “Band on the Run” and closed it out with the mash-up of “Jet/Mrs. Vandebilt,” while John scored with his political “Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple)” and his rocker “New York City.” The two men each delivered beautiful moments as well, Paul with “Bluebird” and “My Love” and John with the Yoko-inspired pair of “Bless You” and “Out the Blue.” George delivered the enormously popular “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)” and the well-regarded “Run of the Mill” and “Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long.” Ringo benefited the most from the band’s fragmentation, voicing Harrison and Starkey’s “Photograph,” Lennon’s “I Am the Greatest,” and McCartney’s “Six O’Clock.” It was the first time Ringo had three songs, and standout hits at that.
• • •
John Lennon returned to Los Angeles by way of London from Nigeria, having been deported from Yoko’s side once again. He had had his fill of the Beatles and was not in a good mood about his wife, so he showed up at Linda Ronstadt’s house.
She was not home. Her own Don’t Cry Now album had become Ronstadt’s most successful to date, selling 300,000 copies in its first year of release. It had also earned her a spot as the opening act on Neil Young’s Time Fades Away tour, where she would be playing for larger crowds than ever before. Even if she had been home, Ronstadt would have asked Lennon to move out over the upcoming Christmas holidays. She told friends that she liked big-size personalities and strong men, qualities she certainly admired in John Lennon, but she could no longer stomach his paranoia. If he really was being targeted by the government, that was scary enough. If he was not but thought he was, that, too, was more than she bargained for.
Despite this breakup, John Lennon always spoke well of his time with Ronstadt.
[John] “Linda takes command. She runs the recording studio, and nobody challenges her. She’s got strong opinions about everything and, you know what, she’s right. She runs her own life that way. Even when her opinion was that it was time to call it quits between us, she was right about that, too.”
Lennon found his own Laurel Canyon home locked up as well and quickly phoned Yoko, who confirmed that she had stopped paying the bills. He then rang up his friend Harry Nilsson, who granted Lennon permission to crash on his couch that night. The next day, he went out looking for a place on the beach.
With the year winding down, Lennon had time to take stock. He had been told by the second woman in less than a year that he should leave the home they were living in together. While he never actually admitted it, he was unusually happy to see that Band on the Run had become the critical hit that it was. He needed to feel artistic and relevant, particularly given Ronstadt’s rising success, and he did.
Paul, meanwhile, retreated to his Scottish farm with Linda and the children. They received matching kimonos from Tokyo, sent by Yoko with the note “Love, John and Yoko” although Lennon knew nothing about the gift. In return, the McCartneys sent John and Yoko matching wool sweaters from Scotland. John’s was mailed to him care of Elliot Mintz, a Los Angeles disc jockey with whom he had become friends. The sweater was outrageously cheesy, and Lennon gave it to Nilsson, who lost it one night at the Troubadour.
George spent his Christmas alone at Friar Park, and the huge Gothic mansion seemed dark and lonely. Pattie, who had threatened to move out with Eric Clapton, was missing. His own infatuation with Maureen Starkey was still threatening to end a friendship with her husband and George’s bandmate, Ringo. Meditation over the changes that had occurred in his life only made matters worse. He turned to cocaine, but even the drug could not cheer him up.
Ringo threw a gala New Year’s Eve party at Tittenhurst Park but failed to invite his own wife, Maureen. Asked by party guest Elton John whether this meant he was getting divorced, he merely said, “Would
you like another appetizer?” George did show up that night with Pattie, and he used the occasion to tell her he wanted a divorce. For those keeping score of such things, George was now interested in Ringo’s wife at the same time that his friend Eric Clapton was putting the moves on his own wife. Seeing George come in the door, the usually gregarious Ringo retreated to his own bedroom and stayed there until his fellow Beatle left the party two hours later.
Lennon heard all about the drama from his new housemates at his Malibu beach house. Relieved to hear that the Beatles could still be fighting with each other while he was over six thousand miles away, he phoned up the only person who might understand his thinking, Yoko Ono, noting that there were still three hours to go before the New Year would be celebrated in Los Angeles.
[John] “It’s like the old British royalty, isn’t it? Go away for the weekend and swap wives. Well, maybe the only women who get through to rock stars besides the groupies that get disposed of like a Kleenex are the wives of their friends. They’re the only ones who get to stick around when the sun comes up.”
If John Lennon thought discussing wife swapping and sleeping with groupies was the way to his wife’s heart, she quickly disabused him of this notion, hung up, and went to a party being thrown by Andy Warhol. As the final hours of 1973 turned into the first hours of a new year, Lennon got out his book of phone numbers and started calling around. No one, it seemed, was at home, except for Paul McCartney, who was having a late breakfast with his family in Scotland.
They discussed making another record in the next year but only after admitting to themselves and fans that it would be the last one.
“Let’s go out on top,” said Lennon, slurring his words from his fourth Brandy Alexander of the evening.
“Whatever you say, John,” answered McCartney, as he chased Stella, his two-year-old daughter, around the house. “My place or yours?”