by Bryce Zabel
JOHN: We didn’t make it that long. George died on us. (To Clapton) No offense. (To Hill) We started as the Silver Beatles. We became the Beatles. I suppose now we’re the Golden Beatles.
BOOTH HILL: But are you surprised?
JOHN: No one’s more surprised than I am that the Beatles made it. Maybe Yoko.
BOOTH HILL: You brought up George. Should we talk about him? He’s been gone twelve years.
PAUL: Love to George.
JOHN: Love to George.
RINGO: Peace and love to George.
ERIC: I remember George asking me to come over when he knew his time was running out. He told me that “spiritual wisdom means not wasting the gifts of the Universe, even if it’s the three of them.” He loved them back.
JOHN: We were going to hang it up, again, but maybe then for real. We’d already gone three decades more than anybody thought we would.
PAUL: Even then, that would have been complicated. Contracts, taxes, families, fans, and such.
JOHN: You’ve been saying that since 1969.
PAUL: But it’s always been true, Johnny.
JOHN: You see how he can be such a right bastard?
PAUL: It’s hard to live up to your high standards of civility. (To Hill) He’s a paragon, he is.
JOHN: George is gone, but the truth of the matter is that what we’re all doing is cascading toward death from the moment we’re born.
RINGO: Cheerful.
JOHN: It’s undeniable. You can try to trick it up by acting young and crazy or you can do the old nip-and-tuck and try not to show the truth, mostly to yourself. Everybody gets confronted by the certainty that portions of our life are in the rearview mirror and we can’t really get them back even if we wanted to. It’s the old existential crisis—and it’s just natural. It happened to George. It’ll happen to me. And it’ll happen to all of you.
BOOTH HILL: Let’s talk the “Freedom” tour you did after George passed. That was 2002.
RINGO: The Stones hadn’t played for three years. Georgie knew if we could get back out there, we might be the longest playing rock and roll act in history. He wanted that for us.
PAUL: There he was, so weak, and he motions us to lean in close, like he’s got this big, important thing to say. He says, “After all the three of you have done to kill the group, it’s not fair if you blame it all on me just because I have cancer.”
BOOTH HILL: Funny, in a dark way.
JOHN: That was George. He wanted us to man up. Eric was his idea.
ERIC: I didn’t want to do it. I mean, who would? Under those circumstances?
BOOTH HILL: What made you do it then?
ERIC: I had to. If these guys wanted me to do it for George, that was that.
JOHN: Eric made me bloody say it. “You have to say it, John.” So I said, “Yeah, okay, let’s do it.” He said, “No. You have to say it. ‘Yes, Eric, I want you to do it.’” I’m just glad he didn’t make me get on my knees for him.
BOOTH HILL: So you did the tour, and then the Stones came out of retirement a year later to take the record back. Since then both bands have stayed at it, refusing to quit.
RINGO: Fucking juvenile, isn’t it? (Laughs)
JOHN: It was like we were both daring the other to retire first. Neither band would back down.
BOOTH HILL: Mick Jagger said, “We’re just playing chicken. We finish a tour and say ‘never again’ and then the boys do another one and we can’t let that stand and so out we go again.”
RINGO: If they would just quit, we promise to quit, too. Lay down your arms, gents, and let’s give peace a chance.
BOOTH HILL: What’s the process for keeping the band together?
PAUL: Play, quit, repeat. That’s been the secret.
RINGO: Just when you thought we might never play again, we did. Then one or even a few of us would say something bitchy about the others in the papers, offense would be taken, people would speculate, and the cycle would repeat.
BOOTH HILL: That sounds a bit like the Eagles.
PAUL: Maybe.
JOHN: They’re still playing together? Didn’t know that. What a fucking shame.
RINGO: We all quit. We just never all quit for good at the same time.
BOOTH HILL: Your concert tours have always been sold-out affairs with fans that span generations. How do you explain that, even today?
JOHN: All the Baby Boomers got old at the same time we did. Then they dragged Timmy and Suzy to our concerts.
PAUL: There’s no age limit on being ready to rock.
ERIC: They’re just being modest. The truth is, the question has never been what to put in but what to leave out. These two men, plus George and Ringo, have kept up a steady stream of material, and they’ve always adapted to the times and experimented with the form. Even their classics have been reinvented. On this tour, we have a centerpiece section with Paul and John on acoustic guitars playing these beautifully re-worked versions of the early material, like “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Please Please Me.”
PAUL: We wanted Eric to get his own stool, but he wouldn’t do it.
ERIC: That wouldn’t have been right.
RINGO: They got that from you, Clapper. You turned your “Layla” into a completely different song and in that first tour after George’s death, you did the same with “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
ERIC: Just for the record, that was a tribute to George, not because I thought I could do it better. They’ll be playing it George’s way forever.
BOOTH HILL: Let’s talk about the current tour, “The History of the Beatles.”
JOHN: I hate that name. Sounds so fucking pretentious.
BOOTH HILL: Then why’d you do it?
PAUL: It was a part of a grand scheme for Apple. It gave them a tour identity, and gave us a creative chance to look into all the corners of our catalog, and everybody got a new compilation, maybe even a documentary film.
RINGO: Right. Because we’ve never done any of those before.
ERIC: I was excited to do it. I was not on that journey from the Cavern Club to being global artists. I mean, the Beatles brand is rivaled only by Coca-Cola and Muhammad Ali.
PAUL: Eric had the detachment we needed to sort out the old wheat from the chaff, as it were.
RINGO: Chaff. Anybody here know what that actually is?
JOHN: It’s the part of the grain that gets thrown away. I read that on my little Kindle.
RINGO: Aren’t you the wise man? I stand corrected, I do.
JOHN: We’ve had our share of chaff. Right, Eric?
PAUL: Now, John, don’t go putting Eric on the spot.
ERIC: I wasn’t a fan of “Honey Pie” and I never cared for “Cold Turkey.” But I chaffed up my share before I joined the boys.
BOOTH HILL: Let’s move on then.
RINGO: Dear God, yes.
BOOTH HILL: The tour started July 6, 2013, in Louisville, Kentucky, and when it’s done will conclude in Liverpool, England, next month. Will this be your last tour?
JOHN: Depends.
BOOTH HILL: On what?
PAUL: The Stones are playing that same night in Rio as we are in Liverpool and have said they’re wrapping up, too. We’ve both agreed to declare a truce in the tour war, and put the Beatles and the Stones in the history books together.
JOHN: It’s all lovey-dovey now. But that Jagger, he’s a sneaky one. We’ve got to keep our eyes on him, Paul.
BOOTH HILL: I want to read you a section of a review from our music critic Coleman Birdwell at Rockstar. “The Beatles never liked open-air stadiums but as they aged and so did their audience, the reasons for the breakup between rock group and fans in large venues largely disappeared. The fans agreed to let them play and be heard, and the Beatles agreed to show up in a handful of stadiums as part of any tour.” Thoughts?
PAUL: Guilty.
RINGO: Fish and fowl. In the smaller venues, people can actually see the twinkle in our eyes, but in those sta
dium gigs, folks just have to take our word for it.
JOHN: We’re just a bunch of twinklers at heart.
ERIC: I just leave the twinkling up to them.
PAUL: Back in ’66, we stopped playing these big shows because it was just madness. But once our fans got too long in the tooth to scream every second, we gave it another shot. The demand for tickets is so strong that we just do it. Why not?
BOOTH HILL: Because you were famously opposed to touring?
JOHN: I changed my mind. I realized that I wanted to get out there and play for people, like a proper rock and roller. Then I thought, do I want to do that with a new band when I can do it with the Beatles?
BOOTH HILL: By my count, last night you did three distinct sets and two encores for a total of twenty-seven songs. That’s quite a work ethic.
JOHN: All for you, my lovely.
PAUL: If this is the last tour, we want everyone to get their money’s worth.
RINGO: Look, it’s been fifty years for fans and more for us. If this is goodbye, then we have to do it as right as we can.
BOOTH HILL: The last album was your double LP, The Road Taken, another tour album. Is there any part of this that has to do with not wanting to come up with original material?
PAUL: We may do another studio album.
JOHN: Or we might not.
RINGO: What they said.
BOOTH HILL: By my count, you have broken up and re-grouped five distinct times.
JOHN: That many? Really?
BOOTH HILL: After the Concert in Central Park in 1975, but then you got back together in 1981, 1992, 2002, and now.
PAUL: Not to get technical, but we never actually said we were broken up after the first time.
BOOTH HILL: But you stopped playing together for years at a time in between.
JOHN: Mental hiatus.
BOOTH HILL: What are your favorite songs that have been done since the 1975 breakup?
JOHN: Is this a trick question? We can’t include anything done before Central Park?
BOOTH HILL: Well, if you want…
JOHN: “Instant Karma!,” “Blasted (By the Light),” “Enemies List.”
PAUL: “Show Up,” “Band on the Run,” “Maybe I’m Amazed.” Post-Central Park, probably “Beautiful Night.”
JOHN: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
PAUL: For what?
JOHN: For not including “Silly Love Songs” or “With a Little Luck.”
PAUL: Right. (To Hill) Those too.
RINGO: I like everything they did, and Georgie, too. From the ones I performed, though…“Photograph,” “Uncle Albert,” “It Don’t Come Easy.”
BOOTH HILL: John, you had two very strong turns last night with “Instant Karma!” from the And the Band Played On album and “Imagine” from Imagine Another Day. But in your introduction—
JOHN: —I know. I said, “God knows what album this is on.” It’s not Alzheimer’s. We’ve recorded 453 songs more or less together and 21 studio albums. You try remembering them all.
ERIC: It’s an insanely deep catalog. I only know how to play about a third of them.
RINGO: Me, too.
BOOTH HILL: Back to that review. “What Lennon still can’t quite bring himself to do is ask the crowd ‘How’re you doing tonight?’ and sound like he means it—his words sound like they’ve been marinated in irony, suggesting that there is a corner of Lennon’s soul that was never touched by show biz.”
JOHN: Everyone knows when I say things like that that it’s not really me saying it. So what’s the point? Last night, when we put in “Eight Days a Week” because of some fan poll, they wanted me to say we didn’t know the results until they appeared on screen. I just couldn’t.
BOOTH HILL: You tried. You said, “It’s a surprise for us,” but you added, “If you believe that…”
RINGO: Next time, I’ll do it. Everyone knows I don’t mean what I say.
BOOTH HILL: Paul, you were described as the “gracious host.” The review went on to say “McCartney has utter commitment to his job: he clearly works the stage more than his bandmates, like he’s doing wind sprints to qualify for an Olympic squad.”
JOHN: I think they confused him with Jagger again.
RINGO: I can’t work the stage because I’m behind my drum kit and they won’t let me out. Now that George is gone, I’m the quiet Beatle.
PAUL: Everybody in the Beatles has their own part to play. If John wanted to get up and jump around more, I’d let him.
BOOTH HILL: Why don’t you, John?
JOHN: I’m enjoying the view of Paul doing it.
BOOTH HILL: Eric, the review said you were “lighter and brighter” than your persona when you first took over for George Harrison.
ERIC: At first, I never spoke because I didn’t want to invite any comparison. After a while, I’ve been accepted by the fans. They know that George is gone and if I could bring him back that I’d do it and be on my way. So I talk a little more and that makes me brighter. It’s all relative.
BOOTH HILL: And Ringo, the review further said, “Drummer Ringo Starr was indispensable, as always. If McCartney is the people pleaser, Clapton the consummate professional, and Lennon the compelling artist, it is Starr who is the life of the party. His smile, as much as his blistering drums, tells everyone that there is a party going on.” Is that how you see yourself? The life of the party?
RINGO: The fans see me that way. It goes back to the bad old days when I was pretty heavily into the whole drinking scene. Now I’m sober, so it’s an act. I’m the Dean Martin of rock and roll. Sorry, kids, old reference. I’m really the Chris Martin of rock and roll.
BOOTH HILL: John, I know we said we weren’t going to talk about 1974, but can we talk about how it changed or affected the idea of the Beatles as a group?
JOHN: The Beatles nearly met their Maker a few times, but this was worse. I’m the one who goes over the security plans at the concerts now.
BOOTH HILL: You used to say you loved New York because you could go anywhere and people would just leave you alone.
JOHN: We came back to America in ’80, I think it was. But we never took chances when we got back into the Dakota. None of that stopping to sign autographs outside, that kind of thing. You know they arrested somebody with a gun outside the Dakota, waiting for me to sign an album or something, I think it was December that year. It only takes one asshole. If this is what you want to talk about now, then I’m done.
BOOTH HILL: Understood. Let’s talk about Apple. Over the years, you’ve turned Apple Media into a top ten company in the Fortune 500. How do you explain that?
PAUL: Steve Jobs was a genius. The best discovery George ever made besides “Here Comes the Sun.” He’s been gone almost five years now.
JOHN: Love to Steve.
RINGO: Peace and love to Steve.
PAUL: Love to Steve. He had a vision.
JOHN: Christ, we’re back to 1974 again. Steve Jobs made it possible for Paul and Yoko to find me. Then he created personal computing. He changed music. He made me a billion dollars.
PAUL: The truth is that the Apple that the Beatles created in 1968 was all about taxes. We turned it into a counter-culture thing, and that was a disaster. Had we broken up in 1970, it would be a distant memory, I suppose. The Beatles stayed together and we stumbled across Steve Jobs. That made all the difference.
RINGO: Amen to that.
BOOTH HILL: You’re all quite fun together and I know that has been a source of your popularity going back to even before you came to America in 1964. I want to ask a final question now, and I’d like your answers to be as honest as you can make them.
JOHN: No pressure there.
BOOTH HILL: The question is as simple as I can make it and as complicated as your answers may be. What do you think explains the group’s longevity more than anything else?
ERIC: Let me talk for a moment so they can get their own thoughts together. I’m not a Beatle in any way that allows me to answer that questi
on. As a fan, I always go back to the music. But I know what George said to me. He said that they managed to stay together only because they loosened up the reins on the group and let them all express themselves as individuals. Once he knew they could all do this, he found it easier to see the benefits of working with these incredible musicians because they were also his incredible friends. With that, I’m leaving because I have a date with my wife.
JOHN: What are you doing on this date, Eric?
ERIC: Eating.
JOHN: Just checking.
BOOTH HILL: Okay, all right then. It’s down to the three of you, the surviving original Beatles. Ringo, can we start with you?
RINGO: If I’m being completely honest which, as I’ve said, is not exactly my thing in interviews, the Beatles remained together because these two gentlemen sitting with me decided that we could. That’s it. Period. But the biggest danger was in, I guess it was 1969 or 1970, and I think you’d almost have to credit the Lord of the Rings movie. We had to pull together to make it. Then we had to shut up to publicize it. That gave us enough time to work out some of the other details. I guess, finally, it’s because we had no other visible skills besides being Beatles, so that was our only option.
PAUL: Even though it was John’s group, I mean, he started it, I guess I always loved it more than John. I never wanted to give it up. For me, I always go back to when the two of us went to the U.S. in 1968 and did The Tonight Show. It could have gone bad, it almost did, but instead when John got stubborn and demanded Johnny Carson had to be there, out of that chaos it turned into magic. That’s where big old square Ed told me that the secret was to show up for each other. I thought it was probably just silly happy talk but told myself I’d give it a try. I went to Scotland for John and Yoko’s car crash and I think he appreciated it. (To Lennon) Did you? I guess I’ve never really asked.
JOHN: Don’t make me get all weepy and everything, Paul. But, all right, I was happy to see you because I was on painkillers. And I guess we wouldn’t have done Woodstock if you hadn’t made the scene.
PAUL: Then we each went to each other’s weddings. (To Lennon) You showed up and I didn’t think you would.
JOHN: I didn’t think I would.