Chapter 7 4 страница

More by inebriated accident than design, Richard Starkey had taken a similar decision. He divorced his wife and set up home in Monaco and California with American actress Nancy Andrews – one of a series of relationships with younger women that filled the rest of the decade. His closest friends were alcoholics – Keith Moon, Harry Nilsson, Monty Python member Graham Chapman – and he prided himself on being able to match them, drink for drink. 'Someone said, " We weren't musicians dabbling in drugs and alcohol; now we were junkies dabbling in music, " ' he recalled. 'I was sliding down. I wasn't taking enough interest. ' One day he shaved his head completely, even his eyebrows, in a desperate search for novelty. Freed from EMI in January 1976, he signed a new deal that required him to deliver an unfeasible seven albums in five years, but the record label backed out after four increasingly mediocre efforts. Chapman and his collaborator, Douglas Adams, attempted to find Starkey a purpose, crafting the skeleton of a TV sitcom for him. 'It was to be a science fiction comedy, ' Adams recalled. 'It involved a bloke called Ringo Starr who worked in an office as a walking chauffeur – he carried the bosses around on his back – until one day a flying saucer landed, bearing a robot which gave Ringo the power to travel through time and space, do flower arranging and destroy the universe by waving his hand. That's as far as we got. ' Instead, Starkey starred in an impeccably uncreative US television special, inevitably titled Ringo, narrated a children's album and waited for death or oblivion to deliver him. Lennon noted to a friend that nothing could be done to save him.

George Harrison had charted a more positive path into the future. Shortly after completing his traumatic US tour, he met the Monty Python team of comedians, and recognised that he had found a boys' club to replace the Beatles. As early as January 1975 Michael Palin wrote in his diary, 'He wants to be involved in some kind of way with us in the States. He said he has so many ideas to talk about, but I was a little wary, especially when he said he envisaged a Harrison– Pythons road show with us doing really extraordinary things throughout the show, such as swinging out over the audience on wires. ' Visiting Harrison's mansion later in the year, Palin lamented, 'One can't escape the feeling of George somehow cut off from everyday life by the wealth that's come his way' and found the ex-Beatle anxious 'that we should stay the night, play snooker on his Olympic-size snooker table, drink and generally enjoy ourselves'. Harrison found that the Pythons' defiantly English humour exactly matched his own. In December 1975 he happily satirised his image on Eric Idle's TV show Rutland WeekendTelevision, in contrast with the world-weary atmosphere of his final Apple/EMI album, Extra Texture. Though the record betrayed traces of comedy – in place of the standard Apple logo, Harrison used a chewed-up apple core – its portentous and moralising tone won few admirers, continuing his steady slide out of public affection.

Harrison could rightfully have complained that his old schoolfriend Paul McCartney had cornered the market in moralising. Completing his sessions in New Orleans without Lennon, McCartney issued a public scolding to his former colleagues of the kind that had infuriated them in 1969. 'I really ought to talk to those boys, ' he said patronisingly, '[and] tell them the facts of life. I thought we were finished with all those immature things – religious kicks, drug kicks, chasing birds – that was good when we were kids, but it's no good now. ' His reference to religion might have been intended to rile the increasingly devout Harrison. A few months later McCartney made amends, insisting,

George is so straight. He's so straight and so ordinary and so real. And he happens to believe in God. . . There's nothing freaky about George at all. . . John's supposed to be a loony according to some people, and I know he isn't. If you ask me, the Beatles are very sane, but they're cheeky with it. With the Beatles, our great in-joke was always that whenever we'd split up, we'd do a Wembley concert, and John was going to do this big thing, like 'Fuck the Queen. ' We were really going to blow it. It was a beautiful dream.

In late May 1975 McCartney and Wings issued Venus and Mars, another collection of exquisitely produced but lightweight pop, which dominated the airwaves as the Beatles had done a decade earlier. Three months later Wings opened a tour that would eventually – once McCartney's visa problems, caused by a series of drug busts, were solved – take them around the world. At the first show, in Southampton, McCartney was so nervous that the show started several minutes early. After a couple of songs someone shouted at him, 'What about John Lennon? ' McCartney stared back for a few seconds and said dryly, 'What about John Lennon? ' But the key moment came when he played the unmistakable opening chords of the Beatles' 'Lady Madonna'. It was the first time he had performed one of the group's songs in public for nine years. 'We were keen for Wings to get an identity of its own, ' he recalled, 'and not rely on the Beatles. By then you could look at them just as songs, not as statements, and not as an admission of failure. By then it was clear that we'd proved our point. '

McCartney was still wrestling with the comparison between the two bands. A few months earlier he had commissioned veteran sci-fi author Isaac Asimov to write a screenplay. 'He had the basic idea for the fantasy, which involved two sets of musical groups, ' Asimov recalled, 'a real one, and a group of extraterrestrial imposters. The real one would be in pursuit of the imposters and would eventually defeat them, despite the fact that the latter had supernormal powers. ' Beyond that framework, McCartney offered Asimov nothing more than 'a snatch of dialogue describing the moment when the group realised they were being victimised by imposters'. Asimov set to work and produced a screenplay that he called 'suspenseful, realistic and moving'. But McCartney rejected it. As Asimov recalled, 'He went back to his one scrap of dialogue out of which he apparently couldn't move. ' It's tempting to imagine that the project collapsed because McCartney knew subconsciously that he was aligned with the losing side.

While George Harrison and Richard Starkey were directing their money towards offshore havens and Swiss banks, McCartney was creating a business empire in the heart of London. A mass of companies was now run out of the same small office, including McCartney Pictures, McCartney Publishing, MPL Pictures, MPL Music, MPL Productions and their parent, MPL Communications. Besides offering ample opportunity for offsetting income against expenses, this complex structure symbolised his independence from the corporations that had controlled the Beatles for more than a decade.

On 26 January 1976 the Beatles' recording contract with EMI Records expired. The following day George Harrison joined his Dark Horse label, under the wing of A& M Records. Richard Starkey's deal with Polydor (for Europe and the UK) and Atlantic (for North America) followed in March – not a moment too soon, as he had financial worries and had been forced to borrow large sums against future royalties. McCartney agreed to remain with EMI, albeit with a renegotiated contract that offered him a substantially higher royalty. According to Lennon, McCartney was also promised increased payments on the Beatles' catalogue – but only if he succeeded in reuniting the group and bringing them to EMI. Meanwhile Lennon opted to remain out of contract, telling friends that he had some 'beautiful songs' but no desire to release them.

Another link with the past was severed that month. Since the breakup of the Beatles their road manager Mal Evans – who shared none of his colleague Neil Aspinall's financial acumen – had struggled to cope with the collapse of the dream that had carried him through the 1960s. Initially he provided tea and sympathy for Lennon, Harrison and Starkey's early solo projects. But as their work rate slowed and they became scattered across the globe, Evans had no obvious role in their lives. He left his family in England and attempted to become a record producer in Los Angeles, but he was unable to control the drinking buddies working on Keith Moon's solo album, and he was thrown off the project. Instead he found a ghostwriter for his autobiography – as Lennon quipped, 'Should be a laugh. . . " Tues: 1965: Got up, loaded van" ' – and appeared as a guest speaker at a Beatlefest celebration.

On 4 January 1976 he phoned his former Apple colleague Ken Mansfield, who thought he sounded upset. 'Nothing is wrong, ' Evans told him. 'Paul and I just worked out some problems, and he is going to give me credit for some of the things I wrote with him. ' It had long been an open secret within the Beatles' circle that Evans had contributed some lines to the Sgt Pepper album; indeed, Lennon had been hurt by McCartney's willingness to ask Evans for suggestions rather than him. But Evans didn't live long enough to sign that agreement. Later that day Los Angeles police arrived at his apartment after his girlfriend told them he was waving a gun around and seemed out of control. When the officers challenged him, he refused to drop the gun – effectively committing what has become known as 'suicide by cop'. 'Mal was a big lovable bear of a roadie, ' McCartney recalled. 'He'd go over the top occasionally, but we all knew him and never had any problems. Had I been there I would have been able to say, " Mal, don't be silly. " In fact, any of his friends could have talked him out of it without any sweat. ' Instead, Evans died instantly.

Evans had been a friend, a servant, a confidant and (alongside Aspinall) one of two men who had shared the Beatles' daily lives. Lennon wept uncontrollably when he heard the news; Evans had been one of the few people who had welcomed Yoko Ono into the Beatles' milieu, and Lennon never forgot his generosity. Tragedy soon ebbed into farce, however: after Evans was cremated, his ashes went missing. His friend Harry Nilsson recalled, 'Neil Aspinall called from Apple and kept saying, " Where's Mal? " I said, " I sent him. " And he said, " Well, we can't find him. He's not here and his mother's downstairs and his wife Lil is here and they're all crying. What am I supposed to tell them? " Finally a few days later I got a call from somebody and they said they found him. I asked where, and they said, " In the dead letter office. " '

He died at a time when it seemed possible that the Beatles might, after all, be requiring the services of a road manager. Once their EMI deal expired, they were barraged with ever more outlandish financial offers for a reunion. Promoter Bill Sargent promised the quartet $50 million for a single show. They could play solo, he stipulated, but must perform together for a minimum of 20 minutes. In return, Sargent would retain full commercial rights around the world, a clause that the Beatles' advisers would never have tolerated. When the group's approval wasn't forthcoming, he doubled his offer, to no avail. Meanwhile, the boss of Electro-Harmonix electricals, one Mike Mathews, seized his moment in the spotlight, offering £ 3 million in cash for a one-off Beatles concert, plus a share in the profits of closed-circuit broadcast that would raise their income to around £ 30 million. By the summer writer Kathleen Tynan was proposing a benefit concert for Vietnamese children, which the Beatles could headline. 'How about a cup of tea together? ' Harrison said sarcastically. 'Get these four people and just put them in a room to have tea. Satellite it around the world at $20 each just to watch it, and we could make a fortune. ' Like Henry Kissinger's Nobel Peace Prize, this illustrated the moment when reality made satire irrelevant: millions of Beatles fans would happily have paid to study these four men who had not shared a room since 1969.

The most persistent advocate of a reunion was Sid Bernstein. In September 1976 he ran a full-page ad in major US newspapers, pleading with the Beatles to unite for 'a one-off charity concert'. Today the world 'seems so hopelessly divided', he wrote; 'more than ever, we need a symbol of hope for the future. . . Let the world smile for one day. ' In the 1960s parents had brought their disabled children to the Beatles' dressing room, as if the laying-on of hands might cure them. Now the group was expected to bring about the spiritual renewal of the entire planet. 'I wrote to him and said, " Look, that was then, " ' Harrison complained. 'The Beatles can't save the world. We'll be lucky if we can save ourselves. ' Yet the sheer weight of Bernstein's figures overshadowed any attempt at logic. He calculated that a concert broadcast around the world on TV and issued subsequently on film and album might generate $230 million. The Beatles might like to donate 20 per cent of their earnings, he suggested. He would take 10 per cent for his trouble, but would give three quarters of that to charity, ensuring that he would still walk away with almost $6 million.

When news of Bernstein's offer broke, comedian Eric Idle rang Harrison. 'He didn't know about it, ' Idle reported. 'He said, " Fucking hell. " ' McCartney's response was equally concise: 'You can't reheat a soufflé. ' Lennon remained enigmatically silent. Starkey had an album to sell, entitled Ringo's Rotogravure, with lukewarm contributions from Lennon and McCartney, so he was left with the burden of framing an official response. 'I think Sid is trying to get his name in the papers, ' he said. 'I don't care about Sid Bernstein; I'm promoting my record. Next week someone's gonna come in with $500 million. ' When the questioner persisted, Starkey snapped, 'Look, we've just spent ten minutes talking about this guy who writes to a newspaper. ' His final word on the subject: 'We didn't start doing it for money, and we ain't going to end it that way. '

Only one offer came close to provoking a reunion, and it was the least lucrative. On the US TV comedy show Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels ridiculed the furore by offering the Beatles $3, 000 if they performed together on the show. When that didn't work, he threw in an extra $250 and overnight accommodation. In April 1976 the McCartneys paid one of their periodic visits to the Lennons at the Dakota, and watched Michaels' show. Lennon suggested they take a cab downtown to the studio and surprise Michaels, before he and McCartney decided they couldn't be bothered. Several months later Harrison had his own album to sell, and he agreed to guest-star on Saturday Night Live with Paul Simon. The opening skit showed him bargaining with Michaels, who was explaining patiently that he could only collect the full $3, 000 if he brought all the other Beatles with him. Lennon's ego would never have allowed him to satirise himself on TV, while McCartney would have ruined the sketch by hamming it up. Harrison played it deadpan, another sign that he was now prepared to play the public role of the comic Beatle.

It was Harrison who encouraged his friends Eric Idle and Neil Innes to create their own Beatles reunion in the satirical form of the Rutles. The so-called Pre-Fab Four debuted on Saturday Night Live in October 1976 with a delicious parody of the Beatlemania era, a song entitled 'I Must Be in Love'. 'It wouldn't have happened without George, ' commented Innes, who was the Rutles' songwriter and also played the Lennonesque Ron Nasty. 'He was the one thinking it would be great if somebody made fun of all this. Which is why he helped the Rutles. . . he was a fan. He thought the spirit of the Beatles had been passed on to Python. He once said that the Beatles, the Pythons and the Rutles should all get together for one big concert. '

Idle obtained the finance to make a Rutles movie, which developed into All You Need Is Cash, a wicked pastiche of Neil Aspinall's long-buried visual biography of the Beatles. 'It's a perfect thing for parody, the Beatles, ' Harrison admitted. 'Eric chose the right Beatle for the project, ' declared their mutual friend Derek Taylor. 'I cannot see Paul or John leaving well so alone – though Ringo, I think, could have fitted in very comfortably. ' But Starkey was adrift in alcoholism, leaving Harrison to parody Derek Taylor in a cameo role (as Eric Manchester), preaching the Rutle Corps gospel as Taylor had done for Apple a decade earlier. Some of Idle's script was joyously childish, and some extremely pointed: there was a foreign Rutle wife who wore Nazi uniforms, a terrifying New York manager called Ron Decline and a wide-eyed balladeer addicted to the creation of sentimental cliché. Innes's music was precisely observed and brilliantly conceived; indeed, it evoked the spirit of the Beatles so accurately that the owners of Northern Songs, ATV, sued for plagiarism, and an inevitable legal battle ensued. Innes lost his songwriting royalties, and Lennon/ McCartney now have to be credited as co-writers of such delicious nonsense as 'Cheese and Onions' and 'Piggy in the Middle'. 'George occasionally attempts to get the rights back for me, ' Innes revealed in 1996. 'But it's not high up on anyone's agenda. I've stopped sulking about it. It's water under the bridge. ' Harrison admitted his own rationale for supporting the project: 'I loved the Rutles because, for the Beatles, the [idea of] the Beatles is just tiresome. It needs to be deflated a bit, and I loved the idea of the Rutles taking that burden off us in a way. Everything can be seen as comedy, and the Fab Four are no exception to that. '

The Rutles' musical tribute was timely. After several years when it was anathema for new artists to admit being inspired by the Beatles, suddenly there was nothing more commercially acceptable than echoes of the past. ELO, led by Beatles fanatic Jeff Lynne, provided the most blatant homage to their sound, winning applause from John Lennon and rivalling Wings' ubiquity on Top 40 radio. A new wave of punk and power-pop artists was emerging, many of whom betrayed a Beatles influence, from the 1963 stylings of the Jam and the Pleasers (who took their name from the Beatles' first album), to the more frenetic sound of the Ramones, whose name was borrowed from a pseudonym once used by Paul McCartney. The Clash might have promised 'no Elvis, no Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977', but there was a familiar lilt to their ragged vocal harmonies and melodies.

Some artists were less subtle about their inspiration. In 1976 a pirate radio promoter named Rohan O'Rahilly, who had once collaborated with the Lennons on the launch of a 'Peace Ship', announced the most important musical event of the era: the arrival of 'The New Beatles'. Even before the lawyers had reached for their writs, O'Rahilly renamed his proté gé s Loving Awareness, with a message to the old Beatles: they should either heal mankind by reuniting or stand aside and bless their successors. So eager were the British public to believe in musical reincarnation that rumours soon spread that Loving Awareness were none other than Lennon and his chums in disguise.

To prove that you can fool the public as long as they wish to be fooled, four Canadian musicians pulled a similar stunt. Klaatu took their name from a 1950s sci-fi movie – also referenced by Starkey on the cover of his 1974 album Goodnight Vienna. None of the musicians was named or pictured on their debut album, which sounded like the work of people who had exhaustively studied Sgt Pepper. Therefore, with a giant leap of faith, Klaatu must be the Beatles in disguise. The final 'proof ' was that their record appeared on Capitol, the label that had released the Beatles' American hits. By the time Klaatu's more mundane identities were revealed, their album had sold more than 500, 000 copies.

EMI/Capitol had a more direct route to the profits of Beatlemania. In March 1976 all 22 of the group's original hits were reissued in Britain, alongside the first appearance on a UK single of 'Yesterday'. Next, EMI delved into the vaults to discover if there was any previously unheard material that could be released. They began to assemble a double-album entitled Rock 'n' Roll Music, and briefly toyed with unveiling some of the lacklustre oldies that the group had recorded during their January 1969 sessions. Fortunately, artistic discretion prevailed over greed, and the album simply repackaged familiar material. EMI mounted an extravagant publicity campaign, and the set climbed to No. 2 on the US charts. Other retrospectives appeared in the years ahead, including Love Songs, Rarities, Beatles Ballads and Reel Music.

Richard Starkey voiced the group's misgivings. 'I'd like some power over whoever at EMI is putting out these lousy Beatles compilations, ' he complained.

They can do what they like with all our old stuff, they know that. It's theirs. But Christ, man, I was there. I played on those records, and you know how much trouble we used to go to, just getting the running order right? And those album covers! John rang them up and asked them if he could draw one. . . he told me he was told to piss off. All of us looked at the cover and could hardly bear to see it. It was terrible.

EMI replied that they had attempted to contact Lennon, but that he had failed to reply in time. As a sign of the rising tension between the group and their original record company, battle was rejoined over the royalties from the Let It Be album. The warring parties would soon reserve a regular berth in the London High Court.

Soon nostalgia was everywhere. Publisher Sean O'Mahony, who had issued the official magazine The Beatles Book between 1963 and 1969, began to reissue all the original copies on a schedule that expired in 1982, allowing him to substitute a brand-new Beatles publication at the moment when EMI were celebrating the group's 20th anniversary. The Beatles Book continued to run until 2001, mocking Paul McCartney's original comment to the publisher: 'What will you find to write about us every month? '

Certain members of the Beatles were particularly averse to this obsession with the past. When journalist David Wigg planned to issue an album of his late 1960s interviews with the group, Starkey and Harrison attempted to halt the project despite the fact that there was nothing illegal or demeaning about it. They failed, merely stirring up sufficient publicity to carry the package into the UK charts.

John Lennon found that the simplest way of avoiding the past was to remove himself from the present. Aside from an occasional appearance in public, pushing his son's buggy around Manhattan or shopping in Tokyo's deluxe stores, he remained absent and silent. When journalist

Roy Carr encountered him at the Americana Hotel, Lennon said that he was concentrating on giving his son Sean the kind of childhood he hadn't enjoyed himself. Another reporter, Chris Charlesworth, asked Lennon for an interview and received a postcard in return: 'No comment was the stern reply! Am invisible. '

When McCartney visited in April 1976 Lennon told him that his sole ambition was to write a classic novel. McCartney explained the touring schedule that faced him over the next few months and Lennon said, 'Sooner you than me. ' In one of his final interviews Lennon claimed that he had become so tired of McCartney turning up on his doorstep clutching a guitar that he asked him to phone ahead first. 'This isn't the 1950s, you know. ' But as their mutual friend Derek Taylor wrote,

It wasn't like that at all. . . John was very funny about the extraordinary McCartney panache, cheek, impudence that enabled Paul to pass doorman, cops, fans, almost anyone in the world except Japanese customs officers without let or hindrance. " I dunno how he does it, " John marvelled, " the cheeky get; but he's the only one who can get in here without anyone being able to do anything about it. Elton can't get away with it, nor can Bowie or Mick – and if it was me going to see Paul, I'd definitely be stopped. " So I don't buy all that stuff about Paul barging in on The Great One's peace of mind.

Yet friction remained. As McCartney noted later, the key was not to mention their business difficulties, which could still catapult them into open conflict. 'I happened to be on my way to the Caribbean, passing through New York, ' he recalled of a conversation in spring 1977, 'so I rang John up. But there was so much suspicion, even though I came bearing the olive branch. I said, " Hey, I'd really like to see you. " He said, " What for? What do you really want? " It was very difficult. ' Twenty years after their first meeting McCartney could still be intimidated by the man he'd imagined as his closest friend. 'He had a great line for me. He said, " You're all pizza and fairy tales. " He'd become sort of Americanised by then, so the best insult I could think of to say was, " Oh, fuck off, Kojak, " and slam the phone down, ' knowing that as usual he had just lost the argument.

No problems affected Lennon's relationship with Richard Starkey: the two men saw each other as often as they wanted, usually once or twice every year. For George Harrison though 'There was a lot of alienation between us and him. Well, there was alienation amongst all of us. Suddenly we're all grown up and we've all got these other wives. That didn't exactly help. All the wives at that time really drove wedges between us. ' He was not referring to his own wives, or to Starkey's. Harrison did occasionally visit Lennon at the Dakota, and 'always got an overpowering feeling from him. Almost a feeling that he wanted to say much more than he could, or than he did. You could see it in his eyes. But it was difficult. ' That adjective disguised the identity of the obstacle, as far as Harrison was concerned. 'It was almost like he was crying out to tell me certain things, or to renew things, relationships, ' he continued, 'but he wasn't able to, because of the situation he was in. '

Other friends were more explicit about Lennon's 'situation'. As May Pang said, 'I still remember vividly the day John moved out. Mick Jagger had rung up looking for him. I remember his reaction when I told him John had gone back to Yoko. There was a long pause, and then Mick said, " I guess I've lost a friend. " ' In an Ono-approved anthology of tributes to Lennon, Jagger reiterated the charge: 'When he went back to Yoko, he went into hibernation. He was living close to where I was living in New York City, but I was probably considered one of the " bad influences", so I was never allowed to see him after that. '

Lennon's friend Pete Shotton, who'd known him since they were five, offered a disturbing portrait of the artist in retreat. He left a message at the Dakota to say he was in town, and Lennon invited him over. 'He said first of all he'd had to ring his numerologist, to ask if it was OK to see me, ' Shotton recalled. 'I said, " You had to ask permission to see me? " He sort of flushed up, like a child. ' That evening Shotton found his friend 'warm, funny and at peace with himself and the world. It was the real John Lennon, the one I always knew was there. ' But two days later, when Shotton called again,

In the background I could hear Yoko shouting something, and John saying, 'Look, Yoko, he's fucking coming over and that's it. ' John didn't realise I could hear all this. I thought, Fuck, here we go again. Yoko is just the same about me. Then I thought, What the hell? I'll go anyway. When I got there, all three of us went out for dinner, to the same Japanese restaurant. But the atmosphere was totally different. They were both uptight. They hardly spoke to each other, or to me. John looked pale and drawn, not as fit or healthy as he'd looked three days earlier. We didn't talk about the old days or personal things this time. Just about the occult and mysticism.

Every couple has its tensions, but Shotton's account chimes not only with the sensationalist tomes published in the wake of Lennon's death, notably John Green's Dakota Days, a pseudonymous astrologist's view of the Lennons' marriage, but also with the faintly eerie reports from Cynthia Lennon in 1968 and May Pang in 1975. All three represented Lennon's past; all three reported their friend, husband or lover seeming somehow different, and removed. Was there a darker message that Lennon was attempting to communicate to George Harrison than a simple 'Leave me alone'?

Lennon promised to attend a New York concert by Paul McCartney and Wings in May 1976, and possibly appear on stage. Inevitably, he didn't turn up. McCartney had solved his visa problems and was free to perform in North America for the first time in a decade. 'Everything we did was in the shadow of the Beatles, ' McCartney admitted later. 'So we did everything with quite a lot of paranoia. You look at 1976 – we have this big, big tour, and at first everyone wants to know, Is this gonna be a Beatles reunion? Even in our most successful year they were taking our success off us. But the great thing was that three weeks into the tour it was suddenly, Who cares? This is a great band. We did this thing that we set out to do. And we needn't have worried. '