Chapter 7 5 страница

McCartney had drilled Wings into a formidably tight touring unit, light on spontaneity – for the rest of his career he relied on well-rehearsed stage patter – but delivering a spectacle that rivalled any of his mid-1970s contemporaries. By late June, when the tour climaxed in California, he could boast that Wings had established itself beyond any comparisons with the past. Two singles from their hastily assembled album Wings at the Speed of Sound had topped the US charts; so did the LP. But Speed of Sound was a distinctly patchier effort than its two predecessors, not least because McCartney had attempted a more democratic distribution of songs among the five members, with decidedly mixed results. In a sour 1984 interview his bandmate Denny Laine complained, 'Paul and Linda smoked a fantastic amount [of cannabis] by anybody's standards. They smoked joints the way ordinary people smoke cigarettes. That's why Paul's albums take him ages and ages to make. He just cannot be decisive about anything. It is very frustrating for people to work with him, because he changes his mind so often. ' In particular, Laine highlighted the delayed release of the films documenting Wings' triumphant tour: Wings Over the World wasn't premiered until 1979, and Rockshow the following year. But McCartney did manage to complete a triple-album anthology of live recordings, Wings OverAmerica, for Christmas 1976. Five songs from the Beatles era were included, and for all of them, the original 'Lennon/McCartney' songwriting credit was altered to read 'McCartney/Lennon'. There was no objection from Lennon.

The most reclusive of the Beatles was forced into public that summer, at a formal hearing to mark his victory against the US immigration department. He was now free to travel without the fear of being barred from returning to America. His first destination was widely expected to be England, but instead he flew to Hong Kong, apparently at the suggestion of Ono's numerologist. There he fell into the company of David Bowie and Iggy Pop, and enjoyed a brief weekend of rock star hedonism, before returning home obediently on the flight Ono had reserved for him. In New York Lennon and Ono rarely socialised, beyond occasional dinners with actor Peter Boyle and his journalist partner Loraine Alterman (Lennon was best man at their 1977 wedding). Their most regular visitor was a former DJ named Elliot Mintz, ^*33 who had interviewed the couple in 1973 and become particularly close to Ono. He became the Lennons' spokesman and travel companion, though as another friend of Lennon's, record producer Jack Douglas, noted, 'It was so weird, because John never had a good word for Elliot. In the studio, if Elliot was coming, John was like, " Ugh. " ' But Mintz offered the attractive quality of not representing Lennon's past or threatening to question his withdrawal from the world. Softly spoken, obsequious but strong-willed, Mintz soon became the Lennons' loyal buffer against media intrusion.

George Harrison also recognised the attractions of withdrawal. He made an anonymous appearance on stage with the Monty Python troupe in New York 'looking tired and ill', as Michael Palin recalled. A vacation in the Virgin Islands failed to restore him, and he was diagnosed as suffering from hepatitis. The collapse of his marriage and the criticisms levelled at his touring and recording activities had encouraged him to take refuge in alcohol and drugs, and now his body was calling a halt. The illness was a decisive moment in his life. Secure in his new relationship with Olivia Arias, he decided that happiness and health were more important than stardom. He was still a Beatle, with the psychology and self-importance that entailed. But he no longer courted the life of a celebrity.

One consequence of his illness was that he failed to deliver his first album to A& M by the due date, 26 July 1976. This forced the cancellation of a major world tour and doomed his Dark Horse Records label. A new legal team had taken over at A& M and discovered that their predecessors had separated Harrison's contract from the rest of the Dark Horse roster: if

Harrison's other signings failed to make a profit, A& M couldn't reclaim their losses from the ex-Beatle's royalties. 'What happened was that they realised they had not made themselves such a good deal, ' Harrison explained as the relationship unravelled.

They found that the only legal grounds they had [against me] was that I had had hepatitis, so my album was two months delayed. And so they picked on that legal point and said, 'OK, we'll get him on that. ' I arrived in LA with the album under my arm, all happy, and I was given this letter saying, 'Give us back the million dollars, ' which was an advance, 'and give us the album, and when you give us the album, you don't get the million back. ' I turned down a deal from Capitol/EMI that was of more value than what I took with A& M. But I took that because of the relationship we were supposedly going to have – which it turned out we never did have.

So Harrison returned the advance and cancelled the A& M deal. 'We backed the truck up to our office and filled it with our stuff, ' he recalled. Warner Brothers was happy to offer Harrison what he wanted, but their commitment to Dark Horse's other artists was merely symbolic, and he was soon the only viable performer on the label.

The album, Thirty-Three-and-a-Third, was more tuneful and lighter in spirit than its predecessors. It contained a sly satire about the 'My Sweet Lord' plagiarism suit, which promised, 'This song has nothing Bright about it. ' The timing was ironic: just before 'This Song' appeared as a single, a New York court ruled on the case of Bright Tunes vs Harrisongs. It decided that when Harrison wrote 'My Sweet Lord' in 1969, he had been guilty of 'subconscious plagiarism' of Bright's song 'He's So Fine'. A second set of hearings was scheduled to calculate Harrison's liability for damages. 'It's very difficult to just start writing after you've been through that, ' he admitted. 'When I put the radio on, every tune I hear sounds like something else. '

The earnings power of 'My Sweet Lord' was boosted by the release of The Best of George Harrison, a Capitol/EMI album deliberately scheduled to coincide with his new record. Both Lennon ( Shaved Fish) and Starkey ( Blast From Your Past) had been under contract to EMI when their anthologies were released, so a degree of co-operation between artist and corporation had been involved. But Harrison had no such leverage. To his embarrassment, EMI decided that his solo catalogue was not strong enough to command a compilation album, so they filled half of the record with Beatles material. 'I don't see why they did that, ' Harrison said, interpreting the decision as a personal slight and ensuring that he would remain a staunch opponent of EMI in the litigation with Apple that lay ahead.

Another enduring legal battle was nearing its denouement, as the London High Court set a January 1977 date for hearing the case brought by three of the Beatles and Apple against Allen Klein and ABKCO. At stake were the infamous management contracts from 1969/70 and millions of pounds in commissions that had either been paid in error (Apple's case) or grossly underpaid (according to ABKCO). The verdict would not be binding on the reverse litigation that was being brought on the other side of the Atlantic, but it was difficult to imagine that the US actions would not be influenced by the judge's decision in London.

To add an extra frisson to the dispute, Allen Klein had made a mischievous intervention in the 'My Sweet Lord' saga. Having acted as Harrison's adviser during the early years of the plagiarism case, he now emerged as the new owner of Bright Tunes, buying it for $587, 000 on the assumption that the company would soon be worth much more. The judge in the case estimated that Bright's share of the income from 'My Sweet Lord' could exceed $1. 5 million, but Harrison's lawyers challenged Klein's right to switch sides midway through the litigation, and any hope of a quick resolution was lost.

Meanwhile, Harrison, Lennon and Klein were set to face each other in the High Court. 'Paul doesn't have to go, ' Harrison explained, 'because he didn't do the deal, and Ringo has got out of it because he's got a tax year out of Britain. So it's John, Yoko and I versus Klein. It's for huge figures, but it's completely like a game. ' The prospect filled him with dread: 'It's going to be awful if it does come to court, a fiasco and a nightmare, because it's going to be open to the public and the press. . . It's very strange. I've got to put my body there, and I'll be sitting in it, but really I'll be somewhere else. ' The alternative to this process of mental withdrawal was grim: 'People commit suicide in that sort of situation, and I've decided I'm not going to be a rock casualty. '

Lennon faced an equally forbidding ordeal. When he had imagined returning to Britain, he had envisaged a scene of triumph mixed with sweet nostalgia. Instead, he would be dragged home by the legal system to face the humiliation of his financial affairs, his private life and every facet of his relationship with Allen Klein undergoing intense public scrutiny. Like Harrison, Lennon had chosen to withdraw rather than expose himself to the world. Both men now had to consider whether any sum of money could compensate for their loss of privacy.

They agreed to trust their cause to an unlikely saviour: Yoko Ono. 'Somebody has to take care of business, ' Lennon explained, 'and there's no way I can do it. I don't have that talent. So she had to do it. She has the talent to do it. . . We decided not to have an outside party. We had to look after our own stuff and face that reality. ' Over the weekend of 8–9 January 1977 Ono and Allen Klein negotiated at the Plaza Hotel in New York. On Monday morning Lennon, Ono and Klein assembled at the hotel to make a formal announcement: all the cases involving Apple and ABKCO were now at an end. Apple would pay Klein $5, 009, 200 as total and final payment of any outstanding management commissions; and with that, Klein's involvement with the Beatles ceased. Lennon signed a document confirming the settlement in front of a photographer, while Klein graciously praised 'the tireless efforts and Kissinger-like negotiating brilliance of Yoko Ono Lennon'. There would be no embarrassing pursuit of the Lennons through a London airport lounge, no court appearance and no return to Britain.

Klein's money came from the collective Apple pot earned by the four Beatles up to September 1974. Not everyone thought it was such a wonderful deal. 'It's true she settled with Klein for $5 million, ' said Linda McCartney later. 'But it wasn't her money, really. Each Beatle gave a share, Paul included, and he never wanted that man as manager in the first place. Five or six million! When you think that they were pulling bloody [tarot] cards to see what they would do! If only we had known what they were doing. ' But as a joint owner of Apple, still in a minority of three to one, McCartney had no option but to accept the settlement, pay the money and claim the moral victory. Later he could enjoy the glow of vindication when Klein was put on trial in New York for tax evasion. The first trial in 1977 resulted in a hung jury; a second was held in May 1979. It was alleged that Klein had accepted 'substantial cash payments' for copies of Apple albums that were intended to be given away for promotional purposes but not reported that money to the Internal Revenue Service. Klein's colleague Pete Bennett testified against him, and he was found guilty of not declaring his full income in 1970 to the IRS but not guilty of two further charges. Inevitably the appeals process was invoked, but Klein began a two-month jail sentence in July 1980.

'I feel sorry for him now, ' McCartney said magnanimously while the trial was under way. 'I was caught in his net once, and that panicked me. I really wanted to do everything to get him. I was contemplating going to where he lives and walking outside his house with placards. I was really that crazy at the time. I would have done anything to get out of it, but it all turned out OK. ' Harrison separated his affection for Klein from his dismay at the consequences of their business relationship. But Lennon, Klein's first and most ardent supporter, was less compassionate, refusing to acknowledge the profound empathy he had once shared with his manager.

Having proved her worth during the negotiations with Klein, Ono became Lennon's primary representative at Apple board meetings. There she sparred with Lee Eastman, Denis O'Brien and Hilary Gerrard, each championing the cause of his Beatle patron. Meanwhile the four protagonists maintained a wary distance from each other. Yet their unwillingness to act as Beatles did nothing to restrain the industry that had grown up in their name. In 1977 two vintage live recordings – neither authorised by the group – competed for attention. Live atthe Hollywood Bowl was collated from tapes of concerts in 1964 and 1965, edited and remixed by George Martin. 'It's not very good, ' Harrison said dismissively, 'it's just a bootleg. ' 'We never wanted it out, ' Paul McCartney admitted.

But after we'd split with Capitol Records, they acquired the rights to all that material and didn't bother asking us any more about what should be released. We never used to like the tapes of those two concerts, because we always thought all the songs were played much too fast. We also thought it was all out of tune. But nowadays we can't even say if we like the cover artwork or not, it's got nothing to do with us. All those old Beatles repackages smell a bit like a rip-off to me.

Although McCartney could not prevent the Hollywood Bowl tapes from being released by the company to which he was still signed, Apple felt more optimistic about halting the second project. In December 1962 a fellow Merseybeat musician, Ted 'Kingsize' Taylor, had recorded the Beatles at the Star-Club in Hamburg. He offered his tapes to the group's manager Brian Epstein for a paltry sum, but Epstein wasn't interested. Nine years passed before Taylor collaborated with another key figure from the group's early career, ex-manager Allan Williams, who recognised a commercial opportunity. The tapes had all the clarity of an alarm clock buried in sand, but they captured the group on the cusp of fame, at the last moment when spontaneity still governed their live performances and they had no reputation to lose.

In August 1973 Williams met Harrison and Starkey at Apple. He played the tapes and offered them to the Beatles for £ 5, 000. The musicians declined, though Harrison tempered the refusal by slipping a present for Williams' wife into his hand: sixteen uncut rubies, which he'd been given by a member of the Krishna community. Undeterred, Williams joined forces with businessman Paul Murphy, who arranged for the tapes to be remixed into a state that was nearly listenable. At Easter 1977 the tiny independent label Lingasong announced that it would be releasing a double album from the tapes.

Only then did Apple act. On 1 April 1977, one week before the Star-Club album was released, Apple's lawyers served a writ demanding that it should be withdrawn. In reply, Ted Taylor testified that at least one of the Beatles had given him permission to make the tape. That would have counted for nothing had Apple examined the recording logically and recognised the obvious clues that it post-dated the signing of the Beatles' June 1962 contract with EMI. An expert witness was available in the shape of John Lennon, who supplied a detailed letter about the album, noting perceptively, 'The sleeve note, apart from being inaccurate, seems to have been written with a court case in mind. ' He added a handwritten postscript: 'THIS IS A FUCKING FAKE! ' But by then Apple had already lost its case. The High Court judge not only accepted Taylor's story but pointedly criticised Apple's tardiness in launching the action. The Star-Club album duly appeared, to the enormous benefit of Beatles scholars but to no great commercial effect: it failed to enter the Top 100 chart in the USA or UK, while Live at the Hollywood Bowl reached No. 1 in Britain and No. 2 in America. Paul McCartney sounded less concerned by Lingasong's package than by EMI's: 'On a personal level it's quite nice to have a memory of those days. On a business level it was all very weird. Nevertheless, I don't think it does any harm. ' But while the Hollywood Bowl album soon vanished from the Beatles' catalogue and was never issued on CD, the Star-Club tapes were repackaged endlessly over the next 20 years.

Through the late 1970s exploitation of the Beatles' name supported a healthy if rarely attractive industry. 'They're like leeches or crows, feeding off the Beatles, ' George Harrison complained. A Broadway musical called Beatlemania featured imitators reproducing the group's hits, while Robert Stigwood proceeded with his cinematic interpretation of the Sgt Pepper album. Some of the most successful pop stars of the age, including the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, were recruited to form Sgt Pepper's band, who – according to the movie's OfficialScrapbook – become 'entangled in an even more villainous web of greed and meanness spun by an international syndicate with the motto of " We Hate Love, We Hate Joy, We Love Money" '. The scenario must have sounded uncannily like real life to the Beatles, who would have greeted these comments by Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb with some amusement: 'There is no such thing as the Beatles now. They don't exist as a band and never performed Sgt Pepper live in any case. When ours comes out, it will be, in effect, as if theirs never existed. ' As Harrison lamented, 'We didn't have any control over that. ' But referring to all the unauthorised productions that were under way, he added, 'I don't really think they're supposed to do that, and in fact we've just got together a group of people to go and sue them all. ' In September 1979 Apple duly filed a lawsuit against the producers of Beatlemania, who had franchised their musical around America; but it didn't prevent a London presentation from opening three weeks later.

Like water dripping through plaster, the flow was irregular but infuriating. Film-maker Steven Spielberg produced I Wanna Hold YourHand, a teen drama hinged around a 1964 Beatles concert. Impresario Dick Clark invested in a television movie, The Birth of the Beatles, for which he recruited the group's former drummer Pete Best as consultant. 'People think we're giving all these producers permission to do it, ' Harrison complained, 'and that we're making money out of it, but we don't make a nickel. ' He added forbiddingly, 'There's not much more we can be sued for, but we can sue a lot of other people. '

One immediate target was John Lennon's first wife, Cynthia. In June 1978 she published a mild, bittersweet memoir, A Twist of Lennon. The juiciest portions were serialised in the reliably exploitative Newsof the World. Lennon was incensed and issued an injunction to prevent further publication, claiming libel. His ex-wife's defence was simple: she had told the truth. That might be so, Lennon's lawyers replied, but the articles had invaded his privacy – a claim breathtaking in its hypocrisy, given Lennon and Ono's willingness to turn their private lives into art. The presiding judge, Lord Denning, agreed: 'I cannot see that either of these two parties has had much regard for the sanctity of marriage. It is as plain as it can be that the relationship of these parties has ceased to be a private affair. ' Publication proceeded, without any serious damage to Lennon's reputation.

'We've been nostalgia since 1967, ' George Harrison contended as he released a self-titled album that was arguably his most consistent work. To reinforce his view, he resurrected a lost Beatles song from 1968, " Not Guilty", in which he had wryly expressed his desire not to 'upset the Apple-cart'. It gently satirised the global obsession with the past, and specifically the era that the Beatles allegedly epitomised. 'It's like Britain has always been hung up about the Second World War, ' he said. 'The Beatles were in and out of people's lives in a flash, and yet they're still there 15 years later. . . They've got lots and lots of songs they can play forever. But what do they want? Blood? They want us all to die like Elvis Presley? ' Harrison noted, 'Every year we were Beatling was like 20 years. . . We were just four relatively sane people in the middle of madness. People used us as an excuse to trip out. . . That's why they want the Beatles to go on, so they can get all silly again. But they don't have consideration for our well-being. ' In any case Harrison still refused to consider the possibility of ever working with Paul McCartney again. 'Paul was very pushy. . . so in that respect it would be very difficult to ever play with him. But we're cool as far as being pals goes. '

In one area Harrison squarely represented public opinion: he wanted to know what Lennon was doing. 'I myself would be interested to know whether John still writes tunes and puts them on a cassette or does he just forget all about music and not touch the guitar. ' Only after Lennon's death did it emerge that during the late 1970s he regularly attempted to compose songs but rarely managed to complete them. 'I know John was desperate to write, ' Linda McCartney commented in 1984. 'Desperate. People thought, Well, he's taking care of Sean, he's a house-husband, and all that, but he wasn't happy. He couldn't write, and it drove him crazy. And Paul could have helped him – easily. ' But the two men were rarely in contact, and whenever they did talk it usually decayed into a petty argument about their legal ties.

Authorised and unauthorised accounts of Lennon's life in the late 1970s vary so widely that both are unbelievable. In 1980 he claimed that he had spent the five years since his son's birth as a full-time carer and part-time baker, exhibiting his fresh loaves with the same pride that he had once devoted to his music. A mysterious open letter from the Lennons, printed as a paid advertisement in several newspapers in May 1979, reinforced the message that the couple were undergoing spiritual and artistic renewal. Yet so-called insiders – his personal assistant and Ono's astrologist and tarot reader – recounted a different narrative: Lennon was embittered, drug-ridden, despairing, lethargic, violent, sometimes suicidal, requiring constant nasal massage to counteract years of cocaine abuse. In an audio diary that he kept sporadically in 1979 Lennon lashed out at his contemporaries, including 'the mighty McCartney', with a degree of venom that hinted at acute envy. ^*34 Yet the anger could shift abruptly into a deadening depression: he no longer listened to new music, he admitted; 'There doesn't seem any point now. ' He lamented the nagging insistence of his sex drive and then confessed to fantasies about sucking his mother's breasts. At least once he flirted with suicide, an experience that later inspired a song, 'You Saved My Soul'. His saviour was Ono, who also 'rescued' him from a brief infatuation with a television evangelist. Whatever was happening in the Dakota between their annual visits to Japan, Lennon sounded anything but fulfilled, creatively, psychologically or sexually. Even at his most positive, he could only describe himself as 'the same but different. . . it's been a long haul'.

After his death Yoko Ono claimed that around 1978 the couple had planned an autobiographical Broadway musical, inevitably titled TheBallad of John and Yoko. In a book of Lennon's posthumous writings she included an essay of that name, purportedly intended for the theatre programme. It was the most sustained piece of prose writing that Lennon ever attempted, in a literary voice as direct and acerbic as his 1970 Plastic Ono Band album. It ridiculed his fellow Beatles, 'Paul, George and It's Only Ringo'; satirised his adventures in radical politics; and delivered a damning verdict on his career: 'The lesson for me is clear. I've already " lost" one family to produce what? Sgt Pepper? I am blessed with a second chance. Being a Beatle nearly cost me my life, and certainly cost me a great deal of my health. . . I will not make the same mistake twice in one lifetime. . . If I never " produce" anything more for public consumption than " silence", so be it. ' It is impossible to reconcile the valedictory tone of these remarks with a man celebrating his own life. More likely these were diary entries never intended for public consumption; the work of an artist who could no longer communicate anything apart from the rejection of his own past.

Occasionally Lennon attempted to revive his creativity: he visited artist Andy Warhol's studio in late 1979, intending to produce screen prints in the master's style. But it was a rare venture outside the Dakota. As one of their neighbours noted, 'When the Lennons go out, they go to Japan. ' 'I enjoyed being the foreigner, ' Lennon said of his visits to Ono's homeland. Otherwise they were effectively invisible. They were not short of places to hide. Ono had become a canny speculator in real estate, and the Lennons owned several farms in Delaware County, a beachside residence on Long Island and a holiday home in Florida. Their stake in the Dakota Building increased to six apartments, offering not only residential space and office facilities, but also storage for the exotic fruits of Ono's passion for ancient Egyptian artefacts and that most essential of Upper West Side accoutrements, a world-class collection of fur coats. Lennon's famous line, 'imagine no possessions', grew increasingly ironic.

In April 1979 he felt guilty enough about his elder son to invite him for a vacation in Florida. Julian was approaching his 17th birthday and was in awe of his father, but Lennon barely knew how to talk to him and was prone to violent surges of anger. 'Julian was constantly on tenterhooks, ' his mother reported, 'sensing that an eruption was coming and retreating to his room in the hope of avoiding it. ' One minute they might be relaxing like a real family; the next, Lennon would be screaming at one of his sons^*35, and a staff member would escort them away. 'One incident in particular did him lasting damage, ' Cynthia Lennon explained. 'Julian giggled [and] John turned on him and screamed, " I can't stand the way you fucking laugh! Never let me hear your fucking horrible laugh again. " He continued with a tirade of abuse until Julian fled once again to his room in tears. It was monstrously cruel, and has affected him ever since. ' It was the last time father and son were together.

More tender care was lavished elsewhere. While Ono worked extended office hours, Lennon scribbled lists for his staff, specifying his choice of cat food and sugar-free snacks. Helpless as a child, he demanded help with fixing the hi-fi and banging nails in his bedroom wall, and asked his assistant for new albums by McCartney and David Bowie, and a biography of evangelist Billy Graham. 'Remind Y. O. her teeth will be needed in later life (i. e. Dentist's must be visited), ' he wrote in one note, presumably afraid to raise the subject himself.

Lennon had succeeded in removing himself from the media. Ono's financial manoeuvres generated an occasional paragraph – she donated $1, 000 to buy flak jackets for New York police, for instance, and sold a prize Holstein cow for the record price of $265, 000. Occasionally there would be a wistful rumour that he was about to record an album, but more significant was his decision to dissolve the companies that had handled his avant-garde activities earlier in the decade. Gallery owner John Dunbar had introduced him to the London underground and to Ono, but when Dunbar unexpectedly visited Lennon in spring 1980 'Yoko explained that they'd been going through a period of seeing no one, that John had been like that for about a year, and going anywhere or seeing anyone seemed like a great effort. ' So estranged was Lennon from the world around him that he failed to notice when Ono slipped into a period of heroin use. 'I made a mistake, ' she admitted later, 'but I'm proud that I conquered it. ' Meanwhile, Lennon was writing desultory letters to his relatives in England, telling his cousin, 'I'm 40 next. I hope life begins – i. e. I'd like a little less " trouble" and more – what? I don't know. '

'How Does a Beatle Live? ' Maureen Cleave had asked in the article that sparked the 'bigger than Jesus' fiasco. The question still stood. While Lennon chose isolation, Richard Starkey found another refuge: alcohol. Despite nearly dying in a 1979 attack of peritonitis that required the removal of several feet of intestines, he maintained a resolutely excessive lifestyle. By day he slept or sunbathed, 'and then evenings, all you can do is eat and gamble. . . I like to play blackjack and a little roulette. ' Rooted in the shallow earth of Monte Carlo, Starkey inhabited the most vacuous brand of celebrity hedonism. 'I worked hard enough to become a playboy, ' he explained defensively. 'And I am a jet-setter. Whatever anyone thinks, and whoever puts it down, I am on planes half the year. ' Like many alcoholics, he felt as if he carried the sun on his shoulders: 'Wherever I go, it's a swinging place, man. It's a crazy kind of world. ' Unable to hold down a record contract, he regarded work as a distraction and the past as a trap. 'I, personally, don't want us to get together, ' he said when asked the inevitable question about a reunion. 'Or they can get together, but I'm not getting together. '