Chapter 7 7 страница

Time passed, and the world continued. Yoko Ono issued the single that represented Lennon's final work, and 'Walking on Thin Ice' suggested that he had glimpsed a way of moving into the future rather than relying on echoes of the past. In June 1981 she released Seasonof Glass, a chillingly fragile album haunted by the tragedy. 'Eighty per cent of my power and personality is being an artist, ' she explained later, 'and I had to live. I had to survive. I would have gone crazy or become very ill if I didn't do that. ' One song, 'No No No', tackled her grief via the language of sexual dysfunction; the track opened with a flurry of gunshots and a heart-rending scream. Where Harrison was glib and McCartney sentimental, Ono had the courage to be real. Attention focused on the cover, which pictured the blood-spattered glasses Lennon was wearing when he was shot. 'People are offended, ' she admitted. 'Well, there was a dead body, you know. I wanted the whole world to be reminded of what happened. If people can't take the picture of glasses because they're bloody, I'm sorry but I'm not sorry. John had to stomach a whole lot more. His whole body was

bloody. There was lots of blood all over the floor. That's the reality. ' But her exploration of darkness ended there. Subsequent albums showed a surprising talent for experimental pop, and remained resolutely positive in a conscious attempt to maintain Lennon's credo that 'all you need is love' to 'imagine'. 'It's a blessing, ' she would say relentlessly of everything that happened, offering a benediction to Lennon or some unnamed deity.

Beyond grief, there was always business. Sunday Times journalist Philip Norman had been working on a Beatles biography for three years, but benefited from his timing: the boldly titled Shout! The TrueStory of the Beatles appeared to great acclaim in March 1981. 'John Lennon was the Beatles, ' Norman declared on US breakfast TV, thereby winning an invitation to tea from Ono; McCartney must have seen the broadcast, as he held an otherwise unfathomable grudge against the book. Jack Douglas wasn't invited to the Dakota, however. The producer of Double Fantasy contacted Ono, wondering when he would receive his royalties, and 'I got a nasty letter. Almost like, " Fuck you, you're not getting anything. " All kinds of nasty business went down after that. All I could ever think of was that I knew too much. She suspected that everyone who knew a lot was gonna write a book. But I made enough in the royalties, and she really lost a good friend. '

The Beatles' empire continued to keep the legal profession afloat. In February 1981 a court in New York awarded Bright Tunes – owned by Allen Klein – $587, 000 as compensation for the damage caused to their copyright by 'My Sweet Lord'. The sum was exactly what Klein had paid to purchase the company, the judge clearly feeling it would be immoral for Harrison's ex-manager to profit from the deal. 'It's a total joke, ' Harrison said. The saga finally ended in 1990 with copyright of both 'My Sweet Lord' and 'He's So Fine' awarded to Harrison in Britain and North America, and to Klein elsewhere.

Yet this apparently endless case would be outstripped by another legal marathon. In 1978 Apple managing director Neil Aspinall learned that a young computer company in California was using the Apple name and a fruity logo. He filed a suit claiming infringement of the Beatles' copyright. The two companies eventually agreed that Apple Computers would only use its name and logo on computing products, and it would never stray into the music business. Indeed, Apple Computers founder Steve Jobs admitted that he had chosen Apple as his company's name because it reminded him of his musical heroes. And here the case rested until it rose zombie-like later in the decade.

There was no shortage of opportunities to make money. Albert Goldman, who had appalled fans of Elvis Presley with a biography that accentuated the star's failings and frailties, signed a $1 million deal for a book about Lennon. Scurrilous 'revelations' were offered by Ono's tarot card reader, Lennon's assistant at the Dakota and assorted survivors from the NEMS and Apple payrolls. Those who couldn't muster a book depended on a magazine or newspaper exposé, such as the 'exclusives' credited to Wings guitarist Denny Laine. 'He wrote two articles, ' retorted Linda McCartney. 'One said I led Paul around totally, the other that Paul totally dominated me. I thought Denny came off badly. '

Laine's disaffection with McCartney probably stemmed from the decision, formally announced in May 1981, to disband Wings. Laine insisted that he'd quit before he was sacked. 'Paul is doing other things, that's all, ' said McCartney's press spokesman Tony Brainsby. As the group's drummer Steve Holly recalled, 'I picked up the Evening Standard and read that Wings had broken up. I rang Paul up and said, " What's this? " and he replied, " Well, I'd been meaning to tell you. " ' We just picked the wrong people, ' Linda McCartney said ungraciously of Wings' multiple incarnations. '[Paul] needed the band to work with, but he had to carry almost all the weight. None of the Wings were good enough to play with him. They were good, but not great. ' Years later McCartney admitted, 'To me there was always a feeling of letdown, because the Beatles had been so big that anything I did had to compare directly with them. '

Working as a solo artist hereafter, McCartney no longer needed to display even the faintest hint of democracy. Every musician was for hire and could be replaced. The one person who had the power to challenge him was George Martin, whom he courageously chose to produce three early 1980s albums. Martin laid down his terms, rejecting most of the songs McCartney auditioned for him. As a gesture of rebellion, the musician revived one of the rejects. 'He thought it was worthwhile, ' Martin recalled, 'and he was hammering himself into the ground. I went in and said, " Paul, it's not working. " He said, " Why isn't it working? " looking at me accusingly. " Because the song's not good enough. " He looked at me and there was a kind of stand-off; and then he said, " Do you think I don't know? " ' Eventually McCartney chose to work with producers who would be more wary about questioning his judgement.

Richard Starkey wielded less power than his former colleague. When he delivered his first album after Lennon's death, it was turned down despite cameos from Harrison and McCartney. Only after much revision was the playful Stop and Smell the Roses released in late summer 1981, to minimal sales and critical disdain. Nor was Starkey able to escape entirely unscathed from the legal cavalcade. In April 1981 his ex-girlfriend Nancy Andrews filed a suit against him in the LA Superior Court, claiming more than $5 million as her share of his earnings during their relationship. The trigger was the news that Starkey was planning to marry Barbara Bach. He had been wary of television since a disastrous chat show appearance in 1979, when his alcohol-soaked performance endangered a lifetime of goodwill. But he and Bach were under contract to promote their feeble film comedy Caveman, and TV allowed the couple to publicise their most valuable asset – their celebrity. It also exposed Starkey to public scrutiny of his reaction to Lennon's death – visibly shaken on The Barbara Walters Special, grimly fatalistic on Donahue, almost tearful on Good Morning America. 'He'd like to smile, ' he told one audience, before looking up and addressing his old friend: 'How are you doing, Johnny? ' More often, he leaned on an actor's repertoire of tricks to avoid displaying the depth of his emotion, employing gallows humour, gulping down his tears or biting his lips to distract him from his pain.

Lennon's absence clouded the wedding of Richard Starkey and Barbara Bach on 27 April 1981. The three Beatles and their wives posed for their first joint portrait since 1969, suggesting that if Lennon had lived the ceremony might have achieved the reunion that Sid Bernstein and the United Nations could not. The press claimed to have witnessed 'the days of Beatlemania all over again on a small scale', as a few hundred fans 'screamed and shouted and one even fainted'. To his delight, Harrison's arrival at the register office was scarcely noticed, so seldom had he been seen in recent years. An array of instruments was delivered to the reception at Rags, a celebrity haunt in Mayfair, in case the Beatles wished to perform together. 'Paul played the piano and Ringo was playing the spoons, ' said photographer Terry O'Neill. 'It was fabulous. ' Life magazine printed a photograph of McCartney behind the piano, Harrison sporting a guitar and Starkey – suitably enough – armed with a champagne bucket. Yoko Ono was not invited to the party. 'They felt intimidated about inviting me, because it was really not the right time to encounter people being happy, ' she observed. 'But it would have been nice to have been told about it. '

A fiendishly complex etiquette now surrounded Ono's role as Lennon's widow. EMI Records was exploring the possibility of plucking unreleased Beatles material from its archive but had a 'gentleman's agreement' with the group not to release anything without their approval. 'Yoko Ono doesn't enter into this, because it's strictly an artistic decision and she's not a Beatle, ' said a company spokesman. But after her husband's death she chose not to sell the family portion of Apple and appointed herself the guardian of his artistic heritage – and effectively a voting member of the Beatles. Moreover, she and McCartney were now the joint curators of the Lennon/McCartney songwriting empire. 'I had so many responsibilities, ' she recalled. 'There was so much I had to do as Yoko Ono Lennon, that I forgot about being Yoko Ono. '

Still doubting the depth of his relationship with Lennon, McCartney needed to deal with Ono on some level of intimacy. He often telephoned after the murder, and then kept phoning, until eventually Ono asked him why he was so keen to keep in touch. 'I think I've misunderstood you, ' McCartney admitted. 'Don't do me any favours, ' Ono retorted. 'I don't want any charity. ' A few weeks later he tried again. 'Look, I'm real nervous about making this phone call, ' he began. 'You're nervous? ' Ono replied. 'You're kidding! I'm more nervous than you! ' That broke the ice, and in April 1982 the McCartneys, the Eastmans and the Ono-Lennons met in New York at Le Cirque.

Under discussion was the vexed issue of the Northern Songs catalogue. Sir Lew Grade, whose ATV corporation had bought the publishing rights to Lennon/McCartney's songs in 1969, was nearing retirement, and had offered to sell Northern back to McCartney for £ 20 million. 'I gulped, thinking, Oh my God, I wrote them for nothing! Your own children are going to be sold back to you at a price, ' McCartney recalled. By his account, he offered Ono the chance to be part of the deal, and she claimed that she could call in some favours and get the price reduced to £ 5 million. She later disputed this story, but either way Grade was soon ousted during a boardroom tussle, and the opportunity was lost.

Ono's bereavement had won her an unprecedented level of public support. Gradually, however, sympathetic profiles began to be balanced by more negative reporting – much of it provoked by her 18-year-old stepson Julian Lennon. Having elected to move to New York, he returned home in October 1981, admitting, 'Yoko's OK, but she doesn't mean anything more to me than the fact that she was married to my father. ' He naively seemed to relish publicity, and was soon complaining about the meagre stipend (£ 150 per week) he received from the Lennon estate. Once again Ono was portrayed as a witch-like figure: 'Dad was always totally under her influence. She is a very strong person. She has a lot of power. She is a bit scary too. ' Ono herself sent out contradictory signals, asking, 'I don't intend to spend the rest of my life alone, but could I bring another man into all this? ' as she gestured at the pictures of Lennon that filled the Dakota, while being seen arm in arm with antique dealer Sam Havadtoy, her close companion for nearly two decades. More damaging were the revelations of tarot card reader John Green, the first of the Dakota insiders to break ranks. He claimed that the Lennons' sex life had been perfunctory, and that Ono regarded contact with her husband 'as an assault on her person. When this happened, John would go out to whorehouses' or, so Green alleged, grope other women in front of Ono, in the hope she might find it erotic. True or not, each tabloid revelation widened the chasm between two irreconcilable legends, each kept alive by the media: the romantic ballad of John and Yoko, and the noir portrait of a couple in distress.

Similar stories were being printed about Starkey: less than a year after his marriage, there were reports of explosive quarrels in Caribbean hotels and a relationship that 'could crash-land at any time'. Twelve months earlier the same exploitative newspapers had alleged that the McCartney marriage was on the verge of disintegration; only Harrison remained immune from this forced exposure. ^*37 Yet behind the walls of his Henley-on-Thames mansion the most secretive of the Beatles was confronting his own demons. 'George was always worried that somebody would try to kill him, ' revealed Colin Harris, who had worked for Harrison since 1975. 'He kept himself hidden and was even afraid to go for a walk in the garden. There was a time – a few years after Lennon was shot – when he wouldn't go out. We didn't see him for three months. He brought in security men and they patrolled the grounds day and night. One went everywhere with George. ' His sister Louise concurred: 'George was finding fame very intrusive. But that was a family trait, in a way; we all preferred it when it was peaceful. ' So complete was Harrison's withdrawal that when he issued his 1982 album Gone Troppo he refused to publicise it, effectively sabotaging the agreeable but low-key record's commercial chances.

McCartney was too conscientious a trouper to neglect the PR machine. In early 1982 he delicately tested the waters of self-publicity for Tug of War, an adult pop album that was his most successful venture since the height of Wings' popularity. Like a penitent, he submitted to public displays of his grief, weeping gently while listening to Lennon's 'Beautiful Boy' on the BBC's Desert Island Discs and appearing uncharacteristically numb during interviews. Earlier media encounters had barely grazed the surface, but now he seemed to welcome the pressure, as if it would assuage some obscure sense of guilt. 'I would've liked to have seen [Lennon] the day before [his death], ' he admitted, 'and just straightened everything out. There was a lot left unsaid. ' Compulsive truth-telling now replaced the spinning of myths: 'People like a loser, people like to feel there is something wrong with you. Now, with someone like me, I cover up what's wrong. . . I'd like to be a whole lot looser. ' The tragedy seemed to have had only one cathartic result: 'A thing like that, it's very final – end of an era. It really wrapped up the Beatle thing for me. ' He confirmed, 'One of the things we'd been consciously aware of with the Beatles was to leave them laughing, and we thought we'd done that, you know. We didn't want to come back as decrepit old rockers. '

The commercial potency of the Beatles was illustrated once again in 1982. Anniversary festivals had once been the domain of the royal family, designed to celebrate the silver or golden jubilee of a monarch's reign. But now the baby-boomer generation had seized control of the media, it was determined that nobody should forget its tumultuous rise to power. The twentieth anniversary of the Beatles' emergence spawned a documentary film, copious press coverage and a comprehensive reissue campaign which carried 'Love Me Do' into the British Top 10.

McCartney now embarked on a project that was intended to acknowledge his glorious past and to extend it. Cinema was a medium that he was desperate to conquer, not least because George Harrison's HandMade Films was emerging as a major player in the British film industry. As his abortive collaboration with Isaac Asimov had shown, McCartney was determined to mythologise his own stardom. Although he had been dubious about the merits of Willy Russell's dramatic representation of the Beatles, he asked the playwright to prepare a script in the late 1970s – the proviso being that it had to revolve around Wings' Band on the Run album. Once again McCartney was dissatisfied with the results, so he tried again, with the dramatist Tom Stoppard. But none of these collaborations produced the results that McCartney had anticipated, so he decided that he had no alternative but to write his own script.

As a master of musical spontaneity and melodic invention, McCartney had every reason to trust his talent. Recognising his limitations had never been one of his strengths though, and accepting negative feedback from his peers was also a challenge. The result was Give My Regards to Broad Street, one of the most disastrous episodes in British film history. Written by and starring McCartney, it was the story of a much-loved superstar who finds himself under threat from a mysterious businessman when the tapes for his new album go missing. With dialogue so flat it wouldn't have disturbed a spirit level, and a plot built around the storyteller's creakiest cliché ('It was all a dream'), Broad Street was weighted against success. McCartney's wooden performance as a man of the people compounded the misery. Despite one academic's subsequent claim that the film was an unconscious re-enactment of his 'psychosexual matrimony' with John Lennon, the most benign interpretation was that McCartney was attempting to convey the trauma he had experienced during Allen Klein's reign at Apple. ('What I'd like to know is, how did we get involved with that Roth character? ' the screen McCartney asks. ) But the film's portrait of the music business was laughably unrealistic, robbing the narrative of any drama or purpose. Equally pointless was McCartney's decision to re-record several Beatles songs for the film's soundtrack. Richard Starkey, who played a cameo role in the movie, refused to participate in the remakes, apparently telling McCartney, 'I've already played on them once. Why would I want to do it again? '

There were compensations from the project – the soundtrack included a worldwide hit single – but his devotion to the film apparently put a strain on his marriage, to the point where he was forced to deny that the relationship was 'on the rocks'. It was a frustrating period for McCartney: his Pipes of Peace album was markedly less successful than its predecessor, and he was said to have been furious when his joyless collaboration with Michael Jackson 'Say Say Say' failed to top the British charts. His staff were now required to sign pledges of secrecy, but even so tales emerged of his temper tantrums when his wishes weren't obeyed. Such behaviour merely proved that he was human, not a saint, but it didn't gel with the image of an ageless, happy-go-lucky charmer.

McCartney could content himself perhaps with the announcement in late 1983 that he was now officially the richest entertainer in the world. Journalist Laurence Shames, the author of a 1980 Esquire article about Lennon's wealth that had apparently influenced Mark Chapman to murder his hero, noted pointedly, 'The mistake most people make is to still regard the Beatles as the young, boyish stars of fond memory. In fact, they are middle-aged men who have had lots of money for a long time, and have become conservative about it. '

George Harrison used his money as a form of insulation against the madness of the world. Besides his mansion in Henley, the guitarist now owned a sizeable spread in a remote corner of Australia, plus a beach-front residence in Nhiki, on the Hawaiian island of Maui. But his pleasure in this last paradise was tainted by the discovery that right of way allowed ramblers access to the shoreline border of his property, within view of his house. In August 1983 he launched a court battle to restrict public access, claiming that he was 'being raped by these people' and that 'privacy is the single most important thing in my life'. Ironically, the case – which was only settled in 2001 – merely robbed Harrison of more privacy, as legal documents revealed that the property was actually owned not by the musician but by obscure corporations that could be traced back to Denis O'Brien's web of Euroatlantic companies. In the glorious tradition of Beatle-related litigation, Harrison's quest for secrecy spiralled into epic legal battles that seemed to envelop the entire population of Hawaii. By the time he had won the right to privacy in 2001, he was too ill to visit the island – the dictionary definition of a Pyrrhic victory.

Harrison's prospering film business still allowed him the luxury of such protracted engagements with the legal profession. Richard Starkey had no such reliable source of earnings; nor did his sparse songwriting catalogue generate much income. By 1983 he was reduced to narrating a banal radio history of his own career, Ringo's Yellow Submarine. His most recent album, the unpretentious Old Wave, had been rejected by both UK and US record companies, and eventually surfaced only in Germany and Canada. His career mined new depths with his portrayal of a bisexual fashion designer in the TV movie Princess Daisy.

Facing the ignominy of life as a professional nostalgist, living off the 'promotion fees' he was granted by Apple and the other Beatles, Starkey would have welcomed a lucrative Beatles project – for example, Neil Aspinall's documentary film The Long and Winding Road, which was once again under consideration. 'You'll never get them all to agree to anything, ' noted Lee Eastman wryly, and he was right: at a summit meeting in July 1983 Harrison vetoed any further progress on the film.

Five months later, on 1 December 1983, the surviving Beatles and Yoko Ono endured an eight-hour legal conference at the Dorchester Hotel in London. During the preparation of a lawsuit against EMI alleging underpayment of royalties, Starkey, Harrison and Ono had discovered the existence of the McCartney override, guaranteeing their colleague a higher return from the group's record sales than they were receiving. Harrison alleged – quite wrongly – that McCartney had deliberately prevented his colleagues from sharing this increase in revenues; he was reminded that McCartney had been negotiating his own solo contract, not a Beatles deal. But McCartney was prepared to offer a compromise: he would help the others achieve the same royalty rate he was receiving, if they each agreed to give him a substantial cash payment in recompense for his co-operation. Thus united, they would be in a more powerful position to extract money from EMI.

Starkey, Harrison and Ono agreed, but the meeting soon descended into petty squabbles. Weary of hearing the same circular arguments and convinced that all their problems ultimately stemmed from the Allen Klein contracts that he had never authorised, McCartney's patience finally snapped. Either the group came to a collective arrangement, he threatened, or he would use his veto and effectively capsize Apple. 'What about the tax? ' the others asked, aware that the British government would claim almost everything if Apple were liquidated. McCartney replied that he didn't care: he'd rather lose the money than go through any more meetings like this. 'I don't need this grief, ' he told his colleagues. Starkey pleaded with McCartney not to take away the promotion fees on which his financial survival depended. Eventually, the three Beatles and Ono managed to negotiate a ceasefire, McCartney promised Starkey another year's worth of support, and the weary participants left the hotel. 'Are the Beatles getting back together? ' a reporter shouted at Starkey. 'Don't be daft, ' was his blunt reply.

While the surviving Beatles battled over their legacy, John Lennon returned from the grave. A medium claimed to have conducted an interview with Lennon's spirit in which he revealed (in a bizarre approximation of a Scouse accent) that he was enjoying a series of unearthly affairs with dead film stars, was intending to 'materialise on television when the world is ready for it', and had just written a new song: 'You won't have a say, you won't lose your head/When at last it's your day, you're gonna be dead. ' Cynics noted that death seemed to have had an adverse affect on Lennon's skills as a wordsmith.

In the absence of a reunion, physical or ghostly, EMI Records – unaware that the Beatles had them under financial surveillance – were anxious to find novel ways of exploiting the group's catalogue. In July 1983 the company opened Abbey Road's Studio 2, where most of their records had been made, to the public. Fans were treated to an audiovisual presentation that featured tantalising extracts from the group's session tapes, in professional quality. The three ex-Beatles were invited to private screenings – Harrison preferring to go alone rather than join McCartney and Starkey – and professed themselves impressed by EMI's archive work.

The company now hoped that the group might look more kindly on the release of a 'new' album of Beatles offcuts. Cassette tapes of a collection entitled Sessions were circulated among senior EMI executives, bearing the secretive label 'Abbey Road Project'. Release was scheduled for Christmas 1984, preceded by a single, 'Leave My Kitten Alone'. Unfortunately, this coincided with Apple's decision to sue EMI/Capitol. The group's chief US legal representative, Leonard Marks, explained, 'We have filed complaints which charge these record companies with, among other things, breach of contract and fraud, and have sought compensatory and punitive damages totalling on the order of $100 million. '

The Beatles were expert at pretending that legal action did not concern them, but this case was too serious to allow any co-operation with EMI. McCartney and Harrison filed affidavits declaring that 'they felt the quality of the work on the Sessions material was not up to their standards, and that's why they didn't approve the release of it in the first place'. Unfortunately for both parties, at least one Abbey Road Project cassette fell into the wrong hands, and within months bootleg release of the Sessions album was available on the black market, followed by several volumes of Ultra-Rare Trax releases containing further gems from EMI's supposedly impregnable archive.

No sooner were the Beatles united in one legal action than they were divided in another. The result was what one tabloid subeditor dubbed an AMAZING BEATLES BUST-UP. In February 1985 Harrison, Starkey and Ono filed a $8. 6 million writ against McCartney in the New York Supreme Court, on the basis that he was 'earning a preferential royalty from Beatles records to the others, as an incentive for him to re-sign with Capitol as a solo artist'. EMI spokesman Bob O'Neill conceded that the allegation was correct, but that the money came from the company's share of the profits and didn't affect the sums earned by the other Beatles.

The Beatles had now reverted to the three-against-one split of the early 1970s, and once again McCartney was exposed as the apparent culprit. He resisted the option of spilling the group's financial secrets in public, held his tongue, and instead abandoned the legal dispute between Apple and EMI, believing that it would cost more than it could possibly gain. His opponents reacted by raising the stakes, claiming not only financial compensation but demanding EMI give up any rights to the Beatles' recordings. That would have had catastrophic repercussions for the company, affecting its short-term share price and its profits for decades ahead, so it was not surprising that in March 1986 a compromise was agreed. Under the terms of the deal the Beatles would receive £ 2. 8 million in lieu of underpaid royalties, plus the freedom to delve further into EMI's overseas accounts. The musicians were now hyper-sensitive to the company's every move, and further litigation was inevitable. As Linda McCartney quipped, 'All I know is, with all the advisers and lawyers and parasites, we're putting a lot of kids through prep school and buying a lot of swimming pools. '

One kid who could afford his own pool was Julian Lennon. In late 1984 he issued an attractively crafted debut album, Valotte, which sold more than a million copies and spawned two Top 10 US singles. Record producer Phil Ramone, who handled the project, glimpsed the spirit of redemption at work: 'This freaky guy shoots your dad, and no matter which way you look at it, you can't recover him. But you can say, " Maybe there's a legacy here. Maybe there's something I'm supposed to do that I feel comfortable with. " And use it – use it in the proper sense. ' Press and public seized on the family resemblance between father and son, and before long there was speculation that the Beatles would re-form with Julian replacing John. Valiantly attempting to retain his individuality, Julian Lennon still felt compelled to end his live performances with a brace of songs from his father's repertoire, 'Stand By Me' and 'Day Tripper'. He must have wondered how much of the applause was being evoked by his name rather than his music.