Chapter 7. Chapter 10

We are the only ones who know each other. We knew what it was like. They are the only two that don't look at me like I'm a Beatle. They look at me like I'm a Ringo, and I look at him like he's a Paul or a George.

Richard Starkey, 1992

When Albert Goldman published his 600-page biography The Lives of John Lennon in August 1988, Paul McCartney was outraged. 'Boycott this book, ' he told Lennon's fans. 'It's disgusting that someone like Goldman can make up any bunch of lies he sees fit, and can be allowed to republish them without fear of repudiation. ' 'He ought to be ashamed of himself, ' Goldman replied. 'The generation of the sixties were scathing in their criticism of everybody. Now, suddenly, they've become very prissy and moralistic when someone says something they don't want to hear about themselves. They can dish it out, but they sure can't take it. '

Goldman portrayed Lennon as mummy-fixated, drug-riddled, instinctively violent, psychologically flawed, a bully who might have been responsible for the death of his friend Stuart Sutcliffe, a closet homosexual and the assaulter of his baby son. Even at his most affectionate – and Goldman claimed above all to have been an admirer of Lennon's work – the writer employed terms such as 'genetic brain damage', 'violence' of 'an epileptic character', 'extreme passivity', 'gullible', 'very intimidating' and 'threatening'.

The Lives of John Lennon was lousy with errors of fact and interpretation, speculative in the extreme, ill-willed and awash with snobbery. Yet Goldman pinpointed Lennon's almost clinical need for domination by a strong woman; the dark ambiguity of a man of peace being governed by violence, either vented or repressed; the unmistakable decline in his work after he left England in 1971; and the instinctive need to believe in a force greater than himself, which led him from guru to guru, each obsession spilling into disillusionment and creative despair.

Ironically, the book – a global best-seller, which nevertheless vanished from history after Goldman's death in 1994 – provided a cause around which Ono and McCartney could unite. Their rapprochement was aided by the efforts of their lawyers to settle the lawsuits that divided them. After motions were granted and denied, appeals heard and overturned, all the parties in their various disputes finally realised that extravagant legal costs were threatening to outstrip their potential earnings. The most obstinate of their disagreements concerned the McCartney override and the associated wrangles over EMI's royalty payments. After more than a year of discussions, Apple, the Beatles and EMI were finally ready to settle. The documents were officially signed on 7 November 1989, and the terms were kept secret, though EMI would no longer be able to proceed with Beatles projects without the express approval of Apple and its four owners. 'The settlement was about ten feet thick, ' Harrison complained. 'I don't think anybody but the lawyers read it. It's a good feeling to be done with it. The funny thing is, most of the people who were involved with the reason that lawsuit came about aren't even in the companies any more. So the people at Capitol and EMI had to take on the karma of their predecessors, and I'm sure that they're relieved too. '

Under the agreement all four Beatles would now benefit from the improved terms that had been enjoyed by McCartney. But as Harrison noted, 'It doesn't wash away the politics of it. Some of the original causes can't go away, in my mind. Because there are certain things that never should have happened in the first place. If I stab you in the back and you happen to get to the hospital and don't die. . . you may not want to see me in case I do it again. '

During the final year of negotiations Richard Starkey's life was transformed. His alcoholism had spiralled out of control in the late summer of 1988. 'Years I've lost, absolute years, ' he recalled. 'I've no idea what happened. I lived in a blackout. I don't know how I'd get to bed every night. We didn't know. That's how crazy it gets. ' By early September he was drinking and snorting cocaine to violent excess. Finally, Starkey and Barbara Bach realised that they needed help, and booked themselves into an Arizona rehab clinic. 'Heading for the detox centre, ' he confessed, 'I was as drunk as a skunk. But after the detox I felt things had to change. I didn't know it then, but I can survive without alcohol and drugs. ' After six weeks the couple flew home to England, determined to live without the stimulants that had protected them from reality. 'I get bewildered and frightened, ' Starkey admitted. 'If I live day to day, I usually have a great day. If I start living in the future or the past, it gets silly. ' As one observer noted, 'He is resentful of the past, frightened of the future. ' 'God watches out for me, ' Starkey said, 'and he laughs when I make plans. '

Yet plans were his chief defence against his illness. In July 1989 Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band began their first tour. Like the Traveling Wilburys, Starkey's was a gathering of veterans, but unlike Harrison's project, his band was rooted firmly in the past. There was scepticism when the initial line-up was announced, as it featured some notorious excessives, such as Rick Danko of The Band and Billy Preston. But Starkey resisted all temptations, and his self-esteem grew as he discovered the affection with which he was still regarded, by musicians and fans alike. The All-Starr Band became his regular touring vehicle for the next two decades, its line-up gradually declining in quality but its purpose – keeping its star out of trouble – steadfast. The consistency on which the band was built could be irksome for its members, though, as Todd Rundgren recalled: 'Maybe on a good night I was only bored half the time, while on a bad night it was all the time. They only knew a couple of my songs, so I had to play the same damned song every night. But there's a karmic aspect to it. I wouldn't be in the music business if it weren't for the Beatles, so when Ringo Starr calls, you have to answer! '

One casualty of Starkey's reformed lifestyle was the album on which he had been working with Chips Moman. 'He wanted to put it on hold, ' Moman complained. 'That didn't seem fair because I'd been working for months on this album and put a lot of my money into it. I'm not as rich as Ringo! It went on for months. Finally I said, " Ringo, I'm gonna put this album out. It's taken me a year to get you on the phone. Send me your picture. If not, I'll just have an artist draw one. " Now, I wasn't really about to do that, but I had to draw matters to a head. ' Lawyers were summoned, and everyone else ended up out of pocket: Starkey paid Moman compensation, which according to Moman amounted to less than his studio costs. All that remained of the album was a pile of tape boxes in Moman's barn which he was legally barred from playing to anyone.

The guardian of Starkey's new career was his business manager Hilary Gerrard. The son of a European é migré to London who adopted the surname after finding himself in Gerrard Street, he is perhaps the most enigmatic character in the entire Beatles' story, and has rarely been photographed. Charming or abrupt as the occasion requires, his manner has been compared to an East End cabbie, albeit with the discreet ponytail and ear stud of a music business maverick. It was Gerrard who supervised the formation of Widgeon Investments in 1989, to handle the money that would accrue from Starkey's adventures in sobriety and send it on vacation to the Caribbean. This was a time of corporate consolidation. Through the 1980s Paul McCartney had launched a series of British companies using his trademarked juggler logo, each handling a specific interest in his creative and business portfolio. Now his empire expanded again, with the formation of companies such as McCartney Enterprises and MPL Tours. After a decade in which his appearances had been restricted to charity events and his nerve profoundly shaken by Lennon's murder, McCartney was ready to return to the road.

He had last toured in 1979, with Wings and a repertoire that touched only gently on the Beatles. Now, at last, he was prepared to acknowledge his lifetime's work. Buoyed by the reception for his inventive Flowers in the Dirt album, he fashioned a schedule that would eventually involve 87 concerts around the globe across the course of six months, in venues ranging from a 5, 000-seat arena in Norway to a world-record stadium crowd of 184, 000 in Brazil. Few, if any, of his peers could have conceived such an ambitious project or fulfilled it with such panache. His lack of spontaneity was apparent – even his ad-libbed introductions were carefully scripted – and sometimes his voice displayed signs of weariness and age. But any misgivings were outweighed by the sheer daring of the enterprise, which involved a set of 30 songs or more, equally divided between his solo career and his Beatles catalogue. McCartney supervised everything with his customary attention to detail, from the film presentation that preceded him on stage to the arrangements of such unexpected delights as the closing medley from Abbey Road, delivered with stunning fidelity to the original record. The tour virtually defied criticism, and it established McCartney as arguably the most popular touring attraction in the world.

Facing a press conference in every city, McCartney inevitably annoyed the ever-sensitive George Harrison. A casual admission that he would be interested in working with Harrison brought a swift and sarcastic response. As the tour ended, Harrison was still muttering discontentedly, 'He's left it a bit late, is all I can say to that. I'm entrenched with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, and I don't see any reason to go back to an old situation. ' So McCartney was forced to defend himself once more: 'George has taken the liberty of answering that question with shocking regularity for you media guys. He's had a field day getting publicity from his negative responses. So obviously it's never going to happen, no matter what I think. '

Beneath this machismo, a healthier line of communication had been opened. The Beatles' wives had been blamed unfairly for provoking the group's demise 20 years earlier. Now they became a means of reconciliation. When the organisation Parents For Safe Food was launched in 1989, Barbara Bach and Olivia Harrison became active campaigners, and the loyal Derek Taylor wrote the campaign's handbook. A few months later Olivia Harrison enlisted Bach, Yoko Ono and Linda McCartney to raise money for starving Romanian orphans. The Traveling Wilburys contributed a single to the cause, and a charity album followed featuring both Harrison and Starkey.

Other well-intentioned projects proved more divisive. Early in 1989 Cynthia Lennon was approached by promoter Sid Bernstein, who wanted to stage a charity concert to mark John Lennon's 50th birthday in October 1990. Cynthia lent her support, and secured the tentative involvement of Michael Jackson, Ravi Shankar and Paul McCartney. Later that year Cynthia attended a concert by her son Julian Lennon at which his half-brother Sean made an emotional cameo appearance. Backstage, Lennon's two wives discussed Bernstein's plan. Cynthia Lennon returned home believing that Ono would co-operate, only to hear that Ono had withdrawn her approval and was planning her own anniversary event.

On 5 May 1990 Ono staged her tribute to her late husband in Liverpool. The attendance was disappointing, and an occasion that was intended to generate a vast sum for Ono's newly incorporated charity, the Spirit Foundation UK, collapsed into financial controversy. Meanwhile, Bernstein continued to dream, his next fantasy involving a Beatles reunion with Julian Lennon at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. As United Nations adviser Hans Janitchek said, 'The significant thing is to bring the Beatles together. If they played " Happy Days Are Here Again" at the Berlin Wall, wouldn't that be terrific? ' Twenty years after their dissolution, the Beatles were still carrying the weight of the world's expectations.

Maintaining a safe distance, McCartney and Starkey contributed videotaped performances to Ono's concert – Starkey revisiting the Beatles' 'I Call Your Name' with gusto, and McCartney offering a banal medley of the songs from the group's first single. But Harrison refused to participate. 'I don't think John would like it, and I don't want to keep dabbling in the past either. Personally, I've made a pact with myself not to get involved in anything to do with ex-Beatles. The Beatles ceased to exist in 1969. They meant whatever they meant to various people across the world, and it was fun at the time, but it has affected the rest of our lives. Let sleeping dogs lie. '

Some dogs were reluctant to snooze. Having secured an undertaking that Apple Computers would never become involved with the music business, Neil Aspinall and Apple's lawyers discovered in late 1988 that the American firm was planning to add a sound chip to its computers which could produce melodic content. On 29 October the Apple vs Apple dispute reached Court 53 of the London High Court, starting a hearing that ran for 116 days, plus ten days more at the London Court of Appeal and another at the European Court in Brussels. The two sides had gathered evidence from dozens of witnesses prepared to testify either that nobody could confuse Apple Computers with the Beatles, or that Apple Corps was a world-famous company whose trademark was being abused by an American upstart.

It was now fifteen years since Apple Corps had last actively functioned as a record company, and it was a moot point whether its name and logo were more associated with the Beatles or with pioneering computer technology. But suddenly Apple Corps announced a global relaunch. Now it was once again a record label, and to show how seriously it took its responsibilities it launched a salvo of court actions in a bewildering variety of directions. It won a High Court injunction against EMI, who had been preparing to release the 1973 compilations by the Beatles (1962– 1966 and 1967–1970) on CD without securing the necessary approval. Apple also targeted Sony, which via a complex series of sub-licensing deals had emerged – as much to its own surprise as anyone else's – with a CD of the Beatles' legally contentious Star-Club recordings from 1962. The record was swiftly withdrawn. But the Beatles' most ambitious move was effectively to sue themselves, in a move worthy of the satirical genius of Eric Idle's Rutles film. Apple had approved the release of a video documentary about the Beatles' 1964 arrival in America entitled The First US Visit. The UK rights were licensed to Richard Branson's Virgin company; but Apple then served Virgin with a writ to cancel the release – for motives that only became clear when the Anthology project was announced a few weeks later.

On 11 October 1991, just as it threatened to become the longest hearing in British legal history, the battle between the rival Apples came to an unexpected halt when the two sides announced that they had reached a settlement. The long-suffering Mr Justice Ferris noted wryly, 'I do not know whether my surprise at this development at this stage outweighs my relief at not having to write a definitive judgement. ' The terms of the agreement were believed to include a payment from Apple Computers of some $29 million and a pledge not to stray into music again. It seemed a comprehensive victory for Apple Corps, and it was surely a strange coincidence that its rebirth as a record company was forgotten soon after the lawsuit was won.

The Apple empire was now secure for the final decade of the century, with Neil Aspinall still controlling its activities with an eye for detail and a tenacious refusal to give ground to any opponent. The company's ethos now represented the polar opposite of its original philosophy – unless, that is, one remembered that Apple was originally envisaged as a method of creative tax reduction. Each Beatle was still represented by a director on the board, which comprised Yoko Ono Lennon, John Eastman (replacing his father Lee, who died later that year aged 81), Denis O'Brien and Hilary Gerrard. The same personnel controlled all the other surviving Beatle companies: Apple Electronics Ltd, Apple Management Ltd, Apple Publicity Ltd (all three effectively extinct), Subafilms Ltd, Apple Publishing Ltd, Python Music Ltd and the mother of them all, The Beatles Ltd. And each Beatle/director combination could boast his/her individual corporate maze to keep the accountants occupied.

Nobody's maze was more circuitous than George Harrison's. The 'money-go-round' (to borrow a phrase from Ray Davies) invented by Denis O'Brien had already scared the Monty Python troupe. Michael Palin remembered O'Brien showing them 'a blackboard, with all these various companies here, there and everywhere, and it was very good, real state-of-the-art tax avoidance, mentioning lots of countries in the world and various names of people there who would run our affairs in the Bahamas or the Caymans or Panama'. For a while each of the comedians was too embarrassed to admit that he didn't understand O'Brien's explanation; when they realised that they were all equally bamboozled, they decided not to sign up for this financial mystery tour. 'I'd observed him quite a lot, ' said Eric Idle, 'and I also knew George really, really well, and I said, " You know, you want to be very careful. There's something going on. " '

Harrison felt he had every reason to trust O'Brien, who had appeared as his saviour in the aftermath of his relationship with Allen Klein and had masterminded his stunningly successful venture into the British film industry. 'When we got rid of Allen Klein, ' he said in 1988, 'I was 15 years behind with my taxes, and Denis helped me sort out that mess. ' HandMade Films' initial success – including hits such as TheLong Good Friday and A Private Function – suggested that business acumen, instinct and luck were working in their favour. But that streak ended with Shanghai Surprise, the Madonna vehicle that cost HandMade £ 10 million and took less than half that at the box office. Subsequent HandMade releases, such as The Raggedy Rawney, were even less successful; and the nadir was Checking Out, a comedy that grossed less than 3 per cent of its costs. For any independent film company these figures were ruinous, and in 1991 production was abruptly halted on all HandMade's projects. Harrison attempted to sever his ties with the industry, faxing the London office staff to tell them they were fired and announcing that he no longer wished to be involved with the company.

Even a Beatle, however, could not dispose of his business obligations so swiftly. O'Brien repaired the public damage that Harrison had caused, and the company stumbled on. But history was about to be replayed. In 1972 Lennon and Harrison had ordered a clandestine investigation of Allen Klein's business affairs. Now Harrison was forced into the same manoeuvre, knowing that the stakes were enormous. At risk, ultimately, was his Friar Park mansion and his quarter interest in Apple and the Beatles. HandMade had offered him a journey out of the past. Now only a return to the past could safeguard his financial future. ^*38

In 1990 Neil Aspinall had advised Yoko Ono and the three Beatles to reconsider the idea of producing an official documentary about their career. Harrison was dismissive, but the others remained open to negotiation. While Harrison grappled with potential disaster and Starkey battled to keep his addictions at bay, McCartney seemed secure and fulfilled. Ono was moved by his decision, during a Liverpool concert that June, to celebrate Lennon's memory by performing three of his best-known songs, 'Strawberry Fields Forever', 'Help! ' and 'Give Peace a Chance'. ^†5Despite his success as a live performer, however, McCartney had always found it difficult to communicate in public. His stage patter was wooden and often embarrassing, and after a brief period of unthinking honesty provoked by Lennon's death, he had returned to his standard interview technique of hiding his discomfort in familiar anecdotes. After former tabloid journalist Geoff Baker became his press spokesman, it did McCartney few favours when he told journalists that the album Off the Ground was 'the best thing Paul's done since the White Album', when it so blatantly wasn't. McCartney was at his most impressive when he wasn't trying so hard to impress – filming an episode of the MTV Unplugged series, for example, on which he revisited songs such as 'And I Love Her' with a delicacy that was all too rarely found in his performances. Even then, McCartney could not be entirely spontaneous. In one of the most endearing moments of the programme an attempt at 'We Can Work It Out' ground to a halt after a few bars. 'This is so informal that we'll start again, ' McCartney said. What the audience didn't realise was that the mistake had been carefully planned. As an aside, MTV Unplugged marked the debut of Stella McCartney's fashion career; the 18-year-old received a wardrobe credit on the show.

The McCartney family widened its horizons in 1991, with Paul venturing into classical composition and Linda launching an enormously successful range of vegetarian foods. Their contentment was sharply at odds with Harrison's financial insecurity. With Handmade Films in disarray, he needed cash, and by autumn 1991 he had agreed to let Aspinall assemble a documentary crew. Inevitably, it was McCartney who announced the news, and Harrison who immediately dampened any illusions about a Beatles reunion. 'No, it can't be possible, ' he insisted in late November, 'because the Beatles don't exist, especially now as John Lennon isn't alive. It just comes every time Paul needs some publicity, he announces to the press that the Beatles are coming together again, but that's all. I wouldn't pay too much attention to that. '

He was speaking in Tokyo at the start of his first concert tour in 17 years. 'I had to do something when I gave up smoking, ' Harrison quipped, discounting his business problems. As in 1974, the constant enquiries about the Beatles irritated him. 'The press conference set the tone for the whole thing, ' reflected Eric Clapton, who supported Harrison on the Japanese tour. 'They were asking him inappropriate questions and he went on the defensive and stayed that way. ' In retrospect, Clapton viewed the tour as a last chance to tug Harrison out of the lethargy that had begun to envelop him. 'I only wish I could have been more help, ' he said in his autobiography. 'It was a fine show, well rehearsed with great songs and tremendous musicianship, but I knew his heart wasn't in it. He didn't really seem to like playing live, so it did nothing for him, except maybe he saw how much he was loved, both by his fans and by us. ' None of that affected the monetary significance of the tour, which comprised twelve sell-out shows in large arenas and spawned a double album. There was talk of taking the show to America, but Harrison's discomfort made that impossible.

He did agree to play one more show, however, on 6 April 1992, his first full-length British concert since 1969. It was another fund-raiser, not for HandMade Films but for the newly formed Natural Law Party. This mysterious organisation had put up several hundred candidates for the UK general election three days later. Their goal was ambitious: 'to create a disease-free, crime-free, pollution-free society – Heaven on Earth' based on the principles of Transcendental Meditation espoused by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Harrison, not previously noted for any political allegiance, promised, 'I will vote for the Natural Law Party because I want a total change and not just a choice between left and right. . . I believe this party offers the only option to get out of our problems and create the beautiful nation we would all like to have. '

Welcome though the concert was, many regarded Harrison's support for the NLP as evidence of his total isolation from real life. The party did little to aid its cause with an election broadcast that demonstrated the joys of 'yogic flying' and asked the populace to imagine a future in which the entire British nation could defy the laws of gravity. Yet Harrison's enthusiasm was undimmed by public cynicism. A few days before his concert he phoned Paul McCartney, 'giggling', from Los Angeles. 'I've been up all night, and you may think this is a bit silly, but Maharishi would like you, me and Ringo to stand as Members of Parliament for Liverpool. We'll win! It'll be great! ' McCartney politely declined.

Fortunately, Harrison's Albert Hall show was a celebration of his music not his political philosophy. Eighteen months earlier he had attacked McCartney for staging 'a Beatles tour. He's decided to be the Beatles. I'm not interested: for me, it's the past. ' Now he opened his show with the Beatles' 'I Want to Tell You', sending a shiver down the spine of everyone who imagined how the group might have sounded in 1966 if they had only bothered to rehearse. He seemed genuinely moved by the audience response. 'I'm always paranoid about whether people like me, ' he admitted from the stage. 'You never know. '

The night was triumphant, with cameo appearances from Starkey and Harrison's son Dhani; the election less so, as only one in every 250 people voted for the NLP. Even the adrenaline rush of the gig quickly dissipated. 'I really enjoyed playing, ' Harrison admitted a few weeks later. 'But I have a conflict: I don't particularly want to play to audiences. It's unhealthy to be the star. ' He was happy to accept the trappings of his stardom, the freedom, the vintage guitars and the mansion; but when he looked back at the Beatles he could only think, 'What a waste of time! The potential danger of forgetting what the purpose is supposed to be in life and just getting caught up in this big tangle and creating more and more karma. I wouldn't want to do it again. '

Yet that was exactly what he had just agreed to do. In January 1992 a film crew began work in an anonymous-looking office in west London. In May Apple was ready to announce that The Long andWinding Road – the Beatles' official history of their own lives – was under construction, and that the three surviving musicians had agreed to work together. 'We went through the stages of the three of us saying hello in different situations, in restaurants and offices, ' Starkey explained later, 'then we started working separately and then we started doing a bit together, and then of course it ends up with us recording together. ' Initially their contribution was limited to scouring their private film archives for rare footage; soon they agreed to be interviewed for the project by

the unthreatening figure of musician Jools Holland. 'None of the guys saw what the others had said, ' explained producer Bob Smeaton. 'We did interview the three of them together, but I preferred to speak to them individually, because they're a lot more honest. They became protective of each other. '

One major problem facing Smeaton, Aspinall and director Chips Chipperfield was the missing Beatle. The crew had access to hours of Lennon interviews and were adamant that they didn't want Yoko Ono to act as a surrogate for her late husband. 'We didn't want her talking about John when she hadn't been around, ' Smeaton recalled. 'But we said, " The guys are obviously going to talk about you. Do you want to be on screen? " But we wouldn't let her see what they had said about her. She had to make a decision there and then. And she said no. ' She retained the same power of veto as the three Beatles, but her absence from the screen offered McCartney, Harrison and Starkey a sense of psychological freedom.

By agreeing to participate in Apple's documentary, the surviving Beatles were, consciously or not, sacrificing some of their carefully guarded privacy. But Harrison could no longer afford isolation. By late 1992 he had been advised that he was on the verge of bankruptcy, as HandMade's debts ate into his capital. It transpired that for years Harrison's wealth had been cross-collateralised to finance HandMade's features: in effect he was liable for 100 per cent of the company's losses, but only 50 per cent of its profits. 'To have someone sit at your table with your family every night and then betray your trust is one of the worst experiences imaginable, ' he commented later. After almost 20 years O'Brien was removed as Harrison's manager and a director of Apple in early 1993 – Harrison assuming the latter role himself.

Two years of investigation followed before Harrison, his Harrisongs company and HandMade Films collectively filed suit against O'Brien in January 1995. Harrison's claim alone amounted to $25 million. In 1988 O'Brien had described his client as 'an absolutely extraordinary individual. . . I'd do anything for that guy. ' Now Harrison alleged in his legal complaint that O'Brien had been 'a faithless and fraudulent manager' whose intention was 'to get a " free ride" at Harrison's expense' and 'to aggrandise himself personally, professionally and socially'. As one commentator noted, the allegations were effectively 'an 18-page insult'. When Harrison had split from Klein, the musician had retained a grudging affection for his former manager. This time the breach was total. Twelve months later the Los Angeles Superior Court issued a summary judgement that O'Brien was responsible for half of HandMade's debts, and that he therefore owed Harrison $11. 6 million. 'It's a help, but I didn't actually get any money, ' the musician commented. 'We've got to follow him to the ends of the earth, getting the case registered in every different area where he could have any assets. It's one thing winning, but actually getting the money is another thing. ' Meanwhile, HandMade was sold to the Paragon Entertainment group for a reported £ 5 million.

The saga took its toll on Harrison's goodwill and health, and forced him into the unwelcome role of nostalgic Beatle. His colleagues were enjoying somewhat better fortune. In the mid-1980s Starkey had narrated a series of children's films, Thomas the Tank Engine, for British TV. His reward was an 8 per cent stake in the production company, which paid enormous dividends when the series was reworked as Shining Time Station for US consumption, with Starkey's lugubrious voice at its heart. He was locked into a healthy marriage and regular touring routine, had resumed his recording career, and appeared to have found the stability he had lacked since the demise of the Beatles. McCartney's situation was even rosier. In December 1992 he signed a new recording deal with EMI/Capitol, ambitiously described as a lifetime agreement that could net him as much as $100 million.

On 10 December McCartney and Harrison met in California. The following day McCartney announced, 'We're getting together, you know, for this [documentary] – it's bringing us together. And there's a chance we might write a little bit of music for it. ' It was the kind of statement that he'd been making for years – every time he had an album to promote, Harrison would have said. But this time there was no sarcastic response from Harrison; merely silence. He insisted only that the project must not be named after McCartney's song 'The Long and Winding Road'. And so The Beatles Anthology was born, comprising a TV series of six or eight or ten episodes (the scope seemed limitless), a set of videotapes and possibly, just possibly, some new music from the surviving group members – some instrumental backgrounds, McCartney suggested, rather than a fully fledged studio reunion.

Once he had promoted his inconsistent Off the Ground album, suggesting as usual, 'John's spirit was in the studio with us, ' McCartney embarked on his New World Tour. Like its predecessor, this was a gargantuan affair that leaned heavily on his heritage. Every show opened with a film dominated by footage from the Beatle era, although none of it post-dated the arrival of Yoko Ono. When the tour reached London in September 1993 Harrison attended one of the shows. 'He came back afterwards, ' McCartney recalled, 'and criticised the gig in a sort of professional way. " A bit too long, " George reckoned. Well, fuck you. And the old feelings came up. But George is a great guy. Even with old friends, this shit happens. '

The two men did agree on one subject: they weren't happy about delving too deeply into the Beatles' archive of unreleased recordings. Their producer George Martin was sent to investigate the possibilities and emerged unimpressed. 'I've listened to all the tapes, ' he declared in March 1993. 'There are one or two interesting variations, but otherwise it's all junk. Couldn't possibly release it! ' Then the financial potential of a series of archive releases was explained to Martin and the Beatles. Within a few months Martin had agreed to assemble three double CDs of unissued material, by which time the vaults of junk had magically become a treasure trove.

The Beatles Anthology was now proceeding on several fronts: the film team in Chiswick editing the archive footage and the new interviews with the Beatles; George Martin at Abbey Road preparing an alternative musical history of the group; and Derek Taylor at Apple gathering quotations old and new for a Beatles autobiography. Only one piece remained elusive: the music that McCartney, Harrison and Starkey had agreed to record together.

On New Year's Day 1994 Paul McCartney placed a call to Yoko Ono. 'She was a little surprised, ' he admitted, but we got chatting. I rang her a few more times after that, we got quite friendly, and this idea came up. I said, 'Look, the three of us were thinking of doing a little instrumental for the film, just to get together. ' But as the thought of the three of us actually sitting down in a studio started to get nearer and nearer, I got cold feet about it. I thought, does the world need a three-quarter Beatle record. But what if John was on, the three of us and John, like a real new record? I talked to Yoko about that and she said she had these three tracks.

On 19 January McCartney and Ono attended the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dinner, where McCartney had agreed to induct Lennon – on the understanding that he would be honoured himself the following year. ^*39 He read an open letter to his late friend, recounting familiar anecdotes, and shared a magnificently awkward hug with Ono – she throwing her head back in mock-ecstasy, he leaning in tentatively as if he was about to embrace a crocodile. After the ceremony Ono handed over a bundle of tapes containing Lennon's home recordings of several songs, most of which had been aired on the Lost LennonTapes radio series. 'We know we can't do anything better than the Beatles, ' McCartney said modestly, 'but for old time's sake, we thought it would be nice to give it a whirl. '

That was the story that went around the world: the Beatles were reuniting, and McCartney had made it happen. But Ono soon let slip that she had first been approached by George Harrison and Neil Aspinall in 1991, relegating McCartney to the role of messenger: 'It was all settled before then. I just used that occasion to hand over the tapes to Paul. ' Whereupon McCartney revised his narrative, now claiming to have suggested the concept to Ono earlier still. 'I checked it out with Sean, ' he said, 'because I didn't want him to have a problem with it. He said, " Well, it'll be weird hearing a dead guy on lead vocal. But give it a try. " I said to them both, if it doesn't work out, you can veto it. When I told George and Ringo I'd agreed to that, they were going, " What? What if we love it? " It didn't come to that, luckily. ' Ono admitted that she had initially been dubious about the project: 'I remember how John always said there could be no reunion of the Beatles because, if they got together again, the world would be so disappointed to see four rusty old men. I also felt that those tracks were private. It was like a kind of physical hurt to me to think of someone taking them and messing with them. ' It was perhaps not the most diplomatic way to describe the other Beatles' input, but Ono concluded, 'The Beatles have become a very important power to many people. I felt that for me to stand in the way of that reunion would be wrong. So I decided to go with the flow. And after all the Beatles were John's group. He was the band leader and the one who coined the Beatles' name. ' She had lost none of her flair for annoying McCartney while appearing to act with grace and dignity. The origin of the Beatles' name – always ascribed humorously by Lennon to 'a vision' of a man on a 'flaming pie' – would cause a rift during the final edit of the Anthology documentary. According to McCartney, Ono insisted that Lennon's account was literally true, not a joke, and wouldn't hear otherwise. The argument inspired the title track of McCartney's 1997 album Flaming Pie, which tapped into the Beatles' spirit more successfully than anything he'd composed in years.

There was much excitement at the news of Lennon's posthumous involvement in the reunion. But the Beatles themselves were more ambivalent. An initial recording session scheduled the week before McCartney collected the tapes from Ono was cancelled when Starkey chose to go skiing instead. There followed negotiations over the choice of producer and venue. 'I told them I wasn't too happy with putting them together with the dead John, ' George Martin recalled. 'I might have done it if they had asked me, but they didn't ask me. ' McCartney believed that Martin had withdrawn from the running by confessing that he was losing his hearing – though that begged the question of why he was being allowed to compile the Anthology albums. Harrison effectively issued an ultimatum: either they hired Jeff Lynne as producer or he wasn't taking part; and Starkey backed him. McCartney was concerned that Lynne would automatically favour Harrison's views over his own, but he reluctantly agreed, and the Beatles gathered at McCartney's Sussex studio on 11 February, for what was originally intended as a week of sessions. In the event, the reunion was extended for a second week, allowing the group to come close to completing one song ('Free as a Bird') and tinker with two others ('Grow Old With Me' and 'Now and Then').

McCartney kept a private diary of the sessions, so he could document this moment of personal history. The initial sessions were said to have been tense, particularly between Harrison and McCartney. 'There have been a lot of bad feelings, ' Starkey conceded. 'We've been in and out of favour with each other for the last twenty years. But this project brought us together. Once we get the bullshit behind us, we all end up doing what we do best, which is making music. The crap went out the window, and we had a lot of fun. '

'Free as a Bird' was identified as the most promising of Lennon's songs – not least because it was clearly unfinished, and therefore allowed for creative input from the other Beatles. 'I actually originally heard it as a big, orchestral, Forties Gershwin thing, ' McCartney revealed later, 'but it didn't turn out like that. In the end we decided to do it very simply. ' While he and Starkey said they felt tearful when they heard Lennon's voice through the studio speakers, Harrison maintained a sense of distance: 'Maybe I'm peculiar, but to me he isn't dead. ' But he admitted, 'I miss him in the context of the band, because he wouldn't take any shit, and I think that aspect's missing. In some ways I feel that I'm trying to make up for that aspect of John, because I don't like to take much shit either. ' Identifying the source of 'shit' did not require a DNA test. In return, McCartney tried to prevent Harrison from playing his trademark slide guitar on the track. 'I thought, Oh, it's " My Sweet Lord" again, ' he admitted, before conceding that Harrison's solo was 'a blinder'. Yet despite their mutual misgivings, the two men were able to pool their strengths rather than their weaknesses, disguising the dirge-like quality of Lennon's performance. Their almost instinctual blend of talents was exemplified by the layers of harmony vocals, which gave the track a distinctively Beatlesque flavour. As Starkey crowed, 'It really sounds like a Beatles track. I think you could say they could have made this in 1967. It was weird for me, and I'm on it! When I was listening to it, it was like a light going on in my head – " It's them! " '

Despite efforts to maintain secrecy, news of the sessions broke in the press within two days and was immediately inflated. The Mail onSunday claimed that the three Beatles had agreed to perform in New York's Central Park with Julian Lennon, earning £ 20 million apiece; its daily sister paper added to the confusion, asserting that the group would perform 'In Spite of All the Danger', a 1958 composition that was actually the earliest recording exhumed from the archives by George Martin. In expectation that the Beatles would be unable to resist the lure of live performance, festival organisers clamoured for their services. Apple received an offer of £ 2. 5 million for a two-hour Beatles set from the organisers of a concert on the Isle of Wight, while the promoters of Woodstock 94 also lodged a bid. Neither offer was acknowledged, let alone considered.

The Beatles kept their distance from each other after the February sessions. Only in May did they meet again, watching early rushes of the documentary and adjourning to a vegetarian restaurant, where they were spotted again with their wives a month later. June 22, 1994 found the three men back at McCartney's studio, but work on a second Lennon composition, 'Now and Then', ceased almost immediately. 'It was one day – one afternoon, really – messing with it, ' Jeff Lynne recalled. 'It was a very sweet song, and I wished we could have finished it. ' 'It didn't have a very good title, ' McCartney conceded, 'but it had a beautiful verse and it had John singing it. But George didn't want to do it. ' McCartney was left with the consolation that he had been able to hear Lennon's voice through his studio headphones as if it was still 1967. 'It was like he was in the next room. ' McCartney beamed. 'Fuck, I'm singing harmony with John! It's like an impossible dream. '

As an apology for having sabotaged the session, Harrison invited his colleagues to his home the following day, accompanied by a film crew. They briefly debated re-recording 'Let It Be' (one Beatle vetoed that idea) before settling, just as they had in 1969, for the safety of reviving less controversial material. While cameras rolled, the three-man Beatles flirted with their pre-fame repertoire – vintage rock 'n' roll standards, primitive Lennon/McCartney originals and even their debut single, 'Love Me Do'. Through it all Starkey kept perfect time with a broad smile on his face, as if he'd just arrived home after an epic voyage; McCartney whooped and vamped like a schoolboy on a sugar rush; and Harrison did his best to suggest that although his body was present, his spirit was on a much higher plane. In the garden a more self-conscious McCartney and Harrison swapped songs on their ukuleles, before calling time on their first fully documented reunion performance since 1970. Then they resumed their habit of non-communication – to the extent that when McCartney suffered a car accident in November 1994 he received anxious phone calls from Starkey and Ono, but not from Harrison.

If the youngest Beatle was preoccupied by the lawsuit against his former manager, Starkey faced the tragedy of the death of his first wife, Maureen Cox, from cancer on 30 December. 'They always loved each other, ' a friend recalled. Starkey joined their children and Cox's second husband at her bedside as she died. McCartney was so touched that he penned the poignant 'Little Willow' for her bereaved children. Another former Beatle wife, Cynthia Lennon, returned to the media in happier circumstances.

This German record label faxed us at home, wanting to know about Julian's career. It's not the first time that's happened, but I'm his mother, not his manager, so why do they come to me? My partner faxed them back, saying jokingly that 'Julian isn't available but his mother is. ' Then they got straight back in touch: 'We're really interested. Can she sing? '

She could, though that didn't make her revival of the 1968 Apple Records hit 'Those Were the Days' anything more than a novelty.

One year after their first reunion the Beatles had completed just one of the three songs they had planned to record. In early February 1995 they returned to McCartney's studio to work on Lennon's 'Real Love'. Harrison complained that the tape was 'this bad copy, and it had this tambourine that was out of time and real loud'. Lynne was forced to spend days cleaning, editing and improving the track before the Beatles could begin work. Bizarrely, none of them realised that a far superior performance of the song had already been released in the 1988 documentary film Imagine: John Lennon. 'I don't like it as much as " Free as a Bird", ' McCartney admitted later. But he refused to criticise Lennon and was affronted when Harrison did. 'He was saying to me, " I sort of felt John was going off a little bit towards the end of his writing [career], " ' McCartney noted. 'I personally found that a little presumptuous. '

Further sessions were held in March and May, but they ended in failure, with Harrison observing, 'It's just like being back in the Beatles. ' That was not intended as a compliment. After years of sparring, Harrison and McCartney had attempted to write together, sketching out a song with the unpromising title 'All For Love'. When the two men launched into a vehement argument, an engineer stepped in to support McCartney, who told him to keep out of it. 'He's still a Beatle, you know, ' he said, pointing at Harrison. 'George had some business problems, ' McCartney said later, 'and it didn't do a lot for his moods over the last couple of years. He's not been that easy to get on with. '

The three Beatles found it easier to socialise together than to work. 'When Ringo said, " I've done my bit, " and left me and George to do it, ' McCartney remembered, 'we had a little bit more tension. ' Yet when Apple's in-house photographer Tommy Hanley took some spontaneous photos of the trio in March 1995 they looked relaxed and playful.

If the Beatles' reunion was a surprise, McCartney's decision to record with Yoko Ono beggared belief. She and her son visited England in March 1995 and taped an experimental soundscape entitled 'Hiroshima Sky Is Always Blue' with the entire McCartney clan. This was her sonic territory, not his, but like his collaboration with poet Allen Ginsberg around the same time it allowed McCartney to restate his credentials as the Beatles' true champion of the avant-garde. A few weeks later he unveiled an anarchic US radio show entitled Oobu Joobu in honour of Alfred Jarry's absurdist 1896 drama Ubu Roi. 'The most refreshing thing about Paul is that he's completely and utterly unpredictable, ' said his producer Eddy Pumer. 'There are no rules, no formats, no restrictions. There were no scripts; it was entirely improvised. ' Lennon and Ono would have been proud of it; Harrison derisive. Indeed, Harrison's major creative decisions of the summer were negative. He was said to have rejected the idea of issuing a ten-video boxed set of the full-length Anthology because the number was 'karmically wrong'. He also vetoed the inclusion of the McCartney-inspired sound experiment 'Carnival of Light' from 1967 on any of the Anthology releases, repeating his oft-heard claim, 'Avant-garde is French for bullshit. '

There were now two priorities for Apple: selling the TV rights to the Anthology documentary around the world and securing the approval of Ono and the three Beatles for a final cut. Ono complained that, in the rough edit, 'there was so much Paul and very little John. They said, " No, no, equal time. " So I got an engineer to time it and it was one to four. Then the Apple people said, " Oh, really? We didn't notice that. " I only found out because I used a stopwatch to check. '

The man with the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the Beatles were happy with the Anthology was, still, Neil Aspinall. 'He's been in the Beatles since 1961, ' said the documentary's producer Bob Smeaton. 'He was in the Beatles when the Beatles weren't the Beatles any more. Every day Neil lives the Beatles. He's hard. He shouts a lot. He's very abrasive. We've had tremendous rows. He wants to get it right. ' Derek Taylor, now re-installed as Apple's press agent, said that Aspinall 'has these voices in his head, and their whims and fantasies are constantly with him. When he rings around, it has to be done with some method and subtlety. He doesn't want Paul ringing George, and saying, " Neil has been doing this or that. " He wants them all in the loop. ' As Aspinall himself noted, 'The point about this place is that everybody knows where the buck stops. ' For his services, his company Standby Films received between £ 400, 000 and £ 500, 000 per year.

Ono, Harrison and McCartney assumed responsibility for their own decisions. McCartney, said one observer, could be 'an imperious employer, making it uncomfortably plain to his key staff that he has bought them 24 hours a day'. 'He'll never admit that he's wrong, ' one insider said. 'You can't criticise anything he's done; you just have to go along with it, and hope it works. ' By comparison, Ono was happy to delegate much of the work involved in the Lennon Estate, freeing her to resume her art career. Harrison maintained the smallest staff of the three, centring his business interests around a handful of trusted aides. 'He's charming to the people who work for him, ' one revealed. 'He'll bring you a cup of tea, and talk to you rather than shout at you. '

The most mysterious of the four support networks was Starkey's. It revolved around the secretive Hilary Gerrard, plus an unshakeably loyal secretary who could dispatch unwelcome enquiries with the rigour of Miss Jean Brodie, and fiendishly expensive lawyers in London and Los Angeles. The most vulnerable of the quartet to commercial vagaries, Starkey was always open to offers that the others would have rejected with contempt – TV advertisements for cars, for instance, or a Pizza Hut commercial in which he joked about 'getting the boys back together' and ended up with three of the Monkees instead.

The financial potential of the Anthology project had been demonstrated by the 1994 release of Live at the BBC, a collection of early- 1960s radio performances by the group. It sold 100, 000 copies in America on its day of release, and immediately topped the British charts, demonstrating the continued potency of the Beatles' name and ensuring keen bidding for the television rights to the Anthology. In May 1995 the US TV network ABC announced that it would screen the five-hour history of the Beatles over two nights in November, and would also be granted the world premiere of their first new recording since 1970. In Britain the ITV network offered more than £ 5 million for a six-part version of the same material. There was only one stipulation: ITV would not be allowed to seek sponsorship from anyone involved in selling alcohol, tobacco or meat, by order of the Beatles.

Not for the first time it now suited both Apple and EMI/Capitol to abandon all their outstanding litigation. Lawyers worked feverishly to secure a final and binding agreement – for eternity, it was hoped – before the unveiling of the Anthology. They succeeded, but only just: all the interested parties, including the three Beatles and Yoko Ono, only put their names to an epic heads of agreement document the size of a telephone directory on 17 November, two days before the first Anthology show was premiered. The deal halted all the global disputes about the Beatles' royalties, ensured a sizeable (£ 2 million was the figure quoted) payment to each Beatle, and secured a substantially larger sum for Apple's corporate coffers.

There was a strict embargo on 'Free as a Bird', chosen as the long-awaited Beatles reunion single. It was broken only once – by George Harrison, who attended the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix in Melbourne a week before the release date, and played the song to commemorate the victory by his friend Damon Hill. Everyone else had to wait until 19 November, when 48 million Americans witnessed the first two-hour segment of Anthology, and endured a nervous 60-second countdown before 'Free as a Bird' was given its premiere. As the final chords died away, the BBC was allowed to broadcast the song for the first time in Britain, at 4 a. m. Later that morning the world's media assembled at London's Savoy Hotel, expecting to see the three Beatles. Instead, they were greeted by the familiar but less glamorous faces of George Martin, Derek Taylor, Neil Aspinall and Jeff Lynne. Asked where the Beatles were, Taylor replied urbanely, 'They are all at home, everywhere else but here. '

The Beatle industry proceeded apace: the TV programmes (with sharply decreasing viewing figures for each episode), the single (poorly received by critics but avidly devoured by fans) and the first of three double-CD sets offering previously unheard recordings. What did it all amount to? 'Free as a Bird' evoked a poignant wave of nostalgia, especially when Harrison and McCartney's voices soared behind Lennon's, but ultimately it was nothing more than a sophisticated pastiche of what the Beatles had been, attractively finished with the thinnest of veneers. The Anthology TV series was equally comforting, but skilfully evaded the issues that had divided the group, from the sacking of Pete Best in 1962 to the agonising corrosion of 1969. A celebration of the Beatles rather than a truthful self-portrait, it struck exactly the right note of nostalgia, without endangering the group's delicate internal framework. Ironically, it was the least controversial of the Beatles' offerings – a collection of early music entitled Anthology 1 – that cut the deepest. Its artwork, an apparently haphazard collage of Beatles imagery prepared by their old friend Klaus Voormann, utilised a familiar 1962 portrait of the group, but with Best's likeness torn away to reveal a picture of Starkey beneath. The gesture was both witty and cruel, although Best finally did receive adequate compensation for his role in the fairy tale and his performances on the album, negotiating a payout rumoured to be around £ 1 million.

'Me and George Harrison are talking about the next album being called Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel, ' McCartney joked as this first package was released. 'And George Martin reckons if we put anything out after this, it'll have to be issued with a government health warning. ' Industry pundits noted that EMI/Capitol seemed to be staking their financial health on the power of the Beatles to rescue them after a meagre year. Capitol believed that co-operation with Apple was vital; in return, the group was expected to deliver a succession of lucrative archive projects, including a collection of the demo recordings they had taped after their return from India in 1968 and an enhanced revamp of the Let It Be album and film. Although 'Free as a Bird' and Anthology 1 did not sell in quite the spectacular fashion that the company had anticipated, they did ease the Beatles' return to the airwaves. For several years their songs had won poor approval ratings on US oldies stations, but now they could be broadcast without listeners reaching for the dial.

The surge of publicity and excitement survived into the spring, when Anthology 2 topped the British charts. While its predecessor had focused on the group's early career, this set concentrated on what was arguably the Beatles' most fertile period, from 1965 to 1967. But many aficionados were dubious about the artificially created rarities assembled by George Martin from a variety of out-takes and rough mixes. Issued at the same time was the second reunion single, 'Real Love'. Fans relished the snippets of reunion footage that were featured in the video, but there was a widespread feeling that the track lacked even the confected magic of 'Free as a Bird', and it was not playlisted by the BBC's pop network, Radio 1. This decision was queried in Parliament by publicity-hungry politicians, but there was no surge of popular outrage.

McCartney made a final attempt to persuade Harrison to join him in creating a third 'new' track for Anthology 3, but without avail. Even without this bonus, the set was arguably the most satisfying of the three retrospectives. It was released in October 1996, and promoted as 'The final chapter in the story of the greatest band there ever was. . . or ever will be'. Within days of its release, Apple issued an official statement with funereal grandeur better suited to the death of a monarch. 'The end has finally arrived, ' it said. 'The Beatles are no more. The official word is that Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr will never play together again as a group, and they have decided that there will be no more singles issued from their back catalogue. '

The chief architect of the announcement was, of course, George Harrison. The Anthology had solved his financial problems; the Beatles had answered the prayers of the world; and now the world could leave the Beatles alone. But the world could not forget the Beatles that easily, and neither, it seemed, could they.