Beatles (2 page)

Some may mock, but little now surprises me about the continuing interest in the Beatles. In fact, the further we get from them, the bigger they become.

There was a period in the mid 1970s when it seemed as though their star might dim, that they would be superseded by newer, more successful, more popular groups and singers, and that new styles, new sorts of music would eventually make the Beatles old hat, rather dated, very Sixties. In terms of facts and statistics this has happened, with new people such as Michael Jackson selling huge numbers of individual albums, breaking some of the Beatles’ sales records. But in the end the Beatles, as a creative force, never did fade away. Whenever there’s a poll of musicians, of pop fans or just of the general public, the Beatles are always rated up there as the most important, most influential, most loved, most fab group in the history of the universe. Well, in the minds and memories of living people.
Sergeant Pepper
is usually hailed as the greatest album and its cover as the best cover ever.

Sales of their old songs and albums, repackaged and reissued, as with
Anthology
, continue to sell in their millions. In 2000, the compilation of their number-one hits topped the charts in 34 different countries.

Early in the 1980s I was asked to be an outside examiner for a student doing a PhD on the Beatles’ lyrics at London University.
I thought it was a hoax. I couldn’t believe that such a respectable university would be agreeing to such a thing. Now it’s totally commonplace. Today there are schools, colleges and universities all over the world where the Beatles are taught, studied, analysed and researched.

More books come out every year on the Beatles than ever before, and every week there is a Beatles conference going on somewhere. Japan, for example, has on average 40 Beatles events a year and has its own magnificent museum devoted to John Lennon. There are dozens of full-time Beatles lookalike groups from dozens of different countries, playing full-time in clubs and concerts all around the world.

Relatively late in the day, Liverpool woke up to the tourist possibilities created by their own local lads. The city now has a hotel called Hard Day’s Night, its airport has been renamed Liverpool John Lennon Airport, and each year hundreds of thousands of people go on Beatles tours. Paul’s council house, now under the care of the National Trust, is open to the public, as is John’s semi where he lived with his Aunt Mimi.

I reckon that there are about 5,000 people around the world today who are living on the Beatles – writers, researchers, dealers, academics, performers, souvenir merchants, conference organisers, tourist, hospitality and museum folk. Even at its height, Apple, the Beatles organisation, never employed more than 50 people.

The price of Beatles memorabilia is now scarcely believable, especially for anything said to be original. In 2008 the manuscript of ‘A Day in the Life’ was sold by Bonhams in New York for £1.3 million. A set of the Beatles’ autographs on a photo can sell for £5,000 – compared with £50 in 1981 when the Beatles market first began.

In 1975 we had a burglary at home and one of the items stolen was a copy of the
Sergeant Pepper
album, signed to me by all four. I claimed £3.50 on the insurance, which was the replacement cost of the album. There was no value in the signatures, except sentimental. Today it’s worth around £50,000.

I had a loss of a different kind a few weeks ago. For 40 years, since this book first came out, I’ve had the original prints of Ringo’s four photos of the Beatles, which he took specially for the book, hanging on the hall wall. I hadn’t realised that the upstairs lavatory was leaking, till mould began to appear on the frames. Alas, three of the prints are now ruined.

I’m always amused today when I hear Italian or other European football crowds singing ‘Yellow Submarine’ – with their own words, of course. I often wonder if Sony, who now own the copyright of the Beatles catalogue, will try to charge a fee to the TV companies who transmit the singing. It would probably surprise most Italian footer fans to find it was a Beatles song.

Daniel Levitin, a professor of music at McGill University in Montreal, predicted in 2007 that Beatles songs and lyrics are now known by so many people around the world that in 100 years they will be seen as nursery rhymes. ‘Most people will have forgotten who wrote them. They will have become sufficiently entrenched in popular culture that it will seem as if they have always existed, like “O Susannah”, “This Land Is Your Land” and “Frère Jacques”.’

In 2007 a judge in Montana, USA, while sentencing a man for stealing beer, showed off his knowledge of the Beatles in his summing up. The accused, when asked what sentence he should get, had apparently replied, ‘Like the Beatles said, “Let It Be”.’ This inspired the judge to work 42 different Beatles titles into the final judgement that he delivered:

It does not require a
Magical Mystery Tour
of interpretation to know
The Word
means leave it alone. I trust we can
Come Together
on that meaning. If I were to ignore your actions I would ignore that
Day in the Life
on 21 April 2006. That night you said to yourself, ‘
I Feel Fine
,’ while drinking beer. Later, whether you wanted
Money
or were just trying to
Act Naturally
, you became
The Fool on the Hill
… Hopefully you can say
When I’m Sixty-four
that
I Should Have Known Better
…’

Old archives get trawled for supposedly unseen and unheard films and tape recordings or unpublished, unknown photos of the Beatles. Usually they’re just the same old shot but from a slightly different angle or more out of focus, but that doesn’t stop photographers from recycling them in books and exhibitions, or printing and selling limited editions signed by the photographer, for hundreds of pounds.

I can’t criticise, of course, having dug out those old lines of George’s, and I’m always a sucker for any ‘new’ pix. I’ve just bought one myself which I’d never seen before, taken in Carlisle, my home town, in 1963 when the Beatles were appearing at the Lonsdale Cinema. It’s a shot of them in a lift, with the female lift attendant looking very fierce. It makes me smile. The photographer was Jim Turner of the
Cumberland News
– and yes, I got him to sign my print.

As well as new stuff turning up, old stuff constantly gets turned over and reassessed, in case there are angles or oddments missed first time round. I thought all the BBC’s records about Beatles appearances had been exhausted, but some BBC files from 1962 have recently been gone through again and reveal that after the Beatles had an audition in Manchester to appear on a radio programme, the producer had made some written notes. These included: ‘Paul McCartney no, John Lennon yes. An unusual group, not as rocky as most. More country and western, with a tendency to play music. Overall – yes.’ I suppose it is a fairly interesting contemporary comment, as it’s usually assumed that Paul always had the more acceptable singing voice.

Then there are the geeks and anoraks who endlessly analyse Beatles lyrics, hoping for fresh insight, or who produce stats no one else had thought we needed.

Ben Schott, well known for his
Miscellany
, produced a ‘Beatles Miscellany’ that appeared in
The Times
in June 2007, part of a special pull-out supplement to celebrate the 40th anniversary of
Sergeant Pepper
. (Anniversaries: they’re an excellent excuse for more coverage.) In it, he analysed all Beatles songs to discover
the most popular words, i.e. the ones that occur most often. He listed 114 words in order of frequency. At the top were You (260), I (178), To (149), Me (137) and Love (125). Down at the bottom were Yesterday (11), Hand (10) and Lonely (10). Fascinating, huh.

I’ve recently been sent an interesting piece of detailed research done by my friend Rod Davis, one of the original Quarrymen. He knew, as we all do, that John Lennon, his school friend, was born in Liverpool at 6.30 pm on 9 October 1940, during an air raid. The air raid bit gets repeated in every book, but Rod had begun to wonder if it was really true.

So he set himself the task of going to the British Library newspaper archive in Colindale, North London and reading every copy of the
Liverpool Echo
for October 1940, looking for air raids. He found a report of ‘30 or 40 aircraft’ attacking the city on 10 October – but no raid reported for 9 October. Rod therefore concludes that while it is true to say that John was born during a period of air raids, there were no reported attacks on the night he was actually born. I hope that clears it up.

So who began this story, displaying a disgraceful lack of proper research? Me, probably. When you come to the chapter on John in the original part of this book, you’ll read, ‘He was born during a heavy air raid.’ That’s what John himself told me, ditto his Aunt Mimi and his father, Fred. It was the family legend, still going strong in 1968. I’m not changing it now.

If I had to keep up with all the subsequent revelations, some major but most of them minor, all the theories and opinions, I’d need to reprint this book every year. That’s another reason why I’ve left the 1968 book untouched. It was an accurate record, more or less, of what they believed at that time.

All the same, there are some events which have to be mentioned, in order to keep the Beatles saga roughly up to date. While we are mainly concerned with What Happened Then, when the Beatles were still at their height, creating and performing, the story has continued. The tragic death in November 2001 of
George Harrison, the youngest of the Beatles, meant that we were then left with only two Beatles. George was aged 58 and had been suffering from cancer for some time. His death made front-page headlines and tributes poured in from people of all kinds, prime ministers to pop stars.

Yet George had been seen as the quiet one, the one who avoided publicity, who was not interested in the media, in meeting fans or giving thumbs up to the crowds. He had been a semi-recluse for some time, as far as the public was concerned, producing nothing between 1982 and 1987. Then came his album
Cloud Nine
in 1989, which was well received. In 1991 and 1992 he did some appearances and tours, after which followed another period of public silence. Early in 2001, his classic album
All Things Must Pass
was re-released.

But most of the time George was busy with his homes, his gardens, his thoughts, living a contemplative life, making music only for his own purposes.

It was a cruel, terrible irony that someone who had withdrawn from public life, wanting to be left alone, should have suffered a near-death experience when an intruder burst into his house, and into his life, and stabbed him. This happened in 1999, at his home near Henley. He did eventually recover.

George had a spiritual life, right to the end, retaining his interest in Indian music and religion long after the others had moved on. But he also retained his sense of humour. The last song he was working on before he died in 2001, ‘Horse to the Water’, was given the copyright line ‘RIP Ltd 2001’.

My own memory of him is of deep seriousness combined with self-awareness. He could go on and on about theories of incarnation till I was about to yawn or scream, then suddenly he’d stop and mock himself, putting on a funny voice. I was with him once at his house in Esher when he was in the middle of some long explanation of his spiritual feelings. The phone rang, he picked it up at once and in broad cockney said, ‘Esher Wine Store.’

He was survived by his wife Olivia, born in Mexico in 1948, brought up in the USA, whom he married in 1978, and their
son Dhani, George’s only child, who was born in 1978. ‘Dhani’ in Sanskrit means wealthy.

Another recent dramatic event that received wide media coverage was Paul’s divorce from Heather Mills in 2008. This kept the newspapers and TV news filled for months and months, as had their stormy relationship from almost its first day.

Linda, Paul’s first wife, had died in 1998 from breast cancer, which was what had caused the death of Paul’s own mother, Mary. Linda had given Paul so much and their marriage had been long, successful and fulfilling. They had almost never been apart, so he was shocked, shattered, distraught, displaced and very lonely. ‘Is there anything left for me?’ is what he wondered to himself. For two years, he hadn’t been able to write a thing.

In 1999, a year after Linda’s death, he met Heather Mills for the very first time. It was at an awards ceremony and he was impressed by her personality, her work for charity and her determination to overcome the handicap of having had part of one leg amputated. She was 25 years younger than him, and had once done some modelling, so her looks were clearly part of the attraction, as well as her strong character. On Paul’s part, it does seem to have been love, not just infatuation, at first sight.

The media were not quite as struck. Paul had become an icon, a public treasure, so they wondered about Heather’s motives, suggesting she could be a gold-digger. They looked into her background, revealing that her modelling career had not been as successful or as respectable as she had maintained, and questioned her honesty, showing that she had tended to take liberties with the truth. Paul stoutly defended her. He said the media were just being nasty and malicious, as ever, without any foundation. There were several gossip column stories alleging that Paul’s own children were not keen on Heather – claims that were denied by both Heather and Paul.

When I read these stories, without knowing anything about the facts, it did make me think history might be repeating itself. When Jim, Paul’s father, had remarried, both Paul and his
brother Michael were not exactly thrilled by their new stepmother. I personally thought they were being unfair. Jim seemed to me to be so happy and content with his new wife, having been alone for so long, bringing up his two sons single-handed after his wife had died.

A lot of the stories about Heather and Paul, and what was or was not happening between them, grew nastier when it emerged that their marriage really was in difficulties. As soon as they announced they were getting divorced, various allegations about their personal behaviour leaked out, supposedly from both sides. All of this might have remained as gossip, i.e. unsubstantiated and unreliable, had not the judge in the case, to the astonishment of most people, decided to go public.