Last Year's Echo, Chapter 9-D
Apr. 27th, 2018 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yes_2dayAgain, THIS IS FICTION, and I made it all up. It is loosely based on real people and real events, but in fact these are my imaginary characters and my made-up plot lines. I hope you enjoy it anyway. Apologies to the real people - no offense is intended, and let me reiterate this is not meant to be about you!
Also, this is based on slash-fiction principles, so if that is offensive to you, do not read this! Still, there is little to no X rated stuff in this chapter.
Chapter 9 D
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One Soho Square
London
May 2006
With great reluctance, Paul had agreed to do an interview along with John for Hello Magazine. At the time, Hello wasn’t as much of a tabloid as it later became. It was mainly a magazine that featured international royals and British celebrities in flattering glossy photo spreads, with accompanying softly polished interviews. Paul felt that being interviewed by the magazine was a giant cop out, and he would have preferred to do no interviews at all. But over the previous month John had become clearly upset and hurt over Paul’s refusal to be interviewed for fear of having to discuss ‘the book’, and it had become a ‘thing’ between them. The humiliating magazine interview was the least he could do to try to mend John’s hurt feelings.
He hadn’t meant to be so obstinate. And he hadn’t planned to be so unwilling to discuss John’s book in public. It was just that when he was finally faced with the inevitability of it, his mind revolted at the idea, and he couldn’t help but let John and their press agent know how he felt about it. He hadn’t expected that what came out of his mouth would sound so surly and bitter. It surprised him, probably more than it surprised John. After Press Agent Henry had left that day, John had given Paul a look of questioning hurtfulness. Paul’s reaction to it had not been very mature.
“What?” Paul had asked in response to John’s look.
“What ‘what’?” John had snarled back.
“Why that look?” Paul asked, apparently believing that a strong defense was the best offense.
John showed his frustration. He had been surprised by the strength of Paul’s negativity about his book, and of course his feelings were hurt. He said: “If you don’t know why I am upset, then I don’t see why I should explain it to you.”
Paul sighed heavily. “Give over, John. I’m entitled to be upset about losing all of my privacy. I can just believe I still have it if I stay away from the press. No one else in my life thrusts a mic in my face and asks highly personal questions. I can deal with it in my private life, but I guess I’m entitled to refuse to play the game publicly.”
John sat down at the table again, feeling like Paul’s words were more like a physical blow than an intellectual one. “I had no idea you hated it so much,” he finally said, his voice expressing his own bitterness. “You should have said all this before I published it. It’s too late to do anything about it now.”
“I thought I had expressed it. I thought you knew that I wouldn’t be discussing this book publicly,” Paul shot back.
Truthfully, John had never actually thought about the consequences of the publication in terms of what it would be like facing the press when selling their other products, be it records or concert tickets. His mind always had hovered over the initial impact of the book when it first hit the world. In John’s mind, the worst was now over, and he hadn’t considered the wake effect that would naturally follow. He privately acknowledged that he could hardly blame Paul for not focusing on this aspect of it until he came face to face with it, since he himself was in the same boat. He decided to soften his approach.
“Well, spilled milk. What are we going to do now that we’re talking about it?” John asked.
Paul was taken aback by John’s about face, and even more so by John’s reasonable manner. Paul wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. He hemmed and hawed for a moment, and then chose to sit down too, across the table from John. He said, “I would prefer to just do the 15-minute spots with local TV news people, and control the content of the interviews, rather than do any long interviews for magazines, or radio spots.”
“No radio spots?” John asked. “Why not?”
“They’re always 20 to 30 minutes long, and they’re live, and radio interviewers always throw in the controversial questions while you’re live, and you can do nothing but come up with an answer.”
“You know, Paul,” John responded, “I can answer those questions. I will. You can sit there and say nothing.”
Paul considered John’s comment. He knew John was a master at answering questions on the spur of the moment. Maybe radio interviews wouldn’t be so horrible. “Well,” he acknowledged, “I see your point there.”
John felt encouraged by Paul’s demeanor and response. The savage beast was calming down. “And, as Henry said, magazines like ‘Hello’ are harmless. They never embarrass their subjects.”
Paul wasn’t quite ready to accept this next step. “Let me think about it,” he had grumbled.
John had smiled at him brightly and said, “Now you can go back to your packing!”
Yet here they were, weeks later, and Paul had held back on agreeing to the Hello interview until just days earlier, and the ensuing weeks had touchy moments between the two men as they attempted to talk around the sore spot. It was one of those issues that could never be reconciled – in order for John to freely express himself he had had to publish his book. The publication of the book was a huge blow to Paul’s need to protect his privacy and his reluctance to expose his intimate and vulnerable feelings to outsiders. The two needs could not be reconciled. Paul had chosen to let John do what John needed to do, because he did not want to stifle John’s creativity. This is something neither of them did to the other since the beginning of their creative partnership. Advise, critique, discourage – yes, they had done that to and for each other – but never to censor. Though Paul’s better ‘self’ had wanted John to publish his book, his lesser ‘self’ was struggling with the aftermath.
But, after all, Paul had shown up for the interview, and he was outwardly warm, welcoming and charming to the interviewer: Beatle Paul was in the room. John felt the onus of the interview was on him, however. He wanted to protect Paul from prurient curiosity as much as he could. He was on alert, and so was a little less welcoming than was Paul.
They settled, along with the Hello reporter, in the comfy conference room of their McLen offices, which had a small living room suite near the windows perfect for interviews. The reporter, Else Hindrich, was a Swiss woman of indeterminate age, elegantly dressed, and expertly made up. Her hair, John thought, looked like a fucking helmet. It was a huge, shellacked, iced blond bouffant. John was also fascinated by the chunky chain bracelet that threatened to engulf her arm. When she smiled, her obviously whitened teeth seemed to gleam in the lamplight. She spoke with a clipped German accent, in an aristocratic tone. Perhaps she was minor aristocracy, John considered. In any case, he was amused by her, and felt that he was more than capable of handling anything she might choose to dish out.
Paul, too, was put at ease by Madam Hindrich. She appeared to be of the strata of society that outwardly deplores asking rude questions, although in private with their own kind they were quite ruthless gossips. Paul had met many such, and knew that the woman’s snobbery would keep her from getting too personal in her questions. This was a great relief.
The questions, as promised, were soft-ball, focused primarily on their concert tour and their plans for future recordings. It wasn’t until near the end of the 30-minute interview that she mentioned John’s book.
“Your autobiography has been a smashing success,” she essayed, looking at John.
“It’s a memoir, not an autobiography,” John corrected with a smile that took all the sting out.
“Oh? There’s a difference?” The question was charmingly asked, the reporter’s smile diplomatically suggested that perhaps her understanding of English wasn’t as good as it should be.
“To me, there is,” John replied. “I didn’t write about everything in my life, or all my accomplishments. I chose to focus on events that shaped my life, but that were also interesting, informative, or entertaining. Also on lessons I learned from my mistakes. It isn’t as disciplined as an autobiography.” He then smiled warmly.
“It was charming, really, I enjoyed it very much,” Ms. Hindrich flattered. She then turned to Paul, her smile not fully disguising her sharp interest. “What are your impressions of the book?” She asked Paul.
Paul’s bland, seemingly open expression didn’t change. He had schooled his face to be still. Meanwhile the wheels in his brain were furiously spinning. Before he could think of a reply, John answered for him.
“It’s my job to talk about the book,” John said cheerfully. “It was my solo project, and I’m the one who answers questions about it.” Although John’s tone was cheerful, his eyes conveyed a warning.
Ms. Hindrich missed the warning. Or she ignored it. “But I’m interested in Mr. McCartney’s reaction to the book, and surely he should be the one to answer that.” Her body language conveyed classic ‘I mean no harm’ innocence.
John’s response came quickly, and the cheerfulness was gone. “He shouldn’t have to talk about my book. If you have questions about it, ask me.”
Paul was grateful for John’s fierce protectiveness, but now he worried that a non-response would end up sounding worse than a tepid response. He quietly nudged John’s knee with his own to convey that he was willing to pick up the guidon, and then smiled at the reporter. “I think John is a wonderful writer, and the book is very well written. I enjoyed reading it very much.” Period. He said no more, and his expression and body language indicated that he was not going to say anything more.
The reporter realized she had hit a brick wall, and smiled at her concession. Soon, the interview ended.
After she left, John and Paul looked at each other for a tense moment, and then they both started laughing. The tension between them on the subject seemed to melt away.
“She was more of handful than I expected,” Paul commented.
“Indeed, she was,” John agreed.
“I wonder how it will be portrayed in the article,” Paul worried. He was a worrier by nature, and he feared that they hadn’t escaped the ‘harmless’ Hello interview unscathed. For the moment, however, he was free from the obligation and was extremely relieved.
Then John mused, “A real reporter would have torn us to bits over that.”
Paul could do nothing but agree with that!
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April 1967
Easter with the McCartneys
For the Easter weekend, April 2 - 5th, Paul was planning to drive up to Liverpool to spend the weekend with his dad and his dad’s wife and stepdaughter. He mentioned to me how hard it was for him to deal with the “step-mother” Angela, although he was quite fond of Ruthie, her daughter. I’d never met either of them, and suggested I go with him to make the visit less stressful for him, and he was very happy with this since Jane wouldn’t be back from one of her acting gigs for another week. So we hopped into his fanciest car – a custom, souped-up Aston Martin - and headed up north. We were blasting our favorite songs on the radio, and having a grand old time.
Immediately upon meeting Angela, I understood why Paul was uncomfortable with her. She reminded me of the “Hyacinth Bucket-pronounced-Bouquet” character from the BBC’s “Keeping Up Appearances.” Blousy, overly-affected, obviously from a lower class upbringing but trying to speak, dress, act as if she were from the upper classes, and not doing a very good job of it. During the weekend she made references to improvements “your father” wanted to make to the house repeatedly, all of them cosmetic, and all of them in a taste and style that Paul knew was not his father’s. She clearly was looking for a handout of a fairly substantial amount. Paul took his Dad aside and asked him if he really needed any money, and Jim told him certainly not! But Paul now was worrying whether his father actually needed the money, and was too proud to ask. I went to Paul’s dad and told him Paul was only going to worry about him, so why didn’t he agree to take a sum of money so Paul could feel better about it. Jim shrugged and said, “I’ll just tell Angie he gave us money. I do wish she wouldn’t go on so much about it.”
While we were there, we shared the guest bedroom, which featured two twin beds. Angie was very nosy, and I kept finding her poking around in there when she thought I wasn’t looking. After the third time I caught her, I enjoyed walking in and asking, “Find anything interesting yet?” She blushed a bright purple, made a bunch of unconvincing excuses, and went bustling away. I told Paul about it later while we were in one of the twin beds, and we both laughed our arses off. He didn’t like to say anything bad about her, but he clearly felt she was with his dad primarily because of the money. This turned out to be the case; when Jim McCartney died in 1976, Angie kept a number of items that should have gone to Paul (his birth certificate, the family piano, some picture albums) and sold them at auction forcing Paul to pay for them all at exorbitant prices! After that, Paul cut off all ties to her. She then went on a public relations tear, trashing him and making up lies about him to the press. Unfortunately, Ruthie turned out just like Angie, so Paul lost that relationship as well.
In any case, while we were there something very weird (and after I dwelt on it longer I decided it was also prophetic) happened. I was in the sitting room with Jim McCartney, and for whatever reason we had about an hour alone together. We had never liked or trusted each other, because we were fighting over the soul and affections of one James Paul McCartney. As we sat there quietly, Jim – who was suffering from severe arthritis already (it eventually almost crippled him before he died) – turned to me and said, “I know about you and my son.”
I was taken aback and I sat there quietly blinking, thinking ‘he can’t possibly know we are lovers; he must be talking about something else!’ I finally said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
He smiled slightly – almost painfully – and looked into the fireplace, which was blazing because it was a cool April. He decided to ignore my attempt to obfuscate. “I can’t say I approve. I also think you can’t be trusted.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” he finally said. “There’s nothing new under the sun.” (Jim always spoke in homely clichés like this. And sometimes his homely expressions were unique and barely understandable, but that’s another story...)
By then I was freaked out and wondering if he had gone into some kind of old man’s reverie, or if he was all-seeing and all-knowing. “I really don’t know what you are talking about,” I said again, weakly this time.
Jim turned around and faced me. “I want my son to be happy. I don’t think he can be happy without a wife and children. “
I stared at him for a few minutes, and then decided to reach out to him. “I love him,” I said. I had never said that out loud to anyone else ever.
Jim looked at me, not unkindly. “Sometimes love is not enough. My son is very vulnerable. No one thinks he is, but he has always been the one to worry about people’s feelings, and to be overwhelmed by his own. I don’t think you appreciate that, or, if you do, you use it against him instead of trying to protect him.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I finally said.
“Paul is a piece of rare and valuable china, and you are a bull in a china shop.”
This floored me. I got what he was saying, but I didn’t want to believe it. I should have listened to him, learned from him, but I preferred to push it away. Instead, I tried to convince him he was wrong.
“I would never hurt him – I love him.”
Jim clearly wanted to end the conversation; he was beginning to become uncomfortable with it. “You’re hurting him by not letting him go.”
This was a painful thing to hear. But I brushed it aside, not wanting to believe that he might have a point.
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On Secret Getaways and Cover Art
Our personal relationship at this time was tighter and more inter-dependent than ever before. We were like one finely tuned instrument, and we didn’t ever have to finish a sentence if we didn’t want to. Just a few words here and there, and that was all we needed. Sometimes eyebrows and other facial expressions, or even body language, was sufficient. For me it was exhilarating- it was what I always had wanted. But Paul found it scary and disconcerting, as he explained to me.
“I didn’t ever want to be that dependent upon another person. That was not something I’d ever been comfortable with. I always wanted some kind of an ‘out’, for ‘just in case’. It’s like that old joke – one foot in the air and the other firmly on a banana peel. That’s how I felt during Pepper and Mystery Tour. In fact, I felt that way all the way through 1967. I think we might have overdone it, and burned ourselves out. I know I was scared of it, although I did nothing to stop it. It was like slipping slowly downhill into a bottomless pit, but you’re just going to go with it, you know?”
Yes, I did know. The difference was, I wanted to be stuck alone in a bottomless pit with him.
To celebrate the completion of recording and editing the Sgt. Pepper album, (it had taken us 4 months to do, which at the time was unheard of), I suggested to Paul that we go on a secret getaway to our favorite place, Paris. The four Beatles had told Brian we were all going to take two weeks off while he and the lawyers worked out the issues related to the album art. Brian no longer scheduled our vacations, or when we would take them. We did.
The launch party for the album was scheduled on June 1. Our vacation started on April 15th. Paul thought a weekend would be nice, but I insisted on two weeks. He said he had to do something with Jane, too, because she knew he had the two weeks off. We eventually settled on a 9-day trip for us, and Paul would then take Jane away for the last 4 days plus the last weekend. I would do something with Cynthia during that time. As you see, it was the women in our lives that got the short shrift at this point, but this was largely due to my constant begging and bullying (in equal amounts.) Since neither Cyn nor Jane knew about our sexual relationship, they had no way of knowing what they were up against. It was hard for them to say, “No, you can’t spend 10 days with your partner writing songs.” English women in the ‘60s didn’t talk back to their men, although they often used more roundabout methods (such as seduction, withholding, or tears) to get their way. It’s embarrassing to me now (and has been for many decades) the way we treated women. I was far worse than Paul. He never spoke harshly to women, or did anything to hurt them physically, and whatever emotional damage he caused was of the usual “he dumped me” variety. I on the other hand could be verbally abusive, and I threw things and shouted until I got my way. As a consequence, Cynthia didn’t even make a peep when I said I’d be gone for 9 days on a business trip with Paul. She didn’t ask any questions, or offer any resistance. Paul, however, had a devil of a time breaking the news to Jane, dealing with her disappointment, and coming up with ways of making it up to her. He did so by giving her permission to plan an extremely romantic 6-day trip to Jane’s favorite place – the Greek Isles - and he even told her she could plan it with “no expense spared”, which NEVER came out of the frugal Paul’s mouth! (It hardly ever does now, either, by the way.) Given such an inducement, Jane settled down to a state of mere irritation about the time and attention Paul was dedicating to her arch rival – me - and also insisted upon one day of alone time with him before he disappeared with me.
Finally, we were free, and we hired a private driver to drop us at a Hertz rental office outside of London on the road to Southampton. Evidently, a paparazzo was watching Paul’s house, and must have followed the private car to the rental establishment, because a candid photo of us getting ready to drive away in the rental car made it into the newspaper the next day. No one immediately jumped to the assumption “there go John and Paul to have a romantic trip in Paris.” Of course they assumed we had some business purpose for renting a car. In the end, it worked to our advantage because both Jane and Cynthia saw the photograph in the newspaper and were reassured that neither of us was running off with another woman!
We took three days to drive to Paris, stopping at fun-looking hotels and B&Bs along the way, and trying out obscure bistros. We dealt with the recognition problem by wearing dark glasses and big floppy hats and anonymous looking clothes (instead of our usual colorful plumage). We figured Paris was going to be harder to navigate, so we stayed in a suite with two bedrooms, although we used only one. This was plausible denial. This time, though, we took turns using the different beds, and remembered to mess up both beds every morning for the benefit of snooping maids on the take. It was so annoying the lengths to which we had to go just to be in love with each other, you know? You’d think we were bleeding criminals plotting horrible crimes, for heaven’s sake.
We were four days in Paris, and then we took two days to get home. We got home at nearly 11 p.m. the night before Paul had to leave for Greece. And Jane was waiting up for him, to show him what she had packed. My car had been parked in Paul’s driveway the whole trip, so I left for home shortly after we arrived back, since Paul had been immediately swept into Jane’s orbit as soon as he crossed the threshold. I remember looking back at the house and hearing Paul’s and Jane’s excited voices and laughter as I drove away without my hoped for romantic leave-taking, and I felt a feeling of foreboding – dread and foreboding. I had to shake off the belief that I had been looking at and listening to my future: outside looking in, isolated, feeling left out and alone. I was extremely grumpy when I got home, and didn’t want to talk to Cynthia about my trip.
Back at work after our 2-week vacation, Paul and I directed our attention to the cover art and contents. All four of the Beatles had input, but in the end most of the art and related ideas came from Paul. The phalanx of photos of famous people was the main crux of the problem. All four of us Beatles had thrown in names of famous people we wanted to have in our “band”, and there were a lot of them. Each photo we wanted to use required a release to be negotiated with not only the photographer/agency that owned the rights to the photographs, but also the celebrities themselves or their estates, as it was intended for a commercial use. This had been something Brian and the lawyers had been working on for weeks, and Brian was very upset about it. And this was before he even knew that we were going to have a marijuana garden at our feet!
Things were going to improve for me, since Jane was leaving on a tour of America with her acting troop and would be gone for six weeks. Paul did have to fly out to meet her in Denver, Colorado for her birthday party during this period, and he accompanied Jane’s mother Margaret (who Paul adored). He flew out for 2 days, and Mal Evans went with him. I was intensely jealous of Mal’s friendship with Paul. In truth, I was intensely jealous of anyone who had a friendship with Paul. I remember feeling betrayed that Paul went to so much trouble for Jane. Not a thing I could do about it, though.
While he was off tending to his relationship with Jane, I stayed home and tried to work on a couple of new songs Paul and I had started working on together, in order to supply a single to tide us over while we took on the next big project all four of us had agreed on: the Magical Mystery Tour. I was working on the lyrics for Baby You’re a Rich Man and All You Need is Love at this time, after Paul and I had sketched out outlines for the songs before he disappeared to America.
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On Swingin’ Sixties Parties and Rumors
In the last seven or eight years or so, rumors have begun to surface about things that allegedly happened during the crazy drug-fueled parties in London in the Swingin’ Sixties. I know of three separate rumors (two involving me, and one involving Paul) that are circulating about us on the Internet. This is my opportunity to respond.
The first rumor is alleged to have happened between a “famous photographer” and me during a party in 1965 or 1966. (The name of this photographer is never mentioned.) I was allegedly seen in what is rudely referred to as the “sub position” (for you innocents out there, this means ‘submissive’ – or, the male in a same sex couple who finds himself on the bottom) in the middle of the party getting it on. None of the tellers of these tales ever know exactly what date it was, whose party it was, where the party was, or who the alleged sex partner is. No names are ever mentioned. It is always, ‘so and so said that so and so said that years ago during some party somewhere on some day, that [fill in name of Beatle] was seen having sex with some nameless person…’ Let me make this very clear: I never had sex of any kind with any man at any of the parties I went to in the ‘60s. I wouldn’t have been caught dead having sex with a man in public.
Another party rumor from 1966 or 1967 had me, again, in the “sub position” at one of those parties with some nameless, faceless man. How careless was I?
I’d like to point out here that at the time I was madly in love with Paul, and having sex with him pretty much whenever I wanted to, and no other man could possibly interest me – I mean, really; does anyone think I would settle for some random bloke when I could be doing it with Paul? Get real!
One of the funnier rumors from this period allegedly comes from some woman who was the cousin of some woman who was the girlfriend of some guy who told some other guy that at a party – it is never clear the date, the place, or any information which could identify the party – had seen Paul on a sofa being kissed by several men. When I showed that one to Paul, he said,
“Several? Was it all happening at once, or in seriatim?”
Trust me when I tell you that this never happened. Sorry to burst all these ridiculous bubbles, but these random anonymous party rumors are beneath our dignity. Besides, if I were going to have sex with a man other than Paul, I would insist upon being the “ass bandit”, not the “sub”. So there!
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On Brian Epstein and his Staff Being Squeezed Out
In essence, Sgt. Pepper marked the abrupt end of Brian’s total control of the band. We were no longer controllable, and as we became men experienced with the music business, we were far less likely to just take his word for stuff. Well, I took his word for stuff, but only if I liked what he was saying. Paul and George began questioning his advice, and let him know pronto if he had made a decision he should have consulted the group on first. After a vote of all four of us, Paul told Brian we were taking management of the art and all creative contents of our music away from the group’s management, and then he told EMI that they could only communicate directly with one of the four Beatles on such matters, as such matters fell under the rubric of “creative” and we no longer wanted our managers to have any say in our creative process.
EMI wanted us to designate one Beatle as a point person, and recommended that it be Paul, but all four of us (including Paul) voted against that idea. In the end, de facto, EMI always went to Paul. Why? Because Paul could speak their language; Paul would not get emotional or irrational about his requests and demands; Paul would quickly return phone calls, and turn up for meetings prepared. At meetings, he could concisely state the group’s position, and knew what should be compromised and what should not.
There were a few reasons why the rest of us did not object to Paul doing all this – first, Paul never took a position he didn’t obtain a vote on from all three of us first, and he had the patience and the organized work habits to keep tracking us down until he got all three votes (the rest of us would never have followed through; it would have been just too boring), and – perhaps more important than that – the three of us didn’t want to be bothered with the business side. As long as we got our two cents into the decision itself, we really didn’t want anything more to do with it.
We also had a rule amongst us that all votes had to be unanimous, so there was no “majority rules” caveat for votes. There was no cramming down a decision on one dissenting voter. We came up with this rule because we had had some
bad experiences where someone felt they’d been cornered, and the fallout to the band’s inter-relationships was so bad, we all agreed that it was “all for one, and one for all”, which meant we would not do “majority rules”. (Make a note of this admission for later, because this is one of the partnership agreements that George, Ringo and I broke when we “crammed down” Allen Klein over Paul’s objections. That was a blatant violation of our own longstanding oral agreement.) Since we had that rule, we knew we could trust Paul to not bind us to anything we hadn’t all agreed to in his dealings with EMI. In fact, he was a liaison running between the two worlds. He hadn’t asked for the job, and in fact had told us all he didn’t want to end up “doing all the scut work; we have to share it equally.” Little by little, however, it all came to him, and on top of all of his other duties in the band (which, as by now you should know, were considerable), it was a huge time suck, and created even more stress for him than he already had.
Meanwhile, Brian Epstein was despondent. He had little to do because we weren’t touring or doing live television. We didn’t want him even talking to the record company about the timing and content of our records, and he hated the direction the band was going in – the drugs, the crazy outsiders who were starting to satellite around us, and the aggressively controversial music. At this point his remaining duties were to be the person we went to when the four of us couldn’t agree on something, or when we didn’t know how to handle something, or when there was some boring legal or business thing he needed to attend to. He did the contracts, and he still organized any press contacts, but now we were telling him when we wanted to have interviews and photo sessions, and who we wanted to do those interviews and photo sessions with. What’s worse, he was taking orders from us, after having been the one in charge for five years. It had to be hard on him, and none of us was sensitive to this. We were too wrapped up in our own self-absorbed little worlds.
It was also at this point that the power shift in the Beatles went from me to Paul. In later years I refused to admit this, and acted as though Paul had staged some kind of coup and then proceeded to take over the group over the objections of all three of us. This was not true; when I said those things, I was bitter, and I was rationalizing my own bad behavior. In fact, all three of us were relieved that Paul was taking over, because he was far better at it than Brian and his little coterie of lover/assistants, as well as finely tuned to our needs and wants. I know that at least two of Brian’s assistants on the business side, Peter Brown and Tony Barrow, started to hate Paul around this time, because he was the embodiment of the new order of things. They no longer could order us around, telling us “Brian said you have to do such and such.” They had to get Paul’s permission first. They started to say really nasty things about Paul behind his back. I remember one of Brian’s office staff approaching me and asking me, “How do you put up with Paul?” I asked what Paul had done wrong, and this person told me, “He’s just an artist, and he should stay out of the business office.” I told this person very sharply that the four of us had agreed that one of us had to keep an eye on the business office, and we had all agreed it should be Paul. (Paul actually had said he’d prefer to break it up by category, with all of us sharing the work equally. We agreed to do this, but then procrastinated about coming up with the details, thus extending Paul’s interim appointment indefinitely.)
Unfortunately, after I made this declaration – loudly, in the middle of the business office so everyone could hear – they started calling Paul “John’s Princess” behind our backs, presumably because Paul’s little feelings were so delicate that John had to come along and defend him. Not that Paul had any idea I had ever defended him in the first place. (I only found out about this over a year later, when Yoko heard them saying it and came and told me. I put an immediate stop to it by threatening anyone I learned had said those words. I told them it was ‘insubordinate’, and none of the four of us would put up with it, and they’d be fired on the spot. No doubt, they still kept doing it, but were far more tactful at least.)
Brian started to be erratic about work, but none of us noticed it. The office staff did, and eventually one of them who liked Paul mentioned how worried they all were about Brian. Paul brought the problem to the rest of us, and we actually sat around in a conference room for an hour discussing the problem, and trying to get a handle on how we could deal with it. We all agreed that I would go talk to Brian, and assure him he was still necessary, and ask him if there were any specific projects he’d like us to consider assigning to him. I was supposed to go, because I was deemed closest to him. (Paul actually said, “I get on Brian’s nerves. He sees me and I can see his blood pressure going up!”)
Paul then announced he had broken up the creative management job into four categories, and he told each of us to pick one, and he would take the one that was left over. George immediately picked the contacts with the press and spokesperson for the press. I was pissed off about this, and said that was the job I wanted. We squabbled for a few minutes until Paul pointed out that whoever had to do this was actually going to have to be discreet and tactful. He gave me a meaningful look, and George laughed out loud. “That’s me then!” He said victoriously. I sat back and grumbled. Paul tried to entice me into handling the communications with EMI. “You’re more forceful than I am, and you say things very directly.” He even promised to train an assistant to do the vote tracking so I wouldn’t have to do it. Flattered, I agreed to take on this high-profile position. The only two categories left were the finance/business dealings (interfacing with the creative side), and then the arranging of our recording schedules, including making sure the booking of the studio was done properly. Ringo took the latter, because we all knew the only one who could handle the finance and business was Paul. Thrilled at his release from human bondage, Paul left the meeting practically bouncing.
I did go to Brian’s house, and he had offered to serve me dinner. I asked him what was going on with him as we ate, and eventually he opened up about his being left out of important decisions. I was feeling some sympathy for him until he started pointing out all the “stupid decisions” we had made after we stopped consulting with him. Since many of these decisions were proposed by me, and all the others I had voted for, I didn’t take this well.
“We’re not idiots, Brian, and we’re not ‘boys’. You still call us ‘boys’. We’re actually men, and we know what we want and what we don’t want, and it is time for you to loosen your grip.” I went on to add that we all respected and loved him, and would always trust him to handle the business (so long as he had Paul sitting next to him at the table) but we wanted complete creative freedom, and that meant freedom from our own managers as well as EMI. Brian looked sad but resigned as I left that night.
Of course, Paul’s ingenuous plan to share the burden of the administrative work involved in the creative direction of the band was bound to failure. After a few weeks of strutting about and fulfilling our new roles, all three of us grew bored and restless. We had no self-discipline, so if we didn’t feel like doing something, we just wouldn’t do it. Our phone messages and mail and uncompleted tasks piled up to a point where Paul started getting calls from every direction at once. EMI wanted to know why no one showed up for the meeting they’d scheduled on launch issues. George Martin wanted to know why we hadn’t reserved the studio for our next effort (“it won’t be free if you don’t book it now”). And reporters and photographers who had been waiting for days to get call backs from Brian’s assistants (who couldn’t book sessions without George Harrison’s say so) began screaming to Brian, who sent
them all to Paul (no doubt with a glow created by Schadenfreude.) It all came down on Paul at once, just as we were getting back from our two-week vacation. Frustrated, he called each of us in turn and told us what we had to do. None of us agreed to do it, and said we didn’t feel like it, didn’t know how to do it, was busy right now, etc. etc. So Paul dug in and did it all. He never managed to get us to take our share of the burden off of him. I only noticed this as a problem when I couldn’t get Paul to spend time with me on a personal level.
“I’m too busy, John, I don’t even sit down when I eat any more. I just keep moving.”
Looking back now, I can see that this was never going to end well. But, at the time, since the burden wasn’t on me, I honestly didn’t see this as being a problem. Paul was obviously much better at all that stuff than the rest of us were; he was actually better at it than Brian and his minions, truth be told, so if it meant him carrying this huge additional burden (but no extra money) and the stress and resentment of the staff with it - well – he’s a tough cookie. He can take it. That was my thinking. I don’t think George or Ringo ever gave it a single thought. Paul, being the type to suffer in silence and also the type who can’t ever ask for help, just took it all on and soldiered through it.
It was a bad omen, if only I had been sober and sane enough to recognize it.