Beatles (67 page)

‘He became so jealous in the end. You know he wouldn’t let me even touch his baby. He got really crazy with jealousy at times. I suppose I’ve inherited some of that …

‘It’s true I didn’t care for Stu, but I wasn’t against him personally. He just couldn’t play bass. That was all there was to it. I had a functional, ambitious-for-the-group sort of objection to him. He knew he couldn’t play. I was the one who told him to keep his back to the audience. I didn’t want him out to get the bass job. Stu himself left us, to stay on in Hamburg. John asked George first to play bass. I’ve checked that with George the other day. He remembers it well. George refused. So he asked me. I got lumbered with playing bass. It wasn’t my scheme.

‘It was the same with Pete Best. I wasn’t jealous of him, because he was handsome. He just couldn’t play. Ringo was so much better. We wanted him out for that reason.

‘The idea of Brian’s murder is crazy, but all that merchandising trouble is true. We got screwed for millions, but in the end it wasn’t worth suing everybody. We’d never get it all back and it would take such time. We knew most of them would still in the end get away with it. It was all Brian’s fault. He was green. I always said that about Brian. Green.

‘We knew he was gay, but it didn’t matter. For a while he
didn’t know that we knew, and we pretended it that way. It didn’t matter. We never discussed it with him. He kept it very private. It didn’t matter. We might make faces at each other behind his back, you know if someone was dressed up in drag. We’d try to catch Brian’s eye, to see if he was blushing. But we didn’t say anything. It was all affectionate. As for that drawing with Brian in the middle of a row of kids in the Cavern,
salivating
. That is not true. I’ve heard of artistic licence, but that’s ridiculous. The other drawings were meant to be true, as they started with one based on a photograph, so you took this as being true. It’s just part of trying to build up Brian’s gay thing. He
never
sat in the Cavern. He never mixed anyway. He just stood at the very back, so no one could see him or knew he was there. There was no salivating.

‘I idolized John. He was the big guy in the chip shop. I was the little guy. As I matured and grew up, I started sharing in things with him. I got up to his level. I wrote songs as he did and sometimes they were as good as his. We grew to be equals. It made him insecure. He always was, really. He was insecure with women. You know, he told me when he first met Yoko not to make a play for her.

‘I saw somewhere that he says he helped on “Eleanor Rigby”. Yeh. About half a line. He also forgot completely that I wrote the tune for “In My Life”. That was my tune. But perhaps he just made a mistake on that. Forgot.

‘I understood what happened when he met Yoko. He had to clear the decks of his old emotions. He went through all his old affairs, confessed them all. Me and Linda did that when we first met. You prove how much you love someone by confessing all the old stuff. John’s method was to slag me off.

‘I’ve never come at him, not at all, but I can’t hide my anger about all the things he said at the time, about the Muzak, about me singing like Englebert Humperdinck …

‘If we had to start listing all the times when
he
hurt me. Doing that one little song on my own, compared with what he said about
me
…

‘When you think about it, I’ve done nothing really to him, compared with that. Anyway, he did the same with “Revolution 9”. He went off and made that without me. No one ever says all that. John is now the nice guy and I’m the bastard. It gets repeated all the time.’

But until John’s death, I said, the general image was that you were the nice guy and that John was the bastard. Neither of course was true, not completely. Things will soon shake down. Don’t worry. Keep cool.

‘But people are printing
facts
about me and John. They’re
not
facts. But it will go down in the records. It will become part of history. It will be there for always. People will believe it all.

‘Anyway, me, George and Ringo have promised to be nice guys to each other from now on. When we meet and talk now I never mention Apple. I’ve learned that. Any mention of Apple just leads to rows and slagging off …

‘I apparently hurt George Martin by default as well. I didn’t know that till I read his book. I didn’t let him do “She’s Leaving Home”. I rang him up, but he was busy, couldn’t make it for two days, or two weeks or something, so I thought what the hell, if he can’t fit me in, I’ll get someone else.
I
was hurt at the time, which was why I got someone else. Now he says I deliberately hurt him. Well, if that’s the only hurt I’ve done him …

‘John and I were really army buddies. That’s what it was like really. I realize now we never got to the bottom of each other’s souls. We didn’t know the truth. Some fathers turn out to hate their sons. You never know.

‘At Ringo’s wedding, I happened to go to the toilet, and I met Ringo there, at the same time, just the two of us. He said there were two times in his life in which I had done him in. Then he said that he’d done himself in
three
times. I happened to be spitting something out, and by chance the spit fell on his jacket. I said there you go, now I’ve done you three times. We’re equal. I laughed it off. It was all affectionate. It wasn’t a row. It wasn’t slagging off. He just suddenly said it, and we moved on. But
now
, I keep thinking all the time, what are the two times that Ringo thinks I put him down …?

‘I suppose we all do that. We never publicly come out with little hurts. George told me the other day of a time I’d hurt him. He’s done worse, I think, like when he said he would never play bass with me again.

‘I was very upset when they said I was just trying to bring in Lee Eastman, because he’s my in-law. In the end, they brought in Klein. As if I’d just bring in a member of the family, for no other reason. They’d known me 20 years, yet they thought that. I couldn’t believe it. John said, “
Magical Mystery Tour
was just a big ego trip for Paul.” God! It was for their sake, to keep us together, keep us going, give us something new to do.

‘Legally, we were mugs. I still have Lee Eastman, and he’s made a fortune. For me. I was forced to sue the Beatles, in order to prove what I knew. I didn’t want to. I went up to Scotland and agonized for three months, cut myself off, before I decided it was the only way. To sue the Beatles. It was a terrible decision.

‘I still get slagged off for it. In the history books, I’m still the one who broke up the Beatles.

‘I didn’t hate John. People said to me when he came out with those things on his record about me, you must hate him, but I didn’t. I don’t. We were once having a right slagging session and I remember how he took off his granny glasses. I can still see him. He put them down and said, “It’s only me, Paul.” Then he put them back on again, and we continued slagging … That phrase keeps coming back to me all the time. “It’s only me.” It’s become a mantra in my mind.

‘I have some juicy stuff I could tell about John. But I wouldn’t. Not when Yoko’s alive, or Cynthia. John would. He would grab, go for the action, say the first thing in his head. We admired him for that. It was honesty, but it could hurt. And it wasn’t really all
that
honest. He
knew
he could hurt. He could be wicked. But I’m always sensible. That’s me. I would never say the things he said.

‘No one else knows the truth, such as it is, that’s the trouble.
I was talking to Neil the other day, having a laugh and remembering some incident, a funny story. We remembered everything exactly, what we said, what I was wearing, that someone had a fan. We were absolutely exact on 75 per cent of the story, except on one vital thing. I said it took place in Piccadilly and Neil said it was Savile Row. I can see it so clearly, every detail as it happened – and so can Neil, yet it’s in different places.

‘Until I was about 30, I thought the world was an exact place. Now I know that life just splutters along. John knew that. He was the great debunker. He’d be debunking all his death thing now.

‘I can’t really remember the 1960s anyway. I went through it in a sort of purple haze. The other day we were at a place, me and Linda, and this gorgeous blonde came up to me and flung her arms round my neck. “Remember me, Paul?” I said hmm, yeh, now, let me see, but I had no knowledge of ever seeing her before. “But Paul, we made love in LA …” “Oh,” I said. “Really. Meet the wife. This is Linda … ‘Scuse us, we’ll have to go …”

‘It’s happened before, of course. It was before I was married. It can be dodgy, but Linda’s a good skin.’

I suggested that he should write it all down, or tape it, record in his words what he thinks was the relationship with John, exorcise it once and for all, then stick it in a drawer and forget it.

‘I might. I did that after being in jail. I’ve written my feelings about that. I wasn’t allowed pencil and paper in jail, and it was all I wanted, so when I came home I wrote it straight out. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want that usual publishing scene. It’s just for me. It’s about 20,000 words. Linda and one or two other people have read it and think it’s good. I got a private printer, just to print for me one copy, one only. I’ve got it. I just wanted a plain white cover and, inside, just black words on white paper. On cheap white paper. I wanted it like an Olympia press book. Just a cheap little thing. It fits in the pocket, just six inches by about four. I did for a time think of publishing a few and selling them off the back of a barrow. Telling no one, just suddenly selling them in the street, for a few bob. But I don’t
want a big thing. Then I heard that some pop musician had already done this, so I didn’t want it to look like copying. So I just have the one copy. I’ll let you read it sometime. Tell me what you think.

‘As for me and John, yeh, I might write it down. You know I helped him with his first book. That’s never been mentioned by anyone. Not by John anyway …’

As for the other characters in the Beatle drama, Neil Aspinall, their roadie, went on to be an executive in Apple and produced the
Let It Be
film. He’s still there, though Apple these days seems to have less to do and produce. He is married with five children. Mal Evans, on the other hand, who always seemed so relaxed and contented, compared with the rather nervy Neil, ended his life in tragedy. He’d left his wife and family and had moved to America when he was shot in an incident with the police in Los Angeles in 1976. Paul’s father Jim had also died, so has John’s father Fred, and George’s mum, Louise. Ivan Vaughan, the boy who first brought John and Paul together (see
Chapter 2
), is now a semi-invalid, suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

George Martin went on to become a successful independent music producer, which he still is, though without discovering anyone on the scale of the Beatles. His remark in the original End Bit, warning that they could go wrong on their own, was, in some ways, prophetic.

Cynthia Lennon married an Italian after her divorce from John. That marriage ended in divorce. And so did a third marriage. She now has a new man in her life and is living very quietly in Cumbria, near Penrith, taking up her interest in art again, which she neglected since her art college days with John. At the age of 45, with her son Julian beginning to be established in the pop music world, she is considering various new careers, such as fashion and television interviewing.

Pete Best dragged himself out of that depressive state he was in when I last met him, in 1968 at his mother’s home. He got himself a respectable job, working at a Jobcentre in Liverpool,
and after 16 years of it, he is earning £8,500 a year. His book about his days with the Beatles eventually came out in 1985. It even managed a favourable report in
The Times
.

After doing very little for a decade to commemorate or recognize their most famous sons, Liverpool has jumped into neo-Beatle life, with statues, exhibitions, tours and other excitements to interest the tourists (see
Appendix
).

One legal and business row still lumbers on – the battle by Paul, mainly, to get control of Northern Songs. It does seem unfair that the Beatles, in essence, still do not own themselves. When Paul was making
Broad Street
, he even had to ask permission to record ‘Yesterday’. It’s a very long story (see
Chapter 20
for its origins), which started with Dick James and his firm owning 50 per cent of all Beatle numbers, as their music publisher. It then passed to Lew Grade’s ATV empire, then to the Australian, Holmes a’Court. Paul at one time tried to buy it back for £10 million, but failed, and at the time of writing he is reported to be offering £20 million. Northern Songs owns the copyright of over 200 Lennon–McCartney compositions, virtually the complete Beatle canon. You can see the attraction.

If you are ever tempted to feel envious of millionaires, then realize how they too can be thwarted and put down, just like the rest of us. Even all their millions cannot always give them what they want. It has at least united Paul and Yoko, after several years of a somewhat strained relationship. Yoko is just as smart in business as Paul, if not smarter. Together, I am sure they will get what they want in the end.

What about the creative future of Paul, George and Ringo? There seems little evidence of them keeping up with new developments in literature, art, theatre or even popular music. But then again, there never was. They prided themselves on being uneducated, untouched, uninfluenced. They provided their own stimuli, the four of them sparking each other, getting out of themselves what was there. If they want to remain independent creative artists, working on their own, where will the stimuli come from? Who will provide the sparks?

They are now of course middle-aged men, so why should we expect it? Ringo is 45 this year, Paul is 43 and George, the baby, is 42. They have their children or their gardens to contemplate, time to put their feet up and relax, though in Paul’s case he is not built for relaxation. Linda knows this well. She is the one pulling inwardly more, into the bosom of the family, but there is a part of Paul that would still like to be up there, still one of the superstars, singing along with Stevie Wonder, or Michael Jackson, or whoever the next flavour of the year will be, just to show he can still do it. The glitter still attracts him, despite his genuine love of family life.