Beatles (69 page)

Along with several other journalists, Derek invited us to join him in a farewell party in his room. He wasn’t there when we arrived, but there was a note saying we were to help ourselves to his mini bar till he returned. We emptied it while we waited for him, but he never appeared. He’d checked out very early that morning, telling no one, having paid his own bill. We were left to pay all the enormous extras.

When Apple was formed, Derek returned to England with his wife and family, and became the Beatles’ press officer, enjoying himself hugely: an amused, self-aware, sensible voice among the madness and phoniness of much of the Apple regime.

I went to pick him up one day in Savile Row, before going out with him for lunch. In his office, he announced it was his birthday, so I must have a piece of special birthday cake. A posh, debby sounding young girl came in with a ginger cake, still steaming from the oven, apparently baked on the premises. Derek cut me a slice. It was delicious. So I had another.

Over lunch I practically collapsed, first in giggles and then
when my head started swimming. I just hadn’t realised it had been a hash cake, not being used to such things, never having knowingly taken drugs before. Yes, a rather pathetic admission for someone who lived through the Sixties.

Derek went back to America again, then returned in the 1990s to work again with the Beatles, notably on the launch of
Anthology
.

Over the years, he wrote three Beatles-related books and memoirs, and also helped George on his book,
I Me Mine
. Derek should have done more, as he had literary skills and great style, but he never quite got round to a major book or a novel, which he often talked about. His letters, though, are cherished by everyone he wrote to. He was more concerned with enjoying himself, and life, and his family and friends, than slogging away on books. He and his wife Joan had six children. He died of cancer in September 1997, aged 63.

MIMI SMITH (1903–1992)

Mimi, John’s aunt, continued to live at her bungalow at Sandbanks, Poole till the end of her life. John’s MBE, which she had on her TV when I went to see her, was later returned to John, at his request, as he wanted to send it back to Buckingham Palace as a protest. She also returned his childhood scrapbooks and drawings, which she had always carefully kept.

Three days before John’s death in 1980 he rang Mimi saying he was homesick and was planning a trip back to England.

Mimi died in December 1992 at her home, aged 89. Cynthia and Yoko both attended her funeral.

FREDDIE LENNON (1912–1976)

John’s father, whom I managed to track down just before the original book was published (see Introduction) did marry his new girlfriend, Pauline Jones, a student whom he’d met when she was 18 and he was 54. The marriage took place at Gretna Green as for some reason her family was not all that keen on Freddie. They
went on to have two sons, David and Robin, who were therefore half-brothers to John, though they never met him.

Freddie died in Brighton on 1 April 1976, suffering from stomach cancer. While he was ill, John had sent flowers from America. After Freddie’s death he offered to pay for the funeral, but Pauline refused. Pauline has since remarried.

Freddie was engaging, amusing, though not exactly the most reliable of husbands or fathers. He was a rolling stone who, once he left the sea, never had proper jobs, just hotel kitchen work. Would John have ended up like his dad, if he hadn’t become a Beatle? That’s what John once said, but surely his art college training, such as it was, would have secured him some sort of proper job. Or perhaps not.

JIM McCARTNEY (1902–1976)

Paul’s father moved from the big house in the Wirral, where I visited him, into a nearby bungalow. For the last few years of his life he suffered from severe arthritis. He died in 1976, aged 73.

Jim was one of nature’s gents, always well turned-out, charming and affable. I’ll always remember the evening that Paul’s ‘When I’m Sixty-four’ arrived and I happened to be staying with Jim and his new wife Angie. They played it over and over again, all evening.

LOUISE HARRISON (1911–1970)

George’s mother was a Beatles fan – always supportive of George and the Beatles and their music, unlike Mimi. At the height of Beatlemania, she would often take it upon herself to answer 2,000 fan letters a month. When I met her and her husband Harold in 1967, they had moved into a new luxury bungalow near Warrington. Alas, she died just a few years later in 1970, after suffering from cancer.

HAROLD HARRISON (1909–1978)

George’s father continued to live in the bungalow after his wife
died, but spent a lot more time staying with George at his home, Friar Park, near Henley. In 1974, he joined George on his Dark Horse tour. He died at his home in 1978 from emphysema.

ELSIE GRAVES (1914–1987)

Ringo’s mother’s marriage to Ringo’s father, Ritchie, collapsed when Ringo was around three years old. She later married Harry Graves. Ringo got on very well with his stepfather and it was he who bought Ringo his first drum kit. Elsie died in 1987. Harry died in 1994.

LINDA McCARTNEY (1941–1998)

Paul’s first wife, whom he married in 1969. She died in 1998, having suffered from breast cancer for three years. Their marriage was not only long and happy, despite how some people had assumed things would turn out when she first appeared on Paul’s arm (i.e. me when I met her in the Algarve in 1968, and thought she’d be simply a passing flame). She turned out to be talented and successful in several fields – photographer, animal rights campaigner, businesswoman.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Paul and Linda’s two daughters should also have become successful in their own right – Mary (born 1969) as a photographer and Stella (born 1971) as an internationally known fashion designer. Paul and Linda’s son and youngest child, James (born 1977), remained out of the limelight in his early years but then emerged as a musician, playing guitar and drums. It remains to be seen how he will develop musically.

Other Beatles’ sons – John’s, George’s and Ringo’s – have in turn tried to follow their fathers, so there are clearly some inherited genes at work, as well as environmental influences. After all, Paul’s own father, Jim, was a good musician, and Freddie, John’s father, maintained he was as well. So far none of the next generation has attained great musical heights, compared with their fathers; but how could they?

MAUREEN STARKEY (1946–1994)

Ringo’s wife, whom he married in 1965 and with whom he had three children. They divorced in 1975. Despite her short affair with George, as described by Pattie Boyd in her recent book, Maureen and Ringo continued to remain friends and he supported her financially. On their divorce, Maureen was said by Cynthia Lennon (in her second autobiography) to have been so depressed that she rode a motorbike into a brick wall and needed facial surgery.

Maureen married Isaac Tigrett in 1989 and had another child, a daughter. She died of leukaemia in Seattle, Washington in 1994, aged 48. Ringo was at her bedside when she died.

MONA BEST (1924–1988)

Mother of Pete Best and usually known as Mo, she played an influential part in the early Quarrymen days when the group performed at the Casbah, the teenage club she had created in the cellars of her large Victorian house in Hayman’s Green. The tradition in the family is that she won the money for the house by backing Lester Piggott when he won the Derby on Never Say Die.

Mo was born in India to a British army family, married an English officer, then returned to England. She called the club the Casbah and decorated it in a vaguely Eastern style to remind her of her Indian childhood.

I remember her as small, dark-haired, voluptuous, very strong and determined. I can imagine Neil Aspinall as a teenager, when he was lodging at her house, being infatuated by her even though she was 19 years older.

She never forgave the Beatles or Brian Epstein for sacking her son, but in 1967, when John asked her if he could borrow some of her father’s Indian army medals to wear on the
Sergeant Pepper
cover, she readily agreed. She died in 1988 after a long illness. Her house is now a listed property.

BOB WOOLER (1926–2002)

Bob was compère at the Cavern Club for seven years, during which time he introduced the Beatles many times. He helped Brian Epstein to meet the Beatles and later married Epstein’s secretary, but the marriage didn’t last long. He had a surprisingly plummy voice, considering his Liverpool background, and was sensitive about his age – usually taking ten years off in order not to make himself sound too much older than the Mersey groups he was working with – but he was kindly, affable, helpful. He never did do his memoirs, though he promised to. He made an income in his last few years as a Beatle guide and speaker. He died in 2002, aged 76.

CLIVE EPSTEIN (1936–1988)

Brian’s younger brother, who took over as chairman of Brian’s NEMS Enterprises on Brian’s death in 1967, thus having a responsibility for the Beatles and many other groups and enterprises. Until then, he’d been looking after the family furniture and electrical business in Liverpool. He found himself having to deal with all the Apple drama and Allan Klein.

He died in 1988, aged 51, suffering a heart attack during a skiing holiday with his wife.

Queenie Epstein, born 1914, was the mother of Brian and Clive. I had to deal with her when Brian died and she in theory inherited my book contract. She insisted that Brian was not gay and that no mention should be made of incidents that happened in Liverpool earlier in Brian’s life. She died in 1996 outliving both her sons.

DICK JAMES (1920–1986)

Publisher of the Beatles music through the company Northern Songs in which he, Brian Epstein and the Beatles had shares. The Beatles had the minority stake and when the company was sold by James – and then resold again – they never managed to get their hands on the ownership of their own songs. At present the
songs are in the hands of Sony and Michael Jackson. To this day, this greatly upsets Paul.

Dick James had been a singer of fairly crummy ballads before getting into music publishing. For decades it had been the system to have the sheet music of popular songs printed and sold, and the publishers therefore had great power. The Beatles didn’t resent this at first, but later did.

However, they seemed to quite like Dick as a person, teasing and mocking him whenever he turned up at Abbey Road. On his arrival, they used to sing in a silly voice, ‘Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen,’ from the song that had been a hit for Dick back in the 1950s. He knew he’d been very lucky to have made such a killing with the Beatles – and went on to become a multi-millionaire, publishing music for Elton John and others. He died in 1986, aged 65.

MAHARISHI (1917–2008)

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became the Beatles’ spiritual advisor in 1967 and 1968 and for a while had some influence over them and on their music. Many other hippy celebrities of the Sixties were attracted to his message of peace and love allied with meditation.

In their 1967 meeting at Bangor, he gave each of the Beatles, so they told me, a special secret word or sound which they had to repeat while meditating to achieve peace and tranquillity, and which might perhaps move them on to levitation; but they didn’t quite manage that. The Beatles went out to India for three months of further study under the Maharishi. Ringo came back early, not liking the food.

John later repudiated the Maharishi, suggesting he was too interested in money and in some of the prettier girls in their entourage. John mocked him in his song lyric, ‘Sexy Sadie … you made a fool of everyone.’

However, the publicity boost given to the Maharishi by the Beatles hardly diminished when they lost faith and interest. He established a worldwide philosophy and system of transcendental
meditation – TM – with schools and colleges and thousands of followers, long after the Beatles connection had been forgotten. George retained his interest in Indian spiritualism and meditated to the end of his life. Maharishi died in 2008, aged 91.

THE QUARRYMEN (1956–1959)

Most of the Quarrymen are very much still alive, but they died in one sense when the group’s name was changed and the Beatles were created. While the Beatles went on into history, the other original members of the Quarrymen had long gone from the scenes and were left as mere footnotes. So they disappear from our story after the early chapters.

But what happened to them afterwards? What did each of them do with the rest of their lives?

Pete Shotton (born 1941) was John’s best friend at secondary school, equally in trouble, did no work, messed around. Despite Pete having no interest in music, John persuaded him to join his little skiffle group, the Quarrymen, when he formed it some time in 1956. Pete was given a washboard to rub, just to be in the band, be John’s friend.

Rod Davis, born 1941, was also at Quarry Bank High School, but he could actually play an instrument, the banjo. He was also clever, later head boy, and the only one of the original Quarrymen to go on to university – Trinity College, Cambridge.

Eric Griffiths, born 1940, was also at Quarry Bank and he and John learned the guitar together. Or tried to.

Len Garry, born 1942, was at the Liverpool Institute (Paul’s school) and came in after the person on tea chest never turned up for rehearsals.

Colin Hanton, born in 1938 and therefore a bit older, was the only one who had not gone to grammar school. He had already started work as an apprentice upholsterer, but was persuaded to join the Quarrymen when they were desperate for a drummer.

These five, plus John, were playing at Woolton Parish Church that day, 6 July 1957, when John first met Paul. Paul joined the group, then George. By mid 1957, by which time they had produced their first amateur record, all these five original members had left the group and gone their own separate ways.

Pete – surprisingly, considering his poor school record and behaviour – became a police cadet. Unlike the others, he did stay in contact with John.