The Beatles (11 page)

John's opinion, volunteered 12 years later, was par for the course: “It's a piece of garbage.”

YER BLUES

‘Yer Blues' was the most despairing song John had written to date, representing an anguished cry to Yoko for help. John felt he was at a crossroads in his life: his career as a performing Beatle was nearly over, his manager was dead and now he was contemplating bringing an end to his marriage.

He felt loyalty to Cynthia and yet he knew that in Yoko he'd met his artistic and intellectual match. She was, he later said, the girl he had always dreamed of meeting; the girl he had imagined when he wrote ‘Girl'.

During the stay in Rishikesh, John and Cynthia were often separated because of their different meditation routines and it wasn't until the flight back to London from Delhi that John mentioned to Cynthia his indiscretions during their six-year marriage. She was shocked: “I never dreamt that he had been unfaithful to me during our married life. He hadn't revealed anything to me. I knew of course that touring abroad and being surrounded by all the temptations any man could possibly want would have been impossible to resist. But even so my mind just couldn't and wouldn't accept the inevitable. I had never had anything concrete to go on, nothing tell-tale.”

John later said that this dilemma had made him feel suicidal. In this song, he jokingly compares himself to ‘Mr Jones', the witless central character in Dylan's ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man'. Musically, ‘Yer Blues' was indicative of the direction he would eventually take with his post-Beatles career.

MOTHER NATURE'S SON

Both John and Paul wrote songs after hearing a lecture by the Maharishi about the unity of man and nature, but it was to be Paul's ‘Mother Nature's Son' that made the album's final selection.

John's song, ‘A Child Of Nature', made similar observations about the sun, sky, wind and mountains but, whereas Paul fictionalized his response by writing in the character of a ‘poor young country boy', John wrote about himself ‘on the road to Rishikesh'.

A demo of ‘A Child Of Nature' was made by John in May 1968, but the Beatles didn't record it. Three years later and with a new set of lyrics it became ‘Jealous Guy'.

Paul had always been a lover of the countryside and when he wrote ‘Mother Nature's Son' he had in mind a song he had heard when he was younger called ‘Nature Boy' (1947) , made popular by Nat ‘King' Cole. Although the song was started in India it was completed at his father's house.

EVERYBODY'S GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE EXCEPT ME AND MY MONKEY

Initially known as ‘Come On, Come On', the song was built up from its title. John said it was a clear reference to his relationship with Yoko. “That was just a nice line which I made into a song,” he said. “Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the glow of love…everybody was sort of tense around us.”

It wasn't until his return from India that the friendship turned into an affair and Cynthia knew what was happening. Yoko started to attend recording sessions for the new album, much to the annoyance of the other Beatles. The British press also found it difficult to accept Yoko and this irked John and was to play a part in his eventual move to America. “In England, they think I'm someone who has won the pools and gone off with a Japanese Princess,” he once said. “In America, they treat her with respect. They treat her as the serious artist she is.”

The rapid ‘ Come on, come on, come on…' chorus sounds similar to what became known as the ‘gobble chorus' section of the Fugs' track ‘Virgin Forest' that appeared on
The Fugs' Second Album
(1966). Barry Miles, then running the Indica Bookshop, supplied the Beatles with the latest underground releases from America, including work by The Fugs.

SEXY SADIE

‘Sexy Sadie' appears to be a song about a girl who leads men on, only to make fools of them, but was written about the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, after John had become disillusioned with him. Knowing that he could never record a potentially libellous song called Maharishi, he titled it ‘Sexy Sadie', but on the demo recording of the track he let rip with a string of obscenities directed towards his real quarry.

There were two reasons why the Beatles decided to leave Rishikesh. They had been told that the Maharishi was only after their money and a rumour suggested he had made a sexual advance to a women on the course. It unnerved them and the three Beatles told the guru they were leaving. Pressed to explain their decision, John reportedly said, “Well, if you're so cosmic, you'll know why.”

Paul Horn, who remembers them leaving, believes the fall-out was inevitable: “These courses were designed for people who had a solid background in meditation. The Beatles didn't have the experience and I think they were expecting miracles. George was really interested but Ringo wasn't into Eastern philosophy at all. John was and always sceptical about anything until it had been proven to him. Paul was easy-going and could have gone either way.

“The big fuss came because there were some people there who were more interested in the Beatles than learning to meditate and they became hangers-on. One woman was really into the Beatles and started all this crap about the Maharishi making passes at her. There were a lot of rumours, jealousies and triangles going on and she got back at the Beatles through saying this about the Maharishi. The bottom line, though, is that it was time for them to go home. This was just the catalyst.”

HELTER SKELTER

The concept for ‘Helter Skelter' came from a music paper's rave review of a new single by the Who. Paul didn't think the single matched the hyperbole and set himself the challenge of writing something that could legitimately be described in that language.

The single, ‘I Can See For Miles', was released in October 1967 and reviewed by Chris Welch in
Melody Maker.
“Forget Happy Jack sitting in sand on the Isle of Man,” wrote Welch. “This marathon epic of swearing cymbals and cursing guitars marks the return of the Who as a major freak-out force. Recorded in America, it's a Pete Townshend composition filled with Townshend mystery and menace.”

It's impossible to be certain that this was the review, because Paul's description has changed over the years. In 1968, he said the review had said “The group really goes wild with echo and screaming and everything,” but 20 years later he claimed it described the Who single as, “the loudest, most raucous rock'n'roll, the dirtiest thing they'd ever done.” However, Paul's account of the effect that the review had on him had't changed: “I thought ‘That's a pity. I would
like to do something like that.' Then I heard it and it was nothing like it. It was straight and sophisticated. So we did this. I like noise.”

Despite being described as having ‘swearing cymbals' and ‘cursing guitars', ‘I Can See For Miles' had a discernible melody throughout and could not properly be described as raucous. Paul wanted to write something that really did ‘ freak people out' and, when the Beatles first recorded ‘Helter Skelter' in July 1968, they did it in one take which was almost half an hour long. They returned to it in September ‘out of their heads', and produced a shorter version. At the end of it, Ringo can be heard shrieking, “I've got blisters on my fingers.”

Most British listeners were aware that a helter skelter was a spiral fairground slide but Charles Manson, who heard the
White Album
in December 1968 thought that the Beatles were warning America of a racial conflict that was ‘coming down fast'. In the scenario that Manson had developed, the Beatles were the four angels mentioned in the New Testament book of Revelation who, through their songs, were telling him and his followers to prepare for the coming holocaust by escaping to the desert.

Manson referred to this future uprising as ‘Helter Skelter' and it was the daubing of these words in blood at the scene of one of the murders that became another vital clue in the subsequent police investigation. It was because of the song's significance that Vincent Bugliosi, the LA District Attorney who prosecuted at Manson's trial, named his best-selling account of the murders
Helter Skelter.

LONG LONG LONG

More than any other Beatle, George was inspired to write by hearing other songs. The chords of ‘Long Long Long' were suggested to him by Bob Dylan's haunting track ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands'. George was fascinated with the movement from D to E minor to A and back to D and wanted to write something which sounded similar. He scribbled the lyric out in the pages of an empty ‘week at a glance' diary for 1968 and called it ‘It's Been A Long Long Long Time' which then became the working title.

‘Long Long Long' sounds like a straightforward love song but, according to George, the ‘you' in question here is God. He was the first Beatle to show an interest in Eastern religion and the only one to carry on with it after the others became disenchanted with the Maharishi following their visit to India. George did, however, alter his allegiances, distancing himself from Maharishi and Transcendental Meditation and becoming publicly identified with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, later producing their Hare Krishna mantra as a hit single.

REVOLUTION

The Summer of Love was followed by the Spring of Revolution. In March 1968, thousands marched on the American Embassy in London's Grosvenor Square to protest against the war in Vietnam. In May, students rioted in Paris. Unlike Mick Jagger, who made an appearance at Grosvenor Square, John surveyed these events from home, keeping in touch through the news media and the underground press. He began work on ‘Revolution' while in India and completed it at home when Cynthia was away in Greece. He took it to Paul as a potential single but Paul said the song wasn't commercial enough.

This wasn't the song of a revolutionary but rather the song of someone under pressure from revolutionaries to declare his allegiance. Easily the most politically conscious of the Beatles and unapologetically left-wing in outlook, John had become a target for various Leninist, Trotskyist and Maoist groups, who felt he should lend both moral and financial support to their causes.

‘Revolution' was John's reply to these factions, informing them that, while he shared their desire for social change, he believed that the only worthwhile revolution would come about through inner change rather than revolutionary violence. However, he was never absolutely sure of his position, hedging his bets on the slow version of the song released on the album. After admitting that destruction can come with revolution, he sang ‘ you can count me out/in' obviously unsure of which side of the debate to come down on. On the fast version, recorded six weeks later and released as the B side of ‘Hey Jude', he omitted the word ‘in'.

The omission provoked much hand-wringing in the underground press. The American magazine
Ramparts
called it a ‘betrayal' and the
New Left Review:
“a lamentable petty bourgeois cry of fear”.
Time
magazine, on the other hand, devoted a whole article to the song which it said, “criticized radical activists the world over”.

The nature of John's dilemma was revealed in an exchange of letters published in a Keele University magazine. In an open letter, student John Hoyland said of ‘Revolution', “That record was no more revolutionary than Mrs
Dale's Diary
(a BBC radio soap). In order to change the world, we've got to understand what's wrong with the world. And then – destroy it. Ruthlessly. This is not cruelty or madness. It is one of the most passionate forms of love. Because what we're fighting is suffering, oppression, humiliation – the immense toll of unhappiness caused by capitalism. And any ‘love' which does not pit itself against these things is sloppy and irrelevant. There is no such thing as a polite revolution.”

In his reply, John wrote: “I don't remember saying that ‘Revolution' was revolutionary. Fuck Mrs Dale. Listen to all three versions of ‘Revolution' – 1, 2 and 9 and then try again, dear John (Hoyland). You say ‘in order to change the world, we've got to understand what's wrong with the world and then destroy it. Ruthlessly'. You're obviously on a destruction kick. I'll tell you what's wrong with it – people. So, do you want to destroy them? Ruthlessly? Until you/we change your/ our heads – there's no chance. Tell me one successful revolution. Who fucked up communism, Christianity, capitalism, Buddhism etc? Sick heads, and nothing else. Do you think all the enemy wear capitalist badges so that you can shoot them? It's a bit naive, John. You seem to think it's just a class war.”

Interviewed later by journalists from the magazine, John (Lennon) said: “All I'm saying is I think you should do it by changing people's heads, and they're saying we should smash the system. Now the system-smashing scene has been going on forever. What's it done? The Irish did it, the Russians did it and the French did it and where has it got them? It's got them nowhere. It's the same old game. Who's going to run this smashing up? Who's going to take over? It'll be the biggest smashers. They'll be the ones to get in first and, like in Russia, they'll be the ones to take over. I don't know what the answer is but I think it's down to people.”

It was a position John was to hold to. In 1980, he said that ‘Revolution' still stood as an expression of his politics. “Count me out if it's for violence. Don't expect me on the barricades unless it's with flowers.”

HONEY PIE

‘Honey Pie' was a tribute to Jim McCartney from his son. “My dad's always played fruity old songs like this, and I like them,” Paul said. “I would have liked to have been a writer in the Twenties because I like the top hat and tails thing.”

Just as he believed ‘Helter Skelter' was written for him personally, Charles Manson found further instructions in ‘Honey Pie'. After all, it was addressed to people in the USA, inviting them to display the magic of their ‘Hollywood song'? Manson lived near Los Angeles. What could be clearer?