The Love You Make (32 page)

Naturally, it was Paul who had the biggest commercial success on
Rubber Soul,
called “Michelle.” This was another of Paul’s saccharine love songs, this time in which he self-consciously lapsed into a French refrain.

It was at the end of the
Rubber Soul
sessions that the Beatles’ preliminary LSD experiments began on a fairly regular basis. Again the music changed distinctively, this time with a hard-edged, electric sound. “Paperback Writer,” with its throbbing chorus written by Paul, was a forewarning of more to come. In John’s audiodelic “Rain,” augmented by George’s Indian instrumentation, the first of the many “backward” tapes were used. This simple trick of playing a recording backward through a tape deck and rerecording it had never been considered before as a serious musical technique. John first discovered he liked this slightly unearthly sound when he was tripping one night. He was working late at Kenwood in his little studio at the top of the house, when he put a rough version of “Rain” on the recorder backward. There are scores of backward snippets of words and music on subsequent Beatles albums.

The whimsically trippy “Yellow Submarine,” with Ringo’s atonal vocals, also came out of these sessions, as did “Eleanor Rigby,” Paul’s eerily compelling portrait of desolately lonely people. The Revolver album also contained, in England, John’s drug-dispensing “Dr. Robert,” written about a real New York physician who gave “vitamin” shots to the rich and famous, and Paul’s pretty “For No One,” another effective McCartney tear-jerker. George was allowed two songs on the
Revolver
album, the comparatively undistinguished “Love You Too” and “I Want to Tell You,” but he was afforded a plum spot in America, where his song “Taxman” was a huge success. This was, for George, an unusually articulate and justified complaint against the English tax system.

Revolver
closed with a harbinger of things to come. Other songs on the album had been influenced by LSD, but John’s “Tomorrow Never Knows” is the first bona fide, all-out acid trip. Originally titled “The Void,” its inspiration came from the Tibetan
Book of the Dead,
which John was reading while tripping. John wanted very badly to record the song with a chorus of a thousand chanting Tibetan monks, whom he had no doubt heard singing inside his head.

The Beatles are always second-guessed as not being originators of ideas but, rather, astute followers. Certainly they didn’t invent LSD or marijuana, and they weren’t the first to take them; but they always managed to be in the forefront of a trend and then popularize it on an international level, until they became associated with the phenomenon itself. Certainly the San Francisco based acid-rock bands did more to proselytize LSD than the Beatles, but it was the Beatles who translated the LSD experience and all that went with it—clothing, grooming, the sexual revolution—into a commercial message. The
Rubber Soul
and
Revolver
albums were the early examples of the Beatles’ power to lead. A potent and potentially deadly demonstration of this power was soon to come.

With the World exploding
and fragmenting around them into the seeds of tangerine trees and marmalade skies, when London was the best place on earth and they were the best people to be, they had to do the one thing they wanted to do the least; they had to leave. It was summer and it was written in the gospel according to Brian that in summer they went out on tour. Nearsightedly, perhaps selfishly, Brian saw no reason to alter this yearly ritual he enjoyed so much, although it was obvious that touring was no longer necessary for the boys’ commercial or financial success. It was perhaps the first major indication that Brian was losing his perspective of what the Beatles had become. They didn’t need the money, certainly, and they didn’t need the aggravation. As far as the Beatles themselves were concerned, their music was so complicated it could no longer be reproduced live on stage.

Yet all the machinery was in motion, and inexorably the familiar entourage was assembled for a June 23 departure for Munich, Essen, and Hamburg, Germany, on the first leg of a world tour. This time Brian insisted that I join them to deal with the Beatles’ administrative and personal problems. I was reluctant to leave the London office for so long and wasn’t looking forward to the grueling world travel in the summertime, but Brian’s behavior and attentiveness had become more erratic in recent months, and I knew I might be needed.

Hamburg was chosen as a stop purely for the sake of nostalgia. We traveled by plane and private train, the Beatles talking excitedly the entire time about old times on the Reeperbahn. But like much of the rest of the world, Hamburg had lost its charm for them. They could no longer walk the streets unrecognized, gaping at the sex shops and the window-ledge hookers. There were no night-long bacchanals, watching the dawn come up over the Herberstrasse rooftops. The bars and clubs where they once played—only a short four years before—were closed; the Star Club was shuttered up with boards. What had once been tempting and exotic in the night was tawdry and tired in the light. Astrid Kirchner, the beautiful young photographer and girlfriend of Stu Sutcliffe, who so dramatically affected the Beades’ appearance, was now a barmaid in a transvestite bar. She had never been paid a cent for the now world-famous photographs she took of the boys in leather and cowboy hats, nor was she in any way recompensed for her famous haircut, which began a revolution in men’s grooming. In her small apartment she kept one room shrouded in black velvet where she burned candles underneath a haunting photograph she took of an ethereal Stu Sutcliffe.
²³

From Hamburg we flew over the North Pole, en route to Tokyo, only to be grounded in Anchorage in the middle of the night by a typhoon raging in the China Sea. It was freezing cold and snowing heavily, and Brian and the Beatles were quite upset at having to be put up in emergency accommodations in a small hotel, as if the typhoon were a personal offense. Brian was claustrophobic and irritable in his small room and decided to ring Nat Weiss in New York City, three time zones and 8,000 miles away. He woke Nat out of a deep sleep, demanding, “Who owns Alaska, Nat?” and “Do you know the name of a good bar?”

We didn’t arrive in Tokyo until dawn of the following day, already exhausted, although the major part of our trip was now just beginning. We were looking forward to some relaxation and sightseeing in Tokyo, yet the moment we deplaned we learned there was an ugly surprise waiting for us. A small, officious but polite police commissioner in a business suit ushered us into a VIP lounge and explained that a kamikaze squad of right-wing militant students, who objected to the Western “perversion” of Japanese culture, had vowed that the Beatles would never leave Japan alive. The students were particularly enraged because the Beatles were scheduled for three nights of concerts at the Budokan, which was also a national shrine to dead war heroes. The commissioner explained that the threats from the student fanatics were not to be taken lightly; they would kill the Beatles if they had the chance, and it was almost certain they would make some sort of an attempt. The Japanese government didn’t want to be caught in the middle of an embarrassing international incident, such as having one of the beloved mop-tops murdered in their fair land, and they had dispatched several thousand armed troops to back up the police escort.

Despite all the dangerous episodes and narrow escapes the Beatles had been through, none of them had been as intimidating as this. A cordon of police led us to the passenger luggage area where the well-meaning Japanese promoters had supplied us with two 1950’s limousines to bring us to our hotel. Unfortunately, the Beatles’ car was an attention-drawing white, while Brian’s was an embarrassing pink. There must have been ten thousand fans lining the road on the route into town, who couldn’t miss us coming in our bright cars, with a motorcycle escort and police cars in front and behind us. Neither could we miss the chanting students who joined the fans, with signs that read “Beatles Go Home.”

The Tokyo Hilton was turned into an armed camp. The entire top floor of the hotel had been cordoned off with army troops, and the elevators were fixed to stop only on the floor below, where a round-the-clock gun-toting platoon screened admission to the penthouse via a single staircase. The Beatles were ensconced in the Presidential Suite, which had six or seven rooms, and Brian and I were in the smaller but equally grand Imperial Suite at the other end of the hall. Once we had checked in to the hotel, the authorities informed us that for security purposes the Beatles were never to leave their hotel suite, except to go to the Budokan for performances. Instead of seeing Japan, Japan was to be brought to them. Disgruntled at what seemed to them to be undue precautions, the Beatles sat around their suite, dressed in ceremonial silk kimonos, and like four young Roman emperors had the riches of the country paraded before them. The directors of the biggest companies in Japan personally came to the hotel to display their wares, and within hours the boys had spent tens of thousands of pounds on cameras, clothing, watches, jewelry, and other trinkets. Sushi chefs appeared in the suite with trays of fish to be carved up for them, and Geisha girls appeared for back rubs and other physical delights.

Late morning of the second day Brian and I were busy tending to last-minute details of the boys’ Budokan concert when the nattily-dressed police commissioner appeared at the door. This time he was no longer bowing. He was most annoyed because Paul had snuck out of his suite that morning and had roamed around Tokyo with Mal Evans for several hours, all the while being trailed by undercover security agents. Paul awoke that morning absolutely claustrophobic and couldn’t face another day locked up inside, so he and Mal donned fake moustaches and wide-brimmed hats from their collection of disguises and slipped out the service entrance of the hotel. The security agents allowed them a few hours of freedom before they were put under custody and driven back to the hotel in a police car. The police commissioner warned Brian that if any of the Beatles breached security again, all the protection would be called off in the blink of an eye, and the Beatles would be left to their own defenses against the militant students. When the commissioner left the room, Brian’s reaction was, “They wouldn’t
dare.”

Brian was probably right, although I’m glad we never had to find out. The boys behaved until showtime, when we were whisked to the Budokan along a route that had been closed off to the rush-hour traffic, throwing Tokyo into a gridlock such as they had never experienced before. Army sharpshooters were stationed all along the route, as well as in the orchestra and balconies of the Budokan. The eeriest part of it was the politeness of the Japanese audience. There were one or two screamers, but for the most part the teenaged boys and girls sat politely in their seats and applauded enthusiastically after each number. It was one of the few concerts during which the boys could hear themselves play.

It was without any regrets that we left Japan and moved on to the next stop on the tour, the Philippine Islands. Manila, with its warm sun and exotic scenery, promised to be a welcome change of mood from the tension of the big city of Tokyo. The Beatles were especially popular with the Filipino people and had easily sold out two concerts at the Araneta Coliseum. Indeed, one of the largest airport crowds ever, over 50,000 people, turned out to cheer our arrival. An army escort led our entourage through the crowds into limousines supplied courtesy of the local concert promoter.

Then a most peculiar thing happened, which is revealed here in its entirety for the first time; instead of being taken to the hotel, we were driven to a pier and put on a boat, which took us a mile or two out to sea before returning again. This was neither a reception nor a government ritual but an opportunity to separate us from our luggage for a half hour or so. It was very disconcerting to all of us, for we all knew that the Beatles now traveled with several pounds of marijuana in their equipment cases. Usually, these cases were searched only perfunctorily at customs, if at all, and generally were given the same treatment as diplomatic pouches. We were returned to the pier and handed our luggage, with no explanations offered nor questions asked. We suspected that the drugs had been found and that the government officials were keeping quiet about it as an accommodation. It was assumed that nobody wanted to become involved in an international incident, yet that was exactly what happened.

The following morning half a dozen uniformed aides from the presidential palace appeared at the door of Vic Lewis’ hotel room. Lewis was the NEMS booking agent who had arranged for certain parts of the international tour and had joined the touring party in Japan. The military police demanded to know what time the Beatles would arrive at “the party.”

“What party?” Lewis asked groggily. “I know nothing of any party.” He directed the officers to Brian, who was having a late breakfast with me in the hotel coffee shop. These military police in khaki uniforms had an unpleasant edge to their voices when they again demanded to know what time the Beatles would arrive at the “party.” We managed to learn from them that Imelda Marcos, the wife of president Ferdinand Marcos, was giving a luncheon party in honor of the Beatles, and they were expected shortly at the presidential fortress, Malachang. In some quarters Imelda Marcos was more feared than her dictator husband; she was an Eva Peronlike figure with a reputation for being as demanding as she was venal. She had a special taste for the famous and celebrated, and had invited 300 children to the palace to meet the Beatles with her.

Brian claimed that this was the first time he had heard of the invitation to the party. He later learned that in Tokyo the publicity man, Tony Barrow, had received such an invitation but somehow nothing had been done about responding. Whether or not it was ever relayed to Brian, by either Barrow or Vic Lewis, was now a moot point; the Beatles were simply not going. They were up in their rooms, fast asleep and in need of rest. Brian wasn’t about to have them woken up to be told they were due at the palace in a half hour.