The Love You Make (41 page)

Magic Alex had not bothered to remind the Beatles that in 1967 Greece was struggling under the power of one of the most repressive military governments in the world. The ruling military junta had banned both long hair and rock music, and a rock and roll group moving to Greece would be viewed with the same suspicion as the long-haired American hippies who were smuggling hashish from Istanbul via Athens. Long-term and life sentences for small offenses were common. Certainly, if any of the Beatles carried drugs into Greece with them, it would be discovered by the customs officers at the airport.

According to Alex, in a story told here for the first time, before the Beatles set out for Athens, he contacted a high government official he identifies as the “vice president of Greece” and asked the man if he knew who the Beatles were. “Yes, they’re a pop group,” the man answered. “But what does this have to do with me?”

“They could be of tremendous publicity value to you if you cooperate in making their journey pleasant,” Alex said. He struck a deal with the government official; if the Beatles were given VIP treatment, and not searched at the airport, they would pose for a set of publicity pictures for the Ministry of Tourism to show how benevolent Greece was; in effect, diplomatic immunity in exchange for an endorsement of the junta.

Alex warned John by phone before he left England not to criticize the junta to the press, either in Athens or in London, and to behave himself at all times in Greece. But when the commercial jet arrived at the airport, John emerged from the door wearing a military jacket and immediately began saluting every soldier in sight. When Alex got up close to him, he could see by John’s glazed eyes how stoned he was and barely got him out of the airport before he insulted the general who had come to greet him.

Alex had gone to a lot of trouble for nothing; John wasn’t in Greece five minutes before he discovered he had left his LSD supply in London. He was inconsolable when he realized this. “What good is the Parthenon without LSD?” he demanded. Magic Alex knew of no LSD in Greece and wasn’t about to try to find any. The only way John was going to get any LSD would be to import it from London.

Alex, believing his phone was tapped, made a cautious phone call to Mal Evans at the NEMS office. “John isn’t well, Mal,” Alex told him cryptically. “You’ve got to come to Greece and bring his medicine.”

“What medicine?” Mal asked, baffled.

“You know, the medicine for his
acidity…”

Mal was on the next flight for Athens, and John was tripping the next day. The Beatles were unmercifully exploited by the Greek government. They were driven around from location to location in the hot Mediterranean sun without a break for fourteen hours straight. The photographs of them appeared on wire services throughout the world. The Beatles’ sudden endorsement of Greece caused some puzzlement but was never explained.

The Beatles loved the islands that Magic Alex picked out for them, and I tried to make the arrangements to purchase them in London. Bryce-Hamner was instructed to purchase the necessary “premium dollars” from the English government to buy foreign property. The Beatles applied for £95,000, on which they had to pay a 25 percent premium per pound. The Beatles’ accountant prepared an analysis that showed the Beatles had only £137,000 in cash to spend and that purchasing the islands would be disastrous to their finances. But the Beatles persisted, and arrangements for the purchase were made directly with James Callahan, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In a letter Callahan sent to the Beatles, he pointed out that £95,000 was the absolute limit to the amount of pounds he would allow to flow outside of the country. He added at the bottom of the letter, in his own hand, “But not a penny more… I wonder how you’re going to furnish it?”

The islands finally turned into so much of a hassle, like everything else they wanted to do, they quickly tired of the problems and sold the property dollars back to the government at the new going rate of 37 percent, making a handsome profit of £11,400 in the process.

In his den
at 24 Chapel Street, Brian fretted over the boys’ scheme to buy a Greek island. He didn’t especially trust Magic Alex, and there was never any suggestion from the Beatles that Brian come to Greece with them. He wrote to Nat Weiss while they were away in Greece that he thought the idea was dotty. “But they’re no longer children, and they must have their own way.”

Brian had more pressing problems. He had now come to completely regret his option agreement with Stigwood and Shaw. With every day he was growing increasingly more upset over what he saw as Stigwood’s personal extravagance: NEMS executives had a charge at a local butcher where they were charging Sunday turkeys; articles of personal clothing were charged to the company account at Harrods; and when Stigwood took the Bee Gees to New York for a promotional trip, he rented a yacht for them to sail around Manhattan Island. Stigwood told Nat to charge the boat to his personal account, and Nat forwarded this information to Brian in London. “What personal account?” Brian fumed. “When the Bee Gees are as successful as the Beatles, then Robert can rent them a yacht around Manhattan!” Brian’s personal hope was that Stigwood and Shaw would not be able to raise the £500,000 to close the option. There was some doubt they were going to be able to raise the money in the financial community, but Stigwood insisted there was no problem and that Brian should inform the Beatles of what was taking place.

It was also just at this time that Cilia Black informed Brian that she had decided to leave NEMS. While the Beatles didn’t seem to mind Brian’s unpredictable hours and behavior, it was an impossibility for Cilia to nurture a still-growing career with Brian so incapacitated. When Cilia called him at home she got either his secretary or a butler, who made embarrassed excuses for him. He canceled or missed half a dozen appointments and sent flowers and candy or notes of apology the next day. Sometimes Vic Lewis would be sent in his place and would refer to Cilla as “my star,” affronting her. Cilia didn’t even think she was Brian’s star.

In a last-ditch effort to save their relationship, Brian sent Clive to make a personal plea that Cilla and Bobby attend one last luncheon at Chapel Street. On the Wednesday morning of the lunch, I called Cilia to make sure they were coming. Brian was very nervous all morning, and I joined them at lunch for moral support. Brian had the butler lay out the best silver and china and served fillet of beef and champagne. No mention of Cilla’s departure was made at all. Later, just Brian, Cilia, and Bobby went up to the roof garden and stood at the railing, looking out over the city. “There are only five people I love in the world,” Brian said, tears coming to his eyes. “And that’s the four Beatles and you, Cilla.” Cilla hugged him tightly. “Please don’t leave me, my Cilia, please …” he whispered.

The next day Brian arranged a meeting with the BBC to produce a new TV series for Cilia. It went on the air a few months later, and became a sensation. “The Cilia Black Show” was one of the most successful female variety TV shows in British history, winning Cilla the TV Personality of the Year award for several years in a row and establishing her as a major star.

It must have seemed to Brian that whatever tenuous hold he had on those around him was slipping. That July his father died of a heart attack while away on vacation in Bournemouth. A badly shaken Brian returned to Liverpool to be at Queenie’s side for the funeral. Queenie was deeply depressed at this tragic end of her thirty-four-year-long marriage. When Brian and Queenie returned home from the funeral together, they sat on a sofa in the living room of Queenie’s house.

“What will you do now, Mother?” Brian asked her quietly.

“I don’t know,” Queenie said.

“Come to London, then,” Brian begged her. “Come to London to live. What do you want with Liverpool? I’ll find a flat for you near my house, and we’ll decorate it splendidly. We’ll have the best time!”

Queenie hugged him and wept. “I need you, Brian,” she told him. “I do so need you.”

“Now, now, Mother,” Brian said softly. “I need you more than you could ever need me.”

On August 14 Queenie arrived in London to stay with Brian at Chapel Street, and an immediate change came over him. Queenie woke him each morning by coming into his room and pulling back the drapes to let the sun in. He showered and dressed, and they ate breakfast together in his room while discussing his plans for the day. He went to the office every day and worked diligently. At night he took Queenie to the theater or a restaurant. His use of barbiturates was discreet, and he didn’t seem to let it interfere with his work or his sleep. He was clearly a man more in control of himself, and his close friends felt a sense of relief. One day Cilla Black and Bobby Willis were pleased to find him waiting for them at Euston Station when she returned from a visit to Liverpool. Brian said he had come by just to show her how much he loved her. He took her out to lunch that day, and it seemed like old times for a while. Then he told her he had a surprise for her; he had arranged for her to appear on the Eurovision TV contest, which was broadcast all over the continent. Cilia and Bobby were surprised at what they thought was a ridiculous decision. Only the year before another English female singer had won the contest. To think Cilla could win was hopeless. But Brian insisted; he knew what was best, and she would appear on the show. Cilia and Bobby left lunch that day, determined that her management contract had to be terminated.

On a warm Sunday night near the end of August, Brian was leaving the Saville Theater with his mother when the paparazzi closed in around them, strobe lights flashing like so many excited fireflies. “When will I see these photographs?” Queenie asked, getting into the backseat of Brian’s Rolls-Royce with him.

“Either when I’m bankrupt or I’m dead,” Brian told her.

Queenie left London the next day, August 24.

As Queenie sat in the train
on the way home to Liverpool, John, Paul, and George were on their way to the Park Lane Hilton Hotel to hear the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi speak his wisdom. They had first been alerted to the Maharishi through Pattie Harrison, who had been introduced to Transcendental Meditation as a way to get “high” on her first trip to India with George. Although George had become an aficionado of Indian music and food, the religious aspects of the culture still eluded him. Pattie taught herself mysticism and TM from books, and that previous February she had surprised George by enrolling in the Spiritual Regeneration Movement. She attended these meetings once a week without him. When Pattie told George that she had been “indoctrinated” and given a “mantra”—a secret word to chant—George felt left out. “What kind of scene is this if they make you keep secrets from your friends?” When Pattie heard that the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi himself would lecture on August 24 at the Hilton, she started a ground-swell movement to get the Beatles to go. As an added inducement, Magic Alex had heard the Maharishi lecture years before at a university in Athens, and he helped Pattie lobby for all the Beatles to hear him speak. John brought Cynthia, Paul took Jane Asher and his brother Michael, and George came with Pattie and her sister Jenny. Ringo, the only Beatle who did not attend, was at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital visiting with Maureen and his newborn second son, five-day-old Jason.

When they arrived at the Hilton, the Beatles were immediately shown to the front row of the ballroom, where there were over 1,000 people in attendance. The Maharishi turned out to be a tiny, brown-skinned man with a squeaky, sing-song voice, who wore flowing white cotton robes that further dwarfed his small frame. His dramatic gray and black mane of hair flowed into a long beard with a white fringe below his bottom lip, which made him look like a beatific nanny-goat. He spoke to the Beatles of Jesus, of Buddha, of God; of eternal happiness and peace; of the inner self and of sublime consciousness; about reaching a state of nirvana—all without the use of messy and illegal drugs. His sales pitch, in short, was that Transcendental Meditation, when practiced twice a day, would make you a better, happier person at whatever it is you do.

The Maharishi was only scratching the surface of this complicated and subtle ancient Hindu practice, but he couldn’t have been more on target for the Beatles. He offered them a brand of instant relief and salvation, like a psychic Band-Aid. To demonstrate this method, the Maharishi went into a deep, trancelike state for ten minutes right there in front of them. The Beatles were overwhelmed. A holy man who could give you a magic word to chant; a mystical trance that sent you into a psychic dreamland. John in particular was swept away by his emotion. He had found it! He had found the key, the answer, what he had been looking for! The Next Big Thing.

The Maharishi may have seemed like a deeply spiritual, unworldly little guru from the Himalayas to the Beatles, but he was far from being a country bumpkin. He was a college graduate with a degree in physics. After college he learned Sanskrit and studied the scriptures with Guru Dev, the most famed of the Indian sages. The tide Maharishi, meaning saint, was reportedly self-adopted. In 1959 the Maharishi moved to various Western countries, where for eight years he had been selling his potent brand of mystic salvation when not on international lecture tours.

After the lecture the Maharishi—not unaware of the Beatles’ publicity value should they become disciples—invited them up to his hotel suite for a private audience. He told the Beatles, “You have created a magic air through your names. You have got to use that magic influence. Yours is a tremendous responsibility.” When John left the Waharishi’s suite that night, all he could say to reporters was that “I’m still in a daze.” The following day the press was informed by the Maharishi’s representatives that the Beatles and their friends had been invited to enroll in a ten-day meditation course the Maharishi was giving in Bangor, North Wales, at Normal College, and the Beatles had accepted. They would leave, along with 300 others who had signed up for the course, not by limo with an entourage and bodyguards but alone, for the first time in memory, on a public train from Euston Station.