The Love You Make (45 page)

Paul and Jane stuck it out for six weeks. Paul simply wasn’t getting it. Or believing it either. The mock seriousness of the Maharishi and the tediousness of meditation were too much like school for him. Paul and Jane were much too sophisticated for this mystical gibberish. But when they were greeted by the press at Heathrow, they said none of this, only that they missed London and wanted to get home.

John and George, however, remained true believers, despite the growing skepticism of their friends, Neil Aspinall among them. Neil was flying in and out of London to the ashram at regular intervals, keeping the Beatles informed on the progress of Apple. One of these trips concerned making a deal with the Maharishi for a film about him. Neil expected to have a hard time explaining the business arrangements to the spiritual man, only to find the Maharishi employed a full-time accountant. For a long while Neil and the guru haggled over an additional two and a half points. “Wait a minute,” Neil thought, “this guy knows more about making deals than I do. He’s really into scoring, the Maharishi.”

The Maharishi’s most powerful critic turned out to be Magic Alex. Alex was summoned to Rishekesh by John, who missed his company. When Alex arrived at the ashram, he was appalled at what he found. “An ashram with four-poster beds?” he demanded incredulously. “Masseurs, and servants bringing water, houses with facilities, an accountant—I never saw a holy man with a bookkeeper!”

According to Alex, the sweet old women at the ashram Cynthia liked so much for their warmth and openness were “mentally ill Swedish old ladies who had left their money to the Maharishi. There were also a couple of second-rate American actresses. Lots of people went to India,” he said, “to find things they couldn’t find at home, including a bunch of lost, pretty girls.” Alex was disgusted to observe the Maharishi herding them together for a group photograph, like a class picture, which he would use for publicity.

It was also quite apparent that John was totally under the Maharishi’s control. John had been completely free of drugs and alcohol for over a month by the time Alex arrived, and he was the healthiest he had been in years, but Alex still felt the Maharishi was getting more than he was giving. Alex was at camp for only a week when he heard that the Maharishi expected the Beatles to tithe over 10 to 25 percent of their annual income to a Swiss account in his name. Alex reproved the Maharishi for this, accusing him of having too many mercenary motives to his association with the Beatles. Alex claims the Maharishi tried to placate him by offering to pay Alex to build a high-powered radio station on the grounds of the ashram so that he could broadcast his holy message to India’s masses.

By the end of the tenth week, Alex was bent on undermining the Maharishi’s influence. He began by smuggling wine into the compound, having secured it on trips to the local village. The men would not drink, but the girls did. Late at night Alex would distribute the wine to the women while John and George were writing songs. During one of these late night, secret drinking sessions, a pretty blond nurse from California admitted that during a private consultation with the Maharishi she had been fed chicken for dinner.

The Maharishi’s menu became a subject of great debate over the next week as word spread through the ashram that someone had accused him of smuggling chicken into the vegetarian community. Oddly, whether or not it was appropriate for Alex to be smuggling wine in was never questioned. In general nobody at the camp cared if the Maharishi had a little chicken on the side once in a while, but then, in the eleventh week, the story got worse. The same girl confided to Alex that not only had she been fed chicken during one of her private consultations but that the Maharishi had made sexual advances to her. The Maharishi began by asking to hold her hand so that his spiritual power would flow between them. It soon developed that he had a more complicated but very old-fashioned method for facilitating the flow. On five separate occasions, eager to please the great teacher, the girl lay back, closed her eyes, and thought of California while the little guru ministered to her flesh.

When Alex transmitted this information to all the other women the following day, they were appropriately horrified. The thought that the Maharishi was not only a religious phoney but also one of such seedy proportions made some of them break down and weep. Cynthia, for one, didn’t believe a word of it. She had long ago become acquainted with Alex’s jealousy over anyone who had John’s attention, and she didn’t doubt that Alex would lie to destroy the Maharishi’s hold. As for the testimony of the American nurse, Cynthia claimed to have seen the girl in Alex’s room sitting at a candlelit table one night. While anyone else would have jumped to a sexual conclusion, Cynthia became convinced that Alex was using “black magic” to bewitch the girl.

Alex decided to set a trap for the Maharishi. On the nurse’s next trip to the Maharishi’s house, it was arranged for several “witnesses” to hide in the bushes outside the Maharishi’s windows. When the Maharishi began to make advances, the girl was to scream, and everyone would come running to her aid. The Beatles and their wives, when told of this plan, strongly disapproved of Alex’s tactics and would have nothing to do with it, but the plan proceeded nevertheless.

Late that night Alex and the nurse returned from the Maharishi’s house with another tale. The girl was again served chicken, after which the Maharishi made sexual advances, but for some reason the girl did not call out for help as planned. As the scene and the Maharishi began to unfold before Alex’s eyes, Alex made a loud noise outside the window to distract him. Afraid they would be discovered by an intruder, the Maharishi fixed his clothing and sent the girl away at once.

John, George, and Alex sat up arguing about it all night. George didn’t believe a word of it, and he was furious with Alex. John had serious doubts. The Maharishi had indeed turned out to be as worldly and mercenary as the rest. John had expected a ticket to peace, but it turned out that the little LSD pills he nibbled on at home were more effective in the long run. The decision was made to leave early the next morning. Alex was afraid that the Maharishi might try to block their way by refusing to help them find transportation, and there was such urgency to their departure that Cynthia and Pattie were ordered to leave behind all their accumulated souvenirs. Shortly after breakfast, the Maharishi entered the compound and took his place, cross-legged, under a little grass canopy. Cynthia could see he was far from giggling. The three men went up to see him. John had been elected as spokesman, although he hated the task. “We’re leaving, Maharishi,” he said.

The little man looked pained. “But why?” he asked.

John didn’t have the courage to confront him. Evasively, he said, “You’re the cosmic one, you should know” The Maharishi looked as if he wanted to kill him. The guru said all he could to persuade them to stay without discussing the true reason they were leaving. As far as his unnamed trespasses went, he said that the truth was like an iceberg with only ten percent showing. It was not enough. Alex was dispatched to the nearby town of Deradoon to fetch taxis.

According to Alex, just as he had predicted the Maharishi had put the word out in the small adjacent town that the Beatles were not to be assisted in leaving. Alex was made to understand by the townspeople that the Maharishi would put some sort of jinx on them if they helped. Alex even offered to buy two taxis and finally managed to rent two old cars and their drivers. He had them driven to the ashram, where they loaded whatever luggage could fit in the trunks. They piled into the cars and drove off with the Maharishi watching sadly from the gates.

The cars broke down every few kilometers, and John and Cynthia’s car got a flat. Everybody thought the Maharishi had put some sort of curse on them. There was no spare tire, and while Pattie and George went ahead for help, John and Cynthia and their driver sat alongside a deserted road in the baking heat for more than three hours before two Eastern-educated travelers recognized John and stopped to give them a lift.

Exhausted and angry when they finally reached Delhi, they checked into the Hilton and were immediately recognized. It was only a matter of twenty minutes before foreign correspondents and reporters from every wire service were milling about the lobby of the hotel, trying to get a statement from the Beatles about why they were leaving the ashram. Wisely, it was agreed that while they were still in India they would say nothing of what had transpired. John and George told the press they had left because they had pressing business in London, and they did not wish to be in a film the Maharishi was planning to shoot.

Back in London the Beatles decided to observe a code of silence about the incident. They decided that if the story were told in full, it would only reflect poorly on them. In later years bits and pieces of the story did get out but were greatly distorted. One widely circulated and believed story incorrectly names Mia Farrow as the Maharishi’s corespondent. Individually the Beatles had predictable reactions to the Maharishi incident. Ringo was benign, Paul was smug in an I-told-you-so sort of way, and George remained a stubborn believer and determined follower. To this day George is one of the many convinced that Alex was lying and trying to slander the Maharishi in order to get John away from him. John had the strongest reaction of all; he felt duped. He felt used, for the millionth time, and he was angry as hell. He took some of his anger out in a song about the Maharishi, but at the last minute he changed the title to “Sexy Sadie” to avoid a possible libel suit. The Maharishi was added to his long collection of disappointments, and John was once again open and gullible for the Next Big Thing to come.

Little could anyone
, not even Cynthia, have expected the Next Big Thing to be Yoko Ono. It was on the airplane going home from Delhi that John and Cynthia first had that little talk about their marriage. Cynthia doesn’t remember exactly how they eased into it, but it started with lots of scotch and Cokes, which they hadn’t had in a long time, and ended with John making the most remarkable admission to her; he hadn’t been faithful to her throughout their married life.

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Cynthia said, staring out of the plane window with a sad, distant look on her face. “It’s worse knowing than not knowing,” she said. She also worried that John’s sudden need for confession was a bad omen of things to come.

“But you’ve got to bloody hear it, Cyn,” John said, putting his hand on her arm. “What the fuck do you think I’ve been doing on the road all those years? There was a bloody slew of girls—”

“In Hamburg,” Cynthia interrupted. “Yes, I knew that—”

“In Liverpool, too! Dozens and dozens, the whole time we were going together.”

Tears welled in Cynthia’s eyes and spilled out onto her cheeks. She wiped them away with one finger under her glasses.

“There were an uncountable number,” John insisted, “in hotel rooms throughout the bloody world! But I was afraid for you to find out. That’s what ‘Norwegian Wood’ was all about, the lyrics that nobody could understand. I wrote it about an affair and made it all gobbledygook so you wouldn’t know. And do you remember whatshisname and his sobbing wife turning up at the door while I was away on tour? Yeah, her too.”

“I don’t want to hear any more,” Cynthia pleaded. But John had caught fire with the idea, the flames fanned by winds of release and honesty. He went on to claim affairs with a well-known English journalist and in America with Joan Baez, among others. There had also been an intermittent affair with an English actress. The rest were one-night stands, sometimes Playboy bunnies set up for him at the homes of friends in London.

By the time their plane landed at Heathrow, Cynthia was in a panic. John’s confession had made her so insecure, it was all she could do to stop herself from clinging to him in the terminal. She worried herself sick over his infidelities, and in the coming weeks she became impossible for him to be with. The following weekend John went away by himself to visit with Derek Taylor and his wife and four children. He spent the day tripping on LSD, one of the first trips since returning from India. Derek spent the day feeding John’s ego, reminding him of how lucky and talented he was. The day with the happy family in the country lifted John’s spirits temporarily. He returned home that night still tripping, ebullient about having more children. He hugged Cynthia to him and said, “Christ, Cyn, it was great. We’ve got to have more children!” Cynthia was so disheartened by this sudden burst of affection, which she knew was only a side effect of the LSD, she burst into tears.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he shouted at her.

“One LSD trip isn’t going to guarantee
my
future!” she shouted back at him. “What’s that going to solve?”

“Goddamn you, Powell!” he shouted at her.

“It’s not me you want, it’s that Japanese woman, Yoko Ono,” Cynthia said through her tears. “Maybe you’re right, maybe she is the woman for you.”

John said that was ridiculous. Yoko Ono was crazy. He had no interest in her.

The atmosphere in the house became impossibly tense. Cynthia was nervous and depressed, on the verge of a breakdown. “I felt … as though I was sitting on the edge of a volcano,” she said. “John suggested that as he had to work for long hours in the recording studios for a few weeks, I should accompany Jenny and Alex on a holiday to Greece.”

Julian was packed off to live with Mrs. Jarlett, and John sat alone in the house. He dipped his fingers into his magic mortar, wandered around London, and had a few laughs with his mates Terry Doran and Derek. He called up Pete Shotton at the Apple Boutique and asked him if he would like to spend the night at Kenwood with him, so he wouldn’t have to watch TV alone. Late that night they sat in the sunroom at the back of the house, the TV on with the sound off, music on the stereo, shooting the bull about their favorite conquests. Suddenly, Jonn said, “I’ve met this woman called Yoko. She’s Japanese.”