The Love You Make (49 page)

Audition tapes for Apple Records arrived by the tens of thousands at Savile Row, so many that Ron Kass estimated that five men in five years couldn’t finish listening to them all. In general, the prevailing attitude at Apple Records was “Sign ’em up!” With the newfound power of being starmakers themselves, almost everybody in the entourage believed he had “discovered” the next major pop star. Terry Doran signed a group of teenagers called Grapefruit, who set about recording an album; Mal Evans discovered the Iveys, who were signed on the basis of a demonstration tape and sent into the studios; George signed Jackie Lomax, a singer from Liverpool, the singers of the Hare Krishna Temple, a husky-voiced black American R&B singer named Doris Troy, and noted session keyboard player Billy Preston; a Swedish group called Bamboo was flown to London for a live audition; John gave a contract to a group called Contact, who sang a tune called “Lovers from the Sky” about flying saucers. To give the Apple label “broader appeal,” Paul signed the winners of the English brass-band competition, The Black Dyke Mills Brass Band, and the prestigious Modern Jazz Quartet. A “spoken word” series was created to record famous writers and poets reading their own works, and Ken Kesey, the American writer who had in part inspired Paul’s conception of the
Magical Mystery Tour,
was imported to London and given a typewriter and a recording contract.

Some of Apple’s discoveries were especially promising. Peter Asher had signed a young American boy named James Taylor. Taylor played acoustical guitar and sang bittersweet love songs with a world-weary resignation, although at the time he was so young his father had to cosign his contracts. Asher believed so strongly in Taylor that he wanted to manage him too. The only reluctance in awarding Taylor a contract was that his sporadic heroin use was not a promising addiction for a young musician. Taylor was eventually signed and sent to the studios to record a single, “Carolina on My Mind,” and later he made an LP. Paul also had high hopes for a seventeen-year-old Welsh singer named Mary Hopkin. Hopkin had been brought to Paul’s attention by the model Twiggy as the three-time winner of a TV talent show called “Opportunity Knocks.” Paul was producing a single with Hopkin called “Those Were the Days,” a folk-rock song with an eastern European flavor, written by songwriter Gene Raskin. “Those Were the Days” was being included in a specially boxed introductory set of new Apple releases called The
First Four.
A copy of
The First Four
was dutifully delivered by hand to Buckingham Palace. The other tunes were a George Harrison composition entitled “Sour Milk Sea,” sung by Jackie Lomax, and the Black Dyke Mills Band playing a Lennon-McCartney composition called “Thingumybob.”

The Beatles’ personal contribution to
The First Four
was the single “Hey Jude,” backed with John’s “Revolution.” “Hey Jude” had turned into a pop epic. Beginning with Paul’s plaintive voice against simple instrumentation, it built to a melancholy anthem of forty instruments and a chorus of one hundred voices chanting a four-minute coda. To help publicize the release of “Hey Jude,” Paul decided to put the closed boutique at Baker and Paddington Streets to some good use. Late one night he snuck into the store and whitewashed the windows. Then he wrote HEY JUDE across it in block letters. The following morning, when the neighborhood shopkeepers arrived to open their stores, they were incensed; never having heard of the song “Hey Jude
n
” before, they took it as an anti-Semitic slur. A brick was thrown through the store window before the words could be cleaned off and the misunderstanding straightened out.

As it turned out, Paul need not have worried about such a small publicity gimmick; “Hey Jude” became one of the biggest selling singles in England in twenty years. Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were the Days” sold almost as well, and throughout the summer both songs fought for the top spot on the record charts, selling a combined thirteen million copies in all.

In its own right, the Beatles’ new double album was no less successful. Entitled
The Beatles,
the album became known to the public as the
White Album,
because of its stark, glossy-white laminated jacket, with the words, “The Beatles,” in almost invisible raised lettering. It was Paul’s idea to have each album individually numbered, like fine lithographs. And indeed, the
White Album
was a work of art. The thirty songs on the two-record set took them an unprecedented five months to record and mix. The critics were ecstatic at the huge selection and diversity of taste on the LP, ranging from John’s “Revolution 9,” a taste of his experimental tapes with a strong influence from Yoko, to Paul’s pudding-sweet “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da.” Tony Palmer, in the
London Observer
, raved, “If there is still any doubt that Lennon and McCartney are the greatest songwriters since Shubert, then … [the
White Album
] … should surely see the last vestiges of cultural snobbery and bourgeois prejudice swept away in a deluge of joyful music making….” None of the critics noted, however, that perhaps some of the album’s diversity was due to the work of individuals rather than the four Beatles working in collaboration. By the time of the
White Album
sessions, the Beatles’ working relationship had disintegrated to the point where the only way for them to get anything accomplished in the studio was for one of them to wrest control for the recording of his own composition while the others played “backup band.” This put Paul at the controls most of the time, with John in second place, and George in a poor third with only four of his own compositions on the finished album. George had so much trouble getting John and Paul’s attention that he even brought famed guitarist Eric Clapton into the studios with him to use as his “session guitarist.”

Ringo contributed hardly at all. He had finally become superfluous to the Beatles. Most of the time he spent in the studio he sat in a corner playing cards with Neil and Mal. It was a poorly kept secret among Beatle intimates that after Ringo left the studios, Paul would often dub in the drum tracks himself. When Ringo returned to the studio the next day, he would pretend not to notice that it was not his playing. The fans never knew, but it must have cut him terribly. The message from Paul and the others was clear; this little man who had lucked into the group and sailed with them to the big times was not good enough musically to play with them.

One day Ringo arrived home after a recording session during which Paul had lectured him on how to play, and he told Maureen tearfully that he “was no longer a Beatle,” that he had quit. Maureen was terrified at first. Ringo sat at home for the next few days and brooded or played with his kids while the recording sessions went on without him. When he got bored and peeved that the others had not attempted to draw him back, he sheepishly announced that he was “returning to the Beatles.” The evening he arrived back in the studios the other three arranged to have his drum kit smothered in several hundred pounds’ worth of flowers. Ringo was delighted and all was forgiven, but the rot had already set in; the foundation of the group was cracking, and no amount of flowers would be able to cover it up.

chapter Sixteen

And they were both naked, the man and
his wife, and were not ashamed
.

—Gen. 2:25

In October of 1968
the Fleet Street gossip mill had uncovered an item that brought cries of moral indignation from kitchens and living rooms all over Great Britain: Yoko Ono was pregnant with John Lennon’s child. The public was outraged, fans as well as parents; first John had ditched his good English wife to take up with this interfering foreigner, now she was pregnant out of wedlock. To top it off, unknown to the public, the police were apparently tipped off that John and Yoko were using heavy drugs.

The establishment came down on them with an iron fist.

It was about eleven-thirty on the morning of October 18 that there was a knock on the door at Montague Square. John had just woken up and was trying to get himself in shape to appear at Apple for a press conference about his upcoming single. He was pale and felt sickly that morning; his hair hadn’t been washed in days. When he opened the door he was faced with Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher of the Scotland Yard Drug Enforcement Squad, along with six policemen, one policewoman for Yoko, and two drug-sniffing canines. As John and Yoko sat next to each other, this team tore through the apartment, turning it upside down as they searched for contraband. One of the police dogs sniffed out some marijuana residue in a binocular case on the mantel, and some marijuana seeds were found in a forgotten rolling machine hidden on the top of the bathroom mirror. A larger quantity of marijuana was later found in a film can inside an old camera case in a rear storage room.

John and Yoko had already heard about Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher, who was making quite a name for himself as an antidrug zealot. Pilcher had launched a vigorous campaign against drugs in this very druggy era, and his primary targets were those he saw as the foremost purveyors of drugs to teenagers: rock stars. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had already fallen victim to the Drug Enforcement Squad. The previous spring they had raided Keith Richards’ country house in Witterlings, known as “Redlands.” Pattie and George Harrison had spent all the day at Redlands, along with Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, art dealer Robert Fraser, and a big-time international dealer to the rock trade. Some of the guests passed the day tripping on LSD or dabbling in heroin. Pattie and George left rather hurriedly in the late afternoon when Marianne Faithfull appeared naked after a bath and wrapped herself in a tawny fur rug. Pilcher raided the house shortly after they left. Some newspaper accounts intimated that a famous rock star and his wife were at the house all day but that the Drug Squad had waited for them to leave before raiding the house. This was presumed to have been in deference to Brian Epstein’s reputation, as well as David Jacobs’ expertise as an attorney. But they were both dead now, and an open season had been declared on pop stars. John was the next righteous target.

I was at a rehearsal hall watching Mary Hopkin prepare for an appearance on a TV show, when I received an emergency phone call from Neil. Neil said he had called the Montague Square flat and a strange man had answered the phone and said John was not there. “Who are you?” the man asked Neil. “Who the fuck are
you
?” Neil demanded. After a few moments John was put on the phone. “You better cancel the press conference for today,” John told him.

“Okay, but why?”

“Imagine your worst paranoia,” John said. “Because it’s here.”

I set off for Montague Square at once and arrived just as John and Yoko were being formally charged with possession, with a charge of willful obstruction of search added for good measure. John, in a black army jacket, black pants, and white sneakers, was ashen-faced and frightened and chain-smoking cigarettes. Yoko was also dressed in black. They were marched out of the flat to a waiting mob of photographers, a pitiful sight as they were led to a police car, with Yoko trailing behind in the custody of a stern policewoman.

Informed at his home that John had been taken to Marylebone Station to be booked, Paul McCartney loyally came to John’s rescue. He placed an emergency call to Sir Joseph Lockwood at EMI, asking him if he could use his political influence and connections to help John. Sir Joe agreed to call Marylebone Station and advise John. By this time, John had regained his composure, and he answered Sir Joe’s phone call, “Hello! This is Sergeant Lennon, can I help you?”

Later that afternoon John and Yoko were released, and on the way back to the apartment, John filled Neil in on the details behind the day’s events, which are told here for the first time. Actually, John and Yoko had been tipped off days before that there was a rumor they were targeted for a bust. John had decided to “clean house” and dispose of any large amounts of drugs—larger than could be disposed of at a moment’s notice. That’s why no heroin was found and also why a charge of obstructing the search was pressed; John wouldn’t let them in while he flushed the remnants down the toilet. John also told Neil that he was high on heroin when the police knocked on the door, but Yoko later denied that this was so. As far as the marijuana they found, John had no idea it was there. He had been so meticulous in his housecleaning that he even had washed the bowl they kept the marijuana in. The film can the police found hadn’t been touched in two years. It had been moved into the storage room by the chauffeur, and John didn’t have a clue it was there.

A few hours after the harrowing arrest, Yoko almost miscarried and was confined to bed. On October 18 she was rushed to the Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital for a series of blood transfusions. John insisted on staying with her in the hospital at all times. For the first few nights he slept in the next bed in her room, but when the hospital needed the bed for a real patient, he slept on pillows on the floor. On November 21, when it became clear that Yoko would not carry to term despite all the emergency medical treatment, and that their unborn child would die inside Yoko’s womb, John asked that a Nagra tape recorder be brought to the hospital. Using a stethoscopic microphone, he recorded the embryo’s last fluttering heartbeats as it died.

Since the dead baby was old enough to legally warrant a death certificate, they had to name it. John called it John Ono Lennon II. He ordered a tiny coffin for him and had it buried in an undisclosed location without telling anyone but Yoko. That night at the hospital he cried himself to sleep on the floor at her bedside.

The
Times
treated the loss with brevity, but it was certain to note that on November 22 “Yoko Ono, the Japanese artist and friend of John Lennon and the Beatles, has had a miscarriage in Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital. Mr. Lennon has said he was the father.”

Later, on November 28, still weak and sick, Yoko appeared with John at the Marylebone Magistrates Court. They clung to each other, depressed and beaten, glassy-eyed with the pain of the world’s persecution. John pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis, with the understanding that his guilty plea would absolve Yoko of any responsibility. He was fined £150. It seemed like a small price on the surface, but in John’s and Yoko’s minds, at least, the arrest had cost them their child.