The Love You Make (53 page)

“Oh my, what a shame,” Princess Margaret said politely.

“Can you help us?” George asked her. “Can you sort of use your influence to eliminate the bad news?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the Princess, appropriately horrified at the suggestion.

Just at that moment Pattie’s youngest sister, Paula, joined the group. Much to everyone’s wide-eyed embarrassment, she produced a joint from her pocketbook and lit it. When Paula realized everyone was glaring at her, she thought she was being discourteous by not passing the joint. She extended it to Princess Margaret and said, “Here, do you want this?”

Princess Margaret turned and fled the party with Lord Snowden following her.

Pattie and George were fined £500 for possession of drugs on March 31. Mr. Michael West, the prosecutor, noted to the judge that Pattie and George were of impeccable character. On the steps of the courthouse, Martin Polden told reporters, “The police might now accept that this is a closed season for the Beatles.”

But John and Yoko were about to give them even bigger targets.

On March 20,
only eight days after Paul and Linda were married, John and Yoko took the plunge themselves. Yoko’s divorce from Tony Cox had become final on February 2, and she was free to do as she pleased. John opted for a private small ceremony at a place where he could get married quickly, without posting banns or alerting the press. He had seen what a media circus Paul’s wedding had turned into and wanted to avoid a similar scene. I was asked to find a location for the “secret” wedding to take place. John and Yoko were in Paris on vacation when I learned that as a British resident John could get married immediately in Gibraltar if he wished. I chartered a plane for them from Paris and met them at the Gibraltar airport with photographer David Nutter, who had no idea what kind of event he had been hired to photograph. I was honored to be John and Yoko’s best man.

John and Yoko arrived at the small Gibraltar airport dressed in wrinkled matching white outfits, Yoko with her skirt halfway up her thighs. The ceremony took less than ten minutes, after which we went directly to the airport. They were on the ground only a few hours.

As private and simple as they wanted their wedding to be, they had planned to turn their honeymoon into a public piece of buffoonery. Quite suddenly, it seemed, John took up the antiwar banner and became overnight one of the most vocal and relentless nonviolent peace advocates known to the media. This was most peculiar to those who knew him, for although the anti-Vietnam War movement had long been a just and fashionable cause, this sudden dedication to it could only be attributable to Yoko’s influence. It seemed a safe and admirable choice in any case, because there was hardly anything morally outrageous about peace, and perhaps being a peace advocate would keep John out of bigger, more serious trouble. We hoped that John’s pacifist stand would deflect some of the hostility that John and Yoko were experiencing from the press, but characteristically, John made peace a holy crusade and turned his honeymoon into a side show

John and Yoko flew to Amsterdam, where they checked into a one-hundred-pounds-a-day luxury suite at the unsuspecting Amsterdam Hilton Hotel and staged the first of their infamous “bed-ins.” Scores of journalists and photographers from newspapers all over the world were invited to see the two in bed. Many of them rushed to Amsterdam expecting to see some sort of sexual act take place à la
Two Virgins,
but they were gravely disappointed. A bed-in was simply John and Yoko sitting up in bed in clean pajamas, clutching flowers, espousing peace, and eating plentiful orders of the food served to them by white-jacketed emissaries from room service. John and Yoko allegedly left bed only to go to the bathroom. This in itself didn’t seem to be the grist for headline-making news, but the amused members of the world press helped turn it into one of the most widely reported stories of John and Yoko’s adventures to date. The newlyweds welcomed reporters and photographers into their suite practically any time of the day or night to give interviews and pose for pictures. At home in England the progress of the bed-in was reported to fans with snide benevolence. A favorite headline was “John And Yoko Are Forced Out Of Bed By Maria The Maid.”

John was lying in bed in Amsterdam one day, reading about his own adventures in the English papers, when he came across an article that said that Dick James, the Beatles’ longtime music publisher, was selling all of his 37 percent of Northern Songs stock to Sir Lew Grade at ATV. Grade presumably wanted to gain control of Northern Songs by buying up any remaining stock he could find. This was a remarkable testament to the longterm worth of the Beatles’ songs; ATV’s bid for undeclared Northern Songs stock came to a staggering £19.5 million.

John was shocked, as was Paul when he heard. How could Dick James, the Beatles’ sweet, cigar-smoking “uncle”—whom they’d helped make into a multimillionaire—sell out Northern Songs without first informing them, or at least asking them if they wanted to buy it themselves. To John and Paul, Northern wasn’t just a collection of 159 compositions, it was like a child, creative flesh and blood, and selling it to their business antagonist, Sir Lew Grade, was like putting that child into an orphanage.

But Dick James had seen the writing on the wall; it was written in Allen Klein’s handwriting, and James was determined to pull out. He had greatly enhanced the value of Northern Songs by his hard work and by diversifying the catalog with the purchase of such songs as “Stardust” and “Those Were the Days.” But he also knew that the value of Northern Songs depended not only on the 159 Lennon-McCartney tunes it already owned but also on the willingness and ability of Lennon and McCartney to continue to compose together. Already John and Paul had refused to sign an extension on their songwriting contract with Northern Songs, and Dick James had good reason to doubt the longevity of their relationship. On one of his rare visits to see the Beatles at work, at the Twickenham Studios during the filming of
Let It Be,
not only did the Beatles ask him to leave but the icy tension between John and Paul made the freezing studios seem warm in comparison. Yet Dick James might have stuck it out if it hadn’t been for the injection of Allen Klein into the already volatile situation. James knew of Klein’s propensity for lawsuits and tearing up contracts, and in the few meetings James had had with him, Klein’s behavior had been characteristically harrowing. This was clearly the time to abandon ship. After all, James had Northern stockholders to consider. So he sold his stock to Lew Grade—without ever mentioning it to any of the Beatles.

With John and Yoko in Amsterdam, Paul and Linda in East Hampton, New York, on their honeymoon, and Klein on vacation in Puerto Rico, that left only George to go see Dick James to ask him to postpone the sale until Paul and John could return to London. Neil Aspinall and Derek Taylor accompanied George on this sensitive diplomatic mission. I counseled them all not to get into any trouble, but Derek and Neil seemed hell-bent on giving Dick James a piece of their minds and had a few scotch and Cokes before leaving the office.

They weren’t in Dick James’ Charing Cross Road office two minutes before things got out of hand. James said he had no intention of waiting for John to get out of bed; he said he had to move his shares quickly or the price might fall. “It’s a very serious matter,” he told them solicitously.

George lost his composure, jumped up, and began to scream,
“It’s fucking serious to John and Paul is what it is!
” Derek and Neil happily chimed in, and the meeting turned into a verbal bloodbath during which George, Neil, and Derek got out all the animosity they had been saving up for James over the years. It ended with them storming out of the office and James warning them, “You’re getting a lot of very bad advice, if I may say so.”

Again the Beatles rode into financial battle, this time with Allen Klein leading them. Klein enlisted the aid of Bruce Omrod, an officer with the merchant bank of Henry Ansbacher and Co. “Sergeant” Omrod, as he was nicknamed, was a tall, distinguished gentleman experienced in takeover battles. But Omrod had no idea what he was letting himself in for in agreeing to make a counterbid for Northern and supervise the purchase. On Friday, April 11, the Beatles formally announced their plan to fight the ATV bid. Newspaper advertisements appeared urging undecided shareholders not to accept ATV’s offers. Omrod told the
Financial Times
that the Beatles would make a substantial counteroffer. “Finding the cash is a detail, but no more than a detail.”

It was that detail that put the final wedge between John and Paul. In order to raise the money for a counteroffer, John and Paul would have to put up their shares in Northern Songs as collateral. Even Klein was chipping in by putting up 145,000 shares of his prudently held MGM stock. But under the advice of the Eastmans, Paul refused to put up his stock. At first he said it was because the Eastmans said it was too risky, until the reason became clear at a meeting at Ansbacher on April 20. When the Beatles’ Northern Stock holdings were tallied, it was disclosed that Paul had 751,000 shares of Northern Songs versus John’s 644,000. At Paul’s direction, I had been purchasing shares secretly for him in his own name. Paul had recently learned a greater appreciation for the value of a copyright, especially his own. As he put it, “It was a matter of investing in something you believed in instead of supermarkets and furniture stores… so I invested in myself.”

“You bastard!” John spit. “You’ve been buying up stock behind our backs!”

Paul blushed and shrugged limply. “Ooops, sorry!” he smiled.

“This is fuckin’ low!” John said. “This is the first time any of us have gone behind each other’s backs.”

Paul shrugged again. “I felt like I had some beanies and I wanted some more,” he said.

Without informing ATV or the Beatles, the brokers on the London market identified the holders of the outstanding shares in Northern Songs, and a meeting of the three largest shareholders was arranged to protect their investment. It was agreed to pool all the shares in a consortium representing nearly 14 percent—the decisive hand.

John’s and Paul’s first tactic was to imply that if the sale to ATV went through, they would stop composing together and not fulfill their six songs a year minimum stipulated in their Northern contracts. An exasperated Lew Grade felt it necessary to reassure the stockholders in a statement to the
Financial Times
saying, “I have every confidence in the boys’ creativity. They would not possibly be able to sit still and write only six new songs a year. Apart from that, songwriting plays an important part in the boys’ income.”

Another point of contention was that if John and Paul gained control of Northern Songs, who would sit on the board? Allen Klein? With Klein’s reputation, his presence would probably not be agreeable to the stockholders. By Easter it seemed that the consortium would throw their shares in with the Beatles on the basis of an extended songwriting contract with Northern—but only on the condition that a new board of directors would be elected. This board would be comprised of three directors—none of whom could be Allen Klein. One suggestion for a board member acceptable to both the stockholders and John and Paul was David Platz, the respected head of Essex Music Corporation and the fourteen-time winner of the Ivor Novello Award for Great Britain’s best music publisher. A second suggestion was Ian Gordon, one of the managing directors of Constellation, who had an easygoing relationship with what the consortium regarded as “show business types” like John and Paul.

On May 3 ATV made front-page financial news when they announced they were extending the date on their bid for Northern Stock until May 15. If they had not won control of the company by then, they intended to turn the tables on the Beatles and accept their partial bid of forty-two shillings, sixpence a share.

The next day Northern Songs’ price rose by nine pence.

Two days before the ATV deadline it seemed they had failed in their takeover bid, and a statement to that effect was drawn up and released to the press. In a front-page article in the
Financial Times
ATV announced they had come within 150,000 shares of owning 47 percent of Northern Songs. It appeared the Beatles had won.

Meanwhile, as Ian Gordon, officers of Astaire and Co., Eastman, Klein, John, Yoko, and Paul were tied up in a five-hour meeting, trying to come to terms with the consortium, John lost his temper. “I don’t see why I should work for a company in which I have no say,” he told those present. “I’m not going to be fucked around by men in suits sitting on their fat arses in the City.”

John’s statement effectively threw the consortium into ATV’s hands. On May 19, although ATV had already admitted defeat in the papers, the consortium signed a deal with them shortly before the Beatles’ own bid expired at three P.M. With some additional machinations and business details, the deal dragged on until October, when it was finally closed. But as far as John and Paul were concerned it was all over now except for the mopping up. They had lost their child. To pour salt in the wound, ATV appointed Dick James to sit on the board of directors.

John and Paul were left with a £5,000 bill for Ansbacher and Co.’s services.

Now was the time
for Klein to try to renegotiate the Beatles’ contract with EMI and Capitol and get them one of those huge advances he was famous for, except for one small detail—he didn’t legally represent them. All this time Klein had been operating on the Beatles’ behalf without a signed contract. He had long ago drawn up a contract for them to sign, but so far none of them had actually put his signature to it. The terms were for a three-year period, cancelable by either side at the end of each year. Klein’s fee for managing them, however, was not to be the standard 20 percent of their income—income which they were already earning before Klein appeared on the scene—but 20 percent of whatever increases he made for them. Therefore, renegotiating their recording contracts was a potentially large source of income to Klein.