Authors: Hunter Davies
‘We knew that the GCE wasn’t the opening to anything. We could have ground through all that and gone further, but not for me. I believed something was going to happen which I’d have to get through. And I knew it wasn’t GCE.
‘Up to the age of 15 I was no different from any other little cunt of 15. Then I decided I’d write a little song, and I did. But it didn’t make me any different. That’s a load of crap that I discovered a talent. I just did it. I’ve no talent, except a talent for being happy or a talent for skiving.
‘Someone wants to bust open this whole talent myth, wise everybody up. Politicians have no talent. It’s all a con.
‘Perhaps my guru will tell me what my real talent is, something else that I really should be doing.
‘I never felt any responsibility, being a so-called idol. It’s wrong of people to expect it. What they are doing is putting their responsibilities on us, as Paul said to the newspapers when he admitted taking LSD. If they were worried about him being responsible, they should have been responsible enough and not printed it, if they were genuinely worried about people copying.
‘I only felt responsible to the public in that we tried to be as natural as we could. We did put on our social faces, but that was to be expected. But given the circumstances, we were as natural as we could be. Being asked the same questions at the same sort of places all over the world, all about the four mop tops. That was boring. And having to be social to so many people and lord mayors’ wives. All those tasteless people who determine tastes. All those people with no standards, setting all the standards.
‘Even from the beginning I hated such things as meeting the promoter’s wife. People were always saying you had to go through with all the false social things. You just couldn’t be yourself. They wouldn’t understand if you said what you wanted to say. All you could do was make jokes, which I was expected to do anyway after a while. I don’t really believe people are like that. Yet why do they go through with it all?
‘I don’t have to go anywhere now, perhaps a club now and again. Cyn cons me into it. We went to some opening the other night, some old friend. David Jacobs was everywhere. I went with George. He realized what it was going to be like the minute we got to the door but I didn’t. I looked round and he’d gone. He never even went inside. But I was in and was stuck. It was horrible.
‘I’m never conscious of being a Beatle. Never. I’m just me. I’m not famous. It’s other people that do it. Until they come up and react, you’ve forgotten. Oh, yes, that’s why they’re behaving so strange, then I remember I’m a Beatle. I was more used to it a year or so ago, when we were in the thick of it, moving round the country, meeting people all the time who
you knew were going to stare. I don’t move around now, except with people I know, so I forget, till I go somewhere new and people stare.
‘People did stare at us before we were famous. Going on a bus to the Cavern, all in leather and carrying guitars. We liked it then. It was our bit of rebellion, just to annoy all the Annie Walkers sitting in the Kardomah.
‘I miss playing soft jokes on people. I used to do it on trains, go into people’s compartments and pretend to be soft, or in shops. I still feel an urge to do that, but you can’t. It would be Beatles Play Tricks. This Will Give You A Laugh.
‘We were on the way to Wembley once in the van. We wrote on a piece of paper, “Which Way to Wembley”. We spoke in a foreign language and pointed to a map of Wales. Everybody went mad putting us right.
‘We did all think of disguises once, so we could get around. George and I went through the customs in long coats and beards thinking no one would recognize us, but they all did. Paul was the best. He pretended to be a weird photographer, coming out with a lot of psychological gibberish. He even fooled Brian.’
Most of all, John misses just going out and about and being ordinary. Even though Beatlemania is long since over, it is impossible for him or any of the Beatles to go anywhere and not be recognized. Cyn can manage on her own. Her years of avoiding all publicity have now paid off. ‘But we can’t do a simple thing together as a family, like going for a walk. It’s terrible. Sometimes I wish it had never all happened.’
Of all the Beatles John is the one who most detests not being able to be a private citizen. When he thinks that perhaps he is doomed for ever to be well known, whatever he does from now on, it almost makes him scream.
‘No! You don’t think that could happen do you? Not famous for ever? What if we disappeared for years and years, wouldn’t that work? I suppose we’d then just become famous in another way, like Greta Garbo. Perhaps a new group will come along and take over from us? It would be so nice to be completely forgotten.’
Towards the end of 1967 and in early 1968 they did start trying to make contact with the real world again. They found that their faces had become so famous that, like the royal family, people don’t expect to see them in the street or in a Wimpy Bar. They managed quite easily to go to little cafés in Soho during the cutting of the
Magical Mystery Tour
. So many people at the time looked like the Beatles anyway, with sideboards and moustaches, that few believed they were the real ones.
‘I did a trial run with Ringo the other day. We went to the pictures, the first time for years and years, since we lived in Liverpool. We went to see a Morecambe and Wise film in Esher. We chose a matinée, thinking it would be quiet, but we forgot the schools were off and it was packed. We didn’t see the whole film. We had an ice cream, then left. Nobody bothered us. It was just a practice run. I might go more often now.
‘Brian used to take us to a West End theatre now and again. We’d go in a party and that would be OK. People would stare, but we wouldn’t be bothered too much. But I don’t care about the theatre, so I’m not worried about missing that. It’s just five blokes on the stage pretending to be somewhere else. But I miss the cinema. I spent all my time in Liverpool at the pictures.
‘Ringo and I also went on a bus. We just decided to try it, to see if we could do it. I’ve never been on a London bus before. It was on the Embankment. We were on the bus 20 minutes. It was great. We got recognized, but it didn’t matter too much. We were in the mood for it. We started filming all the people on the bus. The conductress told us dirty jokes. Most people didn’t really believe it was us.
‘Some newspaper rang up the office the next day. They said some woman was claiming she’d seen us on a bus. I told them to say she was wrong. It wasn’t us. The next thing would have been the newspaper ringing up and saying what was it like, John, going on a bus after all these years? I couldn’t be arsed with all that.
‘What I’d like is to be completely left alone. I’m not a mixer. I’ve got enough friends to see me through. I just want to be left alone.
‘My so-called outgoing character is all false. I kept it up for years, but I’m not a loudmouth. It was a part I put on, as a defence. I cried wolf and I’m paying for it now. I know it sounds like a moan. Perhaps it’s just because the grass is always greener.’
Paul and George do tend to go and see people now and again, but John rarely makes an attempt, to give out or make contact. Things have to come to him, or else he doesn’t care about them. And the way his life is ordered, it is hard for anything to get through to him, except on the telly, which he has on non-stop.
‘A couple of weeks of telly watching is as good as pot. When I used to watch it a few years ago I couldn’t stand people like Hughie Green, now he doesn’t annoy me. He amuses me. He and Michael Miles are my favourites. Everything’s the same. It’s like a newspaper. You read all the stories and they go into your head as one.
‘I think a lot when I’m watching telly. It’s like looking into the fire and daydreaming. You’re watching it, but your mind’s not on it.’
The only live stimulus he gets is from the other Beatles. No one has been within light years of taking their place in his life.
At first, they naturally repelled all boarders, because they were so busy going their own way, doing their own things together. When they became famous and people deliberately tried to get into their circle, usually for the wrong reasons, they actively and brutally repulsed all advances.
Most show-business stars change their friends as they change the size of the billing. Apart from Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles have picked up no friends from the pop music world. In their normal daily life, there is still only each other or Mal, Neil and Terry.
‘We have met some new people since we’ve become famous, but we’ve never been able to stand them for more than two days. Some hang on a bit longer, perhaps a few weeks, but that’s all. Most people don’t get across to us.’
John sees Ringo most of all, as he lives just round the corner. He pops round to his place when he’s bored, to mess around in Ringo’s garden or play with Ringo’s expensive toys. They never make dates or proper arrangements. Things are just done as the mood takes them. Everything’s on a basis of if I see you, I see you.
John most of all can’t be without the other three for very long, which is hard luck on Cyn. He doesn’t mean it in any way nastily, as he doesn’t mean not talking to her or going into a semi-trance to be an insult to her. That’s just him, which she has to accept.
‘If I am on my own for three days, doing nothing, I almost leave myself completely. I’m just not here. Cyn doesn’t realize it. I’m up there watching myself, or I’m at the back of my head. I can see my hands and realize they’re moving, but it’s a robot who’s doing it.
‘Ringo understands it. I can discuss it with him. I have to see the others to see myself. I realize then there is someone else like me, so it’s satisfying and reassuring. It’s frightening really, when it gets too bad. I have to see them to establish contact with myself again and come down.
‘Sometimes I don’t come down. We were recording the other night and I just wasn’t there. Neither was Paul. We were like two robots, going through the motions.
‘We do need each other a lot. When we used to meet again after an interval we always used to be embarrassed about touching each other. We’d do an elaborate hand shake, just to hide the embarrassment. Or we did mad dances. Then we got to hugging each other. Now we do the Buddhist bit, arms around. It’s just saying hello, that’s all.’
Now and again he gets the desire to go off somewhere, with Cyn and Julian, and of course the Beatles as well. The Greek island idea, which John was particularly keen on, greatly appealed to him at the time. ‘We’re all going to live there, perhaps for ever, just coming home for visits. Or it might just be six months a year. It’ll be fantastic, all on our own on this island. There’s
some little houses which we’ll do up and knock together and live sort of communally.
‘I’m not worried about the political situation in Greece, as long as it doesn’t affect us. I don’t care if the government is all fascist, or communist. I don’t care. They’re all as bad as here, worse most of them. I’ve seen England and the USA, and I don’t care for either of their governments. They’re all the same. Look what they do here. They stopped Radio Caroline and tried to put the Stones away, while they’re spending billions on nuclear armaments and the place is full of US bases that no one knows about. They’re all over North Wales.’
But the Greek idea came to nothing, as did other mad ideas John’s had from time to time in the last two years. One day he was all set to go to India in his caravan, though the caravan doesn’t look strong enough to take him into Weybridge. He and Cyn and Julian were going to live inside it, so he said, while Anthony, his chauffeur, pulled them in the Rolls. Another idea was to go off and live on an island off the coast of Ireland. He did buy the island. ‘No, I can’t remember where. Just somewhere off Ireland.’
But the Greek idea was discussed for many weeks. It even got to the stage of trying to work out what to do about Julian and his schooling.
John has some strong theories about the sort of schooling he wants Julian to have, but he usually forgets about them when he’s contemplating six months on a deserted Greek island.
‘He could go to a school in Greece,’ he told Cyn, who was obviously much more realistic about the problem than John. ‘What’s wrong with that? He’d just spend six months of the year there and the rest here at his English school. These little Greek village schools are very good, you know. Why can’t Julian go along with them? He’ll soon pick up the language.’
Cynthia said the chopping and changing around wouldn’t do him any good. John then thought of sending him to the English school in Athens, where all the British diplomats and others send their kids. Cyn pointed out that would mean him
boarding in Athens. They were both against that. Neither wants him to go away to boarding school.
John would prefer a council school, if possible. He’d just found out that the local nursery school Julian was going to wasn’t a council one, as he’d thought. Cynthia explained to him that there wasn’t a council nursery school she could get him into, that was why she’d done it.
‘I don’t know,’ said John. ‘I suppose the fee-paying schools are no worse than the others. As long as he’s happy. What does it matter if you have to pay? But I definitely won’t send him to a boarding school. I wouldn’t send him to Eton. They’d teach him to believe all that shit if he went to Eton. Perhaps a Buddhist school, if there is one. Or a day school, a progressive one, not far from Weybridge, that’s all we want.
‘We’ve been thinking of Julian’s schooling for some time. I even got a book out about all the schools in England. All they went on about was that they could offer football and tennis. Ridiculous, isn’t it? They’ve got all their priorities wrong. He’s got to be taught to be aware of other people, that’s all. He doesn’t want to know how Sir Francis Drake killed all the Spaniards and that Britain invented television and all that shit fool nationalistic stuff. He wants to know how to live in this world.
‘If we do go abroad, then I suppose it’ll have to be a tutor, but we’ll have to make sure there are other kids for him to play with. I had a happy childhood. I liked being at school. It was just that the teachers hated me and I hated teachers. But I liked school. When we’re all talking about our memories, it’s sometimes us as the Beatles, but more often it’s remembering about our school days.