Fire and Rain (22 page)

Two days later, Thursday, April 16, he tracked down Connolly at his home in Kensington. McCartney needed to talk, on the record, and told Connolly to meet him for lunch at Wheeler's, a fish restaurant in Soho. Given the time of day and the restaurant's busy lunchtime crowd, Connolly thought it an odd location. As expected, Wheeler's was crowded, and he, McCartney, and Linda settled into a table—of all places, right in the middle of the restaurant. As Linda ordered vegetarian meals for them all, McCartney talked about how shocked he was that his press release had been interpreted the way it had. “I didn't leave the Beatles,” he told Connolly. “The Beatles have left the Beatles. But no one wanted to be the one to say the party's over.” McCartney felt he'd been made the heavy in the situation, and being disliked clearly rattled him. In a stinging irony, Lennon, who was always giving him a hard time about the future of the band, was now seen as a
victim
.

Over the clatter of conversations at nearby, close-quarter tables, McCartney gave Connolly the first blow-by-blow of events of the previous six months. Lennon, he said, had dismissed McCartney's idea of live performances the previous fall. McCartney admitted Ono's constant presence was a factor in the breakup and that he had had to throw Starr out of his house the month before. He talked about the letter he'd sent to Klein about “The Long and Winding Road” and how he hadn't yet received a response. Even to an insider like Connolly, all of
it was startling—as it was no doubt to the lunching businessmen around them, who craned their necks to hear what was being said. In that regard, the setting was McCartney's clear-cut attempt at public damage control.

At the luncheon's end, McCartney made one unexpected request: He wanted to read the article before it was published. Normally, Connolly would never allow his subjects to approve his text, but knowing the importance of the interview, he acquiesced.

After Derek Taylor sent him a copy of the lengthy piece, McCartney called Connolly yet again. The article was fine, he said, except for one comment he'd made about Starr. “He's
not
the best drummer in the world,” McCartney said.

Connolly pointed out that, in the quote, McCartney had said Starr was “the best drummer in the world
for the Beatles
.”

“Oh,” McCartney said, “okay, right.” Connolly could leave that part in the story.

As they spoke, Capitol, the Beatles' U.S. label, was preparing to release a 45 of “The Long and Winding Road,” complete with the choir and orchestral overdubs McCartney hated so much. (When he read Connolly's interview, which included McCartney's digs at the female choir tacked onto his song, Lennon cracked, “Is that what this is all about—those bloody girls?”) The following Sunday, April 19, McCartney finally returned to
The Ed Sullivan Show
, but this time alone, by way of the promo video for “Maybe I'm Amazed.” The circle was complete.

James Taylor couldn't yet afford a band, so Russ Kunkel, who'd drummed on
Sweet Baby James
, went where he could for work. On May 1, Kunkel found himself in New York, doing a session for another one of

Peter Asher's clients. In his room at his hotel on Central Park South, he was preparing to return to Los Angeles when Asher called. Had Kunkel packed away his drums yet? No, Kunkel replied; they were in storage. Good, Asher said: George Harrison and Bob Dylan need a drummer, immediately. Kunkel reclaimed his drums, threw them into the back of a taxi, and headed to a Columbia Records studio.

No sooner had Kunkel arrived and begun setting up his kit when, sure enough, Dylan and his producer, Bob Johnston, strolled in; Harrison, dressed head to toe in denim, his hair and beard long, followed behind. The bass player was a hulking but affable Nashville session man named Charlie Daniels, who'd already worked with Dylan. Along with Boyd and Derek Taylor, Harrison had flown into Manhattan on April 28 to meet with Allen Klein. One night, the three of them visited Dylan at his new home in the Village, on MacDougal Street, and Dylan invited Harrison to the studio the following day.

Beyond its financial rewards, Harrison hadn't seemed to enjoy being a Beatle during the last few years. The day Lauren Bacall visited Apple, DiLello watched in horror as Harrison recoiled and bolted up the stairs as if being stalked. Yet around other musicians, particularly those who weren't the Beatles, Harrison's demeanor noticeably lightened. Such was the case as the musicians settled in with their instruments and began playing whatever came to mind. With Dylan cradling an acoustic guitar and Harrison an electric, they ambled through songs from their childhood (Sam Cooke's “Cupid” and a wobbly take on the Everly Brothers' “All I Have to Do Is Dream”), rockabilly standards (Carl Perkins' “Matchbox” and “Your True Love”), and a cowpoke classic (“Ghost Riders in the Sky”).

Neither Kunkel nor Daniels was ever told the goal of the sessions—an album or not?—but it was clear Dylan and Harrison had the shared, unspoken rapport of those who'd seen it all, as well as a mutual respect Harrison found refreshing. The afternoon was the polar opposite of the
stressful
Get Back
sessions. “George would say, ‘Let's do “Rainy Day Women,”'” recalled Kunkel. “Usually when someone asks Bob to do a request, he's caustic to them. That wasn't the case there. They were very courteous to each other.” Harrison even gamely played along when Dylan began crooning “Yesterday,” McCartney's song. (As if he'd always wanted to, Harrison played a solo on it.)

No one asked Harrison how he felt about McCartney's press statement nearly three weeks before. The only time it remotely came up was when he turned to Daniels, who was playing bass, and cracked, “You want to be a Beatle?” It was just a joke, but everyone knew the context.

CHAPTER 7

Eighty miles north of Paul McCartney's farm in Argyllshire, Scotland, Art Garfunkel was anxious, and at least part of it had to do with McCartney. As soon as
Bridge Over Troubled Water
was out of their hands and in stores, Garfunkel, like Simon, was gone. Simon ventured into teaching, and Garfunkel acted as if he were a student on summer break. After taking a freighter to Tangier, he made his way to Gibraltar, then hitchhiked to London. From there, he traveled with his girlfriend, Linda Grossman, to Scotland, renting a hundred-year-old estate outside Oban, a resort town in Argyllshire in the country's northwest—far from the music business, even farther from his partner. “American Star's Argyll Holiday,” announced a headline in the
Oban Times
, complete with a photo of Garfunkel and Grossman posing with sheep.

As always, he walked. Whether on vacation or on tour with Simon, Garfunkel was known for taking long, meandering hikes by himself that allowed him to think up a new harmony part for a song or stop into gas stations and start up conversations with strangers. Given his curious, knowledge-hungry brain, the walks were relaxing—if not always for those who worked for him. Just before a Simon and Garfunkel concert in Boston in 1968, he decided to hitchhike rather than fly. Worried that Garfunkel might miss the show, their manager, Mort Lewis, attempted to talk him out of it. Garfunkel held firm and was eventually picked up by a couple who told the frizzy-haired guy in the backseat that he looked just like that singer Art Garfunkel—and then wouldn't believe him when he said he was (not even when he pulled out a driver's license to prove it).

Another time, Simon and Lewis, in a limo on the way to a show, passed Garfunkel on a highway, and Lewis stuck his thumb on his nose and twirled his fingers, the silly “screw you” gesture common to anyone who'd grown up with the Little Rascals; Simon could only laugh along.

Walking also afforded Garfunkel the time to mull things over, and few mulled the way Garfunkel did. In Scotland, strolling past homes encased by stone walls and surrounded by velvet-green hills, he'd much to ponder. After the nonstop work of the previous year, he needed a break from show business and his partner. He'd also heard the new Beatles song, “Let It Be.” With its piano-centered arrangement and reassuringhug quality, it was reminiscent of the
other
kindly ballad dominating the charts, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Garfunkel was concerned that the Beatles' new release would deflect attention from his own signature song. Back in the States, Simon himself noticed the similarities. “The first time I heard ‘Let It Be,' I couldn't believe that he [McCartney] did that,” he told
Rolling Stone
that spring. “They are very similar songs, certainly in instrumentation.... They're sort of both hopeful songs and resting peaceful songs.” Simon heard that McCartney had first offered “Let It Be” to Aretha Franklin—a plan Simon also had in mind for “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

As many had already observed, Garfunkel's walks were merely one indication of how offbeat Simon's collaborator could be. As a child, he'd been methodical, thoughtful, and logical. Simon would always recall the time he encountered his friend at a Queens candy store, rattling different boxes of candy to determine which had the most pieces inside (the louder the rattle, the fewer the goodies). “Reading and teaching are Art's twin avocations,” read an early Columbia press bio of Simon and Garfunkel, as if singing weren't his principal passion in life. In the
Songs of America
television special, he'd taken that comment one step further: “I can't see myself doing this five years from now ... this entertaining, there's nothing new about it.” In conversation, he would laugh at things others wouldn't think
were funny. He loved making lists of things to do. He would stop into record stores and, posing as a customer, ask if a new Simon and Garfunkel album had arrived, even when one was still in the works.

The previous March 1969, he and Lewis were standing on the corner of Madison Avenue and 55th Street when an attractive brunette walked by. The girl—Grossman, the twenty-three-year-old daughter of a Nashville doctor and a recent graduate of architecture school—recognized Garfunkel immediately; a Simon and Garfunkel fan, she'd attended one of their concerts. As she walked by, she heard Garfunkel remark, “Will you marry me?”

Unnerved and unsure how to respond, Grossman crossed the street and went into a deli. To her surprise, Garfunkel followed her inside and apologized for his comment. To make amends, he invited her to a recording studio that evening. Taking him up on his offer, she soon found herself in a Columbia studio watching the duo work on material for their new album. Simon didn't know what to make of her unexpected presence, but he was friendly and accommodating.

During the filming of
Catch-22,
Mike Nichols noticed how peculiar Garfunkel could be. A scene in a mess hall, featuring a visit by a clueless general played by Orson Welles, called for Garfunkel and his costars, including Alan Arkin and Bob Balaban, to leer and laugh as a female aide accidentally flashed a thigh. In take after take, each of the actors dredged up the required guffaws—except Garfunkel, who remained unresponsive. “He just couldn't get cheerful,” Nichols would later recall.

In the end, Garfunkel's concerns about “Let It Be” overtaking “Bridge Over Troubled Water” were for naught. In the U.K., “Let It Be” only reached number 2, held back from reaching the top slot by the Simon and Garfunkel single. Even against the greatest culture force of the past decade, Simon and Garfunkel's place was secure.

When Garfunkel heard about Simon's new girlfriend, he was far from pleased. “Are you crazy?” he was overheard telling his partner. “Stay away from that Peggy Lewis.” But by the spring, it was too late: Simon was already building a new and separate life of his own, and with a new companion.

Although Garfunkel tended to hole up in hotels when in New York, Simon was now living on the Upper East Side at 200 East End Avenue, across the street from the Gracie Mansion estate where New York's mayors, like the then-current one, John Lindsay, lived. Simon was a wealthy man—he paid $350,000 in income tax in 1968—and had the posh uptown home to prove it: a duplex apartment in a postwar building with views of the East River and his native Queens.