The Beatles Boxed Set (24 page)

            While
in Montreal, John and Yoko invited Timothy Leary, Dick Gregory, Murray the K,
Tommy Smothers, Al Capp and some others to sing the peace anthem
Give Peace
a Chance
that Andre Perry recorded in the hotel room on June 1. Released by
the Plastic Ono Band on Apple Records in July, the song became the anthem of
the American anti-war movement during the 1970s. It reached number 14 on the
Billboard
Hot 100 and number 2 on the British singles chart.

The Lennons during their second bed-in
protest, in Montreal

            At
around this time, John and Yoko were living in Tittenhurst, a seventy-two-acre
property they purchased for £145,000. John had originally considered buying the
property with Cynthia. Cynthia recalled, “…John and I had been to look at it
with the other Beatles couples a year or two earlier. It was beautiful, with
extensive grounds including its own market garden. For a crazy moment we’d
considered buying it and all moving in together, in a kind of Beatles commune.”          

            Soon
after John and Yoko settled at Tittenhurst, he relayed an invitation for Julian
to join them in the house for the weekend. Though Cynthia was wary, she consented,
and heard stories from Julian when he came back to her. Julian told her how he
feared the dark house at night as he slept in a separate wing from his father.
Cynthia recalled that “John sometimes had angry outbursts toward him, shouting
at him for the way he ate or being too slow, which had made Julian nervous. He
was afraid of provoking John, who switched very quickly from playful to
furious.” But Cynthia could only laugh as Julian referred to Yoko as
“Hokey-Cokey.”

            When
Julian went to Tittenhurst again, John took him, Yoko and Yoko’s daughter,
Kyoko, now five, to Scotland to visit John’s aunt “Mater” Stanley to introduce
his new family. A small accident took place on July 1. With Julian and Kyoko in
the car, John accidentally veered the car off the road, overturning it and
necessitating a brief hospitalization for stitches. Cynthia heard the news from
the television and it took her an extra day to reach Edinburgh because Peter
Brown accidentally booked a flight for her to Belfast.

John and Yoko in Scotland, with their
children from their first marriages, Julian and Kyoko

            Julian
and Kyoko were both fine, as was John. Mater made known to Cynthia her reaction
to Yoko. Cynthia remembered it quite with hilarity. “Mater regaled me with
hilarious tales of Yoko’s refusing the roast dinner she had prepared and taking
over the kitchen to steam bean sprouts for herself and John. ‘She looked like a
witch hanging over a cauldron with all that hair,’ Mater said.”

            Yoko
became pregnant once again while John began recording for the Beatles’ final
album. After completing the recording sessions for
Abbey Road
, John did
a few recording with his new band. Afterwards, John and Yoko were back to
filming, including making
Honeymoon
and
Rape Part II
. But the
most famous of these was
Self-Portrait
, a film lasting 42 minutes which
focused on John’s penis. John said, “The critics wouldn’t touch it.”

            In
November, John had his chauffeur retrieve his MBE medal from Auntie Mimi’s
mantelpiece. He made headlines when he returned the medal to the queen, along
with this letter:

           
Your
Majesty,

                        I
am returning my MBE as a protest against Britain’s involvement in the
Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against
“Cold Turkey” slipping down the charts.

            With
Love,

            John
Lennon

            What John
did stirred a commotion in the press.

            Had
the press known what John did next in September of that year, it might have
caused more controversy than ever. On September 20, Paul led a meeting where he
suggested that the Beatles return to “little gigs.” As Paul recalled, “John
looked at me in the eye and said, ‘Well, I think you’re daft. I wasn’t going to
tell you till we signed the Capitol deal but I’m leaving the group.’ We paled
visibly and our jaws slackened a bit.”

            John
himself admitted, “I knew before we went to Toronto. I told Allen [Klein] I was
leaving, I told Eric Clapton and Klaus that I was leaving and that I’d like to
probably use them as a group. I hadn’t decided how to do it – to have a
permanent new group or what? And then later on I thought, “Fuck, I’m not going
to get stuck with another set of people, whoever they are.” So I announced it
to myself and to the people around me on the way to Toronto. Allen came with
me, and I told Allen it was over. When I got back there were a few meetings and
Allen had said, “Cool it,” ‘cause there was a lot to do [with the Beatles]
business-wise, and it would not have been suitable at the time.”

            John
didn’t publicly announce his departure, as Klein was still finalizing negotiations
with EMI to extend the Beatles’ contract.

            This
was not the only problem that the Beatles now found themselves in. In 1963,
music publisher Dick James, Brian Epstein and John and Paul founded Northern
Songs to publish songs written by Lennon-McCartney and by George and Ringo as
well. Epstein died in 1967, after which John and Paul tried to renegotiate
their publishing deal with James. Unknown to the songwriting duo and to the
Apple Corps, James and his partner sold their shares in Northern Songs to Britain’s
Associated TeleVision (ATV).

            When
the Beatles found out about it, their manager, Klein, tried to buy ATV out but
failed when John said, “I’m sick to death of being fucked about by men in suits
sitting on their fat arses in the City!” John and Paul were still bound by
their publishing contract which required them to continue writing songs for the
company through 1973.

            John
and Paul decided to sell their shares and collect the royalty on songs they
have already written, though George and Ringo chose to keep their shares. As
this was going on, John learned that Paul owned more stock than he did. As it
turned out, Paul had been instructing Peter Brown to buy shares in secret. When
the paperwork came out, it showed that John had 644,000 shares worth £1.25
million and Paul had 751,000 shares (£1.4 million).

            John
was shocked. They had set up Northern Songs with equal shares in their
songwriting concern. Had they been not forced to sell their shares, Paul would
have continued buying shares indefinitely. Another shock came when John
discovered how Northern Songs distributed percentage of ownership. John and
Paul each held 15 percent while Epstein’s NEMS had 7.5 percent. Dick James and
his partner Charles Silver got 37.5 percent each, and George and Ringo a mere
1.6 percent each.

            This
clearly showed that Epstein was only able to provide them such meager
percentage on their own songwriting. But what was worse was the fact that
John’s songwriting partner, a person with whom he had established a deep
friendship since age 17, had gone behind his back and tried to buy more shares.
John had seen it as betrayal, and he would speak of Paul’s betrayal until his
death. If John learned all these three months previously,
Abbey Road
wouldn’t have been made.

            To
add to his misery, Yoko miscarried again. But having recovered much sooner than
he did from Yoko’s first miscarriage, John hurtled forward.

John
Lennon had been breaking away from the Beatles long before Paul McCartney
realized that it was the end for their group. And now that he was free to
establish his own solo career, he found himself competing with Paul for a hit
single or an album or tour when he could confidently step out of the other’s
shadow.

            Now
that John had let go of the only thing that defined him for the most part of
the Beatles’ existence, the only thing left was to hold on to the woman who
understood him best and encouraged him to follow his heart. Yoko convinced him
to aim at rock star fame beyond the Beatles.

            Following
the band’s breakup, each Beatle had made a solo career for himself, trying to
separate himself from the Beatles brand. Ringo had released two solo albums
that rivaled Paul’s
McCartney
and
Plastic Ono Band
. George also
released a very successful album,
All Things Must Pass
, prompting
newspapers to make headlines that read something like ‘Maybe George was Always
the Most Talented After All.’

            John
began the year 1970 with his
Instant Karma!
Hit. He had began recording
in January, and it was released barely a month later. In talking about the
song, John said, “I’m fascinated by commercials and promotion as an art form. I
enjoy them. So the idea of
Instant Karma
was like the idea of instant
coffee, presenting something in a new form. I wrote it in the morning on the
piano, and went into the office and I sang it many times. And I said ‘Hell,
let’s do it,’ and we booked the studio, and Phil came in and he said: ‘How do
you want it?’ And I said ‘fifties,’ and he said, ‘Right,’ and boom, I did it,
in about three goes. He played it back and there it was.”

            The
single peaked at number 3 on the
Billboard
Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100
singles charts in the US, number 2 on Canada’s Singles Chart and number 5 on
the UK Singles Chart. In the US, the single reached number 3 as the Beatles’
single
Let It Be
made its way to number 1. While the two singles
competed for the top position, the Beatles officially announced their
dissolution.

That
spring, John and Yoko enrolled in a four-week course of primal therapy with Dr.
Arthur Janov, whose book,
The Primal Scream
, discussed how patients were
relieved of emotional pain from early childhood by revisiting their most
traumatic childhood experiences. John became serious with it, as he discovered
that his multiple anxieties were too great to cope with.

            Dr.
Janov had wanted to treat the couple longer, but they felt that they no longer
needed to continue and returned to London. John then began working on his debut
solo album,
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
, for which Ringo Starr drummed
for him. Ringo recalled the sessions, “It was fantastic! It was such a heavy
album for me. I was on it so maybe I was just getting off on it because of
that, but the songs were so great and there were three guys and the cuts and
really terrific.”

           
John
Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
was released in December 1970 and would become one
of John’s finest solo albums. The music critics were all about praises for the
album, with Greil Marcus commenting, “John’s singing in the last verse of
God
may be the finest in all of rock.” Early the following year, the album reached
number 8 on the UK charts and reached number 6 in the US. In the Netherlands,
the album was more successful, knocking off George Harrison’s
All Things
Must Pass
from the top spot and remaining there for 7 consecutive weeks.