The Beatles Boxed Set (36 page)

            Allegedly,
the Beatles snubbed the country’s first lady, Imelda Marcos, where a lunch was
prepared at Malacañang Palace at 11AM with 300 children waiting to see the
famous pop stars. An hour before the party, a delegation arrived at the Manila
Hotel to collect the group. Epstein declined the invitation, saying that no
earlier arrangements had been made.

            But
the concerts proceeded successfully. In between concerts, news reports on
television showed footages of children, some crying, who were disappointed by
the Beatles’ not showing up. Epstein couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He
went to the TV studio to apologize and set the facts straight but he was just
about to issue the press statement when the transmission blipped.

            The
snubbing was reported on newspapers across the country. The Beatles were
scheduled to depart for New Delhi. Suddenly, the Beatles and their entourage
realized that they were on their own as their security detail was pulled out.
They were manhandled on their way to the airport, where Mal Evans was beaten
and kicked. They were already on the plane when Epstein and Evans were told to step
out of the plane. Epstein was forced to pay £6,800 worth of Philippine peso
notes to the tax authorities for the Manila shows and signed a tax bond
verifying the exchange before being allowed to return to the plane.

            The
Beatles felt relieved when the plane taxied off the runway. That experience in
the Philippines was a traumatizing one for all of them and promised never to
return.

            Just
when they thought that it was behind them, more challenges were waiting for the
Beatles at home. Earlier that year, John was interviewed by newspaper reporter
Maureen Cleave for the series of articles titled “How Does a Beatle Live?” She
included in the article a comment that John made: “Christianity will go. It
will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be
proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go
first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples
were think and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

            When
it was published in the UK in March, there was no violent reaction, mainly
because the British public were used to John’s caustic comments. The
controversy began when John’s comments were quoted in the American teenage fan
magazine
Datebook.
Protests broke out in the southern US, and the
Beatles’ records were publicly burned. There were also protests in Mexico,
South Africa, Spain and other countries. A lot of anti-Beatles demonstrations
were carried out, with their music being banned on radio stations.

            Eventually,
the group became bored with the routine of performing live. Up to that point,
they knew too well that their future live performances would be drowned out by
screaming from the audience. The powerful 100-watt amplifiers were still not
enough, and their music could barely be heard above the noise.

            The
Beatles’ last concert was at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29,
1966. After the tour, they took a three-month break from one another to pursue
individual pursuits. While the other three Beatles were busy, Ringo chose to
stay at home with his family, which now included three children: Zak, Jason and
Lee.

* * * * *

With
their touring days over, the Beatles had more time to adopt an experimental
approach to their
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
which they
recorded in late November 1966. It took more than seven hundred hours to finish
recording as the Beatles wanted to come up with a different album.

The album was released on June 1, 1967; the group didn’t
imagine that it would become one of the greatest albums of all time. The album
was a critical and commercial success and definitely a change from a tumultuous
year full of challenges.
Sgt. Pepper
stayed at number one for 27 weeks
on the UK Album Chart and fifteen weeks at number one on the US
Billboard
Hot 200.

            In
1968, the album won four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Best
Contemporary Album, Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts, and Best Engineered
Recordng, Non-Classical. It also won Best British Album at the first Brit
Awards in 1977.

            With
the success of the
Sgt. Pepper
album still hanging in the air, the
Beatles performed their upcoming single,
All You Need is Love
, on June
25 in front of about 350 million viewers on
Our World.

            In
late August, Ringo and Maureen and the other Beatles and their wives travelled
to Bangor for a ten-day course to learn Transcendental Meditation. They had
been previously introduced to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru of the
Transcendental Meditation movement and became the Beatles’ spiritual advisor.

            On
August 27, Peter Brown, the assistant of the group’s manager, phoned and told
them the bad news: Brian Epstein was found dead. His death was ruled an
accidental carbitol overdose. No matter how much they loved their manager, the
Beatles chose to stay away from the funeral to keep it from turning into a
circus.

It
was never the same again. Without Brian Epstein to manage their career, the
Beatles became fearful of what lay ahead for them.

            Just
a few months after Epstein’s death,
Magical Mystery Tour
was released in
the UK as a soundtrack album for an upcoming Beatles’ film. An American author
described the US
Magical Mystery Tour
this way: “The psychedelic sound
is very much in the vein of
Sgt. Pepper
, and even spacier in parts
(especially the sound collages of
I Am the Walrus
)” and dubbed its five
songs “huge, glorious, and innovative.”

            The
album set a record for having the highest initial sales of any Capitol LP in
its first three weeks.

            The
Magical Mystery Tour
film aired on BBC1 on December 26, 1967. It focused
mostly on Ringo Starr and his recently widowed Auntie Jessie. Unfortunately,
the film was a flop, with the Beatles and the others who worked on the film
blaming it on the fact that the film, though shot in color, was broadcast in
black and white. Critics were unforgiving as they gave one negative review to
another. The
Daily Express
called it “blatant rubbish” while
Daily
Mail
called it “a colossal conceit.”

The Beatles on the Magical Mystery Tour
film

            But
they couldn’t say the same things about
Yellow Submarine
, an animated
musical fantasy film featuring cartoon versions of the Beatles and a soundtrack
containing 11 of their songs, four of which were unreleased studio recordings
that made their debut in the film. The film was released in June 1968 and
became a box-office hit. It was credited for bringing more interest to animation
as a serious art form.

            The
soundtrack album for the film appeared seven months later. One of the songs
included in the film’s soundtrack was
Yellow Submarine
which Paul wrote
for Ringo. It quickly went to number one on British charts and remained on the
top spot for four weeks and charted for 13 weeks. It also won an Ivor Novello
Award “for the highest certified sales of any single issued in the UK in 1966.”

            Earlier
in 1968, Ringo and his wife Maureen, along with Paul and Jane, packed their
bags and followed John and George who had already arrived in Rishikesh, India, to
continue learning under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. By then, the world was already
aware that the Beatles were in India, and reporters and photographers were
waiting for them as they disembarked from the plane. Their flight had lasted 20
hours, and they were exhausted upon their arrival.

Paul, Ringo and John in Rishikesh, India,
1968

            Their
road manager, Mal Evans, and Raghvendra from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram,
met them in Delhi.

            As
Ringo was suffering pain in his arm following inoculation injections, they went
straight to a hospital. But the driver wasn’t familiar with the place and lost
his way; a local reporter eventually pointed the way to a hospital.

            Afterwards,
they began the 150-mile journey back to Rishikesh. The sights were a fresh
change from being cooped up in the plane for hours. There were huts and wooden
bungalows from groves of teak and guava trees. They could trace the Ganges up
the mountains.

            But
Ringo and Maureen found themselves missing their children back home. In
addition, the spicy food prepared for them disagreed with him, an intolerance
caused by a childhood bout of peritonitis. For this trip in Rishikesh, he had
taken with him a load of baked beans. But after a few days of eating beans, and
especially-prepared eggs, Ringo got sick of them.

            Maureen
also had a phobia of flies, which were everywhere in Rishikesh. Paul recalled,
“Maureen didn’t like flies – if there was one fly in the room, she would know
exactly where it was at any given time. I remember her once being trapped in a
room because there was a fly over the door. So obviously conditions in
Rishikesh were not ideal for them.”

            The
couple left ahead of everyone. Ringo recalled of their time in Rishikesh, “We
came home because we missed the children. I wouldn’t want anyone to think we
didn’t like it there… It was a good experience – it just didn’t last as long
for me as it did for them.”

            One
good thing that came out of the Beatles’ time in Rishikesh was that they were
productive in terms of songwriting. One account said that they wrote 30 songs,
another, 48. Majority of the songs they have written appeared on their ninth
studio album,
The Beatles
, a double LP commonly known as
The White
Album
because it lacked graphics or text other than the band’s name.

            The
group recorded the album between May and October 1968 amidst tension and
conflict. At the same time, they launched their new multimedia business
corporation, Apple Corps, which proved to be a source of stress for the band. George
was becoming disenchanted with the group, mainly because John and Paul treated
him as a “second class Beatle.” At some points while recording, they would end
up bickering with each other.

The recording sessions for the White
Album marked a tense and difficult period for the Beatles