The Beatles (131 page)

Frantic, he wrenched open a window and leaned halfway out of the train, squinting to find her in the dispersing crowd. Cynthia could barely make out the words as her husband’s pleadings were swallowed by the train’s roar. “
Tell him to let you on!
” John shouted. “Tell him you’re with us!” But it was already too late. They were too far apart, without any chance of the train coming to a stop.
Peter Brown put an arm
around an inconsolable Cynthia Lennon as the caboose disappeared in the distance. He assured her that she could hitch a ride to Bangor with Neil Aspinall, who was driving north later that evening. But Cynthia knew in her heart that though she’d eventually rejoin the gang, her train had finally pulled out of the station.

An expanse of concrete and sun-bleached brick, surrounded by acres of lawn, the University College—or Normal, as it was known—spread across a leafy fringe of Bangor like an abandoned sanitorium. As the school was currently on holiday, the Beatles and their mates were quartered in one of the empty nondescript dormitories, a far cry from the luxurious suites they’d occupied on tour for the past few years. “It suddenly felt as if we were back in school again,” recalled Marianne Faithfull, who shared the others’ excitement about the unglamorous atmosphere.

The freedom they felt was exquisite. There were no handlers, no press, no fans, no obligations. That night, in a show of solidarity, the entire entourage went to a local Chinese restaurant for dinner, where, unrecognized by the staff, they talked with real gusto about the protocols of meditation and the significance of receiving a mantra. No one really knew what to
expect, and perhaps to combat the feeling of the unknown, they grew catty and made snickering references to their eccentric Indian guru. “There were already some misgivings being aired about the Maharishi,” Faithfull recalled. “We’d heard from Barry Miles that the word in India was that [he] was suspected of certain financial improprieties and sexual peccadilloes, and also an obsession with fireworks.”

The following morning everyone was introduced to the seminar’s cross section of participants, of which there were nearly three hundred—most of them strangers—as well as to the resident staff instructors. The initial sessions were devoted to the basics of meditation, which, for inveterate movers and shakers, was a difficult concept to absorb. “
You just sit there
and let your mind go,” John explained in his characteristic stripped-down style. Of course, for John, who dropped acid, then zoned out for hours in front of the television, that might have been a snap, but Paul found it difficult to concentrate. His head was cluttered with too many ideas and projects that competed with the spiritual process. “You spend all your first few days just trying to stop your mind dealing with your social calendar,” he recalled.

Everything changed, however, after they received a mantra, the mystical form of incantation that guides a meditator, “
like a prescription
,” to a higher level of spiritual consciousness. The password or phrase was conveyed in a private ceremony on Saturday afternoon, during which the Maharishi encouraged all students to “immerse themselves completely in the energy of the soul, to make contact with it and establish a fathomless level of consciousness.” Except for a few handicapped cases, all participants took off their shoes and entered a fragrant, candlelit room, where they deposited a few stems of flowers at the guru’s slippered feet. After a brief Hindu prayer was intoned, the Maharishi whispered a handpicked mantra in the disciple’s ear, along with advice that he or she was never to share it with anyone. “
It has been specially chosen
to harmonize with your personal vibration,” he said. Weeks later, after the novelty had worn off,
Mal Evans divulged that his mantra
was
I-ing,
at which point everyone discovered they’d been given the same word.

After a casual lunch on Sunday, the famous friends bounded in and out of one another’s dorm rooms, expressing their views with cautious fascination and looking for corroboration. No one was sure what to make of it all, but they were surely onto something important. John couldn’t resist comparing the Maharishi’s message to inhaling a potent drug for which “
you get a sniff
and you’re hooked.” Even Mick Jagger, who was a very
bright, sensible, and extremely cautious young man, viewed the seminar with an enthusiastically arched eyebrow. Suggestions were made to invite Keith Richards and Brian Jones.

About three o’clock, in the hallway, the infernal pay phone started to ring. Again. No one paid it any attention, thinking it would eventually stop. After an interminably long and noisy stretch, however, Jane Asher excused herself to answer it.

“Jane,” the voice on the other end said, “it’s Peter Brown. Could you find Paul and put him on the phone?”

Peter Brown: The last thing Paul wanted that day was to speak with anyone from NEMS, but if there was Beatles business that needed immediate attention, then he was the only one suited to take care of it. As it turned out, however, this was business of the kind that even Paul was incapable of processing.

Brian had so looked forward to the weekend
“divertissement”
that he skipped the Beatles’ send-off to Wales and headed straight for Sussex in his precious Bentley convertible. There were too many last-minute details that required his attention—an alluring dinner menu, drugs, recreation, discreet sleeping arrangements. The invitees were young, rugged East Londoners and naive, which intrigued him. Things could get rough, which intrigued him even more, although it would be difficult explaining that to Geoffrey Ellis, who, by Peter Brown’s definition, was “
something of a tight ass
.” But when the boys canceled at the last minute, Brian lapsed into one of his depressions. Peter says he could tell instantly upon his arrival that Brian was in a “dark mood.” He was “drinking and stoned, very disappointed that there wasn’t going to be any action.” Even so, they all sat down to a very civilized dinner, a leg of lamb and root vegetables, served by the staff. “
Many bottles of wine
” were consumed, along with brandy after the meal. It didn’t take long until the three men found themselves “sitting there, looking at each other with boredom.” About ten, after calling around London trying to drum up other action, Brian announced that he was going for a drive. “Don’t worry about me,” Brian assured them. “Go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Brown suspects that Brian drove back to London, stopped off at home, made a few calls, then cruised around the city’s usual gay haunts. He obviously found something to amuse him, because on Saturday he didn’t wake up until after five in the afternoon. “Brian called us just after that,”
Brown recalls. “
Clearly, he’d just woken up
, because the sleeping pills, those infernal Tuinals, were still in his system and he was slurring his words.”

“I’m sorry for fucking up the weekend,” he apologized. “I’ll try and come back later.”

Brown, sensing that Brian wasn’t in any condition to drive, suggested that he take the train—a forty-minute trip to Lewes Station, where someone on the staff would pick him up. But Brian never showed up—and never called.

On Sunday, Brian’s housekeepers—Antonio and Maria Garcia—grew concerned that the Bentley, which had been parked at the curb late Friday evening upon its return from Kingsley Hill, hadn’t been moved. They called Joanne Newfield, who thought nothing of the matter. “
It wasn’t unusual for Brian
to go in his room and stay there and take some pills and… check out for twenty-four hours,” she thought. Indulgently, she told them not to worry and thanked them for the call. After lunch with her mother, however, Joanne decided to drive over to Chapel Street “just to make sure that everything was okay.”

When she arrived, about twelve-thirty, the house was immaculate and still. There were no telltale signs of an orgy or a rowdy boys’ party. Joanne summoned Antonio from the basement staff quarters; together, they went upstairs and knocked on Brian’s bedroom door: no answer. That wasn’t unusual, either, but when Joanne couldn’t rouse her boss on the intercom, she became alarmed. The intercom was in the phone, but you didn’t have to lift the receiver to speak into it. Even when Brian was completely out of it, he usually managed a few choice words. Apologetic to a fault, Joanne called Kingsley Hill and eventually reached Peter Brown, who had gone to the Merry Harrier pub in Cabbage for a drink before lunch.

“I’m going to have [Antonio] break the doors down,” Joanne sighed.

Brown, however, pleaded with her to wait. They’d broken down doors before, which only made Brian furious. Instead, he suggested that she contact Brian’s doctor, Norman Cowan, whose specialty was keeping these indiscretions quiet. But Cowan was away for the weekend, so she called Peter’s doctor, John Gallway, a young gay man who would know how to deal with Brian once they got him up and around.

Throughout the unendurable wait for Gallway’s arrival, Joanne and Antonio continued to beat on Brian’s door. Joanne also called Alistair Taylor, who only half an hour earlier had gotten off a plane from California, where, at Brian’s instructions, he’d gone to walk Cream through a
visa problem at the American embassy. Frantic, she explained how Brian refused to answer his door. Taylor, a veteran of two previous suicide false alarms, felt no misgiving. (Once, in 1966, Brian had called him “to say goodbye.” A heartsick Taylor rushed right over, only to find him sitting up in bed, reading, with an annoyed look on his face: “What do
you
want?”) “
So? What’s new?
” he responded now to Joanne. Alistair assured her there was nothing to worry about, but Joanne begged him to hurry over. “Oh, Joanne, I’ve been flying all night!” Besides, he’d “drank the Pan Am 707 dry on the flight back” with Cream, he was out of uniform (in sandals, a denim shirt, and jeans), and he lived in Clapham, a neighborhood quite a ways out of town. Still, there was something in her voice that disturbed him. “All right,” he relented. “As soon as I can get a cab.”

John Gallway arrived
at Chapel Street at 2:45, a few minutes before Alistair, and spoke on the phone briefly with Peter Brown, who decided it was time to break down the door. Gallway and Antonio put their shoulders into the task. Alistair Taylor rushed up the stairs just as he “heard the door give.”

“Just wait outside,” Gallway advised Joanne as he entered the darkened chamber, but Joanne didn’t want to wait and stood inside the doorway of the outer dressing room, holding her breath. Directly in front of her, she could see Brian’s tiny pajamaed figure in shadow, lying eerily on his side.
Blood streamed from his nose
. Nothing stirred; the room was perfectly still. As Joanne remembered it, Gallway examined Brian for a few minutes—although he probably didn’t take more than a few seconds—and when he turned back to her she noticed that all the blood had drained out of his face.

“
Is there any brandy
in the house?” he asked Antonio. “I think we should all go down to the study and have some brandy.”

Gallway walked past Joanne, who was rigid, “in total shock,” and picked up the phone receiver, which was dangling off a table. “
He’s lying on the bed
,” the doctor told Peter Brown, “and he’s gone.”