‘I’m not sure which way I want to go now. Real Indian classical songs are so much different from the sort of Indian-influenced pop songs that have been turned out over here. They’re just ordinary pop songs, with a little bit of Indian background.
‘I’m not sure about the ones I’ve written. Looked at from another person’s point of view, as pop songs, I like them. But looked at from my point of view, from what I really want to do, I don’t like what I’ve done so far. I always seem to be rushed. I see things afterwards that I should have done.’
He’s amused by people who take Beatle music too seriously. He says the words of ‘Within You, Without You’ were meant to be true, but it was still a joke. ‘That’s what people don’t understand. Like John’s “I Am The Walrus” — “I am he as you are he as you are me”. It’s true but it’s still a joke. People looked for all sort of hidden meanings. It’s serious and it’s not serious.’
George thinks they could all go a lot further and probably will in music and words. He thought John’s line about taking her knickers down in ‘I Am The Walrus’ was great.
‘Why can’t you have people fucking as well? It’s going on everywhere in the world, all the time. So why can’t you mention it? It’s just a word, made up by people. It’s meaningless in itself. Keep saying it — Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. See, it doesn’t mean a thing, so why can’t you use it in a song? We will eventually. We haven’t started yet.’
This would follow on Kenneth Tynan’s theory that the Beatle songs are in direct line from medieval English songs. They were all full of arses, shit and fucking. So in one way, it is true. George, John and Paul haven’t really done anything yet in their songs.
Meanwhile, back at the George Harrison ranch. It does look a bit like a ranch, with all that low-slung white wood. The telephone rang. It wasn’t a fan but an ex-employee with a long complicated story about how he’d loaned Jayne Mansfield £250 and she’d died without repaying it and he was about to be evicted and could George help. George said yes, of course. He put down the phone and said ‘Well, what’s £250?’
George is still a Beatle. It’s his job and, as with all jobs, everyone has to think about it now and again, and of the future. He is now beginning to think he has a duty to do it well. He might even have some sort of social responsibilities as a pop idol, which is something none of them considered for one minute not so very long ago.
He is still umbilically connected with the others, despite all the sitar exercises and higher thoughts. They’re his greatest friends. As they shared his religious interest, he shares all their passions, however mundane, from long neckerchiefs to cameras.
‘If one experiences something, the others all have to know about it,’ says Pattie. ‘They have crazes, just like you have crazes at school. But it keeps them all happy.
‘They do waste a lot, when they take up a new craze. They buy a lot of stuff they’re never going to use, but it often turns out useful. They spent a lot on cameras and film equipment, but it showed them they could make films, without having to know a lot.
‘I know now that they are all part of one thing. I didn’t realize it when I was first married. They all belong to each other. No one person belongs to one other person. It’s no use trying to cling on or you would just become miserable. George is my husband, but he’s got to be free to go with them if he wants. It’s important to him to be free.
‘George has a lot with the others that I can never know about. Nobody, not even the wives, can break through it or even comprehend it.
‘It used to hurt me at first, as I slowly began to learn there was a part I could never be part of. Cyn talked to me about it. She said they would always be a part of each other.’
There is only one other minor aspect of Beatle life that Pattie in any way criticizes. Unlike the Beatles themselves, Pattie feels they should do something with their money in the way of helping some charitable cause. (Since the summer of 1968 they have started to donate the profits of a few songs to certain charities. ‘Across the Universe’ went to the World Wildlife Fund.)
‘I know they say a lot of these charities are just keeping the officials in money. There must be something we can do, the way Marlon Brando helps homeless children.
‘The thing with the Beatles was that they were plagued by charities in the early days, wanting them to do things. All those crowds of crippled children that were taken to see them in their dressing rooms, as if they were faith healers. This somehow sickened them.
‘I wouldn’t mind organizing some charity, but there again the publicity would come out all wrong and spoil everything, as George says. It always does. People would think we were doing it for the wrong reasons, the way some people couldn’t believe they were genuinely interested in going to listen to Maharishi. It’s difficult to know what to do.’
George himself says he knows what he is going to do. He has no worries about the future.
His interest in spiritual things will last for ever, he says. The cynics will be proved wrong. The whole interest in Indian cultures is not a passing phase.
‘Reaching a blissful state is the most important thing, but I’ve still got to do a job, being a Beatle.
‘We’ve got to do that job because we can do things now. We’re in a position to try things, to show people. We can jump around and try new things, which others can’t or won’t. Like drugs. People doing ordinary jobs just couldn’t give the time we did to looking into all that.
‘If Mick (Jagger) had gone to jail for taking pot he would have been the best person it could have happened to. It would have been much better than if it had happened to someone with no money, who it could have ruined. Being rich and famous makes it easier to go through with that sort of thing.
‘We’ve just really started making films. Magical Mystery Tour was nothing. But we’ll show it can be done. Anyone can make films, you don’t have to do all this messing around with backers and companies and hundreds of technicians and scripts worked out to the last word.
‘We’ll make perhaps one or two films a year ourselves, not necessarily with us in them. We’ll hire out our studios and people to anyone who wants them. We’ll lend our money as well. If we ever have to use backers, we’ll make sure they have no influence.
‘We’ll go round and round in circles, doing films, trying out new things. Then after films we’ll try something new. I don’t know what. We didn’t know we were going to make films when we started making records.
‘It’ll just be the same sort of scene, trying to do something new each time, going on a bit. Then we die and go on to a new life, where we try again, to get better all the time. That’s life. That’s death.
‘But as for this life, we haven’t done anything yet.’
34 ringo
Ringo lives round the corner from John on the same private estate in Weybridge, Surrey. It is also a large mock-Tudor house. It was built in 1925 and is called Sunny Heights. It cost him £37,000, plus £40,000 to do it up. It hasn’t got a swimming pool like John’s or George’s, but it has much bigger grounds, with lots of trees and shrubs. It backs on to St George’s Hill golf course. Neither he nor John is a member of the club and has never asked to be. But when they moved in one newspaper reporter asked the club if the Beatles could be members. He was told no, there was a long waiting list. Ringo says he wouldn’t join anyway. He doesn’t dig walking.
Ringo’s garden has had a lot of very expensive landscaping done to it. At the back, the house now looks down into a huge amphitheatre, dug out of the ground. It has lots of brick terraces and ponds, which you walk down and into from the French windows of the main drawing room. There are little woods at either side of this amphitheatre, still part of Ringo’s garden. Up one tree there is a large playhouse.