I’ve tried to keep myself out of the book as much as possible, though I’m sure my prejudices have crept in all over the place. I’ve also tried to resist the temptation to analyse. Too many millions of words have already been trotted out by the interpreters. Someone can do a critical biography of them in 50 years’ time, if anyone remembers them by then.
Naturally, I think they will do. I wouldn’t have done all this lot otherwise. But their immediate future is still very hazy. Will they do more films on their own? Will Apple come off? What will happen to Maharishi? Will they get bored and just pack it all in?
Perhaps by the time this book is out, some of these questions will be answered. They have gone through so many stages that there is no reason to doubt that there are more to come.
They are confident that they can succeed in films and in anything else they might try, but in the history of show business, no one has yet repeated a phenomenon. Elvis Presley stood still almost immediately. Charlie Chaplin went on to direct some very professional films, but no one can say they were phenomenal. As with Beatlemania, his little man, bewildered by the big new corporations, was right for the times. Can the Beatles be right again?
It remains to be seen whether the Beatles will be handicapped by living such isolated lives. Is art affected by lack of stimuli? According to some art experts, if Picasso had gone off and seen new people and new places, he wouldn’t have messed around doing little drawings on menus.
But Apple is at least providing some new stimuli, though their private lives are as private as ever. Apple is perhaps their most constructive stage so far. After years of being anti-help and anti-most organizations, like benevolent despots, they are now pouring back their money and power into helping and backing others. And whatever one thinks of transcendental meditation, their interest in religion is also positive and only for the good, which is again a reversal of their early attitudes. Having scorned the idea that pop idols should have responsibilities, they are now almost missionary, in spiritual and in materialistic matters. If their boast that they haven’t started yet comes true, their biographer in 50 years’ time will have more than just the records of a beat group to write about.
It now remains to be seen whether, and in which ways, they can go on alone. They had Brian Epstein when they were emerging as personalities, and George Martin when they were emerging as composers.
All the experts can’t see them doing it again, not in a new medium and not without help.
‘In their music,’ says George Martin, ‘they have an instinctive awareness of what to do. They are always ahead of everyone else. But in much of their other thinking, they tend to be juvenile psychologists.
‘They are very like children in many ways. They love anything magical. If I had to clap my hands in front of John and produce a vase of flowers, John would be knocked out and fantastically impressed and I would be able to do anything with him.
‘They like everything to be like instant coffee. They want instant recording, instant films, instant everything.
‘I think they do need an organizer round them. This would allow them to be more outlandish. If they try to do everything on their own, things could go wrong.’
They are very young, no one can deny that, which is good, because they still want to do things on their own. It’s to be hoped they keep on trying.
But they could and might pack up tomorrow, live on their millions and contemplate their navels. They haven’t done badly so far. They’ve given us quite a lot. And in return, they have got their MBEs.
HUNTER DAVIES
GOZO, May 1968
postscript 1985
When that little End Bit was written, I carefully did not predict what I thought would happen to them. There seemed so many exciting possibilities, such as films, and exciting new creations, such as Apple. They had already stopped appearing in public, and had started to go their separate ways, living separate lives, but I never thought for one moment that a final split was imminent. I hadn’t realized that, in fact. I had recorded the growth and rise of the Beatles and had captured them at their peak. All that was to come was the end. And rather petty and nasty it turned out to be.
In the meantime, back in 1968, I rewarded myself with a year abroad. After the book was finished, and all the boring arguments with Apple executives settled, and the Beatles and their respective families pacified about the contents, I went off with my wife and family, first of all to Gozo in Malta, and then to Portugal. We had two children at the time, aged four and two when we set off, so it seemed a good time to travel, before they started school. I wrote a novel abroad, and so did my wife. I never went back to the Class of ’68, which was what my pre-Beatles book had become. The student sit-ins and radical movements had started, and all my interviews and material, gathered in 1966, had become very out of date.
One night in December 1968, while we were staying in a rented house in Praia da Luz in the Algarve, we were woken by a tremendous banging and shouting on the outside gate. We thought at first it was some fishermen on the way home, having drunk too much. Our house, formerly a sardine factory, was right on the beach, with a large garden and high wall all the way round. I then realized my name was being shouted out, by someone with a strong Liverpool accent. ‘Wake up, Hunter Davies, you bugger.’ I thought at first it might be John, as the voice was so raucous. I got up and went into the garden and opened up the big gates, and there was Paul, standing with a strange woman I had never seen before and a young girl, of about five or six.
That evening, back in London, Paul simply decided that he would come out and have a holiday with me. I had been in touch with all of them, and had sent Paul a postcard inviting him to stay, so he knew where I was, though we were not on the telephone. When the idea had suddenly come into his head, Neil was detailed to get plane times. There were none that evening. Paul, of course, could not wait for the next day. Having thought of the plan, he wanted it now. Instant satisfaction. So a private plane was hired and told to be ready for Paul’s pleasure. It landed at Faro in the middle of the night, much to everyone’s surprise. Faro airport had opened only the previous year and was still pretty primitive, hardly used to scheduled flights, never mind private executive jets.
Paul’s decision was so impulsive that he set off without any Portuguese currency, though he brought some bottles of whisky on the plane with him, as a present for me. In Faro airport, which was almost deserted, he eventually found some official and gave him £50 in English money, asking him to change it into escudos. Then he forgot all about it. He suddenly noticed a taxi, which, luckily, happened to be there, jumped in and gave our address. On their arrival, I paid off the driver.
It turned out to be a very jolly arrival. Our two children, Caitlin and Jake, got up, hearing all the noise. Caitlin was charmed to see that a little girl of her own age, called Heather, had come to stay. My wife and I, though, were rather confused by this blonde American girl called Linda. We had never heard of her. When we left England, Jane Asher was the girl in Paul’s life, and we got on with her very well. Was this Linda a one-night stand or was his relationship with Jane Asher finished?
It took us a while to find out the answers, as they slept in late next morning, despite the arrival at lunchtime of the local press. I couldn’t work out how they could possibly know Paul had arrived. We were in a very remote part of the Algarve and it was the dead of winter. I discovered later that rumours started when the official at the airport, to whom Paul had given £50 in notes, told everybody next morning about this strange English bloke with long hair who had arrived in the middle of the night and was giving money away.