Working in the new way was fine, as long as they were still mates and nobody was getting fed up or wanting to move off in a completely different direction, but petty rows did begin, based on boredom as much as anything else. In 1968 Ringo walked out on the Beatles double album. He said he was fed up being their drummer. Watching him so many times in the studio over the years, it was a pretty fed up-making process. On stage, he was equally involved and important and had his own little special bits to do and acquired his own faithful following amongst the fans. In the studio, he was often virtually ignored. John and Paul would break off sometimes for hours at a time, working on an arrangement or the words or the mixing. There was often no need for Ringo to be there at all — his contribution could be dubbed on at any time. However, he only walked out for a day and was persuaded to come back.
During Let It Be, it was George who left, after an argument with the others. He always had a part to play, though not as much as John and Paul, bringing in his own songs, which he did most painstakingly. During the Indian phase, he was also influencing the nature of the others’ compositions. George had always been the least in love with being a Beatle and was the first to put equal energy into other interests, such as religion and Indian music. He in turn was persuaded to come back.
Paul was really the mainstay of the group in these later years, from about 1967 until 1969, keeping them going as composers, pushing them into new ideas, such as Magical Mystery Tour. He had many ideas for films and for expanding the Apple organization. He loved being a Beatle and didn’t want it to change. While in Portugal in 1968, he was still full of plans to get them all performing in public again. He wasn’t thinking of touring. That had gone stale for them all. He missed appearing in public — playing complete songs for a change, all together, in front of a live audience, trying to recapture some of the fun they had had in the early days. George was all against this. The others weren’t very keen either. Paul, at the time, had high hopes of persuading them.
John, meanwhile, was letting Paul get on with directing most Beatle activities, unable to think of anything better to do. He was pretty bored being a Beatle, but he couldn’t actually think of anything else he wanted to do with his life. It was obvious during the time I spent at his home (see Chapter 31), where he would sit for days dreaming, saying nothing, that he was utterly bored. His marriage had become a habit. Cynthia, as she was the first to admit, was never really on John’s wavelength. She very honestly revealed in the book that but for her becoming pregnant, John would never have married her. (This remark was almost chucked out of Chapter 31, because of pressure from family and business friends.) She knew he’d always loved the Beatles more than her, but they’d been through so much together. John couldn’t think of how else he’d like to live his life. Nothing better had turned up.
Then along came Yoko. At last he had found a kindred spirit, if of a very unusual kind. John was immediately sparked into life. He was away on a new plane, realizing at once that Paul, who until then had been his buddy, his soul mate, was in many ways as conventional as Cynthia. Together, John and Yoko discovered new and all-consuming aims. The rest of the Beatles didn’t matter any more. When Paul came up with an idea for, say, a live TV show, John wasn’t really interested.
Yoko moved into John’s life and into his work — sitting with him during the final Beatle sessions. The others weren’t exactly thrilled at her influence over John or her continual presence in the studio. George and Ringo had become bored anyway, and this took the remaining fun out of it. John and Yoko’s own fun was moving in new and different directions. Making music as Beatles finally finished in 1969. Let It Be came out in 1970, but it had been recorded almost a year before.
Around the same time as John was moving into a new, exciting life with Yoko, Paul met Linda. She came along at the right time for Paul, just as John was moving off, and encouraged Paul not to feel inferior, to be his own man, he could do anything if he tried. She took him over, without in any way becoming a rival. When the arguments started over Apple, both John and Paul were supported by their new mates.
The Beatles’ financial and business affairs had been in some confusion since Brian Epstein’s death — though it was his death that revealed the confusions rather than caused them. The creation of Apple had made things even more complicated. Someone was needed to straighten things out and organize their business lives. Allen Klein, an American accountant, was brought in by John and Yoko, with the backing of George and Ringo. Paul never liked him, and instead wanted his affairs to be handled by Lee Eastman, an eminent New York lawyer, who also happened to be Linda’s dad. The others thought Paul was just trying to introduce his in-laws, which greatly upset Paul. He maintained they should have known him better than that. To break free from Apple, Paul realized he couldn’t sue Klein. He had to sue John, George and Ringo.
Paul had discovered the fact that none of the Beatles had control of themselves. They were owned, including their own songs, by other people and other companies. Paul maintained he was doing it all for their sake — not just his own. To the other three, it looked as if Paul was causing all the trouble. At this stage, they still believed Klein to be their saviour. It was a very nasty few years.
The arrival of Klein was the event that finally and officially led to the split of the Beatles, but the differences between John and Paul, opened up by the arrival of Yoko, were already apparent.
It took up so much of their energy, both physical and creative, being caught in court cases for much of the next ten years. They also had their own individual court cases at different times — either divorces, drug offences, being sued or suing other record companies, immigration problems and suchlike.
The only fun, at least for the onlookers, was the madness of Apple. They seemed either unaware, or even to be enjoying the fact, that they were being ripped off. Millions of pounds were thrown away on daft schemes, shops, businesses, pandering to eccentric notions and strange people. It was almost a morality tale, as if to point up the pointlessness of big business: getting and spending we lay waste our powers, so let’s go out with a mad spending spree. They took on some luxury offices in Savile Row in London, stocked them full of fine furnishings and equipment, and naturally half the Western hippy world flocked to try to take advantage of them, plus a few smart advisers who were supposed to be helping them sort everything out.
After the split, John took all the headlines in the first few years. He did some songs with Yoko, forming the Plastic Ono Band, and had himself and Yoko photographed naked for Two Virgins (1969), which amazed and amused the pop world. They had bed-ins in different hotels round the world, giving interviews about the world’s ills and how they should be cured. He forsook the puns and the whimsy of some of his Beatle songs and earlier writings, and went headlong into the avant-garde. He took to defending causes of all sorts, such as the Hanratty murder case, and filled his new Yoko-songs with emotional outbursts, class struggles and political slogans. The layman was, in the main, amused by John’s latest exploits, while there was a great deal of critical praise for several of the songs he was producing on his own, such as ‘Imagine’ (1971).