‘We did all the proper listening to them, over and over again, when we wrote them,’ says John. ‘When it’s finished, it doesn’t matter any more.
‘I actively dislike hearing bits of them that didn’t come out right. There are bits of “Lucy in the Sky” I don’t like. Some of the sound in “Mr Kite” isn’t right. I like “A Day in the Life”, but it’s still not half as nice as I thought it was when we were doing it. I suppose we could have worked harder on it. But I couldn’t be arsed doing any more.
‘I don’t think our old songs are all that different from our new ones, as people are always saying. The words are different, but that’s because they’re done up differently. The tunes are much the same.
‘I suppose I’m so indifferent about our music because other people take it so seriously. It can be pleasing in a way, but most of it gets my back up.
‘It’s nice when people like it, but when they start “appreciating” it, getting great deep things out of it, making a thing of it, then it’s a lot of shit. It proves what we’ve always thought about most sorts of so-called art. It’s all a lot of shit. We hated all the shit they wrote and talked about Beethoven and ballet, all kidding themselves it was important. Now it’s happening to us. None of it is important. It just takes a few people to get going, and they con themselves into thinking it’s important. It all becomes a big con.
‘We’re a con as well. We know we’re conning them, because we know people want to be conned. They’ve given us the freedom to con them. Let’s stick that in there, we say, that’ll start them puzzling. I’m sure all artists do, when they realize it’s a con. I bet Picasso sticks things in. I bet he’s been laughing his balls off for the last 80 years.
‘It’s sad, though. When we’re not laughing, we’re conning ourselves into thinking we are important. People won’t take anything as a laugh. If we said when we wrote “She’s Leaving Home” we were actually thinking about bananas, nobody would believe you. They don’t want to believe you.
‘It is depressing to realize we were right in what we always thought, all these years ago. Beethoven is a con, just like we are now. He was just knocking out a bit of work, that was all.
‘The thing is, do Beethoven and these sort of people realize they’re a con? Or do they really think they’re important? Does the prime minister realize he’s just a bloke? I don’t know. Perhaps he’s taken in by all this pretending to know what he’s doing. The drag is he sounds as if he really thinks he knows what’s going on, when he doesn’t.
‘People think the Beatles know what’s going on. We don’t. We’re just doing it. People want to know what the inner meaning of “Mr Kite” was. There wasn’t any. I just did it. I shoved a lot of words together, then shoved some noise on. I didn’t dig that song when I wrote it. I didn’t believe in it when we were recording it. But nobody will believe it. They don’t want to. They want it to be important.’
31 john
John lives in a large mock-Tudor house on a private estate full of mock-Tudor houses in Weybridge, Surrey. Ringo lives on the same estate. John’s house cost him in all £60,000, although it was only £20,000 to buy. He spent the other £40,000 doing it up, knocking rooms around, decorating and furnishing, landscaping the garden and building a swimming pool. He has spent too much on it, which he knows. ‘I suppose I’d only get half the money back if I sold it, about £30,000. I’ll need to find a pop singer to sell it to, someone soft anyway.’
In the garden he has a psychedelically painted caravan, which was done to match the patterns of his painted Rolls-Royce. The house is on a slight hill, with the grounds rolling beneath. There is a full-time gardener, a housekeeper called Dot and a chauffeur called Anthony. None of them lives in.
Inside, the front hall is dark and book-ridden, but the rooms beyond are bright and large and lushly decorated. There are long plush sofas and huge pile carpets and elegant drapes, all of which look brand new and unused, like a Hollywood set. But amongst them are scattered irrelevant ornaments, old posters and bits of antiques. They look highly used and personal, obviously chosen by John, rather than an interior decorator, but just dumped and forgotten about once the initial whim wore off.
These reception rooms might as well be corridors. Nobody ever seems to use them, although they are kept beautifully dusted. They just walk through them to get out. All the living is done in one little rectangular room at the back of the house. It has one wall completely made of glass and looks over the garden and trees beyond.
John, his wife Cynthia and their son Julian (born 8 April 1963) spend most of their time in this living room and kitchen. The surrounding opulence seems to have nothing to do with them. Dot looks after that.
Inside their quarters, Cyn looks after her family on her own, doing all the cooking for the three of them — though John sometimes makes tea. She looks after Julian by herself. She has never had a nanny, although Dot does a lot of babysitting. It was she who looked after Julian while John and Cyn were in India in early 1968.
Cyn gets worried now and again by the expense of having and not using such a big house. John, when he thinks about it, finds it a laugh.
‘Everything seems to cost a fortune,’ she says. ‘John spends impetuously and it’s catching. I’m always feeling guilty. I have to pull myself together now and again, when I realize how much something would mean to some people. Our food and drink bill is amazing. It’s mostly bread, tea, sugar, milk, cat food and soft drinks, as we don’t drink. Yet it somehow comes to £120 a month. I don’t know how.’
They have five cats. Their names chart the stages in John’s life. There’s Mimi, after his aunt, and Nel and Mal, after their road managers. One kitten, born in the summer of 1967, at the height of their Yogi summer, is called Babidji.
A lot of the regular bills, like gas and electricity, are paid direct by their accountant. Cyn pays the rest.
‘I sometimes open them when they arrive,’ says John. ‘If I don’t like the look of them I put them away and forget about them till they start complaining. Now and again I do query them, but they just go on about “Well, sir, it’s like this, sir.” You never get anywhere.’
All the Beatles receive a weekly sum of £50 in fivers to cover any personal expenses, like staff. They rarely carry any money personally.
‘I don’t know how much money I’ve got,’ says John. ‘I’m not conscious of having a treasure chest full of it at the bottom of the garden. It’s all hypothetical, but I know it’s not as much as some people think.
‘It’s all tied up in things, in various forms. I did ask the accountant once how much it came to. I wrote it down on a bit of paper. But I’ve lost the bit of paper.’
Their little rectangular living room is crammed high with posters, ornaments and photographs. A large notice pinned on one wall says ‘Milk is Harmless.’
They eat in this room, watch telly in this room, and when it’s cold or rainy John spends most of his time, when he’s not recording or writing a song, curled up on a small sofa in this room, doing nothing. The sofa is far too small for him. He would obviously be more comfortable on one of the lush ones from the other room. But he curls his legs round and can lie for hours.
When it’s fine, he opens the sliding glass door and goes out and sits on a step in the garden, looking down at his swimming pool and his English country garden.
Anthony or Dot usually answer the front door, though if he’s in the mood, John does. He rarely answers the telephone. It is almost impossible to get him on the telephone anyway, as he has an answerphone system that takes messages. This in itself puts off most people trying to get through to him. There is a recorded voice that says ‘This is Weybridge Four, Five, Wubbleyoo, Dubbleyoo, please leave your message now.’