Even when he is trying to communicate, Cyn, like his aunt Mimi, often finds it difficult to know what he’s on about, although he makes more of an effort these days, since Maharishi arrived, taking over from the Buddhism.
‘I do find it hard to pass the time of day with people. There’s no point in that sort of talk. Now and again I do it, as a game, to see if I can. How are you? What’s the time? How are we getting on? Those sort of pointless things.
‘The main thing is, there’s nothing to talk about any more. I think communication all the time like mad, but putting it into words is a waste of time.
‘We talk in code to each other as Beatles. We always did that, when we had so many strangers round us on tours. We never really communicated with other people. Now that we don’t meet strangers at all, there is no need for any communication. We understand each other. It doesn’t matter about the rest.
‘Now and again, even though we feel each other, we do have a talking communication session, when we have to say things out loud, or otherwise we forget what we know we’ve decided amongst ourselves.
‘I do daydream a lot. That’s in the same class as idle conversation, so I suppose I shouldn’t really condemn idle conversation. Just the normal daydreams, what am I going to do today, shall I get up or not, shall I write that song or not, no I’m not going to answer that phone.
‘Talking is the slowest form of communicating anyway. Music is much better. We’re communicating to the outside world through our music. The office in America say they listen to Sergeant Pepper over and over so that they know what we’re thinking in London.
‘I do have little spasms of talking. I go and chat to Dot or Anthony, or the gardener, just to see if I can do it. It surprises them.’
The biggest change in John is the decline in his aggression. All his close friends have noticed. They all believe it has been brought about by success.
‘It took a long long time,’ says Ivan Vaughan, his friend from school. ‘Even a couple of years ago, the old animosities were still there, refusing to talk to anybody, being rude, slamming the door. Now he’s just as likely to say to people come in, sit down.’
Pete Shotton, the other boyhood friend who opened the Apple Boutique, agrees that all the chips have been smoothed down.
‘The good I always saw in him is now at the top. It was only people like schoolmasters who thought he was all bad. No one would ever believe what I saw in him at the time.
‘It’s great that he’s so happy. He spent his whole childhood and all his youth trying all the time to be number one. He had to be the leader at all times, either by fighting everyone or, if they were big, by undermining them by abuse or sarcasm.
‘Today John is not trying to prove anything, he doesn’t have to be number one, that’s why he’s happy. You can even see the change. He used to walk like this at school and at the Art College, all hunched up, his eyes and head down, like a scared rabbit, driven into a corner, but ready to lash out. You can see it in all the old pictures of him. Now he can smile in pictures. He’s now learning because he wants to learn. At school you are forced to learn because you have to fit into society.
‘But John hasn’t changed in some things. He’s not bigheaded or vain, and he’s as generous as ever. When John had a dozen sweets in a bag and there were three of us round him, he’d share them all out, three sweets each. He made me more generous, just by being with him.’
John doesn’t see why success should have made him bigheaded or changed him in any way. Apart from thinking that success is meaningless, he also thinks anybody can do it, which is what Paul also thinks.
Both he and Paul feel that the most important thing about success is willpower. ‘Everyone can be a success. If you keep saying that enough times to yourself you can be. We’re no better than anybody else. We’re all the same. We’re as good as Beethoven. Everyone’s the same inside.
‘You need the desire and the right circumstances, but it’s nothing to do with talent, or with training or education. You get primitive painters, and writers, don’t you? Nobody told them how to do it. They told themselves they could do it and just did it.
‘What’s talent? I don’t know. Are you born with it, do you discover you have it later on? The basic talent is believing you can do something. Me and Paul were always drawing, but George wouldn’t even try because he said he couldn’t draw. It took us a long time to persuade him anyone could draw. Now he’s drawing all the time. And he’s getting better.
‘We knew that the GCE wasn’t the opening to anything. We could have ground through all that and gone further, but not for me. I believed something was going to happen which I’d have to get through. And I knew it wasn’t GCE.
‘Up to the age of 15 I was no different from any other little cunt of 15. Then I decided I’d write a little song, and I did. But it didn’t make me any different. That’s a load of crap that I discovered a talent. I just did it. I’ve no talent, except a talent for being happy or a talent for skiving.
‘Someone wants to bust open this whole talent myth, wise everybody up. Politicians have no talent. It’s all a con.
‘Perhaps my guru will tell me what my real talent is, something else that I really should be doing.
‘I never felt any responsibility, being a so-called idol. It’s wrong of people to expect it. What they are doing is putting their responsibilities on us, as Paul said to the newspapers when he admitted taking LSD. If they were worried about him being responsible, they should have been responsible enough and not printed it, if they were genuinely worried about people copying.
‘I only felt responsible to the public in that we tried to be as natural as we could. We did put on our social faces, but that was to be expected. But given the circumstances, we were as natural as we could be. Being asked the same questions at the same sort of places all over the world, all about the four mop tops. That was boring. And having to be social to so many people and lord mayors’ wives. All those tasteless people who determine tastes. All those people with no standards, setting all the standards.
‘Even from the beginning I hated such things as meeting the promoter’s wife. People were always saying you had to go through with all the false social things. You just couldn’t be yourself. They wouldn’t understand if you said what you wanted to say. All you could do was make jokes, which I was expected to do anyway after a while. I don’t really believe people are like that. Yet why do they go through with it all?
‘I don’t have to go anywhere now, perhaps a club now and again. Cyn cons me into it. We went to some opening the other night, some old friend. David Jacobs was everywhere. I went with George. He realized what it was going to be like the minute we got to the door but I didn’t. I looked round and he’d gone. He never even went inside. But I was in and was stuck. It was horrible.
‘I’m never conscious of being a Beatle. Never. I’m just me. I’m not famous. It’s other people that do it. Until they come up and react, you’ve forgotten. Oh, yes, that’s why they’re behaving so strange, then I remember I’m a Beatle. I was more used to it a year or so ago, when we were in the thick of it, moving round the country, meeting people all the time who you knew were going to stare. I don’t move around now, except with people I know, so I forget, till I go somewhere new and people stare.
‘People did stare at us before we were famous. Going on a bus to the Cavern, all in leather and carrying guitars. We liked it then. It was our bit of rebellion, just to annoy all the Annie Walkers sitting in the Kardomah.
‘I miss playing soft jokes on people. I used to do it on trains, go into people’s compartments and pretend to be soft, or in shops. I still feel an urge to do that, but you can’t. It would be Beatles Play Tricks. This Will Give You A Laugh.