‘We were on the way to Wembley once in the van. We wrote on a piece of paper, “Which Way to Wembley”. We spoke in a foreign language and pointed to a map of Wales. Everybody went mad putting us right.
‘We did all think of disguises once, so we could get around. George and I went through the customs in long coats and beards thinking no one would recognize us, but they all did. Paul was the best. He pretended to be a weird photographer, coming out with a lot of psychological gibberish. He even fooled Brian.’
Most of all, John misses just going out and about and being ordinary. Even though Beatlemania is long since over, it is impossible for him or any of the Beatles to go anywhere and not be recognized. Cyn can manage on her own. Her years of avoiding all publicity have now paid off. ‘But we can’t do a simple thing together as a family, like going for a walk. It’s terrible. Sometimes I wish it had never all happened.’
Of all the Beatles John is the one who most detests not being able to be a private citizen. When he thinks that perhaps he is doomed for ever to be well known, whatever he does from now on, it almost makes him scream.
‘No! You don’t think that could happen do you? Not famous for ever? What if we disappeared for years and years, wouldn’t that work? I suppose we’d then just become famous in another way, like Greta Garbo. Perhaps a new group will come along and take over from us? It would be so nice to be completely forgotten.’
Towards the end of 1967 and in early 1968 they did start trying to make contact with the real world again. They found that their faces had become so famous that, like the royal family, people don’t expect to see them in the street or in a Wimpy Bar. They managed quite easily to go to little cafés in Soho during the cutting of the Magical Mystery Tour. So many people at the time looked like the Beatles anyway, with sideboards and moustaches, that few believed they were the real ones.
‘I did a trial run with Ringo the other day. We went to the pictures, the first time for years and years, since we lived in Liverpool. We went to see a Morecambe and Wise film in Esher. We chose a matinée, thinking it would be quiet, but we forgot the schools were off and it was packed. We didn’t see the whole film. We had an ice cream, then left. Nobody bothered us. It was just a practice run. I might go more often now.
‘Brian used to take us to a West End theatre now and again. We’d go in a party and that would be OK. People would stare, but we wouldn’t be bothered too much. But I don’t care about the theatre, so I’m not worried about missing that. It’s just five blokes on the stage pretending to be somewhere else. But I miss the cinema. I spent all my time in Liverpool at the pictures.
‘Ringo and I also went on a bus. We just decided to try it, to see if we could do it. I’ve never been on a London bus before. It was on the Embankment. We were on the bus 20 minutes. It was great. We got recognized, but it didn’t matter too much. We were in the mood for it. We started filming all the people on the bus. The conductress told us dirty jokes. Most people didn’t really believe it was us.
‘Some newspaper rang up the office the next day. They said some woman was claiming she’d seen us on a bus. I told them to say she was wrong. It wasn’t us. The next thing would have been the newspaper ringing up and saying what was it like, John, going on a bus after all these years? I couldn’t be arsed with all that.
‘What I’d like is to be completely left alone. I’m not a mixer. I’ve got enough friends to see me through. I just want to be left alone.
‘My so-called outgoing character is all false. I kept it up for years, but I’m not a loudmouth. It was a part I put on, as a defence. I cried wolf and I’m paying for it now. I know it sounds like a moan. Perhaps it’s just because the grass is always greener.’
Paul and George do tend to go and see people now and again, but John rarely makes an attempt, to give out or make contact. Things have to come to him, or else he doesn’t care about them. And the way his life is ordered, it is hard for anything to get through to him, except on the telly, which he has on non-stop.
‘A couple of weeks of telly watching is as good as pot. When I used to watch it a few years ago I couldn’t stand people like Hughie Green, now he doesn’t annoy me. He amuses me. He and Michael Miles are my favourites. Everything’s the same. It’s like a newspaper. You read all the stories and they go into your head as one.
‘I think a lot when I’m watching telly. It’s like looking into the fire and daydreaming. You’re watching it, but your mind’s not on it.’
The only live stimulus he gets is from the other Beatles. No one has been within light years of taking their place in his life.
At first, they naturally repelled all boarders, because they were so busy going their own way, doing their own things together. When they became famous and people deliberately tried to get into their circle, usually for the wrong reasons, they actively and brutally repulsed all advances.
Most show-business stars change their friends as they change the size of the billing. Apart from Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles have picked up no friends from the pop music world. In their normal daily life, there is still only each other or Mal, Neil and Terry.
‘We have met some new people since we’ve become famous, but we’ve never been able to stand them for more than two days. Some hang on a bit longer, perhaps a few weeks, but that’s all. Most people don’t get across to us.’
John sees Ringo most of all, as he lives just round the corner. He pops round to his place when he’s bored, to mess around in Ringo’s garden or play with Ringo’s expensive toys. They never make dates or proper arrangements. Things are just done as the mood takes them. Everything’s on a basis of if I see you, I see you.
John most of all can’t be without the other three for very long, which is hard luck on Cyn. He doesn’t mean it in any way nastily, as he doesn’t mean not talking to her or going into a semi-trance to be an insult to her. That’s just him, which she has to accept.
‘If I am on my own for three days, doing nothing, I almost leave myself completely. I’m just not here. Cyn doesn’t realize it. I’m up there watching myself, or I’m at the back of my head. I can see my hands and realize they’re moving, but it’s a robot who’s doing it.
‘Ringo understands it. I can discuss it with him. I have to see the others to see myself. I realize then there is someone else like me, so it’s satisfying and reassuring. It’s frightening really, when it gets too bad. I have to see them to establish contact with myself again and come down.
‘Sometimes I don’t come down. We were recording the other night and I just wasn’t there. Neither was Paul. We were like two robots, going through the motions.
‘We do need each other a lot. When we used to meet again after an interval we always used to be embarrassed about touching each other. We’d do an elaborate hand shake, just to hide the embarrassment. Or we did mad dances. Then we got to hugging each other. Now we do the Buddhist bit, arms around. It’s just saying hello, that’s all.’
Now and again he gets the desire to go off somewhere, with Cyn and Julian, and of course the Beatles as well. The Greek island idea, which John was particularly keen on, greatly appealed to him at the time. ‘We’re all going to live there, perhaps for ever, just coming home for visits. Or it might just be six months a year. It’ll be fantastic, all on our own on this island. There’s some little houses which we’ll do up and knock together and live sort of communally.