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Suddenly one day, Neil or somebody said "Ringo's gone on holiday"
I felt two things. I felt I wasn't playing great
and the other three were really happy and I was an outsider
So I decided, fuck it, I'm leaving
I went to see John, who was living in my apartment in Montagu Square
I knocked on the door and said "Hi"
"I'm leaving the group because I feel unloved and out of it
"I'm not playing well and you three are really close"
And he said "I thought it was you three"
Then I went over to Paul's, knocked on his door and said the same thing:
"I'm leaving the band. You three guys are really close and I'm out of it"
And he said "I thought it was you three"
So we had to reassure him that we did think he was great
You know, that's what it's like in life
You never stop and say "Hey, I think you're great"
I don't think we'd ever done any of that with Ringo
and he felt insecure, so we had to-and he left
So we had to say "You're great, man, you're the best"
Then he said "Oh, thank you." I think he was pleased to hear that
I knew we were just in a messed up stage, all of us
It wasn't just me, the whole thing was going down
I came back into the studio and George had had it decked out with flowers
Flowers everywhere and John had sent me telegrams saying:
"You're the best rock drummer, come on home!"
I felt good about myself again and we'd got through that little crisis
It was great, and then the White Album really took off
Like Yer Blues was great
We all left the studio and went to a little room, so there's no separation
There was lots of group activity going down. I loved the White Album
There was a lot more individual stuff
For the first time I think people were accepting that it was individual
I remember having three studios operating at the same time
Paul was doing some overdubs in one, John was doing something in another
I was doing horns on something else in another studio
because maybe they'd set a release date and time was running out
Hey, I'm getting cramp
If we do that again... are we ready, we'll sing the song
I wanna hear that... I wanna hear that
OK, Robert? - Take 29
Reach for this one. Were any of them any good?
I'll just be singing to guide you...
Can you turn it down in my cans a bit?
The last mistake was entirely when I just took my mind off it for a second
A lot of the recordings would have a basic idea, then a jam session to end it
which sometimes didn't sound too good
But this is a fairly small criticism
When they did the White Album
George Martin Record Producer I thought we should have made a very good single album rather than a double
I agree, we should have put it out as two separate albums
the White and the Whiter album
A lot of information on a double album
What do you do when you've got all them songs?
You want to get rid of them so you can do more songs
There was a lot of ego in that band
and a lot of songs should have been elbowed or made into B sides
I think it could have been made a fantastically good album
if it had been condensed a bit
But a lot of people think it's still the best album they made
It's not my view but... horses for courses
You can always say that, you know. 'Perhaps' I'll go with, not 'definitely'
I think it's fine. The fact that it's got so much is one of the things that's cool
It's varied stuff, Rocky Raccoon, Piggies...
Happiness is a Warm Gun, that kind of stuff
I think it's a fine album
I'm not a great one for 'maybe it was too many of that... '
It was great, it sold, it's the bloody Beatles' White Album, shut up!
There was a little trauma with a song called Revolution
I thought it was 'au courant' as they say
It was about what was going on at the time and I wanted it to be a single
I said "Put this out. We should say something and this is what I want to say"
And they said "No, it's too slow"
Neil Aspinall Head of Apple The Apple boutique closed down
I think we just got to the point where we didn't want it any more
We ended up selling Marks and Spencer underwear
Not the image we started with of Simon and Marijke, all these colourful clothes
Great sixties hippy gear
Then to make it pay we ended up selling...
St Michael underwear... and it wasn't the image we wanted
Apple Shop Giveaway London 31st July 1968 We came up with the idea to give it all away
and stop fucking about with psychedelic clothes shops
We just gave it to the people who showed up on the day
You could have one item each, not take two, in the spirit of the thing
Well, they cleaned out the shop
Only one free dress for each customer
But I think personally it was a good way to do it
We weren't seriously in the rag trade. It was "Look, it didn't work, so..."
"That's it!"
We went round the night before we gave everything away
and took what we felt we wanted
I didn't go
Derek Taylor Apple Press Officer I saw a half-acquaintance outside Apple and said "Where are you going?"
He said "I'm going to join the queue to get some of those clothes"
I thought that was awful
I didn't want them to close the shop and wrote an impassioned open letter:
"Dear boys, you know, if you do this..." and a lot of other hoo-ha
because I dreaded to see the thing falling apart
Frost On Sunday 8th September 1968
Beautiful... absolute poetry
Welcome back to Part III with the greatest tea-room orchestra in the world
Are you in colour? - No, black and white at the moment
But as you can see, making their first audience appearance for over a year
Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!
I was driving out to John's house after John and Cynthia had got divorced
I was just going out to say hello to Cynthia and Julian
I came up with these words in my mind as if talking to Julian...
Hey Jules, don't take it bad. Take a sad song and make it better
So I got the first idea on the way out there
with this 'Hey Jules' as I thought it was going to be called
It seemed a bit of a mouthful so I changed it to Jude
I liked the song a lot and I played it to John and Yoko when I'd finished it
I actually had finished but I thought there was a little more to go
with the words: The movement you need is on your shoulder
I'm playing it and I say to John "I'll fix that" - He said "What?"
I said "The movement you need is on your shoulder...
"I've used the word 'shoulder' once and anyway it's stupid, I'll change it"
He said "You won't, that's the best line in the song"
He said "I know what it means. It's great"
The great thing about John. I'd have knocked it out, he'd say it's great
I'd see it through his eyes and go "Oh, OK"
So that is the line now, when I do that song
That's the line when I think of John and sometimes get a little emotional
This was the period when everything was going up and up and rosy
Then suddenly it started to go down like everything goes in a cycle
Once it starts going down, as anybody can tell you...
when you get knocked to the ground, they start kicking you
The world was a problem but we weren't
That was the best thing about the Beatles
Until we started to break up like White Album and stuff
then even the studio got a bit tense
It was evident on the White Album
I think it was evident in India
when George and I stayed there and Paul and Ringo left and it was a slow death
It was like the wind-down to a divorce
A divorce usually doesn't just happen, there's months and years of misery
They were going through a very revolutionary period at that time
They were trying to think of something new
They actually had a good idea which I thought was well worth working on
They wanted to write an album completely and rehearse it
then perform it in front of a large audience, a live album of new material
We started rehearsing at Twickenham Film Studio and I went with them
Twickenham Film Studios London I'm not sure whether everybody was behind the idea of going to Twickenham
They decided to film whatever they were doing
and they were going to start making a new album
The original idea was that you'd see the Beatles
rehearsing, jamming, making up stuff
getting their act together and then finally we'd perform somewhere
as the big end of show concert
Michael Lindsay-Hogg was going to direct it
This should be built like a film set
so you can glide all over the place on tracks with your cameras
Go places that TV cameras don't go
You can come down from that roof on one long shot, down on a thing
Slowly like a chair-lift
Right down into Ringo's face on the one shot from right back there
Have all sorts of cranes and lifts for your cameras to float around us
Just all that flowing movement and then the songs
Just stay with us and that will create your sets, with cameras hanging all over
I thought, it's a new year and we've got a new approach
but it soon became apparent that it wasn't anything new
It was just going to be painful again
The days were long and they could get boring
Twickenham wasn't conducive to a great atmosphere. We were just in a big barn
I'd just spent six months producing a Jackie Lomax album
and hanging out with Bob Dylan and The Band in Woodstock, having a great time
For me to come back into the winter of discontent
with the Beatles in Twickenham
it was very unhealthy and unhappy
It was just a dreadful feeling, and being filmed all the time like that
I just wanted them to go away... and we'd be there at 8.00 in the morning
You couldn't make music at 8.00 in the morning in a strange place
with people filming you and coloured lights
As everybody knows, we never had much privacy
They were filming us rehearsing
There was a bit of a row going on between Paul and I
You can see it where he's saying "Well, don't play this", or something
I'm saying "You know I'll play what you want, or I won't play if you don't want
"Just make up your mind." That kind of stuff was going on
They were filming and recording us having a row. It was terrible
But it's complicated in the bit... - It's not complicated
I'll play the chords if you like
I'm trying to help you, but I always hear myself annoying you
OK, look, look, I'm not trying to say that
You're doing this as though I'm trying to say...
And what we said the other day, you know, I'm not trying to get you
I really am trying to just say... Iook, lads, the band...
Shall we try it like this?
It's funny how it only occurs...
It's like, should we play guitar all the way through Hey Jude...
I don't mind, I'll play whatever you want me to play
or I won't play at all if you don't want me to play
What it is that pleases you, I'll do it
I thought, I'm quite capable of being relatively happy on my own
I'm not able to be happy in this situation, I'm getting out of here
The whole pressure of it finally got to us
So like people do when they're together, they start picking on each other
It was "You got the tambourine wrong so my life's a misery." It became petty
But the manifestations were on each other as we were the only ones we had
It was wait a minute, George has left and this isn't good enough
I'm not sure what happened. Maybe Neil or one of the people looking after us
would probably ring George and say "They're sorry, it was a mistake"
I remember being called to a meeting in Elstead in Surrey
It was Ringo's house that he'd bought from Peter Sellers
It was decided it would be better
if we got back together and finished the record
Also, Twickenham Studio was very cold and not a nice atmosphere
so we abandoned that and went to the Savile Row recording studio
In the end we recorded in the Apple studios in Savile Row
There was a guy called Magic Alex, who was a great friend of John's
John thought he was the bee's knees because he gave John electronic toys
He said EMI was no good and he could build a better studio. Well, he didn't
Hello. I'm Alexis from Apple Electronics
I would like to say hello to all my brothers around the world
and to all the girls and all the electronic people around the world
And that is Apple Electronics
When we finally got him to do a recording studio...
We had a 16-track studio and we walked in there, it was chaos
We had to rip it all out and start again
He had 16 little speakers all around the room
There wasn't anything he did-except a toilet with a radio in it or something
So we just took the same portable equipment in there
But the studio itself, the actual room to play in there
was much cosier and much more at home
Apple Recording Studio Savile Row London
I think everyone was getting a little tired of us by then
because we were taking a long time
and there were many heated discussions
Billy Preston was a great help, a very good keyboard guy
His work on Get Back alone justified him being there
He was an amiable fellow, very nice
He was a kind of emollient, if you like
He helped to lubricate the friction that had been there
It's interesting to see how people behave nicely when you bring a guest in
They don't want everybody to know they're so bitchy
This happened back in the White Album
when I brought Eric Clapton in to play on While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Suddenly everybody's on their best behaviour
So I put a message out to find if Billy was in town
and told him to come into Savile Row, which he did
Straight away there was 100o/o improvement in the vibe in the room
Everybody was happier also to have somebody else playing in the band
Every number's got a piano part
Normally we overdub it... but this time we want to do it live
We were working on a good track and that always excited us
His part was also part of it
Suddenly, when we were working on something good
the bullshit went out of the window
We got back down to doing what we did really, really well
I think it works OK with just the two verses...
Sweet Loretta Martin, the first verse - Just have two for now
I'll sing it and shout where I think it should go. If you disagree, I'll change it
Maybe if we had an intro, a verse and a chorus...
To me the Beatles were always a great little band
Nothing more, nothing less, for all our success
When we sat down to play, we played good from the very beginning
From when we first got Ringo into the band, and before
But when we first got Ringo, the band really gelled. We played good!
We've never had too many of those times where it's just not working
We had them like any other band but for a great little rock'n'roll band -
we could play any little blues or rock'n'roll thing-and it seemed to work
The original idea to rehearse all these new songs
and then make an album in a live show never really happened
because the album became us in the studio
As we rehearsed the songs, they were recorded
They were talking about doing a concert on a boat
or in an amphitheatre in Greece
or maybe at the Roundhouse in London
There were lots of ideas about where they should maybe do a concert
and nothing was ever really agreed
What do we want to do? - I'll tell you what
We're still rehearsing and we'll get it together
So then you must collect...
We'll all collect our thoughts on what we want
You still expect us to be on the chimney with a lot of people or something like that
Or even a stage at the Saville or anything
We won't worry about that so don't give us that one
'Expecting' is not a word we use any more... 'thinking about'
'Praying'
What about the move tomorrow, do you want to...
No, let's decide on that a bit later, let's keep off that
We're getting into too diverse... we'll do the numbers, we're the band
Whatever, I'll do it... if we've got to go on the roof
But I mean... I don't want to go
I would like to
I'd like to go on the roof - It diverts people
That's all right. Anyway, we won't discuss it
I want to record them as tracks and I want to do 14 numbers
Any time is paradise when I'm with you
That was looking for an end to the film
and it was "How are we going to finish, there's not going to be a big concert"
By then it was looking like... can we do this, finish in two weeks' time?
Then it was suggested that we go up on the roof
and do a concert there, then we could all go home
30th January 1969
And in the end it started to filter up from our roadie, Mal
who crept in, trying to keep out of the camera:
"Police are complaining. You've got to stop." We said "We're not stopping"
He said "The police are going to arrest you"
"Good end to the film. Let 'em do it. Great!"
We thought that's an end: "Beatles busted on rooftop gig"
The thing on the roof that always I feel let down about were the police
Someone called the police and I was playing away and I thought, oh great!
I wanted the cops to drag me off - "Get off those drums!"
We were being filmed and it would have been really great
Well, they didn't. They just bumbled in: "You've got to turn that sound down"
It could have been fabulous
By the time we got to Let It Be we couldn't play the game any more
It had come to the point where it was no longer creating magic
and the camera in the room with us made us aware that it was phoney situation
In fact what happened was when we got in there
we showed how the break-up of a group works
We didn't realise we were actually breaking up as it was happening
Just the same as it was before
The year before when we were last in the studio
There was a lot of... kind of trivia
and games that were being played
I think it shows as an absolute fact that we were going different places
I've mentioned it before, the energy for the Beatles was waning
We put in 1000o/o but it was dwindling now
"Oh dear, do we have to turn up?" "Do we have to do that thing again!"
"I want to do this and John wants to do that"
And George was off and people were... you know, we had families
I remember thinking of it like army buddies
One of the songs we used to love in the past was Wedding Bells
Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine...
and this idea that you'd been army buddies but one day...
you kiss the army goodbye and get married and act like normal people
It was like that for the Beatles, we always knew that day had to come
London, weepy time down south
The last bachelor Beatle was no longer a bachelor
12th March 1969 Paul McCartney married New Yorker Linda Eastman
at Marylebone Registrar's office
Paul's new step-daughter Heather
was one of the shrieking, sobbing, devoted fans
who surged round the newly-weds as they made for their car
London bobbies and photographers tangled with tear-stained teenagers
bidding farewell to the bachelordom of the Beatle who resisted marriage so long
At last the new threesome found sanctuary in their car
But clearly Paul's plan for a quiet wedding had gone drastically wrong
Exit the McCartneys, a very popular group
And they chose Paul's wedding day to bust me
George was in my office
Pattie rang, saying that Sgt Pilcher, if that was his name...
was swarming all over the house in Esher
George said to me "What should I do? What should I tell Pattie?"
I said just tell them where the stuff is because they'll find it anyway
Save yourself a lot of hassle
He said he had a bit of grass and maybe some hash in a box on the mantelpiece
So he rang Pattie and told her to tell them where it was
By which time they had found a chunk this big
in a boot in his wardrobe
Sgt Pilcher was gaining great notoriety by busting pop stars
such as George, Mick, Keith and John - always was the same cop
Nobody realised, nobody put two and two together
There was a kind of social pecking order
that was in the pop world
The drug squad decided to go round
and this fellow thought he was Oliver Cromwell
He decided to go round and clean up what was going on
They busted Donovan first
Anybody who was in England at that time will remember
Then they bust the Rolling Stones and they worked their way up
They they busted John and Yoko and me
Sgt Pilcher's successful career with the drug squad was short-lived
He was later sent to prison for perjury
Sentencing Pilcher to 4 years in prison, Mr Justice Melford Stevenson said:
But now my life has changed in oh so many ways
We wanted to get married on the cross-Channel ferry
That was the romantic part - when we went to Southampton
She couldn't get on because she wasn't English and couldn't get a day visa
Anyway you can't get married. The Captain's not allowed to do it any more
We called Peter Brown from Paris. "We want to get married, where can we go?"
He said "Gibraltar's the only place"
So "OK, let's go" and it was beautiful
When John hooked up with Yoko so intensely
it was obvious there could be no looking back after that
I always felt he had to clear the decks of us in order to give her enough attention
It takes a lot to live with four people for years and years, which is what we did
We'd call each other every name under the sun
We'd got to blows, we'd been through the whole damn show
We knew where we were at, we still do
We've been through the mill together for more than ten years
We've been through our therapy together many times, you know
On a lot of days, even with all the craziness, it really worked still
Instead of working every day, it worked two days a month
There were still good days
We were still really close friends
then it would split off again into some madness
It was quite obvious that the Beatles became...
The thing that it started out being...
gave us a vehicle to be able to do so much
when we were younger, and we grew right through that
But it got to a point where it was stifling us, there was too much restriction
It had to self-destruct
It's easy for people to say about Apple and the Beatles "Why didn't you...?"
You sit there with millions of dollars and try and work it out
It's so easy afterwards to say "Why didn't you?"
With Apple we were great creators and we could do all of that
but nobody had half an idea about a budget
So we were spending more than we were earning
There was nobody managing Apple
It was wasting away all this money
Nobody had any ability to be a business manager
So it was a question of who was going to do it
I was doing it but only on the basis
that I'll do it until you find somebody you want to do it. Because I didn't
That's why somebody like Allen Klein
had the opportunity to say he could do it, but so did a lot of other people
Klein had been managing the Rolling Stones...
and I believe Donovan... and John had met him
He came in one day and said:
"I'm going to get Klein to manage me, and that's what's happening"
And Allen was... a human being
the same as Brian was a human being
It was the same thing with Brian in the early days, it was assessment
I make a lot of mistakes character-wise but now and then I make a good one
The alternative to Klein was possibly Lee Eastman
but I'm not at all sure
that Paul wanted Lee Eastman to be a manager
in the sense that Brian Epstein had been a manager
or Allen Klein to be a manager like Brian Epstein had been a manager
I put forward Lee Eastman, Linda's dad
as a possible sort of lawyer and possibly someone to do it
But they said no, he would be too biased for you and against us
Oh yeah, we had great arguments with Paul
We felt the three of us have gone this way, why don't you?
So there it was, and it was a three-to-one situation
In the Beatles, if any one doesn't agree with the plan
it was always vetoed, it was very democratic that way
So the three-to-one thing was very awkward
Things would happen like...
at Olympic Studio one evening we were supposed to be doing Abbey Road
and we all showed up at the studio ready to record
and Allen Klein showed up as part of the party with his henchman
They said "You've got to sign a contract for Klein to take to his Board"
I said "It's Friday night, he doesn't work on a Saturday
"Anyway, Allen Klein's a law unto himself, he doesn't have to report
"We can easily do this on Monday. Let's do our session now
"You're not going to push me into this." They said "You're stalling"
They said "He wants 20o/o"
I said "Tell him he can have 15o/o." They said "You're stalling"
I said "No, I'm working for us. We're a big act"
My exact words: "We're a big act, the Beatles. He'll take 15o/o"
I think they were so intoxicated with him that they said:
"He must have 20o/o and he's got to report to his Board tomorrow
"Sign now or never"
I said "Right, that's it. I'm not signing now"
There was a big argument and they all went, leaving me at the studio
What changed at Apple after he arrived? Everything!
It was a completely different situation
First and foremost, Paul wasn't there
Let It Be was such an unhappy record, even though it has some great songs
and I really thought that was the end of the Beatles
I thought, what a shame to go out like this
But Paul rang. "We're making another record, would you produce it?"
My immediate answer was "Only if you let me produce it the way we used to"
"We want to do that." "John included?" He said "Yes, honestly"
So I said "If you really want that, let's get together again"
And it was a very happy record - everybody knew it was to be the last
I think the deal was that through Let It Be
I left and we got back just to finish it, to make it tidy
Then everybody decided we ought to do one better album
I think it shows on the record
that when we were excited the track's exciting
It really all comes together
It doesn't matter what we're going through individually on the bullshit level
When it gets to the music
you can see that it's really cool, we'd all put in 1000o/o
Nobody was sure it was going to be the last one, but everybody felt it was
The Beatles had gone through so much, and it was a long time
They'd been incarcerated together for nearly a decade
It was a very happy album. Everybody worked frightfully well
And that's why I'm very fond of it
There was always a possibility that we could have carried on
We weren't sitting in the studio saying "OK, this is it
"Last record, last track, last take"
But when we'd finished Abbey Road the game was up, we all accepted that
It was magical
There were some really loving, caring moments between four people
A hotel room here and there
A really amazing closeness, just...
four guys who really loved each other. It was pretty sensational
They gave their money and they gave their screams
but the Beatles gave their nervous systems
which is a much more difficult thing to give
I'm really glad that most of the songs
dealt with love, peace, understanding
Hardly any said "Go on kids, tell them to sod off, leave your parents"
It's all very "all you need is love" or John's "give peace a chance"
There was a very good spirit behind it all
It's just natural. It's not a great disaster
People talk as if it's the end of the earth. It's only a rock group that split up
You have all the old records there if you want to reminisce
22nd August 1969
That's what they ask you. On tours round the world and press conferences:
"Getting the Beatles back together?" You say "What are you talking about?"
They say "How about Julian?" I feel sorry for him in the middle of all that
Or Sean or somebody
Well, let me ask you this way: "Are you getting back together?" No!
And yet with Free as a Bird we somehow did, yeah
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