Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney. Howard Sounes

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СКАЧАТЬ of tape speed has more than a touch of the avant-garde, showing that Paul was certainly not alone in his musical experimentation. To make these promotional films, the Beatles worked with a New York-born television director named Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who had the appearance of the average, trendy young man-about-town, but who – like many people the Beatles were mixing with now – had aristocratic roots. The great-grandson of the 1st Baronet of Rotherfield Hall, a stately pile in Sussex, Michael would eventually inherit the baronetcy, becoming Sir Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Back in 1966, he was plain Michael, 25-year-old employee of the independent television company Rediffusion, working mostly on the pop music show Ready, Steady, Go! One day he was summoned to meet the Beatles for lunch at Abbey Road.

      Mal Evans came in and said, ‘They’re coming,’ and then almost immediately in they came, and it was them. When I say it was them, in these days it’s hard to remember how famous they were. It wasn’t only that they were talented, but somehow they’d caught the temper of the times, and also they somehow inhabited their fame in a way that other people weren’t able to do.

      The Beatles sat down to eat, leaving their guest standing. Finally, Paul acknowledged Lindsay-Hogg, who continues the story: ‘Paul was like the host. That is something he is very good at. Paul is famously charming when he wants to be [and] in my experience, my relationship with them, he was more the driver of certain projects.’ Over time the film-maker would come to realise something else about Paul: ‘Charm for him is like a weapon.’ Beneath the charm, ‘he is very, very tough’.

      When Lindsay-Hogg shot the films for ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain’, at Chiswick House in London, Paul paid close attention, looking through the cameras himself before the shots were taken. The Beatles were under contract to make a third feature film for United Artists, and Paul was thinking about what they might do, and how they might have more creative control. In short, he wanted to become a film-maker himself, an ambition which threads through the ensuing years, usually with disappointing results. In thinking about what sort of picture they might make, Paul also consulted widely, taking advantage of his fame to meet diverse and interesting people.

      Around this time Paul and Jane were granted a meeting with the philosopher Bertrand Russell to gain the Nobel Laureate’s views on Vietnam and the Cold War, which Paul and Jane were both concerned about, half-expecting Armageddon to come by way of a nuclear strike from the East. ‘I think that made us more determined to enjoy ourselves and live for the moment,’ Jane has said. When Paul told the philosopher that the Beatles had a mind to make their next picture an anti-war film, Russell suggested Paul speak to his friend, the author Len Deighton, who was developing the First World War musical Oh What a Lovely War as a picture.

      Deighton invited Paul to dinner to discuss the movie, an invitation to dine with Deighton being a great treat as the author was, among his other talents, a gourmet chef. Deighton served an elaborate Indian meal. Paul expressed an interest in the Beatles starring in Oh What a Lovely War, the project falling down when it came to how they would use music in the picture, as Deighton recalls:

      I couldn’t use Beatle music as the whole point of Oh What a Lovely War was that all the dialogue, words and music, were taken from those actually sung or spoken at the time of the war 1914–18. Paul explained that they wanted to be in a film with a more direct reference to modern war.

      Paul thanked the author, and continued his search for a suitable movie vehicle.

      First the Beatles were contracted to play a series of concerts, their last as it turned out. What became their farewell tour began on 24 June 1966, when the band played three shows in Germany. Before they did so, Brian Epstein – intent on avoiding what his assistant Peter Brown describes as ‘general embarrassment’ – dealt with Hamburg barmaid Erika Wohlers’ claim to have given birth to Paul’s illegitimate daughter. Erika had recently married, becoming Erika Hübers, but her daughter Bettina, now three, was nevertheless still living in care. Erika claims that the German Youth Welfare Office had issued an arrest warrant for Paul that would have made his life difficult had he come back to Germany before reaching a settlement with her. ‘He would have been arrested if he stepped foot on German soil again.’ As a result, Erika says that in January 1966 a lawyer came to her home, explained that he represented McCartney, and made her a cash offer.

      On the instructions of the office in England, he should offer us a so-called ‘hush-money’ [payment] amounting to 21,000 Deutschmarks,* so that neither I nor my husband would ‘go public’. The lawyer explained that the Beatles were coming to Germany in July 1966 and that my daughter Bettina would receive more money, money which would be held in trust until her eighteenth birthday.

      Erika agreed to the deal, receiving 10,000 DM on signature, the balance payable when the Beatles left Germany. A further 30,000 DM was placed in trust for Bettina. No word of this story appeared in the press during the Beatles’ valedictory tour of Germany.

      Though the Hamburg barmaid had been mollified for now, the Beatles’ progress around the world that summer was dogged with trouble. From Germany, the boys flew to Japan where they had been controversially booked to play the Nippon Budokan Hall, a Tokyo auditorium with special, spiritual status because of its association with the martial arts. Many Japanese considered it a desecration to stage a pop concert there. NEMS had received death threats in advance of the tour, and when the Beatles arrived in Tokyo there were street protests, members of the public holding up signs that read BEATLES GO HOME. The authorities sequestered the band inside the Tokyo Hilton prior to the show for fear they might be assassinated, stopping the boys when they tried to sneak outside. At least the Beatles had some dope to smoke. Peter Brown claims they were carrying a supply on tour, which was reckless. The Japanese took a hard line on drug use. Luckily, they weren’t caught.

      This difficult world tour became seriously unpleasant when the Beatles flew from Tokyo to the Philippines to play two stadium concerts in Manila. Led by President Ferdinand Marcos, a former army officer with a murky past, the Philippines was a corrupt police state bolstered by the US as a strategic Cold War ally in South East Asia. With US patronage, Marcos was shaping up to be a fully-fledged dictator, while his young wife, Imelda, lived like a queen. Imelda Marcos was 27 in 1966, her husband a relatively young despot of 48, ‘so we were still attuned, we were close enough in age to be aware and sensitive and admirers of the Beadles’, says the former First Lady, mispronouncing the band’s name. Indeed, Mrs Marcos and her husband owned all the Beadles’ records and very much wanted to meet the group when they came to their country, as did most of the government, which is to say Ferdinand’s political and military cronies. An invitation had already been extended to visit the First Family at their palace. Brian received the invitation in Japan, and declined. The boys had grown to loathe civic receptions of this type. Unfortunately, nobody in the Philippines was brave enough to tell Imelda that the Beatles had turned her down.

      A large number of Filipinos gathered to greet the band at Manila Airport on Sunday 3 July 1966, but the Beatles weren’t permitted to meet their fans. Instead the boys were taken off the plane by police and driven to Manila Harbour, where they were put on a boat. ‘We’ve no idea why they took us to the boat,’ George Harrison said in an interview for the Beatles’ Anthology. ‘I still don’t know to this day.’ In her first interview about the Beatles’ visit to her country, Mrs Marcos says the boat was for their protection.

      Remember, ’66 was at the height of the Cold War, when China, Russia and America were fighting in Vietnam. And the Philippines was in the centre of all of this, the Left was fighting the Right and the communists were very strong nearby, which was China. They had their cultural revolution [and here in the Philippines] the rich and the poor … So it was not a secure place. [So when the security services] saw the mob and the hysteria that met the group they placed them in the boat to make them secure.

      When Brian threw a tantrum, and demanded they be taken ashore, СКАЧАТЬ