BeatleFIC: Thoughts From Behind the Wheel pt 4
The journey down Route 66 continues onward and Paul remembers a time in the clubs when Jane got angry with him over John's antics. DISCLAIMERS: I have no idea how John or Paul behaved in clubs
Though the dry heat and bright blue skies are the dominant weather I've seen in the American Southwest, there have been other examples of rain and clouds that were absolutely amazing. Storms in the desert are something to witness. They come on swift with a sudden change of atmosphere. You can feel the icy chill in the wind blowing before the clouds gather and boil and make weird shapes in the
sky. In the middle of wide open panoramic view, it was like we were in some form of stadium watching a performance the Gods were giving just for us. Those clouds only covered part of the sky. The thunder began to sound and finally the rain fell. It fell in a torrent pouring down so hard I almost wondered if I could continue to have visibility on the road. But here was the weird part. It was only coming down on my side of the road. The other side remained dry with only a tiny sprinkle. Hell, the sun even came out during the storm on the dry side. I would later mention this to a few locals once I encountered them and they'd tell me that was pretty normal actually for what goes on around here but it was still this amazing experience.
One thing did happen that we didn't like. Probably because of the rain being local to just one side of the road, we encountered a group of lizards running right in front of our vehicle probably to get to the dry part on the other side. I tried slowing down and swerving a bit to miss them but there were too many and they had surprised me. I'm sure I hit some. I mentioned it to my companion that I think I still ran a few of them over and she replied, “I won't tell you what I saw. At least you tried to not hit them. It was the best that you could do.”
I didn't like that feeling. We kept our eyes peeled after that for signs of animals running across the road but we really never saw anything else except for a cloud of moving dust we figured was either a rabbit or a road runner.
Then it happened where we both felt the need to find a bathroom but there was no sign of anything coming up. It had been a while since we've last seen any town, even one of those tiny ones that were just a few businesses and that need was growing quite urgent. So I did what anyone would have done. I decided to stop and pull the car over the side of the freeway. No one else was coming and we could take turns watching out for each other. Hey, any port in a storm.
I let my leading lady go first. After all, she had been the one to express her needs first. I stood leaning against the back of our car while she crept around the side not facing the highway. The ground was still all wet from the rain, I noticed. I could see dimples in the sand from the raindrops.
When she was done, she called to me, “You've got to see this tree branch. I think we should get a picture of it.”
I peeked around to have a look at what she was going on about. She was right. The branch was all wet from the rain but it had this green and red stuff growing on it that made it looked like a severed arm until you realized it was a plant you were looking at.
“That almost looks revolting,” I exclaimed.
“I've never seen a tree branch like that,” She said.
So we got out the camera and took our photo. It was definitely a novelty among our collection of snapshots. Later I'd be showing our album of photos to friends and when they came upon that one, I wouldn't say a word at first. Let them figure it out. Sure enough, it would garner quite a lot of conversation.
“What is that? It looks like a rotting arm. Oh my God, is that really a tree branch?”
I would then explain how it was all wet from the rain and that made the colors pop out. Something I learned about photography from Linda and when I saw it, I just had to get a picture of it.
And most would reply, “That looks almost disgusting.”
Yeah, I'm glad we had to stop when we did. It made for a novel photograph.
That novel on tape was continuing on as we moved forward along the highway. Poor Michael was now alone. His wife was gone and many of their assets divided up in a long drawn out court battle. She had actually done quite a bit of homework and acquired the biggest share of the major ones and he was
heartbroken.
Some mutual friends who had been in the same boat began taking him out for drinks to cheer him up. Quite a few of them were part of the Gay scene in the city and told him how it was mostly Raoul who convinced Colleen to fight now for their combined assets or she might not get any in the future. She'd be richer in the long run especially when those assets continued to make money.
“But why would she do that?” Michael would wonder. “Our marriage seemed perfect and what would Raoul gain? He didn't get any of these assets.”
“No he didn't. He just pushed what he thought was the better lifestyle and it worked on her. Who knows how long he had been trying to convince her. Years probably playing on her greed in subtle ways. Working on her slowly.”
The big question for Michael was why?
There were no easy answers. Every woman he had been friends with had gone through a divorce. That could merely be a coincidence.
“To be honest,” Michael's friend told him, “He just feels he's doing his job. Helping Colleen get the maximum amount of money out of her investments. The decision to divorce was ultimately hers.”
That hurt to listen to and made Michael fume about Raoul.
“I always had a feeling about Raoul,” He declared. “I couldn't put my finger on it since I knew it wasn't anything obvious. But I always had a feeling about him and now I know why.”
That was when Michael's life began to change in major ways. For one thing, he wasn't broke. He still had retained a portion of his assets. Boy, did thinking about that bring back some weird memories for me when I was busy trying to protect my old bandmate's assets from the likes of Klein and taking a fall. Granted, Michael's was a different circumstance, but I couldn't help thinking about it all.
Michael began to consider other investments with his money. He was frequenting this club that his friend owned, and he eventually went into become a partner when a new one was opened. Getting involved in that scene opened up a different world for him.
He went into great detail describing the club scene not from the point of view of a patron but from that of an investor. Making decisions and then trying to attract both clientele and entertainment.
I said to my lady, “You know, I've been to many of these types of clubs both as a patron and as a working entertainer. I never knew what all went into running them now. It wasn't like this when my manager Brian ran his theater. I guess that was a different time.”
She said she didn't know what it entailed either and never gave it much thought. Her family had invested in restaurants and places like this in the past, but that was all their involvement was. The money.
“I guess it's a bit different when you actually have to see the running of the place,” She replied.
When did I start going to clubs? Hanging around at a few dives and holes back in Liverpool hoping for a chance to play. Most of the crowd was our age. Then off to Hamburg where that was it's own story. Then the theaters. Those aren't really clubs, are they? They're a bit different.
I remember some of the first big exclusive places we were patronizing after hours in the studio well into the morning. The hippest of the London crowd all sitting together drinking and laughing and talking.
John dropped something. A spoon or a napkin and he wanted to retrieve it. He bent down putting his head under the table to get it and when he came back up, he had a wide-eyed look of surprise on his face. Then he did it again but this time on purpose. He finally told me, “You can see up the ladies skirts under there. Who knew? That one over there,” He nudged in the direction of a fine lass. “She's got flowers on her panties. Her skirt is hiked up so high I wonder what she was doing to get it up that far.”
I couldn't help myself. I just burst out laughing and why not? It was funny and such boyish humor and typical of John.
Throughout the course of the evening, he kept ducking his head under the table not even bothering to hide what he was doing. He'd holler out quips like, “Oh no. Granny panties. Why is she even wearing those?” to comments like, “Nice legs on that one. Who knew?”
At one point later on he came back up for air and joked, “It's too dark down there. I can't see anything now. Everyone looks like they're all wearing black trousers.” When he went to lit a cigarette, he had an idea as the flame lit up his face. “Hmmm...maybe this would be a help. Let me see things better.” That was when he ducked his head back under the table again.
I could hear the flick of the lighter and then John's voice call out, “Well, I can see now but nobody around us is wearing anything worth looking at...wait a moment...Hello? There's some bird up over there but I'm not close enough to really get a look at anything.”
“Well, maybe you should get a bit closer,”I said egging him on.
“All righty then. Here I go.” And then I could feel and hear where John was literally crawling under the table after he slid out of his chair and got down on the floor. It was hysterical. You could tell where he was by the expressions on the faces of the folks he crawled by. His voice would call out things like, “Sorry. Pardon me. Just passing through. Sorry. Just getting by. Sorry.”
I just kept laughing. “Getting a good view down there, John?”
I heard him answer me, “Hang on.” Then the lighter flick. “Yeah. You should see this. They're plain white with little bits of lace around the edges but man are they sexy.”
While I laughed along with most of the other guys was that none of the ladies found this amusing at all especially Jane who I was with at the time. Several of them were beginning to glare first at each other and then at their male companions.
Boy, did I hear about it on the car ride back home.
“He was crawling around on his hands and knees under the table,” She stammered at me. She was often no longer amused by John's antics and let both of us know most of the time lately when we all were together. “And what did you do? Encourage him for God's sake. He needs to be told that is simply not acceptable doing what he did in public like that.”
“I agree he could have been more private about it,”I replied and boy, was that the wrong thing to say.
“Paul, you're part of the problem. Don't you even realize it?”
“How am I the problem? I wasn't the one doing it,” I defended myself.
“No, but you didn't try to stop it either. If he had done that to me, I would have kicked him in the face and who cares of I broke his nose. He'd deserve it. I'm surprised nobody kicked him.”
And it went on from there. Not even my pleas of, “John's a big boy. He should be able to take care of himself and set his own limits. He's a father for God's sake. He's taking care of a family,” worked with her. She was still mad and nothing I could say would set things right. That was not a good night though my current lady and I had a good laugh while I told her about it. Funny how time can change perspective on things.
Laying in the motel room that night, I remembered that wasn't the end of it. There was something else that happened from an incident shortly later where everyone who knew us knew what we did, but it's barely gotten a mention in the lore and legend that surrounded us.
While in New York, we went to a club. A really big one that was much larger and livelier then anything we ever had over in England. Someone got us in. I'm not sure exactly who. It was pretty exclusive but one of the big deals was not everybody but a good chunk of the patrons were openly gay and showing it. Everywhere you looked, there'd be large groups of guys all sitting together and most weren't girl
watching either. Or a pair of girls really lingering leaning in to talk to each other a bit closely, practically in each other's laps.
Every once in a while some guy I figured to be a friend of Dorothy's might stop and check out a lady's bum or stocking and there were more then a few chicks clearly hot to trot with anything or anyone that moved really swinging their stuff out there on the dance floor. This club had all types under one roof. Some of the entertainment were drag queens though we already had been used to seeing them in Hamburg. All of them were big and colorful and larger then life in personality.
We were all actually there for Brian. He had been the first to express a held-back desire of checking out the American scene and somehow all of us wanted to go along with him. I know we used the excuse of being his support because he flipped flopped and got flustered once it was all happening worrying if maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. We all knew this was one of the big things he had wanted to do and we couldn't see why he shouldn't and why he was talking himself out of it. The press was different back then. None of them were going to report any of it. They weren't like that once upon a time long long ago. Rumors may have been whispered behind backs but none of it ever became a headline.
So we all went to check it out. It wasn't much different really from any other club really when you think about it. People were there to drink and meet and dance and watch entertainers perform and that's all that was happening. Brian was amazed at how relaxed and open the men were with each other. He seemed a bit uptight but then, he usually was on those types of trips anyway. He kept making comments on how amazed he was with how the Americans can be at times in places like this.
Naturally it was the type of place where John pulled some memorable antics. At first he was doing his usual bit of pretending to drop things like his lighter on the floor and bending down under the table to retrieve it. I knew he was probably checking out the ladies' legs and skirts and things like that. At one point, he made eye contact with me when he came back up for the third or fourth time and I asked him without a word, “See anything good?” merely by my facial expression.
He got the message and shook his head in the negative. Then he mouthed the words to me, “All blokes,” and I understood. We were sitting surrounded by some local young men all engaged in conversation with each other. There were no skirts for him to look up in the nearby vicinity.
Later, I was startled to hear a sharp bark and feel something in my crotch. I jumped in my chair, looked down and there was John crawling around under the table yet again. He was barking and panting as he acted like a dog sniffing my crotch and a few others seated around me. I could tell where he was by the way people were jumping and reacting. Most seemed to take it with some good natured humor except for Brian who really jumped, turned read and squealed which only provoked John further. He kept his nose right there between Brian's legs and began making funny little yelping noises. Brian looked around as if to ask for help because he clearly didn't know what to do. I'm sure for him it was the embarrassing fulfillment of his not-so-secret fantasies regarding John. In more private circumstances, he might have gotten some enjoyment out of John's antics but not here in public with everyone watching and laughing.
“Kick him in the face,” I joked remembering that argument I had with Jane the last time John pulled a similar stunt.
Brian clearly wouldn't do that but he did slap John once causing John to yelp in a loud high-pitched funny way. We all laughed as John scurried away yipping until he climbed up back into his vacant chair. That earned him a round of applause and he continued to ham it up by taking bows before he lit a cigarette and went back to having another drink.
I thought it was funny how everyone knew about that incident. It wasn't exactly a secret and was quite public but it was still unknown because going to such a club couldn't be talked about especially back then. How it sort of summed up one facet of John's humor quite nicely and how he did sort of get a bit of a come-uppance from Brian for a change. That hardly ever happened.
But then in the here and now I reflected how I was with a woman in my life whom I could share such an incident and she wouldn't judge me. She's just see the humor in the whole thing and laugh along with me as I told her about it.
Though the dry heat and bright blue skies are the dominant weather I've seen in the American Southwest, there have been other examples of rain and clouds that were absolutely amazing. Storms in the desert are something to witness. They come on swift with a sudden change of atmosphere. You can feel the icy chill in the wind blowing before the clouds gather and boil and make weird shapes in the
sky. In the middle of wide open panoramic view, it was like we were in some form of stadium watching a performance the Gods were giving just for us. Those clouds only covered part of the sky. The thunder began to sound and finally the rain fell. It fell in a torrent pouring down so hard I almost wondered if I could continue to have visibility on the road. But here was the weird part. It was only coming down on my side of the road. The other side remained dry with only a tiny sprinkle. Hell, the sun even came out during the storm on the dry side. I would later mention this to a few locals once I encountered them and they'd tell me that was pretty normal actually for what goes on around here but it was still this amazing experience.
One thing did happen that we didn't like. Probably because of the rain being local to just one side of the road, we encountered a group of lizards running right in front of our vehicle probably to get to the dry part on the other side. I tried slowing down and swerving a bit to miss them but there were too many and they had surprised me. I'm sure I hit some. I mentioned it to my companion that I think I still ran a few of them over and she replied, “I won't tell you what I saw. At least you tried to not hit them. It was the best that you could do.”
I didn't like that feeling. We kept our eyes peeled after that for signs of animals running across the road but we really never saw anything else except for a cloud of moving dust we figured was either a rabbit or a road runner.
Then it happened where we both felt the need to find a bathroom but there was no sign of anything coming up. It had been a while since we've last seen any town, even one of those tiny ones that were just a few businesses and that need was growing quite urgent. So I did what anyone would have done. I decided to stop and pull the car over the side of the freeway. No one else was coming and we could take turns watching out for each other. Hey, any port in a storm.
I let my leading lady go first. After all, she had been the one to express her needs first. I stood leaning against the back of our car while she crept around the side not facing the highway. The ground was still all wet from the rain, I noticed. I could see dimples in the sand from the raindrops.
When she was done, she called to me, “You've got to see this tree branch. I think we should get a picture of it.”
I peeked around to have a look at what she was going on about. She was right. The branch was all wet from the rain but it had this green and red stuff growing on it that made it looked like a severed arm until you realized it was a plant you were looking at.
“That almost looks revolting,” I exclaimed.
“I've never seen a tree branch like that,” She said.
So we got out the camera and took our photo. It was definitely a novelty among our collection of snapshots. Later I'd be showing our album of photos to friends and when they came upon that one, I wouldn't say a word at first. Let them figure it out. Sure enough, it would garner quite a lot of conversation.
“What is that? It looks like a rotting arm. Oh my God, is that really a tree branch?”
I would then explain how it was all wet from the rain and that made the colors pop out. Something I learned about photography from Linda and when I saw it, I just had to get a picture of it.
And most would reply, “That looks almost disgusting.”
Yeah, I'm glad we had to stop when we did. It made for a novel photograph.
That novel on tape was continuing on as we moved forward along the highway. Poor Michael was now alone. His wife was gone and many of their assets divided up in a long drawn out court battle. She had actually done quite a bit of homework and acquired the biggest share of the major ones and he was
heartbroken.
Some mutual friends who had been in the same boat began taking him out for drinks to cheer him up. Quite a few of them were part of the Gay scene in the city and told him how it was mostly Raoul who convinced Colleen to fight now for their combined assets or she might not get any in the future. She'd be richer in the long run especially when those assets continued to make money.
“But why would she do that?” Michael would wonder. “Our marriage seemed perfect and what would Raoul gain? He didn't get any of these assets.”
“No he didn't. He just pushed what he thought was the better lifestyle and it worked on her. Who knows how long he had been trying to convince her. Years probably playing on her greed in subtle ways. Working on her slowly.”
The big question for Michael was why?
There were no easy answers. Every woman he had been friends with had gone through a divorce. That could merely be a coincidence.
“To be honest,” Michael's friend told him, “He just feels he's doing his job. Helping Colleen get the maximum amount of money out of her investments. The decision to divorce was ultimately hers.”
That hurt to listen to and made Michael fume about Raoul.
“I always had a feeling about Raoul,” He declared. “I couldn't put my finger on it since I knew it wasn't anything obvious. But I always had a feeling about him and now I know why.”
That was when Michael's life began to change in major ways. For one thing, he wasn't broke. He still had retained a portion of his assets. Boy, did thinking about that bring back some weird memories for me when I was busy trying to protect my old bandmate's assets from the likes of Klein and taking a fall. Granted, Michael's was a different circumstance, but I couldn't help thinking about it all.
Michael began to consider other investments with his money. He was frequenting this club that his friend owned, and he eventually went into become a partner when a new one was opened. Getting involved in that scene opened up a different world for him.
He went into great detail describing the club scene not from the point of view of a patron but from that of an investor. Making decisions and then trying to attract both clientele and entertainment.
I said to my lady, “You know, I've been to many of these types of clubs both as a patron and as a working entertainer. I never knew what all went into running them now. It wasn't like this when my manager Brian ran his theater. I guess that was a different time.”
She said she didn't know what it entailed either and never gave it much thought. Her family had invested in restaurants and places like this in the past, but that was all their involvement was. The money.
“I guess it's a bit different when you actually have to see the running of the place,” She replied.
When did I start going to clubs? Hanging around at a few dives and holes back in Liverpool hoping for a chance to play. Most of the crowd was our age. Then off to Hamburg where that was it's own story. Then the theaters. Those aren't really clubs, are they? They're a bit different.
I remember some of the first big exclusive places we were patronizing after hours in the studio well into the morning. The hippest of the London crowd all sitting together drinking and laughing and talking.
John dropped something. A spoon or a napkin and he wanted to retrieve it. He bent down putting his head under the table to get it and when he came back up, he had a wide-eyed look of surprise on his face. Then he did it again but this time on purpose. He finally told me, “You can see up the ladies skirts under there. Who knew? That one over there,” He nudged in the direction of a fine lass. “She's got flowers on her panties. Her skirt is hiked up so high I wonder what she was doing to get it up that far.”
I couldn't help myself. I just burst out laughing and why not? It was funny and such boyish humor and typical of John.
Throughout the course of the evening, he kept ducking his head under the table not even bothering to hide what he was doing. He'd holler out quips like, “Oh no. Granny panties. Why is she even wearing those?” to comments like, “Nice legs on that one. Who knew?”
At one point later on he came back up for air and joked, “It's too dark down there. I can't see anything now. Everyone looks like they're all wearing black trousers.” When he went to lit a cigarette, he had an idea as the flame lit up his face. “Hmmm...maybe this would be a help. Let me see things better.” That was when he ducked his head back under the table again.
I could hear the flick of the lighter and then John's voice call out, “Well, I can see now but nobody around us is wearing anything worth looking at...wait a moment...Hello? There's some bird up over there but I'm not close enough to really get a look at anything.”
“Well, maybe you should get a bit closer,”I said egging him on.
“All righty then. Here I go.” And then I could feel and hear where John was literally crawling under the table after he slid out of his chair and got down on the floor. It was hysterical. You could tell where he was by the expressions on the faces of the folks he crawled by. His voice would call out things like, “Sorry. Pardon me. Just passing through. Sorry. Just getting by. Sorry.”
I just kept laughing. “Getting a good view down there, John?”
I heard him answer me, “Hang on.” Then the lighter flick. “Yeah. You should see this. They're plain white with little bits of lace around the edges but man are they sexy.”
While I laughed along with most of the other guys was that none of the ladies found this amusing at all especially Jane who I was with at the time. Several of them were beginning to glare first at each other and then at their male companions.
Boy, did I hear about it on the car ride back home.
“He was crawling around on his hands and knees under the table,” She stammered at me. She was often no longer amused by John's antics and let both of us know most of the time lately when we all were together. “And what did you do? Encourage him for God's sake. He needs to be told that is simply not acceptable doing what he did in public like that.”
“I agree he could have been more private about it,”I replied and boy, was that the wrong thing to say.
“Paul, you're part of the problem. Don't you even realize it?”
“How am I the problem? I wasn't the one doing it,” I defended myself.
“No, but you didn't try to stop it either. If he had done that to me, I would have kicked him in the face and who cares of I broke his nose. He'd deserve it. I'm surprised nobody kicked him.”
And it went on from there. Not even my pleas of, “John's a big boy. He should be able to take care of himself and set his own limits. He's a father for God's sake. He's taking care of a family,” worked with her. She was still mad and nothing I could say would set things right. That was not a good night though my current lady and I had a good laugh while I told her about it. Funny how time can change perspective on things.
Laying in the motel room that night, I remembered that wasn't the end of it. There was something else that happened from an incident shortly later where everyone who knew us knew what we did, but it's barely gotten a mention in the lore and legend that surrounded us.
While in New York, we went to a club. A really big one that was much larger and livelier then anything we ever had over in England. Someone got us in. I'm not sure exactly who. It was pretty exclusive but one of the big deals was not everybody but a good chunk of the patrons were openly gay and showing it. Everywhere you looked, there'd be large groups of guys all sitting together and most weren't girl
watching either. Or a pair of girls really lingering leaning in to talk to each other a bit closely, practically in each other's laps.
Every once in a while some guy I figured to be a friend of Dorothy's might stop and check out a lady's bum or stocking and there were more then a few chicks clearly hot to trot with anything or anyone that moved really swinging their stuff out there on the dance floor. This club had all types under one roof. Some of the entertainment were drag queens though we already had been used to seeing them in Hamburg. All of them were big and colorful and larger then life in personality.
We were all actually there for Brian. He had been the first to express a held-back desire of checking out the American scene and somehow all of us wanted to go along with him. I know we used the excuse of being his support because he flipped flopped and got flustered once it was all happening worrying if maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. We all knew this was one of the big things he had wanted to do and we couldn't see why he shouldn't and why he was talking himself out of it. The press was different back then. None of them were going to report any of it. They weren't like that once upon a time long long ago. Rumors may have been whispered behind backs but none of it ever became a headline.
So we all went to check it out. It wasn't much different really from any other club really when you think about it. People were there to drink and meet and dance and watch entertainers perform and that's all that was happening. Brian was amazed at how relaxed and open the men were with each other. He seemed a bit uptight but then, he usually was on those types of trips anyway. He kept making comments on how amazed he was with how the Americans can be at times in places like this.
Naturally it was the type of place where John pulled some memorable antics. At first he was doing his usual bit of pretending to drop things like his lighter on the floor and bending down under the table to retrieve it. I knew he was probably checking out the ladies' legs and skirts and things like that. At one point, he made eye contact with me when he came back up for the third or fourth time and I asked him without a word, “See anything good?” merely by my facial expression.
He got the message and shook his head in the negative. Then he mouthed the words to me, “All blokes,” and I understood. We were sitting surrounded by some local young men all engaged in conversation with each other. There were no skirts for him to look up in the nearby vicinity.
Later, I was startled to hear a sharp bark and feel something in my crotch. I jumped in my chair, looked down and there was John crawling around under the table yet again. He was barking and panting as he acted like a dog sniffing my crotch and a few others seated around me. I could tell where he was by the way people were jumping and reacting. Most seemed to take it with some good natured humor except for Brian who really jumped, turned read and squealed which only provoked John further. He kept his nose right there between Brian's legs and began making funny little yelping noises. Brian looked around as if to ask for help because he clearly didn't know what to do. I'm sure for him it was the embarrassing fulfillment of his not-so-secret fantasies regarding John. In more private circumstances, he might have gotten some enjoyment out of John's antics but not here in public with everyone watching and laughing.
“Kick him in the face,” I joked remembering that argument I had with Jane the last time John pulled a similar stunt.
Brian clearly wouldn't do that but he did slap John once causing John to yelp in a loud high-pitched funny way. We all laughed as John scurried away yipping until he climbed up back into his vacant chair. That earned him a round of applause and he continued to ham it up by taking bows before he lit a cigarette and went back to having another drink.
I thought it was funny how everyone knew about that incident. It wasn't exactly a secret and was quite public but it was still unknown because going to such a club couldn't be talked about especially back then. How it sort of summed up one facet of John's humor quite nicely and how he did sort of get a bit of a come-uppance from Brian for a change. That hardly ever happened.
But then in the here and now I reflected how I was with a woman in my life whom I could share such an incident and she wouldn't judge me. She's just see the humor in the whole thing and laugh along with me as I told her about it.