Ray Connolly: The Beatles Archive
If memoirs and biographies are written with the benefit of hindsight and quite often with one particular, unifying agenda (scores to settle, or defenses to make), letters and diaries are the perfect counterpoint in terms of research because they can't offer big pictures, they offer glimpses of the here and now, and the agenda in them keeps changing. And then, as of the 20th century, there are interviews. And articles based on same. They, too, can be great and insightful material (as long as you keep the whole part in mind where even a seemingly straightforward interview with no interjecting descriptions is already edited by the journalist and their editor, according to what he or she deems important, and of course whoever is giving the interview has their own reasons for doing so and usually something to sell.
In the Beatles' saga, some journalists and their writings are more prominent then others. Maureen Cleave for the January 1966 interview with John Lennon containing the "more popular than Jesus" quote that started the furore which was to end the band's touring days; Jann Wenner for the 1970 Lennon Remembers published in Rolling Stone which Wenner still insists on seeing as the definite John Lennon, and which certainly defined how the rock press and much of the public saw John Lennon (and the other Beatles) for years to come, never mind how much of it was contradicted by other interviews. And then there's Ray Connolly, who became one of the journalists with direct access to the band ca. 1967, was particularly close to John in 69/70/71, somehow miraculously managed to be on friendly terms with Paul through the breakup period as well (I don't think any other press members pulled off that one, they all took sides for one or the other), wrote the script for one of Ringo's most successful film appearances (That'll be the day), and was and is friends with Paul McCartney's younger brother Mike throughout the decades. Based the collection of his Beatles related articles, which is now collected as an e-book, he strikes me as the anti Jann Wenner in many ways. Not least for his insistence on the equality of talent between the two main Beatles songwriters (Rolling Stone and Wenner follow the "John's the one true genius!" party line to this day), but also for way he keeps between the two extremes of Lennon presentation, rejecting both the sainted apostle of peace/persecuted artist image and the vicious non stop angry thug (most recently spotted in Lennon Naked). His reported John keeps having wit and charm and generosity along with the capacity for cruelty and self absorption (and thus makes it understandable for readers what people saw in him beyond the amazing talent). His collection of Beatles articles also contains some great Ringo interviews (starting with some made directly after India, as Ringo returned long before the rest of the gang did, and had time at his hands), and he's good with the one article portraits as well, whether it's of producer George Martin, Mal Evans (one of the two Beatles roadies; as opposed to the other one, Neil Aspinall, who went on to become the head of Apple, Mal had a tragic fate), Allen Klein, Pete Best or Cynthia Lennon. His reporting and image of Yoko varies; he was one of the first journalists to interview her at length (one interview from 1968 is included) and his descriptions of her and John in early articles are positive (and he was trusted enough by the very distrustful Ono-Lennons to be given the task of taking care of her younger sister Setzuko when she visited New York, but as the years go by he becomes steadily more critical. The Beatle he had least access to and consequently least writes about is George, and consequently while there are articles about the Bangladesh concert and an obituary, there is no George interview. ("In fact, though we knew each other, George and I never hit it off. Perhaps he thought I was too close to John and Paul, or should have shown more interest at a meeting one morning with a few other journalists at which he'd talked about his spiritual journey into Indian mysticism. Or was it simply that he was distrustful of most journalists?" writes Connolly in one of the explanatory texts he intersperses between articles.) Speaking of obituaries, the other two are for John and for Linda McCartney, both very touching, but you can tell he saw more of either than of George.
The collection starts with a Paul interview which was an attempt at damage control after Magical Mystery Tour flopped spectacularly and ends with a George Martin interview apropos last year's documentary about GM, with an epilogue that is, simply put, absolutely charming RPF: Ray Connolly imagines what would happened to the four Beatles if Beatlemania had not happened and the band had dissolved in 1963 instead. It's written with much humour and affection for all parties concerned (I'll give excerpts later along with the other quotes), and ends with a bit of shameless shipping. (Again, quote to follow because it's also v. v. funny, intentionally so.) Regarding the interviews, articles and explanatory notes in between: I was familiar with some that used to be online, and also with some quotes because biographers used them later, but sometimes reading the entire article instead of simply the one quote picked out by biographers gives a different context, and/or enriches the old one. Take for example one Paul quote that shows up in many a biography (and showcases the McCartney propensity for using the plural in certain situations): "John's in love with Yoko, and he's no longer in love with the three of us." The article this quote hails from is from an interview directly after the news about the Beatles break-up had gone public, another attempt at self explanation, and the longer passage it's from is as revealing as the single statement cherry picked by biographers: "I didn't leave the Beatles. The Beatles have left the Beatles, but no one wants to be the one to say that the party's over. Last year John said he wanted a divorce. All right, so do I. I want to give him that divorce. I hate this trial separation because it's just not working. John's in love with Yoko, and he's no longer in love with the three of us." And just when one thinks, again, about Paul being disingenious with the "three of us" phrase, there is, a few paragraphs later, the amazingly direct: "I was jealous because of Yoko, and afraid about the break-up of a great musical partnership."
Also, while several of the direct quotes made it into the biographies, Connolly's descriptions from the original articles didn't, and that's a shame, because they allow you to imagine everyone concerned, as in this 1970 article about John and Yoko: "Yoko smiles, amused at all this, as though humouring a teenage boy. Contrary to popular belief, they are, in fact, rarely that serious with each other. Rather it's the reverse as John chides Yoko, poking fun at her and enjoying a teasing relationship. "It was Yoko that changed me," he scoffs. "She forced me to become avant garde and take my clothes off when all I wanted was to become Tom Jones. Andn now look at me. Did you know that avant garde is French for bullshit?" Yoko, for her part plays bashfully along, ignoring his swipes at her upper-class and artistic background. "At fifteen I wanted to be a fantastic opera singer and go to La Scala," she suddenly says. "My range was very wide and I would have liked to have been a coloratura soprano." "She also wanted to be a nightclub singer," John jibes back. "Well, yes, that was a secret ambition. Also, I wanted to become an actress."
Does he have blind spots? Absolutely. There is one passage from an description of the 1971 party for Yoko's big exhibition and John's 31st birthday party which made me furious and scream "rape culture". (See below.) But generally, he gives you the impression of writing with sympathy but without apologia or attempting to present his subjects as always being in the right. (Case in point: he sees the ending of the Paul/Jane Asher relationship as mostly Paul's faul. He also seems to have been the only journalist to whom the amazingly discreet Jane, to this day stonewalling any inquiries about their five years relationship, said something about said relationship after it ended, to wit: Jane (...) told me how naive she'd been so far as other girls were concerned. But there were other problems. She was also unhappy about drugs, which were as common among rock stars then as they are now, and definitely not thrilled by Paul's friendship with some of the Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones bit is news to me. Must be a reference to either Mick Jagger or Brian Jones, since he didn't befriend Keith Richards until decades later.)
All in all, a very reccommendable collection: not as a replacement for a biography (it does expect you to have at least a rough outline in your head to how the whole Beatles thing went down, explanatory footnotes notwithstanding), but a good addition, and a source from an eye witness as opposed to speculation after the fact. If Connolly isn't quite the Boswell or Pepys of the Swinging Sixties and Dangerous Seventies, he comes close.
Ringo in the spring of 1968, returned from India before the rest did and presumably not aware that the good times have now ended and the storm is about to begin: Still, the happiest times in my life have been as a Beatle. But you know what I regret most - never being able to see a Beatles' stage show from the audience. I would have loved that. It isn't the same when you see it on film later.
(Joining the band as late as he did, he always had an intriguing insider-outsider position, and I think with this remark it shows.)
One of Ray Connolly's biographical footnotes: I got the opportunity to see Paul in his home environment that summer at the wedding of his brother Mike in Cheshire. Plum (Connolly's wife) and I got there late, only to find Paul being berated by an uncle about his admission a year earlier that he'd tried LSD. I was used to seeing the world virtually genuflect in the presence of a Beatle, but no prodigal nephew was big enough to escape the admonishments of a straight talking, middle-aged Liverpudlian. That night Paul told us to follow his car to his Auntie Jin's house in a Liverpool side street where he sat and played cards with his cousins. It was probably the only time I ever saw him, or indeed any of the Beatles, treated like an ordinary person.
Yoko about herself and John in the wake of the Two Virgins album: Basically we're very shy and square people.
Err.
Connolly about meeting the other new female arrival in the Beatles saga: His new girl Linda Eastman, accompanied by her six year old daughter Heather, arrived as he was finishing. (...) It was the first time I'd met Linda, and two things immediately struck me. She seemed grown up, professional more than glamorous, and as a working photographer was genuinenly interested in what I was doing as a journalist. That doesn't always happen.
The craziness at Apple in its later stages: There were tears when one of the old Liverpool mates was sacked by Allen Klein, with no intervention to save him from the Famous Four; paranoia during Derek Taylor's Olympian damage limitation exercise to the world's Press when John and Yoko were busted; and astonishment and then anger on a Beatle face when it accidentally fell to me to tell Paul that John had made a film of his penis in slow motion, before, during and after erection. THe film was called, naturally enough, Erection.
As I might have said before, no fiction writer would dare to invent John Lennon. However, here's another side:
"Paul and I might be all right," John told me one afternoon. "But I don't want to see Ringo having to tour the northern clubs in twenty years time in order to make a living."
Aw, John.
Ray Connolly reviews Abbey Road (which, remember, was produced last but was released last but one due to the delay of Let it Be, so when he reviewed, separation rumours were in the air but not yet official): The best part of the medley is the third section, beginning with Golden Slumbers, where a degree of form becomes more discernible. Melodies are repeated with different worlds, and Carry That Weight becomes a chorus line on which to base the whole movement. If the Beatles slit up could they produce such good albums? Probalby not. They need each other as musicians, editors and critics.
Aw, Ray. Also aw, Ray, when he's defending John in an 1970 article apropos the MBE return and Cold Turkey:
People ask me all the time if John is insane. He isn't. He's possibly capricious, juvenile and distasteful on occasions, and maybe his demonstrations for peace might be more effective were he tackle them in a more orthodox manner. But he's still the great wit, the original thinker. Sometimes I think he's rather like the monkey in the zoo who is really laughing at all the people who are laughing at it.
After this article, John invited him along to a Canada trip and sprang the news about the Beatles break-up on him (the entire "I want a divorce" tale), then asked Ray Connolly not to write about it yet as Allen Klein was still renegotiating the Capitol contract for the Beatles. As later events showed, he must have been hoping that Connolly, being a journalist, would not be able to resist to go with the world exclusive anyway. However, Connolly's inner Beatles fan won over his inner journalist; he hoped John would still change his mind. And then came the April of 1970 and the release of Paul's first solo album.
Then on April 9, Peter Brown at Apple slipped me an advance preview of the questions and answers statement Paul was putting out to the Press to announce the release of the record. In it, when asked if he had any plans to record with the Beatles, Paul replied he hadn't, but didn't know whether the break would be temporary or permanent. My reading of the document was that he was still waiting for John, hoping he might change his mind and cancel their 'divorce', but a journalist called Don Short on the Daily Mirror decided the document was saying that Paul had left the Beatles. PAUL QUITS BEATLES, ran the Mirror's headline on April 10, and the story raced around the world, condemning Paul for the break-up. Some people still blame him. Around lunchtime that day I spoke to John. He was furious. It seemed to him that as he'd started the Beatles when they'd been the Quarrymen, it was up to him to announce publically when they would be finished, and Paul had stolen a lead on him in that respect. Since Paul was being blamed for wrecking the world's most favourite entertainment it seemed a perverse argument to me, but that was how John saw it. 'Why didn't you write it when I told you in Canada I'd left the Beatles?' he snapped down the phone.
'You asked me not to,' I replied.
His reply was withering. 'You're the journalist, Connolly, not me.'
I already quoted Paul's divorce statements from the follow-up interview with Ray Connolly. The same interview also contains the understatement of the year in reply to why the solo album: I was bored. I like to work, I'm an active person. Sit me down with a guitar and let me go. That's my job.
Connolly went through some of the Beatles song catalogue with John in 1972 the way the Playboy interview from 1980 does, and while several (highly interesting) comments on their songs made it into the article the interview was for, the following quote on George in the early Beatles years didn't: I encouraged George like mad. It wasn't that we were making him invisible or keeping him out, it was simply the fact that he had never written anything and he could only just sing. He could only just get his voice out of his throat.
Nor did this bit about Revolution appear in the final article: "J (laughing): That bit about 'pictures of Chairman Mao'... If I ever go to China and they ask me about that, I'll simply tell them Paul wrote that bit.'
Or this statement on song writing:
In the old days we used to write and write and write, nowadays I only do it if I particularly want to or when I'm particularly inspired. (...) Sometimes the songs are in my head first. Sometimes writing is easy. But usually torture. I write them in all kinds of ways. Piano, guitar, any combination you can think of. It isn't easy. It's torture. (There's another call from Yoko.) Oh, Yoko says that writing the song is easy, it's the recording that I go through hell.
For someone who was primarily a John boy, Ray Connolly has sometimes unorthodox tastes:
1971 was really George Harrison's year, but no sooner was My Sweet Lord at number one that Paul was issuing a new single, Another Day, and John was sending me a demo copy of Power To The People. Of all three records I liked Another Day most. It had a charming sadness. John had once told me that his proudest moment was watching people singing Give Peace A Chance at the Washington Moratorium, but Power To The People was more of a marching bullying song.
Much like John had a "nobody gets to diss Paul but me" attitude, he also had a "nobody gets to diss the Beatles but me" attitude. Especially not a Rolling Stone. Quoth he:
Some people like Mick Jagger have said we weren't such a good band as performers. But he never saw us at our best in Liverpool and Hamburg. We were the best bloody band there was. We'd play for hours. I know all the early rock songs much better than most of those I've written myself.
And now for the passage that made me furious with everyone concerned except the victim. As mentioned, it comes in a description of the October 1971 party celebrating Yoko's exhibition at Syracuse University as well as John's 31st birthday.
But there was another side to the evening. In another room, unknown to John, some of the security men were taking turns to have sex with a doped up girl whom Phil Spector had brought to Syracuse.
'Hey, you wanna have a go...' I was asked by one as he left the rom and saw me passing in the corridor.
I didn't. Telling John what was happening, he looked puzzled, surprised. Then he said quietly: 'Don't tell Yoko, will you?'
John was protective of Yoko, which was ironic becasue before she met him Yoko had been a tough and self-reliant person. It was indeed her independence which had attracted him.
And off we go into another scene involving John and Yoko. Deep breath. Okay. First of all, Ray Connolly, I don't care if it's 1971, if you watch a doped up woman in this situation, you get her out of it immediately and then make sure she can sober up somewhere where she doesn't get gang raped. You don't get to feel virtuous for declining to participate in the gang rape, because that's what sex with a woman unable to give consent by multiple men is. Secondly, John Lennon, this is why I can't take your claims to feminism seriously. "Don't tell Yoko?" That's all? You don't, say, go to stop this situation and fire the security guards? For heaven's sake. And thirdly, Phil Spector, I'm even more glad you're in prison.
At this point, the John and Yoko relationship starts to show strains, John begins to lash out at her, and we're off to the Lost Weekend era of the mid 70s. Ray Connolly's conclusion about the whole May and Yoko situation for John:
In many ways John Lennon in this period was like a cross between a sometimes wayward, talented, grown-up child who needed a capable, loving carer to see to his daily needs, and that obviously included sex, and a multi-millionaire who had to have a manager to take care of his business.
Or, to put it more cynically and crassly than he does, Connolly thinks John in the end picked Yoko the manager over May the sexual babysitter. He got notified of the reconciliation by post cards from Yoko and John both. ("Dear Ray, Here's a hard one for you to take. John and Yoko have not only come together, but they're having a baby due October! What happened to your famous film? Isn't it coming to NY? We're waiting. Love, Yoko" and John's letter post birth of Sean telling him that "George (I'm with God) Harrisongs is in New York and due to meet the incredibly beautiful and intelligent Sean Ono Lennon!".
And then it's silence from New York until 1980. Otoh, Connolly gets to brush up his McCartney connections. In an article/portrait from 1979, he writes of Paul: To be honest it's easier to be around McCartney these days than it was during the last nerve-plucking days of the Beatles. I'm not saying that he's the chummy Prince Charming unaffected bloke of the Beatle Paul myth; he isn't, and never was. And he still betrays an air of off-hand arrogance occasionally, but he's more approachable and able to discuss his work without sounding falsely modest. And he's refreshingly prepared to admit he sees himself in the tradition of Gerswhin and Cole Porter.
Another summary characterisation of Paul McCartney from a different article: "Though he may be prone to moods, he is someone who never gives up, who goes on and on until he gets what he wants. His father used to say, 'God loves a tryer', and Paul never stops trying."
1980 starts badly for Paul via the infamous Japan pot bust; one of the previously unpublished pieces of Connolly's book is his summary of Paul's memories of the nine days in prison. Predictably, the scariest things (other than, you know, the prospect of several years in prison for the hubrisitc idiocy of carrying pot into Japan) seem to have been the enforced boredom and lack of music. Then there's the oddly touching detail of dreaming "that he, Linda and his father were walking up hill to a pub" several years after his father's death.
Ray Connolly was due to leave for New York and interview John when John died, and his obituary is deeply felt (and also, btw, a good example of how you praise John and mourn for him without denigrating anyone else; looking at you, Robert Christgau). So, several decades later, was his obituary for Linda, and since Linda obituaries are far less well known, I'll quote from that one:
She had dignity. Right from the beginning, it simply shone from her. Even as a young woman she seemed grown up, casually assured. She was a fan. Obviously. Everyone was in those days. But she didn't behave like one. She didn't fawn or giggle. She was her own person, instantly friendly, an American girl in London, a professional photographer, with the sunniest of smiles. I remember seeing her for the first time at the Abbey Road studions in 1968 while John Lennon and George Martin were mixing Cry Baby Cry for the Beatles' White Album. Paul was there, too, but it wasn't his song they were working on, and Yoko was with John, anyway. So, with nothing much else to do, he took me into the band room, and, sitting at the piano, began to play a new song he was working on. It would turn out to be Let It Be, a song, at least in part, about his mother, Mary McCartney, who had died of cancer when he was 14. He told me, he had a new girlfriend who would be coming along later to collect him. (...) Those were garish times, the post Sergeant Pepper days, and I wondered how extravagantly turned out this new girl would be.
Then there was Linda, at 26, strolling down the corridor accompanied by Heather, her small daughter from her first marriage, looking scrubbed and without make-up, wearing just jeans, a raincoat and a sweater, and seemingly privately amused by the situation in which she found herself.
Connolly's Mal Evans portrait is written around the interview of another spouse, Mal Evan's widow Lil, noting the irony that just as the Beatles themselves went domestic (or at least John and Paul did), formerly devoted husband Mal, unable to cope with a post Beatles world, went wild, separated from wife and children and headed towards his violent death in Los Angeles. She does blame the group for the earlier enstrangement:
I felt left behind. It wasn't as though Mal was having an affair with a woman, but four affairs with the Beatles. And four fellas can be worse than one woman. He was always at their beck and call. He was a nice fella to have around, so much so that it would provoke little jealousies within the band. When I met Yoko years after Mal died she said John had told her he'd been very jealous at one point of Mal's relationship with Paul.
My favourite of Connolly's articles, though, is one from 2009 where he goes back and listens to his old interview tapes. Some choice quotes:
Always verbally adroit, John could hardly have chosen a more appropriate term than 'divorce'. Because while it always seemed to me that the Rolling Stones came across like a raiding party, the four Beatles were more like a family. There was John, the clever, witty, mercurial, confrontational and sometimes wayward father figure, who always seemed so much older than his years, and Paul, the brilliantly musical, ever industrious, ambitious mother of the band who wrote the letters for them early on and was their diplomat. Then there was George Harrison, to me the truculent teenager in the Beatles family, chippy, in that he felt, and later with some justification, that he was overlooked by the leading pair; and Ringo, the happy-go-lucky junior member who would say in our firrst taped interview that he was only where he was because, 'I just said 'yes'.'
The John Lennon I recorded was a very funny man who liked to pain himself ironically as the indignant butt of his own stories. 'Did you see that Time magazine is saying that George is a philosopher?' he asked me one day. 'And there's an article in The Times, that I've actually thought about sending anonymously, of course, to Pseuds Corner, saying how Paul is this great musician. Where does that leave me?'
'The nutter?' I hear myself suggest.
'Exactly. I'm the nutter. Fuck 'em all.'
Today he might have been a star as a stand-up comedian with a line in self mockery. (...)
Later, saying how a favourite of his songs, You Can't Do That, was his attempt at being Wilson Pickett, he becomes mock-anguished when admitting it was 'a flip side because Can't Buy Me Love (Paul's song) was so fucking good.' He was competitive with Paul, yes, and, when relations between the two were really bad, vituperative. (....) But, as he would so often say, 'they were just the words that came out of my mouth at the time'. The truth is, he always knew how good Paul was, without necessarily liking everything he did. 'I only ever asked two people to work with me as partners,' he would boast of his talent spotting abilities. 'One was Paul McCartney and the other Yoko Ono. That's not bad, is it.' Indeed at one point in London I remember a writer from an Underground magazine being rather snide about Paul's song Let It Be, presumably assuming that John would agree. He didn't.
'Paul and me were the Beatles,' he would emphasise to me. 'We wrote the songs.' And on the subject of his debt to the younger McCartney, he was actually generous. 'I didn't write much material early on, less than Paul, because he was quite competent on guitar. Paul taught me quite a lot of guitar really. All those who see John as the towering greatest of the great should reflect on that: John Lennon quietly, happily admitting how much he owed to Paul McCartney. And while he could be flattering about some of Paul's songs, he liked For No One particularly ("that was one of his good ones. All his semi-classical ones are best, actually'), he was disarmingly dismissive about several of his own.
'I am the Walrus didn't mean anything,' he says at one point, blithely consigning to the pointless bin the work of a generation of Beatle anoraks who tried to interpret its lyrics, while he always hated Yes It Is, didn't think he sang Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds very well ("I was so nerouvs I couldn't sing, but I like the lyrics") and admits that he and Paul would give the lousy songs they wrote to George and Ringo to sing."
Interestingly, and it's something I've only realised listening again to the tapes, no matter how much John publically critisized Paul, in none of my several interviews with Paul did he ever critisize John. Quite the contrary. 'On Abbey Road I would like to have sung harmony with John, like we used to,' he said in one. 'And I think he would have liked me to. But I was too embarrassed to ask him.'
I always wished I'd been involved in the Beatles' early happier days, but my role was to cover hte final act of their career, and to observe the fall-out, largely, though by no means totally, with John.
And now for Ray Connolly writing an "What If" AU: his theories for what would have become of the Beatles if Beatlemania had never happened are:
John: would have become a cross between a Scouse Dylan Thomas and a comedy writer, for Spike Milligan and others, and quite successful, until, see later.
George: plays lead guitar in a couple of bands but never manages to impress said bands with his own compositions. ("John and Paul would have liked his stuff, he was sure of that. Well, almost sure...") Then finds happiness as a gardener and collector of Native American ("although he always referred to them, politically incorrect, as Red Indian") paintings.
Ringo: unfortunately doesn't make it in films and is so so as a club owner, but wins the lottery ticket and has a nice retired life thereafter. ("Talk about a lucky man who made the grade.")
Paul: retakes some A-Levels at night school, goes to college and becomes an English teacher. "Where, with his usual energy, he becan to reshape the plays, concerts and music department. Naturally, perfectionist that he is, no school concert was ever good enough for him, no matter how much he joined in, designing and building the stage, painting the sets, showing the school orchestra how to play, coaching the choir in harmony. Nor was being in the background ever quite enough, either. So when, at the last minute, the male lead in the school production of West Side Story lost his voice and Paul was called upon to take over the part of Tony, he needed no persuading, though at forty he did look quite a bit older than the fifth former who played Maria. "There's a place for us...", he sang, as the sixth form girls who had a crush on him wept and his children squirmed in embarassment." This event inspires him to start writing songs again and in 1985, he finally has a breakthrough with Sgt. Pepper the Musical ("based on his father's old Jazz band").
And thus Ray concludes his RPF: "That more lor less brings us up to date, but for something that happened just the other day. Popping into a pub in Charing Cross Road to get out of the rain, Paul noticed a familiar face arguing with someone at the bar. It was John. It had been years since they'd met, though, of course, he'd seen John on TV now and again, and loyally bought all his books. Naturally John was well aware of Paul's success with Sergeant Pepper, too... even, perhaps a little jealous. Wary at first with each other, after a couple of drinks, it was just like old times. "Why don't you come round, bring your guitar with you," John suggested. "Perhaps we could even write together like we used to. You know, Lennon and McCartney."
"Let's do that," Paul said. "But it might have to be McCartney and Lennon on some of them this time."
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/743014.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
In the Beatles' saga, some journalists and their writings are more prominent then others. Maureen Cleave for the January 1966 interview with John Lennon containing the "more popular than Jesus" quote that started the furore which was to end the band's touring days; Jann Wenner for the 1970 Lennon Remembers published in Rolling Stone which Wenner still insists on seeing as the definite John Lennon, and which certainly defined how the rock press and much of the public saw John Lennon (and the other Beatles) for years to come, never mind how much of it was contradicted by other interviews. And then there's Ray Connolly, who became one of the journalists with direct access to the band ca. 1967, was particularly close to John in 69/70/71, somehow miraculously managed to be on friendly terms with Paul through the breakup period as well (I don't think any other press members pulled off that one, they all took sides for one or the other), wrote the script for one of Ringo's most successful film appearances (That'll be the day), and was and is friends with Paul McCartney's younger brother Mike throughout the decades. Based the collection of his Beatles related articles, which is now collected as an e-book, he strikes me as the anti Jann Wenner in many ways. Not least for his insistence on the equality of talent between the two main Beatles songwriters (Rolling Stone and Wenner follow the "John's the one true genius!" party line to this day), but also for way he keeps between the two extremes of Lennon presentation, rejecting both the sainted apostle of peace/persecuted artist image and the vicious non stop angry thug (most recently spotted in Lennon Naked). His reported John keeps having wit and charm and generosity along with the capacity for cruelty and self absorption (and thus makes it understandable for readers what people saw in him beyond the amazing talent). His collection of Beatles articles also contains some great Ringo interviews (starting with some made directly after India, as Ringo returned long before the rest of the gang did, and had time at his hands), and he's good with the one article portraits as well, whether it's of producer George Martin, Mal Evans (one of the two Beatles roadies; as opposed to the other one, Neil Aspinall, who went on to become the head of Apple, Mal had a tragic fate), Allen Klein, Pete Best or Cynthia Lennon. His reporting and image of Yoko varies; he was one of the first journalists to interview her at length (one interview from 1968 is included) and his descriptions of her and John in early articles are positive (and he was trusted enough by the very distrustful Ono-Lennons to be given the task of taking care of her younger sister Setzuko when she visited New York, but as the years go by he becomes steadily more critical. The Beatle he had least access to and consequently least writes about is George, and consequently while there are articles about the Bangladesh concert and an obituary, there is no George interview. ("In fact, though we knew each other, George and I never hit it off. Perhaps he thought I was too close to John and Paul, or should have shown more interest at a meeting one morning with a few other journalists at which he'd talked about his spiritual journey into Indian mysticism. Or was it simply that he was distrustful of most journalists?" writes Connolly in one of the explanatory texts he intersperses between articles.) Speaking of obituaries, the other two are for John and for Linda McCartney, both very touching, but you can tell he saw more of either than of George.
The collection starts with a Paul interview which was an attempt at damage control after Magical Mystery Tour flopped spectacularly and ends with a George Martin interview apropos last year's documentary about GM, with an epilogue that is, simply put, absolutely charming RPF: Ray Connolly imagines what would happened to the four Beatles if Beatlemania had not happened and the band had dissolved in 1963 instead. It's written with much humour and affection for all parties concerned (I'll give excerpts later along with the other quotes), and ends with a bit of shameless shipping. (Again, quote to follow because it's also v. v. funny, intentionally so.) Regarding the interviews, articles and explanatory notes in between: I was familiar with some that used to be online, and also with some quotes because biographers used them later, but sometimes reading the entire article instead of simply the one quote picked out by biographers gives a different context, and/or enriches the old one. Take for example one Paul quote that shows up in many a biography (and showcases the McCartney propensity for using the plural in certain situations): "John's in love with Yoko, and he's no longer in love with the three of us." The article this quote hails from is from an interview directly after the news about the Beatles break-up had gone public, another attempt at self explanation, and the longer passage it's from is as revealing as the single statement cherry picked by biographers: "I didn't leave the Beatles. The Beatles have left the Beatles, but no one wants to be the one to say that the party's over. Last year John said he wanted a divorce. All right, so do I. I want to give him that divorce. I hate this trial separation because it's just not working. John's in love with Yoko, and he's no longer in love with the three of us." And just when one thinks, again, about Paul being disingenious with the "three of us" phrase, there is, a few paragraphs later, the amazingly direct: "I was jealous because of Yoko, and afraid about the break-up of a great musical partnership."
Also, while several of the direct quotes made it into the biographies, Connolly's descriptions from the original articles didn't, and that's a shame, because they allow you to imagine everyone concerned, as in this 1970 article about John and Yoko: "Yoko smiles, amused at all this, as though humouring a teenage boy. Contrary to popular belief, they are, in fact, rarely that serious with each other. Rather it's the reverse as John chides Yoko, poking fun at her and enjoying a teasing relationship. "It was Yoko that changed me," he scoffs. "She forced me to become avant garde and take my clothes off when all I wanted was to become Tom Jones. Andn now look at me. Did you know that avant garde is French for bullshit?" Yoko, for her part plays bashfully along, ignoring his swipes at her upper-class and artistic background. "At fifteen I wanted to be a fantastic opera singer and go to La Scala," she suddenly says. "My range was very wide and I would have liked to have been a coloratura soprano." "She also wanted to be a nightclub singer," John jibes back. "Well, yes, that was a secret ambition. Also, I wanted to become an actress."
Does he have blind spots? Absolutely. There is one passage from an description of the 1971 party for Yoko's big exhibition and John's 31st birthday party which made me furious and scream "rape culture". (See below.) But generally, he gives you the impression of writing with sympathy but without apologia or attempting to present his subjects as always being in the right. (Case in point: he sees the ending of the Paul/Jane Asher relationship as mostly Paul's faul. He also seems to have been the only journalist to whom the amazingly discreet Jane, to this day stonewalling any inquiries about their five years relationship, said something about said relationship after it ended, to wit: Jane (...) told me how naive she'd been so far as other girls were concerned. But there were other problems. She was also unhappy about drugs, which were as common among rock stars then as they are now, and definitely not thrilled by Paul's friendship with some of the Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones bit is news to me. Must be a reference to either Mick Jagger or Brian Jones, since he didn't befriend Keith Richards until decades later.)
All in all, a very reccommendable collection: not as a replacement for a biography (it does expect you to have at least a rough outline in your head to how the whole Beatles thing went down, explanatory footnotes notwithstanding), but a good addition, and a source from an eye witness as opposed to speculation after the fact. If Connolly isn't quite the Boswell or Pepys of the Swinging Sixties and Dangerous Seventies, he comes close.
Ringo in the spring of 1968, returned from India before the rest did and presumably not aware that the good times have now ended and the storm is about to begin: Still, the happiest times in my life have been as a Beatle. But you know what I regret most - never being able to see a Beatles' stage show from the audience. I would have loved that. It isn't the same when you see it on film later.
(Joining the band as late as he did, he always had an intriguing insider-outsider position, and I think with this remark it shows.)
One of Ray Connolly's biographical footnotes: I got the opportunity to see Paul in his home environment that summer at the wedding of his brother Mike in Cheshire. Plum (Connolly's wife) and I got there late, only to find Paul being berated by an uncle about his admission a year earlier that he'd tried LSD. I was used to seeing the world virtually genuflect in the presence of a Beatle, but no prodigal nephew was big enough to escape the admonishments of a straight talking, middle-aged Liverpudlian. That night Paul told us to follow his car to his Auntie Jin's house in a Liverpool side street where he sat and played cards with his cousins. It was probably the only time I ever saw him, or indeed any of the Beatles, treated like an ordinary person.
Yoko about herself and John in the wake of the Two Virgins album: Basically we're very shy and square people.
Err.
Connolly about meeting the other new female arrival in the Beatles saga: His new girl Linda Eastman, accompanied by her six year old daughter Heather, arrived as he was finishing. (...) It was the first time I'd met Linda, and two things immediately struck me. She seemed grown up, professional more than glamorous, and as a working photographer was genuinenly interested in what I was doing as a journalist. That doesn't always happen.
The craziness at Apple in its later stages: There were tears when one of the old Liverpool mates was sacked by Allen Klein, with no intervention to save him from the Famous Four; paranoia during Derek Taylor's Olympian damage limitation exercise to the world's Press when John and Yoko were busted; and astonishment and then anger on a Beatle face when it accidentally fell to me to tell Paul that John had made a film of his penis in slow motion, before, during and after erection. THe film was called, naturally enough, Erection.
As I might have said before, no fiction writer would dare to invent John Lennon. However, here's another side:
"Paul and I might be all right," John told me one afternoon. "But I don't want to see Ringo having to tour the northern clubs in twenty years time in order to make a living."
Aw, John.
Ray Connolly reviews Abbey Road (which, remember, was produced last but was released last but one due to the delay of Let it Be, so when he reviewed, separation rumours were in the air but not yet official): The best part of the medley is the third section, beginning with Golden Slumbers, where a degree of form becomes more discernible. Melodies are repeated with different worlds, and Carry That Weight becomes a chorus line on which to base the whole movement. If the Beatles slit up could they produce such good albums? Probalby not. They need each other as musicians, editors and critics.
Aw, Ray. Also aw, Ray, when he's defending John in an 1970 article apropos the MBE return and Cold Turkey:
People ask me all the time if John is insane. He isn't. He's possibly capricious, juvenile and distasteful on occasions, and maybe his demonstrations for peace might be more effective were he tackle them in a more orthodox manner. But he's still the great wit, the original thinker. Sometimes I think he's rather like the monkey in the zoo who is really laughing at all the people who are laughing at it.
After this article, John invited him along to a Canada trip and sprang the news about the Beatles break-up on him (the entire "I want a divorce" tale), then asked Ray Connolly not to write about it yet as Allen Klein was still renegotiating the Capitol contract for the Beatles. As later events showed, he must have been hoping that Connolly, being a journalist, would not be able to resist to go with the world exclusive anyway. However, Connolly's inner Beatles fan won over his inner journalist; he hoped John would still change his mind. And then came the April of 1970 and the release of Paul's first solo album.
Then on April 9, Peter Brown at Apple slipped me an advance preview of the questions and answers statement Paul was putting out to the Press to announce the release of the record. In it, when asked if he had any plans to record with the Beatles, Paul replied he hadn't, but didn't know whether the break would be temporary or permanent. My reading of the document was that he was still waiting for John, hoping he might change his mind and cancel their 'divorce', but a journalist called Don Short on the Daily Mirror decided the document was saying that Paul had left the Beatles. PAUL QUITS BEATLES, ran the Mirror's headline on April 10, and the story raced around the world, condemning Paul for the break-up. Some people still blame him. Around lunchtime that day I spoke to John. He was furious. It seemed to him that as he'd started the Beatles when they'd been the Quarrymen, it was up to him to announce publically when they would be finished, and Paul had stolen a lead on him in that respect. Since Paul was being blamed for wrecking the world's most favourite entertainment it seemed a perverse argument to me, but that was how John saw it. 'Why didn't you write it when I told you in Canada I'd left the Beatles?' he snapped down the phone.
'You asked me not to,' I replied.
His reply was withering. 'You're the journalist, Connolly, not me.'
I already quoted Paul's divorce statements from the follow-up interview with Ray Connolly. The same interview also contains the understatement of the year in reply to why the solo album: I was bored. I like to work, I'm an active person. Sit me down with a guitar and let me go. That's my job.
Connolly went through some of the Beatles song catalogue with John in 1972 the way the Playboy interview from 1980 does, and while several (highly interesting) comments on their songs made it into the article the interview was for, the following quote on George in the early Beatles years didn't: I encouraged George like mad. It wasn't that we were making him invisible or keeping him out, it was simply the fact that he had never written anything and he could only just sing. He could only just get his voice out of his throat.
Nor did this bit about Revolution appear in the final article: "J (laughing): That bit about 'pictures of Chairman Mao'... If I ever go to China and they ask me about that, I'll simply tell them Paul wrote that bit.'
Or this statement on song writing:
In the old days we used to write and write and write, nowadays I only do it if I particularly want to or when I'm particularly inspired. (...) Sometimes the songs are in my head first. Sometimes writing is easy. But usually torture. I write them in all kinds of ways. Piano, guitar, any combination you can think of. It isn't easy. It's torture. (There's another call from Yoko.) Oh, Yoko says that writing the song is easy, it's the recording that I go through hell.
For someone who was primarily a John boy, Ray Connolly has sometimes unorthodox tastes:
1971 was really George Harrison's year, but no sooner was My Sweet Lord at number one that Paul was issuing a new single, Another Day, and John was sending me a demo copy of Power To The People. Of all three records I liked Another Day most. It had a charming sadness. John had once told me that his proudest moment was watching people singing Give Peace A Chance at the Washington Moratorium, but Power To The People was more of a marching bullying song.
Much like John had a "nobody gets to diss Paul but me" attitude, he also had a "nobody gets to diss the Beatles but me" attitude. Especially not a Rolling Stone. Quoth he:
Some people like Mick Jagger have said we weren't such a good band as performers. But he never saw us at our best in Liverpool and Hamburg. We were the best bloody band there was. We'd play for hours. I know all the early rock songs much better than most of those I've written myself.
And now for the passage that made me furious with everyone concerned except the victim. As mentioned, it comes in a description of the October 1971 party celebrating Yoko's exhibition at Syracuse University as well as John's 31st birthday.
But there was another side to the evening. In another room, unknown to John, some of the security men were taking turns to have sex with a doped up girl whom Phil Spector had brought to Syracuse.
'Hey, you wanna have a go...' I was asked by one as he left the rom and saw me passing in the corridor.
I didn't. Telling John what was happening, he looked puzzled, surprised. Then he said quietly: 'Don't tell Yoko, will you?'
John was protective of Yoko, which was ironic becasue before she met him Yoko had been a tough and self-reliant person. It was indeed her independence which had attracted him.
And off we go into another scene involving John and Yoko. Deep breath. Okay. First of all, Ray Connolly, I don't care if it's 1971, if you watch a doped up woman in this situation, you get her out of it immediately and then make sure she can sober up somewhere where she doesn't get gang raped. You don't get to feel virtuous for declining to participate in the gang rape, because that's what sex with a woman unable to give consent by multiple men is. Secondly, John Lennon, this is why I can't take your claims to feminism seriously. "Don't tell Yoko?" That's all? You don't, say, go to stop this situation and fire the security guards? For heaven's sake. And thirdly, Phil Spector, I'm even more glad you're in prison.
At this point, the John and Yoko relationship starts to show strains, John begins to lash out at her, and we're off to the Lost Weekend era of the mid 70s. Ray Connolly's conclusion about the whole May and Yoko situation for John:
In many ways John Lennon in this period was like a cross between a sometimes wayward, talented, grown-up child who needed a capable, loving carer to see to his daily needs, and that obviously included sex, and a multi-millionaire who had to have a manager to take care of his business.
Or, to put it more cynically and crassly than he does, Connolly thinks John in the end picked Yoko the manager over May the sexual babysitter. He got notified of the reconciliation by post cards from Yoko and John both. ("Dear Ray, Here's a hard one for you to take. John and Yoko have not only come together, but they're having a baby due October! What happened to your famous film? Isn't it coming to NY? We're waiting. Love, Yoko" and John's letter post birth of Sean telling him that "George (I'm with God) Harrisongs is in New York and due to meet the incredibly beautiful and intelligent Sean Ono Lennon!".
And then it's silence from New York until 1980. Otoh, Connolly gets to brush up his McCartney connections. In an article/portrait from 1979, he writes of Paul: To be honest it's easier to be around McCartney these days than it was during the last nerve-plucking days of the Beatles. I'm not saying that he's the chummy Prince Charming unaffected bloke of the Beatle Paul myth; he isn't, and never was. And he still betrays an air of off-hand arrogance occasionally, but he's more approachable and able to discuss his work without sounding falsely modest. And he's refreshingly prepared to admit he sees himself in the tradition of Gerswhin and Cole Porter.
Another summary characterisation of Paul McCartney from a different article: "Though he may be prone to moods, he is someone who never gives up, who goes on and on until he gets what he wants. His father used to say, 'God loves a tryer', and Paul never stops trying."
1980 starts badly for Paul via the infamous Japan pot bust; one of the previously unpublished pieces of Connolly's book is his summary of Paul's memories of the nine days in prison. Predictably, the scariest things (other than, you know, the prospect of several years in prison for the hubrisitc idiocy of carrying pot into Japan) seem to have been the enforced boredom and lack of music. Then there's the oddly touching detail of dreaming "that he, Linda and his father were walking up hill to a pub" several years after his father's death.
Ray Connolly was due to leave for New York and interview John when John died, and his obituary is deeply felt (and also, btw, a good example of how you praise John and mourn for him without denigrating anyone else; looking at you, Robert Christgau). So, several decades later, was his obituary for Linda, and since Linda obituaries are far less well known, I'll quote from that one:
She had dignity. Right from the beginning, it simply shone from her. Even as a young woman she seemed grown up, casually assured. She was a fan. Obviously. Everyone was in those days. But she didn't behave like one. She didn't fawn or giggle. She was her own person, instantly friendly, an American girl in London, a professional photographer, with the sunniest of smiles. I remember seeing her for the first time at the Abbey Road studions in 1968 while John Lennon and George Martin were mixing Cry Baby Cry for the Beatles' White Album. Paul was there, too, but it wasn't his song they were working on, and Yoko was with John, anyway. So, with nothing much else to do, he took me into the band room, and, sitting at the piano, began to play a new song he was working on. It would turn out to be Let It Be, a song, at least in part, about his mother, Mary McCartney, who had died of cancer when he was 14. He told me, he had a new girlfriend who would be coming along later to collect him. (...) Those were garish times, the post Sergeant Pepper days, and I wondered how extravagantly turned out this new girl would be.
Then there was Linda, at 26, strolling down the corridor accompanied by Heather, her small daughter from her first marriage, looking scrubbed and without make-up, wearing just jeans, a raincoat and a sweater, and seemingly privately amused by the situation in which she found herself.
Connolly's Mal Evans portrait is written around the interview of another spouse, Mal Evan's widow Lil, noting the irony that just as the Beatles themselves went domestic (or at least John and Paul did), formerly devoted husband Mal, unable to cope with a post Beatles world, went wild, separated from wife and children and headed towards his violent death in Los Angeles. She does blame the group for the earlier enstrangement:
I felt left behind. It wasn't as though Mal was having an affair with a woman, but four affairs with the Beatles. And four fellas can be worse than one woman. He was always at their beck and call. He was a nice fella to have around, so much so that it would provoke little jealousies within the band. When I met Yoko years after Mal died she said John had told her he'd been very jealous at one point of Mal's relationship with Paul.
My favourite of Connolly's articles, though, is one from 2009 where he goes back and listens to his old interview tapes. Some choice quotes:
Always verbally adroit, John could hardly have chosen a more appropriate term than 'divorce'. Because while it always seemed to me that the Rolling Stones came across like a raiding party, the four Beatles were more like a family. There was John, the clever, witty, mercurial, confrontational and sometimes wayward father figure, who always seemed so much older than his years, and Paul, the brilliantly musical, ever industrious, ambitious mother of the band who wrote the letters for them early on and was their diplomat. Then there was George Harrison, to me the truculent teenager in the Beatles family, chippy, in that he felt, and later with some justification, that he was overlooked by the leading pair; and Ringo, the happy-go-lucky junior member who would say in our firrst taped interview that he was only where he was because, 'I just said 'yes'.'
The John Lennon I recorded was a very funny man who liked to pain himself ironically as the indignant butt of his own stories. 'Did you see that Time magazine is saying that George is a philosopher?' he asked me one day. 'And there's an article in The Times, that I've actually thought about sending anonymously, of course, to Pseuds Corner, saying how Paul is this great musician. Where does that leave me?'
'The nutter?' I hear myself suggest.
'Exactly. I'm the nutter. Fuck 'em all.'
Today he might have been a star as a stand-up comedian with a line in self mockery. (...)
Later, saying how a favourite of his songs, You Can't Do That, was his attempt at being Wilson Pickett, he becomes mock-anguished when admitting it was 'a flip side because Can't Buy Me Love (Paul's song) was so fucking good.' He was competitive with Paul, yes, and, when relations between the two were really bad, vituperative. (....) But, as he would so often say, 'they were just the words that came out of my mouth at the time'. The truth is, he always knew how good Paul was, without necessarily liking everything he did. 'I only ever asked two people to work with me as partners,' he would boast of his talent spotting abilities. 'One was Paul McCartney and the other Yoko Ono. That's not bad, is it.' Indeed at one point in London I remember a writer from an Underground magazine being rather snide about Paul's song Let It Be, presumably assuming that John would agree. He didn't.
'Paul and me were the Beatles,' he would emphasise to me. 'We wrote the songs.' And on the subject of his debt to the younger McCartney, he was actually generous. 'I didn't write much material early on, less than Paul, because he was quite competent on guitar. Paul taught me quite a lot of guitar really. All those who see John as the towering greatest of the great should reflect on that: John Lennon quietly, happily admitting how much he owed to Paul McCartney. And while he could be flattering about some of Paul's songs, he liked For No One particularly ("that was one of his good ones. All his semi-classical ones are best, actually'), he was disarmingly dismissive about several of his own.
'I am the Walrus didn't mean anything,' he says at one point, blithely consigning to the pointless bin the work of a generation of Beatle anoraks who tried to interpret its lyrics, while he always hated Yes It Is, didn't think he sang Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds very well ("I was so nerouvs I couldn't sing, but I like the lyrics") and admits that he and Paul would give the lousy songs they wrote to George and Ringo to sing."
Interestingly, and it's something I've only realised listening again to the tapes, no matter how much John publically critisized Paul, in none of my several interviews with Paul did he ever critisize John. Quite the contrary. 'On Abbey Road I would like to have sung harmony with John, like we used to,' he said in one. 'And I think he would have liked me to. But I was too embarrassed to ask him.'
I always wished I'd been involved in the Beatles' early happier days, but my role was to cover hte final act of their career, and to observe the fall-out, largely, though by no means totally, with John.
And now for Ray Connolly writing an "What If" AU: his theories for what would have become of the Beatles if Beatlemania had never happened are:
John: would have become a cross between a Scouse Dylan Thomas and a comedy writer, for Spike Milligan and others, and quite successful, until, see later.
George: plays lead guitar in a couple of bands but never manages to impress said bands with his own compositions. ("John and Paul would have liked his stuff, he was sure of that. Well, almost sure...") Then finds happiness as a gardener and collector of Native American ("although he always referred to them, politically incorrect, as Red Indian") paintings.
Ringo: unfortunately doesn't make it in films and is so so as a club owner, but wins the lottery ticket and has a nice retired life thereafter. ("Talk about a lucky man who made the grade.")
Paul: retakes some A-Levels at night school, goes to college and becomes an English teacher. "Where, with his usual energy, he becan to reshape the plays, concerts and music department. Naturally, perfectionist that he is, no school concert was ever good enough for him, no matter how much he joined in, designing and building the stage, painting the sets, showing the school orchestra how to play, coaching the choir in harmony. Nor was being in the background ever quite enough, either. So when, at the last minute, the male lead in the school production of West Side Story lost his voice and Paul was called upon to take over the part of Tony, he needed no persuading, though at forty he did look quite a bit older than the fifth former who played Maria. "There's a place for us...", he sang, as the sixth form girls who had a crush on him wept and his children squirmed in embarassment." This event inspires him to start writing songs again and in 1985, he finally has a breakthrough with Sgt. Pepper the Musical ("based on his father's old Jazz band").
And thus Ray concludes his RPF: "That more lor less brings us up to date, but for something that happened just the other day. Popping into a pub in Charing Cross Road to get out of the rain, Paul noticed a familiar face arguing with someone at the bar. It was John. It had been years since they'd met, though, of course, he'd seen John on TV now and again, and loyally bought all his books. Naturally John was well aware of Paul's success with Sergeant Pepper, too... even, perhaps a little jealous. Wary at first with each other, after a couple of drinks, it was just like old times. "Why don't you come round, bring your guitar with you," John suggested. "Perhaps we could even write together like we used to. You know, Lennon and McCartney."
"Let's do that," Paul said. "But it might have to be McCartney and Lennon on some of them this time."
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/743014.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.