Back in England, John immediately returned to his drug routine. But the juggernaut that had become the Beatles had to go on, and, in the absence of Brian, it would now be driven largely by the energy and idealism of Paul. The Beatles’ company Apple would, Paul told me, ‘be rather like a Western Communism . . . We want to set up a complete business organisation . . . not just for us but for the general good . . .’ And to that end he and John soon began planning a trip to New York to publicly announce their new venture.
Relations between John and Cynthia thawed momentarily after John spent a weekend tripping on LSD with family man Derek Taylor, who was now handling the Beatles’ press relations. But when Cynthia asked if she could go with him to New York, the coldness returned. No, John said, she couldn’t. This was a business trip and he had a lot of work to do as well as to prepare for the next Beatles album.
So, instead, she accepted an invitation to go on a two-week holiday to Greece with Pattie Boyd’s sister Jennie, Donovan and Magic Alex, leaving the care of Julian once more in the hands of housekeeper Dot Jarlett.
John was lying on their bed when she left to catch the plane. ‘He was in the almost trance-like state I’d seen many times before and barely turned his head to say goodbye,’ she would remember.
In New York, John and Paul had never appeared more business-like. Wearing a suit and clean shaven, John addressed a press conference standing four square alongside Paul in the Apple venture. ‘We want to set up a system whereby people who just want to make a film . . . don’t have to go down on their knees in somebody’s office,’ he said. The aim wasn’t ‘a stack of gold teeth in the bank. And, with that, he invited, through television, citizens of America to fulfil their artistic dreams with a cheque from Apple.
Whether the New York business community listened seriously to the ideas of Western Communism is doubtful. Everyone was too mystified by what sounded like a crazy idea. Nothing John and Paul talked about seemed to have been thought through in a business sense, except perhaps the notion of Apple Records. At the end of their short visit, the only positive step either of them had made seemed to be that Paul had met up once again with the photographer Linda Eastman, who had attracted him a year earlier at the Sgt. Pepper launch party.
But when, as a follow-up to the company launch, an advertisement was placed in the London underground newspaper the International Times inviting readers to send in their film scripts, songs, poems, tapes, fashion designs, inventions, plays, electronics, novels and recordings, within days the Apple office in Wigmore Street was inundated with thousands of submissions from hopefuls. Not one of them ever got any further.
By that time John was back at Kenwood, and with Cynthia still in Greece he invited Pete Shotton over to stay. No longer managing the Apple boutique, Pete had now become John’s personal assistant. Loaded with LSD and smoking joints, the two played together for hours in the attic studio making experimental tapes, before Pete fell asleep. John didn’t. The next morning Pete found him in a state of some excitement.
‘Pete,’ John said, ‘I’ve got something important to tell you.’
‘Yes?’
Pete had heard his pal say some strange things before, but nothing quite like this. But, going along with the fantasy in the druggy mood of the moment, he humoured him by asking if being John Lennon wasn’t enough for any man.
No, it wasn’t, John said, and immediately decided he had to tell the world, starting with the other Beatles. With Pete driving, the two set off for London where, sitting in the Apple office with his closest associates Paul, George, Ringo, Neil and Derek, John told them of his realisation.
Coolly, they listened, all recognising that John was tripping, and then agreed they would have to think about it. It was, after all, only the drugs talking. Then the new Messiah left to go to lunch with his mate, Pete.
It was evening before the two got home for a dopey top-up. Pete was exhausted, but John was still revving, and at about ten o’clock he started to talk about Yoko. ‘I fancy having a woman around, Pete. Do you mind if I get one?’ was Pete’s published memory of the conversation.
Pete didn’t mind. So John got on the phone to Yoko. It was late, she was married and it was a twenty-mile taxi drive out of London for her, but she came anyway, with Pete supplying John with the money to pay the taxi driver. Apparently, her husband, Tony Cox, had taken their five-year-old daughter Kyoko to the south of France for a few days. Dot Jarlett was still taking care of Julian at her home.
In Pete’s recollection Yoko seemed shy and nervous when she arrived, and after a few pleasantries he went to bed leaving John to get on with seducing her. ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ John would recall, ‘so we went upstairs to my studio and I played her all the tapes that I’d made, all far-out stuff, some comedy and some electronic.’
Evidently she liked what she heard, because after a while, sharing some LSD, they made a recording together. ‘It was midnight when we started,’ John told Rolling Stone – although it must surely have been much later, ‘and it was dawn when we finished’, and they opened the window to record the sound of the birds’ morning chorus as a counterpoint to Yoko’s voice. ‘And then,’ he said, ‘we made love at dawn. It was very beautiful.’
Pete got up early that morning and was surprised, when he went downstairs, to find John sitting in his dressing gown eating a boiled egg. ‘Have a good time last night?’ Pete asked knowingly, as he would have done after his pal had spent the night with any girl.
‘Yeah, Pete. It was great,’ came back a very serious answer. And then: ‘Are you doing anything today?’ Pete said he wasn’t. In which case, said John, would he go and find a house for him and Yoko to live in. He’d made up his mind to leave Cynthia.
A couple of days later, Cynthia flew back from Greece. While changing planes in Rome, she took the opportunity to phone home and let John know the time she would be back. According to her, his reply was, ‘Fine, I’ll see you later.’
It was late afternoon when she reached Kenwood. On the flight home, she, Jennie and Alex had talked about going out for dinner that night and had wondered whether John might like to join them. So, on arriving at Kenwood, Cynthia opened the front door for the three of them and went inside. She realised immediately that something was wrong. The porch light was on, and all the curtains were still drawn.
Opening the door to the sun room, she looked inside. This is how she described it in her memoir of life with John.
‘John and Yoko were sitting on the floor, cross-legged, and facing each other, beside a table covered in dirty dishes. They were wearing towelling robes we kept in the pool house . . . John was facing me. He looked at me, expressionless, and said, “Oh, hi.” Yoko didn’t turn around.’
For reasons she would never understand, Cynthia suddenly blurted out that they were all going out to dinner in London and asked John and Yoko: ‘Would you like to come?’
She was in shock, made to feel like an interloper in her own home. But the stupidity of the question would haunt her ever after. There was Yoko, wearing her gown, sitting with her husband, having obviously spent the night and day with him, and there she was trying to appear normal. The truth is, she had no idea how to react because it was obvious that they had wanted her to find them like that. ‘You had to be in the situation to realise the horror of it,’ she told me. ‘It was vicious. He knew I’d be coming.’
Rushing upstairs to collect some clothes, passing a pair of Japanese slippers neatly left outside a bedroom, she hurried outside again to the embarrassed Jennie and Magic Alex and was driven away.