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Others let their resentment simmer.

A year after the death of Joe Orton, the Beatles were still searching around for material for their next feature film. Might The Lord of the Rings be suitable? In February 1968 Donovan had brought Tolkien’s trilogy out to Rishikesh, giving John, Paul and George each a volume to read; Ringo was no bookworm, preferring comics.

Soon after the Beatles’ return to England, there were rumours in the music press that they would be starring in an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Paul would play the lovable Frodo Baggins, Ringo his loyal sidekick Sam Gamgee, and George the wizard Gandalf. John was to play Gollum. His casting might have channelled a secret empathy, as his feelings towards his group were akin to Gollum’s towards the ring: ‘He loved it and hated it, just as he hated and loved himself.’

With its elves, quests and magic, The Lord of the Rings attracted a strong hippy following. Though forged in the trenches of the First World War, it would be possible to overlay it with a dreamy, psychedelic vision derived from the recent songs of the Beatles.

As the year progressed, the talk turned to the director. Who should it be? David Lean? Antonioni? John’s favourite film of 1968 was 2001: A Space Odyssey; he said he planned to watch it every week. One day he called on the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, hoping to spark his interest. But he came away disappointed: Kubrick told him it was too large and complex ever to be adapted for the screen. John complained to Pete Shotton about Kubrick’s negativity. How, he grumbled, could the guy who directed 2001 be so ‘nowhere’?

Soon afterwards, Victor Spinetti, a mainstay of A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, was sitting in bed at home when the doorbell rang. It was the postman, with a parcel from Apple Corps. There were four books: The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He started to read them, but found the process effortful. Before he had got very far, the telephone rang.

It was John. ‘Have you got the books? They’re going to do a film. We’ll be the hobbits and you’ll be Gandalf.’

Spinetti agreed to press on, but ‘it was no use. I found them turgid and twee.’

He phoned John back. ‘What do you think?’ asked John.

‘Oh, John,’ sighed Spinetti. ‘I couldn’t finish –’

‘That’s all right, neither could I. Forget it.’

Haywood Magee/Stringer

Nevertheless, the Beatles persisted with the project, the only barrier being Professor Tolkien himself. Fifty years their senior, and by nature a traditionalist, he nursed a particular dislike of pop music, born of bitter experience. In 1964, at the height of Beatlemania, a local band used to rehearse in a garage close to Tolkien’s home on Oxford’s Sandfield Road. He had detested the racket. ‘In a house three doors away dwells a member of a group of young men who are evidently aiming to turn them into a Beatle Group,’ he wrote to a friend. ‘… The noise is indescribable.’

Four years later, when the Beatles approached him to turn his trilogy into a film, Professor Tolkien’s mind drifted back to the hullaballoo that had assailed him from that garage down the road. Thinking no more about it, he turned them down without further ado.