I ended my first term of boarding at Farleigh House in July 1965. The headmaster and founder of the school was Jocelyn Trappes-Lomax, a tubby man in his early sixties who was in the habit of wearing the same uniform as his pupils (grey flannel shorts, Boy Scout belt, short-sleeved shirt, Start-Rite sandals). Towards the end of those long, hot summer holidays, we were informed that Mr Trappes-Lomax had died of a heart attack in his bath.
He was replaced by a more go-ahead geography and art teacher, known as ‘CJ’, who must have been in his thirties. One of CJ’s early acts as headmaster was to convert a disused underground cellar beneath the chapel into a club for boys in their last two years at the school, the youngest of whom would have been eleven and the oldest thirteen. It was called the Cavern, presumably in a nod to the Beatles, and consisted of three dark, slightly dank chambers, enlivened by psychedelic murals of underwater scenes painted by CJ and the senior boys. One of the chambers had a ping-pong table, another a billiard table, and the third was furnished with armchairs, a beanbag and a record player.
The Beatles’ White Album was released on 22 November 1968, when I was exactly eleven and a half years old. It was a double album, so doubly expensive – £3.12s.6d. My parents gave it to me for Christmas, and I spent the next few months luxuriating in its pure white cover, so sleek and so shiny, studying its four-colour headshots of the freshly unsmiling Beatles, and, above all else, examining every detail of its full-length poster, which came pre-folded so it could fit into the package.
On one side of the poster were the words to all but one of the songs, from the first track on side one, ‘Back in the USSR’, to the last on side four, ‘Good Night’. I liked following the words with my finger as the record spun round, imagining that I was somehow directing the words as they flowed off the paper and into the air.
Many of the lyrics seemed to raise more questions than they answered. What is a stupid get? How could an onion be glass? Why don’t we do what in the road?
On the other side of the lyrics sheet was a collage of photographs, some large, others so small you could scarcely see them. Again, smiles were few and far between, and mainly on snapshots from long ago: the Beatles with Harold Wilson in March 1964, or a beaming Brian Epstein looking calm and relaxed in shirt and tie around that same time.
But generally speaking, the four of them looked sullen. If you compared the moody scowls of The White Album to the cheery grins on the cover of Please Please Me, just five years before, you would come away with a poor impression of fame and fortune. The only truly happy photograph on The White Album was also the most formal: the bearded Ringo Starr, spruce in black tie and dinner jacket, dancing arm in arm with a visibly delighted Elizabeth Taylor against a posh background of a chandelier and ruched curtains.
At that time, I was used to family photographs of everyone looking cheerful, or at least making an effort, which meant roughly the same. We would dress smartly, and smile when the photographer told us to (‘Say cheese!’). But one of the largest photographs in the Beatles collage, top right, was of Paul lying in a murky, soap-sodden bath, with his chin stubbly and his eyes shut, rather like poor Mr Trappes-Lomax. He certainly wasn’t making an effort. Towards the bottom left of the poster was a black-and-white photograph of John, naked but for his spectacles, sitting cross-legged on a bed, talking on the phone while Yoko slept, or at least pretended to sleep (her head was set at an uncomfortable angle). Nude adults abounded. Close to the centre, just along from Elizabeth Taylor, was a small photograph of Paul, also naked, standing in a bathroom with a towel around his shoulders. The shot was taken through a window: the central frame covered his private parts, but only just. Up a bit and left a bit was one of John’s squiggly cartoons of himself and Yoko. They too were in the nude.
Other photographs were mysteriously shoddy: it was almost as though the Beatles had plundered their rejects box for snaps that were out of focus, or dingy, or showed them at their worst: a smudgy Polaroid of John looking as if he was about to pick a fight with the photographer; a large photograph of George – the largest of the lot – with half his face lost in an overexposed blaze of white; a blurred picture of Ringo on the drums, bored stiff.
The collage was scrappy but mesmerising – or scrappy and mesmerising, like The White Album itself. And like The White Album it seemed modern and cutting-edge and devil-may-care, but at the same time it came steeped in a sense of nostalgia. I now see that half the photographs are from happier days – in Rishikesh, or on the set of Help!, or at the Variety Club awards. Two date back to John’s carefree twenty-first-birthday trip to Paris with Paul, before they were famous. In one of them – presumably taken by Paul – John is sitting up in bed wearing a black T-shirt and a bowler hat. In the other, the two of them are leaning moodily against a wall plastered with concert posters, their hands half-in, half-out of the pockets of their black jeans. The photograph itself is wonky: half of each head is cut off, and, for no reason, the camera is slanted towards their winkle-pickers.
In fancy italic lettering, a message reads: ‘Order of the British Empire to our trusty and well beloved Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey Esquire).’ This too is a throwback to more innocent days.
The only other words on the poster are hand-written in red biro over the imprint of pink lips:
I love you
Who was the I and who was the you? No clue was provided. Could I be the you? I found the thought sinister.