Chaos in Lagos inspires McCartney’s best album. Chaos with Phil Spector fuels Lennon’s lost weekend. Starr and Harrison form their own songwriting duo until Harrison plays musical chairs with one wife too many.
The Rolling Stones’ and Elton John’s trips to Jamaica had not gone well, but Paul McCartney thought Lagos, Nigeria, might be a good place to reboot his career. His last album had done well commercially, but the critics derided him for not living up to his potential. When he discovered that his label, EMI, had a record studio on the Atlantic coast in Central Africa, he figured he could hire local musicians to give his project exotic flavor, plus relax on the beach with Linda when not working.
The first hiccup came when Wings guitarist Henry McCullough quit, because McCartney didn’t allow him creative input and paid low. Drummer Denny Seiwell resigned the night before they were scheduled to fly, irked at his salary of $175 a week. McCartney wasn’t unduly alarmed; he played drums on his first solo album. So he set out with Linda and guitarist-vocalist Denny Laine on August 9. EMI sent a letter warning him to avoid the country because of cholera, but McCartney did not receive it before his departure.1
He was disappointed to find the studio had just one eight-track recorder. The power often went out. Fela Kuti, leader of the local Afrobeat music scene, warned McCartney not to steal their music, so McCartney gave up the idea of employing Nigerian musicians.
The city was under the control of a military junta, and the McCartneys were told it was too dangerous to go out at night. Still, he and Linda attempted to walk twenty minutes to Laine’s house. Five or six muggers, one brandishing a knife, jumped out of a car.2 “Don’t kill him, he’s a musician!” Linda screamed. They stole McCartney’s money and a bag containing demos and lyrics.
When they returned to work, he was forced to reconstruct the songs from memory. “It seemed stuffy in the studio, so I went outside for a breath of fresh air. If anything, the air was more foul outside than in. It was then that I began to feel really terrible and had a pain across the right side of my chest and I collapsed. I could not breathe and so I collapsed and fainted. Linda thought I had died. The doctor seemed to treat it pretty lightly and said it could be bronchial because I had been smoking too much. But this was me in hell. I stayed in bed for a few days, thinking I was dying. It was one of the most frightening periods in my life. The climate, the tensions of making a record, which had just got to succeed, and being in this totally uncivilized part of the world finally got to me.”3
Perhaps he started refining “Picasso’s Last Words” in bed. The song had its genesis the previous spring when Dustin Hoffman invited McCartney and Linda to dinner. “He was asking me how I write songs; I explained that I just make them up. He said, ‘Can you make up a song about anything?’ I wasn’t sure, but he pulled out a copy of Time [April 23 issue], pointed to an article and said, ‘Could you write a song about this?’ It was a quote from Picasso, from the last night of his life, April 8. Apparently, he had said to his friends, ‘Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink anymore,’ and then gone to bed and died in his sleep. So I picked up a guitar, started to strum and sing ‘Drink to me, drink to my health…’ and Dustin was shouting to his wife, ‘He’s doing it! He’s doing it! Come and listen!’ It’s something that comes naturally to me but he was blown away by it.”4
Hoffman later said of the evening, “It’s right under childbirth in terms of great events in my life.”5
McCartney also toyed with a phrase from the pub sing-along segment of his James Paul McCartney special, where the patrons belted out “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag.” “What’s the use of worrying?” they all sang, and he turned it into the chorus of “Mrs. Vanderbilt.” “When your light is on the blink … you don’t complain of robbery.” If this album was going to be his own last words, what would they be?
John Lennon also endured a tumultuous session that fall, for his album of ’50s covers called Rock ’n’ Roll. The threat to him was his producer, Phil Spector, later given a life sentence for shooting actress-waitress Lana Clarkson. Spector would arrive at A&M Studios in Hollywood late, perhaps dressed as a surgeon, then keep Lennon waiting for hours as he tinkered with the thirty-piece band, leaving the singer with too much time on his hands to get bombed. Once Lennon grew so irate he smashed his headset on the console. The studio owner left the damage unfixed to stand as a Beatle memento. After one endless session when a wasted Lennon threatened to get violent, Spector’s bodyguard spirited him back to the house he was staying at, against his wishes. When Lennon attempted to strangle Spector, the bodyguard tied Lennon facedown on his bed to allow for their escape.6 Another night, Spector, without provocation, hit Lennon’s assistant Mal Evans in the nose. When Evans warned him, “Watch that!” Spector yelled back “You watch it!” and fired his pistol into the ceiling.7 Lennon retorted, “Phil, if you’re going to kill me, kill me. But don’t fuck with my ears. I need ’em.”8
The best performance was “Bony Moronie.” The first track recorded, it reflected the initial excitement before the project devolved into sodden debauchery. But the most compelling Spector-produced track was the ridiculous train wreck “Be My Baby.” It was not released until 1998 on the John Lennon Anthology, because Lennon slurs and yelps, as if on the verge of passing out. He seems to stagger all the way back to 1960, to the famous night in Beatles history when he took the stage of a dive club in the Hamburg red light district wearing only his underwear and a toilet seat around his neck. (The album’s eventual cover featured a shot of him from this period.)
The studio finally ejected Lennon and Spector over “a matter of pee,” as Lennon titled a note he wrote to Spector. (The note was sold in 2014 for more than $88,000 by Cooper Owen Auction House.9) “Should you not yet know, it was Harry [Nilsson] and Keith [Moon] who pissed on the console!” he wrote. “Anyway tell [the studio owner] to bill Capitol for the damage if any. I can’t be expected to mind adult rock stars. Nor can May [Pang, his girlfriend and assistant].”
Spector disappeared with the master tapes. While Lennon debated whether to abandon the project all together, he marked time producing a solo track for Mick Jagger, “Too Many Cooks.” He watched his Mind Games album, released at the end of October, make it to No. 9 in the US. McCartney and Harrison had made it to No. 1; Starr would make it to No. 2 with his album. The cover depicted a tiny John walking away from a mountain that was Yoko Ono’s profile, facing up as if she lies in a sarcophagus. For the “Mind Games” single sleeve, he superimposed her profile so it came out of the top of his head, much like the face of Harry Potter’s villain Voldemort coming out of the head of Quirinus Quirrell. Ono, meanwhile, pursued an affair with her guitarist David Spinozza. With no Ono, no politics, no new self-help tool like acid or meditation or primal therapy to believe in, Lennon went off the rails with his clique of fellow rock stars, who dubbed themselves the Hollywood Vampires: Starr, Nilsson, Moon, Alice Cooper, Marc Bolan, Bernie Taupin, Joe Walsh, Micky Dolenz, Keith Emerson, and Keith Allison (of Paul Revere and the Raiders).
“In L.A. you either have to be down at the beach or you become part of that never-ending show business party circuit. That scene makes me nervous, and when I get nervous I have to have a drink and when I drink I get aggressive,” Lennon explained.10 He told Playboy, “For me, it was because of being apart (from Ono). I couldn’t stand it. They had their own reasons, and it was, ‘Let’s all drown ourselves together.’ From where I was sitting, it looked like that. ‘Let’s kill ourselves but do it like Errol Flynn, you know, the macho, male way.’”11
Or maybe the Curse of the Werewolf way. One night fans spied Lennon in the window of On the Rox, the lounge atop the Roxy nightclub on the Strip. When they hollered up at him, per biographer Albert Goldman, “he kicked out the window overlooking the lot. Then he started screaming at the fans, ‘You want me, ya fucks! You want me!’”12 He ran down and started brawling with them until producer Jack Douglas and session drummer Jim Keltner pulled him into a car. Lennon kicked out the back windows as it drove away.
That autumn Lennon received an uneasy visit from his ex-wife and son Julian. The day after, he got wasted at the Troubadour and slapped a Kotex maxipad on his head. The waitress avoided his table, so he demanded, “Do you know who am I am?”
“Yeah, you’re some asshole with a Kotex on his head.”13
When Annie Peebles began her set, which included her recent hit “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” Lennon called out, “Annie, I wanna suck your pussy!” and was promptly ejected by the bouncers.14 (They kicked him out again a couple of months later for heckling the Smothers Brothers.) Returning home with session guitarist Jesse Ed Davis and their girlfriends, the two musicians smashed the furniture, then began wrestling. Lennon got Davis in a full nelson and began kissing him, trying to stick his tongue in. Davis bit his tongue, prompting Lennon to hit him on the head with a marble ashtray, knocking him out. As the women screamed, Lennon doused Davis with orange juice to revive him, then “bandaged” his head by wrapping a roll of film around it.
It was then the cops arrived with shotguns, perplexed to find the sheepish icon amid the destruction.
One of the police ventured, “Do you think the Beatles will ever get together again?”
“You never know. You never know.”15
After George Harrison co-wrote and produced two hits for Ringo Starr, “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Back Off Boogaloo,” it appeared a new partnership was emerging from the Beatles’ demise. After Starr and his wife, Maureen, attended Jagger’s wedding to Bianca in the South of France in 1971, he rented a yacht to live on during the Cannes Film Festival, and Harrison and his wife, Pattie, joined them. There the two began working on a song called “Photograph.”16 They took a stab at it during Harrison’s Material World sessions; then Starr redid it for his Ringo album, produced by Richard Perry. Stones regulars Nicky Hopkins and Bobby Keys contributed piano and sax. Spector’s former arranger Jack Nitzsche created his own version of the Wall of Sound orchestra, complete with bells and chorale—perfect for the holiday season, as were the bittersweet lyrics yearning to “have and hold … as we grow old and gray.” It hit No. 1 in the US two days after Thanksgiving, the finest of the year’s many odes to nostalgia. Starr sang the best he ever would, eager to prove himself, undergirded by Harrison’s harmonies and twelve-string acoustic. Lennon and McCartney also contributed to Ringo (“I’m the Greatest” and “Six O’Clock,” respectively), but nothing came close to the Harrison-Starr production.
McCartney also joined Harry Nilsson in backing up Starr on a cover of the 1960 Johnny Burnette hit “You’re Sixteen,” recorded a month after American Graffiti featured the song. McCartney imitated a kazoo in the instrumental, and the song, surprisingly, followed “Photograph” all the way to No. 1. Another track from Ringo made No. 3, the proto-disco “Oh My My,” written by Starr with his songwriting partner Vini Poncia, featuring Martha Reeves and Mary Clayton on backing vocals. For a few years, Starr was second only to McCartney for ex-Beatle with Most Consecutive Top 10 US Singles, with seven to McCartney’s eight.
Ringo shot to No. 2 in the US, abetted by its Sgt. Pepper–esque cover and the public’s craving for the Fab Four spirit. Lennon telegrammed him, “Congratulations. How dare you? And please write me a hit song.”17
“George was happy to talk to me about Indian mysticism and music, even his use of cocaine,” Pete Townshend wrote in his memoir. “I found it hard to follow his reasoning that in a world of illusion nothing mattered, not wealth or fame, drug abuse or heavy drinking, nothing but love for God.… Yellow-robed young Hare Krishna followers living in [Harrison’s] house wandered in and out as we chatted.”18
Pattie’s occasional affair with Eric Clapton mattered little to Harrison. Their liaison began after Harrison slept with Charlotte Martin, Clapton’s ex. Eric confessed one night to Harrison in front of a mortified Pattie, “I have to tell you man, that I’m in love with your wife.”19 Despite Harrison’s initial anger, the marriage, the men’s friendship, and the affair continued.
Ron Wood married another ex-girlfriend of Clapton’s, model Krissy Findlay. In Wood’s autobiography he wrote, “One night at George’s house, Friar Park, in Henley, I took George aside and told him quite seriously that when it was time for bed I would be going to Pattie’s room. Seemingly unflustered he pointed to the room Krissy and I were staying in and added, ‘I shall be sleeping there.’ When the time came, the two of us were left on the landing, hands on knobs (doorknobs) of the respective rooms. ‘Are we going to do this?’ I asked. ‘I’ll see you in court,’ George replied and in we went. Pattie was a little surprised to see me. I told her I thought she was seriously neglected, was going to waste and unleashed that I felt so strongly for her. The following morning we were woken by George, who informed me that he had called his lawyers. He never actually did. Pattie and I headed off to the Bahamas and Krissy and George left for Portugal.”20
In Pattie’s own memoir, she wrote, “Krissy often came to stay at Friar Park. I was desperately hurt: another one of my friends was sleeping with George. When I challenged him, he denied it and tried once again to make me feel as though I was paranoid.”21
In Pattie’s telling, she and Harrison were scheduled to go to Portugal in the spring of ’73, but at the last minute he told her he didn’t feel well, so she went to the Bahamas instead with her friends. As soon as Pattie was gone, Harrison contacted Krissy. Per Krissy’s memoir, “George said he had rented a holiday villa in Portugal, and since Pattie was too busy to go, he asked me. I was a bit run down at the time and needed a break so Ronnie was happy for me to go.”22
As soon as Krissy was gone, Wood contacted Pattie in the Bahamas. “He was on tour and said he might come to see us for a few days. It was such a relief to have someone else to party with, someone who is light and fun.… He didn’t seem upset that his wife was with George—just thought it was funny that they’d gone to see Salvador Dali.… A pair of comforting arms were what I needed.”23
Krissy wrote of Harrison, “He was gentle, kind and considerate, just what I needed at that moment. Our affair was on a very serious and spiritual level. On our return from Portugal, George and I returned to Friar Park, but Pattie and Ronnie were not in England. They had flown off to the Bahamas for a holiday, which upset George because Pattie had said she didn’t want to go to Portugal. Rather than sit around and wait for her, George and I then flew to Switzerland for another holiday. We returned to England and I stayed with George until his wife returned. But [Pattie] was not at all jealous. If anyone was jealous, it was me. I felt [Pattie] was very pretty and I wasn’t really happy that she was together with Ronnie.”24
Pattie began to suspect that something was going on with Harrison and Starr’s wife, Maureen, when she found some photos that showed Maureen had been at their estate one weekend when Pattie was away. She noticed Maureen had begun to visit more frequently to watch Harrison and his fellow musicians record in his home studio. Pattie would go to sleep and find Maureen still there in the morning. Maureen began wearing a necklace Harrison gave her. One day Pattie heard them in Harrison’s room and found the door locked. When she banged on the door, Harrison laughed that Maureen was just tired and lying down. When Pattie told Starr, he grew enraged, but Harrison initially denied any affair.25
But finally, one night when the Harrisons and Starrs dined with Harrison’s assistant Chris O’Dell, a wine-drunk Harrison confessed, “You know, Ringo, I’m in love with your wife,” a phrase not unlike the one Clapton had uttered to him.26
According to O’Dell’s memoir, Starr responded, “Better you than someone we don’t know.”27 Pattie’s memoir depicts Starr stalking off quoting Lennon’s “Strawberry Fields Forever”: “Nothing is real.” Maureen went red and just shook her head, looking down.
Maureen did not want to split from Starr, but he left her and England for his friends in Los Angeles and divorced her. Harrison eventually settled down with a secretary from his record label, Olivia Trinidad Arias. Pattie married Eric Clapton; Harrison attended their wedding. Maureen tried to kill herself by driving her motorcycle into a brick wall, necessitating facial reconstruction.28 She married a co-founder of the Hard Rock Café, Isaac Burton Tigrett.
To the world outside, it appeared that the obstacles blocking a Beatles reunion were melting away. Harrison, Starr, and Lennon had jettisoned the manager who McCartney objected to. Lennon separated from Yoko Ono, who famously clashed with McCartney and Harrison. The three had played together on “I’m the Greatest.” McCartney and Lennon tentatively jammed when McCartney was allowed back into the States the following spring.
But there was no Harrison track on Goodnight Vienna, Starr’s follow-up to Ringo. The Beatles’ former assistant Peter Brown wrote in his biography of the group, “When George was later asked why of all the women in the world he had to choose his buddy’s wife, George shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Incest.’”29
“We just would rather do [marijuana] than hit the booze—which had been a traditional way to do it,” McCartney observed. “There were a lot of musicians at the time who’d come out of ordinary suburbs in the ’60s and ’70s and were getting busted. Bands like the Byrds, the Eagles—the mood amongst them was one of desperados. We were being outlawed for pot.”30 Some of the pot busts in ’73 included Marvin Gaye, the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh, The Last Detail director Hal Ashby, and McCartney, for growing cannabis on his farm in Scotland.
So he wrote a mini rock opera about a gang who make a prison break and escape into the sunset. The line “If I ever get out of here” was actually something Harrison said during one of the interminable business meetings that consumed the Beatles during their breakup. The first two segments of “Band on the Run” were recorded in Lagos, but the last section was captured in London. McCartney could sing “I hope you’re having fun” like Butch Cassidy to the Sundance Kid with jubilation now that the Nigerian odyssey with his wife and Laine was a crazy memory. For cinematic flourish he enlisted T. Rex’s producer Tony Visconti to arrange a sixty-piece orchestra, fresh off Bolan’s Tanx.
The Fab Four had always released albums for the Christmas market, and on December 5 McCartney issued his most Beatle-esque album. “Jet,” named after his black Labrador puppy, was the sound of McCartney recapturing his swagger after two LPs in the wilderness. “Helen Wheels,” the name of McCartney’s Land Rover, blazed with the euphoria he felt to be touring again. (Lennon and Harrison hadn’t wanted to play live anymore.) “Mamunia” was a hotel the couple stayed in in Marrakesh, the word for “safe haven” in Arabic.31 Written in the desert, it reminded listeners to appreciate the rain. “No Words,” a co-write with Laine, offered warped Harrison-esque guitar coupled with Visconti strings. McCartney chopped “Picasso’s Last Words” into pieces and reassembled them to make the song cubist like the master’s paintings; then Visconti added Philly proto-disco strings. “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” built to a frenzied climax featuring McCartney’s good-natured imitation of Lennon circa “Cold Turkey,” a song McCartney initially didn’t want to record with the Beatles because of its heroin references. Only “Bluebird” seemed saccharine.
Like Ringo, the cover recalled the whimsy of Sgt. Pepper, featuring Wings and celebrities including Christopher Lee and James Coburn as convicts escaping. In the US, “Helen Wheels” went to No. 10, followed by “Jet” at seven; then “Band on the Run” hit No. 1 on June 8 in 1974. The album itself made the top spot on April 13 and returned there June 8 for three more weeks. It was the bestselling album of 1974 in the UK and Australia.
Harrison contributed indirectly to another song on the album. “Let Me Roll It” was a line from “I’ll Have You Anytime,” the opening track of All Things Must Pass—though the vocals and primitive guitar echoed a different bandmate’s. “I hadn’t realized I’d sung it like John,” McCartney later conceded.32 The record’s title track, meanwhile, carried more than a whiff of nostalgia for the old days when the four of them shared the eye of the hurricane together.
“Band on the Run is a great album,” Lennon told Rolling Stone.33 It challenged him to pull himself together and record Walls and Bridges, one of his best, and enlist Elton John to help nab the No. 1 single that had so far eluded him with “Whatever Gets You thru the Night.”
The record capped the final year in which each Beatle released classics that fired on all cylinders: “Band on the Run,” “Mind Games,” “Give Me Love,” “Photograph,” “Live and Let Die.” On the radio it was almost as if the group still existed.