a moral to this song

The Beatles through the looking glass onion: recordings, rhetoric, images, interviews, articles, album sessions, and intrigue. Updated infrequently.

[amoralto]

In your recent post from Gloria Steinem’s “Beatle with a future,” do you know the “she” that Derek Taylor is referring to? Or is that supposed to be apple or the Beatles themselves or something? Who Paul didn’t officially say goodbye to? It seems revealing how John would say “nothing’s going to change Paul.” There’s so much there. Oh and one last thing, who was Ringo saying “always worrying about people” ? Idk why but it’s hard for me to tell who was talking to who here.

Re: the “friend from Philly” Derek Taylor refers to, it’s not specified. Somebody better-versed in fan/groupie/Beatlemania-era dalliance stories may be able to connect the dots, but as far as Steinem describes it she was merely one of a few girls who’d met the band while they were in Philadelphia (September 2nd) and had now followed the band to their engagement in New York (September 20th) holding a charity concert for the United Cerebral Palsy Fund at the Paramount, their last gig on the US tour before returning to England to record Beatles For Sale. Here’s all the appearances she and the other girls from Philadelphia make in Steinem’s article:

It was time for The Beatles’ performance. Everyone crowded into the hall, looking expectantly at the room in which The Beatles had been “incommunicado” and “resting,” the same room into which I had seen Ed Sullivan disappear. Paul McCartney came out first, looking soft-faced and vulnerable as a choirboy. George Harrison and Ringo Starr followed animated and laughing. John Lennon moved quickly behind them, but his face was stoic and aloof behind his dark glasses (the face that inspired a London journalist to write, “It has the fear-neither-God-nor-man quality of a Renaissance painter’s aristocrat”). Behind Lennon came three chic young girls, two brunettes and a blonde, in their late teens or early twenties. McCartney jerked his head toward them as he got in the elevator and told some of his staff members to “look after the birds now, won’t ya.”

[...]

The Beatles’ entourage crowded together in the wings, and I talked to the birds. Were they working for The Beatles or interviewing them? No, they were just friends. “We met The Beatles at a press conference in Philadelphia,” said the pretty blonde, “that’s where we’re from.” Two of them wore wool suits with short culotte skirts. They all looked as if they had stepped from the pages of a teenage fashion magazine, and one carried a met them,” corrected the friendly blonde, “and this time we brought along a friend.”

The girls were simply left to sit in an adjoining room apart from Steinem, John, and Ringo, with both Paul and George in their own rooms presumably sleeping: 

The Beatles were leaving for London early the next morning. That, plus the fact that several Manhattan hotels had turned them down, brought them to the Riviera Motor Inn at Kennedy Airport. The rooms were small, barely big enough for a bureau, twin beds and a television set but they had commandeered a whole floor and there were policemen guarding the halls. Our room was jammed with carts of Scotch and Coca-Cola, trays of sandwiches and two photographers, the young ladies from Philadelphia, a tall girl who had followed The Beatles from San Francisco, several journalists who had been on the Beatle tour, a pretty airline stewardess in a very lowcut dress who was acting as hostess, and, occasionally, Neil Aspinall and Derek Taylor. Two of The Beatles were in other rooms, but Ringo Starr and Lennon were in the one adjoining us with the door locked. It was opened only to admit Aspinall, Taylor, one or two other selected young men and liquor.

And at the end of the article: 

I thanked Lennon, who looked worried, and said, “I hope you’re as true as you seem.” I said goodbye to the three birds who still sat in the adjoining room. Two were stretched out on the bed and a third was applying eye shadow. (“Women,” Lennon had once told a reporter, “should be obscene and not heard.”) They smiled their Mona Lisa smiles.

The “charity” concert itself was a point of consternation for the band (think Embassy-level feelings of exploitation, with the audience made up entirely of high society folk who could afford the exorbitant ticket prices and John saying they were treated “like animals”), and yet another thing in a cumulation of things they’d incurred over the past several months that had the band feeling exhausted and frustrated and even disillusioned with the unrelenting scrutiny and tabloid headlines and general mania surrounding them. Which may be why there’s a sense of distrust and weariness from John and Ringo that comes through in the article. 

Add to that Derek Taylor ultimately resigning from his position as Brian Epstein’s assistant (a position he’d only held for about a year) from the stress and that triggering argument with Brian he’s confiding with Neil Aspinall and John about (which Brian would try to backtrack on, asking him to stay, to no avail), and just the random and curious fact that Bob Dylan and Albert Grossman were there in the room as well (which Steinem only gives a passing mention to; sleepless!John and Bob would later have breakfast together), it would seem Gloria Steinem had (albeit entirely unwittingly) caught the Beatles at a very intriguing point in time. 

(I could go on more about Derek Taylor and how his emotional sensitivity/ego and issues with Brian Epstein (his management, his overprotectiveness of the boys leading to possible misattribution of blame, etc.) seems to prefigure his later issues with Paul and later serve as a bonding agent for him and John in mid-late-1968 (although John would still eventually cry betrayal, in typical gang leader fashion, when John interpreted Derek wanting to keep the Beatles together as “siding” with Paul against John), but I have another earlier ask I have to yet to reply to where that would be more pertinent for me to discuss it.)

Re: “nothing’s going to change Paul”, there’s definitely a lot to deconstruct and pick apart there, even if to the uneducated observer (Steinem) it comes across as just another “desultory” aside to pacify Derek, just as he tries to pacify Derek with the Brian issue (“He’s all right, but he doesn’t understand people having a few laughs, not even me laughs with me wife.”). Insert essay here. 

Re: Ringo, I read it as him making a rueful comment on the situation in general, and therefore referring to both Derek and John. I could be wrong, though! The mileage varies. 

I checked through @amoralto to see if I had posted/transcribed any interviews and such from around this time, and it turns out I have! Larry Kane’s with John and Ringo from Philadelphia (as it happens), with Ringo’s matter-of-factness with the tabloid trap they’re in (“I’ll have it on tape, I’ve been called a queer”) and John and Ringo talking about being the band being alone together (“One gets reliant on the others”). 

Also, I’d be willing to post the entire Steinem article if anybody’s interested! Like I said, it’s an intriguing glimpse into the trauma of living through Beatlemania, something which still gets underplayed in the Beatles historiography - and also something I wish Ron Howard’s film could have focused on, instead of just shallow anecdotes by famous fans who went to see them in concert - and a worthwhile read, even if Steinem sometimes comes across as naive and even judgmental. She also unfortunately skews towards (if not wholly believes in) the popular, nigh-deleterious stereotypes of the Beatles (i.e. John as the Most Talented and Most Intelligent and Most Versatile - indeed, she sought out the Beatles specifically to talk to John in the first place) typical of many features/articles from the time (and which still unfortunately continues to this day). 

[amoralto]

The phone rang again. The Princess, now at her home phone and reduced to saying that she was a friend of The Animals, hoped very much she could speak with The Beatles and invite them to an island hotel. “No,” said Lennon, “hang up.” “Don’t answer the phone,” counselled the bearded journalist. “You can’t answer all the calls around here, you’d go crazy.” Wouldn’t Lennon answer any interview questions at all? “I don’t think so,” he said and addressed the journalist. “You ought to get out of your hotel room, see a little more of our country, beautiful monuments and all that. See the Statue of Liberace.” It was a good imitation of an interview, and we all laughed. “Statue of Liberace is good,” said Bob Freeman. “Is that the first time you’ve used that?” At that point, Lennon was staring into his drink. Ringo observed meditatively that he didn’t see why policemen had to stand right in front of the door, and that in one hotel, the police had stolen souvenirs from their rooms. More silence. It was 5 A.M. I told Lennon that I understood how tired he must be of answering questions, and began to say goodbye. He looked surprised. [Neil] Aspinall came back, explaining comfortingly to [Derek] Taylor that Brian Epstein had once slapped him, but that was just one of the manager’s moods that had to be understood... “Listen,” said Freeman kindly, nodding towards me, “she’s all right. She’s a friend of friends.” The effect on Lennon was as magical as an OK from the Mafia. He smiled for the first time, and told me not to leave. “But she’s the press,” Ringo muttered skeptically. “You see,” said Taylor reasonably, “they’ve been exploited so much that it’s hard for them to trust anyone.”

Gloria Steinem for Cosmopolitan: Beatle with a future. (December, 1964)

[amoralto]

[Derek] Taylor came back from a conference with [Neil] Aspinall about whether or not he should leave his post as publicity chief and go back to being a newspaperman (“The Beatles are fine,” said Taylor, “but their life is unbearable”) and asked Lennon if there wasn’t something he could do about Paul who had barricaded his door and gone to bed without saying goodbye to his friend from Philly. “She’s rather upset,” Taylor explained. “After all, Paul did make a big thing of her and now he won’t even say goodbye.” “Look,” Lennon said patiently, “Paul is Paul and nothing’s going to change him.” Ringo, in a purple silk shirt with white polka dots, shifted his weight mournfully. “Always worrying about people,” he said.

Gloria Steinem for Cosmopolitan: Beatle with a future. (December, 1964)

[amoralto]

But the one that really got me was Rubber Soul, which came out at the end of 1965. Rubber Soul is probably the greatest record ever. Maybe the Phil Spector Christmas record is right up there with it, and it’s hard to say that the Who’s Tommy isn’t one of the best, too. But Rubber Soul came out in December of 1965 and sent me right to the piano bench. It’s a whole album of Beatles folk songs, a whole album where everything flows together and everything works. I remember being blown away by “You Won’t See Me” and “I’m Looking Through You” and “Girl.” It wasn’t just the lyrics and the melodies but the production and their harmonies. They had such unique harmonies, you know? In “You Won’t See Me,” Paul sings low and George and John sing high. There’s an organ drone in there, a note that’s held down for the last third of the song or so. Those were touches they were trying, almost art music. What was so great about the Beatles was you could hear their ideas so clearly in their music. They didn’t pose like some other bands, and they didn’t try to stuff too much meaning in their songs. They might be singing a song about loneliness or a song about anger or a song about feeling down. They were great poets about simple things, but that also made it easier to hear the song. And they never did anything clumsy. It was like perfect pitch but for entire songs. Everything landed on its feet.

Brian Wilson, I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir. (2016)

[amoralto]

John Lennon waits for art dealer Robert Fraser in Fraser’s Gallery office, London, colourised. (End-1967) (Note: WIP, because this is kind of difficult for me to recreate at the moment. On the wall: Ed Ruscha’s Angry Because It’s Plaster, Not Milk and Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band’s Safe As Milk seal.)

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Frivolous self-indulgent post is frivolous and self-indulgent! I swear I’ve been sourcing proper Beatles things to post on @amoralto​ in the meantime as well, but Animal Crossing’s been whiling me through my weary bed-in phases. I made a ratty attempt to recreate John’s Sgt Pepper launch press party look; I tried my best (read: spent too long feeling incompetent and annoyed with myself before giving up) with the custom afghan coat, but I haven’t come across any green oxford brogues yet so this John-avatar will just have to settle with some strappy heels for the time being. If things go a bit better with sourcing/customing other items/clothes I may even, horror, make Animal Crossing!Beatles a weekly thing. (What is this blog turning into.)

(Why is John wearing his 1967!afghan coat with his 1968!hair sans-moustache? I know, I know, indulge me. Insert nitpicking nitwit rant here about the glasses being too big and more Harry Potter than NHS and how the glasses + the short messy hairstyle which is the closest available analogue to John’s mid-1967!hair really only makes him look like Harry and that’s why I can’t use it. But I digress.)

Anyway, the least this post is worth is as an admin check-in to let everybody know that I’m still doing relatively okay in the circumstances, and that I hope everybody else is managing to get by as well. I’ll be back to posting Proper Things soon.

Edit (Self-Indulgent): Olaf seems to be noticing end-1967!John’s emotional turmoil and misgivings, as well: 

[amoralto]

— Alan Walsh for Melody Maker: Has Apple gone rotten? (December 7th, 1968)

[amoralto]

Your blog is truly a work of art. I know that made sound cliched, but it is an incredible historical resource whose value can’t be underestimated. You’ve provided more factual, unbiased information about the Beatles than most books out there, and all for free. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Thank you, anon, and I think I really needed to hear this, in recent days more than usual. I can never sit entirely comfortably with my presence here, and I often worry about how much my more subjective thoughts/“meta” interfere with, distract from or otherwise cloud over the content for the people who browse/follow this blog, and if trying to engage more actively within the fan-community as an actual Person is really all that helpful to the blog overall, but in any case, I’m genuinely heartened by your words, which are not just kind but downright lofty in a way I can’t allow myself to feel I entirely deserve, but thank you so much for saying them, and for taking the time to say so to me. x

[amoralto]

The Beatles pose for the camera in the ABC Cinema, Huddersfield. (November 29th, 1963)

[amoralto]

I met Paul McCartney later in the ’60s, in a studio. I was almost always in a studio back then. He came by when we were at Columbia Square working on vocal overdubs, and we had a little chat about music. Everyone knows now that “God Only Knows” was Paul’s favorite song—and not only his favorite Beach Boys song, but one of his favorite songs period. It’s the kind of thing people write in liner notes and say on talk shows. When people read it, they kind of look at that sentence and keep going. But think about how much it mattered to me when I first heard it there on Sunset Boulevard. I was the person who wrote “God Only Knows,” and here was another person—the person who wrote “Yesterday” and “And I Love Her” and so many other songs—saying it was his favorite. It really blew my mind. He wasn’t the only Beatle who felt that way. John Lennon called me after Pet Sounds—phoned me up, I think the British say—to tell me how much he loved the record. But Paul and I stayed in touch. Another time not too long after that he came to my house and told me about the new music he was working on. “There’s one song I want you to hear,” he said. “I think it’s a nice melody.” He put the tape on and it was “She’s Leaving Home.” My wife, Marilyn, was there, too, and she just started crying. Listening to Paul play a new song let me see my own songs more clearly. It was hard for me to think about the effect that my music had on other people, but it was easy to see when it was another songwriter.

Brian Wilson, I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir. (2016)

[amoralto]

The Beatles with Capitol Records US President Stanley Gortikov at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, London. (August 10th, 1968)

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At the conclusion of the meetings at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, the Apple contracts were signed by Gortikov and the four Beatles right there on a small table in the suite. Then the Beatles presented us with hand-lathed 45 rpm copies of the first four records. They had packaged them in individual black plastic boxes embossed with our names—Stanley Gortikov, Larry Delaney, and Ken Mansfield—a green Apple, “Our First Four,” and 3 Savile Row on the front. One thing that made the package even more special was that the labels on the records were handwritten by the Beatles themselves. For Capitol’s part, Gortikov had arranged to present them with a special crystal Apple. It didn’t make it to the meetings, so he symbolically presented them with a real apple instead and a crystal rain check in return. This real apple had been placed in the center of the table with the documents. After the contracts were signed, Paul picked up the apple, walked away from the others, and ate it.

— Ken Mansfield, The Roof: The Beatles’ Final Concert. (2018)

[amoralto]

Top: The Beatles with Capitol Records US president Stanley Gortikov to sign contracts for Apple Records at Royal Lancaster Hotel, London. Below: Stanley Gortikov’s itinerary for the day, (probably) written by Apple secretary Barbara O’Donnell. (August 10th, 1968)

[amoralto]

Visit Original Link

June 13th, 2001 (Greek Theatre, Los Angeles): While Brian Wilson is performing ‘God Only Knows’ on stage, he (and the audience) notices Paul McCartney has come by to see him.

More than thirty years later, I was opening for Paul Simon, which I didn’t like. It was okay to share a bill with him, but we were playing to older crowds, and that meant the first act, which was me, played when the sun was still up and the crowd was still filing in. It was hard to have a good relationship with the people in the audience under those conditions. At the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, I started the show when it was less than half full. [...]

We went through some more hits: “California Girls,” “I Get Around,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” After “Add Some Music to Your Day,” we started in on “God Only Knows.” Right at that moment, the side door opened and Paul McCartney walked in. Everyone saw him. The theater erupted with applause and everyone stood up cheering for him. I saw Carnie in the audience put her hand to her mouth in shock. It was an “oh my God” moment. I waved from the piano. But waving wasn’t enough. We were going into the final verse and I changed the lyrics on the fly to “God only knows what I’d be without Paul.”

After the set Pablo came backstage. That’s what I call Paul sometimes, Pablo. I was happy to see him. He said that when he was coming up to the Greek in the limo, he rolled down the window so he could hear the music. “I wanted to hear those Brian sounds,” he said. He had a question about the intro to “You Still Believe in Me.” There was a keyboard in the dressing room, so I just played it for him. We did harmonies. It was incredible, Paul McCartney and I harmonizing on the intro to “You Still Believe in Me.” Can you believe that?

— Brian Wilson, I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir. (2016)

[amoralto]

September 19th, 2019: On BBC Newsnight, Emily Maitlis asks Paul (with Stella and Mary) about hearing his music being made into muzak. 

MAITLIS: But when you step into a lift now in a hotel, and you hear the sort of muzak lift version of ‘Yesterday’, does it make your blood run cold? Or do you love it?

PAUL: No I love it, I love it. I mean you know, it’s a song I wrote, so the fact that someone can be bothered to record it, I don’t care how bad it is. I don’t! I just think, “Wow.”

MAITLIS: Do you sing along?

PAUL: [laughs; mock-indignant] No. The worst thing for John was, that he didn’t write ‘Yesterday’, I wrote ‘Yesterday’, and he used to get really quite miffed, because he’d be in New York and he’d go into a restaurant, and the pianist would go du-du-du... [sings tune of ‘Yesterday’] And he’d go, “Oh... [grumbling] It’s Paul’s.”

[amoralto]

What do you think about the upcoming new Let It Be movie?

My thoughtful (if disorganised and near-hysterical) answer: I remain cautiously ambivalent. In a way I feel the same I’ve felt about the recent Super Deluxe Edition releases, where I am “happied” by whatever I can get, very much so, but I’m also exasperated in a pathetically hand-wringing fannish way that the estate is still trickling out outtakes in unbearably curated fashion as accessories to new mixes, when all I’ve ever really wanted is for them to release comprehensive collections of their session recordings - every take, every flub, every silly piece of silly studio chatter, everything. (Roll it out album by album, sell every volume in a fancy multi-disc box set for a small fortune, I don’t care, I’m willing to pay for it, and I expect many others would be too.) But alas! They haven’t, and they don’t look like they will in the near future, and so I can’t bring myself to hope for much with the Let It Be film either.

And especially not with Let It Be, by virtue of its medium, as a manipulated assemblage of curated footage, edited and cut and spliced together, in leading and misleading and distorted ways. (As all documentaries arguably are.) Even with the footage run through a supposedly more gracious filter, it will still be just that - filtered, reassembled, recut, and still an (in)effectively incomplete picture, inevitably subject to the confirmation biases and various lazy/shallow/poisonous interpretations rife in mainstream music journalism.

Which just has me wringing my hands with even more, not only because these sessions have been a bit of a preoccupation of mine for a while so I’m even more of an invested headcase than usual, but because the Get Back/Let It Be sessions arguably deserves the most reexamination in its greater perspective, and certainly the most correction and care. And it’s probably not going to get it, or at least not nearly enough. And of course I understand it has to be this way - the general public won’t be interested in going through 55~ hours of video recordings and 140~ hours of audio recordings (which means there are still at least 40-50 more hours of unreleased tapes than what has been leaked and circulated on bootleg for decades), and the logistics of mass-releasing such an enormous amount of material is laughable. But as I said, I am a headcase about this, and where the general public and even the general fans may take this new recut version of the film on some measure of faith, I probably won’t be able to bring myself to. 

Also, every time I can stomach to take a tentative browse of mainstream music journalism or certain major music discussion forums and the narrow, cynical, simplistic narratives that are still being perpetuated about the Beatles in general and these sessions in particular, I find myself sadly resigned to the reality that many people’s minds may never be expanded or changed, no matter how the film is cut, or how the sessions are framed. If there’s “too much” inclusion of jokes and jollity and the fun the band really did have, it’ll trigger complaints of “whitewashing”, all the blame of which will almost certainly be placed upon “shrew-like control freak historical revisionist” Paul. If there’s any inclusion at all of previously-unseen tension or argumentative exchanges (which are really just ultimately sad attempts to relate and communicate emotionally with each other), it’ll only reinforce the absolutist perceptions held by some people of the sessions being wholly disastrous and wholly awful with no “real” joy and jollity anywhere, not to mention their perceptions of, well, “shrew-like control freak historical revisionist” Paul.

Basically, the very reframing, the very act of recutting of the film in and of itself, will be (and already is) seen by many people as a rewriting of history. Which is sad and silly, because in this case the history should be rewritten; it’s just that however well it’s written, it’s still at the mercy of being read, and how, and by who.

(Insert tangential essay/foaming rant here about how/why people insist on interpreting the Beatles and their dynamics through the shlocky paradigm of the Stereotypical Rock Band when they don’t remotely fit the archetypes, and hey, have you ever considered that humans and also human relationships are tangled and complex? And that humans are capable of resenting and loving each other at the same time? And that maybe a lot of the things John “I Said That But I Was Lying” Lennon has said should never be taken literally or at face value or as nothing but the timeless truth? Etc.)

All that being said, I will, as noted at the start, take whatever I do get. Remastered HD footage is just a nice thing to have, for one, and I’d be overjoyed to see video footage of some of the session audio I’ve clipped and transcribed in the past, if any of it even makes it into the final film. (Anything from January 13th especially and hell, the 24th and 25th too, but now I really am hoping for too much at this point. Now that I think of it, I should probably motivate myself to clip and transcribe more interesting bits and pieces from the sessions, in the lead up to the release of the film.)

My glib unserious (haha, unless...?) answer: Damn it, Peter Jackson, you took my job. 😭

[amoralto]

Hi, i just wanted to say thank you for keeping this blog active for so long! I don't actively follow the beatles or beatle-adjacent people anymore, but still check your blog when i see it on my dash bc you post so many interesting things :) have a lovely day hehe

Oh, thank you so much! I can’t with good conscience call this an “active” blog in the healthiest sense of the word, currently; I can only say that I do try to make up for my lapses and absences when I can, as I am at this point in time trying to do with a bit more time on my hands. The blog will remain up as long as I’m able, and it warms me that you look forward to the posts even when you’re not actively following Tumblr fan community anymore. (I can barely follow it myself, sadly.) x

[amoralto]

In fact, you didn’t even need to go out to have a berserk night in John’s company. One evening in New York, we were holed up in my suite at the Sherry-Netherland hotel, determinedly making our way through a pile of coke, when someone knocked at the door. My first thought was that it was the police: if you’ve taken a lot of cocaine and someone unexpectedly knocks at the door, your immediate thought is always that it’s the police. John gestured at me to see who it was. I looked through the spyhole. My reaction was a peculiar combination of relief and incredulity. ‘John,’ I whispered. ‘It’s Andy Warhol.’ John shook his head frantically and drew his finger across his throat. ‘No fucking way. Don’t answer it,’ he hissed. ‘What?’ I whispered back. ‘What do you mean don’t answer it? It’s Andy Warhol.’ There was more knocking. John rolled his eyes. ‘Has he got that fucking camera with him?’ he asked. I looked again through the spyhole and nodded. Andy took his Polaroid camera everywhere. ‘Right,’ said John. ‘And do you want him coming in here taking photos when you’ve got icicles of coke hanging out of your nose?’ I had to concede that I did not. ‘Then don’t fucking answer it,’ whispered John, and we crept back to doing whatever we were doing, trying to ignore the continued knocking of the world’s most famous pop artist. But I genuinely never encountered that nasty, intimidating, destructive aspect of John that people talk about, the biting, acerbic wit. I’m not trying to paint some saintly posthumous portrait at all; I obviously knew that side of him existed, I just never saw it first-hand. All I ever saw from him was kindness and gentleness and fun, so much so that I took my mum and Derf to meet him. We went out to dinner, and when John went to the toilet, Derf thought it would be a great joke to take his false teeth out and put them in John’s drink: there was something infectious about John’s sense of humour that made people do things like that. Jesus, he was so funny. Whenever I was with him – or even better, him and Ringo – I just laughed and laughed and laughed.

Elton John, Me. (2019) (Note: This is a direct continuation of this quote.)

[amoralto]

I first met John Lennon through Tony King, who had moved to LA to become Apple Records’ general manager in the US. In fact, the first time I met John Lennon, he was dancing with Tony King. Nothing unusual in that, other than the fact that they weren’t in a nightclub, there was no music playing and Tony was in full drag as Queen Elizabeth II. They were at Capitol Records in Hollywood, where Tony’s new office was, shooting a TV advert for John’s forthcoming album Mind Games, and, for reasons best known to John, this was the big concept. I took to him straight away. It wasn’t just that he was a Beatle and therefore one of my idols. He was a Beatle who thought it was a good idea to promote his new album by dancing around with a man dragged up as the Queen, for fuck’s sake. I thought: We’re going to get on like a house on fire. And I was right. As soon as we started talking, it felt like I’d known him my entire life. We began spending a lot of time together, whenever I was in America. He’d separated from Yoko and was living in Los Angeles with May Pang. I know that period in his life is supposed to have been really troubled and unpleasant and dark, but I’ve got to be honest, I never saw that in him at all. I heard stories occasionally – about some sessions he’d done with Phil Spector that went completely out of control, about him going crazy one night and smashing up the record producer Lou Adler’s house. I could see a darkness in some of the people he was hanging out with: Harry Nilsson was a sweet guy, an incredibly talented singer and songwriter, but one drink too many and he’d turn into someone else, someone you really had to watch yourself around. And John and I certainly took a lot of drugs together and had some berserk nights out, as poor old Dr John would tell you. We went to see him at the Troubadour and he invited John onstage to jam. John was so pissed he ended up playing the organ with his elbows. It somehow fell to me to get him offstage.

Elton John, Me. (2019) (Note: You can watch the Mind Games commercial of John and Tony King in drag dancing here. You can read the continuation of this quote here.)