teen magazines absolutely living their best lives here, making up all the things I would make up if I was paid to make things up
especially I love whatever's going on with George: Suicide pact! Deep heartache! Furious! Deadly passion! Saddest Moments! oh they were so confused by him being all quiet and moody
The second 'READA BEATLA WEEK' feature in TV Times, 15 November 1963, in which Paul George and Ringo get to remorselessly talk shit about John.
With Britain in the throes of Beatlemania, the four fabulous young men from Merseyside flew to Sweden for a hectic series of appearances. Brian Finch went along with his tape recorder to find out just what Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr think about John Lennon.
Full text under cut...
PAUL: Lots of people think John Lennon is the oldest Beatle of them all. It isn’t true.
GEORGE: He’s just the ugliest.
PAUL: And he wears his hair longer than we do.
This session starts at London Airport, where the Beatles are snatching a quick breakfast before leaving for what they imagine will be the comparative anonymity of Stockholm.
GEORGE: I went to the same school as he did - Dovedale Road Primary School, in Liverpool. I didn’t know him then, of course.
PAUL: He was very musical, even in those days. His mother played a banjo and she encouraged his interest in it.
GEORGE: She used to beat him on the head with the banjo. One night his head got stuck in the strings and he’s been deeply attached to the instrument ever since.
PAUL: After leaving Dovedale Road, he went to Quarrybank Grammar School.
GEORGE: One of the first things he did was to found a newspaper called The Daily Howl.
RINGO: It was a real scream.
GEORGE: The first edition went like a bomb.
PAUL: He sold all five copies.
We are on the plane now. High over the North Sea the boys shoot miles of cine-film which should certainly never come out, considering the lighting conditions. John Lennon, unmoved by the gale of wise-cracks, tucks into cold chicken salad.
PAUL: The most important day in John Lennon’s life, of course, was June 15, 1955.
RINGO: What happened that day?
PAUL: He met me. He was playing with a group called The Quarrymen. I went to one of their concerts and took an instant dislike to him. But I didn’t think I could lick him, so I joined him.
GEORGE: I met the old man a couple of years later. I was playing my guitar on the top deck of the bus.
RINGO: I never met him at all. Why doesn’t somebody introduce us?
The sun is shining brilliantly over limitless acres of Christmas trees as the plane swoops down on to Stockholm airport. The boys look abashed when they are presented with a traditional Swedish greeting of a bunch of flowers. But they are quickly back on home ground again - copying with an ecstatic group of Swedish teenagers, who swamp them as they go through the barrier.
GEORGE: Now that we’ve all got to know John Lennon properly we all like him. His teachers didn’t share our enthusiasm though - he got suspended from Quarrybank.
PAUL: For eating chocolate in prayers.
GEORGE: They wouldn’t even have minded that particularly.
PAUL: But it was somebody else’s chocolate.
RINGO: The headmaster’s.
PAUL: And finally, of course, he went to the Liverpool College of Art.
RINGO: I don’t remember that bit.
PAUL: No, he didn’t stay long.
RINGO: Why not?
PAUL: Art didn’t like him.
The explosion of mirth that this provokes lasts several miles along the way to Stockholm as we speed along the highway with a carload of screaming teenagers buzzing us delightedly in another car. It’s an appropriate moment to bring in John Lennon to talk about himself.
“Having this lot make cracks about me doesn’t worry me at all. I knew they were twisted when I met them. And when you spend 25 hours of every day with them, as I do, you get used to their distorted sense of humour. It isn’t Beatles that bother me. It’s people who think I’m older than Ringo - and those mad scrambles to get in and out of theatres alive. It’s bad enough for the others, but it’s murder for me. I’m supposed to wear glasses, you see. Without them I’m blind as a bat. I’ve tried putting them on for our run-ins. But I hate them - and, invariably, they get knocked off, anyway. So what I do these days is grab hold of one of the other Beatles and let him guide me in.”
“I don’t lose any sleep about it, of course, I don’t lose any sleep about anything!"
"It’s a funny thing, suddenly hitting the big-time like we have. You begin to feel like a blob of something on a slide, with half a million microscopes focussed on you trying to analyse you and find out what makes you tick."
"What makes me tick?"
"I don’t really know. I know that when I was at Art School in Liverpool I didn’t want to become a commercial artist, as everybody thought I should. I wanted more from life."
"Money seemed a good idea at the time. A rich and aging millionairess was high on my agenda, I remember."
"Now, I’m getting good money, but I’m not aware of the fact. I mean, I don’t see any of it. I get my pocket money and the rest is being banked for me."
"Tax depresses me occasionally. How much do you have to earn before you begin to make real money? They just keep taking it away."
"And people who keep making suggestions that there is trouble between my wife, Cynthia, and I, bother me. I am a happily married man. The only reason I don’t emphasise the fact that I am married is because I don’t believe my home life should constantly be dragged into the spotlight."
George gets up to go but [Derek] Taylor thrusts a telephone receiver into his hand and says: "They want to know what you look for in a girl."
"Hello," says George. "This is John Lennon. I look for spiritual qualities more than...physical. Though I like girls who don't wear bras. Have you got any shares in Northern Songs? Eyes are the windows to the soul, as someone once said. Sorry to have taken up your time."
From 'Inside the Crazy World of Apple' in the TV Times, 5 June 1969.
