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by
Marshall Terrill
Ken Mansfield has worked with some of the biggest giants in the rock 'n' roll and country music industries. As the former U.S. Manager of Apple Records, he was invited by his bosses, The Beatles, to run their record label. He was a loyal employee and companion to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr both during the band years and well after their 1970 breakup. As a record label executive and Grammy Award-winning producer, he also worked on the marketing, promotion and production of dozens of albums by top-selling artists, such as the Beach Boys, Glen Campbell, and The Band, and was a major player in the 1970s as producer of the groundbreaking Outlaw movement in country music, whose impact is still felt in the genre to this very day.
Mansfield recounts his memories of The Beatles as a true member of the group's inner sanctum in a recent interview with Daytrippin'. Question: Your first book, The Beatles, The Bible and Bodega Bay was released in 2000 and became a best-seller. Seven years later, you have written The White Book. What's the difference between the two? Ken Mansfield: So many people asked me to expand on the Beatle stories from BB&BB -- they wanted more stories about my time with the Beatles and also asked me to include stories about my association with other artists of their era such as Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, David Cassidy etc. Once I got into these reflections the book, much like The White Album, began taking on a life of its own, becoming a much more complicated project than originally intended. I was a songwriter during most of my 30 years in the music industry and I found there was a rhythm to the story as it developed and like a song it required a definite literary melodic feel - intro, verse, chorus and fade ending. Music industry historian Brent Stoker assumed the task of creative editor and we laid things out chronologically as best we could in order to make it a book not only about my times with the Beatles but to also give an inside look at the artists of their era and the industry we were involved in. It became a broader stroke about a unique time in history - the subtitle describes it well: The Beatles The Bands and The Biz: An Inside Look at an Era. Q: Your style of writing and storytelling is quite different in that you bounce back and forth between time frames but the reader is able to follow you. What was your literary influence and why did you choose to write in this style? KM: The format for BB&BB was influenced by an approach Kurt Vonnegut used in his book Slaughterhouse Five. I loved the way he jumped from one chapter to the next with no transition or explanation, giving the reader a rather delightful literary whiplash. He would be rushing his wife to the hospital to have a baby and without completing that story he would begin the next chapter with a flashback where he is in a foxhole during World War II and from there without warning he would be on a space platform with a hot babe. It freed me to think and write non-chronologically. So in BB&BB this led me to bounce back and forth between conversations with God on the beach to being on the roof with the Beatles for their last concert, and like Vonnegut there would be no transitional language -- I would go straight from the roof to the beach ignoring time and geography in my story telling. In contrast I took an entirely different approach to The White Book. Q: BB &BB, the Beatles Anthology and now The White Book are the only three books ever to be authorized by the Beatles. Why do you think that is? KM: Let me make a quick clarification, BB&BB in its entirety was approved by the Beatles and Apple. George was alive during the first approval process and for The White Book, Olivia approved George's portions as did Yoko for John. In answer to your question --I felt so privileged to have been invited into their personal and business world that once I wrote the first book I felt a moral obligation to make sure that I didn't betray their trust and to grant them the courtesy of not writing things about them that were either untrue or inaccurate as has been the case with most of the books written before about them. A handful of us who were allowed inside the Beatles world had made a pact that in later years we would not write about our experiences with them -- not because the Beatles asked us not to but because we had such respect for them. Over dinner one night in the early '90s Ringo asked me when I was going to write my book and I told him about my decision not to. The outcome of our conversation that night was that he basically released me to go ahead if I wanted because he trusted me to not go "dark" on him and his mates. It was several years before I did write about my time with them and I couldn't believe how many authors of other Beatles tomes called me asking how I had gotten permission to use Apple pics and how I managed to get the Beatles approvals. They said not only were they unable to get permissions but that they couldn't even get Neil Aspinall or anyone to take their calls or give them consideration. Q: Let's start at the beginning with your association with The Beatles. When did you meet them and how did that grow into becoming the U.S. Manager of Apple Records? KM: Mainly I was in the right place at the right time. I was in charge of promotion and artist relations for the western states at Capitol Records when they came to California on their 1965 tour so it was my official job to work with them -- press conferences, etc. I was in my twenties and the resident hip young guy on the label and we simply hit it off. Because of their exaggerated fame, their relationships with record company executives was at the highest levels, you know --a "Lord" of EMI, a "Chairman of the Board" of Capitol Industries, all older "suits". We worked together one day and the next day they had the day off and invited me up to their house to hang out. I was the tan California guy and we were equally fascinated with each other's cultures. I worked with them the following year when they came to America and when they decided to set up Apple, I was their man in America so they sent for me to set up the US launch and to run the label in the world's most important market. Q: Give a brief thumbnail sketch of each Beatle as you perceived him. KM:
Paul was the energetic one, the one that seemed like the
popular kid in high school. He was the one whom you
would cruise main street with your arms hanging over the car
door edge, pressing tight to make your muscles look
bigger. He would be the guy who would wave at the
girls and slow down so they could jump in the back. I
never felt a strong personal agenda coming from Paul, and by
that I mean that it didn't feel like you had to figure out
who he was or where he was coming from. He was always
presenting the next project or place to go. It was the
sheer impetus of purpose that put things in motion so what
you saw was an idea and a goal, and none of it needed
complicated examination. "Here's what we are about to do
and that was exactly what we were about to do." Q: I've always seen Apple as a multi-media company that was 30 years ahead of its time. Great concept, but somewhere the execution went awry. What, in your opinion, went wrong? KM: I understood Apple to be based on a "conglomerate" approach. There were five divisions I believe. To my mind Ron Kass (Apple's chief executive) was the consummate class executive and knew how to think corporate. I remember sitting in meetings with him when he would be negotiating major deals for the Beatles and Apple and I felt like a child watching a master. As I have said before the two men I respected the most and learned the most from in the entertainment business were he and Stanley Gortikov who was president of Capitol during my time there. The working structure felt more like Apple was a record company with four subsidiaries because the record division is where the energy and emphasis seemed to be. You are right that the concept was very innovative but there was one big problem (among many others) and that was within the multi media concept there were multi bosses – four to be exact. Each one had a position of legitimate and complete authority and the four horses would not always pull the Apple cart in the same direction. It was very hard for the day-to-day underlings at the label to stay focused. Another problem was in the altruistic approach to the world’s musical youth and the fact that Apple was to have an open door policy for aspiring artists. It became very hard separating the legitimate artists from the loonies due to the masses that descended on 3 Savile almost around the clock. As I mentioned before there were five divisions so that means four (Beatles) times five (divisions) equals twenty possible complications -- right? Q: I imagine there was great pressure on The Beatles to make a spectacular debut regarding the launch of Apple. Did you feel the pressure and did you know you had the goods with "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" and later, with The White Album? KM: At the time of the Apple launch we felt that this was probably one of the single most critical decisions we would be making – the Beatles first single on the new label. "Hey Jude" was an obvious masterpiece but there was great concern, especially from McCartney that it could be rejected because of its length. Those were the days (!) of tight play lists and extreme competition between the top 40 (rock) stations - the way to gain listeners was to play the most hits in an hour. This created the two-and-a-half minute standard for single record lengths. The stations would then take it one step further and in many cases would actually speed the records up very slightly in order to squeeze one more record in during the hour and then the station could make the claim that their station was the one to listen to because they played the most hits. We sat on the floor of the Apple building for what seemed like hours listening to "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" over and over again trying to decide which one should be the "A" side. It felt like Paul was the head of A&R in this matter so I suggested that the Beatles trust me with an advanced copy of the record and I would fly back to the US from London and hopscotch my way across the country back to LA, stopping off along the way at major radio stations where I would get the opinions of major music directors across the nation. It was unanimous that "Hey Jude" was the hit no matter what its length. I called Paul when I got back to LA to let him know what I had found out and the rest is history. Q: Brian Epstein, The Beatles' manager, died as Apple was being set up. If Brian had lived, what role do you think he would have taken at Apple, if any? KM: I have no idea. This is an area that I have very little insight into because I only worked with Brian once and that was briefly during the 1965 tour. If I had to guess I believe he would have had less influence over their careers but at the same time I felt they were fiercely loyal to him and he would definitely have retained his title as manager. Hard to project how that would have played out in the long run. Q: You describe Apple in The White Book as a place teeming with excitement on a daily basis. What made it such a great place to work? KM: Gee -- how about there was never a dull moment and you never knew what the next moment was going to bring. The building vibrated and the level of vibration depending on how many Beatles were in there at one time and the nature of the world’s most famous and infamous people that were haunting the halls on any particular day. Hells Angels, Hare Krishnas, famous movie stars -- you name it -- you never knew. There was also this incredible buzz coming up out of the basement recording studio with little records like "Let It Be" being made. Q: You were also in charge of Zapple Records, the experimental arm of the record division. What was the expectation of this susidiary? KM: This was John's baby and I felt honored to be included in his dream. If I had to guess, I don't think he cared if the projects he was bringing on board this label sold 10 copies or 10 million. He mainly wanted them to be made because he saw great intellectual and literary value in them and felt they needed to be immortalized via recordings. I mean a Richard Brautigan recital is not actually a Shea Stadium concert event. Q: One recording that didn't get distributed by Zapple was John & Yoko's Two Virgins. Can you please tell the story of how he approached you for this project? KM: I cover this in detail in The White Book - the incident that took place concerning me and that album cover was one of my most confusing and scary moments in the music business. The four Beatles, myself, Stan Gortikov, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall and Larry Delaney (Capitol's head of press and relations) were in all day meetings in a hotel suite on Hyde Park in London. We took a small break and Mal had taken a room next to our suite and suggested I join him and Neil there. I hadn't done much in the way of drugs in those days and Mal handed me a filtered English cigarette that had the tobacco dumped out and then mixed with some hash and returned to the cigarette. I took a couple of hits because I wanted them to think I was cool and we kicked back for a while which made me late in returning to our meeting. I went back to the suite and sat down on the couch with John and Yoko. The minute I sat down I realized how stoned I was and I became very paranoid because across the room was the president of the company I worked for staring at me. Here's where things got real squirrelly -- John leaned over, pulled a bunch of pictures out of a manila envelope and began slowly laying them on my lap one by one. They were nude pictures of he and Yoko. I thought he was suggesting something that I was very unprepared to consider and my head started spinning and I started sweating. After what seemed an eternity I looked up and saw Paul laughing at me. While I was out of the room John had presented his cover idea for the Two Virgins album to everyone, in my absence, and when I returned to the meeting he was simply bringing me up to speed. He neglected to give me the reason for the pictures though! Paul realized what was happening and decided to let me squirm for a while. When he felt I was nearing panic stage he kindly explained what the pictures were about.
KM: The John Lennon/Two Virgins incident was my most uncomfortable event in my recording industry career and the day on the roof watching the Beatles play together in concert for the last time is by far my most exciting -- I like it that both had to do with the Fab Four. The feeling the few of us up there that cold January day experienced was something magical. We all knew something special was going down but it couldn’t be defined at that time. I saw the Beatles from a few feet away being the band they started out to be -- ironic that it was also the beginning of the end. My description of that day on the roof is my favorite chapter in the book. Q: There's a funny story in the book about your dealings with businessman Allen Klein and how the pudgy and out of shape accountant gave you all you could handle on the tennis court. What was that all about? KM: To make a long story in the book short, it had to do with Klein trying to convince me to stay on with Apple and the Beatles after he came aboard and forced Kass out. Kass landed quickly at MGM and immediately made me a very lucrative offer to join him there. I turned my resignation into Apple and Capitol and Klein quickly called for a meeting with me before my two weeks notice period was up. My loyalties were to Kass but Klein was so persistent and kept upping the ante to the point I was having a hard time turning him down. His offer was so great it was almost an insult to not give it great consideration. In our conversations, during the small talk portions, we had discussed our love for tennis. I was playing regularly and at a fairly high level at that time so I nonchalantly challenged him to a tennis match -- one set -- if he wins I join him and if I win he leaves me alone. He looked like he was not in very good shape and I assumed he would not even consider the idea and I also assumed it would be a slam dunk for me if he did - and there would be a bonus, let's say a little getting even for my pal Kass. The one thing I didn't take into consideration was that the match in his mind was not a sporting event but a negotiation and Klein was not known for coming out on the short end of important business encounters. What took place was the tennis match from hell. You have to read the book to get the final score! Q: You still retained a relationship with all four Beatles when Apple went south. Tell me about your last encounters with John, Paul, George and Ringo. KM: PAUL: We chatted outside in the parking lot after a Grammy awards show on March 1, 1975 and made plans to get together the next day while he was in LA. He gave me a private number and told me when to call. My call was intercepted by a young assistant who decided I was another bothersome fan and would neither put me through or take a message for Paul. (He passed a hello on to me a couple years ago during a book signing when the person getting the autograph told him they knew me but that was it).
RINGO: Our relationship continued on for many years as he lived a great deal of the time in LA and there was a small group of us old friends who hung out together. I even represented him in his record deal with Private Music/BMG in the early '90s. The last time we saw each other was in Santa Rosa CA when he was on tour with his All Starr Band. It had been a while since we had seen each other or hung out and it was oddly strange when we got together after such a long break. We had gone in different directions with our lives and it was honestly a bit awkward. Not that we weren't friends but it was simply keeping a relevant conversation going. We had our history together but after the hellos and "how's Barbara" etc were done we struggled to find things to talk about. JOHN: It was an unusual last meeting with John. It was during the crazy years when he and Harry Nilsson were hanging out when Yoko had sent him off on his own for a while. I was producing Waylon Jennings at the time and Ringo had asked me to come over and play the finished master on the Are You Ready for the Country album I had just finished for RCA Records. When I walked into the living room at Ringo’s house John was sitting on the couch and he was in an obvious bad mood. He had just shown up out of the blue and wanted to be alone with Ringo. Ringo asked me to put the tape on anyway - John became more anxious as the music played on wishing the album would end and I sensed for me to go away. The day had an interesting ending (in the book) but I wish it could have been a more pleasant last time with John Lennon. Q: According to you, Apple was going to reform again in 1986 with Ron Kass at the helm and all the original players coming back to their original positions. What happened? KM: In the summer of 1986 very unexpectedly, I received a call from Ron Kass. I was in my Main Mansfield Associates office on Nashville's Music Row. It was so good to hear from Ron as it had been a while. I knew he was in LA producing films as well as other music industry ventures but when I moved to Nashville we had drifted apart. After catching up on old times he told me why he was calling. He had just returned from London and had had some preliminary meetings with a couple of the Beatles and Neil Aspinall. The discussions concerned starting up Apple again. There were two caveats: a) the Beatles would not be putting up the money this time so it would have to be funded by someone else and b) it would not be the typical restart of an old company because the feeling was that the company was more than a name -- that it was most of all a special group of people -- therefore the only way it would be done is if it was staffed by the original gang. He wanted to know if I was in -- would I return as the US Manager of the company? I said yes of course and it took us about ten minutes to get a $10 million dollar start up backing commitment from one person. We flew to London within weeks and began having meetings with Neil Aspinall, Tony Bramwell, myself and the investor. Gotta read the book to see how this didn’t turn out. Q: That same year you had a run-in with Julian Lennon, John's first son, who was on the concert circuit. What did you tell him about his father and what was his reaction? KM: I ran into Julian at the Starwood amphitheater in Nashville where he was headlining. He didn't know who I was when I ran into him backstage but he stopped in his tracks when I said I knew his father and had worked with him. I could tell he wanted to know more about his dad and he knew I had spent time with John during a particular phase that maybe wasn't real clear to him. I can't remember the details of the conversation but the gist had to do more with the day to day times at Apple and what his dad was like and into at that time. It was a gentle meeting and I left feeling very moved. It was a bit freaky because I kept having this feeling I was talking to a young John of old. Q: John Lennon and George Harrison are no longer with us. Where were you when both passed away and how do you feel about them today? KM: I was sitting on the floor of my new Hometown Productions Inc. offices in Hollywood deciding which pictures of my Beatle/Apple days I was going to put on the walls when I got a call from rocker Nick Gilder ("Hot Child in the City") telling me that John had just been shot. I hung up the phone and looked at a picture of John in my hand staring up at me. He had written me a note that accompanied the picture. I wept. That picture and note are in the book. Ironically, the morning I found out George had just died of cancer I was in the doctor’s (oncologist) office being given bad news about the status of my own incurable cancer. Fox News was calling every five minutes trying to get me to drive to San Francisco for a live feed interview with different anchors. Out of respect for our long friendship I finally agreed to set my emotions aside and allowed them to send a car for me. I spent the day appearing on three or four different Fox shows and completed the day with a CBS interview reflecting on my impressions of George. It did take my mind off my situation and I felt as if I had helped him say goodbye. Q: What's the main thing you want to convey about your life and The White Book? KM: There were only a few people who were actually there during certain times when the Beatle phenomenon was happening and I had a special place because I was the guy who may have come the furthest to join in the fray. They treated me special and I became a part of the musical bridge that eventually connected the UK and the US. The book is not only about the Beatles but it is about an era. I had history with the Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, David Cassidy, Andy Williams, etc. and became a part of the conduit that brought many of these historical entertainers together. It was a special time in the music industry -- a time that will never be repeated. My book is a kind book about incredible people. That's how I saw it then and that's how I will always remember it. ---- Visit the official website for The White Book: The Beatles, the Bands, the Biz: An Insider's Look at an Era, at http://www.fabwhitebook.com
by Shelley
Germeaux My
discussion with Julia Baird occurred on Tuesday, March 20,
2007, just as her new book, Imagine
This: Growing Up with My Brother John
Lennon
In recent years Julia's tireless research and persistent questions of family members and neighbors finally began to pay off. She learned of the concocted stories that were devised by Aunt Mimi when John became famous, to sacrifice Julia Lennon's character and conceal her own wrongdoings. These misconceptions formed the basis of public opinion and have appeared in every biography about the Beatles since then. Julia Baird sets out to reverse this deception and honor the memory of the mother that she and John shared. Probably the biggest falsehood that has been spread is that Julia handed John over to her sister, Mimi, to raise him, in 1946 when Julia's life was rough. She was cast as a frivolous woman who also willingly gave away her baby daughter, Victoria, in 1945 when she'd had a wartime affair with a Welsh sailor while her husband, Alf Lennon was away at sea. However, Ms. Baird's book reveals that Julia's older sister, Mimi and her father, "Pop" Stanley, were outraged when Julia had gotten pregnant in late 1944 and insisted that the baby be given up for adoption because Julia was a "sinner." Mimi took John while Julia went to a Salvation Army home until the baby was born. After returning home, she was very ill, and had post-partum depression but had to go back to work. Mimi and Pop were irate once again when Julia moved in with a new boyfriend Bobby Dykins after it was clear that Alf would never stay home long enough to take care of his family. Divorce from Alf was impossible because in those days, he would have had to consent to it in court, and that was not happening. Julia had to carry on with her life somehow. Julia's moving out meant that no one was home to take care of Pop, now that her mother had died. Mimi took John away from Julia because she was "living in sin" and for not taking care of her father. Julia was devastated but could not fight Mimi or her father. Another stunning revelation was Ms. Baird's discovery that Mimi had had a secret affair, while John was still living with her, with a student lodger over 20 years her junior. This is particularly shocking in light of her condemnation of her sister, Julia's situation. Our discussion began with the subject of bad childhoods. We talked about the process of researching the truth, asking questions and finding out shocking things, eventually leading up to the idea of a book.
Julia Baird: I'm not pretending for one second that our family history was unique. The problem is, like I said in the first place its been written out, across the sky, every week with a different version. That's the problem. There are skeletons in everyone's cupboard, but theirs aren't being published, performed, or put into plays. "Experts" have been talking about us day and night. And we're all looking at it thinking, that's our family! Shelley
Germeaux: And to find out that so much of it is not even
true! Julia Baird: Oh yes; well I always knew that there were great un-truths, but I could never get to the bottom of it, cause they (the relatives) wouldn't talk. Until at the end with Nanny (Mimi's sister) and I couldn't stop her. It was amazing, absolutely incredible. In 1996 and 1997 I already had things in my mind that (Aunt) Nanny had been telling me. In the book there's a picture of her, sitting in a chair looking out through the window, and that was Nanny talking to me, she never looked at me, she was looking through the window at the beautiful willow tree outside. But I just needed to start her off and she talked and I listened and listened, and all the bits of the story, you know when you hear bits, she was knitting it together for me. And with huge additions. Some things she said I haven't put in the book because I only set out to exonerate my mother. And in fact I've had beautiful letters from readers, but I had a beautiful one from a lady in England, miles away from here, I've never met her before, saying, "you have redeemed your mother's character beautifully, well done." That's what I set out to do. And she sent a little card with it, saying "To the two Julias." Its not a book about me; of course we're in it, my sister and I, and it's not about John; of course he's in it-- it's a book about my mother and trying to put the record straight. SG: I know the first question everyone is going to ask is, why didn't all this come out in your first book [John Lennon My Brother (1988)]? I took it reading this book, that this has been a journey for you over the last, nearly twenty years…since the last book came out, finding out all this stuff. Julia Baird: ...yes, since John died. In 1985, it was John's five-year anniversary (of his death), and they (BBC) said we'll do this program; we watched it on TV, and it was so... wrong. I rang the BBC the next day to complain, and they just said, "Well John didn't have a sister." SG: They told you that you didn't exist basically! Julia Baird: Well it turns out that had come from Mimi. Phillip Norman, who wrote Shout; now I haven't read it, but someone told me that he did an interview with Mimi and so did Hunter Davies, but she vetoed it. She cut loads of stuff out. SG: Yes, I had read someplace, and I think it was in Hunter Davies' revised biography just a few years ago. I haven't actually gone to check it but I remember thinking that he had said in there that that John was one of the people that wrote to him or called him up and said, "Mimi's worried sick about what you're going to say, and you have to change this to fit her version." And he did, because John was terrified of Mimi. Julia Baird: Yes! We all were! And in the eleven years after John died she reinvented herself. And even before I found out the truth about the affair and the social services man, I was saying, "If Mimi had lived for another twenty years she would have born John by then, she would have had him by then." (laughter) It was going in that direction, and I knew that was the way of things even before I knew the truth about the story.
SG: So this book comes about at this time, because why? Because you're ready, or does it fit with some timing... JB: Because I wasn't ready to do the big investigations before. And I was still working, I was a Special Needs teacher for the last fifteen years. Cynthia (Lennon, John's first wife) and I had actually decided, about five or six years ago, we've got to put this straight... because she knew that there was a lot more obviously from her side, and we actually started to do something together. We talked on the phone; she was living in France at the time, and I said, "I'm working but I will start gathering stuff together." And after about three or four months of me trying to write bits on the weekend and after work I needed to go research things and I didn't have the time to do this. We both decided to call it off. I said, "I don't think I can carry on like this every spare minute, looking for things," and it wasn't even a big computer time. I wasn't comfortable with the Internet to look things up. I knew I needed to go speak to people. So I said to Cynthia, "I don't think I can do this anymore," and she said "Right, luv, I know. I'm in a mess too." So by consent we agreed to leave it. JB: And then in spring of '04, when Mendips was about to be opened, Philip Norman, (author of Shout: The Beatles in their Generation) rung me. I was really surprised. He's a well-respected biographer, and I got this phone call, and he said, "I'm Philip Norman," and he explained briefly that he was doing this mega mega, another expert book, and he was taking a couple of years over it. The first part would be John's British life, if you like, and the second would be to do with his American life. I don't pretend to know anything about that, because I wasn't there. So I just said, "Mr.Norman, you wrote in one of our big tabloids, the most awful article that my mother was a fly-by-night, and gave two children away. " And (after first denying it) he said, "I'm so sorry, I apologize deeply. Now I want you to put it straight in my book." And I said, "Mr. Norman I would do it myself if I was going to do it," but I was still at work. I was really upset about it thinking , right, this is the other book coming out, and he's writing it with some backing from Yoko. Now I don't know what, I can't say anything, but I know that she is certainly contributing to the American side of the book. And why not? She lived with him. What I did in the end, I thought, this book is going to be written, and I need time to do it myself. So I took time in 2004 and I was writing the book from then, with all the research that's involved. I've just got myself up with a computer and gone off to interview all our old neighbors and people that would not talk to people like Philip Norman or anybody else, they are very loyal. (Pictured: John Lennon's Aunt Mimi. Photo courtesy Julia Baird.)
JB: With the help of the state! He (Pop) was an old "sea dog", and he disapproved of her having another man in her life. He thought she was supposed to be taking care of John and him. There was no money coming from Alf, and there was no welfare state in those days, and my mother was going out to work, for her father who's a pensioner, and herself and John. She was actually working for them. SG: I can't even believe, this day and age, if she had post-partum depression, and she's had these terrible things happen, she's had two children taken from her in the space of a year, and she's depressed, and she has to go to work full time. JB: Yep, definitely. SG: And for her to not find someone that she could live with. That would have just been terrible.
JB: Yep. And it was. But that's what they expected. And the thing with them having Victoria, when I first found out about Victoria it was through a journalist! Inadvertently he mentioned my mother's four children, and when he saw my face, he said, "You don't know, do you?" He said, "Your mother had a baby after John," and I just sort of nearly fell over. He said, "I'm going." [Editor's Note: To understand the birth chronology of the four children, read Daytrippin's Review of Imagine This] I went down to Nanny and it took three visits before she would tell me! And she just said, "Yes, your mother did have a baby and it was given up for adoption, and I will not discuss your mother's pain with you." And she went upstairs crying, and I was downstairs crying. She stonewalled me, she wouldn't speak about it. In 1996-1997, which is 11-12 years later, I asked her and she told me everything she could think of, and I was able to question her. When my mother was pregnant, it was the only affair she'd had, and Alf had disappeared in early 1940. This was late 1944. She had a three week affair and got pregnant. And (Pop) said immediately, "You're not keeping the baby," because she was still living at home then. Nanny said, "Everyday, every time he saw her, he called her a sinner and that she wasn't keeping the baby. She spent the time in tears." Nanny said, when she had the baby in the Salvation Army home, the Welsh soldier, who is the father of Victoria, said to my mother, even though he couldn't marry her, obviously, because Alf was never going to give her a divorce, ever, he said, "I'll take you and the baby, but not him," pointing to John. So my mother threw him out! Of course.
JB: Well, Taffy Williams, the father, said he would keep her and the baby, but not John. And Alf came back on one of the three visits, and he said, I will adopt the baby…and then he disappeared! The one time they actually did have family life together was on the second visit home, my mother had moved into a cottage owned by Mimi and George, and Alf came home and stayed with them for a while, and John, who was two and a bit. This was the only family life they ever had by themselves.
JB: My mother wanted Alf to get "shore job"‚ to stay at home. Alf said, "No, I'm a sailor and I'm going back to sea." And my mother said, "I don't want you to go back to sea. I don't want to be on my own," and he just said, "No, I'm a sailor; deal with it." She had grown up with her father being at sea, he was a sail maker in the Tall Ships. And he came home and left a baby every two years! So when he went back to sea, rather than stay in that place on her own, with John, which she had taken on to persuade him to stay at home, she went back to stay with her father (at 9 Newcastle Rd). Because he needed her! And Alf had obviously disappeared again. She never knew where he was, she never had any money from him, he visited three times in five years. He can't expect her to commit to that, but she did. Until she met this Taffy Williams, and sadly, desperately, she got pregnant. So she was upset through the pregnancy, of course, being told everyday, "You're a sinner, this is a dreadful thing, you're a married woman, you're bringing shame on our family. " SG: Have you read Daddy Come Home? JB: Yes, and I felt sorry for Alf. Are you superstitious? I say I'm not (laughs) but notice that the number 5 keeps coming up. I felt bad for Alf. He was five when he went to the orphanage. John was 5 when he went to Mimi. Sean was five when John died, and Julian was five when John met (fell for)Yoko. Alf was five when he was given to the orphanage, with his baby sister. And the damage that was done there was irreparable wasn't it? He did not know how to be a father, or to commit. So I did say that probably when he came home after his philandering at sea he probably thought that my mother would be there and waiting. It must have been a shock to him that she had the strength to say no, because they had courted for ten years, she had not been out with anybody else. They were married a time before they had John, it was all the normal stuff, it was very restrained really. All the family said that neither of them had a boyfriend or girlfriend since my mother was fourteen. So you can hardly call her anything, can you? It was very difficult to find out. It (Daddy Come Home) was one of the few books (about John) I ever read, I got it after I'd written the book. And obviously it paints a more rosy picture than what I would paint. Because the truth of it is, Alf did disappear when John was 5, never to be seen again until John was famous. So what did he do that for, I mean you can excuse and excuse only so far can't you? SG: Yeah. The way he (Alf) paints it is that he's this terribly unlucky person that just keeps running into Arabs and jails, and keeps getting stopped from coming home, and of course there's Mimi stopping him, and he never gets back to John again because he's being stopped. Then after I read your book I thought, I get it, he's just trying to vindicate himself... JB: Right. He didn't want to take responsibility for the fact that he'd abandoned him. Why do these men think that they can come back on the scene when their sons become famous? But I did feel sorry for Alf because of the life he'd led. SG: You didn't mention when John met up with his father, his reunion with him in 1964. JB: I wasn't there, that's why I read Daddy Come Home, and I found out about it, and I thought, if I expand the book to include that, I am writing third party, and in the whole book I've tried not to do that. I've tried to write the book through painstaking research, from emotion, which has to be mine, and from memory, and I don't have a memory of John meeting his father. I would be making it up wouldn't I, I would be doing what all the other researchers do, I'd be basing my research on somebody else's research. SG:
So he never said anything to you about
it? JB: We never talked about it, no. My father we did; but not his. He never mentioned Alf. SG: When your father died and you made the trip down only to have everyone shut their doors to you. How did that feel? JB: They didn't care where we went, Jackie was sent to work, and they (her employer) said "What on earth are you doing here?" The whole village knew but not her. They (the relatives) didn't care, and that was the truth. (Pictured: John Lennon's mother, Julia, holding daughter, Jackie in 1950. Photo courtesy Julia Baird)
SG: What is the real reason your mother couldn't have somehow, was it just the laws that she couldn't divorce Alf without his consent? JB: No, Shelley, you couldn't. She was really in a no-win situation. When she went to have the baby (Victoria), she fed her for six weeks, and then the baby was adopted straight from the Salvation Army home. "And she came home," Nanny said, "and we thought she'd be all right then, but she came home and cried and cried and didn't eat." And Nanny said, "I'd bring her hot food, go to work, come back, take the cold food away, give her more hot food." And then Nanny went to live over the water with my cousin and his parents, and my mother had to go and get a job, because they were still in the same situation. John was at school and my grandfather was there. So she got a job, and I think Nanny said she had post-natal depression. She was working in a cafe, (in Penny Lane), taking John to school, picking John up from school. That's when she met my father (Dykins), and that's when everything went wrong, because Pop and Mimi just pounced on her and said she wasn't to have a man in her life. SG: Why couldn't they have just left her alone; do you think it was jealousy on Mimi's part? JB: Yes, I do, I think Mimi was jealous of my mother. I think in the end, Mimi hadn't planned all of this but she was an opportunist; John had been to stay with her, here and there when my mother was depressed, and having Victoria. And when my mother met my father, Mimi and Pop together rounded her and said, "You are not to have anyone." I called my father Sir Galahad, he was on his white charger to the rescue.
Julia made the point that this facade of morality, and accusations of being a sinner surprisingly had nothing to do with religion and everything about keeping Julia in her place. Steve Turner, who wrote The Gospel According to the Beatles in 2006, assumed that they must have been religious people based on what he was finding out about the family, and wrote to Julia to ask her about it. JB: Steve Turner, who just wrote about the Beatles spirituality, emailed me to say, "Did Mimi go to church?" (I said) "No." (Then again), "Did Mimi go to church?" "NO." "Did Mimi go to church?" "NO!!!" He said, "Somebody in your family said she did‚" and I said, "I would like to know who, because I can tell you the answer is no." But still we were sinners and Mendips was the House of Correction, where you go to get wrongs made right. SG:
...and what does that do to you? I'm reading this and
thinking, What types of self-esteem did these girls
have?
SG: And then you found out that Mimi had had an affair with Michael Fishwick, the student lodger. JB: YES. That came about when Nanny kept saying "Mimi had a boyfriend!" and she thought it was in New Zealand, and it didn't make sense. So I started asking the neighbors and no one knew. Finally I thought, wait a minute, Mimi never went anywhere. Never. She was always at Mendips. So if she had a boyfriend, someone there would have had to know. The only lodger that had been there any length of time was Michael Fishwick, he was there nine years. So I found him, and he talked with me. I asked him, "Who was Mimi's boyfriend?" And by his response, I knew I was right. So we met for coffee down by the docks and he starts taking off his cufflinks. At first I thought he needed help with something, and finally he shows them to me and says, "Do you remember these?" I said no, and he said "These were the cufflinks Mimi tried to give to the love of her life. When he died, the family gave them back to Mimi, and this was before she met George." That's when I knew it was him. I nearly fell over, saying, "No, no, oh no ...not him!" But it was.
SG: What would you say, as far as your happiest times playing with John, can you think of a time that would give people a notion of what he was like. JB: Watching the Elvis films with my mother. John, my mother and I went to see "Love Me Tender", and we'd sit and watch them three or four times; my mother was the Elvis fan before John. SG: You talked about when John met Elvis, how you wished your mother could have been alive for that. JB: YES!! It would have been wonderful. SG: What was John really like as a kid, what do you remember about him? JB: He was just great, and Jackie and I absolutely adored him, we would jump on him, there were piggy back rides and shoulder bags and swinging round; and we played in the park. SG: He had to babysit you sometimes, you said in your earlier book, which gives people a different view of him, because Paul McCartney once said that John didn't know how to take care of kids. JB: Oh, no, he definitely babysat us. My father worked in a local hotel at one point and my mother sometimes went down to meet him and John would be there (with us.)
SG: ...and what must it have been like to see Paul McCartney? Looking back on it now do you sometimes think, I saw the formation of the biggest rock band?? JB: Of the Beatles, yeah! The original Beatles were my mother and John. SG: And then Paul comes around, and this is obviously after the Quarrymen, but you remember Paul too. JB: I still know Paul, and I remember him well. My mother loved him, and kept bringing rounds of food because his mother died, poor thing. And he had his hair all slicked back and everything. I called John and Paul the "dream team". John was the genius to me, I mean you have four people-- you're only going to get one genius, and it was John. But without Paul's organization, his determination, without him they may never have made it. Because in England at that time there were thousands of groups and they were all very good. And I think that John and Paul together, they were ONE. And my name for them was the "dream team."
SG: I heard that John had received Alf's manuscript [later published in Daddy Come Home] after Alf died. And that he'd read the whole thing at the Dakota and was just torn apart. I'm thinking that even if John read that, he still doesn't have the whole thing because he's got Alf's side of the story. He never sees your book. JB: He didn't know what I know now. SG: John never heard what Nanny had to say, and everything else you found out, which would have made a huge difference to him. It makes me very sad for him because I think that he had a lot of unsolved emotions about his mother. JB: Yeah, there was a talk in Liverpool last year and Pete Shotton was there. I know him well, and the other one was Tony Sheridan, you know the one who did "My Bonny" with him (John). He met John when he was 18, 19, in Hamburg and he was talking about it, and said that John had referred to himself as a psychological cripple, because he didn't live with his mother. And I was in the back and had to leave because I was in tears, he didn't know I was there at all. And I had just thought, Tony Sheridan, this should be interesting; I wasn't expecting that. But I knew it was true, I absolutely knew it was true. SG: I always felt like John wanted to know the truth. I don't get the impression that he understood all of this by the time he died. JB: He didn't, I promise you! He wouldn't have known. It was the Director of Social Services that Mimi took along (to get John from Julia.) He wouldn't have known about that, but because I couldn't verify a name, I just said an inspector. I know that there will be people out there who will say, "Oh no it wasn't, or no it didn't." But I was told by two people that it was a Director. SG: The song he wrote, "Gimme Some Truth" -- I always felt that it was less about the political situation and more about his childhood. JB: YES. Well it was funny because John actually said to somebody, and I found the quote but I couldn't tell where it was from, when they said (to John), "Are you ever going to write your autobiography?" And he said, "No I'm not and I don't think people should right now. I don't believe in writing autobiographies, and stuff like that." And I thought, "John, your whole songwriting is your autobiography!" In the '70s, on the phone, we both got really upset. I said to him, "Do you know why you went to Mimi's?" and he said, "I don't bloody know!" and then he said, referring to Julia, "You had her and I didn't. It's not fair!" And this is a man, a 36-year-old man speaking like that, "It's not fair!" you know like a child. Inside he still was, and I just didn't know what to say. We both just cried. SG: What did you and John talk about, when you had your reunion in 1975 and you spent all those hours on the phone? JB: Everything. Everything under the sun. SG: What did he really think happened? JB: He didn't know what happened. And then you don't know who you are. I said, and this is in the foreword I think: "Every time you think you're beginning to know who you are, a tail of a brush just sweeps right across the canvas, and leaves you completely bereft and you don't know who you are all over again because you've found something else out." SG: You said he was coming home in 1981 and of course, I've heard that a few times. JB: YES. Oh, yes, he said it in interviews, too. SG: Did you say that someone actually bought that letter from Leila (where John said that he was coming home)? JB:
There's a few letters that have been sold. In the book I've
put bits of the letters. After our mother died, John had
said, "I want the girls living with me, but Mimi won't have
them," and the stuff about the house. (The house John bought
for Julia and sister, Jackie, after their mother died, but
they never got. First an aunt and uncle lived there, and
after John died, Yoko inherited it.) My other aunts were
saying, "The house was for the
girls!" SG: ...and that's particularly heartbreaking. It tracks along your story about how Yoko becomes Mimi's replacement. JB: Yeah I know! But this time there was no escape for him. SG: So you feel that Yoko really did intercept the calls and didn't let you get through after a while? When did that start happening? JB: I don't know. We probably had a good few lengthy phone calls, and suddenly when I was ringing, Yoko would answer the phone, and I've quipped in the book, "Was she walking around with it in her pocket?" I don't even think we had mobiles in that day, unless they were the size of televisions. You've seen it on the films, they prop it up and put it on a trolley and bring up this great big aerial-- that was the beginning of the mobile phone wasn't it? (laughs) Certainly I was trying to ring, and Yoko would answer and say, "John is trying to sleep right now, you don't understand his life." And I'd say, "Wake him up then!" And she'd say, "No, you don't understand his life. He's awake all night at the moment." And I said, "Wake him, he'd want to speak to me." And I later found out she did the same to Julian, and I put that in the book. She may have been totally, dissed with the whole British family by this time, cause John had opened the gate and we were all writing, and ringing. And maybe... I have to say maybe, because I wasn't there, she must have decided at some time that it was all too much. I don't understand why she did it to Julian! SG: I've read so much about her supposed jealousy. JB: Well Jackie and I, maybe, but Julian? And when we were at Mimi's funeral, we actually brought it up, and I said, "Why did you stop the phone calls?" and she didn't deny it! "Why didn't you put John on the phone?" I said. And she said, "I was protecting John." And I said, "What-- from his sisters?" And she just looked down and said, "Well I didn't know." What could she say, she was surrounded by John's English family. (Pictured: Julia Baird (left) and sister, Jackie, in 1985, on Mathew Street in Liverpool in front of the Cavern Club) SG: Do you have any contact with Sean or Julian now? JB: Julian yes, Sean no. Not because I don't want it, because he doesn't want it. He knows where we are. He's done a tour now, hasn't he, with fantastic reviews, and he came to Liverpool. Two organizations rung me and said "Do you want tickets?" and I said "No I don't." Not because I didn't want to meet Sean; I didn't want the press there. Because you know how they are, they would be saying, "Do you know your aunt is in the front row?" I couldn't have born it. It wasn't right, but when he came to Liverpool, if he would have said, "Oh Julia lives here, can you get her number please?" I'd have loved to have gone and met him quietly, or brought him to my home. SG: And he didn't make any kind of effort like that? JB: No--He did make a point to say Liverpool was his spiritual home, but I'm obviously not the spiritual sister. SG: Somebody was saying to me that Sean would not give interviews in Liverpool, but he had opportunities to do more interviews and a bigger press thing in Liverpool but he didn't for some reason. JB: Well probably because the city's very John based isn't it? They might have said, "Have you met Julia?" I'm not saying they would have, but I'm a Director of the Cavern and they all know I'm there. But I'm sorry that he didn't think-- all he had to do was say, Can you find her number? When I did meet him again at Mimi's funeral, he was delightful. He looked stunningly handsome, beautiful attired, and a delightful boy. My sister and I, we were all talking to him, and I did say, John would have been so proud of you. And he said "Thank you." It would have been lovely to meet him. And I was pleased to see earlier this week, last week there was a picture of Julian and Sean in the paper at some point on this tour; and I thought, "Good." SG: Yes, it was all over the press that Julian was actually on the tour bus with him. And actually hung out with him on the bus, and Sean said in one of his blogs, "None of my friends wanted to rough it on the road with me, but Julian came with me and we've had a great time." JB: I've been on the tour with Julian when he's been on tour and it really is a scruffy life I can tell you that. On the other hand it's a contained space and nobody can get on or off unless you want them to, so they have the place probably to themselves. I wish them both well. They are both John's sons. SG: Julia, this has been very fascinating, and thank you for letting me talk to you JB: I want the story out, that's why I'm talking to you. It's not a matter of, I've written a book, buy the book-- it's a matter of, read the story. And if it has to go in Rolling Stone then it has to go in Rolling Stone. And anyone in Liverpool who wants a book, I'm signing it for them. SG: I wish you all the luck in the world! JB: Thank you. SG: What about a book tour? JB: I'm more than happy to do it, and I will. I'm ready but I need an American publisher. I would love to do it. ----------- Shelley Germeaux is the West Coast Correspondent for Daytrippin' Magazine. She also has written for Seattle Sound Magazine. Read Daytrippin's Review of Julia Baird's book Find out how to order Julia Baird's book: For US residents: Imagine This: Growing up with my brother John Lennon For UK
residents: Imagine
This: Growing Up with My Brother John
Lennon
Author of The Gospel According to the Beatles (November 2006) by Marshall Terrill
Turner, best known to Beatles fans as the author of A Hard Day's Write: The Stories behind every Beatles song, has covered the rock music scene in Britain and the U.S. for more than thirty years. He met John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1971 when Lennon was promoting "Imagine", and has maintained a special interest in the relationship between spirituality and pop culture. His latest result is one of the most original and fresh looks at the Beatles in a very long time. More specifically, how the Christian outlook of their youth helped to shape their collective outlook on their songs, art and lives. The 256-page book contains many new revelations, approximately 80 interviews (including Pattie Boyd and Cynthia Lennon) and access to never-before-published material. In this Daytrippin' exclusive, Turner offers fresh insights into some of the most notorious incidents in Beatles history, from the "more popular than Jesus" controversy in 1966 to the truth about the first time they dropped acid, to John Lennon's 1972 letter to evangelist Oral Roberts seeking spiritual guidance. Daytrippin': The premise for this book is a most interesting one-- a look at the Beatles' spiritual journey, philosophy, and how it affected their lives, their music and their audience. How did the idea for this book come about? Steve Turner: I've been a Christian for almost as long as I've been a Beatles fan and so I've always been acutely aware of their spiritual quest. I had the idea of doing something on Lennon as a spiritual pilgrim about ten years ago and then the publisher WJK approached me to do something vaguely along the lines of The Gospel According to Rock 'n' Roll. But I wasn't keen [on it since] in the 1980s I wrote Hungry For Heaven: Rock 'n' Roll and the Search for Redemption, and I'd only be covering the same ground. However, I said that I'd certainly be interested in doing one on the Beatles which would almost be the Gospel According to Rock 'n' Roll!! Daytrippin': Even though the book is 256 pages, it's very apparent the research you've conducted is not only exhaustive, but you've uncovered seemingly lots of rare interviews (and a few photos) that never appeared in the States. How did you conduct your research?
Daytrippin': Briefly describe all four Beatles religious upbringings and how that shaped each individual as they became adults. Steve Turner: Paul and George both had Catholic mothers and agnostic fathers. In Paul's case he was more affected by his father than his mother, who died when he was young. He is however prone to using Catholic imagery in his songs (Lady Madonna, Let It Be). George reacted against a Catholicism that only affected people for an hour each Sunday. He wanted something more pervasive and thought he founded it in Hinduism as he first experienced it in India in 1966. Interestingly enough, Hinduism has many aspects familiar to Catholics-- prayer beads, icons, statues, chants. John had the most thorough church upbringing, in the Church of England. It made him very familiar with the Bible and you can see allusions to Scripture all through his interviews. It also meant that when he attacked religion, it was this religion that he attacked. Ringo went to an evangelical Sunday school in the Dingle, but only because the choir paid well and they had bricks for the children to play with! Daytrippin': The crux of this book seems to be the 1966 controversy that erupted as a result of John Lennon's comments in regards to the Beatles being more popular than Jesus Christ. It's the most thorough examination of the subject I've ever seen and quite revealing how it played out. Why was it important for you to trace the roots of this incident? Steve Turner: Firstly, because it was such a familiar incident that biographers tend to just report the hearsay. I wanted to question every aspect rather than pass on what was in previous books. Also, the incident happened almost exactly in the middle of their career as recording artists and marked the divide between performing Beatles and recording Beatles, between Fab mop tops and serious artists, between pop idols and spiritual leaders. It served to illustrate the seriousness with which people responded to what the Beatles said and was one of the first times, surely, where rock 'n' roll was compared to religion ("I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity"). Daytrippin': You interviewed Cindy Bury, who was the girlfriend of John Riley, the dentist who first gave the Beatles LSD. Why did you track her down and what was her reaction to the fact that you were able to find her? Steve Turner: I wanted to get another side of the story-- the only one not then on record. Also I wanted to check out the "facts" - where did the LSD come from, what were Riley's intentions. I started with the address of the incident, from that checked electoral rolls from 1965 and found who lived there, from that checked Riley's registration details as a dentist, from that found his last known address, from that found that he was dead and ended up talking to his last (third) wife. That led me to the name of Cyndy Bury and the information that she was living in Spain. I then only had to track her down!! We met in a bar in a small village and then went back to her house. She was a bit nervous about it all. When I first called her she said, "I've been waiting 40 years for this call." She then invited me to fly down to get the real story. Daytrippin': After LSD no longer held its fascination, the Beatles turned to Transcendental Meditation for answers. As cynical as the group was, I was surprised at how easily they could be duped by: (a) The Maharishi, (b) Magic Alex, and (c) psychics. What did you think of this contradiction? Steve Turner: I think that in common with many in their generation, once they had jettisoned the traditional values that had guided the generation of their parents and grandparents, there were no longer any visible guidelines. Everything seemed equally true. If you reject the idea of an absolute truth, how can you detect a fake? The cultural atmosphere in the "underground" of the time was such that it would have been quite uncool to dismiss someone as mad or too far out because people weren't expecting revelation to come from the usual sane sources. Daytrippin': George seemed to be the most sincere when it came to his spiritual quest. What was in his makeup or background that pushed him toward spiritual enlightenment? Steve Turner: I can't say for sure. He was slightly more serious and possibly more sensitive. I think fame wasn't to his liking. He couldn't see why he was deserving of so much attention and it frightened him. I think also that when he got so much money at such an early age he found that it didn't satisfy him in the way he'd always assumed that it would so he began asking-- why doesn't it? Am I made for something else? What should I be doing with the rest of my life? At the age of 23 or 24 he was asking some of the most profound human questions. Daytrippin': Why do you think the Krishna movement held his particular fascination? Steve Turner: Maybe because it so clearly renounced materialism as a solution, and the crux of its practice was the repetition of a sound-- the Krishna mantra. So, there was a rejection of everything that he had already concluded as false and a solution that involved sound, something that was at the heart of his life anyway. His upbringing in Catholicism may have prepared him to be more accepting of the Krishna movement's devotional life and use of images. Daytrippin': The following description of Lennon I found quite insightful: "He'd renounce drugs and then snort heroin to the point of addiction. He'd call for revolution and then attack revolutionaries for being destructive. He'd sneer at religion and then devour religious literature or become totally enslaved to the advice of psychics. He'd praise Karl Marx, the father of communism, while living in a mansion in the stockbroker belt." Why do you believe Lennon was such a snarl of confusion and contradictions? Steve Turner: I don't know why but it was something he admitted. He said that sometimes he wanted to be worshiped on stage and at other times he wanted to be a monk. Also, there was often a contraction between his ideals and his nature. Love and peace could be an ideal, but conflict and aggression was part of his nature. Simply living was his ideal, but love of comfort was in his nature. Activism was his ideal, but laziness was his nature. Daytrippin': You also wrote of a 1972 letter from Lennon to American evangelist Oral Roberts, in which the superstar asked quite desperately what Christianity could do for him. How did you uncover the letter and what do you make of this? Steve Turner: Several years ago I wrote a story for Christianity Today about John's "born again" period, based on the findings from his diaries and published in then new books by Robert Rosen (Nowhere Man) And Geoffrey Giuliano (Lennon in America). As a result of this I had a letter from a guy in an American prison who was surprised I hadn't mentioned John's connection with Oral Roberts. This man told me that when he had been a student at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Roberts had spoken to the students in a morning assembly of the contact he'd had with John. I contacted the university, they trawled their archives and came up with a transcript of the very sermon the man had remembered which quoted verbatim from John's letter.< |
Now,
Mansfield's experiences with the Fab Four and the music
industry are recounted in his new memoir
To
me, Paul was the unabashed leader of the group, the
hard-charging one with the ideas and the one that on the
surface seemed to be less troubled about things in
general. I've said it before that he was like a
hyper-kinetic kid that never slowed down - the difference
being that he was able to harness this energy into his
god-given musical talent and just let 'er rip. In all
honesty, he wore me out. It was fun, the times I got
to hang with him or work with him, but his tempo was
maddening and his energy pool bottomless. I did have
an underlying pressure as the US manager of their company so
that I couldn't just totally go with the flow and hang out
and party. My responsibilities were always looming in
the back of my mind. If we had been high school
buddies and there had been no fame, I think Paul would be
the kind of person who would be great to hook up with again
at class reunions. It would always be good to see him
again. He, like the other Beatles, had an admirable
sense of loyalty to their old mates. I was with Paul
when he brought Ivan Vaughn, an old friend from his
Liverpool school days to LA with him to just hang
out. He was certainly no one famous or even in the
business - just an old friend hanging out with a mate who
just happened to be the "cute Beatle."
Q:
When the Beatles played the legendary rooftop concert on top
of Apple headquarters at 3 Saville Row, you were one of the
few people to watch it in person. What are your
recollections of that day?
GEORGE:
We spent a lot of time together after Apple - our wives had
also become friends and he and Pattie were spending a lot of
time in LA. But the last time I talked to him was
after he and Olivia were together and we ran into each other
in a narrow alley that separates Dan Tana's restaurant and
the Troubador nightclub in Hollywood. We hadn't seen
each other in a while and we had a mini-reunion in a dark
alley. It was very pleasant and normal, just like
running into an old high school classmate. 
was released in the UK. Having gotten a copy and devouring
it with rapt interest, I'm grateful at the opportunity to
interview her for Daytrippin'.
Julia
Baird was John Lennon's half-sister, and her story about
their childhood is riveting as she discloses for the first
time, the family secrets that were kept hidden so many
years. The shocking truth as to why John went to live with
his Aunt Mimi instead of their mother, Julia Lennon, was
never revealed until the mid-1990s. The confusion about
John's childhood caused him emotional distress throughout
his life, and it was a theme in his music many times.
SG:
Reading your first book (John Lennon, My Brother,
1988), and other books that have come after that, I
started getting the impression, that Mimi is not the saint
that everybody has said that she was. What do you want to
say about what really happened with Mimi and Julia and why
in the world Mimi would have taken John from Julia? The
story has always been, Julia gave John up willingly. But now
we see that Mimi has actually forcibly taken this little boy
away. 
SG:
The way Alf (Lennon, John's father) puts it in his
autobiographical manuscript is that both he and Taffy (Taffy
Williams, the soldier) are in the room to get her to decide,
and she's refusing both of them, and in (Alf's wife)
Pauline's book, (
Imparting
a gospel to a generation had not been the Beatles' intent
when they first played rock & roll. They were
looking for kicks, girls, and a life of leisure, not
transcendence. But as British rock journalist Steve
Turner shows in his new book, The Gospel According to the
Beatles‚ the Fab Four went from pop stars to shaman--
from "She loves you, yeah yeah yeah" to "Turn off your mind,
relax and float downstream"-- in the span of three
years.
Steve
Turner: I think that to justify adding to the
hundreds of volumes of Beatles books you have to come up
with the new information. The general reader might not be so
aware of this but the hard-core Beatlemaniac will naturally
look for new facts, new analysis and new photos. I try to
supply all three! As with any author, my research starts
with a trawl through all available printed and recorded
material. I started a Beatles scrapbook in 1963 and have
collected major pieces ever since so I have a good supply of
my own. I will do internet searches, naturally. Then I
interview people in the close circle. In pursuing the "more
popular than Jesus" story, for example, I ended up at an
archive of previously unused material amassed by the former
editor of Datebook. That was in a university.
Sometimes a reference in one interview will alert me to the
presence of another, earlier, interview. I found one, for
example, in a magazine which only lasted a few issues but
was a great interview with Paul in 1965 specifically about
his songwriting. You just have to be incredibly persistent
to find good material and to be aware of the stuff that has
already had a good airing.