John and Cynthia Lennon, October 1967. © MIRRORPIX

  There was a lot of discontent brewing among the Beatles. As in any family, they were beset by the kind of jealousy that erupts into fights. Nothing that serious—at the moment. But it was impossible to tell when it might blow up into something more critical.

  In the meantime, the band had agreed to participate in the world’s first satellite TV broadcast, linking thirty-one television networks around the globe. An estimated 300 million people could conceivably watch the same show simultaneously. It was designed to allow each of the participating countries a five-minute segment in which to feature material or an act that represented its culture. And, of course, what could be more British than the Beatles?

  John had just finished writing “All You Need Is Love,” which, according to George Martin, “seemed to fit with the overall concept of the program.” As the broadcast drew near, however, the Beatles realized that performing it live, without a safety net, so to speak, was risky. They’d become used to taking their time in the studio, overdubbing and correcting mistakes. Nothing was left to chance anymore. The Beatles hadn’t performed live in almost a year. There was no telling how they would sound.

  Visiting with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1967. © MIRRORPIX

  “By 7 PM [on the evening of the broadcast], the studio appeared to be in chaos,” reported a friend. But despite all the turmoil, between miscues and mischief, the Beatles performed “All You Need Is Love” for the world without a hint of disorganization. They sat perched on stools placed directly in front of some guests, appearing as cool as only the Beatles could look under the circumstances. Their voices synched beautifully, perfectly, to a backing track. It sounded effortless, done in one take, much the way they’d fired off “Twist and Shout” four and a half years earlier: rock-steady and right on.

  • • • • •

  Now that that musical ordeal was over, the Beatles looked outside the studio for some personal peace and quiet. They all felt a little bit of emptiness in their souls, to say nothing of the fact that they had been through intense, nonstop craziness for the past four years. So on August 24, 1967, three of the Beatles (Ringo was visiting his wife, Maureen, in the hospital, where she had just given birth to their second son) attended a lecture given by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, an Indian spiritual leader whose message promoted love, peace, and eternal happiness.

  The Maharishi was a spidery little man who dressed in a gauzy white robe and sat cross-legged on a deerskin mat strewn with flowers. He advised John, Paul, and George “to look within in order to find peace.” And he suggested they learn how to meditate. By meditating, he said, they could reach a state of cosmic consciousness, which was blissful and beautiful. George, Paul, and John thought he made a lot of sense. They quickly explained the lecture to Ringo, who was always supportive of the others’ whims, and on August 25, all four Beatles, along with their wives or girlfriends and several friends, left London for a campus in Wales, where they planned to take part in a weeklong retreat given by the Maharishi.

  • • • • •

  Brian Epstein remained behind to take care of business and host a dinner party at his country estate. For months, he had been grappling with personal problems, including severe depression, which had put him in a dark funk, and he looked forward to blowing off some steam without worrying about the Beatles. But as the weekend lingered on, he fell into an even darker mood, and after some guests cancelled their plans to attend his dinner, he drove back to London.

  It must have been hard for him to get to sleep, so Brian took some pills—very powerful pills—to help him drift off. The next morning, when an assistant showed up, he was still in bed. After banging on Brian’s locked bedroom door for a long time and getting no answer, she called a doctor, who broke down the door. Inside, everything was perfectly still, including Brian, who was lying on his side.

  An hour later, one of Brian’s assistants telephoned the retreat where the Beatles were staying and asked to speak to Paul. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid I’ve got bad news. Brian has died.”

  George and his wife, Pattie, arrive at the memorial service for Brian Epstein, October 1967. © MIRRORPIX

  The Beatles had known little or nothing about the state of Brian’s health or the extent of his depression. Still, all evidence indicated that his death was accidental. He had taken too many pills for his body to absorb at one time. At a hastily arranged press conference, the Beatles appeared bewildered. “This is a terrible shock,” Paul told the reporters who had gathered there. “I am terribly upset.” In the “confusion and disbelief” that followed the phone call, there was only numbness.

  What could they do? Who would they turn to for advice? For the moment, Paul recalled, the Beatles went to see the Maharishi. “Our friend is dead,” they told him. “How do we handle this?” Because Hindu teaching dictates that mortals not focus on death but on the transcendence of the spirit—the soul’s moving on to another plain—the Maharishi’s advice about Brian was “to love him and let him go” so that his soul could continue its upward journey. “You have to grieve for him and love him, and now you send him on his way.”

  John told reporters that Brian was just passing into the next phase. “His spirit is still around and always will be,” he said. But deep down, John remembered thinking, “We were in trouble then.” John admitted feeling “scared” about the Beatles’ ability to function, to remain together as a group without Brian’s instinct and finesse. Indeed, as soon as the news of Brian’s death struck home, John thought, “We’ve…had it.”

  Chapter 11

  FROM BAD TO WORSE

  A few days after Brian’s death, Paul rounded up the other Beatles for a meeting at his house. When they pulled up outside, Paul was already waiting for them at the front door with his sheepdog, Martha. “Let’s go upstairs to the music room,” he said. “There is something we should get to without delay.”

  Paul felt that the best remedy for their shock was to do something together, something musical. He had been tinkering with an idea for a new project taken from one of his childhood memories. During the late 1950s, neighborhoods had sponsored “mystery tours” in which kids boarded a bus whose destination was kept secret. “Everyone would spend time guessing where they were going, and this was part of the thrill,” he remembered. What would happen if the Beatles gave this idea a new twist? he asked the others. How cool would it be to comb the English countryside in their own private bus, stopping spontaneously in villages and towns to film nutty sequences? They could stage little scenes and provide an original sound track. And they could make it up as they went along, so that the Beatles wouldn’t have to learn lines to a script, which they hated. It was loaded with possibilities. Before long, he’d imagined it as a groovy mystery tour—no, a magical mystery tour—to echo the spirit of the times.

  Even though John, George, and Ringo were skeptical, Paul was convincing, so much so that he and John immediately fired off a title song with the opening line “Roll up! Roll up for the mystery tour.” Despite the lack of a plan, a crew, or even a basic script, Paul wanted to begin filming Magical Mystery Tour right away, that very week. It was crazy, but their lives as Beatles had been crazy from the start. This was something they could pull off easily, and it would help take their minds off Brian’s death. Besides, they already had a bunch of songs they could use. Paul had written “The Fool on the Hill,” and John was working on something called “I Am the Walrus,” which was cluttered with zany wordplay. It all came together fast—perhaps too fast. “Some of the sounds weren’t very good,” according to George Martin. “Some were brilliant, but some were bloody awful.” The Beatles, however, were clearly pleased with the album.

  Production began immediately on the Magical Mystery Tour film, which proceeded in a haphazard manner. Other than Paul, no one had given it much thought. “We literally made it up as we went,” he recalled. There was no real cast to speak of. Faces were the important thing; the Beatles wanted characters, eccentrics who would look and perform in outrageous ways. There were a couple of midgets, thanks to John, who, according to Ringo, “would always want a midget or two around.” There were fat actors, people who could twist their bodies into wild shapes, and a few friends. They located a sixty-two-seat bus, an old yellow job on which they painted a Magical Mystery Tour logo that Paul had designed, and took off for the West Country with their cast and crew aboard.

  For the most part, the tour was a mess—five days of chaotic shooting in and around Surrey and Devon, with visits to the Cornish beaches on the Atlantic coast. “We would get off the bus: ‘Let’s stop here,’ and go and do this and that,” Ringo recalled. “Then we’d put music to it.” Occasionally, it worked, but often they encountered technical and logistical problems that interfered with their plans. Besides, the tour was hardly magical or even a mystery, since the bus was trailed everywhere by a convoy of twenty or so cars filled with press and fans who blocked roads and snarled traffic.

  Paul McCartney by the Magical Mystery Tour bus, September 1967. © MIRRORPIX

  Beatles Merchandise

  In all fairness, the Beatles should have reaped a merchandising windfall. Fans clambered for any product that featured the boys’ images: dolls, stationery, lockets, wigs, songbooks, T-shirts, photos, pins, calendars, sweaters, scrapbooks, games, and more. There was even Beatles bubble bath and Beatles wallpaper. In February 1964, the Wall Street Journal predicted that US teenagers alone would spend $50 million on Beatles paraphernalia.

  Unfortunately for the Beatles, that side of their operation was “a major rip-off.” “The reality is that the Beatles never saw a penny out of the merchandising,” according to a lawyer who later helped un-tangle their business affairs. The deals Brian Epstein made for them were atrocious, just bad. “Tens of millions of dollars went down the drain because of the way the whole thing was mishandled.”

  Eventually, the Beatles had enough footage to string together an hour’s worth of film, but everyone involved with the project knew this wouldn’t be one of their masterpieces. “If Brian had been alive, he would have pulled it into some kind of professional shape—or talked the Beatles out of it,” said a colleague from their management firm. But without him, the Beatles went full speed ahead.

  • • • • •

  Meanwhile, back at NEMS, everyone was fighting to take over Brian’s job. The Beatles weren’t interested in a manager at the moment, Paul told them. After all this time, the Beatles were finally on their own, free to make every decision as they alone saw fit.

  The first thing they did was to form a new company called Apple Music Ltd., so named because, Paul maintained, Apple was the first schoolbook word that children learned: A is for apple. Then they sat around trying to figure out exactly what their new company would do. “We’re just going to do—everything!” John told his old friend Pete Shotton. “We’ll have electronics, we’ll have clothes, we’ll have publishing, we’ll have music. We’re going to be talent spotters and have new talent.” John was very excited about the Apple idea.

  To kick things off, Apple opened a clothing company. The Beatles were delighted by the idea of having their own boutique full of groovy clothes. Early in 1967, they had purchased a cute little building on Baker Street, which they intended to use for their new business empire, hiring some friends to paint a mural on its ancient white brick facade. Citywide, the Apple Boutique mural was a huge conversation piece. London had never seen anything like it. People came from every district to get a closer look, clogging the sidewalk outside the shop, tying up traffic.

  For a brief period, the Apple Boutique wore a forty-foot psychedelic mural painted by the Fool before neighborhood shopkeepers demanded its removal, December 1967. © HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS

  Inside, however, the shop was a mess, beginning with the clothes themselves. “The clothes looked more like fancy-dress costumes than anything one could wear day to day,” wrote an observer. “Court jester crossed with harlequin crossed with Peter Pan, rainbow colors, zigzag hems, ballet tights and operatic coats for flower children.” The clothes were pretty to look at but completely impractical.

  Meanwhile, John and Paul began to fight for control. “Paul wanted dividers up,” recalled Pete Shotton, who was hired to run the place. “Then John would come in and say, ‘Why in the hell are we cutting people off from each other?’ and he’d have the dividers ripped out.” There was much bickering back and forth. Each of the two Beatles wanted to put his own stamp on the store; each was suspicious and jealous of the other’s contributions.

  The Apple Boutique finally opened on December 7, 1967, with a by-invitation-only gala. From the outset, the store suffered severe losses. “No one knew where anything was,” recalled a friend. “People were stealing things left and right.” Another friend said, “It was disastrous from start to finish.”

  In the midst of this wreck, another disaster loomed. On December 15, Paul gathered the Beatles and their friends to watch the final cut of Magical Mystery Tour. It was a fifty-odd-minute crazy quilt of scenes that had been pasted together without the slightest regard for a story. “There was no plot,” Paul admitted. According to Neil Aspinall, the band’s road manager, who had traveled with the Beatles from their very first days on tour, “Nobody had the vaguest idea what it was about.” George Martin, who watched in openmouthed horror, thought “it looked awful and it was a disaster.” Even John described it for a journalist as “the most expensive home movie ever.”

  John with Cynthia, and George with Pattie at Heathrow Airport, off to India, February 1968. © MIRRORPIX

  The Beatles had dropped roughly £40,000 of their own money on Magical Mystery Tour up to that point. And the critics hated it. “Appalling!” the Daily Mail said. “It was worse than terrible.” A writer for the Evening News advised readers to take their pick from the words “rubbish, piffle, chaotic, flop, tasteless, nonsense, emptiness, and appalling.”

  One disaster for the Beatles was uncommon, but two coming right on top of each other—well, two disasters were unimaginable. The band had always been very careful about how they conducted business. There were never any slipups when Brian was alive. But now that the Beatles were in charge of their own destiny, things had gotten a bit derailed.

  To get their lives back on track, the Beatles made plans in February 1968 to spend three months at the Maharishi’s ashram, or retreat, in rural India, a setting of natural simplicity where they intended to study Transcendental Meditation. It was the answer to the Beatles’ prayers. “We were finally getting away from everything,” John recalled—the craziness, the drugs, the fame, the grind. John and George and their wives arrived first; Paul (with Jane Asher, who was still at his side) and Ringo (with Maureen) followed three days later, where they joined their friends and sixty other students who were absorbed in quiet, thoughtful meditation. There was also plenty of time for talking, reading, and lazing in the sun.

  George had become an instant convert to TM. But John more than anyone threw himself wholeheartedly into the practice. “I was meditating about eight hours a day,” he recalled. Cynthia, who admitted to being surprised by his discipline, said, “To John, nothing else mattered. He spent literally days in deep meditation.” He and George threw themselves totally into the Maharishi’s teachings, which led George to pursue a purer lifestyle and renounce LSD. Paul recalled that he was “looking for something to fill some kind of hole.” He acknowledged feeling “a little bit of emptiness” in his soul, “a lack of spiritual fulfillment.” Even Ringo, whose enthusiasm for India was much lower than his friends’, said, “It was pretty exciting. We were in a very spiritual place.” Here they were happy, relaxed, and above all found a peace of mind that had been missing in their lives. Only Paul seemed less than satisfied. “It was quite nice,” he thought at the time. But more and more he had “trouble keeping [his] mind clear,” he said, “because the minute you clear it, a thought comes in and says, ‘What are we gonna do about our next record?’”

  What Is Transcendental Meditation?

  The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi educated the Beatles about the benefi ts of Transcendental Meditation, or TM, which they embraced wholeheartedly in the early months of 1968.

  An ancient eastern form of spiritual meditation, TM is the process by which a person contacts his inner reservoir of creativity, energy, and intelligence by looking within himself in order to fi nd peace. For twenty minutes a day, he is supposed to sit comfortably with his eyes closed, allowing the mind and body to become deeply relaxed. At the most settled state of awareness, according to the Maharishi, the mind transcends all mental activity to experience the simplest forms of awareness, or Transcendental Consciousness. One’s breathing becomes softer, the muscles relax, and more blood fl ows to the brain, all of which helps lessen stress and fatigue.

  “It’s all in the mind,” John explained. “It strengthens understanding and makes people more relaxed. It’s not just a fad or a gimmick, but the way to calm down tensions.”

  Paul called the experience “almost magical” and still advises his kids to practice TM whenever they are “stuck somewhere…or a bit disturbed.” It helped, he said, to “face your dangers” so “you will see that they’re not what you thought they were.”

  Paul couldn’t let it rest, not even in India during afternoons sunbathing with the others on the banks of the Ganges River. There was always a guitar within reach, always paper nearby on which to scribble the beginning of a song. Paul wrote like mad in India—but truth be told, so did John. “Regardless of what I was supposed to be doing, I did write some of my best songs while I was there,” he recalled. John and Paul began meeting in the afternoons in each other’s rooms. In all, they completed nearly forty songs. John wrote “Julia,” “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Jealous Guy,” “Across the Universe,” “Cry Baby Cry,” “Polythene Pam,” “Yer Blues,” and “I’m So Tired,” while Paul tackled “Rocky Raccoon,” “Wild Honey Pie,” “I Will,” “Mother Nature’s Son,” and “Back in the U.S.S.R.”