Free Beatles by Hunter Davies

minds, changing their clothes, their interests, always into something new.
    John was the hardest to talk to. I spent hours at his home in Weybridge in silence, swimming round his pool with him, eating a meal, sitting in his little living room, often without a sound, except for the rotten television set flickering away in the corner. In the end, if conversation seemed impossible, I would pack up and come again another day, when I hoped he would be more forthcoming. With Cyn, he could go on like that for weeks. He seemed to be in a permanent state of mental abstraction. I don’t think it was the effect of drugs, though he was smoking a lot, or even Maharishi’s meditations. For long spells, he just chose to cut off. Looking back, he was waiting for Yoko to come along, and spark him into life again.
    John could still be the strongest personality in the group, if he wanted to, though not as dominant as in the past. He let Paul take control of most things and allowed him to steer the Beatles into new projects, such as Magical Mystery Tour , or George to steer them into Indian mysticism.
    Even at the private party to celebrate Magical Mystery Tour , which was a very jolly affair, with their friends and relations and personal staff, John seemed so subdued. We all came in fancy dress. I went as a Boy Scout, and my wife as a Girl Guide, which was a bit pathetic and showed little imagination. John looked magnificent as a greasy rocker, just as he had been, ten years previously. He talked for a while to my wife about books, then sat in a daze.
    At his home, and in his head, he had so many half songs, uncompleted bits of verse, which he would play with, before quickly tiring of them. For months I seem to remember he was mucking around with ‘Across the Universe’, or variations on it. He would play or sing me the same old bits every few weeks, having failed to make any progress with it since I’d last seen him.
    Paul was the easiest to talk to. He had such energy and such keenness and, unlike John, enjoyed being liked, at least most of the time. I don’t see this as a criticism. John himself could be very cruel about Paul’s puppy-dog eagerness to please. The irony was, and still is, that John’s awfulness to people, his rudeness and cruelty, made people like him more, whereas Paul’s genuine niceness made many people suspicious, accusing him of being calculating. Paul does look ahead, seeing what might happen, working out the effect of certain actions, but he often ends up tying himself in knots, not necessarily getting what he thought he wanted. I think there is some insecurity in Paul’s nature, which makes him try so hard, work so hard. It also means he can be easily hurt by criticism, which was something that just washed over John.
    George, at the time I was doing the book, was an obsessive, which could make it very hard to talk to him. He hated, even then, the Beatle days, and wanted to forget them completely and move on. They all felt that, but George felt it most of all. His development, during those years as a Beatle, was by far the most dramatic. It’s easy to forget just how young he was, a callow 17-year-old, when he joined them. For so many years, most people tended to dismiss him as a mere child. John was so dominantand, at that stage in their career, being three years older, it made an enormous difference and he completely overshadowed George. Presumably John and Paul did see hidden things in George, right from the beginning, apart from his excellent guitar playing. They were proud of him, in a big-brotherly way, for being so good on the guitar, and by 1967 their pride had turned to admiration, not just for the excellent songs he had now composed, but for being so knowledgeable about Indian music and culture, going to such trouble to teach himself the sitar. For the first time in his life, he had become a leader, doing it by example, not in any bossy, domineering way.
    Going to see Ringo was rather strange. He