5.

Speaker 1:They're dealing now with their work as real art. To own that album is to own a piece of art. And it's seen as exemplifying the summer of love and this radical developments that are taking place in San Francisco, particularly Haight-Ashbury, as well as in kind of Carnaby Street and Swinging London.

And there is a track on Sgt. Pepper called Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which people point out, well, the initials of that song LSD, and this is the time when the Beatles, even Paul, he'd been very reluctant to take it, starts taking LSD. I mean, they always denied that it was, but it's kind of hovering in the atmosphere. And that sense of drugs as opening the mind, you know, you can tune in and discover new things about yourself.

That is also part of the excitement for people who are listening to Sgt. Pepper of what is going on, isn't it? The sense that new opportunities are opening up. There's this new idea that drugs can provide all these positive benefits.

Speaker 2:Yeah. And this is, you know, a number of years before we start losing people to drugs. And John tends to overdo things. So he goes—

Speaker 1:He's all in.

Speaker 2:He's all in on LSD to the point where he's positively green from it.

Speaker 1:[I was aware of them smoking pot. I wasn't aware that they did anything really serious. In fact, I was so innocent that I actually took John up into the roof when he was having an LSD trip, not knowing what it was.]

Paul takes LSD because John is out, you know, off his face. And he wants to kind of, you know, accompany John in his, you know, this terrible kind of experience. Which I just find a kind of very touching, moving illustration of that.

Speaker 2:Yeah. He felt the need to, I've got to do this too so that I can know what he knows, but he never goes as far as John. But this opens up a lot in their music.

Speaker 1:And of course, John is so influenced already by Alice in Wonderland imagery. So that's the other thing, isn't it? That even as they are kind of pushing at the limits in a kind of Timothy Leary kind of way, they are still drawing on the traditions of their childhood.

So you mentioned Alice in Wonderland, but even Sergeant Pepper. And they're kind of dressing up in Edwardian style uniforms and there's the fairground noises in The Benefit of Mr. Kite, which was a kind of fairground poster. There's a kind of Edwardian vibe there, even as the hippies are crowding in.

Speaker 2:I have a theory that many artists get lost in the 60s because you start to think, if I think of it and I do it, it must be good. There are many terrible songs written in the 60s and there are many terrible movies made in the 60s, especially in the later 60s. People can tend to lose their way because there's this concept that we just made it, it's wacky, it's what happened, it doesn't make sense, but it doesn't have to.

I think the Beatles survive it really well because they're rooted in this discipline, the musical, music structure, production, fine production. They're rooted in all these things that help give them ballast, even though, yes, they're taking LSD, they've been smoking a lot of pot. They always have that ballast of, there's work to be done and it needs to be good.

Speaker 1:And I think also they consistently have a sense of the ridiculous. They can recognise when people are making idiots of themselves. So it's interesting that George goes to San Francisco and he hangs out in Haight-Ashbury and he wants to see the flower power revolution and hang out with the hippies and stuff. And actually he thinks there's quite a lot of casualties here and decides it's not really for him.

Speaker 2:[I mean, everywhere we went, people were smiling and sitting on lawns, drinking tea, festivals of music and stuff. I mean, that's summer of love. A lot of that was bullshit, really. It was all what the press was saying.]

Speaker 1:And so he wants to explore alternative ways of attaining enlightenment. And by great good fortune, he is put in touch with a guy called the Maharishi, Mahesh Yogi, who has just turned up in London. And George persuades the other Beatles and Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull to get on a train with the Maharishi and go to Bangor in Wales.

So what's your take on the Maharishi?

Speaker 2:Well, I think the Beatles are very curious people and they always wanna advance to the next level and learn more. And so when they hear about this Maharishi, they think, let's give it a try, let's hear him out. So that's what the trip I think to Bangor is about. It's a getaway, it's a happening. They all go together. Of course, Cynthia misses the train, which is very symbolic.

Speaker 1:And also symbolic is the fact that while they're in Bangor, they get terrible news, which is that Brian Epstein, their manager, the guy who had shaped their career and kind of kept them on track has died of an overdose back in London.

Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's footage right after they hear, they walk out, they're in Wales, they've listened to the Maharishi, they get the news that Brian's died and bright, bright lights and a camera and you can watch this footage. They are completely traumatized.

Speaker 2:[I don't know what to say. You know, we've only just heard and it's hard to think of things to say, but he was just a beautiful fellow, you know? And it's terrible.]

[What are your plans now? Well, we haven't made any. I mean, it's only just, we've only just heard.]

[That was kind of stunning because we were off on this sort of finding the meaning of life and there he was dead.]

Speaker 1:And much later, John said, I knew then we'd had it. This was the guy who kept everything together and he's gone. And particularly traumatic, I think, for John and probably Paul too because they had both lost key figures of their life. You know, as kids, they had lost their moms.

You can see in that footage that they are dumbstruck. The interviewer says to them, you know, what did the Maharishi say? And John's way, he basically gave us these platitudes and John at this level isn't saying their platitudes.

Speaker 2:[I understand that this afternoon, Maharishi conferred with you all. Could I ask you what advice he offered you?]

[He told us not to get overwhelmed by grief and to whatever thoughts we have of Brian, to keep them happy because any thoughts we have of him will travel to him wherever he is.]

Speaker 1:But you can see that already, John is not the kind of person probably who's going to think that the Maharishi is the guy to replace Brian in his life. I mean, you said that John will ultimately say this is where it all ends. I mean, let's explore that a bit further.

Speaker 2:Yeah, they're at a crossroads now. And it's funny, there'd always been probably some chafing against Brian and his suits and they had probably at times chafed at some of his ideas and concepts. But then when he's gone, I think they probably realized how much he had held them all together.

Speaker 1:And you said in the first half that the Beatles are very good at not going off on kind of mad lunatic journeys that turn out to be disasters. But actually that is what they do in the wake of Brian's death. Because Paul, who almost by default is kind of stepping up to play the managerial role, says, well, why don't we go on a kind of groovy road trip around Britain? It could be a magical mystery tour.

[The magical mystery tour is waiting to take you away.][Waiting to take you away.]

And again, it's this kind of idea of traditional British culture that you get on a bus and you go off to Blackpool or something combined with people claiming to be walruses and such like. So it's a kind of fusion of the psychedelic and the kind of seaside, but it's an absolute disaster.

Speaker 2:Well, I think one of the problems is that the Beatles are very confident people because when they've had to try things and do things, they're extremely highly competent. They haven't had a failure, but now they extend it to how hard could it be to direct and make a cohesive film.

And I think Paul gets on the floor and he has a giant sheet of paper and he draws a circle. And then his way of creating the movie is, I think, just to section off parts of the circle and arrows. I mean, I like it.

Speaker 1:Yeah, he would say, it has great moments in it. He would say, look, it was shot in color. It was aired by the BBC on Boxing Day and in black and white on little screens. That's not the way it was meant to be seen. And it holds up if you really look at it.

And there are a bunch of good things in it, but at the time it's seen as a disaster. It gets panned by the critics. People think the Beatles have lost their minds. It's another big bump in the road for them, but I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't put it in their way terminal.

Speaker 2:Not at all. And I think the I Am A Walrus sequence, one of John's great songs, kind of ends up with King Lear muttering in the background.

Speaker 1:Oh, I love it. And they're all goo-goo-goo-jooing in the background. And it's, I think, one of their great moments.

Speaker 2:I love the video they made in Magical Mystery Tour for I Am The Walrus. They seem to be at some kind of military complex. And it looks like they spent all of seven minutes setting up the scene with a piano and impromptu goofy masks and bald cap wigs that are just applied with no glue. But it's fun and it's them having fun and goofing around, which is infectious.

Speaker 1:So the goofing around, that's been fundamental to the Beatles right from the very beginning, right back to the days of the Quarrymen or whatever. What is slightly newer is the idea of very earnestly going off and getting enlightenment in the Himalayas, which is what then happens early in 1968, isn't it?

And the Maharishi reappears because he's got a kind of a big place out in Rishikesh. And he says, come on out and sit at my feet. Learn wisdom.

Speaker 2:When the Maharishi died several years ago, someone wrote a really thoughtful piece, which said, he's an important part of the Beatles story because after Brian's death, they've all had it. They're fraying. Their lives are chaotic. And they do a very unusual thing for the biggest stars on earth. They go to a retreat. They don't bring electric guitars. They bring these acoustic guitars, I think these Martin guitars, and they sit around. And there's quiet and peace. And there's nothing to do except chant. And they start writing songs. And essentially most of the White Album was written during that period.

Like anything else, they take a moment and they make it work to their advantage. So even though they didn't find enlightenment and spirituality, they wrote a ton of songs they might not have written otherwise.

Speaker 1:Well, they kind of respond in different ways, don't they? So Ringo has gone out with baked beans. He has a suitcase filled with Heinz baked beans.

Speaker 2:Because of his stomach. He's worried about his stomach.

Speaker 1:Paul is, I mean, he's kind of into it and kind of not really. John has a massive bust up, I feel. And he writes an excoriation of the Maharishi, which he titles Sexy Sadie. He's worried about whether the Maharishi will be too cross with him or whatever.

Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of people don't know Sexy Sadie, the original title was Maharishi. They made it a song. It's almost as if lawyers showed up and said you have to change that.

[You'll get yours yet.]

Yeah, originally it was Maharishi, you'll get yours yet. And it was the other Beatles saying, let's think of another title.

Speaker 1:Yeah, he didn't want to look like anyone had made a fool of him. So he's very angry and rejects it completely. Yet another of the many songs that emerges from that period. And as you say, it goes on to the White Album.

And I suppose two things to say about the White Album. First is it's white. I mean, it's not actually called the White Album, is it? It's called the Beatles. But it's such a deliberate contrast with the kind of technicolor of Sgt. Pepper, just this white album. And the other thing is that it's a double album because they kind of feel we've got so many songs, we want to put it all on.

I know that George Martin later regretted that. What do you think? Do you think it should have been just a brilliant single album? Or do you have room for Revolution Nine?

Speaker 2:I say let the Beatles be the Beatles. And so I know George Martin thought, oh, it should just be one perfectly produced album, not a double album. But I'm on the Paul side of that. He says this in the anthology. He says, you know, people say maybe it could have been this or it could have been that. And maybe there's some songs in there that are too many. And he said, oh, come on, it's the Beatles. It's the White Album.

Speaker 2:[You know, I'm not a great one for that. You know, maybe it was too many of that. I mean, it was great. It's old. It's the bloody Beatles. White Album, shut up.]

Speaker 1:The Beatles still have so many great songs left in them. And particularly, I guess, Paul does. Because by this point, John is starting to become increasingly disenchanted with his identity as a Beatle. And it's kind of fueled, I guess, by a couple of things. One is that he's starting to get seriously into heroin, which is obviously quite a drag on one's creativity. But the other thing is that he's got a new woman in his life, hasn't he? So he was married to Cynthia, but by 1968, no longer.

Speaker 2:Yeah, John has met this artist, Yoko Ono, and he's infatuated with her. And this is, obviously many people say, well, this is what ended up breaking up the Beatles. But I think that's not true. People always want to blame somebody for something that I think would have happened anyway. So no, I don't think Yoko broke up the Beatles. She certainly creates strain in some of the recording sessions.