Chapter 52: Two of Us (May - August 1977)

5-8 May 1977

John Lennon, 1977.

The following is excerpted from John Lennon's autobiography, Nowhere Man[1], originally published under Apple Books, July 1990:

"There was one weekend in particular that I don't think we will ever forget. Madeline and I had just had little Freddie, George, Ringo and I (George especially) had mended fences with Paul after nearly five years of bitching in the press, and we even had a reunion as the Beatles. But we never really put out a proper reunion album for our fans, something that would eat at us for the rest of the 70s.

Paul was very much busy recording and touring with Smile, George and Ringo had reformed once again to play with the Dark Horses, and that left me to spend time with my family, something I never had the chance to do back when the Beatles were a worldwide sensation. The constant touring and recording in the 60s meant that I had little time to spend with Julian, and it was after getting divorced from Yoko that I was able to get to know Julian better. Even more so now that I had dual citizenship between America and England.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Less than two months ago, Maddy had appeared on stage for a musical called She Loves Me as Amalia Balash, for a limited run of performances at The Town Hall in the Big Apple[2]. Having seen a performance myself, as well as having roles in Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, (Maddy would soon be appearing in Mel Brooks' next film, his fourth under Apple Films, High Anxiety) it got me interested in having a part-time acting career, be it on film or on stage. Ringo had taken up acting himself, as had David Bowie with The Man Who Fell to Earth.

So... maybe it could work out for me too? Also, I wanted an excuse to get out of the house every now and again.

'What should be the first thing I ought to know about acting performances?' I asked Maddy. 'How does it differ from performing music on stage?'

'Erm... probably not that different,' Maddy shrugged. 'I mean, you get on stage, say your lines and all. I'm... sorry i-if that-that wasn't the best advice I can offer...'

'No, no, it's fine. I'll take it,' I said. 'D'you think the transition from performing music to just performing would be easy? I have been doing it for quite a while.'

'Yeah, you have,' Maddy agreed. 'Acting, playing music, or even a simple reading, it's all in the performance.' My wife was right; being an actor or musician isn't that difficult. I'd starred in Dick Lester's How I Won the War a decade ago, and after that, I did Alice in Wonderland with the rest of the Beatles. Then when the 70s rolled around, I appeared in Willy Wonka and Blazing Saddles before landing the starring role of Young Frankenstein, and that was when I understood that being an actor's not that different from being a musician. It's all a matter of performance. Being around Maddy, Mel, Gene, etc. during production of the latter two probably helped as well.

Anyone can do it; all you need is to understand and know what you're doing.

Madeline Kahn as Victoria Brisbane in High Anxiety, released Christmas 1977. The film was Mel Brooks' fourth to be produced with Apple Films, with his contract being extended from three to five following the success of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein in 1974.

'But what's all that got to do with a particular weekend that I mentioned? Well, it was during that conversation between me and Maddy that I brought up the topic of dropping Paul and Linda a surprise visit. Not surprisingly, she was in favor of the idea; I knew how close she and Linda had gotten over the past year, especially over Christmas 1976. Had I still been with Yoko, she would've shot the idea down, but there was a chance that Paul would've come uninvited and I'd have dismissed him, though probably without meaning to be rude. I mean, could you honestly blame a guy for trying to look after their infant child and some guy you've known for twenty years bursts in without prior warning?[3]

Anyway, we made plans to head over to the United Kingdom that May - partially so Maddy and Freddie could see the sights there, partially so I could check in to listen to some recordings by the newest signings to Apple Records, but mostly to give a surprise visit to the McCartneys. We arrived on the fifth to give ourselves a bit of time to acquaint (or reacquaint) ourselves with England, with the intention of arriving at Paul and Linda's home in Scotland on the sixth.

The three of us took a train to Scotland on the morning of the sixth - changing Freddie during station stops, of course - before arriving the rest of the way with Mal Evans driving us.[4] It was getting late in the evening by the time we had arrived at where Paul and his family lived, but I didn't care. Spirits were very high among us, and I was sure that Paul was feeling the same as well.

It was Linda who answered the door, five months pregnant, and with little Stella behind her. She smiled big when she saw Maddy, and Maddy smiled back. The two greeted and hugged each other happily, and Mal and I greeted Linda and little Stella as well. 'Sorry for turning up so late in the day,' said Maddy, 'but do you know where Paul is?'

'I'll get him,' Linda replied. 'Wait here.' She and Stella quickly went back inside to tell Paul about our surprise visit, and it was barely a minute before good old Paulie Macca returned with them to greet us.

'Well, hello there, John,' he smiled warmly, shaking my hand. 'I didn't expect you to turn up this late in the evening.' Paul then went to hug Maddy and gave little Freddie a bit of a stroke on the head.

'I just figured we'd come by to see how you were doing, Paul,' I said.

'Quite well, thank you,' Paul replied. 'Why don't you all come in?' So we did.

It was our first time being at the McCartney household that he had bought back in 1966 when he was dating Jane Asher. Since giving it renovations, I have to say, he and Linda had done a fine job, both inside and out. I could see why he preferred to live in the countryside rather than a big, bustling city like London or New York. It's isolated, private and remote, completely surrounded by grasslands, trees and bushes. He even had a small farm of his own. Quaint, but still had a bit of charm to it."

Paul and Linda McCartney, 1977. That September, they would have their first (and only) son, James McCartney.

The following is excerpted from Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, written and compiled by Barry Miles and originally published under Apple Books, October 1997:

"I was not expecting a visit from John and his family so soon following Freddie's birth, when the Lennons and McCartneys celebrated Christmas together in New York, y'know. They didn't really have to come all the way to Scotland just to see us, but still, it was a nice gesture coming from John. I mean, our friendships were a lot stronger than they had been at the start of the decade, probably even stronger than they'd been since the early days of the Beatles. I think that feeling got even stronger when a few musicians [Syd Barrett, Marc Bolan, Ronnie Van Zant] died in 1977 at a really young age, which made the four of us realize that life was too short to hold onto petty grudges, y'know. We could lose someone at any time and we may never get the chance to make amends before they die.

On the surface, the Lennons' visit wasn't anything special. But dig deeper, and there was a lot more to it. Linda and Madeline, with Heather's help, would look after the kids and sometimes tend to the animals and ride horses. Our wives had grown very close over the past year, y'know, and public would assume that it was because they were married to two of the most famous singer-songwriters in the world. Those who actually know them know that they had a lot more in common than that.

Which left me and John. He was very different from the John Lennon I knew back in 1958, 1964, 1970 or even 1974. He was a rebel growing up in Liverpool, and I was the good kid by comparison, y'know. John had to grow up without his parents being there for him, living with his aunt Mimi, while I always had support from my parents until my mother Mary died when I was fourteen. John losing his mother Julia just as they were repairing their relationship had left a big hole in his heart that had never been completely filled in. He ended up with Yoko, but their relationship fell apart after a few years and then he found Madeline and realized how much she understood him, despite having differing personalities.

John said that he wanted to clean himself up and stay away from drugs of any kind (unless they were medical reasons) and overcome his demons. By the time of the surprise visit to Scotland, John had been over two years sober and had not smoked a joint since that same time. As I had often gotten busted for drug use in the 70s, I realized that I had to stop taking them as well, and I believed that George and Ringo had followed suit as well by the end of the decade. That was perhaps the right thing to do for us, y'know; as we get older, we get wiser too.

Twenty years ago, John and I were aspiring young musicians from Liverpool, but now, come 1977, both of us were happily married - not to each other, y'know! - and with kids of our own. Over that weekend, John and I would sometimes jam on the guitar, and we'd let each other informed on what was happening in our families' lives. I remember particularly when he informed me about how the latest artists under Apple Records were doing and what they were like. He'd even brought copies of some of the new recordings like the Clash, Motörhead, Elvis Costello and Wreckless Eric.

'I can almost hear us on these recordings,' John said after, I think, the eighth song I was presented. 'There's a certain rawness to them that reminds me of our youth in Liverpool. Y'know, before all the egos and the bullshit, they could've come from some cellar in Liverpool or one of our Hamburg shows.'

I could certainly see where John was coming from, y'know; there was a particular rawness that we almost recognized. Maybe a few of them were even covering rock 'n' roll songs from the 50s, the same ones we used to play before our songwriting developed. In fact, it was practically the rise of new wave and punk music during that time that would influence not only my songwriting, but the sound of the next few Smile albums as well.

But all too soon, the visit from the Lennons had come to an end, and they would soon catch a flight back to New York. John and I promised to keep in touch with each other every now and again, and maybe have another jam session together when we have the chance. Who knew when that would be, y'know, and when all four of us would be in the same room again?'

May 27, 1977

The Queen's Medical Center, established 1859.

A Texas-born man, 22 years of age, had recently arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii. Not to take a vacation from a stressful job, but to commit suicide. He was inside a car with the windows rolled up, and with a vacuum cleaner hose attached to the exhaust pipe with the other end inside the car. Some time after the man was discovered unconscious in the car, an autopsy had been performed, confirming that he had inhaled several lungfuls of carbon monoxide. However, it was suspected that he couldn't have been breathing normally; otherwise, he would have woken up by now and survived the suicide attempt. The man must have been talking or singing in the car, taking deep breaths in between his speech, and that must've been what killed him before the hose had melted.[5]

The following day, a woman by the name of Diane Chapman received a call from The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu. The voice on the other end asked her, "Are you the parent or guardian to Mark David Chapman?"

A few days following the shocking announcement of her son's demise, Diane was found dead at her home in Atlanta, Georgia, believed to be a suicide. She was survived by her husband David Chapman and their daughter of fifteen Susan. Some time after the death of his son and wife, in December 1980, David said in an interview that Mark was an avid Beatles fan ever since he had first bought his son the album Meet the Beatles, and even taught him to play guitar. However, since becoming a born-again Christian, Mark had sworn off playing any of the Beatles' music because of what Lennon had said about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus.

When Lennon himself was interviewed following David's comments, he said, "That May, back in 1977, I had a bit of a fright myself with a man I didn't know shooting his gun at me, five bullets going right through me and tearing through my vital organs, and then I just lay there, bleeding to death. I woke up screaming and after telling her that I felt a ghost grab at my soul, Maddy helped me calm down. We both went back to sleep, and by morning, I'd very much forgotten the nightmare I'd had."

"Do you think it was Mark Chapman shooting at you?" the interviewer asked.

Lennon just shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "It had been three years since that terrifying night, and Maddy and I never mentioned it to anyone, nor did I even think about it until now."

15 July 1977

The Dark Horses - Thirty-Three & 1/3

Released: 15 July 1977

Recorded: February - May 1977

Producer: George Harrison, assisted by Glyn Johns

Track listing[6]

Side A

Woman Don't You Cry for Me
Wonderful Tonight
Dear One
Lay Down Sally
This Be Called a Song
Pure Smokey

Side B

It's What You Value
The Core
I'll Still Love You
See Yourself
Peaches and Diesel

With John Lennon now taking full-time responsibility as a househusband - alongside the odd bit of performing - the Ladders were more or less finished. However, it would rise from the ashes as the Dark Horses, being fronted by George Harrison (lead) and Eric Clapton (rhythm) on guitar, along with the ever-faithful Ringo Starr on drums. They were also joined by Vangelis on keyboards and Ronnie Wood on bass guitar; although the latter had been associated with the Rolling Stones since 1974, even becoming part of the band during Red and Black Blues and the subsequent controversial tour, Wood still found time to perform bass duties with Harrison and company.

Recording for the Dark Horses' first album, Thirty-Three & 1/3, began shortly before Harrison's 34th birthday, with his contributions to the album having been written shortly after the release of Between the Lines (two of them, "See Yourself" and "Woman Don't You Cry for Me", had origins as early as 1967 and 1969, respectively). Clapton's contributions were originally intended for a fourth solo album before becoming full-Dark Horses recordings themselves, and both he and Harrison donated a song for Ringo to sing - "This Be Called a Song" and "I'll Still Love You" (a rewrite of "When Every Song is Sung", a track Harrison had given to Ronnie Spector back in 1971). The sessions for the album were largely uneventful, although Harrison was planning to marry his girlfriend, Olivia Arias, later that year.

Thirty-Three & 1/3 was backed by the single "Wonderful Tonight"/"Pure Smokey" a few days before the album's release. The A-side was penned by Clapton about his girlfriend (and Harrison's ex-wife) Pattie Boyd, who had also inspired Harrison's "Something" eight years prior. The single reached #3 in the United States but did not reach any higher than #29 in the United Kingdom. The follow-up singles, "It's What You Value"/"Next Time You See Her" (August 8, #16 US) and "I'll Still Love You"/"Lay Down Sally" (November 7, #28 UK), were not Top 10 hits on either side of the Atlantic.

Shortly after the release of the album, George Harrison and Olivia Arias were married in a private ceremony at the Henley-on-Thames Register Office in England on 6 August 1977, close to his home at Friar Park.[7] Like Harrison's wedding to Pattie Boyd, Paul McCartney served as the best man with Linda as maid of honor. John Lennon, Madeline Kahn and Ringo Starr also turned up at the subsequent party at Friar Park along with Brian Epstein, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall, Peter Brown, Derek Taylor, as well as the Lennon, McCartney and Starkey children (with Cynthia and Maureen coming along too), Harrison's immediate family, and a few other members of British rock or entertainment royalty, including Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd, Vangelis, Ronnie Wood, Klaus Voormann and Michael Palin. The following day, the newly-wed Harrisons began their honeymoon in Hawaii.

Footnotes

1. The title of John Lennon's autobiography his is a reference to Robert Rosen's Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, published 2000 after getting access to Lennon's diaries in 1981. OTL's Nowhere Man was a controversial account of Lennon's last five years up to his murder, contradicting the official view of Lennon as a contended househusband. This was initially brought up in Albert Goldman's controversial Lennon biography, The Lives of John Lennon, in 1988, before being further confirmed twelve years later.
2. Madeline Kahn also starred alongside Barry Bostwick (Georg Nowack), Rita Moreno (Ilona Ritter, reprising the role from the original London run in 1964), George Rose (Zoltan Maraczek) and Laurence Guittard (Steven Kodaly) for She Loves Me in March 1977. John Lennon was still living in New York at the time. As he's married to Madeline in this universe, this remains unaffected, save for John wanting to take acting performances more seriously.
3. This is a reference to what had actually happened when John Lennon and Paul McCartney saw each other in person for the last time on April 25, 1976, the day after Lorne Michaels made a joke offer for the Beatles to reunite on Saturday Night Live.
4. Mal Evans was killed by the Los Angeles police on January 5, 1976 when they mistook an air rifle he was holding for an actual rifle; him being a very tall person probably didn't help Mal's case either. In TTL, with Apple Corps being much stronger, Mal likely got his life together during the first half of the 1970s and became a valuable asset to the company. Also, he was able to publish his book, Living the Beatles Legend, the manuscript of which, in OTL, ended up being lost in the mail following his death. Had it not gotten lost and been published posthumously, it would've been the first book written by a true insider regarding the Beatles.
5. In OTL, Mark David Chapman's suicide attempt failed and made a recovery in hospital. He later then began to work at the hospital part-time before marrying and becoming a security guard. Afterwards, he moved to New York in 1980... and you can very much guess what happened on that fateful day that same year.
6. Tracks are sourced from George Harrison's Thirty-Three & 1/3, Eric Clapton's Slowhand, and Ringo Starr's Ringo's Rotogravure.
7. George Harrison and Olivia Arias were married in September 1978, shortly after the birth of their only son, Dhani. A likely reason for them marrying early would've been good feelings between the Beatles in TTL, particularly between George and Paul.

Author's Comments

First off, I'd just like to say happy (early) 80th birthday to Ringo Starr! Yet he doesn't look eighty if we consider his past history of drug use; he almost looks like he could easily pass for fifty. But here's hoping he and Paul will still be around for new music to come.

This is one of those chapters that's pretty light on alternate albums, instead putting heavy emphasis on the personal lives of the former Beatles in 1977. It was really interesting reading about what Madeline Kahn was up to during that time, especially since she was taking part in a limited performance run of She Loves Me in New York. Also interesting was having large chunks of narrative focusing on the perspectives of John Lennon and Paul McCartney during the unexpected Scotland visit. I dunno if they will be a frequent fixture in the later chapters, but I reckon they'd be fun to do if I did.

And yep, the man infamous for killing John Lennon has finished himself off. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion from the get-go that John would survive past 1980, though he will eventually die, most likely from old age. I guess ten years' worth of butterflies would be enough to shake a few things up, however minor they might be. Fifty years' worth, however, would make the world a lot different from how we see it today!

Album cover for Thirty-Three & 1/3 was designed by Auran.