Fab Four FAQ 2.0
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Fab Four FAQ 2.0 The Beatles’ Solo Years, 1970–1980 Robert Rodriguez An Imprint of Hal Leonard New York Copyright © 2010 by Robert Rodriguez All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review. Published in 2010 by Backbeat Books An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation 7777 West Bluemound Road Milwaukee, WI 53213 Trade Book Division Editorial Offices 19 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10010 Printed in the United States of America Book design by Snow Creative Services Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rodriguez, Robert, 1961– Fab Four FAQ 2.0 : the Beatles’ solo years, 1970–1980 / by Robert Rodriguez. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-87930-968-8 1. Beatles–Miscellanea. 2. Harrison, George, 1943–2001—Miscellanea. 3. Lennon, John, 1940–1980—Miscellanea. 4. McCartney, Paul—Miscellanea. 5. Starr, Ringo–Miscellanea. 6. Rock music—1971–1980—Miscellanea. I. Shea, Stuart. Fab Four FAQ. II. Title. III. Title: Fab Four frequently asked questions 2.0. ML421.B4R63 2010 782.42166092’2—dc22 [B] 2010002244 www.backbeatbooks.com This book is respectfully dedicated to William Powell Lear, who, in 1962, invented the eight-track tape cartridge. Contents Foreword ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii 1 I Don’t Believe in Beatles: 1970 1 2 Now You’re Expecting Me to Live Without You: 7 Pre-Breakup Solo Work 3 I Give to You and You Give to Me: Beatles Helping Beatles 24 4 Got to Pay Your Dues if You Want to Sing the Blues: 1971 41 5 I Really Want to See You: Some Memorable Live Performances 47 6 Help Me Cope with This Heavy Load: Some Stellar Sideman 70 7 What’s It All to You?: 1972 92 8 Just Wishing for Movie Stardom: The Ex-Fabs on Film 98 9 Take a Dose of Rock ’n’ Roll: Compilations, Reissues, and Rarities 117 10 We Fell in Love on the Night We Met: 1973 137 11 The Magic That You Do: Their Best Albums 144 12 I’m Sorry That I Made You Cry: The Worst 178 13 Baby, It Looks Like I’ve Been Breaking Out: 1974 195 14 There Is No End to What We Can Do Together: The Wing Men 202 15 Now That Can Be Done for You: Some Notable Guest Appearances 225 16 I’m Tired of Waking Up on the Floor: 1975 245 17 And You Better Believe It, Baby!: Their #1’s 253 18 And When the Cupboard’s Bare: Their Worst-Charting Singles 274 19 Somebody’s Ringing the Bell: 1976 291 20 So Sgt. Pepper Took You By Surprise: Latter-Day Beatlemania 297 21 Made Me Wish That I’d Stayed Home: The Ex-Fabs on Television 315 22 No Matter Where You Roam, Know Our Love Is True: 1977 338 23 I Won’t Do You No Harm: The Best Unsung John 345 24 It’s Guaranteed to Keep You Alive: The Best Unsung Ringo 355 25 My Desire Is Always to Be Here: 1978 363 26 The Wonder of It All, Baby: The Best Unsung Paul 369 27 I’ll Try My Best to Make Everything Succeed: 379 The Best Unsung George 28 All I’ve Got to Be Is to Be Happy: 1979 389 viii Contents 29 You Gotta Give the Other Fellow Hell: Feuds, Fights, 396 and Bad Behavior 30 Sometimes I Feel Like Going Down: Wives and Lovers 416 31 Why Don’t We Take Off Alone: 1980 428 32 It’s Not Like It Was Before: Some Post-Fab Socializing 436 and Near-Reunions 33 The Green-Eyed Goddamn Straight from Your Heart: 450 The Death of John—December 8, 1980 Selected Bibliography 459 Index 463 Foreword am always amazed at how much there is to the Beatles. In 1968 during our meetings when we were setting up Apple Records, I remember the I four lads talking about the individual roles they would take in the launch of this new and exciting enterprise. A phrase kept repeating itself as each of them entered the conversation until finally I asked them about something I found very amusing in the dialogue. To a man, they never referred to the Beatles in the first person but always as if “the Beatles” was a separate entity from themselves—almost as if they were a band from another planet. When I questioned them about this, they explained that the whole phenomenon had gone beyond them and had actually become more than they could comprehend as a group of guys who made really good music. To look back now on this meeting that took place over forty years ago, it is mind-boggling how they had in essence looked into the future and realized how complex and incredibly astounding what they had created would become. Because I was in that simple place with them, a place where we thought we were just making music and having a good time, I am astounded to this day by just how much there is and was to them. Fab Four FAQ 2.0: The Beatles’ Solo Years, 1970–1980 expands on how intriguing this band, the greatest event in musical history, is, and continues to offer more details of its depths in a very accessible and enjoyable way. It is put together so you can read for minutes or hours and be satisfied. If you are a newcomer and are looking to learn more about aspects of their individual paths, then you will be amazed how much there was to it all. If you have been researching their story for decades and are such an old- timer when it comes to the Beatles that you feel you know everything about them and their music, I challenge you to dig in. You will find things you never knew and also gain deeper insight into the things you did know about. I am not a fact person. I am a feel person. That is why I find this book important. Robert has done the painstaking work and research to bring so many interesting facts to our attention so that people like me can simply x Foreword enjoy the music and the memories without doing our homework. That fact makes me feel good and adds to the wonder of it all. He has worked it out. Ken Mansfield, Former U.S. Manager of Apple Records and author of The Beatles, the Bible, and Bodega Bay; The White Book; and Between Wyomings Introduction I Hope You’re Having Fun elcome back, Beatle people! On a late-summer Saturday in 2009, a suburban Chicago W neighborhood commemorated the end of the season with a block party. It was an astonishingly diverse gathering; excited children, some with infant siblings, played in an inflated bouncy house under the warm gaze of some residents old enough to have witnessed World War II, all within the afternoon shadows of multimillion-dollar McMansions coexisting alongside teardowns on borrowed time. It was a happy celebration, made all the more convivial by the sonic ambience: Beatles 1 blasting through a high-wattage system set up in the street. Without giving the matter a second thought, someone had supplied exactly the right touch for connecting the generations. I realized a lifelong dream in 2007 by, with Stuart Shea, producing a book on the Beatles, one that I had long hoped somebody would write—but no one did. With Fab Four FAQ , we attempted to present a critical history of the group, offering every facet of their story in self-contained chapters that lent themselves to random exploration. That is, readers were invited to pick up and dig in at any point—not necessarily at the beginning—and see where the story led them. Taken in its entirety, the book was always intended to offer an impressionistic accounting of the Beatles’ career that covered just about every aspect that a fan would want to know about. From exchanges with readers both in person and via cyberspace, as well as reviews, I found that we were successful in our goal. My favorite blurb came from one Ari Spool (who is in no way connected to the authors, by the way) of the Seattle Stranger, who opined that “any book that can teach you this much about something you already know a lot about is a very good book.” Mission accomplished (to coin a phrase), right? Well, not really. Because if you are a true fan, the story hardly ends with John, Paul, George, and Ringo clearing out their desks in the spring of 1970 and marching out of Savile Row laden with cardboard boxes contain- ing years of accumulated stuff. Reverberations of their former collective echoed onward for years, while each man individually attempted to reclaim his identity after years of subsuming it to a persona first sketched out in xiv Introduction Introduction A Hard Day’s Night (and amplified, in America at least, in weekly episodes of the Beatles cartoon). For Beatles fans, the 1970s dawned with the heartache of seeing their beloved group in the throes of a bitter, emotional breakup, one frequently likened to a four-way divorce. Most of the antagonism pitted Paul, recently believed to be dead, against the other three. By taking his former bandmates to court, McCartney took the ugly but very necessary step of freeing himself from the stranglehold of Allen Klein, a man whose divisive tactics helped shatter the fragile relations within the ranks at the very moment when the group most needed to stay united.