The Beatles: The British Invasion, with Conan O’Brien (Part 2)

| This episode is available a week early for members of The Rest Is History Club | What happens when fame, drugs, and genius collide? How did the Beatles survive John Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” interview and the death of Brian Epstein? And, why did the band eventually break up? Conan O’Brien returns with Tom to dive into the Beatles’ final years: rooftop gigs, groundbreaking records, and the inner conflicts that defined - and arguably destroyed - the band. The Beatles’ nine-part “Anthology” documentary series has been restored and is now available to watch on Disney+. Thank you to Apple Corps and Disney for the opportunity to use archive from the Anthology in these special Beatles episodes. Hive. Know your power. Visit https://hivehome.com to find out more. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restishistory It's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee ✅ _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editor: Jack Meek / Harry Swan Social Producer: Harry Balden Assistant Producer: Aaliyah Akude Producer: Tabby Syrett Senior Producer: Theo Young-Smith Director: Chris Floyd Cameras: Patrick Acum & Tom Frimley Sound: Ali Pares Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dominic Sandbrook?

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• 0:12Tom Holland?

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• 1:05Tom Holland?

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• 1:17Dominic Sandbrook?

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• 2:02Dominic Sandbrook?

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• 4:18Tom Holland?

  Hello everyone and welcome back to a Rest Is History Beatles themed special. And this is part two. It's the blue album to the red album of part one. We left you on an absolute cliffhanger. John Lennon has made unwise comments about Jesus and provoked outrage in the Bible Belt in the United States. And the problem for him is that the Beatles are due to go on a tour to the United States. So Conan O'Brien, who has replaced Dominic on this show, because Dominic refuses to talk about the Beatles, because Conan, what we didn't perhaps go into in great detail in the first episode was the actual music.

• 5:00Tom Holland?

  And before the Beatles go on the tour that will bring them to America and all the Jesus kerfuffle, they have recorded an album that many now see as their greatest album, Revolver.

• 5:19Tom Holland?

  Are you a particular fan of Revolver?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Huge fan of Revolver. Revolver is very interesting because the Beatles are now recording music that would be very difficult to perform live. And live performance is a huge part of the Beatles' engine. Eleanor Rigby.

• 5:36Tom Holland?

  Tomorrow never knows.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Tomorrow never knows.

• 5:38Tom Holland?

  Which is kind of playing things backwards.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  These are all very difficult, if not impossible. Now it could be done with modern technology, but they've become real recording geniuses and artists and it's taking them in this other direction. So they finished Revolver and enough time has gone by because I think people used to say, well, Sgt Pepper or Abbey Road is their greatest and those are obviously fantastic. But Revolver, I think if you asked one of the Beatles. They might have the greatest fondness for Revolver.

• 6:29Tom Holland?

  And that there's a kind of tension between now what they can do in a studio but not reproduce on a stage and the fact that they are starting to get a bit fed up with touring. Because it's not only that they can't reproduce, you know, the musical effects that they've got on Revolver on stage, it's also the fact that they can't barely hear themselves play.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:47Tom Holland?

  And they know that most people in their audience, because they're all screaming, they can't really hear them either. So that's frustrating.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  We just became like lip syncing, you know, miming. And we didn't, we almost, sometimes things would break down and nobody would know. And so it wasn't, wasn't doing the music any good.

• 7:05Tom Holland?

  And then after they finished Revolver, they go on a world tour and they go to Japan and then they go to the Philippines and they have a kind of awful run in with Imelda Marcos.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:15Tom Holland?

  Famous for her shoe collection.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Yes, I was just there, I was just in the Philippines and I went to the Manila Hotel, which is where the Beatles stayed.

• 7:24Tom Holland?

  But you didn't turn down an invitation to tea with the head of the Philippines.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  I did.

• 7:28Tom Holland?

  And get in trouble.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  I did, and I was bullied at the airport.

• 7:31Tom Holland?

  Like the Beatles were.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Like the Beatles were. I know, that was totally not the Beatles' fault. The Marcoses announced that the Beatles will be appearing at the palace and having tea and then greeting a bunch of children, but no one asked the Beatles. And they're, as you guys would say, knackered.

• 7:47Tom Holland?

  Yeah, they were knackered.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  They were knackered.

• 7:49Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  They just wanted to use the loo and then take a lift. Um, I'll never be invited again, but they, they were tired. They didn't want to do that. They said, no, we're not going to do that. And then, of course, the Marcos family said, this is a terrible snub. And they were in their hotel room watching this all unfold. And then they were hated throughout the Philippines.

• 8:11Tom Holland?

  And there was a kind of real physical threat of, of, of danger.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:15Tom Holland?

  And they kind of, you know, they made it out to their flight and it was all really traumatic. And they left the Philippines, said, we're never going back. And I don't think they ever did, actually. But kind of in a sense, worse was to come because we now come to the way that John Lennon's comments on Christianity was playing out in America. And there's kind of escalating outrage in the Bible Belt. DJs there are inviting people to bring their records and their Beatles wigs and to kind of burn them.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Don't forget to take your Beatle records and your Beatle paraphernalia.

• 8:45Tom Holland?

  To any one of our fourteen pickup points in Birmingham, Alabama. And lots of people are kind of carrying around placards saying, you know, Jesus died for your sins. John Lennon and the Ku Klux Klan are getting in on the act and it's a pretty menacing environment, isn't it?

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:59Tom Holland?

  And when the Beatles land in America and they are asked about this, you can see when John is speaking at the press conference, I mean, he looks traumatized.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, apparently he's a tough guy and he speaks his mind and he's not afraid to back down. But this was traumatic for him and he realizes that he's put the whole thing in jeopardy. And at one point he cries, apparently breaks down crying just with the group and Brian. And says, I, I, I'll do what I have to do to fix this.

• 9:34Tom Holland?

  And he does.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  He does. He gives an apology. It's a, it's a bit of a non apology apology.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  You know, but I'm not saying that we're better or greater or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is, you know, I just said what I said and it was wrong or was taken wrong. And now it's all this.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  But he clarifies his remarks and of course, people that don't like the Beatles won't be satisfied. But it feels like it's enough for them to get to move on.

• 10:03Tom Holland?

  And so they decide after this that they have had enough of touring. And so from this point on, they essentially are going to be meeting in the studio and developing albums of increasing complexity, technological and, and musical. But there is also a sense, isn't there, I think, that what that embroilio in America in nineteen sixty six had kind of revealed was the scale of the cultural rupture that is going on in the sixties between an increasingly kind of countercultural take on religion and the Vietnam War

• 10:43Tom Holland?

  and kind of host of issues and a kind of a conservatism that is still very much there. And there is a real kind of cultural divide starting to widen.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:55Tom Holland?

  And. As you go from nineteen sixty six into nineteen sixty seven, this will become very apparent.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:02Tom Holland?

  Because nineteen sixty seven will be famous for the Summer of Love. And it is the Beatles who provide, in a sense, the soundtrack for that with

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:14Tom Holland?

  two massive, massive kind of musical monuments. The first double A-side, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Penny Lane, there is a bar showing photographs of every head he's had the pleasure to know. And all the people that come and go, stop and say hello.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  On the corner is a banker with a motor car. The little children laughing him behind his back. And the banker never wears a mask in the pouring rain. Very strange. Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes.

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Way up beneath the blue suburban skies, I sit and meanwhile back in Penny Lane.

• 12:15Tom Holland?

  And then their album, Sergeant Pepper.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's important to remember that sixty six were just two years away from Nixon being elected president. And what Nixon reveals and his campaign is that there is a huge part of the United States that isn't down with the kids.

• 12:34Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  And wants no part of it. And through the Beatles, we're starting to see this showing up. And we're going to see it very clearly in two years. But it's one of the reasons they stopped touring. They can't hear themselves. The technology for touring on the Beatles scale was terrible. They're still using these relatively small Vox amps. They, when they play giant stadiums, they're piping it through the public announce address system. So they can't hear themselves, people can't hear them. And I think, I mean, John Lennon always said they were a terrific live band and they got something from that. But now there's no communicating with an audience that size. There's no give and take. So they've got to move on. They take a break.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  After they stop touring, John goes off and makes How I Won the War.

• 13:25Tom Holland?

  That's where he starts wearing his round glasses.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  I guess it was a government issue granny glasses.

• 13:31Tom Holland?

  And that chest glasses, yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  And then Paul does the score for the Family Way, I think. Everyone takes a little bit of a

• 13:38Tom Holland?

  Bit of a breather.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  A little bit of a breather and then they get back together. Paul has an idea and they start working on Sergeant Pepper. But you mentioned that they have this incredible single they put out. An A-side and a B-side, which is Strawberry Fields Forever and then Penny Lane. They were meant to be part of the new album. But because of this demand that there always be new singles, two of the greatest songs the Beatles would ever make are put on an A and a B-side and put out and now can't be on the album. Which today people would say, well, that's silly. Put it on the album too. But they were very strict about that.

• 14:20Tom Holland?

  You mentioned how Nixon in America is lurking in the wings. And it would be remiss of me at this point not to ventriloquize Dominic, whose great point is that Sergeant Pepper will be outsold by The Sound of Music in 1967. Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, which lots of critics have said is the kind of cultural pinnacle of post-war British achievement. I think without a doubt, the greatest single the Beatles ever released. It's their first one for, you know, eons not to become number one. And it's kept off the top spot by Engelbert Humperdinck. So they're not having it all their way, but it is a transcendent achievement, isn't it? And it takes them back to Liverpool.

• 15:04Tom Holland?

  So both Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields are locations in Liverpool.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think Strawberry Fields Forever might be my favorite Beatles song.

• 15:15Tom Holland?

  Penny Lane for me with the trumpet. But I mean, they're both so incredible.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  They also show you both sides of this incredible songwriting team and they're perfection.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  And so, this is how good the Beatles have become. You take these two songs and you don't even put them on the watershed album Sergeant Pepper. You take them off and issue them as a single. That would be unheard of today.

• 16:22Tom Holland?

  I mean, the only track I think that transcends it is "Day in the Life",

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:26Tom Holland?

  which is the last song on Sergeant Pepper and perfectly fuses the best of John and Paul.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:35Tom Holland?

  And is designed to be a kind of overwhelming symphonic experience. They, here we are in Abbey Road. They invited, you know, vast orchestra to come in and play all kinds of mad tunes and, you know, crashes out and you're left with this incredible silence which continues on the album. And it's all very groovy and it's all very countercultural. And you do get the sense with Sergeant Pepper that the Beatles are starting to, as the Queen put it, go a bit odd. So it's not just that the music is more radical and edgy and kind of exploring new ways of developing. But they're all, you know, the facial hair is starting to develop and the hair is getting even longer.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Yes, I know that you and Dominic have beard obsessions and the beards start to show up, the mustaches and soon beards. But it's a concept album. It really isn't. They, Paul had this idea that it would be a whole album done by a fictional band called Sergeant Pepper's. But they stick with that idea for maybe one or two songs.

• 17:41Tom Holland?

  They give up.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  And then they give up, but it doesn't matter. It's really about that amazing cover.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  It's called the first concept album. It doesn't go anywhere. Mr. Kite, all my contributions have absolutely nothing to do with this idea of Sergeant Pepper and his band. But it works because we said it worked and that's how it appeared.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  They're dealing now with their work as real art. To own that album is to own a piece of art.

• 18:37Tom Holland?

  And it's seen as exemplifying the summer of love and this kind of this radical developments that are taking place in San Francisco, particularly Hayth Ashbury, as well as in kind of Carnaby Street and Swinging London. And there is a track on Sergeant 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, who'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.

• 19:21Tom Holland?

  That is also part of the excitement for people who are listening to Sergeant Pepper of what is going on, isn't it? The sense that new opportunities are opening up.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  There's this new idea that drugs can can provide all these positive benefits.

• 19:36Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  And this is, you know, a number of years before we start losing people.

• 19:40Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  To drugs. And John tends to overdo things. So he goes.

• 19:46Tom Holland?

  He's all in.

• 19:46Speaker 02

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

• 20:04Speaker 04

  That I actually took John up into the roof when he was having an LSD trip, not knowing what it was.

• 20:11Tom Holland?

  Paul takes LSD because John is out of his face and he wants to kind of accompany John in his, you know, this terrible kind of experience. So I just find a kind of very touching, moving illustration of their friendship.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  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 and of course, John is so influenced already by Alice in Wonderland imagery.

• 20:41Tom Holland?

  So that's, 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, I mean, 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.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  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 music hall, music structure, production, fine production. They're rooted in all these things that help give them ballast, even though, yes, they're

• 21:50Speaker 02

  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.

• 21:56Tom Holland?

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

• 22:21Speaker 04

  I mean, everywhere we went, people were...

• 22:24Speaker 05

  Um, smiling and, you know, sitting on lawns, drinking tea, you know, festivals of music and stuff. I mean, you know, that summer of love, a lot of that was bullshit. Really was all what the press was saying.

• 22:38Tom Holland?

  And so he wants to explore alternative ways of attaining enlightenment. And by a great good fortune, um, he is put in touch with a guy called the Maharishi, Mahesh Yogi, who has just turned up in London.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:54Tom Holland?

  And George persuades the other Beatles and Mick Jagger and Marion Faithfull to get on a train with the Maharishi and go to Bangor in Wales. So what's your take on the Maharishi?

• 23:04Speaker 02

  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.

• 23:25Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  They all go together. Of course, Cynthia misses the train, which is very symbolic.

• 23:30Tom Holland?

  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.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there's footage, right after they hear, they walk out, they're in Wales. They've listened to the Maharishi, they 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.

• 24:01Speaker 05

  Well, 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.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  What are your plans now?

• 24:12Speaker 05

  Well, we haven't made any, you know. I mean, it's only just, we only just heard.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  That was kind of stunning because we were off on this sort of.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Brian and the meaning of life and there he was dead. And much later, John said, I knew then we'd had it. That 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.

• 24:39Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  You know, as kids, they had lost their moms. You can see in that footage that they are dumbstruck.

• 24:46Tom Holland?

  The interviewer says to them, you know, what did the Maharishi say? And John's way, he basically gave us these platitudes.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:54Tom Holland?

  And John, at this level, isn't pointing, isn't saying their platitudes.

• 24:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  I understand that this afternoon Maharishi conferred with you all. Could I ask you what he, what advice he offered you?

• 25:05Speaker 03

  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, have of him will travel to him, wherever he is.

• 25:18Tom Holland?

  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.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:27Tom Holland?

  In his life. I mean, you said that John will ultimately say this is where it all ends. Let's explore that a bit further.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:32Tom Holland?

  After a break.

• 25:37Dominic Sandbrook?

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• 26:42Dominic Sandbrook?

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• 27:03Tom Holland?

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• 27:19Dominic Sandbrook?

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• 28:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Rest is History, our Beatles-themed extravaganza with Conan O'Brien. And Conan, we left the Beatles traumatised by the loss of Brian Epstein, their manager, for so long, and kind of asking themselves, well, what does the future hold?

• 28:43Speaker 02

  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, you know, 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.

• 29:04Tom Holland?

  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.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:12Tom Holland?

  But actually, that is what they do.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:14Tom Holland?

  In the wake of Brian's death.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:15Tom Holland?

  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.

• 29:55Tom Holland?

  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.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  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, to just section off parts of the circle and arrows.

• 30:42Tom Holland?

  I mean, I like it.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  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.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  It's another big bump in the road for them, but I shouldn't say that.

• 31:30Tom Holland?

  In their way, terminal.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Not, not at all.

• 31:32Tom Holland?

  I think the "I Am the Walrus" sequence, one of John's great songs, kind of ends up with King Lear muttering in the background.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean.

• 31:40Tom Holland?

  And they're all goo goo goo doing in the background. And it's, I think, one of their great moments.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  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, so.

• 32:10Tom Holland?

  So the goofing around, that's been fundamental to the Beatles, right from the very beginning, right back to the days of The Quarryman 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, he's got a kind of a big place out in Rishikesh. And he says, "Come on, you know, come on out and sit at my feet, learn wisdom."

• 32:40Speaker 02

  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.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  So even though they didn't find enlightenment and spirituality, they wrote a ton of songs they might not have written otherwise.

• 33:32Tom Holland?

  Well, they kind of respond in different ways, don't they? So Ringo has gone out with baked beans.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  He has a suitcase filled with Heinz baked beans.

• 33:39Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Because of his stomach.

• 33:40Tom Holland?

  He's worried about his stomach.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:41Tom Holland?

  Paul is... I mean, he's kind of into it and kind of not really.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:46Tom Holland?

  John has a massive bust up. I feel, you know, and he writes an excoriation of the Maharishi, which he titles Sexy Sadie. He's worried about, you know, whether the Maharishi will be too cross with him or whatever. For George, Indian spirituality opens up entire, you know, portals through which he goes and will never come back. I mean, it's a massive, massive experience for him. A life-changing experience.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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.

• 34:19Tom Holland?

  You'll get yours yet.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was originally, it was Maharishi, You'll Get Yours Yet. And it was the other Beatles saying, let's think of another title. Yeah, he, you know, didn't want to look like anyone had made a fool of him. So he's very angry and rejects it completely.

• 34:33Tom Holland?

  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 Sergeant 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. Do you, what do you think? Do you think it should have been just a brilliant single album? Or do you have room for Revolution Nine?

• 35:12Speaker 02

  I say let the Beatles be the Beatles. And so I know George Martin thought 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.

• 35:35Tom Holland?

  You know, I'm not a great one for that, you know, maybe. It was too many of that. What do you mean? It was great. It's sold. It's the bloody Beatles. Why is album shut up? 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. Yeah. 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 nineteen sixty eight, no longer.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  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.

• 36:43Tom Holland?

  So I've, I've actually been in a bag. The Tate Modern here in London did a show of Yoko's art two or three years ago. There's an opportunity to get in a bag, and we went in a bag, did a happening.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Okay, I hate to top you. I've been in a bag with Yoko. Yoko came on the show and she surprised me with the bag. And she thought that I'd be too uptight to get into it with her. But of course, being a terrible ham, I said, absolutely, we both got in the bag.

• 37:10Tom Holland?

  And you're quite tall. Was the bag big enough?

• 37:13Speaker 02

  It was big enough. It was an extra large bag. I take an XXL in a bag. But I got into the bag with Yoko and then she, we were inside and there's a stu-, live studio audience. And she said, what do we do now? She said, well, that's it. Now we just get out of the bag and go to commercial. I said, no, Yoko, we have to do something because that's the comedy rule. So I start handing my clothes out of the bag. And then we emerged from the bag. I didn't take everything off, but I took, I think her, I think I took up an article of her clothing and put it on, which looked absurd.

• 37:43Tom Holland?

  Because Yoko had a thing where people would cut her clothing off, didn't she? I mean, it's quite something to have been in a bag with Yoko. I mean, do you feel one of the great moments of your life or?

• 37:54Speaker 02

  It's the greatest moment of my life and I have been at the birth of both of my children. So I'm a sociopath.

• 38:02Tom Holland?

  You're a big- You're a fan of Yoko's art.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, the saddest thing to me about this period are the clips I see where you can tell John is impaired, he's on heroin or trying to come off heroin, and it makes me sad.

• 38:16Tom Holland?

  That kind of been, I think, a kind of gentleman's agreement among the police, that it was fine to arrest the Rolling Stones for drug offenses, but you leave the Beatles alone. That sense is starting to fade by now, and John and Yoko are arrested and George is arrested. So there's a sense that the Beatles are becoming fair game now.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  There was a hierarchy in the pop world.

• 38:40Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Beatles are on top, then the Rolling Stones, then the Who, Kinks way at the bottom, Herman's Hermits. But now things are changing. You can arrest a Beatle. You can arrest a Beatle and charge them.

• 38:51Tom Holland?

  So Paul, meanwhile, he is still very keen on being a Beatle, keeping the Beatles on track. And his response to John's breakup with Cynthia is to drive down to Weybridge from London to see Cynthia and John and Cynthia's son, Julian. And he writes one of the great Beatles singles.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, Hey Jude.

• 39:17Tom Holland?

  Hey Jude.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:18Tom Holland?

  They play it live on David Frost Show, and it's their kind of first live performance for a very long while.

• 39:24Speaker 04

  My pleasure to introduce now in their first live appearance for goodness knows how long in front of an audience, the Beatles.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  Hey Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better. Hey Jude, don't be afraid. You were made to go out and get her. The minute you let her run to you.

• 40:23Tom Holland?

  And also, it's inordinately long, isn't it? So that's another kind of Beatles first.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  It breaks all these rules. No track has been that long. And at the time, someone said by that point, people thought, well, the Beatles have had it. And then Hey Jude comes out and it's a massive, massive hit.

• 40:42Tom Holland?

  And there's this amazing account of how Paul has the tapes and he's kind of driving through the English countryside and they're going back to London. They want to have, you know, take a break and they arrive in this picture perfect village and there's a pub and the pub is open and Paul goes in there and he plays Hey Jude on the piano for people there and then he plays the track and people will always remember it. Yeah, it was one of the kind of examples of Beatles magic that you're just sitting in a pub and suddenly Paul McCartney walks in and plays Hey Jude for you. That sense that that magic is still there is obviously a kind of powerful motivator for Paul, but also for the other Beatles as well. And so they are prepared to listen to him when he proposes that they get back.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:28Tom Holland?

  That they they get back to kind of be, you know, doing live shows, the footage that got taken of those sessions.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:34Tom Holland?

  Which were kind of often seen as being very difficult and troubled. Peter Jackson kind of took the footage, didn't he? And made it into this incredible film.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:44Tom Holland?

  Where you can actually witness the process of songs being made.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  I mean, a lot of things I loved about Get Back.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Just, I'm a geek, so getting to see all the equipment, how it really worked is fascinating. But basically, the greatest thing is seeing these guys together and they're still making each other laugh. You get glimpses of the process.

• 42:07Tom Holland?

  There are so many bits in it I loved, but I loved the bit where, so Paul by now is with Linda.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 42:12Tom Holland?

  Who he will end up marrying.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 42:14Tom Holland?

  The most eligible bachelor in the world will get hitched to Linda. And Linda and Yoko are talking and in the background, Paul is composing Get Back.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:23Tom Holland?

  And it's like kind of watching, I don't know, Michelangelo think, oh, I don't know, should I have Adam and God and their fingers tied? Maybe, I don't know.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  He's in the background, yeah.

• 42:31Tom Holland?

  It's so, it's so brilliant. But also, it's the fact that that all of them look so cool. I mean, George, George just looks brilliantly cool in it.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  They're all so, just little. Little fun things. I don't know what time of day it is, but Mao will say, "Does anyone want anything?" And they'll all want some wine or beer.

• 42:49Tom Holland?

  Cup of tea.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's always a lot of toast. You're like, "This is the biggest band in the world." And they've got, you know, there's not a bowl of cocaine, it's toast.

• 42:57Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  It's all very British.

• 42:59Tom Holland?

  Although you can see that John is really not well. Of the four of them, John is, is the one who's most kind of faded at that point. Although, they were very keen to have a kind of spectacular climax to this process of filming.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:12Tom Holland?

  Um, and so there was talk about doing them on a cruise ship or doing it in a Roman amphitheater in Africa. But then they, they, they haven't really got the energy for any of this. And so they decide that they will have a rooftop concert, um, on the Apple Building in Savile Row.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  But there's hemming and hawing up until the moment. This is where Peter Jackson's documentary is so great. He lets you know that they're still in a back room as the equipment's all set up and they're ready to go on the rooftop, they're still deciding whether or not they're gonna come out.

• 43:40Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Because at this point, they have so many wounds from traveling and knowing what the spectacle was all about. They've been just living in a hobbit hole, engineering these great sounds. Why go out there and expose ourselves? So it's amazing when they come out.

• 45:10Tom Holland?

  And, you know, all of London gathers on the streets below and then the police come and stop the fun. And actually, that's kind of, you know, a perfect way for the film to end.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was some disappointment. I think Paul really wanted them, or George, or Ringo. They really wanted the police to grab them and physically arrest them off. Because that would be a better ending to the film. There's a part in it that's very sad to me, which is they're all, they're sitting in four chairs. And Peter Sellers comes in. Do you remember this part? Peter Sellers comes in and says, hello, fellas. Five years before, they had met Peter Sellers, and it was one of the biggest thrills of their life. And they're young and they're excited. Now, it's the number of years later, and John's on heroin, and they're tired.

• 45:57Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  And they're all sitting in four chairs like mannequins.

• 46:02Tom Holland?

  Separate.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  For some reason, that segment, I think John makes a joke about, watch out for the needles on the floor. He makes a heroin joke to Peter Sellers.

• 46:09Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  It's just starting to, the milk is starting to curdle a little.

• 46:12Tom Holland?

  Yeah, and adding to the stress is the fact that they're now supposed to be a business. So I mentioned the Apple building in Savile Row. This is the headquarters for a groovy new company that the Beatles have set up as a kind of tax dodge. And they've set it up in a very 1960s hope that you get rid of the pigs and the man and the capitalists. And just let groovy people like Magic Alex, a Greek engineer, come up with lunatic schemes and everything will be great.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  He can make a studio that levitates.

• 46:44Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 05

  Hello, I'm Alexis from Apple Electronics. I would like to say hello to all my brothers around the world and to... To all the girls around the world and to all the electronic people around the world.

• 47:00Tom Holland?

  Apple, basically, they're saying, come in and rip us off. And so loads of people do come and rip them off. And so they've got money problems as well as all the other issues that are going on. Tensions over music, tensions over drugs, tension over, you know, their respective spouses. And now money, and money's probably the kind of the biggest thing.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:21Tom Holland?

  Because Paul wants his father-in-law, so Linda's father, to run their finances for them. And the other three want a guy called Alan Klein. I mean, he seems quite a kind of New York figure, quite a New York character.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think thuggish is one word people might use. I think the Rolling Stones felt they had had a good experience with him. John hears about this tough guy who can come in and get you a better royalty rate. He's all down. It's actually in Get Back. John's had a meeting with him and he goes and he says to George, I mean, I feel, I think he knows me as well as you do or better, George. I mean, can you imagine George hearing this? He's been, he's been with John since nineteen fifty-seven, fifty-eight. And now John's had one meeting.

• 48:07Tom Holland?

  Yeah, well, that one, George walks out.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  I'll see you in the clubs.

• 48:10Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  And he walks out. They get him back in, but there's a lot of bad feeling now. And again, this is all part and parcel of Magical Mystery Tour. Hey, how hard could it be to make a movie? You know, the Apple boutique, how hard could it be to make a shop and sell groovy clothes? Apple Music, how hard could it be to just get rid of the obstacles and let groovy people be groovy?

• 48:32Tom Holland?

  Stick it to the man.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and without accepting that maybe what made the Beatles great were hurdles and obstacles and or added to their greatness. So there's a lot of naivete at this point.

• 48:46Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  It all seems kind of fun now, but I think they're pretty miserable.

• 48:49Tom Holland?

  So John has gone off and he's got married to Yoko in Gibraltar in Spain.

• 49:15Tom Holland?

  He's recorded Give Peace a Chance with the Plastic Ono Band. So there's a sense there of John looking to a musical future.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:25Tom Holland?

  After the Beatles.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  An off-ramp.

• 49:27Tom Holland?

  And with Yoko, he is now very into taking kind of radical positions on Vietnam. Because I think he, he had recorded a track called Revolution and he'd sung two versions of it. And he said, you can count me out, you can count me in. And he decided to go with You Can Count Me Out and felt embarrassed about that. And so he, political activism is something that he's getting increasingly into. You can see kind of a new career direction for him with Yoko. And they've got all these money issues and arguments. And so it looks as if it's all over. But then there is one last glorious hurrah, isn't there? And we are sat here in Abbey Road.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:09Tom Holland?

  I embarrassed you, but I also embarrassed myself by getting you to pose on the Zebra Crossing outside, which of course is the cover of the album Abbey Road.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I only objected because I'm the last person alive to not pose. And now you made me do it.

• 50:26Tom Holland?

  I'm so sorry.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  It's okay.

• 50:27Tom Holland?

  I'm so sorry.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  It's okay.

• 50:28Tom Holland?

  But Abbey Road, are you a, a fan of Abbey Road?

• 50:31Speaker 02

  Of course, yeah. Abbey Road is fantastic. And again, I don't think Let It Be should have been the last album.

• 50:39Tom Holland?

  No, it's such a downer, isn't it compared to?

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:42Tom Holland?

  To Abbey Road.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  There's great songs on Let It Be and it, and Let It Be was, again, the Beatles being part of something that was really happening, which is there was music like The Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival that were stripping it all back, stripping it down, going the other way. So that's what they're doing. They're playing very stripped down.

• 51:00Tom Holland?

  Well, they're getting back, aren't they?

• 51:01Speaker 02

  They're getting back, as it were. Yeah, they're getting back. And so that's great, but it's not the heroic ending they should have.

• 51:08Tom Holland?

  Well, it kind of muddies the water, doesn't it? Because it, the songs on Get Back are recorded during the Get Back sessions and it's then released as their final album. But actually, the last time that they're in the studio creating an album is with Abbey Road. I think the moment on Abbey Road that I find the most moving and the, and, well, it's sad, but it's also. Triumphantly moving is You Never Give Me Your Money, which is Paul singing about you only give me your funny papers. It's a sense I'm bogged down in paperwork and arguments over finance and cash. And you see there the kind of the horror of the Beatles breakup. And then it's such a kind of classic Paul moment where he suddenly, you know, I'll hang this, we're off and the kind of music soars and they're off on a kind of journey.

• 52:02Tom Holland?

  It's a move that Paul does again and again in his songs where you're down and then you free yourself. That for me is the moment in Abbey Road that it's it's an album that is taking wing after you thought that the feathers were tarred forever.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  I was lucky enough to be in the audience for the Saturday Night Live 50th and I had seats that were way off to the side. So for all of the live sketches, I had a pretty good view, but not the best. And then I realized, oh, wait a minute, here comes Paul McCartney to close the show with the final track on Abbey Road. And I'm sitting right there. I'm in the perfect spot.

• 52:46Tom Holland?

  Her Majesty.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  No, not Her Majesty. Yes, not them. Okay, you're gonna be literal. Where they're trading guitar solos and I got to watch Paul McCartney do that. Yeah, out of body experience to see him do that and also know that they ended on a perfect note. And I think there are people that moan about how the Beatles could have gone on into the seventies. But I think one of the things that makes them a true rarity in show business is their timing was impeccable always. And they ended on this beautiful note and then never came back. And that's that's one of the reasons that we are still talking about them today.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  I intend to hang around show business, I already have, long after I've served my purpose. To an embarrassing degree, they timed it perfectly.

• 53:38Tom Holland?

  Do you think also that the news that the Beatles are breaking up comes out in 1970? So in a sense, the association of the Beatles with the 1960s is absolutely cemented by the fact that they don't survive into the next decade. And do you think that's kind of important part in framing the memory of them, the understanding of them, that they're associated so indelibly with everything that made the 60s kind of vivid and technicolor?

• 54:09Speaker 02

  I brought up this concept of luck early on. None of this is planned. Think about how short a decade is to us now. At this stage in my life, a decade is so quick. They are in 1960, 61, just really getting started. And in 1969, at the end of the year, they're finishing it up. And that wasn't planned, but like so many things with them, it's what happened and it was perfect. Yes. In history books, 500 years from now, there'll be, if there's a section on the 60s and there are only three photographs, one of them is going to be of the Beatles.

• 54:49Tom Holland?

  So do you think that people will still be listening to the Beatles in 500 years?

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. You know, this is with the caveat that we're all still here in 500 years. Hate to be a downer, but one never knows.

• 55:02Tom Holland?

  So unless we're destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, people probably won't.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Or I'm tending more towards alien invasion. Oh, the aliens will love the music, but we won't be there anymore. They'll ship us off to a colony on Ryze Act 7.

• 55:14Tom Holland?

  So this episode is spiraling off in a direction that I hadn't anticipated.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  No, that's my favorite thing is to take something, unlike the Beatles, I like to take something that is pretty perfect and then ruin it.

• 55:24Tom Holland?

  Not at all.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  With my mad babblings.

• 55:28Tom Holland?

  It's starting to get a bit Plastico no band.

• 55:31Speaker 02

  So that can be good, too.

• 55:33Tom Holland?

  That is, I think, the perfect way to end this episode. The 60s are over, the 70s are dawning, Plastico no band is waiting, Wings are waiting, All Things Must Pass are waiting, Photograph, Ringo's great hit, is waiting. So it's certainly not over for the constituent parts of the Beatles, but the Beatles as a band are over. And I think on that note, I should thank you very, very much for joining me here in Abbey Road to talk about The Beatles.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Well, I think I've made it clear Rest is History is my favorite podcast. So when I got the call, would you be on Rest is History at the studio where your favorite band and your obsession recorded their songs? That's a trip I had to make.

• 56:17Tom Holland?

  And you said that you were quite keen to be on The Rest is History, but only with one of us because you wanted to make the other one jealous.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Well, next time it'll be just Dominic and we'll be doing Beards of the Civil War.

• 56:28Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  And you will have to stew alone on your estate while we two yuck it up.

• 56:35Tom Holland?

  Dominic is left to reflect on the error of his ways.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:40Tom Holland?

  If only he'd been a little more enthusiastic about The Beatles, he could have been here too.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Or if he had understood anything about music.

• 56:44Tom Holland?

  Yeah, that's true. And on that tremendous Dominic-oriented note, thank you, everyone, for watching or for listening. Goodbye.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Goodbye.

• 57:41Speaker 06

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