DISGRACELAND - The Beatles (Pt. 2): Kamikaze Assassins, Acid Smuggling, Suicide, Kidnapping, and the Breakup the Greatest Band of All Time

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

At the height of their world-changing and culture-defining popularity, the Beatles faced death threats in foreign countries, an unfair tax rate in their own country that forced them to stash heaps of undeclared cash in brown paper bags, and the sudden suicide of their manager. But none of this could break up the band. Nor could LSD smuggling missions, drug busts, extramarital affairs or the deranged fans who came to their houses. Listen to learn what really tore the Beatles apart. To see the complete list of contributors, visit ⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠ This episode was originally published on March 2, 2021. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places.

Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like, like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart Podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by Cotton.

of our lives. Disgraceland is a production of double Elvis. The story of the Beatles, their meteoric rise from working class backgrounds to global icons in such a short time span, is so complex that two episodes were needed to properly tell this story. If you're just getting hip to this now, I suggest you hit pause and go back to the last episode of Disgraceland, part one of the Beatles story. Or if you're looking exclusively for a deep dive into John Leland,

Lennon in his final days, he should check out the two-part episode dedicated to the assassination of John from Season 2 of Disgraceland. In this episode, however, we get into earlier assassins, right-wing Japanese kamikazis trained on murdering the not-so-innocent mob tops. We also get into the Beatles' continued exploration into drugs and the smuggling of cash and LSD from America, a deranged woman's brief kidnapping by a beetle, and the suicide of the band's manager. Of course, we discussed the influence of Yoko Ono and tracked the demise of the greatest band of all time. A band that made great music,

like the greatest music in the history of the world. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Skies of Blazin, MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Ode to Billy Joe by Bobby Gentry. And why would I play you that specific slice of Tallahatchie Bridge cheese could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on August 27, 1967. And that was the day the Beatles manager Brian Epstein killed himself and effectively pushed the Beatles into their third and final act as a group. On this episode, Kamikaze assassins, acid smuggling, suicide, kidnapping, and the breakup of the greatest band of all time, the Beatles. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Brian Epstein, manager of the biggest pop group on the planet, was afraid. He was sweating profusely from the fluorescent lights bearing down on him in London's Heathrow Airport. Maybe it was the pills, not the fear. Maybe he was being paranoid. What did they know anyway? And how would they find the money without the indignity of a search? They would never search.

Not him. Not now. The Beatles were the UK's greatest cultural export. Whatever confidence this lent at the young pop manager, it didn't erase the fear. If customs agents did search his luggage, all that cash would have to be explained, and there was, of course, no explaining it. He'd be through. And so too, it is beloved Beatles. Paul would never forgive him. Paul's judgment would be swift, and Brian feared Paul had it out for him from the beginning.

And John, forget it, his dreams of one day settling John down. Well, that would never happen, as if it ever would. And the Beatles and Brian Epstein would be no more. Brian was a long way, but a short while removed from Liverpool's Cavern Club on that day back in 1961. When he first saw what would become his life's work, the Beatles. From that moment on, the Beatles became his obsession and he became their manager. Brian threw himself into the work of shepherding the group's career with an intensity and drive that made him him and the group fantastically rich just two years from the day he first met them.

In early 1963, the Beatles completed their conquest of America. It was official. They were now the world's most popular group and top-selling pop group. There was little to actually worry about aside from all the money. More specifically, what to do with it. Bringing it home from America was particularly distressing. The British Inland Revenue Service, the equivalent of the American IRA, was there in London waiting to collect its 94%.

94% of every dollar, every pound made by these four working-class kids from Liverpool, was to go to the government, not into their own bank accounts or to their families, but to the government. 94%. The fact that a large portion of this money was generated outside of the UK and the United States made the collection of it even more onerous. The Beatles were estimated to sell 6 million pounds worth of Al-EFLES. that year. Their royalty rate was minuscule. Most of the gross money went to their record label EMI. Whatever was left, 94% of it went to the government. Then Brian took his 25% management fee.

The balance was then divided amongst John, Paul, George, and Ringo, whereupon John and Paul received the lion's share for writing the songs. Let's game this out. You're a working-class kid named, I don't know, George, from the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere in Northern England. You don't have a cent to your name. Your lot in life is determined at birth. You're to be a butcher's assistant or drive a lorry or work on the docks and make a meager living, just enough to support your family so you don't starve. You'll break your back working and die with little, if any, savings, but you decide that type of future is unacceptable because deep down you're a dreamer. So you get your hands on a guitar as a kid and improbably teach yourself to play. Then you join

a band with three older kids from town and forsake your future and any security you might have and plunge yourself into a true hand-to-mouth existence. You risk it all to make a living doing something you love and you work your ass off. It's fun but dangerous and lo and behold, hard work, intelligence and grit amount to something and your risk pays off. You create a job for yourself out of thin air. Not only that, you're the best at it in the world. And as should be the case, You're paid handsomely for your risk and your hard work and your ingenuity. You and your band, oh, I don't know, for the sake of easy math, earn, let's say, six million pounds one year.

Your name and face are everywhere, as are the songs you play. You create a product that people can't go without. You create demand. You must be fabulously wealthy. Your family can't believe it. Georgie boy struck it rich, and their dreams will all soon come true, for a Georgie boy will surely take care of them. Six million pounds.

But wait a minute. Of that $6 million, the record label takes their cut, which unbelievably, due to the ridiculous contract signed by your asshat manager, was for the sake of argument generously understood to be about 90%. 90% of $6 million is $5.4 million to the record label, so now you've got $600,000. Okay, even with the stupid contract, $600,000 in 1963 is the equivalent of about $5 million today. Not bad. Not bad. At least the record company did something to earn their cut. They put up the money for production, manufacturing, distribution, and promotion. The government, on the other hand, they did nothing, but it doesn't matter.

They're taking 94% of your 600 grand. So now you've only got 36,000. And your manager has to take his 25%. So now you're down to 27,000. But you've got to split that with your bandmates, and you don't write the song. So most of that money, say 75% goes to the two songwreck. Now you're down to 6,750 that you have to split with your non-songwriting drummer, which means at the end of the day that you get 3,375 pounds.

Not bad. Almost three times what most Londoners took home in a year in 1963. But let's not forget, you started by generating 6 million, 6 million. And you got a little more than 3 grand. Bad record company contracts, management fees, and songwriters' royalties aside, due to Britain's 94% tax rate, the poultry cut the Beatles took home after all of their hard work, was nothing short of criminal. Brian Epstein, despite his 25%, agreed.

Fight fire with fire. Steal their money before the taxman got the opportunity to steal it first. In England, where they lived, there was little they could do about the tax man, but in America it was a different story. Whenever possible, Brian Epstein demanded payment for Beatles' live performances in cash. Oftentimes, he demanded cash up front, sometimes as much as 50%. In the United States, whatever cash he collected was stuffed into brown paper bags, and that cash, along with performance fees paid in checks,

were deposited into small local American banks while the Beatles scurried around the country playing concerts. Brian kept the books while on the road, and upon re-entering the UK, the books would reflect an amount of gross income that did not include the vast sums of money Brian had left behind in the small American banks, thus keeping that money safe in the taxman's clutches. Brian would return to the U.S. a few weeks later by himself on quote-unquote business and make his withdrawals in cash, and then smuggle that cash back into the U.K. or try to anyway. The customs agent was young, curious, a bit rough around the edges. Brian Epstein cut an impressive figure.

He fought back the fear and paranoia and charmed the boy, and he was allowed to pass through customs unsearched, with his luggage filled with cash, deduct his 25% and distribute the rest of the band ensuring that they'd properly be compensated outside of the Queen's good graces. The Beatles themselves were clueless of the major tax fraud perpetrated on their behalf.

Brian never told them where the money came from and they didn't ask. Brian was taking care of them, as was his charge, a charge that was becoming increasingly difficult as their popularity continued to skyrocket throughout the early to mid-60s. Touring for the band had become a joke. Aside from the brown paper bag money, touring offered little to the band beyond hassle. Playing music was next to impossible. The Beatles couldn't hear themselves on stage over the screaming audience no matter what venues they played.

And making matters worse on the road, the Beatles were pretty. prisoners of their own fame, unable under the best circumstances to leave their hotel rooms for fear of being torn to shreds by their adoring fans. Now, in a post-Bob Dylan reality, the band were stoned literally all the time, and increasingly paranoid, and in 1966 in Japan, for good reason, for it wasn't adoring fans looking to smother them with aggressive affection that was the problem. It was assassins, hell-bent, on shooting down the Anglo pop stars who'd come to their country seemingly to disrespect their heritage. The Beatles were booked to perform at Budokane, a sacred venue to the Japanese, a shrine to

deceased war heroes, some of whom had given their lives in the fight against the British and their allies in the Second World War just two decades prior. The band was met upon arrival at the airport by Tokyo's police commissioner and several thousand armed Japanese troops. John Paul, George Ringo, Brian, and their entourage were informed that a right-wing kill squad was determined to assassinate them for their plans to desecrate Boudicon with their music. If they were to survive, they were to remain under the protection of the commissioner and do as he said, which meant they were to go nowhere and see no one. And the commissioner was serious, as was the tone of the 10,000 fans assembled upon the route to the Tokyo Hilton, where they'd be staying,

and they were there ostensibly to cheer the English pop stars on, but the crowd, compared to other crowds they'd encountered, was less fanatic, more stern, ominous. Signs with Beatles go home peppered the crowd, and the air was marked by the nervous faces of their outnumbered protectors. So alone, the Beatles sat in their presidential suite of their hotel, racked with fear. Paul Paced, John made nervous jokes,

and George was more quiet than usual. Ringo tried escape. more than once. In their rooms were patrolled by armed guards, and the Beatles weren't going anywhere. So they waited in a collective state of deep paranoia, impatient to perform on stage where, not one, but numerous right-wing assassins would be well positioned to take them out while they toiled with instruments the audience would never hear. For what? For less than 6%? This fear, this paranoia, their lives, was it worth it? The answer was a, course, no. It was an easier way. Assuming they survived the concert at Buda Khan, after this tour,

there would be changes. No more live shows. John was all for it. He'd convince the others and Brian would be forced to go along. The Beatles would make their way as recording artists inside the sanctum of EMI's Abbey Road Studios, safe and free to pour all their efforts into creating music, as opposed to running themselves ragged performing music. They'd double down on expression, Blow their own minds as well as the world, sell more records because of it, and increase their bottom line in the process despite the 94% tax rate,

despite the lack of brown paper bag money from ticket sales. But before that, they need to get back home again to London and get their hands on some American LSD. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either.

We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands.

I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets. And just then, we felt the love. plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle.

Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of showed me out of the way and said, move and he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia

Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance.

Like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been sleepwalking. David O'Yellow-O. I love this podcast. whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts.

Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Durbin. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gayton Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, monjeu.

Camilla Morone at Carrie Kenny Silver. and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Getting back home again, in the figurative sense, back to being just a great little band, nothing more, nothing less. Getting back beyond the complications of top-tier tax income and Japanese assassins was proving harder for the Beatles by the minute, for at the moment, Despite forsaking the road for the recording studio, John, Paul, George, and Ringo were once again on stage. But this time, not in a stadium or a concert hall,

but in a makeshift television studio in front of a small A-list crowd seated on the floor at their feet. Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithful, Eric Clapton, Keith Moon, British television personalities, and various members of Swinging London's smart set were all assembled in the newly fashionable flower-power stylings and excited to hear the Beatles' performance of their new single for the popular Our World International Television Broadcast.

Once again, John Lennon was afraid. This performance would be seen by 200 million people worldwide, and they were broadcasting live, one mistake, one flub note, one missed lyric, and it would all be shot to shit. And it wasn't just himself, Paul, George, and Ringo he had to worry about. There were other performers as well, a 13-piece orchestra.

John had no control over that. In the pre-recorded backing track, they were all performing on top of to round out the mix didn't make the event any less nerve-wracking. They still had to nail the vocals. Couldn't fix everything in post. 200 million people,

how the fuck did this happen? This pressure, this success, this influence, this exposure. John tried calming his nerves pre-show by thinking about the party they were attending after the broadcast. Brian was hosting at his flat. Most here at the studio would be there, and so too would Owsley's acid.

John had arranged for the American chemist to create a batch, especially for them, and great efforts were made in getting the illegal substance from the states to the Beatles in London. June 18, 1967, one week prior to the Beatles' Our World broadcast, John had arranged for a film crew to arrive in Monterey, California, a couple miles away from Bear Owsley's laboratory. Monterey was chosen on this day because it was the date of the Monterey Pop Festival, a first of its kind,

an outdoor music festival with major acts, Otis Redding, Janice Shoplin, The Who, and Jimmy Hendricks performing, among others. An occasion if there ever was one that was worthy of documenting on film, which was why the Beatles sent the film crew. But the Beatles knew full well that the film rights for the festival

had been granted to someone else. Their crew was denied access to shoot. So off to Osley's lab went the Beatles film equipment, where it was stuffed with vials of liquid LSD, and inconspicuously shipped back to London with its illicit contraband undetected by authorities, as was the plan all along. Sitting on his stool on stage,

awaiting the countdown to the broadcast, John Lennon knew that the LSD was now carefully arranged and pint-sized vials on Brian Epstein's bookshelf in his flat, waiting for him and his guests, and he couldn't wait to get his hands on it. But first, there was the matter of the 200 million people on the other end of the lenses currently pointed at him. Five, four, three, two. To John's relief, the band settled in nicely to the beginning of the song, All You Need is Love.

It was written especially for this moment. So simple, so childlike, innocent, direct. its simplicity tempered by the complex orchestral accompaniment. 1967, five years, a gazillion record sold, a global audience of a couple hundred million people, and 13 orchestral members removed from the simplicity of the cavern club. The Beatles were never further from being just a great little band. But they were somehow immune to the pressure of it all.

Whatever fear John had, you could hardly tell from his performance. He and the band were loved. locked in together, four minds as one, and the studio audience, like all Beatles' audiences, was enraptured, as was the audience at home. By the time the second chorus hits, it's clear that the show is a success. And when the song breaks down toward its end, you can hear the band breaking free of the pop. The inner showmen in them start to bust loose from the banal pretentiousness of the statement, All you need is love, and the song and dancemen start to muscle their way past the orchestra

to take their place center stage. As the tune's chorus plods on, Paul can't help himself and starts to ham it up. John's nervousness begins to slip away. It's as if they are no longer playing to 200 million people and they're back at the Star Club in Germany, back at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, to 200 teenagers.

John is clearly jazzed by Paul's slight improvisations. He smiles noticeably and begins to rock back on his stool. Now he is enjoying himself more than that. than he is performing, and Paul is spurred on by John's loosening up. The All You Need is love chorus continues. Paul then, out of nowhere, fills in the ends of the vocal refrain with She Loves You, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that same famous melody, and John quickly notices what he's doing and hits the early Beatles' chorus with Paul in unison. As confetti rains down upon the assembled television studio audience, John and Paul ride the nostalgic melody over their utopian refrain and

out to the commercial break. In their minds, they are partially back where they belong. If only for a moment, a moment that will be short-lived and quickly obscured by more drugs, unexpected death, arrests, a kidnapping, and the witchy influence of a tiny avant-garde artist from Japan named Yoko. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either.

We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield. And in this new season of The Girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care.

So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no, I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was.

Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off.

And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else? that you can do rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary.

I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been sleepwalking. David O'Yellow-O. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham.

So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, monjeu. Camilla Morone.

Kenny Silver and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yoko Ono was born on February 18, 1894. When she first met John Lennon in 1966 at the age of 72, she was most certainly the oldest woman he would ever become romantically involved with, but far from the most entertaining. That distinction belongs to Joan Baez, but. but I digress. Remarkably, Yoko Ono is still alive today, living comfortably on New York's Upper West Side, where she spends her time managing the Ono-Lenin estate and with a diminutive uncut Italian servant named Paco and watching apples decompose in real time for fun. At the spry age of 127, Yoko Ono, whose name in Japanese means Ocean Child, is believed to subsist on a partial diet of raw sea turtle and vampire bat tears.

Yoko is expected to survive the remaining Beatles, save for Ringo Starr, the world's oldest, finest, and last remaining true song and dance man. I kid, of course, Yoko Ono is not some sort of ageless vampire. She did not break up the Beatles. A bad mix of greed, distrust, and Alan Klein's hubris broke up the Beatles. Yoko Ono saved John Lennon from the trappings of fame, the boredom of being a beetle at a time when being John was more interesting to him and saved him from himself,

propelled him personally and creatively. But nevertheless, according to Beatles' lore, Yoko Ono did have a vampire grip on John Lennon. To the public, to the fans, Yoko's influence on John was true horror. But back in 1966, when Yoko Ono first met John Lennon, the real screams of horror were thankfully going unnoticed

from John's suburban Kenwood estate. The giant snake in the backyard was coming. John cared to the extent that her screams would attract the local cops. And if they were to search his home, the amount of illegal drugs they'd find would surely have him locked up for years. But that didn't matter to the young female houseguess he dosed with acid. She was in a state of panic, sprinting in circles, trying to outrun the giant snake. John and his friend, Magic Alex, gave chase. The girl's fear was real.

Her pace inspired. She screamed non-stop. And the LSD John was on took its cue from the screaming. house guest and started to send him reeling into paranoia. What if she doesn't stop screaming? What if the cops come to the house? What if that thing really was a giant snake? What if it caught her and swallowed her hole? How would he explain that to Cynthia? Cynthia, his wife, could accept a lot of things, but a murdered young woman in her home was likely not one of them. Said woman was on the side of John's home at the moment attempting to scale it to the roof, the giant snake no doubt nipping at her

heels. She managed to hoist herself up under the windowsill and from there onto the low roof above John's sunroom. Christ, what if she went higher and jumped? To her death, suicide at Beetle John's Waybridge Mansion is what the papers would say. John and Magic Alex sprinted. Giant Snake be damned and slithered wildly between their frantic footfalls. More screams. The duo hit the window sill, hoisted themselves up to the low roof, grabbed the screaming woman, pulled her down, she screamed some more. And the giant snake taunted them all. The third, Three of them quickly made it inside, and the woman's screams were relentless. John thought she was possessed.

He and Magic Alex found the guest room and locked her inside to cool off, perhaps even sleep off, her dose high. Then, John went back to his drugs. At home, he kept a mortar and pestle containing a powdery mixture of speed barbiturates in LSD. John took to it casually, looking and swiping his finger into the mixture and sucking it down whenever he felt his primary high starting to fade. As a result, he was perpetually stoned, and at the moment, given the buzzkill circumstances, his high was in need of a boost.

He and Magic Alex settled themselves. The screams had stopped. The giant snake, in reality, John's vacuum cleaner hose from his pool had been slayed, it seemed. Then the doorbell rang. Magic Alex leaped up and frantically set about to hide the drugs. John never wanted to pass up an opportunity to entertain an audience, quickly found his top hat and cape,

donned them shirtless, and answered the door. The two Weybridge police officers took one look at John and cut up with laughter. But when the laughs died down, they asked John about a call they'd received from John's residence, from a young woman claiming to have been kidnapped by a John Lennon impersonator. Was this, too, some sort of joke? John assured them that it was, and they were content to believe their local pop star in resident and split. Of all the things that took place at Cynthia Lennon's Weybridge home, the discovery of a young woman doced on LSD and effectively kidnapped by her husband

would not be the most distressing. No, the most distressing would be discovering John in her kitchen, casually drinking tea with a bizarre Japanese conceptual artist after obviously just having had sex. And this was exactly what Cynthia Lennon discovered one morning after returning home from vacation with friends. John's casual indifference to her discovery only made the betrayal sting more. Oh, hi, he said to her. Yoko was wearing Cynthia's robe. John didn't care what Cynthia thought about his trist with Yoko Ono.

As far as he was concerned, the marriage was over. He split, filed for divorce. And he and Yoko rented a flat where they quickly took up a heroin habit and an extreme interest in each other's art. John encouraged Yoko's wildest experimentation. In turn, Yoko encouraged John to embrace the inner artist in him, the one he left behind at art school before the Beatles took over his life. The two staged confounding experimental art demonstrations

and quickly garnered the whitehawk glare of a celebrity couple. This new kind of attention led to their flap being raided by the notorious detective sergeant Norman Pilcher, the same Norman Pilcher, who famously brought 18 officers with him to conduct a raid at Keith Richard Redlands Estate. John and Yoko were arrested for possession. 200 grams of hashish were confiscated, along with a cigarette rolling machine with traces of marijuana and half a gram of morphine. The rest, John had successfully flushed down the toilet. The bust was an international media sensation. The fact that the press and the public should have seen it coming due to a previous very clumsy public statement from Paul McCartney about LSD, where he answered an interviewer's

questioned honestly and stated that he had in fact tried the hallucinogenic drug, didn't make the reality that their beloved Beatles were seemingly consumed by drugs any easier to digest for the public. Then, John Lennon poured gas on the flames of controversy. In November, a month after his and Yoko's arrest, he released his first music without the Beatles. An experimental album with Yoko entitled Two Virgins. On the cover, John and Yoko posed fully nude. And the press freaked the fuck out. And so did the Beatles fans. In addition to the cover, full frontal nudity in 1968, the music was way too out there for the record buying public at the time, or at any time, really. What happened to John the Beetle? What had this woman done to him? Surely

he was mad. And Paul, too, with the LSD and the rumors the band weren't getting along. The news from the Beatles was plentiful and not a lot of it good. And the bad press dwarfed most of the goodwill the Beatles' recent run of successful albums had generated. Revolver and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band in particular. The Beatles may have been beloved and inventive recording artists, but increasingly they were being seen as dangerous, drugged-out hippies. The pressure of it all pulled at John, Paul, George, and Ringo internally.

And by the time 1969 rolled around, the Beatles were a long way from home and looking down the barrel of the end of their career as a band. Brian Epstein was dead. Suicide, pills, pressure, whatever it was. It hardly slowed down the Beatles. They remained set on their paths to either continued world domination or self-destruction. Even they didn't know.

Either way, each path was not the path back home again. Paul tried with Let It Be. Up until January 1969, when rehearsals for Let It Be started and beginning in 1966 the year the Beatles stopped touring, the Beatles' albums progressed as follows. Revolver was a psychedelic dipping of the toes that showed the world the promise of creative expression on both long-playing albums as well as on short-form single releases.

Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band was a fully realized psychedelic masterstroke that nailed 1967's collective cultural conscience. An album so consequential, it spawned its own successful spin. Minovs, Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine. And of course, there was the Beatles' 1968 self-titled album known simply as the White album, which of all the Beatles' albums prior best encapsulated the band's genius artistry

as individuals. Simplicity is hardly a factor on any of these albums. The band's roots are always present, but the weight of the Beatles' creative ambition moved in lockstep with the weight of the band's personal and business problems. The bigger and better the Beatles became the further they strayed from being just a great little band, nothing more, nothing less, and the further they drifted from each other.

Paul McCartney was set to do something about it. Let It Be was to be the band's next album, and artistically, the whole point of Let It Be was to get back to the band's roots back to where they once belonged. It was a disaster. The writing was clearly on the wall. A film crew documenting the recording

captured what was obvious. The Beatles could no longer stand being in the same room together, never mind be forced to make music together under the suffocating glare of the film crew's Clegg lights. The lighting seemed to be a real-life metaphor for the slew of pressures of disagreements over new management, the pressure of stewarding the band's diversified creative business, Applecore, a bare-knuckle business brawl over ownership of the Lennon-McCartney publishing company Northern Songs. And there was Paul's overbearing schoolmarm attempts at controlling the band, the distraction and sometimes embarrassment over John's now very public social activism.

And of course, there was the moody, omnipotent presence of Yoko Ono, who since the beginning of the White album sessions was constantly at John's side, literally sitting next to him in the studio while he sat in with the band for rehearsals and tracking. It was all too much, too big, too heavy, and the band failed to finish recording Let It Be, and the album was shelved. After some time off, the Beatles returned to Abbey Road Studios to take another swing at recording. One last time. But this time, there would be no film crew. And Yoko would, of course, be at John's side throughout the process,

but she'd be distracted by a complicated pregnancy, one that would end a miscarriage. Yoko in her mid-30s had had multiple miscarriages, one of which John recorded in the hospital, capturing his and Yoko's dying baby's last heartbeats on tape. Sometime later, when John was to provide a special personalized Christmas recording for a magazine as part of a promotional obligation, John sent the magazine, the recording of the last heartbeats of his dying sun. But for the most part, that darkness is absent from John and the rest of the Beatles' contributions to what would become Abby Road, the band's final album. And so is most of the pomp and individualism of the Beatles' previous recorded efforts from the second half of the decade.

Unlike the recording of the White album, when band members were so alienated from one another, they basically transformed themselves into solo artists working within a group of side musicians, wherein each would bring into the studio a song they'd written, play as much of the instrumentation as they could by themselves, and rely on others to fill in where necessary. On most of Abbey Road's 17 tracks, the Beatles perform together as a band, a good little band, and the results are undeniable. Abby Road is the Beatles' greatest album.

It showcases the group's collective strength, their power and inventiveness, and unrivaled creativity as a band in a way that is unmatched on any of their previous efforts. The moody groove have come together, the staggering beauty of something, the rawness and vulnerability of, oh darling, and the weed haze jaminess of I want you, she's so heavy,

and the hope of here comes the sun, respectively Paul, John, and George's lead singers on each track are supported by the power of the group at their backs and encouraged to bear their souls in the name of creative risk and ultimately artistic greatness. Even Ringo's vocals on Octopus's Garden are nothing short of classic. And toward the end of the medley of songs on Side 2 of Abbey Road, you can practically hear the strains of excitement from the Cavern Club as the band transitions from Paul themed Pam to she came in through the bathroom window. Oh, look out.

The Beatles were back, for a moment anyway. Despite the immediate and massive critical and commercial success of Abbey Road, the relationship between Paul and John had suffered irreparably. Ringo had already quit once, and so had George. Both eventually returned, but nevertheless, rumors persisted that a breakup was imminent. But then the phone rang at the office of Applecor. There was bad news. The Apple Corps representative who answered the phone couldn't believe what he was.

his hearing. His hand trembled. The cup of tea was holding fell to the floor and shattered. His eyes went wide. The fear gripped him and then shock set him. He was overcome by it, not because the Beatles were breaking up. He knew that. Everyone who worked for the Beatles knew that. But he didn't think the end would come like this. Now he was shocked because the voice on the other end of the line told him that Paul is dead. I'm Jake Brennan in this episode. of Disgraceland is to be continued. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

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When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

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