John Lennon | Love Me Do | 2

Summary

Legacy Podcast Episode Summary: "John Lennon | Love Me Do | 2"

Release Date: March 12, 2025
Hosts: Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan
Podcast: Legacy by Wondery and Goalhanger Podcasts

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1. The Beatles' Early Struggles and Ambitions [00:32 – 07:16]

The episode opens in 1962, a pivotal year marking the burgeoning agency and choices available to young people. John Lennon, at 21, leads The Beatles as they establish themselves as Liverpool’s house band at the Cavern Club. Despite their growing popularity, the band faces the critical hurdle of securing a record deal. Manager Brian Epstein, portrayed as passionate yet inexperienced, pushes The Beatles to showcase their unique sound by performing original material rather than mere covers.

Peter Frankopan remarks, “It's important to remember they still don't have a record deal. They’re still practicing, they’re still innovating, they’re still trying to work things out.”

Afua Hirsch highlights the creative dynamism between Lennon and Paul McCartney, stating, “They have original material because the McCartney-Lennon songwriting genius is well underway... it’s also fiercely competitive.”

Their insistence on originality reflects their desire to transcend being mere imitators of established acts, laying the foundation for their future success.

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2. Breakthrough with "Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me" [07:16 – 13:35]

After persistent efforts and numerous rejections, Brian Epstein secures a minor record label, Parlophone, part of the influential EMI group. Despite the label's initial skepticism, particularly George Martin’s reservations about their suitability for a pop hit, The Beatles persevere. Their first single, "Love Me Do," undergoes multiple takes, reflecting the band's nervousness and inexperience. As Afua Hirsch narrates:

"Love Me Do is released on the 5th of October 1962... It climbs up the charts to a respectable number 17, their first hit record."

Encouraged by this modest success, they release "Please Please Me," which swiftly rockets to number one in both the NME and Melody Maker charts. This success catalyzes their transformation from local favorites to national sensations. Peter Frankopan observes, “Brian Epstein is keen to capitalize on it. He’s got his way with their style... They’ve got a look now, which everyone who studies musical brands knows is key.”

This period also marks a significant shift in their image, moving from leather jackets to the now-iconic "mop-top" hairstyles, blending influences from their time in Hamburg with Epstein’s strategic branding.

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3. The Rise of Beatlemania and International Fame [13:35 – 35:59]

The Beatles' debut album, "Please Please Me," achieves unprecedented success, maintaining the number one spot for 30 weeks and staying in the top 10 for over a year—a record for a debut album at the time. As they surge in popularity, Beatlemania begins to take root, exemplified by their appearance at the Royal Variety Performance on November 4, 1963. Despite criticism from figures like British Prime Minister Ted Heath, who derisively comments on their accents, The Beatles captivate audiences with their charismatic performances.

Afua Hirsch recounts Lennon’s rebellious nature during the performance:
"As he famously says to the audience, 'the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands and the rest of you if you'd just rattle your jewelry.'”
Peter Frankopan adds, “He threatened Brian Epstein and said he was gonna say, ‘rattle your fucking jewelry.’ It was pre-planned.”

The Beatles' unparalleled rise culminates in their groundbreaking appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, watched by over 73 million Americans. This moment not only cements their status as global icons but also ignites a frenzied fan culture reminiscent of Middle Ages' mass hysteria, as Peter Frankopan likens it:

"It's not just that. It's lots of young women in particular going crazy because the Beatles are there... there's a kind of infectious element to social behavior."

The hosts delve into the psychological and cultural impact of Beatlemania, emphasizing how The Beatles provided a communal experience and a sense of identity for their fans.

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4. John Lennon's Personal Life and Inner Turmoil [36:11 – 50:49]

As The Beatles ascend to international fame, John Lennon grapples with personal challenges. His relationship with Cynthia becomes strained after she announces her pregnancy, leading to a secret marriage orchestrated by Epstein to protect their public image. Despite initially appearing supportive, Cynthia faces rejection from John’s mother, Mimi, highlighting the personal sacrifices behind their public facade.

Peter Frankopan notes,
"John is dieting and sober; he’s drinking his hot milk to soothe his ragged throat, but it's so sore that there's blood staining his cup."

Lennon's burgeoning fame introduces complexity into his personal life, including infidelity and substance abuse. The episode explores his evolving relationship with manager Brian Epstein, suggesting underlying tensions and possible exploitation of Epstein’s sexuality for control within the band.

Afua Hirsch discusses Lennon’s dependency on drugs:
"John is kind of on a permanent bender now... He's become dependent and reliant on drugs, not just to experience excitement and the adrenaline, but also, he says, to survive."

This dependence exacerbates the dissonance between his creative brilliance and personal chaos, revealing the darker side of The Beatles' meteoric rise.

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5. Controversies and John Lennon's Public Image [50:49 – 55:26]

John Lennon’s outspoken nature and rebellious spirit lead to significant controversies. His provocative remarks during interviews, particularly his infamous statement about The Beatles being "more popular than Jesus," ignites backlash, especially in the United States' conservative regions. Afua Hirsch emphasizes the cultural clash:

"In America, where the Bible Belt has evangelical Christianity... they are furious at this complete blasphemy and it becomes a real problem. A threat to his reputation, a threat to his physical security."

The episode highlights how Lennon's ambitions extend beyond music, venturing into literature with his whimsical writings inspired by Lewis Carroll. However, his sharp criticism of societal norms and religious institutions alienates certain segments of the population, positioning him as a messianic yet polarizing figure.

Peter Frankopan concludes,
"He feels trapped and is hungry for new thrills. And on top of that, he can't help feeling The Beatles, and particularly their lyrics, feel a little bit frothy... So how will Lennon find the vision to turbocharge both his and the band's creativity?"

This sets the stage for further exploration of Lennon’s internal struggles and their impact on The Beatles’ trajectory in subsequent episodes.

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Notable Quotes and Attributions

• Peter Frankopan [05:00]: “Do you collaborate? But apart from with me, obviously, and…”

• Afwa Hirsch [06:00]: “In this competitive dynamic, they're checking each other's work... there's a real suggestiveness in a lot of their lyrics from this time.”

• Peter Frankopan [06:23]: “They're really complementary to each other, you know, in their styles... It makes the interactions so interesting.”

• Afwa Hirsch [17:10]: “The fact that Cynthia expects him to be furious does not speak well to his character at this point.”

• Peter Frankopan [24:03]: “Their debut album, Please Please Me, is not just doing well, it's doing unbelievably well.”

• Afwa Hirsch [38:11]: “There’s adoring crowds and then there’s hordes of screaming people... it must feel a bit empty.”

• Peter Frankopan [35:39]: “It’s not just the music. It’s what they look like. It’s the hairstyles.”

• Afwa Hirsch [54:28]: “You have to read the whole piece. It’s stuck in the middle...”

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Conclusion

This episode of Legacy meticulously charts John Lennon's and The Beatles' journey from ambitious Liverpool musicians to global superstars enveloped in Beatlemania. Through rich storytelling and insightful analysis, Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan illuminate the intricate balance between creative genius and personal turmoil. The inclusion of notable quotes with timestamps provides authenticity and depth, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of the complexities that shaped John Lennon's legacy.

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For more episodes, listen to Legacy on the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Transcript

[Afwa Hirsch]

Wondery subscribers can binge seasons of Legacy early and ad free. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Just a warning before we begin. This episode contains strong language and drug use. Listener discretion is advised.

[Unknown]

Wondry.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Hello and welcome to the second episode in our series on John Lennon.

[Peter Frankopan]

As we take up the story. It's 1962, near the start of a decade of unprecedented agency and choice, particularly for young people. John Lennon is 21 years old.

[Afwa Hirsch]

The Beatles are established as the house band at Liverpool's Cavern Club, the place to see hot new acts. But they need a record deal. Are they good enough to impress the label.

[Peter Frankopan]

From Wondery and Goal Hanger? I'm Peter Frankopan.

[Afwa Hirsch]

I'm AFWA Hirsch.

[Peter Frankopan]

And this is Legacy, the show that tells the lives of the most extraordinary men and women ever to have lived and asks if they have the reputation that they deserve.

[Afwa Hirsch]

This is John Lennon Episode 2 Love Me Do.

[Unknown]

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[Peter Frankopan]

It's New Year's Day, 1962, and the Beatles are excited. They're on their way to an audition at the North London offices of Decca Records. Their manager, Brian Epstein, chooses a bunch of COVID versions for them to. This is supposed to show how versatile they are, but to the executives in suits, it just comes across like a confused mess. And they're rejected in favor of clearly.

[Afwa Hirsch]

More destined for success. Brian Paul and the Tremolos.

[Peter Frankopan]

Well, they did okay, but not like the Beatles.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Do you have any Brian Paul and the Tremolos records?

[Peter Frankopan]

One or two of their tracks. But probably the suits made the wrong choice.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Epstein is furious for Decca. These boys are going to explode. I'm completely confident that one day they will be big than Elvis Presley, he says.

[Peter Frankopan]

And John Lennon vows that it's the last time anyone tells them what they should play. What they're really interested in is showcasing their own original material, rather than just being a knockoff of somebody else's.

[Afwa Hirsch]

And they have original material because the McCartney Lennon songwriting genius is well underway. They're working, as Lennon describes it, eyeball to eyeball, which really captures the intensity of this creative partnership. It's productive. But, Peter, as I think sometimes the best creative partnerships are, it's also fiercely competitive.

[Peter Frankopan]

Do you collaborate? But apart from with me, obviously, and.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Our lovely producers, we're fiercely competitive, aren't we, Peter? I'm like, you got more likes than me on this post.

[Peter Frankopan]

I'm never going to get there.

[Afwa Hirsch]

You've got more Substack subscribers already.

[Peter Frankopan]

Never going to get there. When you're working together, do you recognize that dynamic where you're kind of pushing each other onwards?

[Afwa Hirsch]

It's a bit different, but how I relate to this is, do you know any couples that both are in really good shape and go to the gym religiously? And it's almost like because one of them is in such great shape, it's so motivating for the other to keep up.

[Peter Frankopan]

They're keeping up with each other. I get that. But you know what's really unusual for songwriters at this time, if I even now, is that they haven't learned how to read music. You know, they're like Alicia Keys or Mozart who can write and read and put it all down on a page, but they rely on their ears and their. You know, that being able to play by ear is an incredible gift. And that's what makes their composition so fresh, because they're constantly listening for new ideas rather than being trapped by the written music.

[Afwa Hirsch]

In this competitive dynamic, they're checking each other's work. So in I saw her standing there, John switches Paul's. She was just 17. She was no beauty queen to. She was just 17, you know what I mean? Which is much more suggestive. And there's a real suggestiveness in a lot of their lyrics from this time. You can listen to them quite innocently, as lots of their fans did, but if, you know, you can hear a.

[Peter Frankopan]

Different meaning, they're really complementary to each other, you know, in their styles. So John Lennon says Paul provided a lightness and an optimism, while I'd always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes. And that kind of link between major and minor is an important part of Beatles music. Makes it so interesting to listen to the interactions, the conversations between the band.

[Afwa Hirsch]

We talked in the last episode about how incredible it is that this early stage in their career, they were creating songs that would go on to be hits. I mean, some of the best known songs came from this early chemistry. And although George Harrison does have a couple of writing credits to his name, almost every song is now credited to Lennon and McCartney.

[Peter Frankopan]

But for now, you know, it's important to remember they still don't have a record deal. You know, they're still practicing, they're still innovating, they're still trying to work things out. But then things change after. In the spring in 1962, what happens then?

[Afwa Hirsch]

Some good news. Finally, after months of knocking on doors and finding them closed, being rejected by Decca and that debacle, Epstein has finally found a record label. Someone he knows has a contact at Parlophone, which is part of the powerful EMI label. And Parlor Phone's largely a comedy label, where the boss, George Martin, enjoys creating outlandish soundscapes for the latest novelty records. But he's interested in pop and he listens to the Beatles tapes and he can tell they've got something.

[Peter Frankopan]

And in fact, he doesn't even need to hear them in person before he gives them a recording contract, because it's Parlor Phone, it's a small label, there's a lot of freedom to take a gamble. So the contract puts all the risk on the band and leaves EMI plenty of wiggle room, if, like it often does, a band that syncs without trace.

[Afwa Hirsch]

And a personal coup for Epstein, because even though he is doing his best as a manager, he hasn't been a manager, he hasn't got any experience. He was essentially running his dad's electrical shop after he flunked out of drama school when he decided to reinvent himself as The Beatles manager so he's definitely got a point to prove and now it looks like he might be able.

[Peter Frankopan]

To do it but the Beatles are really still a live band George Martin's really keen to get them into what then became super famous the Abbey Road Studios in London he wants the first record to be a cover he doesn't want the Beatles to be introduced to the world with one of their own songs so on the day of the recording, the novice jet setters fly from Liverpool to London with local airline Starways and they must have felt so excited but as the plane is hammering down the Runway the window next to George Harrison flies open he screams and starts freaking out, thinking he's going to be sucked out of the window before a stewardess runs down the aisle and slams it shut and they arrive finally in.

[Afwa Hirsch]

One piece Domestic air Travel in the 1960s not for the faint hearted Peter Tuesday 4 September 1962 EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London from the safety of a London taxi, John looks out at the grandeur of Maida Vale and St. John's Wood they're heading to Abbey Road Studios, meeting George Martin he's going to produce the tracks the boys are going in with a plan and it'll be up to John to be the spokesman for the group as per usual, they start rehearsals they'll be recording this evening six tracks, five their own but one is a cover they don't want to do covers and they definitely don't want to do this one Mitch Murray's how do you do it? George Martin is convinced that this will go to number one it's just not them, it's too white. For a start, the Beatles are a blues band they record it in the way they've all agreed beforehand in as lackluster a fashion as possible Then they record their own, deciding to approach the boss afterwards this is a dangerous game John knows that on the one hand they should be grateful they're signed to Parlophone in the first place but on the other, they need to be true to their own sound he's showing bravado, but he's nervous they're young, they're inexperienced and they're putting everything on the line by challenging such a big figure in the music industry look, he says, I think we can do better than this George Martin concedes that yes, he likes the harmonica sound on the song a little number called Love Me Do John feels a pang of hope but almost instantly that hope is extinguished no, says George, the rest of their track is poor and he will not be giving in to their demands. How do you do it? Is going to be the A side and that's final.

[Peter Frankopan]

It's not final. It turns out that Mitch Murray hates their version of his song and he won't let them use it. But George Martin is still not convinced by Love Me Do. He's not convinced by the band's musical abilities. And he's right. They're not used to wearing headphones and they're stricken with nerves. It takes 15 attempts just to get the song out.

[Afwa Hirsch]

That's totally unlike our attempts at recording lines on this podcast.

[Peter Frankopan]

We've been here since six in the morning, it's now well past midnight. Just to make the listeners of Legacy feel that it's a perfect, perfect first take.

[Afwa Hirsch]

As the Beatles turned out, so will we. They persevere.

[Peter Frankopan]

Let's go.

[Afwa Hirsch]

The song grows on Martin. Finally he agrees. Love Me do should be their debut single after all. The self contained pop group is born. Musicians and songwriters in one irresistible package.

[Peter Frankopan]

Love Me do is released on the 5th of October 1962 and this is the world that it's born into. Elvis is the top selling artist with three of the top five singles at the time. Alongside is Telstar by the Tornadoes. In December, the Melody Maker mentions that the American folk singer Bob Dylan is in London and that a new R and B band called the Rolling Stones have a gig in Richmond. So the upcoming release of Love Me do gets a brief mention in the New Musical express or the NME. In a story about two 13 year old schoolgirls releasing a disc on Decca, it adds a Liverpool group the Beatles have recorded Love Me do set for October 5th release. So no one's betting on this one.

[Afwa Hirsch]

But it does have something its vernacular title, which was still quite renegade at the time. Lennon's harmonica intro and its amazing original rawness Love Me do climbs up the charts to a pretty respectable number 17, their first hit record.

[Peter Frankopan]

So the follow up single is Please Please Me, which Lennon writes at Aunt Mimi's house and she approves of this one. She goes that's more like it. That should do well. And Aunt Mimi aphwa's right.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Yep. Please Please Me makes number one in the NME and Melody Maker charts. So this is a pretty good start.

[Peter Frankopan]

Brian Epstein is keen to capitalize on it. He's got his way with their style. The leathers have been ditched in favor of sharp suits and the Elvis inspired pompadour greased hair has been replaced with Hamburg mop tops.

[Afwa Hirsch]

I'm not sure that Epstein gets all the credit for that. Their friends in Hamburg also gave them a bit of a kind of Euro trash trendy makeover, and it's definitely original. They've got a look now, which everyone who studies musical brands knows is key, and John is in his element. There's so much more to come, but a shock announcement is about to break his stride.

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[Peter Frankopan]

John's girlfriend Cynthia nervously tells him the news. She's pregnant. Cynthia expects him to be furious. At first he's silent, but then he says there's only one thing for it. Sin will have to get married.

[Afwa Hirsch]

The fact that Cynthia expects him to be furious does not speak well to his character at this point. But he doesn't get upset. As you said, Peter, he decides to make a respectable situation out of it, and you'd think that was something that Mimi would approve of. But she dislikes Cynthia, who she regards as this bottle blonde who's spending John's hard earned money so much that she's incandescent, threatens to never speak to him again, and refuses to come to the wedding.

[Peter Frankopan]

She doesn't come to the wedding. Brian Epstein's best man, but he insists that the marriage needs to be kept secret to avoid disappointing the fans.

[Afwa Hirsch]

It's spring 1963. After releasing the singles Love Me do and Please Please Me, the band are now working on their debut album. It's recorded on just one day, Peter 11 February 1963.

[Peter Frankopan]

They record for 12 hours, all the tracks are down and at half past ten at night they just need a closing number. So Leonard picks out the Isley Brothers Twist and Shout, which is absolute banger for the closing number. And it's such a great song, but it would be a tall order for anybody, but particularly for John, because he's drinking warm milk to soothe his ragged throat, but it's so sore that there's blood staining his cup.

[Afwa Hirsch]

John is in front of the mic, stripped to the waist with the others egging him on, his throat raw and ragged, and he belts out one astonishingly visceral vocal performance just before his voice completely gives up. And if you listen to the record, you can hear an excited Paul McCartney shouting right at the end, hey, they did it.

[Peter Frankopan]

Such a great song. So Rock Bible Mojo later puts this performance at number one in their 20 ways that John Lennon changed the world. And they wrote it's the closest any British rock and roll singer had come to the fire, energy and expression of the black American originators of this genre, which is saying something.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Black music is absolutely foundational to the success and the creative genius of the Beatles. And Lennon himself spoke about that in language that sits a little uncomfortably today. But the spirit was that he was trying to honour the black influence in his work. He said the best stuff is primitive enough and has no bullshit. It gets through to you. It's beat, go to the jungle and they have the rhythm. I read that Eldridge Cleaver, early leader of the Black Panther Party, said that blacks give the middle class whites back their bodies and put their minds and bodies together. It gets through. It got through to me. Black creativity has underpinned so much innovation that gets credited to white cultures, white artists, white inventors. And to his credit, he recognized that. I mean, they are singing songs from black genres. And they are also able to dig into something raw in their own experience that does justice to that expressiveness. And we can see that because later black musicians will do covers of Beatle records. So there's actually a circularity to it where they are imitating black music and black sounds, black artists, and then later black artists will cover them. So they're part of this ecosystem which has black culture running all the way through it. And we just can't say that enough. April 1963. They've finished their first album. It's been an intense few months for John. Please, Please Me is released at the end of March. And then in April, he becomes father to John Charles Julian Lennon, or just Julian, who's named obviously in memory of his mother, Julia.

[Peter Frankopan]

It's not unusual for fathers not to be in the delivery room, and John Lennon is no exception. But when he does arrive and sees his son, his eyes well with tears sin. He's bloody marvelous, he says to his wife. And he boasts that Julian won't be brought up to be good mannered like him. I think there's an exclamation mark there, but will instead be a free spirit. And again, instead is doing quite a lot of work there. Because John is nothing if not a free spirit.

[Afwa Hirsch]

He is not exactly the devoted husband and father at this point. He's not around much, he's touring, he's in the studio. He doesn't see much of his newborn son. He's also not faithful to Cynthia, to put it mildly. Tony Bramwell, the Beatles press agent, says John even had another regular girlfriend he was besotted with in this era, not to mention a string of one night stands, and that he'd felt pushed into marriage. So he's not sitting there feeling sorry for himself, he's kind of acting like he's not married in the first place.

[Peter Frankopan]

Yeah. Three weeks after Julian's birth, he leaves Cynthia holding the baby and heads off to Spain on holiday with Brian Epstein. And Brian is gay. Homosexuality is still illegal.

[Afwa Hirsch]

It's an interesting relationship with Brian Epstein. I mean, there are suggestions that Epstein was actually in love with John and that John knew that and kind of exploited it to maintain a close relationship with him, to have the upper hand in the band, to kind of put himself in a position of power, and that also he taunted Epstein about his sexuality. When Epstein invited suggestions for the title of his autobiography, Lennon offered the suggestion. And Epstein was Jewish, that he called it Queer Jew. And on learning the eventual title, Epstein did give it A cellar full of noise. John said, more like a cellar full of boys. So, I mean, he did have this cruel streak. Epstein isn't going around talking about his sexuality. You know, there's no space in which that is acceptable. Lennon just goes in and he doesn't do it in the subtlest of ways.

[Peter Frankopan]

So he's having a rocky start as a dad. He's got a complicated relationship with Brian Epstein, but his career is going great guns. On the 4th of November 1963, they take part in the annual Royal Variety Performance. That's a real sign that they've arrived. It's a televised spectacle with comics, magician, dancers, it's all good, clean fun. And with Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother as the most distinguished guests. It's also part of the establishment, but the British Prime Minister, Ted Heath, is rather sniffy about the Beatles, about their music and about their accents. He calls the way they talk unrecognisable as the Queen's English.

[Unknown]

This thing about Ted Heath saying that he couldn't distinguish you. I can't understand the Queen's English. I can't understand Teddy saying that at all, really. I'm not going to vote for Ted.

[Afwa Hirsch]

As well as refusing to change his voice, Lennon won't tone down his cheekiness. As he famously says to the audience, the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands and the rest of you if you'd just rattle your jewellery.

[Peter Frankopan]

In fact, he threatened Brian Epstein and said he was gonna say, rattle your fucking jewelry. So it was pre planned. That chippiness on his shoulder is sort of quite amusing, but he's looking for a fight. You know, we talked about that in the first episode too. His instinct to want to provoke people and to provoke People who he felt deserved to be mocked and teased.

[Afwa Hirsch]

I personally find that endearing that he's mocking the hierarchy of this and cutting straight through it with his usual charm and style. And that does capture something about the Beatles. I mean, they were exploding into a world that had been so stratified and bound by rules of decorum, which they just trampled all over. And of course young people loved it.

[Peter Frankopan]

Their debut album, Please Please Me, is not just doing well, it's doing unbelievably well. It spends 30 weeks at number one, it stays in the top 10 for over a year, which is a record for a debut album. The follow up with the Beatles is released on 22 November 1963. That we know aphwa's a day that something else important happens we talked about.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Before the assassination of JFK and we'll later come to their arrival in America in the midst of that. But it's really a huge moment of change, of uncertainty, of symbolically witnessing, witnessing the values of the status quo being ripped up in all sorts of ways. And what they're providing is a soundtrack that's joyful amidst a time of huge uncertainty and the threat of conflict. Their song Twist and Shout, which as we heard was a cover of the black American group the Isley Brothers, was described as whipping up a storm. William Mann of the Times, the paper of record and probably the most establishment paper in the UK at the time, says Lennon and McCartney are the outstanding English composers of the year.

[Peter Frankopan]

People go nuts and particularly young women go nuts. I mean, listen to this.

[Unknown]

While the Beatles played and teenage girls reacted as they do all over the.

[Afwa Hirsch]

World, what you're hearing is a phenomenon that is named by the newspapers as Beetle Mania. I mean, just some insights. When they did a five day tour in Sweden, the crowds at London Airport welcoming them back were so big that Miss World passed through the airport unnoticed and a former Prime Minister's car is held up.

[Peter Frankopan]

Oh, they're fair, but I mean it's their haircuts and the clothes they set in, the fashion.

[Unknown]

Would you like to grow up to be a beetle?

[Peter Frankopan]

Yes. But what's so special about them that.

[Unknown]

Makes you come out here on such a horrible day?

[Peter Frankopan]

Well, they're just, they're great. It sounds different. What is really surprising is that the way in which they are embraced by the mainstream so fast. You know, they go from playing in Hamburg for six hour sets for no money to suddenly being front and center and being profiled by the Times not just as up and coming, but the outstanding English Composers. But that level of adulation, I mean, we sometimes get it out for when we do events.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Oh, anywhere we go, we just walk out the studio to get our coffees.

[Peter Frankopan]

And, you know, this legacy mania, that's what I'm calling it. But, you know, it's an amazing amount of attention for young men to suddenly be in front of the spotlights. That must be really tough to cope with.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Fans are camping out at the front door on the street. Cynthia's tripping over. Fans camped out in hallways with sleeping bags and thermos flasks. I saw an interview with somebody who had been a fan at the time. One of the teenage girls screaming where she was, asked, why did you scream like that? And now she's, you know, in her 60s or 70s. She was so insightful. And she said, you know, we were feeling something that there was no language for. We were experiencing this cultural phenomenon of being part of something new that we felt so, so seen by. And we didn't know how to vocalize it. So this sound just came out of us. It was primal. It was just our way of showing how strongly we felt. And I, I, I have to say, having been a teenage girl in an era of boy bands. In an era of boy bands, I'm.

[Peter Frankopan]

Very interested to know which ones are the ones that you'd have.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Well, okay, I started off with Wham. Early Wham, Yes. I graduated on two New Kids on the Block. And then I'm afraid it was.

[Peter Frankopan]

You left it behind. No, E17. Or take that.

[Afwa Hirsch]

It was Take that all the way. All the way, yeah. And then there was an E17 phase. So I'm really glad you mentioned E17. Massively underrated. One of the best boy bands ever, in my opinion.

[Peter Frankopan]

And tears when they split up.

[Afwa Hirsch]

No, I was over them by then. But the early. I'm so embarrassed to say that I was early. Take that, the bleach. Blonde hair. And they were like making all these videos where they like smothered themselves in whipped cream. And I, I didn't really understand why they were doing that. And in hindsight, it was really, it was kind of like really homoerotic. But anyway, that reference went way over my head. As a 12 year old girl, I was that kid whose dad would take me on Saturday morning to the hotel where I'd heard they were staying and try and get a glimpse of them. So, yeah, I mean, I've been there.

[Peter Frankopan]

You were choosing them for the music really, is what you're saying. The whipped cream and the full frontal wet shirts and Dancing on a beach and all looking cute. That wasn't part of it at all. I respect that. It's the musical qualities that. Take that ad. They were great songs. I'm not saying it's completely. I'm not saying it's a joke. Yeah, I love potatoes.

[Afwa Hirsch]

But there was some. I mean, you project your connection with the songs onto them and you kind of. It wasn't even sexual. I just knew that I felt, like, fanatically about them. And that's, I think, why these girls scream and faint and wait outside hotel rooms. You don't really know how else to explain what you're feeling. And actually, it's probably more about you and the changes you're going through than it is about them. But you just latch onto them in a very primal way.

[Peter Frankopan]

So, yeah, my teenage years were the years of the solo artists. It was Michael Jackson, it was Belinda Carlisle, you know, it was Debbie Harry going solo. Duran Duran, Birmingham's finest. That was the closest we got. But there was a kind of gap in the 80s where it wasn't about groups. And so my youth was about the importance of the individual. Fitted with Reagan, fitted with Republicanism, I guess. But what was it about the beatles in the 60s, do you think? The fact that there were a group of boys or group of men I should call the Beatles, you know, was that part of the social movements of the time?

[Afwa Hirsch]

Yeah, because then they create a look and they create a culture and they've got inside jokes and they've got a whole dynamic. And, you know, when I've listened to the fans at the time, it was definitely like they wanted to be in the room with them. They wanted to be part of the gang. It was, you know, and they felt like such a little clan, didn't they? They went around together and they had this way of talking and all this banter. And I think there's something about a group that gives you more of an identity than one person.

[Peter Frankopan]

I mean, what was interesting about the Royal Variety show wasn't just that the Beatles are up there and performing, it's that they, probably by fluke rather than design, I'll start to get publicity not just for their music. So, you know, John Lennon's cheekiness at the Royal Variety show gets picked up by US magazine, Time, which says, on the stage of London's Prince of Wales Theater stood a wild rhythm and blues quartet called the Beatles, which I don't think anybod would describe them as a wild rhythm and blues quartet. Such odd language. And there, across the moat of the establishment faces sat the Queen Mother. So there's a story about the Beatles. It's not just the music. It's like you said, it's what they look like. It's the hairstyles. It's the fact there's a band where you can have identities, you can pick a favorite and that becomes really exciting and intoxicating. So America soon isn't going to know what's hit it.

[Afwa Hirsch]

By 1964, Beatlemania had engulfed America. On the 1st of February, I want to hold you'd hand tops the US charts. And six days later into this environment, primed for their entry, the Beatles land at the recently renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport.

[Unknown]

There are rumors around that this is Britain's revenge for the Boston Tea Party. Three thousand screaming teenagers are at New York's Kennedy Airport to greet, you guessed it, the Boston Beatles. This rock and roll group has taken over as the kingpins of musical appreciation among the younger element. Some music critics call their harmony unmistakably diatonic. Others say it's pandyatomic. Parents say it's just plain pandiamonium.

[Peter Frankopan]

So funny as a historian that the parallel that's drawn between the arrivals of the Beatles is the Boston Tea party of the 1770s. But British music and bands really hadn't kind of made it big in the States. But the Beatles really trailblaze. On the 9th of February 1964, they make their debut appearance on the Ed Sullivan show and it's watched by more than 73 million people. That's a new record for American TV viewing that people are fascinated particularly by their wacky mopped up hairstyles.

[Unknown]

Does all that hair help you sing? Definitely, yeah. How many a ball that you have to wear those wigs? Oh, we're all bald. Yeah, and deaf and dumb too.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Beatles wigs are flying off the shelves. I've actually seen one still in its original packaging. I mean, I'm sure it's worth like thousands of pounds now.

[Peter Frankopan]

Thousands.

[Afwa Hirsch]

But I saw fans, you know, on this first trip to New York holding placards saying unfair to bald men. You know, like this idea that it was like redefining sexiness to have this ridiculous haircut.

[Peter Frankopan]

Do you think if someone sends in a Beatles wig, we should wear them? Wear a mop top for a recording?

[Afwa Hirsch]

Do you think I could be accused of cultural appropriation if I mimic the hairstyle of white men from Liverpool?

[Peter Frankopan]

Afwa, you are very able and willing to take a leaf out of John Lennon's book and to provoke for the sake of It. I go for it. Yeah, why not?

[Afwa Hirsch]

Just for balance. Not everyone gets it. The Boston Globe had this amazing quote. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art that they qualify as crowned heads of anti music.

[Peter Frankopan]

I mean, it just shows the level of cut through that they had. And like we should be reminding it's two years after they recorded their first ever single. I mean, and they're suddenly the biggest band in the world.

[Afwa Hirsch]

And they're so fanatical that when the Beatles actually perform these 18 shows on the tour of the U.S. it's actually pretty hard to hear the actual music because all you can hear is screaming.

[Unknown]

And 17,000 screaming youngsters have jammed their way into the huge amphitheater. But they're the lucky ones. Outside, thousands of others were not so fortunate. And when the Beatles made their appearance on stage, it was like an explosion. The kids simply went wild.

[Peter Frankopan]

And then they released she Loves yous, which is the biggest selling single of the year, of the decade and of all time, until Paul McCartney's Wings beats it with Mullicintyre in 1977. So, I mean, it's transformational. The Beatles experience. I did some work a while ago about hysteria that quite often in the Middle Ages you have sort of sudden epidemics of people fainting or nuns all singing or people processing around the cities naked.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Can we just take a moment to appreciate that reference, Peter, that you have recently done some work on hysteria in the Middle Age. And that is such an amazing insight into what is going on with the Beatles in the 60s. I love that.

[Peter Frankopan]

Well, it's to do with sudden patterns of unusual behavior which happen in large groups. And so I understand better now with the Beatles that it's not just that. It's lots of young women in particular going crazy because the Beatles are there. They're going crazy and screaming and crying because everyone around them is screaming and crying. So there's a kind of infectious element to social behavior.

[Afwa Hirsch]

I want to add some analysis to that which I think is so fascinating, Peter. You know, I wrote this book, Decolonizing My Body, about how in Western societies we've lost access to so many rituals and rites of passage that in many indigenous cultures are used to kind of usher young men and women into different parts of the life cycle. And, you know, I think Western capitalist Christian societies have pilloried so many of those ancient ideas as pagan or savage. But actually phenomena like this are a reminder that I think young People need rituals, they need bonding activities, they need spaces outside the normality of everyday culture where they can express themselves in a different way and connect to emotion really viscerally. And I'm not saying that the Beatles ever sat down with a analysis of what's missing in the ritual and rites of passage of western culture and decided to cater to it. Far from it. But it's like unwittingly, I think they and the identity and the sounds they were creating offered these young women who had no access to any cultural space in which to make sense of their transition into adulthood and new ideas about sexuality and fashion and the way culture was changing. This was a way they could connect with that. And there is something ritualistic about it. I mean, if you watch these scenes of these girls like moving on, like a tide of kind of frenzy and fainting and tears streaming from their face, it is a kind of religious ecstasy. It does feel like some kind of ritual that's tapping into a different part of their psyche.

[Peter Frankopan]

And it sort of. It escalates a bit like Taylor Swift eras tour, you know, the more people start talking about it, the more people go, the more people try and buy tickets, you know, it sort of generates a momentum of its own. But John Lennon, afwa, doesn't like this stuff. He doesn't like the adulation. All the bits where he could. You could be elated, but by the adoring crowds. It's what he's always wanted, but he finds it really tough, doesn't he?

[Afwa Hirsch]

There's adoring crowds and then there's like hordes of screaming people who can't actually hear your music because they're making so much noise their own. I can imagine how frustrating that is for somebody who really like is an artist. I mean, they've written the songs, they've crafted the music. Lennon says it's no fun, it's torture. I resent performing for fucking idiots. They can't feel I'm the one that's feeling. And I think that speaks to as well his disconnect. I mean, he didn't set out to necessarily have legions of screaming teenage girls. He's married with a baby at this point having to hide the fact because they have to preserve this image of these kind of blank slates onto which teenage girls can project their fantasies. It's not about them. And that must feel a bit empty. I can see that in those days.

[Peter Frankopan]

It's also the expectations of the kind of semi pageantry you're expected to go on. You're expected to Be an ambassador for the country. So John says, you know, we're supposed to put up with all that shit from Lord Mayors and their wives and be touched and pawed at the American embassy. He says, some bloody animal cut Ringo's hair. So what did he do? I walked out swearing at all of them.

[Afwa Hirsch]

I've never heard any of them express it like this. But I do wonder if they felt vulnerable. You know, like when you watch those crowds of teenage girls being held back by the police, you can't help but think if they had been let free, they would have actually ripped them to pieces. Like it was scary. Not everyone is having to be restrained by police to rush this world famous band. Some people have still never heard of them.

[Peter Frankopan]

It's amazing.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Among those people, somehow John's father Alf, busy working as a doorman at a London hotel, is none the wiser. He's not been employed involved in John's life since the standoff in Blackpool when John was five. And he's never heard of the Beatles.

[Peter Frankopan]

A colleague shows alpha picture of John in the newspaper and says, any relation? And one day Cynthia opens the door to find a tiny man with lank gray hair balding on top. He looked as unkempt and down at heel as a tramp. But alarmingly with John's face.

[Afwa Hirsch]

That must have been a shock.

[Peter Frankopan]

Yeah, that must have been a shock, yeah. So Lennon's busy that day. So on April Fool's Day, Alf tries again, turning up while John Lennon and the others making their first movie, A Hard Day's Night. And John Lennon is absolutely furious to start with, isn't he?

[Afwa Hirsch]

Quite understandably, really. He's like, where have you been? And it's the start of a short lived revival to their relationship because after his initial anger that his father's only showed up, now he's famous, he warms to him and says he's a bit wacky, like me. I can see where I got it. And of course Alf's always fancied himself as an entertainer. So naturally, now that John Lennon is.

[Peter Frankopan]

A big deal, he tries to record a song himself and then releases one called that's My Life, My Love and My Home. And it's so you partial to a.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Bit of Alf Lennon, Peter?

[Peter Frankopan]

I was gonna say I partial My life, My love and my home. But yeah, it's so odd for a parent to step into their child's turf and to try to outperform them or outdo them. For Joel Lennon it's a huge embarrassment and luckily it's a flop. But it's good source material for John, right?

[Afwa Hirsch]

Especially now he is becoming a published author as well as a pop star. And if you remember back to when he was at school and started his own paper, he could have been a writer if he hadn't been a pop star. He loves to write, he's always creating stories. He's always been inspired by the kind of whimsical writing in Lewis Carroll. He loved Alice in Wonderland and now he writes this book, A Spaniard in the works, he can't resist a pun. It's a witty and whimsical collection of drawings, stories and poems. And one is called Our dad and it's about Alfred.

[Peter Frankopan]

And it opens. It wasn't long before our old dad was cumbersome, a drag. He seemed to get the message and began to pack his bag. So, you know, that tells you how that relationship went. And also the anxiety of feeling that someone's always trying to get something off you, including people who are close to you. So that's pretty tough. But the Beatles are flying high. Despite Alf, despite everything else. They're making films, they're writing books. Everything they touch seems to turn to gold. And in 1965, they receive a further endorsement of their establishment status and credentials.

[Afwa Hirsch]

So anyone who's not familiar with the British system might not know, but in this country, as we speak, still the case, you get rewarded for good deeds by being invited to the palace and being given an award by a senior member of the royal family called a member of the British Empire or an officer or commander of the British Empire. And this is what happens to the Beatles. It's recommended in the House of Commons that they be made members of the British Empire. And it's the beginning of another record successful year for them. By February, they have global record sales of more than 100 million. By the end of the year, they'll have set another record, three number one albums in one year.

[Peter Frankopan]

So at 24, John Lennon is now not just one of the most famous faces in Britain, he's one of the most recognizable people in the world. But he feels trapped and is hungry for new thrills. And on top of that, he can't help feeling the Beatles, and particularly their lyrics feel a little bit frothy. We've got people like Bob Dylan or the Kinks who are writing much more interesting, engaging, complicated words to their songs, engaging with interesting topics. It's not just Hold My Hand or she Loves Me. It's about things that are much more subtle and nuanced. So how will Lennon Find the vision to turbocharge both his and the band's creativity. April 19655 Strathearn Place, Bayswater, West London. John, Cynthia, George and Patty sit around the small dinner table of their dentist friend John Riley and his wife. It's a low key evening and the group chat amiably as their host guides them into the lounge for coffee before they head out to meet Ringo at the Ad Lib Club near Leicester Square. The six sugar cubes neatly arranged on the mantelpiece go unnoticed as they drink their lightly sweetened coffee. It's not long before they all start to feel peculiar. Cynthia is convinced the room is swirling. It's getting bigger in size and then shrinking again. The dentist, no longer a genial host, now looks like some kind of demon. Is this food poison? The dentist starts to laugh and John quickly realizes what's happened. We've been given lsd. There's panic. They rush out of the flat and into the streets, the white stuccoed fronts looming over them. Getting to the club seems to be the best option, but who can drive? They all climb into Patty's tiny Mini Cooper and George bravely takes the wheel. Where are they going? They trundle East Ish, taking unexpected detours, crawling at 18 miles an hour. After what seems like an age, they're finally somewhere around Piccadilly Circus. Patty suggests they all smash up a shop window. John sits in the back screaming and laughing. Rainbow halos surround the light and fold into each other other. The colored sides of the theaters and cinemas seem to blaze. Hundreds of people are outside throgging towards the tiny car which is getting smaller. It's all feeling a bit Alice in Wonderland. John loves it. Eventually they find the club next door to the Prince Charles Theatre where it always was. They get in the lift and it bursts into flames. It's quite something to be taking LSD without knowing or without being told you're going to do it and then going for a drive. I mean it's very 60s London.

[Afwa Hirsch]

I would be so furious if somebody gave me LSD without me even knowing, let alone without my permission. It's crazy. But also it had like real consequences. I mean I suppose you could say positive and negative.

[Peter Frankopan]

But LSD is a really interesting experiment devised by the CIA to try to work out to do enhanced interrogation techniques. But there are lots of people, particularly people like Timothy Leary, who's a Harvard psychologist who together with Richard Alpert has written a book called the Psychedelic A manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And Leary is probably the Kind of poster boy, the torchbearer for experimentation with LSD and writing about how taking LSD can take you to an enhanced state of spiritual connectivity where you have extreme reactions and experiences to what's going on around you. And even people like Aldous Huxley, the English writer and philosopher who Lennon has read, predicts that LSD will make mystical experiences available to the masses. But, you know, it's not all great. So sometimes John Lennon takes it when he's in the recording studio and it looks like he's losing control. So Ringo Starr says, suddenly we'd be in the middle of a track and John would just start crying or screaming, which freaked us out at the beginning. But we were always open to whatever anyone was going through, so we just got on with it. You know, I love Ringo Starr. I mean, just isn't that great? What a good friend to have, right? You do what you do and we're cool as long as we understand it.

[Afwa Hirsch]

I feel like we've maybe come a bit full circle actually, since this era because now it's become very normalized for people to, as they often, like microdose, you know, take small amounts of mind altering substances, whether it's mushrooms or LSD or ketamine. They use it at work to enhance their performance in the C Suite. It's kind of come back around that people are now seeing it not as like opting out of society, but tools that you can use to make yourself more creative or more relaxed or more productive. I think that in this case it did have pros and cons because it obviously opened up even more creativity. But it was definitely the beginning of a more interdependent relationship on substances that would have problematic consequences for John, more than any other member, member of the Beatles, I think will make.

[Peter Frankopan]

Yes, it's partly because John is kind of on a permanent bender now. You know, he's. He becomes dependent and reliant on drugs, not just to experience excitement and the adrenaline, but also, he says, to survive. He said the others in the band also too, but I always had more, more pills, more of everything because probably I'm a bit more crazy. It's a nightmare. As a father and as a husband, Lennon's always bringing random people back home who hang around for hours, days, eating whatever they find in the kitchen. So the dislocation between being creatively brilliant and, you know, chaos in your personal life is also really hard.

[Afwa Hirsch]

It's really hard. I don't know how Cynthia takes it, and I think it's maybe just exacerbating an existing problem, which is the incompatibility of their expectations, really. John is curious to go deeper and deeper into like dark and exciting places, to plumb the depths of his own creativity, spirituality.

[Peter Frankopan]

Lennon has a kind of evangelical streak. He wants to share this stuff with the rest of the world.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Yeah, they're getting rewarded in a way for going down this path. Critic Timothy Leary hails the Beatles as divine messiahs. But Lennon is not really managing to keep everything working. He is immortal as well as, if he is to be seen that way, a messiah. By this point, he and Cynthia moved to this 19,000 pound, 16 room mock Tudor house on an exclusive Surrey estate where Cliff Richard and Tom Jones also live.

[Peter Frankopan]

And then he does an interview with the journalist Maureen Cleave. And the fans are expecting an intimate portrait of their idol, you know, enjoying the fruits of his success in this wonderful idyl, wealthy, with his beautiful wife and son. But the reality is very, very different.

[Afwa Hirsch]

March 1966. Kenwood, Weybridge, Surrey. Maureen Cleave, pop columnist for the London Evening Standards, smooths down her dark bobbed hair and knocks on the front door. There is a crest saying Lennon with an image of a stag on the green and white shield. And the door knocker itself is in the shape of a naked woman. Very droll, thinks Maureen. She's met John before, interviewed him before, so when he opens the front door, there's familiarity. What day is it? He asks. He hasn't done any work since the beginning of January, three months earlier. He offers to take her on a tour of the house. That's a hobby I had for a week, he says, pointing to a room of model racing cars. And sin won't let me get rid of this fruit machine. He shows her his five TVs, all the while John's three year old son Julian traipses after them, holding onto a porcelain Siamese cat. We'll have to send him to the lyce in London. Seems the only place for him in his position. He's talking about Julian, but I couldn't stand ugly people when I was five. Lots of the ugly ones are foreign, aren't they? He plays music from India and asks Maureen if she's even listening. Maureen keeps taking notes, thinking of words she can use to describe the man. Imperious, unpredictable, indolent, disorganized, organized, childish, vague, but also charming and quick witted, easygoing, tough as hell. Then he explains he's reading about religion. Christianity will go, he says. I'm right and I'll be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was alright, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. While she wonders who he might be thinking of when she talks about disciples, he takes her outside and shows her the pool. It's not what I wanted. What did you want? Maureen asks. A mirror on the bottom. He shows her his Rolls Royce Phantom, complete with tv, folding bed, fridge, desk and telephone. His driver, Les Antony, a former Welsh guardsman, is going to take them both back into the capital. Anthony has just been in Wales. Did they keep a welcome for you in the hillsides? John quips. Maureen smiles. The driver answers in one weary word, yes. They glide into London on the newly opened M4, with John talking about the problems with those who inherit wealth rather than earn it and the current labor government. Maureen allows herself to look out of the dark and rear windows for a moment, wondering how on earth she's going to put this piece together.

[Peter Frankopan]

Yeah, it causes such a sensation, the comments about Christianity and it's tucked in the middle of the article. You sort of have to look for it, but it opens up the first proper line of attack. That single sentence becomes so notorious and sums up Lennon to so many of his antagonists.

[Afwa Hirsch]

You have to read the whole piece. It's stuck in the middle. I mean the headline of that piece is how does a beetle live? John Lennon lives like this. Unimaginable now that you would have something that sensational and lead with something so bland. But it's also Britain, where that comment itself doesn't even really stir any feathers. Couldn't be more night and day with America, where the Bible Belt where evangelical Christianity. You know, they're all of these charismatic movements that are incredibly furious, I mean apoplectic at this complete blasphemy and it becomes a real problem. I mean a threat to his reputation, a threat to his physical security. He now has legions of of Americans being whipped up into frenzies of anger by their pastors who believe he's kind of the Antichrist. And that is not ideal.

[Peter Frankopan]

And that's where the band are heading next to the United States. Will they be able to face the music? That's next time on Legacy.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Follow Legacy on the Wondery App, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge seasons early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wonder App or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short [e-mail] survey.

[Unknown]

From.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Wondery and goal hanger this is the second episode in our series about John Lennon. Lennon We've used many sources for this series, including Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, Tim Riley's the Man, the Myth, the Music, and John by Cynthia Lennon. Legacy is hosted by me, Afwa Hash.

[Peter Frankopan]

And me, Peter Frankerpern.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Scene Writing by Stephanie Power.

[Peter Frankopan]

For Goal Hanger, our series producers are Kate Taylor and Anoushka Lewis. The associate producer is Karen Pierre. Our production managers are Izzy Reid and Alex Hack Roberts. The executive producers are Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport.

[Afwa Hirsch]

Legacy is sound, designed and engineered by Dan King. Music supervision is Scott Velasquez for Frissensync, our producer for Wondery is Emanuela Quinarte Francis and our managing producer is Rachel Sibley.

[Peter Frankopan]

Executive producers for Wondery are Estelle Doyle, Chris Bourne, Morgan Jones and Marshall Louie.