Of course the music made during the Beatles' brief reign—it was a mere six years from Meet the Beatles! to Let It Be—lives on. With more than 1 billion singles and albums sold, the Fab Four are still top of the pops. Yes, that's a new Beatles hits compilation, 1, high on the charts, a photo-laden memoir, The Beatles Anthology, on bestseller lists and a newly restored A Hard Day's Night in theaters. Neo-Beatlemania has even spread to the Web, where www.thebeatles.com registered 2 million hits within six hours of its Nov. 13 debut. Nixing renewed reunion rumors, the surviving mates remain close. On these pages, PEOPLE tracks the fortunes and misfortunes the Beatles and their intimates have encountered on life's long and winding road.
George
The quiet Beatle is nearly silenced
When he first confronted an intruder in his home last Dec. 30, George Harrison said he tried "to confuse and distract him" by shouting " 'Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.' " Chanting mantras may have thwarted the Blue Meanies in Yellow Submarine, but this foe was real—and deadly. "He was on top of me, stabbing," Harrison said in a statement read in court Nov. 14 during the attempted-murder trial of Michael Abram, 34, a mental patient from the Beatles' hometown of Liverpool who, according to his lawyer, thought that Harrison and his band-mates were actually "witches flying on broomsticks from hell." Harrison, who, in the aftermath of John Lennon's 1980 assassination, installed a state-of-the-art security system around Friar Park, his Henley-on-Thames estate 35 miles west of London, added, "I truly believed I was dying."
Chilling words from the normally reserved guitarist who, at 57, is the youngest of the Fabs (as he self-deflatingly calls the Beatles). Author of such classics as "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun," Harrison was nonetheless cast, he noted in 1990, as "the quieter and more subordinate Beatle." The fact is, says his friend, Monty Python alum Michael Palin, "he can bend anybody's ear." His accomplishments, however, often did the talking for him. Harrison was the first ex-Beatle to score a solo No. 1 single, "My Sweet Lord" in 1970, and he orchestrated the all-star Concert for Bangla Desh the following year. While his last hits came with the Traveling Wilburys, he embraced a second career as a film producer, with both gems (1979's Life of Brian) and turkeys (1986's Sean Penn-Madonna vehicle Shanghai Surprise).
Harrison himself starred in one of rock's most celebrated soaps when his wife, Pattie Boyd, split in 1974 and took up with his good friend, guitarist Eric Clapton. Harrison soon rebounded when he met Mexican-born Olivia Trinidad Arias, an employee in the L.A. office of his record label. The two married in 1978, a month after the birth of their son Dhani (now 22 and a student at Brown University). A homebody and enthusiastic gardener who prefers flowers to rock concerts, Harrison was enjoying the holidays with his family at Friar Park last year when Abram attacked him. Severely wounded, Harrison, who suffered a punctured lung and a knife thrust that barely missed his heart, might easily have become the second martyred Beatle if Olivia, 53, had not helped subdue Abram by bashing him over the head with a lamp. On Nov. 15, after a British court declared Abram not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered him confined indefinitely at a medium-security psychiatric unit near Liverpool, Dhani read a second statement from his father, who remained home during the two-day trial to prevent it from becoming a media circus. While assuring fans that he and his family "will continue rebuilding our lives," Harrison issued a Beatle-esque plea "that the growing violence in society" be "replaced by the goodness of most people in the world."
There was something about Pattie Boyd
Like many women who orbited the Beatles, model Pattie Boyd, Mrs. Harrison from '66 to '77, "was beautiful and sensual," one music writer noted. "But she had an extra ingredient." It would take a rare muse indeed to inspire Harrison's classic "Something" plus Eric Clapton's "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight." Clapton became Boyd's second husband in 1979—with a nod from George, her ex and his friend. "I'd rather she was with him," he said, "than with some dope." That didn't last either, but Boyd, lately dating a British businessman, remains close to both men. "When you see them," Boyd, 56, a photographer, told Britain's Daily Express in 1991,"it's as though it were yesterday and you've never been apart.
John
As John Lennon bounced vibrantly out of seclusion, tragedy struck
It was just like starting over. In 1980, the year he turned 40, John Lennon was enjoying newfound happiness. "He was in good shape," says former Beatles business manager Peter Brown. "He was happy with his home life and excited about [his new album] Double Fantasy." His sometimes rocky marriage to Yoko Ono had stabilized, and he had grown closer to his older son Julian, whom he had seldom seen after his divorce from first wife Cynthia in 1969. Determined not to be a nowhere dad again, he had retired in 1975 for five years to help raise his second son, Sean, and had even begun to reach out to his relatives in Britain. Lennon spent hours on the phone with his half sister Julia Baird, reminiscing about their mother, Julia, whose sudden death (she was hit by a car in 1958) haunted him. "We talked about Mummy endlessly," says Baird, 53, a teacher in Cheshire, England. "He rang everybody saying he was going to come home [for a family reunion]."
Sadly, it was not to be. On Dec. 8 Lennon was killed by an autograph seeker turned assassin outside his New York City home. This year marks the 20th anniversary of his slaying—and the 60th of his birth. In a dark irony, his killer, Mark David Chapman, 45 and serving 20 years to life in Attica, N.Y., became eligible of parole. It was denied Oct. 3 after Ono said in a taped statement that with Chapman free, she and Lennon's sons "would not feel safe for the rest of our lives."
Lennon would no doubt take heart in knowing that both his children carry his tuneful torch. "He has finally come into his own," Cynthia Lennon says of Julian, 37, who, after drug problems and a string of mostly forgettable albums, won over some critics with his last CD, Photograph Smile. Living in Italy and France with his 24-year-old girlfriend Lucy Bayliss, Julian, who received a reported $30 million inheritance from Ono in 1996 after a long legal battle, collects Beatles memorabilia and is working on a new album, due next year. His half brother Sean, 25, is also following in Beatles bootsteps. Living in New York City with his girlfriend, musician Yuka Honda, 40, he is recording the follow-up to his 1998 debut album, Into the Sun. He has also taken his father's place as loyal admirer of Yoko's unique musical vision. Now hailed as a trailblazing artist, the once reviled Ono, 67, took issue when, in 1996, Sean jokingly said that his band was "more hip and better-looking" than her past backups, including a certain John Lennon. "Better-looking?" she joked. "Your dad was pretty good-looking!"
Lennon's disloyalty couldn't end his first wife's love
Even now, 32 years after her marriage effectively ended when she arrived home in Weybridge, England, to find her husband and Yoko Ono breakfasting in their bathrobes, Cynthia Lennon says, "My memories are full of love for John. Whatever I do is colored with John the Beatle, and it will always be the same."
At 61, Cynthia still wears her blonde hair in the Brigitte Bardot style that caught Lennon's eye at the Liverpool College of Art in 1958. When the Beatles invaded the U.S. six years later, Lennon's by-then wife and their baby, Julian, were kept secret for fear of alienating adoring fans. "It didn't mean he didn't love Julian," Cynthia now says. "I have letters from him saying how awful it was that he couldn't see us."
With two subsequent marriages behind her, Cynthia lives with Noel Charles, 59, a Trinidad-born former nightclub owner, in Normandy, France, where she tends the gardens surrounding her tidy stone cottage and pursues the art career she intended before becoming a Beatle wife. Having received about $240,000 from Lennon in their 1969 divorce—"not exactly the lottery," she says—Cynthia supports herself by painting. (A series of her prints of John recently sold for $300 per set of four.) To those who accuse her of exploiting Lennon's memory, she is unapologetic: "It is part of my history."
A long 'lost weekend' and (half) a Beatles reunion
When Yoko Ono wanted to film a fly on a naked woman in 1970, she dispatched her 20-year-old Chinese-American assistant May Pang to collect the bugs. In 1973, when Ono sought an unorthodox fix for her rocky four-year marriage, she again turned to Pang. "Things weren't going well between John and Yoko," recalls Pang. "Yoko said, 'I know John likes you. Have an affair with him.' I said, 'I don't want your husband.' She replied, 'Oh, but you will.' " And soon began an 18-month separation that Lennon called his "lost weekend" with Pang, now 50 and a music manager who lives near New York City with her two children by record producer Tony Visconti, from whom she recently split. Before returning to Ono in 1975, Lennon enjoyed a less cloistered life with Pang, who, unlike Yoko, encouraged him to see old mates. When the McCartneys rang the bell unexpectedly at the Manhattan apartment John and Pang shared, "John said, 'Paul and Linda are downstairs. Can you handle it?' I said, 'They can come up anytime.' He goes, 'Oh, okay.' Obviously, he wasn't used to that."
Paul
with Linda by his side, McCartney took wing
Paul, now 58, not only filed the suit dissolving the Beatles but made the first announcement of a breakup on April 10,1970. That move made him and ever-present helpmate Linda look like spoilers, rock's Duke and Duchess of Windsor. For weeks, McCartney was so depressed he had trouble even getting out of bed. "He was torturing himself," Linda later told her friend and biographer Danny Fields.
All those troubles seemed so far away on March 11, 1997, as McCartney became the only Beatle to be knighted. Of course, by then, Sir Paul—George and Ringo, he said, called him Your Holiness—had established himself as an asset to the empire, except perhaps for that 1980 marijuana bust in Tokyo (he spent 10 days in jail). The most productive ex-Beatle (and the richest, worth $750 million), McCartney has released some 30 solo albums, nine with his band Wings, a name he hit on while waiting in the hospital for the birth of daughter Stella in 1971. "He just works and works and works," says biographer Barry Miles.
He puts just as much effort into family. He initially sent his children to a private British school but decided they were being exposed to too many other privileged scions. When he moved to a country house in Sussex, he transferred them to public school. Today Heather, 37 (from Linda's first marriage), is a promising textile designer; Mary, 31, is a photographer (and mother of Paul's grandson Arthur, 20 months); Stella, 29, has made a splash as head designer for the French fashion house Chloé; and James, 23, is a guitarist. "I've known those kids since they were tiny," says Peter Blake, who designed the cover for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. "They've always been wonderful."
McCartney has suffered tragedies too. He is still haunted by John Lennon's death in 1980. "I'll have a whiskey," he told music journalist Ray Connolly a few years ago, "and I'll feel tears welling up about John." In 1998 Linda, 56, to whom he was devoted, died of breast cancer.
But in the past year he has found fresh happiness with British model and champion for the disabled Heather Mills, 32. The couple declared their love publicly in an interview on British television in October. "I always had a dream," said Mills, "of a knight in shining armor." Enter Sir Paul.
McCartney's touch of class
On the group's 1964 hit "And I Love Her," Paul sang, "A love like ours could never die." Unfortunately, the sentiment proved short-lived as regards to Jane Asher, the upper-class English redhead who inspired the ballad. A 21-year-old actress when she became engaged to Paul in '67, "she was his Miss Posh," says former London gossip columnist Richard Compton Miller. "She had a proper education and was well-spoken." When they split in '68, she kept a stiff upper. "People who make a drama out of their lost loves are such bores," she said. Now 54 and wed to British cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, 64, the mother of three is an English Martha Stewart, turning out books and TV shows on such topics as babies and cakes. She still acts and also writes novels. "I'm too aware of what an interesting life I have," she said in '98, "to regret anything." Even Paul.
Ringo
For the lovable drummer, happiness don't come easy
If John, Paul and George were complicated, often incompatible pop geniuses, drummer Ringo Starr was just...Ringo-unpretentious, funny and a neutral party in his bandmates' ego clashes. "They wouldn't talk to each other, but they'd talk to him," says Nancy Andrews, a girlfriend in the '70s. "He was the Yoda of the group."
But after the split, the Force was not with Ringo, now 60, as he endured a string of personal troubles (alcoholism) and undignified career choices (he played a designer in a Judith Krantz miniseries, 1983's Princess Daisy). Still, Ringo righted himself, humor intact. Asked by Rolling Stone in 1998 if he had come to terms with the past, Starr, who toured with his All-Starr Band this year, responded, "I don't get up in the morning saying, 'Good morning, icon.' "
In 1971 he released the hit that became his post-Beatles signature, "It Don't Come Easy." But the output slowed to a dribble as his drinking increased. Along the way, he lost the heart of Maureen, the working-class Liverpool girl he married in 1965. Nor was he much of a presence in the lives of their children Zak, Jason and Lee. "I overreacted to the responsibility of marriage and kids," he later said, explaining his excessive partying. The marriage ended in 1975; by then he was living with model (now photographer) Nancy Andrews. Much of those years, Starr has said, is a blur. Just as well. His rented Hollywood home caught fire in 1979, melting some of his gold records. And that same year a critical illness required the surgical removal of five feet of his intestine. "I'd have died" if the doctors hadn't operated, he later said. "But it still blows me away to think what's missing."
He seems to have found a sense of completeness with Barbara Bach, now 54, a onetime Bond girl (The Spy Who Loved Me). They met in 1980 when they were cast as Stone Age lovers in the comedy Caveman. After they emerged unscarred from a car accident that year, Ringo recalled, "we agreed never to be separated." (He had his-and-her lockets made from the shattered windshield.) Married in 1981, they kept that pact seven years later when both entered rehab. "We went down together," Bach later said, "but we came back up together." (And, on one recent occasion, even double-dated with Paul and his new love Heather Mills.)
The couple have continued since then on an even keel, even as Ringo weathered new crises: Maureen's death from leukemia in 1994—Starr was at the deathbed—and in 1995 daughter Lee's brain tumor (from which she recovered). Now a non-drinking vegetarian, Starr is also a pitchman for the Charles Schwab brokerage firm. He has grown close to his children. "He's very sweet with them," says Hard Rock Cafe founder Isaac Tigrett, Maureen's second husband. Zak, 35, and Jason, 33, are drummers like Dad. (Zak plays with The Who.) Lee, 30, briefly owned a boutique in Los Angeles. But their stepmom remains Ringo's soulmate. The couple, who in April adopted a mutt named Monty from a shelter, share homes in L.A., England and Monte Carlo. "You see them walking hand in hand, dressed in black," says Beatles biographer Philip Norman, "like two little Quakers."
Steve Dougherty and Tom Gliatto
Nina Biddle, Liz Corcoran, Caris Davis, Pete Norman and Simon Perry in London, Sue Miller in New York City and Robyn Flans and Lyndon Stambler in Los Angeles
- Contributors:
- Nina Biddle,
- Liz Corcoran,
- Caris Davis,
- Pete Norman,
- Simon Perry,
- Sue Miller,
- Robyn Flans,
- Lyndon Stambler.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
