The Wives (and Ladies) That Late They Laved

If cool English girls like supermodel Jean Shrimpton or the gloriously tousled Julie Christie in Darling created the image of the swinging model girl of the Sixties, Pattie Boyd Harrison certainly lived the role, topping off her career by landing a Beatle, no less — even if it was the quiet one. Not for George the pregnant childhood sweethearts that John Lennon and Ringo led to the altar. He wanted something flash to symbolize his new success, and a beautiful model clinging to his arm was better than a shiny new Ferrari. To their credit, the Harrisons did establish the most egalitarian marriage among the Fab Four until John and Yoko — but that's another story...

Pattie came from a comfortably middie class London family, and rather drifted into modelling. She was an immediate hit; her toothy blonde innocence and girlish, long-legged figure complemented the new miniskirts perfectly. As Mary Quant remarked: "...their ambition [young girlsl is to look like Pattie Boyd rather than Marlene Dietrich... childishly young, naively unsophisticated." So Pattie was in great demand, traveling to the States at one point to model Tuffin & Foale fashions ("feminine clothes for the girl who goes to parties on the back of motorcycles"), and making quite a name for herself before Hari Georgeson ever hit the scene. They met when she was filming a bit part in A Hard Keystone Day's Night (she's the giggly blonde on the train who goes into hysterics when the Beatles play a song in the baggage car), but it almost didn't happen. Pattie not only had a boyfriend, but was engaged and not particularly interested in the tender young lad from Liverpool. After all, George Harrison in 1964 was still a 20-year-old fresh from the provinces, and Pattie was just the sort of breezy London girl that he admired... and wanted. He persisted and finally scored a date, somehow the boyfriend was shuffled off to Buffalo, and in no time Pattie and George were a "Thing." Pattie's relationship with A Beatle spawned even more media attention in her, and she started writing a monthly "Letter from London" for the American teen magazine 16, in which she would rattle on about how her favorite color that month was white, so everything from her Mini to the kitty was that color. How Mick and Marianne were at this party or that. That George said "hello."

On January 21, 1966 George and Pattie were married, after having lived together for about six months (unbeknownst to 16 readers). Her age was listed as 21, somewhat older than what she'd said before...ruins that girlwoman image to be of drinking age, y'know. The Harrisons adopted a moderately secluded lifestyle — Pattie gave up her hectic modeling schedule to devote more time to decorating and running their modern cottage in Esher. There is a story that the other Beatles dubbed her "Dippie" — if they did it was probably more descriptive of her giggly manner than a put-down of her gray matter. Maybe she didn't have the intellectual pretentions of a Marianne Faithfull, with an ex-husband who was ringleader of the radical pop undergrpund in London. But singlehandedly Pattie may have kicked off the mass popularity of TM. She'd been reading about Eastern religions and attending a few lectures here and there long before meditation became a part of pop culture. She introduced George to it, he was soon hooked and Hari Georgeson was sprung upon the world. Thanks, Pattie! She did contribute anonymously and faithfully to various "causes," modelled sporadically, suffered an intense paranoia whenever she saw gangs of girls (rabid fans would chase her, punch her and scream obscenities if they recognized her), and slowly but surely drifted into the background. By the time Eric Clapton revealed that she was "Layla" she was a vague enough figure to qualify as a mystery woman. Thanks to Eric (in his Rolling Stone interview) we know that Harrison had sunk even deeper into his religion, neglected Pattie and left his best friend (Slowhand) to give her aid and comfort. They fell in love, but Pattie returned to have another go at her marriage. Clapton plunged into despair, and we have Lay/a and Other Love Songs as a chronicle of that despair. But the Harrison marriage failed, and Pattie was accepted back by the ever-loyal Clapton. Now she travels with Clapton, lingering quietly at the fringes of tour activity, a still-girlish 31-year-old enigma. As for a divorce, Harrison has simply said "It's as silly as marriage."

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Cynthia Powell and John Lennon, were married quietly in Liverpool on August 23, 1962. They had attended art school together — she a shy, studious girl in twin sets, he the dirty Teddy boy who initially disgusted, then fascinated her. Word got around to him that she liked him, they started dating and perhaps would just have drifted apart again — both admitted later that Cyn's pregnancy forced them into a marriage, that otherwise wouldn't have happened.

"I was a bit shocked when she told me," says John. "But I said yes. I didn't fight it." When John told his Aunt Mimi, she simply groaned.

Lennon was every bit the old school Liverpool husband, occasionally giving Cyn a knock, ordering her to bleach her hair blonde, dabbling in infidelity. "Norwegian Wood," John later confessed, was about one of his affairs, written in an oblique way so Cyn wouldn't suspect. He couldn't recall exactly which girl it.was.

Cynthia .wasn't stupid — she admitted to Hunter Davies, the Beatles's official biographer, that she was frustrated, that she wanted to "do" something. But she continued to cook and care for Julian while Lennon roamed the world. And it suited John for quite a while, having the little woman waiting for him at home. Until he discovered women's liberation in the Village Voice, and Yoko Ono careened into his life.

Lennon had met Yoko at John Dunbar's Indica gallery, where she was putting on a show. Dunbar, Marianne Faithfull's ex and a heavy man on the local art scene, introduced them. Yoko handed Lennon a card that read "breathe." He panted. They noticed each other at several other gallery openings, then Yoko broke the ice by approaching Lennon directly for backing for one of her shows. He says that she started to have a tremendous hold on him then — he felt incredibly stimulated in her presence and couldn't wait until he saw her again. §he was, he said, someone you could drink with like a mate, argue politics .and aesthetics with.. .and then go to bed with! Lennon was ecstatic: "My head would go open like I was on an acid trip," he gushed. He renounced his male chauvinest Liverpudlian view of females, and consumated his affair with the Japanese artist one night while Cyn was away.

In the public's eyes, he'd traded his blonde English, wife in for a ravenhaired Japanese older model. But he loved her, and he wouldn't acfcept anything but love for her from the people around him. The trouble was, Yoko was as temperamental as Mount Fuji if her art was questioned. She'd been subject to much criticism, and had never really been accepted in the New York art circles she had once haunted. One critic's remarks about one of her early happenings in Japan plunged her into such a despair that she tried suicide and was confined to a mental hospital for a while. When she made requests at the Apple offices, if they weren't complied with immediately she would scream that she was an artist, that she had a right to expect these things... Apple office girls would grumble and give her the finger bphind her back, and John fumed even more. To make matters worse, his own mates disliked her. Paul admitted that he'd hated her at first, but she'd grown on him. John said it was too late. George told her, "upfront," that he'd heard from Dylan and a few people in New York that she'd gotten a lousy name there, that she gave off "bad vibes." Lennon snapped: "They sat there with their wives, like a fucking jury, and judged us...all that shit about Hare Krishna and God..."

Then, of course, Allen Klein entered the picture! The events surrounding the dissolution of Apple.are still extremely confusing, but it seems clear that Yoko wanted Klein in as.the Beatles' manager, perhaps for the backing he'd offered her for her films Smile and Two Virgins. Klein did not exactly speak kindly of her, though — Paul McCartney testified later in High Court that Klein had confided to him: "The real trouble is Yoko. She is the one with ambition." Klein also boasted that he had control over her.

"Paul's too easily led by Linda. She's leading him down the road. John was, as heavily influenced by Yoko at one time, but that's not so any more. I pried John away from Yoko artistically. There'll be no more John and Yoko double albums."

Even if one approaches Yoko without any of the "racist" or "sexist" feelings that Lennon accuses everyone of, her behavior in public has often spoken for itself.

When John, George and Ringo convened in Los Angeles in 1973 for a business meeting, they also 'got together at a Hollywood studio where Ringo was having some problems cutting his new record. Lennon played rhythm guitar, George took lead and the engineer reported that the vibes were "great." Afterwards, when a clap track was dubbed over, everyone rushed into the studio to join in the applause. "Everyone except Yoko Ono," as Newsweek reported.

Yoko has also expressed surprise that people think Sigt. Pepper was Lennon's high point.

"People think he's satisfied after having done something like the Beatles. Actually, that's cutting him down." Such sentiments are not likely to endear God to Beatle devotees.

There is some justice to the claims of sexism and racism. Private Eye, an English periodical with less scruples than most floating around the Isles, has a gimmick of coining acronyms for famous people. "Spiggy Topes and the Turds" was their blanket put-down of pop stars, whether Jagger and the Stones or Lennon and the Beatles. Yoko became "Okay Yoni" (If you're rusty on the Kama Sutra, yoni means poozwax), and a flood of incredible filth followed.

What it comes down to in the end, though, is Yoko's consistent lack of humor about herself or her art. She scoffed at Lee Eastman (Linda McCartney's father) for dropping names like Picasso and Kafka with a sort of "aren't we intelligent" air, but in many ways she is at least as pretentious, with her rolling around in bags and her screaming and moaning, her demands to be taken seriously. What was always satisfying about the Beatles was their lack of pretention: they kpew it was all a big joke. Yoko is obsessed with being taken seriously; sadly she has become a big joke.

Jane Asher came into Paul Mc-

Cartney's life in May of 1963 when she appeared at a concert the Beatles performed at as a "teenage commentator." She was a striking girl, with long red hair and a sweet, refined manner, and Paul recognized her from her regular spot on the TV show Juke Box Jury. He invited her to the Beatles' hotel suite later that night, and immediately fastened onto her. "She was a rare London bird, the sort we'd always heard about," he said. It was the start of a relationship that was to last until 1968, and inspire several McCartney compositions, including "And I Love Her", and "We Can Work It Out".

Like George, Paul had a provincial boy's yen for a sophisticated London girl, but that wasn't the real basis of Jane's appeal. Pauldeveloped a strong relationship with Jane's mother from the beginning. He was invited to spdnd the night once when he missed a connection back to Liverpool. Reluctantly, he stayed and stayed...making his permanent London home with the Ashers for three years. The security of the Asher home — upper-middleclass, professional — was irresistable. And he craved a close relationship with an older woman, having lost his mother as a teenager. Even after he established his St. John's Wood home Paul would have Jane and her mother over for tea, serving up strawberries and cream as if he was born to it.

Apparently that wasn't the extent of his romantic activities. According to John Dunbar (Marianne's ex), he had a "close" relationship with Dunbar's child's nanny, an "earthy, workingclass girl," for several years. It was in fact his inability to resist these little flings that caused several tiffs with Jane, ending up in several major breaks. Paul himself confessed to Hunter Davies: "...my whole existence for so long centered on a bachelor life. I didn't treat women as most people do. I've always had a lot around, even when I've had a steady girl." .

Jane and Paul suffered a further estrangement during the whole Maharishi affair. Jane mistrusted the Maharishi from the start, and though she went along to India with the other wives she never understood the way the others took to it. Paul's experiences with LSD drove them further apart. He would rave on about the spiritual experiences he'd had with John, which she knew nothing about, and didn't really care to explore.

Jane and Paul were engaged in 1967, but by early1968 it was over. After that Paul indulged in several flings, not worth mentioning except for the fact that one girl milked a whole book out of her brief tenure at McCartney's house. It wasn't until Linda Eastman made her appearance that

Paul entered a serious relationship again.

If you believe what you read, Linda either was a fame-crazed groupie who went after Paul, or an eminent photographer who embarked on an idyllic relationship with him. As always, the truth is probably somewhere in between.

Despite constant denials from the Apple office , the British press persisted in their belief that Linda was a member of the Kodak Eastmans. You can't blame them, though — for months the Apple office denied even the possibility of a romance between the two, and that was obviously false. Describing Linda as an American heiress jibed with all the romantic Daisy Miller myths. In fact her father had changed his name from (!) Epstein (John Lennon persisted in calling Linda's father "Epstein" during their business dealings).

Linda is a simple, nonintellectual girl who has always admitted that she was more of a "comfort" to Paul than an intellectual sparring partner like Yoko. She was never interested in playing music with Paul, either, until the breakup of the Beatles left him at loose ends. As Linda said in a 1974 interview:

"When it actually broke up, I was left with a man whose whole world was falling apart. Obviously I decided to stick with him. But the situation was never one where two strong women took the men away from ..the group."

Not two strong women. Linda is a full member of Wings now but nowhere near the position John Lennon held in relation to Paul. And she probably doesn't much care.

The trouble is, with Linda the press has'very little it can get its teeth into. She doesn't have an instantly recognizable style, like Bianca or Britt, but is more apt to wear instantly forgettable minidresses and neglect to shave her legs, and there's only so much you can say about that. She doesn't bombard the newspapers with dialectic like Yoko, so her tendency to lapse into "far-out, groovy" kind of dialogue is leaped on. So why did one of the •most sought-after men in the world choose her as a partner for life?

"I'm a good chick," says Linda. Yeah, right. But how can you attack her? She puts herself down from the start. It's strange that so many of her former "friends" have found ways to attack her: she's a scheming groupie, she deserted her American friends... you can see why she did, too.

Acolleague of mine remarked, "One thing that remains true, no matter what anybody says...it's a good marriage. You can't take that away from them." Very true. You also can't sell a single copy of the National Enquirer with that story.

Ringo's wife Maureen Cox started out chasing a car down a Liverpool street that she knew contained a Beatle. Ringo, to be exact. Maureen was a fan who made good; she haunted the Cavern in the early days with the other girls, snatching a kiss from one of the boys as they left the bandroom. She first kissed Paul on a dare, but it was Ringo she really liked, and after he walked her home a few nights, they started dating. Like Pattie, she experienced the horrifying rage of Beatle fans who recognized a "Beatle woman" — one girl reached through a car window and scratched her viciously when she dented dating Ringo.

Maureen was a hairdresser by trade, and the only one of the Beatles wives who sprang from the same class as her husband (Cynthia Lennon was a bit "posh" by Her husband's standards). It's clear from the pictures dating from her marriage to the Beatles breakup that Maureen tried valiantly to conform to the image of "Beatle wife." Starting out as an elaborately coiffed brunette to match Ringo's Butlins ducktail, she went pale blonde by the time of the Beatles' Indian adventures, and appears in the Maharishi pictures almost undistinguishable from Pattie, Cynthia or Jane.

Things went well in the Starkey marriage for a while — Ringo, like John, was a typically paternal Northern husband but Maureen seemed to thrive on it, caring for her babies and sewing her own clothes. But for whatever reasons, they split and Ringo. took up with a model, a "groovy chick" like George's, instead of the submissive Liverpool wife who would cook him meals when he got home from the studio. At last check, they've left each other, but Ringo has apparently forsaken home cooking for boots and hot pants permanently. ¶|