The Love You Make by Peter Brown

Author:Peter Brown
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-11-24T05:26:44+00:00

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On November 9 I could no longer put off the worried phone calls from our English tour promoter, Arthur Howes, about booking future Beatles’ concerts. Brian, who couldn’t bear to admit the truth, finally called Howes and told him that the Beatles would no longer accept any bookings. Within the hour word leaked out to the press, and the office was deluged with calls. It was reported in most papers the next day that the Beatles intended to exist solely as recording artists. No entertainment act had ever attempted this before, and the implication of many of the articles was that that was the first step in their long-expected demise.

While Brian and I were on the phone with various reporters, assuring them that the Beatles were far from having broken up, John Dunbar was on the phone with John Lennon, who was crumpled on the curved sofa on the sunporch at Kenwood. He had been up for three consecutive days, tripping on LSD, and he had not washed or shaved in seventy-two hours. Dunbar wanted John to come to a private preview that night of a show opening at the Indica. Dunbar’s description of the show sounded very sexual to John, vaguely like an orgy. There were to be all these beautiful young people lying around in a big bag or something. The exhibit was titled “Unfinished Paintings and Objects by Yoko Ono.” John agreed to go.

Later that evening, at about ten o’clock, John arrived at the Indica in his chauffeur-driven Mini. Dunbar met him at the door of the gallery and took him around to see the exhibit. It was unlike anything John had ever seen before. The displays were so simple and arbitrary that it seemed some sort of put-on. There was an ordinary apple on a pedestal with a £200 price tag on it. John assumed one paid £200 for the privilege of watching the apple decompose. There was also a stepladder with a spyglass attached to the top step with a chain. If you climbed the ladder and looked at a circled spot on the ceiling, you could read the word “Yes” printed in a tiny scrawl. And there was a board with several nails hammered partially into it, with a note that said, “Hammer A Nail In.”

Dunbar led John downstairs to the basement to see the live part of the exhibition. Several long-haired young men and women were sitting around the floor, darning the rips in a large canvas bag. Dunbar went across the room to get the artist. “Go and say hello to the millionaire,” Dunbar whispered pointedly to her, and presently a remarkable figure appeared before John.

She was a tiny Japanese woman, less than five feet tall, dressed in black pants and a tatty black sweater. She had a very pale, grim-looking face, set off by two thick columns of black hair that streamed over her breasts nearly to her waist. Her name was Yoko Ono.

“Where’s the orgy?” John asked her, slightly disappointed that nothing sexual was happening.

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