MAGICAL
MYSTERY TOURS
My Life With The Beatles
By Tony Bramwell with Rosemary Kingsland
Published by Thomas Dunne Books
Review by Ritchie Champagne
My Life With The Beatles
By Tony Bramwell with Rosemary Kingsland
Published by Thomas Dunne Books
Review by Ritchie Champagne
The
book turns bittersweet as it nears its end. He remembers his last meetings
with Harrison and Lennon before their
deaths, both incidents not quite what they were intended to be. He describes
Lennon becoming more and more shut off from the outside
world with even two of his oldest pals, McCartney and
Pete Shotton, being turned away at the door. Near the
end of Lennon’s life, Shotton
had dinner with Lennon and Ono. Lennon
told Shotton to phone him the following day but when
he called, he heard Ono order Lennon
to tell him to get lost. This was to be Lennon and his
boyhood friend’s final interaction. In fact, Ono
is vilified in this book. It’s long been said that Ono
and Linda McCartney were to blame for the breakup of
the band. Bramwell paints a pretty picture of the late
Mrs. McCartney and a dismal one of Ono.
While the band would more than likely still eventually have broken up,
Ono’s presence surely hastened the process. Bramwell
also proposes the notion that McCartney’s 1980
arrest for marijuana in Japan was instigated by Ono calling
in favors in her home country, perhaps to keep McCartney
from overshadowing her and Lennon’s reemergence
with their Double Fantasy record.
Bramwell
wonders if, instead of tiptoeing around the issue, they had all come right
out and said, “John, she’s bloody awful –
you know it, we know it, and the whole world knows it,” maybe Lennon
would have realized it himself. He also regrets everyone’s reticence
to speak up for Lennon’s silly political agenda
in the late 1960s. “I developed the somewhat old fashioned attitude
that a pop star’s job, if that word is correct, is to sing songs
and make records, not to comment on politics, be it John Lennon
or whoever.” Since no one would speak up against Lennon’s
“happenings,” he and Ono thought everyone
took them seriously.
