"I hated the Philippines" "As soon as we got there, it was bad, bad news" "It was one of those places where you knew they were waiting for a fight" "It was a very negative vibe the moment we got off the plane" "So we were a bit frightened" "We got in this car, not even with Neil" "The guy just drove off with us four." "Our bags were on the runway" "Neil Aspinall Tour Manager Those little briefcases had the marijuana in them so I had to..." "While the confusion was going on" "I put them in the boot of the limo I was going to be in" "I just said "Take me to where you've taken the Beatles"" "I thought, God, this is it, we're going to get busted" "They took us away and drove us to Manila harbour and put us on a boat and took us out to this yacht anchored in the harbour" "I never really understood why they got put on this boat" "I just remember Brian Epstein really flustered" "He must have been with, maybe... the Philippine promoter, agent or somebody" "He was yelling and shouting and he appeared on the scene" "They were all yelling and then they took us back off the boat and drove us in the car to a hotel suite" "Then we did a concert which again had a big problem because Brian Epstein had made a contract for a stadium" "Rizal Memorial Football Stadium Manila 4th July 1966 or a situation for I don't know how many thousands of people" "Maybe 2000-5000 people, something like that" "When we got there, it was like the Monterey Pop Festival" "Just millions - 200000 people on that site" "We did the show and I didn't know personally... that Madame Marcos had invited us to dinner" "Normally we only get invited by silly Ambassadors wanting to see us" "So somebody set it up and we didn't know about it" ""It is indeed a great honour, but it's our day off so we can't go"" "We were very firm." "We don't get many days off to stuff in a royal reception" "John and I were sharing a room after the gig and in the morning... we phoned for breakfast and newspapers as we like to read about ourselves" "Can we have egg and bacon and all the newspapers?" "Yes" "We were just in our beds, chatting doing whatever we were doing" "Time went by so we called again "Excuse me, can we have our breakfast?"" "Still nothing happened so we put the TV on" "There was this horrific TV show of Madame Marcos screaming "They've let me down"" "All these shots of the cameramen..." "tip the camera on to empty plates and up to the faces of little kids crying because the Beatles hadn't come" "And the TV commentator saying "And they're still not here yet"" ""The Beatles are supposed to be here"" "We were amazed, couldn't believe it" "We just watched ourselves not arriving at the Presidential Palace" "I don't recall much of what happened until the newspapers arrived and the TV news, it was:" ""Beatles snub First Family"" "Then things started to get really weird" "Come on, get out of bed, get packed, we're getting out of here" "As we started to get to the car, we really had no help" "We got downstairs and there was one motor bike" "After this huge motorcade had brought us in, there was just one guy" "At the airport there's chanting, people hating us, all the way" "We were put into the transit lounge" "Then we got pushed from one corner to another" ""You treated like ordinary pasenger!"" "They were saying "Ordinary passenger!" He doesn't get kicked, does he?" "They started knocking over our road managers" "That worried you?" " Yeah, I swear there were 30 of them" "What do you say they were?" " I saw five in sort of outfits that were kicking and booing and shouting" "Did you get kicked?" " No, I moved when they touched me" "I was petrified." "I could have been kicked and not known it" "There's the famous story of John and I hiding behind these nuns" "We thought, it's a Catholic country, they won't beat up nuns" "We got on the British Airways plane, all kissing the seats" "You know, this is a little piece of Britain" "It was feeling you were in a foreign country and all the rules had changed" "They did carry guns after all so you weren't too gung-ho" "Then an announcement:" ""Will Mr Epstein, Mr Evans and Mr Barrow..."" "That was Tony Barrow, our press agent at the time" ""...will they get off the plane"" "And Mal, who was the nicest, gentlest person - a big guy, but really sweet - he went past me down the aisle of the plane, breaking out in tears" "He said "Tell Lil I love her." That's his wife" "Because he thought the plane would go and he'd be stuck in Manila" "We sat there for what seemed a couple of hours" "It was probably 30 minutes, maybe an hour and they got back on the plane and it was allowed to leave" "They took the money off Brian Epstein that we'd earned at the concert" "And that was it, we got out of there and it was such a relief but I felt such resentment for those people" "It's probably the most frightening..." "I've never been back" "We'll never go to any nut-houses again" "But the nice thing about it was that in the end... when we found out that it was Marcos and what he'd been doing to his people and what lmelda had been doing and the rip-off it all allegedly was" "We were glad to have done it" "We must have been the only people who ever dared to snub Marcos" "Do any of you have plans to record on your own?" "We do at home" "In fact we have done." "Eleanor Rigby was Paul on his own and..." "We were just drinking tea" "Brian Epstein New York 6th August 1966 I have prepared a statement which I will read which has had John Lennon's absolute approval by telephone" "This is as follows:" ""The quote which John Lennon made to a London columnist three months ago" ""has been quoted and represented entirely out of context"" "George Martin Record Producer Early in 1966, John was interviewed in the Evening Standard and he remarked that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ" "Was it a mistake?" "In the short term, yeah." "Maybe not in the long term" "But he said "I don't know what's wrong with the church" ""At the moment the Beatles are bigger than Jesus Christ"" "Like they're not building Jesus enough." "That was taken out of context in America" "There was all this big palaver going on" "Anyway, we got to America." "I think we did a press conference where John, under the pressure of the cameras and the Press..." "You know, just the stress of having to deal with this thing that he in effect had caused" "If I'd said television is more popular, I might have got away with it" "Chicago 11th August 1966 I was talking to a friend." "I said Beatles as a remote thing, not what I think but as the Beatles like other people see us" "I just said they are having more influence on kids and things than anything, including Jesus, but I said it in the wrong way" "Some teenagers have repeated your statements, saying:" ""I like the Beatles more than Jesus Christ." What about that?" "Originally I pointed out that fact in reference to England" "That we meant more to kids than Jesus did, or religion at that time" "I wasn't knocking it but just saying it as a fact" "And it's true, more for England than here" "I'm not saying we're better or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing, or whatever it is" "I just said what I said and it was taken wrong, and now it's all this" "The repercussions were big" "Particularly what they call the Bible belt" "Down the south there, they were having a field day" "We've got footage of a disc jockey saying:" ""Come and bring your Beatle trash and deposit it here"" ""...to one of our 14 pickup points in Birmingham, Alabama..."" "The photos showed middle-aged DJs and 12-year-olds burning LP covers" "Millions of kids were burning their Beatle records" "There were bonfires of them, which was OK 'cos then they re-bought them" "The Beatles said in the newspapers that they're getting better than Jesus" "The Ku-Klux-Klan, being a religious order, will come out here the night that they appear here" "We're going to demonstrate with different ways and tactics to stop this performance" "The Klan is going to come out here and make a stop to these accusations" "This is nothing but blasphemy and we'll stop it any terror way we can" "We're known as a terror organisation..." " Terror organisation?" "We have ways and means to stop this" " What ways and means?" "There will be a lot of surprises when they get here" "My image as anti-Christ or anti-religious was wrong." "I'm a most religious fella" "Well, it looks like the bloom is off the Beatles" "Last year, not an empty seat in Shea stadium - this year, thousands" "Perhaps 15000 or 20000 empty seats in an arena that holds 56000" "Oh dear, what a failure, we only sold 50000?" "Miserable... we were dying on our feet there!" "Yeah, there was big news about that, you know" "They've only sold 50000 seats!" ""It's all over for the Beatles" says Roger Whittaker of the Dallas Times" "OK" " I don't ever remember going there twice" "Are you a Beatles fan, or are you here because it's the right thing to do?" "I love the Beatles" "I bet there's a group you prefer now" " No group's better than the Beatles" "Aren't they on their way out?" " No, they're still strong" "Are the Beatles out of style?" " They'll never go out of style" "Which group is better than the Beatles?" " The Beatles, I love them" "Don't you think this craze is silly and strictly for girls?" "No, they are very talented musicians and songwriters, excellent showmen" "You like them?" " Yeah" "How long do you think they'll last?" " As long as they keep playing" "You know the Beatles bring joy into the world" "We forget our cares when we hear Beatle records." "They're fun" "How long do you think the Beatles can last?" "I wish they'd last for ever, they could bring happiness to everybody" "They're less popular than they were months ago" "Is there another group you like better?" " There is" "Which one?" " Herman and the Hermits" "It doesn't matter if people don't like our records, our looks or what we say" "They're entitled to not like us and we're entitled not to have anything to do with them" "We've all got our rights, you know..." "Harold" "There was this other thing of this woman..." "A famous psychic she was supposed to be" "She'd predicted Kennedy's assassination and other things" "She was saying in the papers the Beatles would die in a plane crash" "All this time, they were getting death threats" "It wasn't long since President Kennedy had been assassinated" "I remember going to one of their concerts at the Red Rock Stadium" "I climbed up on a gantry overlooking the stage with Brian and looked down at the boys during the performance" "The amphitheatre at Red Rocks is such that a sniper on the hill could pick off any of those fellows at any time, no problem" "I was very aware of this." "So was Brian, and so were the boys" "How much of a good thing can you have?" "How long can you sustain things?" "Every tour we'd done had just gone great" "But we were getting fed up because we'd been at it so long" "It gets gruelling, one Holiday Inn after another" "Just the general Beatlemania, you know... it took its toll" "We were seeing it then no longer as like... a naive kind of... just on the buzz of our fame and success" "By this time, the dental experience had made us see it from a different light" "It was no longer fun any more" "I don't think anyone didn't want to stop touring" "Paul would have gone on longer than George and I" "But you'll have to ask Paul about that" ""Touring's good, it keeps us sharp"" ""I'd keep music live." I'd been sort of a bit that attitude" "But finally I agreed with them" "I think it was George and John who were particularly fed up" "We might have been waxworks for the good we did there" "Nobody heard anything, not even a basic beat because they were too busy tearing each other up" "We were just tired, you know" "It had been four years of legging around screaming in this mania" "We were tired, we needed the rest" "By the time we got to Candlestick Park, we knew it wasn't fun any more" "I think that was the main point" "We'd always try to keep... you've got to keep some fun in it for yourself" "In anything you do, you know" "We'd been pretty good at that." "We'd enjoyed touring and TV" "We'd enjoyed Europe, we'd enjoyed America" "Candlestick Park San Francisco 29th August 1966 But now, even America was beginning to pale" "So by then it was:" "Don't tell anyone, but this is probably our last gig" "There was big talk at Candlestick Park" "That very period of "This has got to end." "This is it"" "But my... we went further than that" "We got back to England before we finally said "That's it"" "I certainly felt that we weren't going to tour again like that" "I never really projected into the future" "I was thinking this is going to be such a relief to not have to go through that madness" "I don't remember feeling negative about the band, but about touring" "But you always forget the bad bits." "I remember the band as being quite good" "I'm sorry for the people who can't see us live" "Sometimes you haven't missed anything because you wouldn't have heard us but sometimes I think you might have enjoyed it" "The Beatles were then just four lads on that rather dimly lit stage" "We were getting worse as a band while all those people were screaming" "It was lovely that they liked us but we couldn't hear to play" "The only place we could develop was in the studio, where we could hear ourselves" "The most important thing was the safety aspect" "Soon after that, it became terrorism" "When we were going, it was only us and two people" "All those things happened, like people threatening Ringo or saying the plane was..." " Snipping bits of hair off and stuff" "The plane would crash, hurricanes, race riots, student riots" "There was always some big thing going on when we pulled into town" "We'd come in the middle with this mania and it would be chaos" "It was just becoming too difficult on the nervous system" "When we'd all decided it was "What are we going to do?" "Announce it?"" "We said no, just don't say anything" "But I was too scared to walk away." "I was thinking it was the end" "I was dead nervous, so I said yes to Dick Lester that I'd make a movie" "I went to Spain for six weeks because I didn't know what to do" "What do you do when you don't tour?" "There's no life" "Our officer calls me up and says "Musketeer Gripweed"" "He was a tall chap, some would call him weedy." "I did" "Remember, we were some few hundred miles behind enemy lines" "He said "Green, green, green." So I did" "Some bastard's been prior, has he, Jock?" "One bastard down the road stinks to high heaven" "Are you a duration bloke?" " You wouldn't chuck her, would you?" "Well, pack it in then." "I'm a regular." "It's my sodding career, liberating, all right?" "Ringo came to Spain, right to Almeria when John and I were down there" "Yeah, I went and hung out because he was lonely" "We really supported each other a lot" "He was out there being this actor" "John was doing How I Won the War so I went to India for six weeks" "It was a fantastic time" "I would go out and look at temples and go shopping" "I travelled all over, went to various places and eventually went up to Kashmir" "I stayed on a houseboat in the middle of the Himalayas" "It was incredible." "I'd wake up in the morning" "A little Kashmiri fellow would bring us tea and biscuits" "I could hear Ravi in the next room doing his practice" "That was incredible times for me" "George was doing the Indian stuff." "I don't know what Paul was doing" "To me, if you are blessed with the ability to write music... film scores are kind of an interesting diversion" "George Martin, being able to write and to orchestrate got an offer through the Boulting Brothers for him and me to do some film music for The Family Way" "I looked at the film and thought it was a great film." "I still do" "A very powerful, emotional, soppy but good film for its time" "We even got an Ivor Novello award for the best film song that year for Love in the Open Air" "Can I have a word?" "Are the Beatles going to go their own ways in 1967?" "On our own or together, we're always involved with each other" "Could you ever see a time when you weren't working together?" "I can see us working not together for a period, but we'd always get together" "You need other people for ideas and we all get along fine" "Will you be doing films on your own next year?" "No, I don't want to make a career of it." "I just felt like doing it" "Dick Lester asked me and I said yes" "I wouldn't have done it if the others hadn't liked it, but they were on holiday" "Do you foresee a time when the Beatles won't be together?" "No, no" "Have you got tired of each other?" "No" "Have you got anything lined up on your own, film parts for example?" "There may be one if we don't do one together early next year" "I'm sort of out of it - John and Paul can still write even though we're not working together" "And George can learn his sitar." "I've just been sitting around" "Getting bored?" " No, getting fat!" "Do you think that in the New Year you will be going your own ways?" "No, no definitely not" "Can I have a brief word?" "If you never toured again, would it worry you?" "I don't know." "No, I don't think so" "But the only thing about that is, performance for us..." "It's gone downhill because we can't develop when no one can hear us so for us to perform, it gets more difficult each time" "Do you mean they don't listen to you so you don't want to do that?" "We want to do it, but if we're not listened to and we can't even hear ourselves, we can't get any better" "But in the studio we could do Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane and then Pepper" "Were they the first ones out?" "That was what happened once we got full-time into the studio" "And saying at the time "Now our performance is that record"" "That new record started with Strawberry Fields" "That was going to be what became Pepper." "But no one had heard of Pepperyet" "But it was going to be a record made in the studio with songs they had written which couldn't be performed live" "They were designed to be studio productions and that was the difference" "Strawberry Fields is John's song" "He used to live next door to Strawberry Fields, a Salvation Army place for kids" "He used to bunk over and it was his little magic garden to play in" "When I visited him, he'd tell me about Strawberry Fields" "Strawberry Fields I wrote when I was making How I Won the Warin Spain" "It's a Salvation Army home near the house I lived in with my aunty in the suburbs" "Although I took the name as an image" "We had this thing called the mellotron for the intro of Strawberry Fields" "This is one." "We had flutes, and this was the intro" "Then the nice thing is that our stuff started to get a bit more surreal" "Penny Lane was a bit surreal too, although a sort of cleaner thing" "I remember saying to George Martin, a very clean recording" "I was into clean sounds." "Mainly Beach Boy kind of things at that point" "But the Fireman with his hour-glass and all that was us trying to get into a bit of art, of surrealism, all based on real things" "There was a barber called Bioletti" "I think he's still there, actually, in Penny Lane" "He had the pictures all barbers have of the haircut you can have only instead of saying "The barber with pictures of haircuts in his windows"" "you'd change it round to..." "Every head he's had the pleasure to know" "A barber showing photographs like it's an exhibition" "It was like twisting it to a slightly more artsy angle" "Penny Lane is not only a street, it's a district" "I lived in Penny Lane in a street called Newcastle Road so I was the only actual person that lived in Penny Lane" "Right now, we're going to say hello to John Lennon and Paul McCartney" "Penny Lane having failed to make No. 1 in Britain, were you at all put out?" "No, the main thing is it's fine to be kept from being number one by a record like Release Me because they're not both trying to do the same kind of thing" "So that's a completely different scene altogether" "But you have in the past been reported as saying that if a record didn't go to No. 1 you'd think of packing it all in" "It was a relief" "Everything we did went straight to No. 1, so there was that pressure" "I believe we had six or seven in a row" "It was out, in, out, you know" "So within the group it took the pressure off" "You obviously don't have to write any more songs except you like doing it" "But it's always been like that - that's the good thing" "It has been a hobby and it still is" "Can you tell us anything about the numbers you're now engaged on?" "Paul had been on a train or plane journey with Mal Evans" "He came up with the idea of Sgt Pepperand he was kind of..." "To me, we were in the studio to make the next record and he was going on about this idea of some fictitious band" "Sgt Pepperis Paul after a trip to America" "The whole West Coast long-named group thing was coming in" "People are no longer the Beatles or the Crickets, but suddenly" "'Fred and his Incredible Sheep Shrinking Grateful Aeroplanes'" "There were many such bands:" "Laughing Joe and his Medicine Band" "Thank you wam bam mam kind of group names, you know" "Colonel Tucker's Medicinal Brew and Compound" "So I thought, if there was a band, what would be a mad name for it?" "It was basically Paul's idea" "He had this song, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" "He was identifying it with the Beatles themselves" "I think we recorded the song first and then the idea came to make it into an album" "It was also triggered by Neil Aspinall, who said at that time:" "Why don't we have Sgt Pepper as the compere?" "At the beginning of the show, he introduces the band" "At the end of every Beatles show, Paul always used to say:" ""It's time to go, we've got to go to bed and this is our last number"" "Do the last number and go" "I suggested Sgt Pepper should come on at the end of the album:" ""Well, that's it, we've got to go." "Here's our last number"" "and send the album on tour instead of the band" "We liked that idea" "We'd read a report somewhere that said:" "Elvis Presley has sent his gold-plated Cadillac out on tour" "We thought that was a great idea - because we'd been sending ourselves out" "We thought that's a really good idea." "You stay at home and send your car" "It did go on tour and people had come and they'd pay money" "They wandered around it as if it was an exhibit and he didn't have to be there" "Then, in the 60s when we thought of doing Sgt Pepper, we didn't want to tour" "The idea suddenly sounded very nifty, you know" "We said we haven't gold-plated Cadillacs, we don't do that stuff but we could send a record out on tour" "It was Sgt Pepper and his Lonely Hearts Club Band and all these other acts" "It was going to run like a rock opera and we got as far as Sgt Pepper and Billy Shears" "A Little Help From My Friends, then everyone said sod it, let's just do tracks" "So from the start it was going to be something totally different but it still kept the title and the feel that it's all connected" "It's called the first concept album, it doesn't go anywhere" "Mr Kite - all my contributions - had nothing to do with this idea of Sgt Pepper and his band" "But it works because we said it worked and that's how it appeared" "Apart from Sgt Pepper, Billy Shears, and the so-called Reprise... that's it" "Every other song could have been on any other album" "A Day in the Life, Mr Kite - they could have gone anywhere" "We were spending a long time in the studio and still doing the same basic tracks and then it would take weeks for the overdubs" "The great thing about this band was whoever had the idea, that was OK" "Whoever had the best idea, that's the one we'd use" "For instance, in A Day in the Life, John had this opening verse" "I think he'd got the idea from the Daily Mirroror something" "It had two stories - the Guinness child had killed himself in a car" "That was the main headline story" "The next page was about 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire" "So Blackburn, Lancashire..." "the holes..." "Albert Hall all got mixed, just a little poetic jumble that sounded nice" "The momentous song, A Day in the Life began in a very simple way" "And we've got the rehearsal take, take one, very first time we'd heard it with John giving instructions as usual just before he starts it" "Have the mike on the piano, quite low to keep with my maracas" "John was singing and playing his acoustic guitar, Paul was on piano" "George was playing maracas, I think, and certainly Ringo was on bongos" "John counts in by saying "Sugar Plum Fairy"" "Sugar Plum Fairy, Sugar Plum Fairy" "Even in this early take he has a voice which sends shivers down the spine" "That was mainly a John song" "I read the news today, oh boy..." "He'd taken a lot of it from a newspaper" "Then I had another bit..." "Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head" "That was a little bit I had, it wasn't doing anything and we got the concept of building it like a mini-operetta" "John said let's shove it in the middle and see if we can't connect them" "We connected them with a series of empty bars either side of Paul's section before we came back into John's as a reprise and we knew we had to fill those bars with something sensational" "To keep the 24 bars so everybody knew when to come back in dear old Mal Evans stood by the piano counting the bars" "Also, he set off an alarm clock at the end to trigger everybody back into it" "They wanted an orchestral climax to fill these empty bars" "A giant orgasm of sound rising from nothing at all to a most incredible noise" "And this is what we came up with" "With that we joined up the two parts of the song" "The moment I remember best outside of him bringing the song..." "It was obviously a gorgeous song when he brought it" "I was a big fan of John's, you've got to remember that" "It wouldn't just be:" "Oh yes, professional person will write this" "It would be:" "I can't wait to get my hands on this" "We'd learned the chords off him and we'd develop it" "But the moment I remember..." "We got to a little bit that he didn't have where we said:" "I'd love to turn you on" "We looked at each other and thought, we know what we're doing here, don't we?" "We're actually saying, for the first time ever, words like 'turn you on' which was in the culture anyway but no one had actually said it on record" "There was a look of recognition between us" "Do it, do it, get it down!" "So the sleeve came and we wanted to dress up" "To be those people, the Peppers" "We had to get suits and it was flower-power coming into its fullest" "That's what it was" "Mal and I went to all the different libraries and got prints" "Peter Blake blew them up and tinted them and made the colour" "I remember the weekend it was released getting a telegram from people like James Fox: "Long live Sgt Pepper"" "People had come round and said "Great album, man"" "So it got very noticed - as if "You're making it for us," our crowd" "I think it did represent what the young people were on about" "It seemed to coincide with a revolution in young people's thinking" "It was, I suppose, the epitome of the swinging '60s" "It linked up with Mary Quant and mini skirts and that kind of thing" "And dope to a certain extent" "The freedom of sex, and of soft drugs like marijuana" "It was all a bit exciting and I thihk it did reflect this time" "I thought it was great" "I thought it was a huge advance" "I was very pleased as the music papers had been saying:" ""What are the Beatles up to?" "Drying up, I suppose?"" "It was nice making an album lke Pepper, thinking, yeah, drying up, that's right" "So it was lovely to have that on them" "When it came out, I loved it" "I had a party to celebrate." "That weekend was a bit of a party as I recall" "I remember getting lots of telegrams from people" "The biggest single tribute was that it was released on the Friday" "On Sunday we went to the Saville Theatre which Brian Epstein rented and ran some rock shows because nothing ever happened on a Sunday" "Jimi Hendrix opened with Sgt Pepper and he'd had since Friday to learn it" "Sgt Pepperfor me - it was great - it's a fine album but I did learn to play chess on it" "Because I'd have so much spare time, you know" "We'd do the basic track and then we'd put other stuff on, then... but the percussion would be overdubbed later and later" "For me it was a bit tiring, a bit boring" "A few moments I enjoyed but generally I didn't like that album much" "My heart was still in India" "That was the big thing for me when that happened in '66" "After that, everything else seemed like hard work" "It was a job." "It was doing something I didn't really want to do" "I was losing interest in being fab at that point" "It wasn't that spectacular when you look back on it" "People just had this dream about Pepper." "It was good for then, you know" "I was very cross that the BBC decided to ban some of the tracks" "They wouldn't play A Day in the Life." "Why?" "I don't know" "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was banned for a rumoured drug connection and Lucy in the Sky actually stood for LSD, which wasn't true and that it was an album promoting the use of drugs among the young" "I was aware of them smoking pot but not that they did anything very serious" "In fact I was so innocent that I actually took John up to the roof when he was having an LSD trip and not knowing what it was" "I never took it in the studio." "Once I did by accident, thinking it was uppers" "I was not in a state of handling it but I took it and I was just so scared on the mike" "I said "What was it?" "I feel ill"" "I thought I was going to crack and I said I must get some air" "They took me up on the roof and George Martin was looking at me funny" "Then it dawned on me I must have taken acid" "The only place I could take him for fresh air was the roof" "We went up and it was a wonderful starry night" "He looked up and went to the edge of the parapet" "He looked up at the stars and said "Aren't they fantastic?"" "To him, they would have been especially fantastic" "They just looked like stars to me" "Paul, how often have you taken LSD?" "About four times" "The newscaster said "Is it true you've had drugs?"" "I made a lightning decision, thinking:" "I'm either going to try and bluff this..." "They're at my door..." "No, go away!" "Or I'm just going to tell him and I thought, sod it..." "I told him, you know what's going to happen" "I'm going to be blamed for telling everyone I take drugs" "But you are the people who'll distribute this thing" "I'll tell you but, if you are worried about it affecting kids, don't show it" "Do you think you've encouraged your fans to take drugs?" "No, I don't think my fans will take drugs just because I did" "That's not the point." "I was asked whether I had or not then the whole bit about how far it's going, how many it will encourage" "It is up to the newspapers and up to you on television" "You're spreading this" "It's going into all the homes in Britain and I'd rather it didn't" "But you're asking me the question." "You want me to be honest" "It seemed strange - we'd been trying to get him to take it for 18 months" "It seemed funny that one day he's on television talking about it" "It gave the press a field day, to be on all our cases" "I didn't think it was their business but once he said it..." "Whoever said anything in the Beatles, the other three had to deal with it" "Which we did with all love because we loved each other" "But I could have done without it myself" "The point about the whole drug scene was that the press asked Paul:" ""Have you taken LSD?" Otherwise we didn't say a word about it" "It was just a personal thing" "I feel to this day that we did take certain substances but never to a great extent at the sessions" "We took a little... but whenever we overdid our intake the music we made was absolutely shit" "And we'd go home real happy with the tape" "We'd play it when we got home and play it the next day" "Every time, we'd come back to record again we'd all say "We have to do that again"" "Because it didn't work" "It didn't work for the Beatles to be too deranged when making music" "Somebody said we should invest some money so we thought let's buy an island" "We'll just go there and drop out" "We rented a boat and went up and down the coast from Athens, looking at islands" "We came to one we'd arranged to see" "It came to nothing." "We didn't buy an island, we came home" "Subtitles:" "Screentext"