In light of newly remastered footage of The Beatles in New York circa 1964 and brand-new Super 8 footage of John Lennon onstage with Elton John, Atwood takes a look at the ex-Beatles in New York circa December 1974.
On February 7, 1964, four young musicians were ushered into the Presidential Suite of the Plaza Hotel.
They’d enjoyed a modicum of success in their home country, but their first trip across the pond was a harbinger of unprecedented fame. Two days later, they were onstage at The Ed Sullivan Show and nothing would ever be the same. Six years later, it was all over. And four years later, efforts to make The Beatles’ breakup final had an unexpected consequence.
It’s Thanksgiving 1974, and John Lennon is throwing up. He’s the loser of a bet with rising star Elton John. Earlier in the year, John guested on Lennon’s Walls and Bridges, “underdubbing” piano and adding backup vocals that morphed “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” into a duet. John smelled a #1 hit, but Lennon wasn’t convinced. He had no inkling that a handshake meant that months later he’d be in the wings at Madison Square Garden. Yoko Ono, with whom John had separated several months prior, requests a seat in the 12th row, and gives John a carnation for his lapel.
To a rapturous reception, Lennon and the band rip through three numbers – “Whatever Gets You Through the Night,” “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” and what Lennon introduces as “a number written with an old, estranged fiancé of mine called Paul” – “I Saw Her Standing There.”
Paul McCartney and Wings are finally taking flight after a shaky start. A series of seemingly head – scratching moves – a retreat to Scotland to make a lo-fi homespun record, and forming a creative partnership with Linda McCartney as a songwriter and the keyboardist in a new band – left critics sour on The Cute One. Band on the Run, released in the final days of 1973, is the first bona fide commercial and critical hit record that McCartney has notched since The Beatles. Sessions in Nashville and a documentary film, One Hand Clapping, break in Wings Mark II for a planned world tour.
In April of ‘74, the McCartneys are in LA and swing by a rental property to jam with Harry Nilsson, Stevie Wonder, and – for the first time since 1969 – John Lennon. Ringo, also a houseguest, inspects his kit the next morning and bemoans, “That McCartney, he always moves my bloody drums!”
George Harrison’s first solo tour elicits a mixed reception. Initially lauded for the sprawling triple album triumph All Things Must Pass, Harrison invented the charity rock concert with the Bangladesh gigs and notched a number 1 hit with “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” in 1973. However, in the midst of a divorce, recording his own record, and producing Splinter’s debut, Harrison is weary and stricken with laryngitis as the Dark Horse Tour passes through North America. Ben Fong Torres dubbed it “Lumbering in the Material World.” Torres and other critics cite an abundance of Ravi Shankar material and a reluctance to faithfully perform Beatle classics.
Harrison swaps lyrics – “In my life, I love God more” and “If there’s something in the way, remove it, find yourself another lover” – and jokes, “God bless John, Paul, and Ringo, and all the other ex-ex-ex-exes!” A star studded band featuring the LA Express, Eastern-fused compositions with Ravi Shankar and a glorious guest spot from Billy Preston aren’t hiding the strain on Harrison’s voice. His new girlfriend, Olivia Arias, is swept into the eye of the hurricane.
The partnership agreement between the ex-Fabs and Apple Corps is dying a slow death, and a plan is hatched to ink the final dissolution papers. With ties to problematic manager Allen Klein severed, plans are made for three of the four Beatles to meet prior to Harrison’s MSG gig on December 19. McCartney is in town for the show, and Lennon is living with photographer May Pang In an apartment on East 52nd St. Where should the trio convene?
The Plaza Hotel, naturally.
In revelatory footage first seen in Martin Scorse’s 2009 Living in The Material World documentary, McCartney and Harrison are flanked by lawyers to iron out the severance of The Beatles contract. Harrison, perturbed, mutters, “Krishna, Krishna, Krishna… allow this to be final.” Linda snaps photos of the occasion. Starr, at home in England. has already signed and phones to give his ‘okay.’ Lennon, however, is nowhere to be seen. In his place, a promotional balloon from Walls and Bridges, reading simply “listen to this balloon.”
Furious, Harrison phones Lennon and scuppers a planned appearance onstage at the garden. “I started this tour without you, and I’ll finish it without you!” Lee Eastman, Linda’s father and an entertainment lawyer, is tapped to give the legal papers a once-over. Though Lennon skips out on Harrison’s December 20th show at the garden, Paul and Linda attend in absurd disguises.
Bob Gruen, who snapped photos of the incognito McCartneys at the Harrison show, verified the occasion with the author in 2021.
On the night of the 20th, Harrison tapes a post-show interview for New York City’s RKO station. About halfway through the taping, a guest saunters in the room- John Lennon. They discuss Beatle memories and David Bowie, bearing no scars from their blowout the day before:
50 years on, these snapshots and reels of extremely famous old friends are a fascinating insight into their post-breakup band dynamics.
Harrison and McCartney seem sullen and morose in the Plaza hotel footage; in McCartney’s current stage video accompanying ‘Something’, there are two Linda McCartney photos of the pair smiling on the same occasion. The argument between Lennon and Harrison was apparently so fractious that Eastman and Pang worried their friendship was irreparable; the duo took to the airwaves the following night. However, a single question plagued me through years of researching this period-
Some time in New York City, were John, Paul and George in the same room?
In April of 2023, I had the opportunity to find out firsthand. May Pang was exhibiting her photography at City Winery in Philadelphia. Among her photographs of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr in times past, I queued up and braced for a disappointing answer.
“Ms. Pang, were John, Paul, and George all together at any point that weekend in December 1974?”
“Yes,” she smiled, “at the afterparty!”
On December 20, 1974, an afterparty for George’s show is held at Club Hippopotamus. Lennon, McCartney and Harrison are all in attendance, and, though photography is verboten, May Pang watches the trio share one last group hug.
On December 29th, 1974, Lennon brings Pang and his son Julian to Disney World. There, in the happiest place on Earth, the papers that McCartney and Harrison had signed ten days prior are laid before him. In the Polynesian Hotel, John Lennon provides the final signature to formally dissolve The Beatles partnership. Pang snaps a photo between the “e” and the “n.”
George’s New Years’ single, “Ding Dong Ding Dong,” is accompanied by a promotional film. He cycles through reams of wardrobes that have become music history – a collarless grey Pierre Cardin suit, psychedelic frills, a dayglo orange Sgt. Pepper uniform – before appearing behind a guitar wearing nothing at all. He sings,
“Ring out the old, ring in the new,
ring out the old ring in the new
Ring out the false, ring in the true,
Ring out the old, ring in the new.”
Footage of The Beatles’ first trip to New York is available in Beatles ‘64, now streaming on Disney+. New Super 8 footage of Lennon onstage at MSG can be seen in Elton John: Never Too Late, streaming on Disney+. For further reading and listening on this period, stream the Nothing Is Real podcast and read May Pang’s ‘Loving John.’
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© Aidan Moyer
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