Interview for The Beatles Monthly Book

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Q: What is the truth about that New Year’s Eve incident, George? According to reports you were refused admission to Annabel’s.

GEORGE: We were in a party — about eight of us including Brian Epstein and Eric Clapton. And Patti, of course. We went to Berkeley Square for supper but everyone insisted I couldn’t get served unless I wore a borrowed tie over my sweater. I wasn’t annoyed but I did try to get them to reason out the logic of the thing. So we all went off to Lyon’s Corner House in Coventry Street and had a great meal. Very enjoyable. It was all a hit of a laugh and as long as we finished up enjoying what we ate, there’s no reason why we should have any hard feelings.

Q: Paul, I am told you’ve been looking for a new housekeeper. Is this right?

PAUL: Very right, very true. Mr. and Mrs. Kelly are looking for another place and I’m getting another couple to replace them. There have been disagreements over the running of the household. I haven’t asked them to leave instantly because that’d be unreasonable.

Q: Someone claimed the disagreement was over your cat. Right?

PAUL: Thisby? No, that’s nonsense. Poor old Thisby! It had nothing to do with him!

Q: Ringo, do you find it a bit boring in the recording studio, waiting for John and Paul to get each new song ready to record?

RINGO: I would be if I just sat doing nothing. But I don’t. If Neil or Mal are about it’s all down to a game of chess or something.

Q: John, everyone expected you to get a single out immediately before Christmas or, at least, by New Year. What caused the delay?

JOHN: Everybody just assumed that because we started recording at the beginning of December we’d just make two sides and get Parlophone to put them out a couple of weeks later. It doesn’t work like that. The first two things we record after a long gap and a lot of writing may not be the ones best suited to a single. You can’t just decide without being able to compare. So we went on and on getting together more new stuff on tape. Then, eventually, we sat around with Brian and George Martin listening to all the numbers we’d done. That’s when we started discussing which ones we all thought would be right for the two sides of the single.

Q: What about television this year?

PAUL: Too early still to answer a general question like that. There is this idea of making our own programme using songs from the next LP. You know how important good sound quality is to us and it’s not easy to get the best sound balance on most telly shows. We’ll have to see what happens. But we would like to do a big telly. It’s the best way of showing the new LP numbers to people in different parts of the world at more or less the same moment in time.

Q.: Are you all finding record-making as easy today as it was in 1963?

GEORGE: It stands to reason it was easier than to take something like “She Loves You” because we’d only got a few guitars to worry about then.

RINGO: If we were still going for the same sort of sounds we could polish off a couple of tracks in a day. From what I can make out John and Paul — and George these days — are capable of writing any number of basic tunes and basic words.

PAUL: That’s true. In fact, we do give ourselves a much wider scope over words these days —as we do with instruments and special effects — instead of just doing the I-want-to-love-you-don’t-you-love-me-too stuff.

JOHN: We’ve always enjoyed recording sessions. I suppose we’ve enjoyed our first 1967 sessions on a different level to the “Love Me Do” days. Every track you decide to tape is a real challenge. I don’t mean that to sound corny. But it’s like painting something new and having a great big sheet of clean white paper and wondering what the finished job will look like.

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