Bigger Than Jesus
I always thought of my Uncle Jack's stories as unreliable. It was not that he told lies, rather that his mind tended to wander and reality and fantasy blended. But whatever their accuracy, his stories were never less than entertaining.
He wasn't my real uncle; he lived with my mother's sister, Lillian. They had never married, though he always referred to her as his wife. I think he might still be married to someone else, officially, though it's something that was never discussed. At least never in my hearing. But he had been part of our family since before I was born, and I wasn't about to disown him. He was the most interesting relative I had, by a long chalk.
According to family lore he had been a bit of a tearaway in his youth, and something of a celebrity. There's a picture of him on our sideboard dressed in a leather motor-bike jacket, his hair greased back in a quiff and holding an electric guitar carelessly under one arm. My mother always said it made him look like Eddie Cochrane, whoever he was.
Aunt Lillian kept a huge suitcase under the bed, stuffed with memorabilia related to Jack's career. She always maintained he had the talent to be one of the greats, 'but he was a bit ahead of his time'. He was into psychedelia in 1964, before anyone knew what it was. He stopped being a hippie in '66 and began wearing eye-makeup and glitter in '69. By the time glam hit the charts he was already the oldest punk in the business. So it goes.
I can't remember how many times I've read articles in the music press about the next big thing, to discover them naming Jack as a major influence. Some of them record songs he wrote. A couple have even been hits. It's those royalties that enabled him and Lillian to live in comfort, even though he hadn't worked since he turned forty. 'He felt like a fraud,' Lillian said. 'Rock and roll was a young man's business. He didn't want kids laughing behind his back because he was a wrinkled old fart trying to be hip. I think the sight of Elvis getting fat and recording rubbish affected him badly.'
'It's a pity you didn't know him when he was at his peak,' she said, a secret, proud smile playing on her lips. 'He was really something.' The smile broadened. 'All the girls fancied him.'
It was hard to believe that, looking at him. He was thin and stooped and balding. I don't think I ever saw Jack without his carpet slippers and a cardigan. Even in the garden. He loved his garden. Even in his late seventies when his faculties were fading rapidly he'd be out there for a couple of hours if the weather was fine, weeding his vegetables, checking the raspberry canes, deadheading the roses or planting something new. At that stage he employed a gardener two days a week to do the heavy work but all the fiddling, as Lillian put it, was his province.
Watching him pottering about the garden, constantly pushing up the sleeves of a baggy cardigan to keep them out of his way, I could never imagine him as a ladykiller. But there was plenty of evidence to support Lillian's claim. He had been married before and had a son. That was Julian, who was also a sort of honorary uncle. Jack and Julian were very close. The only time Jack would ever perform at family gatherings was to duet with his son. They looked and sounded so alike it was always difficult to tell who was singing which part unless you watched them closely. Julian would usually take the guitar and Jack the piano. By the time I was old enough to attend these gatherings Jack's hands were unable to form guitar chord shapes well enough for his standards. But he could still hammer out a tune on the Joanna.
Julian wasn't Jack's only child. At least, not for certain. Between breaking with Julian's mum and meeting Lillian he had a fling with an Asian woman, an artist of some sort. She had a baby she claimed was Jack's, though it wasn't born until after that relationship ended. There had been others too numerous to count, according to Lillian, but they were merely one-night-stands, groupies who meant nothing to him. And there were none after he met her and started on what he referred to as 'my real family.' Lillian always wondered if he was disappointed at not having a son with her. All four of their children were girls. If the subject ever arose, and especially if Julian was there, he would say, 'They're just trouble, boys,' and laugh.
I suppose I would always have thought of Jack as a vaguely interesting but dotty old guy, had it not been for Sir Brian Epstein's funeral. There was a three-minute piece on Sky News about it. Jack and I were eating our tea in front of the TV, chatting over the background noise--the aural wallpaper he called it--about that year's Booker nominations, I think. Jack was always interested in literature, he wrote poetry and had a novel published once, though it was a commercial failure despite acclaim from the critics.
But anyway, we were watching Sir Brian's funeral and Jack suddenly cut me off in mid-sentence with a chopping motion of his hand. "I want to hear this," he said, sitting forward onto the edge of his armchair. For the length of the item he watched intently. When it was over he surfed a couple of dozen channels until he found something else about the funeral. BBC 4, it looked like; an in-depth appraisal of the late Sir Brian's career.
"Poor Eppy," Jack said. "He was a decent poor sod. He didn't want me thrown out."
"Thrown out of what, Jack?" I asked.
His gaze never shifted from the TV, his concentration never faltered. "From the band, son," he said.
"A band? You worked for Epstein?"
He looked away from the screen for a moment. "He worked for me, son. He worked for me."
"Get away with you, you old chancer," I said, nudging him in the shoulder. "Your stories get more outrageous the older you get."
"It's true." The voice came from behind me. Lillian was standing in the doorway. How long she had been there I couldn't tell.
I turned in my seat. "Are you trying to tell me that my uncle, Jack Lennon, played in one of Brian Epstein's bands?"
She nodded. "Wait there. I've got something to show you."
I heard her going upstairs. Two minutes later she was back with a framed photograph that she passed to me. I almost dropped the picture with surprise at what it depicted. It was as though the entire history of the world had been re-written in that moment. The photograph appeared to be an old black and white publicity still. There were five figures in it, four posing with guitars, the fifth clutching a set of drum sticks: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Rick Starkey, some pretty boy I didn't recognise and my Uncle Jack.
"I don't get it. How come I never heard this before now?"
"He doesn't like to talk about it," Lillian said. "It makes him ... unhappy."
We both looked around at Jack. He was still staring at the piece on Sir Brian and he was crying softly. She placed a hand on his shoulder. "There, there, Jack, it's all right. He had a good innings."
"I should have been there," he said. The photograph caught his eye and he took it out of Lillian's hand. "I'm the only one of them left," he said. A tear rolled down his cheek and splashed onto the glass of the photograph, a tribute to lost heroes.
"Who is the other guy in the picture?" I asked.
"Poor Stu. He was the first to go. Not long after that shot was taken." He wiped away the tear with the sleeve of his cardigan. "Brain haemorrhage."
"I remember reading something about him. One of those Curse of the Beatles articles that appeared after the accident, trying to make his death seem like a part of a pattern."
"Poor Stu. He wouldn't have let them kick me out either."
"Why did they ... kick you out?"
His eyes took on a faraway look. He seemed younger all of a sudden. There were no less wrinkles on his face but somehow there was more life in it. A spark of vitality that wasn't always there, lately.
"It was the day that photograph was taken," he said. "The only time that line-up was actually together. We'd come down from Liverpool for an audition with Parlophone, one of EMI's smaller labels. It was the second time we'd been to them. The producer had asked Eppy to do something about the drummer, so he got hold of Ringo, that's what Rick called himself back then. Ringo was already a professional and even if he didn't want to join the group we needed someone like him for the session at least.
"I was certain we were going to make it big. George Martin, the producer, liked us, and he had a few ideas for improving the sound. The four of us who had been in the Beatles all along felt really upbeat about the whole trip. Even Ringo was affected by our enthusiasm. I could feel he wanted to be a part of what was about to happen.
"The session went well right until the end. George Martin said he wanted to get down a song we could use as a single. He suggested we try My Bonnie again. We'd had a bit of success with that in Germany, though it was Tony Sheridan's single really. But Paul got it into his head that we should record an original. There was a number we'd been working on called, I'm pretty sure, To The End Of The World. It was a slushy ballad and his voice sounded really good on it, but it just wasn't chart material. I could see that George Martin wasn't crazed about it, but Eppy liked that sort of thing and he weighed in with his two cents worth and To The End Of The World it was.
"I suppose I should have had my say in the studio but I kept my mouth shut for once." He grinned. "I had a bit of a reputation with the lads for being a bully and getting my own way all the time. So for once I held my tongue. But then we got outside and Paul was really giving it some about his song and how it was going to be a big hit. It was my song too, I wrote the words, but he was right, he sang it, he wanted it, it was his song. But I didn't think it was hit material. And I told him so.
"We were standing outside the studio. It was dark, maybe ten o'clock at night, and the nearest street light was fifteen yards away. Paul seemed shrunken by the darkness. 'Oh, you're the big expert on hits now, are you?' He laughed, looking at the others for support. Nobody met his eyes. 'You're jealous. You wanted the lead vocal.'
"'I just wanted a different type of song.'
"'A John-type song.'
"'What's your problem, Paul?'
"'I'm fed up being pushed around by you, that's my problem. You treat us like the Beatles is your band.'
"'Pushed around?' I said, stepping in close, adding an edge of menace to my voice. Paul was usually easy to intimidate.
"He stood his ground. 'Yeah, pushed around.'
"I placed a hand in the centre of his chest and shoved. Paul skidded backwards across the pavement and ended up on his arse in the road. 'How's that for pushing around.'
"Eppy was just coming out of the studio as Paul hit the deck. 'John,' he shouted, and ran towards me. George stepped in and grabbed me by the shoulder as I moved to close with Paul again. I fancied giving him a good kicking. In those days I had a real short fuse. So George grabbing me sort of twirled me half around. And without thinking I punched him. Just once. But it was enough. His nose broke, smearing across his face like a dropped ice-cream. Within seconds the front of his shirt was covered in blood. And everybody froze.
"Eppy's hand flew to his mouth; I thought he was going to spew. Paul was sat in the street rubbing at his hands where he'd scraped them breaking his fall. Ringo and Stu stood like goldfish, their mouths opening and closing, nothing coming out. George looked slowly down across his chest. The realisation and, probably, the pain hit him late and all at once. His eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed like an empty suit.
"Paul was first to react, scrambling over to George without getting up off the ground. He wiped blood away from George's mouth and checked his breathing. I felt like death; worse than George looked. I tried to help Paul. My legs felt like sticks of celery. I wondered what had happened to my knees. For some reason they refused to bend. My arms and hands jerked as though they were connected to an electric current. I wished a hole would open in the ground and swallow me. 'Jesus, Paul, I'm sorry.'
"'Just get lost, John. You've done enough damage. Just fuck off and don't come back.'
"The world tilted, sending me staggering away from the still life with blood outside EMI's studio. I turned, going with the tilt, and began to run. With each stride my left knee banged against something hard. I looked down. Throughout the fight and as I ran I had held tight onto my guitar case. It was all I had left of the Beatles. All I would ever have. Except for that picture. Eppy sent me that a few weeks later when he still hoped the others might reconsider and ask me to come back. But they never did.
"I suppose you couldn't blame them. Stu had been my real mate in the band and when he died I just sort of forgot about them for a while. Paul tried to speak to me at the funeral but I was too cut up. Maybe he thought I was being a prick. I don't suppose I could blame him if he did.
"Then there was the problem with the master tape of the session, which meant everything was lost. And then when they went back to re-record it they needed a guitarist and Eppy brought in Mike. And the rest, as they say, is history. Hit after hit, just like a factory. The biggest band in the world they were, when Sgt. Pepper came out. I played on the same bill as them a few times in sixty-seven. Usually opening the show. But we never said more than a handful of words to one another."
Jack let out a protracted sigh and flopped back into his chair, as tired as though he'd run a pensioners' marathon. For a while he simply sat there and controlled his breathing. No-one spoke. The TV was showing archive footage of the Beatles in their lovable, smiling, cheeky post-moptop days. They were singing Eleanor Rigby. Jack said quietly, "I was a Beatle once and I blew it. I suppose that will be my epitaph. It's the only decent thing I was involved with and I fell off right at the start."
"You would have been in the plane when it went down, Jack," I said. "You'd have been dead before you were thirty. Just like the others."
"But I'd have been a legend. When people would argue about who was their favourite Beatle some of them would say Jack Lennon. I'd be remembered forever. They were bigger than Elvis. Bigger than Jesus."
"The accident happened in 1967," I said.
"1968," Jack corrected. "January fifth."
"That was almost fifty years ago. Are you saying you would have given up everything in those last fifty years to have been one of the Beatles?"
He said nothing but I could see he was giving the question consideration.
"Had he met you at that stage, Lillian?"
"That's the day I met him. The fifth of January 1968. He was sitting on the side of the road outside Holland Park tube station crying like a baby. I asked him what was wrong and he told me the Beatles were dead. So I sat down beside him and we cried together."
Jack leaned over the arm of his chair and reached out his hand towards her. She went to him and took hold of the hand. "A wonderful wife and four beautiful daughters," he said. "It's not much to put in the scales against immortality." He glanced up at a framed photograph hanging over the mantelpiece. It was Jack and his family, the ones he sometimes referred to as his five wives because of their fussing, and the way they all bullied him into doing what they thought was best for him.
His head nodded as though his neck was a spring. There was a calculated look about the set of his mouth. I felt I could have said anything to him and he would not have heard. His mind was cast far into the past. He was reliving the times he had with his mates in the Beatles and maybe the times he never got a chance to have. He grunted a few times as old men will and sighed more than once. Finally he blinked out of his reverie and turned the full glare of his attention onto me. "You're waiting for an answer," he said.
"No, Jack. The question was unfair."
"But I'm glad it was asked. The way it was asked." His fingers clung tight to Lillian's. The pale, crisp skin across his knuckles shone white. "Fifty years don't weigh much against immortality." He stared up into his wife's eyes. "But people weigh heavy in any equation. And I know five wives is a lot for a man to carry and they weigh heavy and they swung the balance until I couldn't tell which way it was favouring."
Lillian looked disappointed.
"But then I thought about Julian and his family. And all my grandchildren. And I added them to the sum."
Lillian smiled. She placed her free hand on top of the hand she held.
"But the scales didn't budge." He shook his head at his wife as she began to interrupt. "Don't. Let me say this all as one piece. My last song. About balance." He took a deep breath. "So I took everything off the scale and I thought for a while. I thought about our first baby daughter. I thought about how you'd made me come into the delivery room with you. How you looked. I suppose a stranger would have noticed the way the sweat of labour made your hair lank, or the lines pain put in your face. But what I saw was in your eyes. That spark that is you, the thing I will always love most in the world.
"And I remembered how the doctor made me hold my baby daughter before they'd even wiped her clean properly. And I remembered her little red face with the scrunched up eyes and how I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. And I took that memory and I placed it in the balance. And you know, immortality doesn't weigh a thing against something really important."
Jack smiled and Lillian smiled. I smiled. What else could I do. We had been played like a musical instrument. By a master.
Jack's last song was a hit.
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