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- If you can look out the window,
obviously behind you,
you see this, sort of, brick building here.
This brick,
uncolored building here.
When you look at the roofs,
does that kinda take you back
to being in Savile Row and that kinda look?
- I don't think I'm seeing the same building you are.
Mine's white.
- Well then, there's another one there.
(both laugh)
The one next to it. (Chris laughs)
Okay.
The one next to it.
How does,
You know, if you look at the, sort of,
architecture around here,
does it kind of take you back to that, sort of, period?
- No.
Not really. (laughs)
- Answered the question straight.
- [Cameraman] That didn't work then.
- [Chris] My name is Chris O'Dell,
but some of you may know me as Miss O'Dell.
In the late 1960s and early '70s,
life for a girl out of small town Tucson, Arizona
became pretty extraordinary.
- [Simon] Who's that?
- [Chris] That would be me.
- Jimmy Page told me it was his party.
- [Chris] Yoko had never been with John before in public.
I'm gonna ask her, can I come over
and would you help me do my makeup sometime?
When you start with The Beatles,
your resume looks really good.
So, go to The Stones,
that's the next step on the run.
- How did it, sort of, feel like to be responsible
for looking after a band like the Rolling Stones on tour?
Did it ever, sort of, dawn, oh, my god,
I'm looking after The Rolling Stones.
- Hard work, I've gotta tell you.
- I heard he was a massive flirt.
- [Chris] Wouldn't you be if you were Mick Jagger?
- So, do you think Bob Dylan's act is an act
or do you think that really is part of his
- No. - real persona?
- I think it really is who he is.
I worked with the holy trinity of rock and roll.
I was with Santana and Earth, Wind & Fire in Europe.
Then I worked with Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin,
Phil Collins, Genesis.
Apple was where everyone wanted to be.
This was the hub of everything.
- Apple Records is not interested
in signing David Bowie.
(Chris sighs)
And it's typed by you.
- There was an inner circle.
- [Pattie] Mm-hm.
- And that not many people got into that inner circle.
- [Narrator] Before she's even 25,
Chris has achieved the impossible.
- I grew up in an era of free love, flower power,
sex, booze, drugs, and rock and roll.
He would take acid and come in and just
sit on the filing cabinet.
- Oh, geez.
- He was unstable.
You know? - That's one way
of putting it. (both laugh)
Oh, you wanna go there?
- I go everywhere.
(Chris laughs)
- [Cameraman] He's like god.
(all laugh)
- But much shorter
(Chris laughs) and less hair.
- The song "Miss O'Dell"
is more about that than it is about me.
Oh dear, naive me.
- Who would've known
that that would've been The Beatles's last concert?
- You know what he said to me when he first played it?
I'm gonna make you famous.
- He never hated anyone
as much as he hated Paul McCartney in 1968.
- Oh. - Kind of almost like
a Britain invasion.
- Like this he went (hands clap)
and pulled the trigger.
- Gosh, we were all crazy.
Okay, and that's the end of that story. (laughs)
I did acid with one of them
and he took me on his Harley.
(Natalie laughs)
- Yeah, - Through the streets
of London. (laughs) - stupid.
- It was like a sensory overload.
- They called it the Swinging Sixties for a reason.
Times were so different then, weren't they?
Birth control pills first came onto the market.
So many, - Weren't men happy with that?
Of course they were. (Chris laughs)
Are you kidding?
- They were thrilled.
Sex became a way of getting to know each other.
- George is little bit of a naughty boy.
So, after George and I got married,
I thought, (gasps) maybe this was a mistake.
- This is where John and Yoko first met.
- [Bob] But some people did refer to you
as groupie at the time.
- Well, I never considered myself a groupie.
I felt like I worked my way through all of it.
I wanted love.
All they wanted to do was hold my hand. (laughs)
But it was also a time of great change.
There was a feeling of liberation,
hope, freedom, and excitement.
- [Bob] And I parachuted down here
into the most incredible energy,
the most amazing scenes bursting into color.
You know, all the clubs, the bands,
the arts, the movies.
- [Chris] The fashion.
- [Bob] The fashion.
- [Chris] But much of this was set
against a darker background
of conflicts and wars that raged on different continents.
* Yeah they feel the death plague *
- During the Vietnam War,
I was living in London
and I have to admit, quite ashamedly,
that I really wasn't exactly aware of the Vietnam War.
My husband, who's a veteran, was fighting
and I was doing peace and love with The Beatles in London.
It wasn't until I came back some years later
and tried to contact some people,
that I found out that some men had been killed,
some were,
had lost limbs,
and a lot had PTSD.
In some ways, it was the perfect canvas for creatives,
who seized the moment to tell their stories
and try to make the world a better place,
or at least a more meaningful one.
I've come back to the United Kingdom
to retrace my footsteps here with filmmaker, Simon Weitzman
and a host of lovely people.
- You were saying, initially, that it's great
'cause these guys were from England
and that was a far off land.
But there must been some of that effect,
with you coming here,
that people looked at you and (gasps)
she's so amazing.
She comes from America.
Did you get that impression?
- No. (laughs)
- Okay, thanks, and that's the end of the film.
- And that's the end of the story.
(upbeat twangy music)
(upbeat twangy music continues)
* I'm the only one down here *
* Who's got nothing to say about the war or the rice *
* That keeps going astray on its way to Bombay *
(upbeat twangy music)
* That smog that keeps polluting up our shores *
* Is boring me to tears *
* Why don't you call me *
* Miss O'Dell *
(upbeat twangy music fades)
- Coming into London was like coming into a world
so different from everything I'd just left in Hollywood.
I didn't want anything to change,
but I could see the changes that were made there.
It, you know,
It was so overwhelming.
I don't know if I really, actually, was able to feel
the deep emotions that were, unlikely, there
because there are just so many memories.
- Just as a lot of those American records
were really kicking in,
all of a sudden, bam,
there was The Beatles.
(fans screaming) (Beatles music plays)
- [Reporter] Some brave volunteers
among the British police
elect to act with heroism above and beyond the call of duty
and escort The Beatles to their car.
(fans screaming) (Beatles music plays)
So, there you have the homecoming of The Beatles,
the return of the heroes to their native land.
They did what the red coats couldn't do
in the American Revolution.
- Do you ever think back to that moment
where you are watching it on TV and thinking,
I can't believe I'm, actually, now working with these guys?
- Oh, yeah.
It would be ridiculous to not think back
and see here to there
and think, oh, how'd I do that?
- [Narrator] I know what you may be thinking.
How does someone from a small town at the age of 19
get to work with The Beatles?
Well, let's go back.
(tape rewinds)
- My dad was a teacher and a coach and we lived in,
I was born in Indiana,
but then moved to Oklahoma
to a little town called Keota.
Almost sounds Japanese.
And had a population of 500 people.
I grew up in really small towns.
We moved to Tucson when I was 11.
It was just a really kind of normal childhood.
But for some reason I was just drawn to a bigger world
than what Tucson had to offer.
- When did you first, sort of, then become aware
of The Beatles, the Rolling Stones,
all of these bands coming on?
Like, what was your first kind of experience of that?
- Actually, I was into Motown.
(soothing rhythmic music)
I think I hit Motown around 14 or 15.
And I loved
Motown.
I loved the music.
I loved the feel of it.
It expressed what I felt
- Yeah. - really well.
- So, had The Miracles started?
- Oh.
Smokey. - Smokey.
- I wanted to marry Smokey. - When Smokey sings, yes.
(Chris laughs)
I just wanted Smokey.
I realize today, looking back, that
music is the way that most of us, as teenagers,
have of understanding our feelings.
The type of music that we are listening to
often describes what's going on for us.
I was in high school when JFK was shot.
And he was such a handsome man.
He looked like he was the future of this country.
It was an, actual, trauma for all of us.
I'll never forget that day in school,
walking down the hall and people were talking about it.
It was like, no.
This can't be.
People my age, we were, kind of like, oh, gosh.
What is this world giving us?
What have we got left to look forward to?
And along came The Beatles.
For certainly me,
and I think millions of other people,
there was something we'd never seen before.
You know, the long hair.
The music was so simple.
I mean, talk,
You know, the difference
between Motown and The Beatles was
pretty vast. - Huge, yeah.
Yeah. - I don't know
that we thought of it as a British invasion,
which it was.
- [Bob] When The Beatles did arrive in America,
obviously, there was that incredible impact
of the "Ed Sullivan Show."
* Oh yeah, I *
- You know, that was such an interesting thing, wasn't it?
That The Beatles, originally, were signed to a little label,
the Vee Jay record label.
It was in no position to cope with the demand
for Beatles records that eventually transpired.
So, all the singles that have been
being released in Britain,
hadn't really surfaced in America yet
until they appeared on the "Ed Sullivan Show"
and then suddenly all those records,
you know, "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me",
"From Me To You," "She Loves You",
"I Want To Hold Your Hand",
they all burst into the charts in America
all at the same time.
- I didn't know that.
And that explains why there were so many one after the other
hits at that time. - Yeah.
They had 14 - Yeah.
- of the Billboard Top 100
at one point. - Amazing.
- And that was unprecedented.
Nobody had ever achieved that.
But it was because of this, sort of, log jam
- Yeah. - of records
that hadn't been properly released
in America yet. - Ah.
- [Bob] But the press conference
that they did at the airport,
where people in the States saw them for the first time,
experienced their incredible chemistry and sense of humor,
and that, in itself propelled them, didn't it?
- Oh, - It was part
of the whole - totally.
- feeling of what this band was about.
- They were so funny.
- I hear, anyway, that the four of you
are gonna be millionaires by the end of the year.
- Really? - Oh.
- Oh, that's nice. - Yeah.
(all laugh) - Hi hopes.
- Congratulations.
- Have you got time to actually spend this money?
- What money? - What money?
(all laugh)
- And now suddenly you've got these four kids,
who apparently are unaffected by their fame.
They're just, absolutely, loving every minute of it.
How vigorously and intentionally
are you wanting to weave yourself into the scene
that was happening there at that moment?
- You know, I didn't have any intention.
I wanted to find my independence.
And so, going to LA, I really didn't have any
idea what I was doing.
I had met a band that had played in a club in Tucson,
and one of the guys said, oh,
we're gonna be playing in San Francisco.
Why don't you stay in my flat?
I went into this apartment and stayed.
This woman said, I have to go for a job interview.
I don't want it.
Well, I got to LA when I was about 19, I think.
I went to Dot Records and got the job.
At Dot, I really didn't learn too much about anything.
I just had fun.
I worked for a man who put out a newsletter,
which back then they did.
They would get the singles and play them all
and decide which ones should be played on the radio.
And they would get paid to advise radio stations
what records to play.
And I worked for him and did his tip sheet.
Ted Randal Enterprises was a small little company
in Los Angeles.
He was very close to Hollywood and Vine.
He did a lot of radio programming
for Australian stations
and many in the United States.
- The night that you get called to say,
come to meet Derek Taylor?
- Mm-hm.
- What year is this?
Remind me.
- That would be 1968.
Alan Rider, who was the promotion man at A&M Records,
introduced me to Derek Taylor.
He worked for The Beatles.
The way that I put it at one time is, they weren't real.
So, anybody who said they knew them,
they weren't real either.
So, when Alan said, you've gotta meet this man.
He's amazing.
Little did I know.
(Bob laughs)
- [Simon] Describe Derek Taylor,
as a person that's never met Derek Taylor.
What kind of human being was he?
- He was older.
He was in his 30s.
(Simon gasps)
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh, it's true.
It was really scary.
(both laugh)
But he was,
He looked a lot like Errol Flynn.
He was very dashing.
Very British.
He had short hair.
A cigarette, always.
He was just a little guy.
Not very big.
But just like,
he just, sort of, was always going.
He had a lot of energy.
I'm in LA.
At this point, I'd lost my job
because I was driving him around all the time.
He had brought joy into my life.
- Yeah. - That hadn't been,
a different kind of joy I'd never known.
And he had a going away party at Ciro's,
which was hysterical.
And we were up all night and there was beautiful music
and people,
He was charging people to come to his going away party,
(Bob laughs) that he'd invited.
And so, then we took him to the airport.
His secretary at the time,
We drove him to the airport
and he said to me, go get me some cigarettes.
Go get me some,
I need some ciggies.
So, I went down,
'cause back then you didn't have security.
Went down to buy these ciggies for him.
A carton of cigarettes.
And when I got up there, the plane was gone.
And I was devastated
because I didn't get to say goodbye to him.
- Oh, my goodness.
- So, I went, but I've got his cigarettes.
I was 20.
- [Bob] Yes.
- So, I said to his secretary,
I'm going to San Francisco where his plane stops,
makes a stop there.
I'm going there to give him his cigarettes.
And I did.
So, I borrowed her shoes
because I had lost mine at the club.
I couldn't find them. (Bob laughs)
And I'm dressed in this fall and this crazy thing.
Got in an airplane
and showed up at the gate in San Francisco
and said, oh, you have to let me on.
I have to get to my friend.
I've got his cigarettes.
And they went, well, we can't do that.
We're about to leave.
And I went,
I started crying.
So, they said, okay.
So, I ran onto the plane and found Derek,
and I went, here are your
cigarettes. - Cigarettes.
(Bob and Chris laugh)
- Derek must have thought to himself,
oh, my God, this woman,
I mean, she's chased me to San Francisco
to give me cigarettes.
She must have some tenacity about her.
- I don't know. - Um,
do you think that that was part of his decision,
in terms of getting you to London,
knowing that you'd bring something special?
- I can only assume.
Because he really did push it.
He called me when he was in New York with John and Paul,
when they were doing the "Tonight Show"
and said, you really should come to London.
I mean, this would be a really good time
for you to come to Apple.
I'm like,
I don't think I can do that.
I don't think I have the money.
But I was living with this aspiring actress
called Terry Garr.
And she had been here to London
and she said, you've got to go.
So, if she hadn't pushed me,
I don't know if I would've.
She convinced me.
- Derek was,
even then, you sensed that he was
way, way ahead of his time.
- Derek was totally responsible.
He changed the direction of my life.
There's no doubt about it.
I don't know where I would've ended up had I not met him
and been offered the opportunities that he offered.
I was just this little girl in this little town
who ended up in London in 1968.
It's like, it could have been anyone.
I was like way down in the lower levels
of the music business, at that time.
But just through coincidence, ended up meeting Derek Taylor,
who was kind of at the top.
Tony, it's good to see you.
- It's great to see you again,
Chris. - I know,
Listen, I knew your father,
Tommy. - Yep.
Okay.
- [Chris] He was one of the most amazing photographers.
He's one of the only photographers
who really captured The Beatles right through
- Sure. - their whole time.
I'd like you to talk about that a little bit.
- Okay.
The 6th of September, 1963 was the first time
that my dad went with a journalist, called Mike
to the Odeon Luton,
Hennessey,
to meet The Beatles in the changing room.
My dad said to the four of them,
listen, when you come out of the changing room,
can you just stop in this room here?
I'd like to get a shot of the four of you together.
So, it became probably one of the most iconic images
of the young Beatles.
At that time, we called it the four tie shot,
'cause they all stood there.
But then he worked with them up to '64
until the tour in America.
He'd been out to Paris.
He'd been locked in the George Sank Hotel
for three days and nights because they couldn't get out.
And then they asked him to go to the states
for the tour in the states.
But his own personal experience
of being locked in that hotel room with them
and a few other people as well, was,
he kinda said, very politely, thanks, but no thanks.
And when I tell this story to different people,
they kind of like, the jaw drops.
'cause they say, he said no to The Beatles.
But he had his own reasons.
And his ambition was to be a travel photographer.
- [Chris] Look at this.
Here we are again.
George and I.
Only a much better picture of my outfit.
- [Tony] Absolutely.
Absolutely.
- [Chris] Boy, we were so groovy back then.
- [Tony] In that photo of all of the group,
everybody is so trendily dressed
in, what I think, was durry gur, at that time.
Your outfit is pretty bang on.
It is, absolutely, spot on.
Even the shoes.
- Oh look.
I love those shoes.
Not bad for a yank, huh?
- Whoa, yeah.
You know, - If you'd seen
the way I arrived in this country,
you would applaud me.
Actually, I think at that time, Soho, Kings Row,
- Yeah. - Biba,
- Yeah. - Mary Quant.
- Yeah. - I mean, it,
- 'Cause there's a lot of Mary Quant in that,
- Yeah. - in my opinion.
- [Chris] Well, it,
This was London.
- [Tony] Yeah, sure.
- [Chris] At this time.
This was just London.
You could just find so many cool things.
It was that time in London
when everything was, absolutely, booming.
You had Vidal Sassoon on one corner,
Bibas on another,
Mary Quant on the Kings Road.
It was just a fascinating time in London.
Style was everything.
I think I had more flashbacks than anywhere else,
'cause the memories,
those were my first months of working for The Beatles,
so it was the most exciting period of time.
- So, you arrive in London then.
Where was it when you parachuted down into Apple?
What were you experiencing around you?
- Well, it was at Wigmore Street.
And so, they were in this one floor, in Wigmore Street,
and all the offices were all there.
I walked in that,
I think the day I got there,
John and Yoko were sitting in reception.
And I was talking to Derek,
and Paul walked in and went into the room next door,
which, at that point, was the Apple Boutique office.
- [Simon] The first time you meet the guys in London,
what kind of impression do they make on you?
Because, of course, you've seen them
as these little stick men, as you call it.
- They're stick men. - The stick men.
And then they're right in front of you.
So, what does that feel like to actually meet them?
- Pretty difficult to express in words?
So, the first time,
well, the first day I was at Apple was,
I met Paul and John in the first day that I was there.
I mean, they were just very friendly and very nice.
Hi, how are you?
Nice to meet you.
And I'm like, (laughs)
I think I was, probably, paralyzed,
to be honest.
- One by one, then,
How did you begin to establish a relationship with them?
They're Beatles, aren't they?
So, there's quite a glass sea ceiling
or glass wall to break through, isn't there?
So, what would,
What were your,
You know, how did you go about that, winning their trust?
And,
- John was there, kind of, around.
George, I met with Derek.
We went to lunch on like the third day I was here.
And that was the day that the Apple Boutique opened.
And so, I met him like that.
Ringo was away doing a movie.
I didn't meet,
I didn't meet him for quite a while.
- And from that time onwards,
did you feel very comfortable around him?
And which ones did you feel, perhaps,
initially, most attached to?
- Um.
Paul.
Because he was there every day.
But Paul was there and he was part of,
He felt like part of the company.
It was like he was working there too.
He was easy to get to know.
So, it was very comfortable being around him.
He kept saying, are you looking for a job?
'Cause I was just there.
There was no glamour.
It was just, this is the offices.
And there were a few Beatles running around.
(Chris and Bob laugh)
- And subsequently, demonstrated your incredible ability
as an overseer, an organizer.
Somebody to, sort of,
put that chaos into some sort of order.
- I hope so.
I think that
What would,
You know, it's what it was
is that I came in with the American work ethic.
And not to put down the British work ethic,
but it was different back then.
I mean, you know, the example of that is that
when I said I need something right away,
that meant tomorrow.
Here, it meant next week.
And I'd go, what?
You can't get it sooner than that?
I can't believe it.
So, I would push through barriers that were there.
It was a tough one to do though,
because some of the other girls that worked at Apple
had been there for quite a while
and they weren't exactly thrilled
about this American who came,
you know, bouncing in and would do anything.
I mean, the reason I got the job was lunches.
I'd go out and get lunches for them.
But they were going to the deli
and I would go to the restaurants
and ask them to cook up the food and let me have the China
and I'd bring them back in these baskets.
- [Bob] Yes.
- And that's how I got,
finally, got the job.
- And I mean, that's amazing initiative, isn't it?
- Yeah.
You just gotta do anything, huh?
- I know.
- Derek Taylor wrote in his book "As Time Goes By",
that he never hated anyone
as much as he hated Paul McCartney in 1968.
- [Chris] Oh.
- And this is a letter.
We probably don't want a press department, do we?
And it's a picture of journalists
and the like, heavily drinking.
- Oh, my gosh.
That's amazing.
Strike out.
We're not applicable.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- And type, - And not signed.
- No.
Note taken and typed by Jolly Minor.
- [Mark] Mm.
MBE.
I mean, it's a beautiful construction.
Paul's - That'
- [Mark] such a clever artist.
- [Chris] Quite an amazing thing.
- [Mark] But imagine if you were receiving that
from your boss, who's paying your wages.
- [Chris] Did he send this to Derek
- [Mark] Yeah.
- Well, it is well known,
and was certainly well known, at that time,
that Derek's,
Derek and George had the closest relationship
- Yeah. - of really,
anybody that I knew, at that point.
And I never really knew whether he and Paul
had much of a relationship anyway.
I don't know.
- [Mark] They did.
But it was strained compared to how it was with John and,
- Apparently. (laughs)
- [Mark] With John and with George, in particular.
Yeah.
When was the first time that you met George?
- The first time I met him, he came into London,
into Wigmore Street.
Derek had said, would you like to go to lunch today?
And so, I was in his office.
And then George pranced in.
And, literally, George float,
He had a floating walk to him.
Derek introduced us.
And so, we went to the Aretusa
on Kings Road
and there were people sitting there having lunch.
It looked normal.
Here I was on the Kings Road in London
with this cape and short skirt I bought in Hollywood
that was like blue and orange checkered.
(Mark laughs) I mean,
I just thought, oh, god, I look so wrong.
Anyway, we swept in there and sat down at a seat
and George sat on the other side of the table.
And you know, once we had a little wine,
I felt a little more comfortable.
But I also didn't have to say anything.
You know, I had to look like, (laughs)
and respond appropriately.
But no, I didn't have to like,
What would I have said, at that point?
And then the waiters started moving all kinds of tables.
And I'm like, looking at Derek, like, what's going on here?
And Derek said, oh, did I forget to tell you?
The Apple Boutique fashion show is happening now,
here, in the same place.
- [Mark] Right.
- Since George was there and Derek was there,
then John and Yoko came and sat down.
And then Pattie came in and sat down.
And the press were all around
because it was the first time they'd seen John and Yoko out.
And so, of course they were really snapping away like crazy.
And I'm sitting there going,
what am I doing here? (laughs)
I've been here four days
and I'm sitting at this table.
You know, I looked at Yoko, at one point,
and said, you're doing great.
(Mark laughs) And then,
And then Pattie came and sat down.
And I thought, well, she looks nicer.
And I was like, maybe I could talk to her.
So, at the right time, I reached across
and said, hi, I'm Chris.
I just came from America.
I'm a friend of Derek's.
Would you show me how to do my makeup sometime?
And she went,
yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. (laughs)
You know, totally caught off guard.
But in my mind I thought, oh,
I'm gonna end up being best friends with her.
What did you think?
- I was just so blown away.
I couldn't believe you were, actually, asking me that.
(Chris laughs)
It seemed like such an odd request,
at like a dinner, with all the press there listening.
And you want,
you want to learn about makeup?
- [Chris] I know.
- [Pattie] And then I thought, oh, how sweet that is.
- Aw. - Maybe I should help you.
- And then some years later,
you said to me, oh, I like your makeup.
How do you do it?
And I went, oh.
That's good.
This is full circle.
- [Simon] Your background's in photography
and you're,
I mean, I love your photographic work
and then you've got beautiful eye for it.
You know, the other one's nice, as well.
But
(Pattie laughs)
- Can I just tell you something, darling?
- Please.
- Only 'cause it's funny.
(Chris laughs) I only like funny stories.
So, you know, I'd have my rolls of film
developed every evening
and then I'd pick them up the next day.
Contact sheets and Ringo, said, um,
Pattie, there's something I have to tell you.
Yes.
Well, the photographs are very nice,
but they're a bit, sort of, fuzzy.
They're not really in focus.
And, of course, I didn't know then,
I'm shortsighted.
And this is before auto focus, right?
So, I'm focusing with my bad, short eye.
Right.
So, for me, (Chris laughs)
looking through the lens,
of course it was sharp,
but of course it wasn't.
'cause you know.
- That's hysterical.
Never would wear your glasses.
- [Pattie] I didn't know I was shortsighted.
Life was lovely and fuzzy.
- When did you start taking photographs?
- Oh, many years before I met George.
- Really? - Yeah.
'cause when I was a model,
fashion model,
I was,
I worked with hundreds of photographers.
And my boyfriend, at the time, was a photographer.
And he encouraged me to save up my money and buy a camera.
I remember Derek finding some guy, who needed a job,
and Derek said, I want you to come into my office
and sit on top of the,
- Filing cabinet. - filing cabinet.
And this guy, I just thought, oh, perfect.
He sat up there all day. (Chris laughs)
- I remember him very well.
- [Pattie] What on earth was he doing?
- I can't remember his name.
He was high.
He would take acid and come in
and just sit on the filing cabinet.
Someone asked me once,
were those times all about sex, drugs, and rock and roll?
(upbeat music)
- [Female Narrator] Books could be censored.
But now something came along that was much harder to stop.
Something that millions of young people would seize
and use as a means to further separate themselves
from adult society.
* Line on the beam set on light control *
* Radio tuned to rock and roll *
- Availability of the pill was suddenly there.
Sex became a way of getting to know each other.
- A lot's changed since 1967.
- No doubt, love.
But as long as people are still having promiscuous sex
with many anonymous partners without protection,
while at the same time,
experimenting with mind expanding drugs
in a consequence free environment,
I'll be sound is a pound.
- Pioneers and Americans.
- What is it you're pioneering?
What you wanted to say?
- [Fifi] The sexual revolution.
- [Simon] Looking back, do you think men took advantage
of a very different morality regarding sexuality back then?
Or do you think they just had to play a game to get on?
- [Chris] I never,
I've been wondering about this myself.
I don't really think that the men did that.
I think the women loved the music.
They loved the musicians.
They were mostly men, musicians.
So, I think that the women
were feeling a freedom they hadn't had before.
I, definitely, don't put the weight on the men's shoulders
because I don't think they were taking advantage of it.
I mean, the girls who wanted to be with them
and have sex with them for the night,
they wanted them to do it.
So, I don't really think
that the men should get blamed on this one.
- Here's a flashback that no one really expected.
Imagine your mother on an acid trip.
- A curtain, a spider web.
Can you see it?
It's right here in front of me right now.
Watch.
It passed right through.
- Together you had this gigantic influence
on the young people.
Right?
And everybody knows that The Beatles
went through a drug phase.
Did it ever occur to you,
or did you ever stop thinking of it this way,
that the fact that this was known,
and the fact that you were The Beatles,
might have caused thousands of kids to go into drug problems
that might not have otherwise?
- Uh.
Well,
No, no.
Let him ask the question. - Shut up, will ya?
- Let him ask the question. (audience laughs)
- [Simon] Do you feel yourself being,
sort of, pulled into that world?
Or was there a point where you thought, (gasps)
this is starting to get a bit overwhelming?
- Drugs were available.
I mean, they were there.
And they weren't just drugs.
They were really good drugs. (laughs)
For example, the first time I ever had the feeling
that maybe I was overdoing it
was when I was at Apple on Wigmore Street.
- Oh, my god. - How does this feel like?
Home from home?
- This is like,
This is really home.
- Look. - This is really home.
- On the 95.
- 95 Wigmore Street.
The beginning.
There was a point where I called Leslie Cavendish and said,
I'm overdoing it.
I can tell.
I'm starting to get paranoid.
- What was it, the second, third floor?
Something like that up there.
- Yeah.
Up third. - But you were sitting there.
Very pretty.
Blonde girl.
A nice little accent.
- [Chris] Leslie Cavendish, he was so gorgeous.
He was just this handsome guy.
So, naturally I was attracted to him
and we started talking.
And he told me that he was the hairdresser.
He did cut their hair.
And he was gonna be, eventually,
I don't know if he knew it at that time,
but eventually, would have the Apple hair cutting salon
in the Apple Boutique on Kings Road.
- She had the severe haircut.
You had this five point cut.
I think she needed somewhere to stay
and somebody asked me if I would put her up.
That was over 50 years ago.
We've been great friends since.
- [Simon] You were living just off the Kings Road.
- Yeah, Chelsea Manor Street. - So,
on Chelsea Manor Street?
- [Leslie] Yeah.
- [Simon] What do you think her first impression
of being in that area was?
- Well, I,
You know, let's put it this way.
She's come to London.
She's obviously met a Beatle or two, within 24 hours.
She's now moved into a flat in Chelsea.
That's not a bad opening, is it?
How would you imagine,
you know, a lot of people work hard to get all that.
The nice thing about her
was that she was so easy to talk to.
You know, she was that laid back lady
from LA or Tucson, Arizona.
Remember you told me you got on a plane from LA.
You've ended up in the middle of London 95 Wigmore Street.
Did you know?
Did you know what was gonna happen here?
- No, not at all.
How could I have?
I loved Wigmore Street.
It was the part,
It's the place I have the fondest memories of
because we were all on one floor
and it was just
so like family. (camera clicks)
Everybody was just there.
It was just pointed out to me, recently,
that there was only a four year time span
between the time that The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan
and when I went to London to work for them.
To me, at that age, it seemed like
it was about a hundred years.
It didn't seem that short a time.
And I just wanted to go to Liverpool.
The idea of actually meeting them,
that was pretty much fantasy.
During the trip, we took a train to Penzance.
I was excited about meeting Natalie,
whose mother was Debbie, the Apple receptionist.
I was also very excited to meet another generation
and see how much she knew and what she remembered.
Because I already knew
that Debbie had passed away several years before.
- They're absolutely beautiful.
- I really must come back.
- You've gotta come back.
- [Simon] It's called the Jurassic Coast, isn't it?
- No, that's Devon.
- [Simon] It's not called the Jurassic Coast.
(Natalie laughs)
(Chris laughs)
- [Simon] I'm just gonna turn that down a little bit.
- He never gets to turn that on.
(Natalie laughs)
- [Simon] Yeah, I never turn on.
- We just do this.
- [Simon] We just go from place to place pretending to film.
- But we're not really
doing anything. (Natalie laughs)
First of all, everyone was real young.
- [Natalie] Yeah.
- [Chris] Your mom was 19
- [Natalie] 18, 19, I think.
- 18, 19. - Yeah.
- I was, um,
- Which is crazy. - 20, 21.
- Yeah.
- The Beatles were only in their twenties.
I mean, we were all really young.
My memory, when I think of your mom,
first of all, she was the face of Apple.
You walked in the door into reception
and there she was.
- Yeah. - Sitting
right in front of the door.
Let's say this out loud.
Your mom was very beautiful.
- She was gorgeous. - She was
absolutely gorgeous. - She was.
- [Chris] Great figure.
- [Natalie] Oh, my god.
Yeah.
Amazing.
- When you think that John Lennon's office was on,
right off reception.
- [Natalie] Yeah.
- Everybody else was stuck up in the (laughs)
- Well,
But it's,
You know, not only did he get the prime spot,
like, street level, straight to the car,
like, no messing.
But I think it's telling that they put the mirror in.
He wanted to know.
He wanted his finger on the pulse of everything
that was going on in his place.
- Right. - He wanted to know
what was happening.
That's the feeling I get.
I went back there when I,
when we went to the roof gig anniversary thing.
And we walked down there.
And I suppose because of the architecture
and because of the nature of the actual buildings,
it probably hasn't changed very much.
The shop fronts
but itself, it must look just the same.
- [Chris] It looks the same.
- [Natalie] Yeah.
- [Chris] The door, it used to be white.
- [Natalie] Yeah.
- Where it's a different,
it's a darker color now.
But I remember like thinking, god,
everything looks so small.
- Yeah. - You know,
in the memory, it all seems so big.
- [Natalie] Wow.
You were young.
- We were young. - You were so,
I can't believe,
You know, when I think now,
like, how I was at 17, 18 to 21, whatever.
Like, you know, you think you're a grownup,
but you are still a kid, really.
You're still really young.
So much to learn.
And you guys were, you know,
running and working at
and being part of this incredible thing.
- Amazing, isn't it? - It's crazy.
- [Chris] Yeah.
I have to tell you.
Sitting here talking to you is like talking to your mom.
- [Natalie] Aw.
- And it's not even because you look, amazingly, like her.
- Thank you.
- It's also because you're the same.
You're that happy, cheery person
that she always was. - Aw.
Thanks, that's - That's true.
- really special.
- Yeah.
- I promised myself I'm not gonna cry today. (laughs)
- You can cry.
You can cry.
We can both cry.
- It just really,
It's really special to be able
to meet someone that knew her,
- Aw. - although years ago
and can, you know, tell me what it was like.
She used to tell me stories,
but, you know, probably not as many as you've got.
She was quite, kind of, private about it all, really.
She would just be like, oh, it was just a job.
There was a year where there was a Christmas party
(Chris laughs) and,
Well, I'm sure there were many Christmas parties,
but one where people took their kids
and John dressed up as Santa and gave out presents.
- [Chris] That would also be
when the Hell's Angels were there.
- Okay. - Yes.
- [Natalie] She did mention
those guys, as well. - Yes, yes.
- My uncle got given this shiny red firetruck
that he absolutely loved.
And once all the presents had been given out,
he looked over and saw that Julian didn't get one.
There weren't quite enough presents.
So, he ran over and gave his present to Julian.
And my uncle remembers this.
It's like one of his earliest memories.
- [Chris] That is so sweet.
- I don't think it really landed with him
until he was a little bit older
that Santa Claus was John Lennon. (laughs)
- Yeah. - Like I think
that probably like,
when he became like a young adult,
he would've been like, uh,
- Well, yeah. - I got given it. (laughs)
- I got given my gift by Santa.
- [Natalie] Yeah.
- That, actually, is also when one of the Hell's Angels,
that same night,
So, you got the kids down here
and the Hell's Angels up there.
Did she tell you about the Hell's Angels?
- She told me the day that they all rocked up
and she was like, I just heard this almighty
noise of these engines,
these bikes just like, roaring up the street.
And she said that she was like,
somebody was in a meeting or having a phone call
or something quite important was happening.
And she was just really annoyed
that whoever was outside was making all this noise.
And then she realized, oh, no.
They've stopped.
They're here for us.
- Well, we'd been warned.
George wrote a memo saying that they were coming to town
and not to,
you know, don't give them a hard time.
Don't uptight them.
Were his exact words. (Natalie laughs)
Don't uptight them.
They slowly made their way up the building.
And when they got to the fourth floor,
they came into mine.
And I,
so I just went,
I'm American.
Don't mess with me.
- [Natalie] Like, come on, man.
- [Chris] Yeah, come on.
(Natalie laughs)
- [Chris] And so, I got along great with them.
I hung out with them.
- [Natalie] Cool.
Oh, my god.
I bet that was a riot.
- [Chris] That was a riot.
I did acid with one of them
and he took me on his Harley.
(Natalie laughs)
- Yeah. - Through the streets
of London. - Stupid.
(Natalie laughs)
- [Natalie] Stupid but fun.
- [Chris] In snow.
- [Natalie] In,
Are you sure it was snowing? (laughs)
- [Chris] Well, it was,
Yeah, it was definitely snowing
because we how cold did a skid
and I'm like, - No.
- [Chris] Whoa.
This is not the way I choose to die.
- [Natalie] Yeah.
Suddenly it's not so fun anymore.
- So, you see this lamppost here?
- Yes.
- I can remember coming back from work
and there were two Harley Davidsons up there.
- Oh.
- And I thought to myself, - I know where this is going.
- And you see where that window?
- Yeah.
- It was open.
Now, as I'm coming down here,
I see smoke coming out.
And I knew they weren't electing a pope, right?
(Chris laughs)
And I thought, oh, my god.
There's so much smoke coming out here.
I'm gonna get this,
wee problems here.
And I've walked in, and I knew
that the Hell's Angels were at Apple.
- Mm-hm.
- And I said to myself, Chris isn't,
don't tell me Chris is inviting them back.
(Chris laughs) And I remember walking in
and they were just sitting here.
We had soft cushions, Afghan cushions.
- [Chris] Mm-hm.
- [Leslie] And there you were,
sitting in the corner with Sweet William.
- [Chris] Sweet William.
- [Leslie] And who was the other guy?
- [Chris] Frisco Pete.
- [Leslie] Frisco Pete
and Frankie. - Frankie,
- Yeah. - Hart.
- [Leslie] Frankie Hart.
- [Chris] Frankie Hart.
- And,
and you said, oh, Leslie, this is my friends.
You know, and they,
- How'd you feel when you walked inside and that was,
- I was scared because you had,
they had Budweisers there (Chris laughs)
and I had a beautiful wooden Afghan table
and I thought they were gonna go (whistles)
with the bottle tops
- Yeah. - and ruin my table.
And I was nervous.
I'm thinking, this is my place.
And I'm now nervous.
And I broke the ice. (Chris laughs)
He said to me, - This is my place.
- He said to me,
oh, you cut The Beatles' hair, do you?
And I went, yeah.
And he went,
Suddenly the atmosphere changed.
Then you turn around and said, yes.
And I said, where have you been?
And you said, oh, I've just been running around London
on the back of his motorbike.
- Yeah.
Apple was, in my memory and to me, my feeling,
the hub of the world.
It was like it was where everyone wanted to be.
Her phone was ringing all the time.
- [Natalie] Just constant.
- Constant. - She said
it was a really busy office.
- [Chris] Very busy.
- [Natalie] Was never a minute.
- [Chris] And her,
and the people were coming in all the time.
There was Jimmy, the doorman,
- Yeah. - who helped.
- Yeah. - He, kind of, kept
some of it calmed down.
(Natalie laughs)
One of my favorite stories,
that I'm gonna tell you about
- Okay, - your mom,
is that Peter Asher and I
were walking back from lunch one day
and there was this psycha,
or this kind of painted, sort of, lor,
not a lorry,
but it was a flatbed truck,
- Yeah. - parked in front of,
And you never knew what was gonna be coming into Apple.
- Okay. - So,
Anyway, and then there were all these people standing,
these guys with no hair and a ponytail on the back
and all this saffron and everything.
And it turned out it was the Krishnas.
- [Natalie] No.
- And it was their first day coming there.
And so, Peter,
who can be quite shy.
- Okay. - It was almost like
he went into turtle pose.
It's like, I hope they're not here to see me.
(Natalie laughs)
And I went, I doubt that Peter.
- Yeah.
- So, we went into the thing.
We went upstairs to our fourth floor offices
and my phone rang.
And your mom goes, Chris?
Peter's three o'clock appointment is here,
(Natalie laughs) or two o'clock
or whatever it was.
And I went, oh.
Is it the people that were
in that truck outside? - Oh, no.
- And she said, yes. (laughs)
- [Natalie] Well, they're all stood in reception, probably.
And she's like, on the back.
- Two of them were all that came in.
- Oh, no. - And so, I said,
okay, hold them down there.
I'll be right there.
And I went to Peter and said,
uh, they're here for you.
- Oh, no. (Chris laughs)
(Natalie laughs)
- But that's the kind of thing
she had to deal with
all the time. - Yeah.
- Is that she always had to call
and act like everything was normal.
- Mm-hm.
- Because we'd be on the other end going,
oh, what do they look like?
Or what do they want?
- Yeah.
- I mean, she was the face of Apple.
- The first time you met Peter, how did he strike you?
What was the kind of impression you got from him?
(record skips)
- [Narrator] Oh, shit.
Wrong one.
Or is it?
- Well, I would use the word reserved.
He was very reserved.
But part of it was
that he had come from an upper class family.
And my exposure to English people, at that time,
had been mostly from Liverpool.
It just seemed different.
He seemed very different.
Hello?
- Hi, darling.
(Chris laughs)
- How are you?
- It's been a while.
I'm fine. - It's been
- Thank you. - a really long time.
- I'm fine, thank you.
- Good.
Thank you for inviting me here
- It's a pleasure. - To talk to you.
- Nice to see you.
- You asked me if I would be your assistant.
- Yes. - And I said great.
And then I asked you, what do I do?
And you said, I don't know.
I've never had a personal assistant before.
(both laugh)
So, we just, kinda, winged it, at that point.
- Yes, exactly.
And you were,
to be honest, you were a personal assistant would,
but back then,
when it wasn't insulting to call someone a secretary,
you were also a secretary.
Because I've seen letters that,
you know, have your initials on them.
You know, in the old days it used to be
who dictated them and who typed them.
And you, - Funny you should say that.
- Oh.
- 15th of July, 1968 from Peter Asher.
Head of A&R for Apple Records.
Dear sir.
This is addressed to Kenneth Pitt management.
As we told you on the phone,
Apple Records is not interested in signing David Bowie.
The reason is that we don't feel
he is what we're looking for, at the moment.
Thank you for your time.
Yours, sincerely, Peter Asher.
- Oh. - And is typed
by you.
C-O. - Yeah.
P-A, Peter Asher.
C-O, Chris O'Dell.
- Yes, I definitely typed it.
God, I wonder if Peter remembers this.
(upbeat music)
- Yes.
That's a weird one.
I, yeah,
Because what is strange is that
that's not language I would ever have used.
- Well, I signed it.
- Yes.
Because, I initialed, - I know it's not
my signature either. - Yeah.
- 'Cause people have asked me about that.
- But did you see who,
- Yes, yes. - we were
- It's David Bowie.
I know. - rejecting?
- Yeah, yes.
(Chris laughs)
Who's that guy, Ken Pitt.
- [Chris] Huh, I'd never seen it before.
- [Peter] Apple is not interested in signing.
The reason is that we don't feel
he's what we're looking for, at the moment.
That's not a phrase I, - That's not you.
- I would ever use, no.
- That was probably me.
(Peter laughs)
- Maybe.
- [Chris] And remember we were only in our twenties.
- Yes. - If you think about that,
it's pretty amazing.
So, it was the right time to be doing,
to be going out and having fun at the end of the day.
But we did work hard. - Oh, absolutely.
I remember. - Oh, you did.
You know, you were a terrific assistant.
- Thank you. - Providing,
you could be found.
- Oh, yes. - Occasionally.
Occasionally, - Occasionally.
- you disappeared.
- I slept under my desk one night.
(both laugh)
- This does not surprise me.
(Chris laughs)
Yeah, no, it,
You were terrific.
But every now and then, it was like,
has anybody seen Chris?
(Chris laughs)
And it means that I've either you fallen asleep
or something much more interesting
is happening on another floor.
- That could be true.
- Originally. - I remember you
looking for me once.
I was, (laughs) (Peter laughs)
You were very patient with me.
That's not even relating to the time that you told me
I was the first person you knew
who was a week late for work.
(both laugh)
So,
Apple,
I remember you leaving,
but I can't remember why you left.
I mean, I know I have a thought that you left
because things were falling apart, basically.
- Yeah, I left because I knew about Alan Klein,
by reputation from some friends in New York
who knew him
and people who also,
who knew The Stones,
who were already, were not too keen on Alan.
And even at that time, they started to realize
it was too good to be true.
You know, that he was a bit of a crook, on the side.
Yeah, I wrote a, actual, letter of resignation,
which I've asked Apple if they can find it,
'cause they're pretty good at finding stuff,
but no one's found it yet.
But I remember writing a specific letter
explaining why I was leaving.
And then James and I just left.
And I went to LA
and we agreed that I would become James's manager,
simply because we didn't know
who else we would trust to do it.
I figured if Brian Epstein can go
from running a record shop to managing The Beatles,
I can go from being an artist to managing James Taylor.
- James Taylor sounds like a character.
- Yes.
He was my first date, so to speak.
When I first got here,
Derek hated to see me be gettin' lonely,
and so, he fixed me up with James.
And it was the same thing.
I didn't come here to meet an American guy.
But James was very different back then.
- [Simon] You were lucky enough
to, kind of, be around the studios.
Did you get a different take on them, as people,
in that recording studio?
- You had to move from thinking
they were these little people like this
to suddenly there were these real people,
standing in front of you.
So, once that adjustment was made,
that's the acclimating.
Acclimating to the fact that, okay, now I'm part of this.
And to the point, that I thought it was quite okay to say,
Paul, do you mind if I come to the studio
and watch you record?
Which as it turns out, it,
I did do that, but it wasn't really okay.
Two of the other girls said, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
We don't ever do that.
In fact, when Brian was alive,
we weren't even allowed to go
to the same social events is them.
That,
That doesn't make sense.
And they said, well, that's kind of the rule.
- No, it was, sort of, it felt like a male bastion.
It was just for the guys to have fun.
I thought.
Or I felt that.
- And, as it turned out, it really was (laughs)
because I did go to the studio, thanks to Mal Evans,
and I wasn't gonna get in that night.
And we sat.
And we sat
(Gary laughs) and I went,
he has no intention of letting me into the studio.
- [Gary] He was the human rottweiler, keeping the,
- Exactly. - Yeah.
- His job was to make sure nobody got there.
But he did it in such a nice way.
- Yeah. - But he didn't want
to upset anyone. - No.
- Did he? - I think that,
I'm not sure if I ever saw you two,
it was when you were really little.
- Right. - A friend
I went to school with has memories of my dad,
kind of, more than me.
He remembers all the parents coming into the school
when we were about seven or eight,
all in suit,
all the men were in suits.
And my dad be coming in six foot three with Afghan coat.
- [Gary] He'd pick us up outside the school gates
with the cowboy hat, holster on and all the gear.
(Chris laughs) - I remember,
I remember the, - Seriously?
- I remember the car he had - Yeah.
- 'cause it was a Mercedes, I think.
Wasn't it? - Yeah, they,
- It was a Mercedes. - The hike,
the Apple. - And that used to
make me feel a little special,
going out in the Mercedes and that.
So, it's strange what you do remember,
- I just want to know what we were like when we were young.
- [Gary] Yeah.
- [Pattie] Younger when,
You would've been a little boy,
so you probably - Yeah.
- [Pattie] didn't pay much attention to us.
- I remember
being by a river
and you putting sun lotion on my back.
- Oh. - And I'm thinking,
this is nice.
(all laugh)
- I'll be able to tell my friends about that one.
- I can't remember which film it was,
but it would've - Oh, the little boy,
- [Gary] '72, '73.
- Yeah.
- [Gary] Yeah.
11 years old with Pattie Boyd,
you know, doing that.
- [Chris] Rubbing My Back.
- But you,
you were so,
you were the epitome of
being a beautiful young woman in the '60s.
- Mal was a character.
What a character.
- Oh, yeah.
He and Neil were like Frick and Frack, in a way. (laughs)
Neil was kind of serious.
And Mal was just fun and easygoing and loving
and um,
and smart.
He really knew how to work,
how to work the game.
- [Simon] And what were your impressions of Neil?
- Oh, Neil was amazing.
He was the fifth Beatle.
I don't care what anybody else says he was.
He was with them from the beginning.
He was a little intimidating
because he would tell you exactly what he thought
and he did everything for the best of them.
And at that time, when I was going to work for him,
he was starting to put together all the film
that would later become "The Long and Winding Road".
Isn't that what it was called?
- I think so. - The one
that came out? - Yeah.
- He had another name for it.
But at that time.
But that was the very beginning.
And that was in 1970.
- I took over from Mal.
When Apple started,
Neil,
the dynamic in the studio was with the four boys,
Mal and Neil.
Those two looked after the band.
Mal looked after the equipment.
Neil looked after their personal stuff,
whether it's, you know, hey Neil,
I need to go to wherever next week.
Can you arrange something?
And so, Neil is liaising with the office
to sort anything out that the boys wanted.
And Mal was the equipment man.
And between the two of them in the studio,
they would also look after the bands once, you know,
And they also kept each other company.
'Cause it is boring sittin' around
in a studio doing nothing.
I can guarantee that.
- [Chris] Mal Evans was a part-time bouncer
at the Cavern Club
and was hired by Brian Epstein
to be The Beatles roadie,
alongside another great friend to the boys, Neil Aspenall.
Mal kind of became the older brother to the four lads
and was their trusted sidekick on tour.
He was a musically talented man
going on after The Beatles broke up
to produce the band Bad Finger
and their biggest hit, "No Matter What".
- Mal, he does always come across as this, kind of,
like big teddy bear character.
Was that how you saw him? - He was.
Oh, absolutely.
He was the gate to The Beatles.
And had it not been for John's friend, Pete Shotton,
who came up and started talking to me and,
'cause Mal wasn't gonna let me in.
And then Pete said,
would you like to come in the studio?
And I went, yeah.
(traffic hums)
- [Cameron] Hello.
- Hello.
- [Cameron] Welcome.
- Here we are. - How are you?
- Oh, my goodness.
- So, hopefully this room hasn't changed too much
since you were last here.
- This room has changed a lot.
- Oh, really?
- First of all, it's much more colorful than it was.
But the board.
I mean, there was this much smaller board
right in front of the window.
- [Cameron] Yeah, they changed the positioning, didn't they?
- Yeah.
But they've got little things
so they can see what's going on in the studio.
That feels so funny.
- Yeah, no monitors back then.
- Yeah. - The window's in the same,
same spot. - The window's
in the same spot
and the stairs is in the same.
So, we came into the studio from down there
and we're sitting around the piano.
And then John and Yoko came down
and they were, actually, recording,
I think "Number 9".
- Okay. - And so, I clapped.
That was my first Beatle session.
I got to clap.
- That's a strange first session
to walk into that one.
- A strange first session.
(Cameron laughs)
Second time I was here,
I brought George a note from the Krishnas,
from Peter about the Krishnas wanting to record.
And then it seems that, after a while,
they just got to know me here.
And I just, kind of, showed up
at will.
There was one session that George was doing sub,
he was putting vocals on a "Savoy Truffle".
And he would go down, put the voice on and come back up.
And we decided to get a bottle of wine.
Well, I don't think we decided.
We had a bottle of wine.
And so, it got to the point
where we'd sit here, drink some wine,
he'd go down there, I'd follow him,
bring the wine with me,
and then come back up and down the stairs.
Up and down the stairs.
And after a while we'd had a lot of wine.
(Cameron laughs)
And I
said, I'll be back.
I'm just gonna go to the ladies' room.
And I did.
I went to the ladies' room
and there was a sofa.
It was downstairs.
I don't know if there's still one here.
But this big powder room with a sofa.
And I laid down and fell asleep, (laughs)
or passed out.
And the next morning when I woke up,
it was daytime and I thought, oh, I gotta get to work.
Where am I? (laughs)
And I walked up and the guard,
the security guard said, oh.
Where were you?
They were looking for you all evening, trying to find you.
(Cameron laughs)
But anyway, and then George later said,
what happened to you?
And I went, oh, I went home.
- [Cameron] Yeah.
Went home early.
- [Chris] I passed out.
- Yeah, a little - Totally.
- [Cameron] rare privilege,
- Yeah. - Spending the night
at Abbey Road.
- Whoa.
You can feel the energy.
Absolutely.
It's amazing.
- Yeah, and the smell.
- Oh, the smell.
- Sort of, a
musty, - Yeah,
a musty smell.
- Cigarettes maybe still in the walls a bit.
- Everybody was smoking, - Absolutely.
- drinking.
It was good fun
and a good mood.
It was a happy atmosphere.
I can remember the first night
that I actually came into the control room
when I was, actually, bringing the letter to George.
And it was just so easy and calm
and nobody freaked out that I was there.
But of course, Mal had to let everybody in.
Nobody could really get in unless Mal said, yeah, it's
Come on in.
okay.
It was very closed.
- [Cameron] And of course,
you're involved with "Hey Jude", as well, aren't you?
- Yes.
The night that they were recording,
they were putting on the orchestra
and they had moved to Trident Studios.
And again, I booked all the studio time at Trident.
I didn't at Abbey Road, but I did at Trident.
- Do you think Trident Studios have been forgotten about
by people, business mans?
- Oh god, Richard.
It's true.
It has been forgotten by people.
This was a very big piece of Apple.
Trident Studios was created by drummer Norman Sheffield,
along with his brother Barry in 1967.
And it went on to become
one of the most popular recording studios of its era,
with The Beatles, famously, recording "Hey Jude" there
in the summer of '68.
They went on to record a number of hits at the studios,
leading to the likes of David Bowie, Mark Bowland,
Frank Zappa, Elton John, the Bee Gees,
the Rolling Stones, and Carly Simon,
all following in their footsteps.
I was pretty used to going to Trident, a lot, actually.
Paul came up to the control room to talk to George Martin
and as he was leaving, he said, Chris, come here.
And I thought, okay, whatever.
So, I went down,
'cause the studio was downstairs from the control room.
And I went down and all the orchestras standing around
and everybody there standing around
and Paul said, okay, this is what we're gonna do.
We're gonna sing this chorus.
And at first I thought, oh, man, I don't sing.
I don't,
I'll never be able to do this.
So, I tried to be very, very quiet.
And then after a while, Paul just,
he just sort of got us into singing.
And so, it was fun.
Then it got to be fun and we did it
over and over and over again.
And I can remember a couple days later, seeing,
We had put posters,
Apple put posters all around the west end of London,
saying, "Hey Jude".
That was letting people know it was coming out.
And I remember walking by and going,
yeah, I sang on that.
That was cool.
- I also was spending quite a lot of time at Trident
because I was a friend of Mark Bowland's.
and Mark was working there with Tony Visconti
and Mark then, kind of, introduced
David Bowie into the mix.
And David started working with Tony Visconti.
And I sing on a track of David's
called "Memory Of A Free Festival".
And this end section of that is
the sun machine is coming down
and we're gonna have a party.
The sun was,
And there were about six of us on the studio floor
and we were recorded and then double tracked
and then multi tracked
and then quadruple tracked
until there was like a massive, kind of,
you know, wall of voices that created,
They, as Tony and David were describing it, at the time,
as a "Hey Jude" style mantra like finish
that faded at the end of the track.
So, I'd been on that studio floor (laughs)
- Doing the same thing. - singing on,
Memory of a,
And you've been on that studio floor,
singing the end of "Hey Jude".
- Yeah.
So, I heard that "Let It Be",
I've always believed this,
that "Let It Be", when Paul wrote it
was because your dad used to say that all the time.
So, Mother Mary,
- In the Aashram, Paul had a dream and my dad came to him
and they did do a take of Brother Malcolm.
"Mother Malcolm", yeah.
- But it sounded better than Mother Mary.
- Mother Mary.
Oh, it was Brother Malcolm.
- Early hours of the morning.
Paul was saying to my dad, I hope you don't mind,
but it's gonna be Mother Mary.
- Did you know that?
- Oh, no, I didn't know that.
- There is a version on YouTube.
- Ah.
- He did an interview, - Of him singing
Brother Malcolm. - On YouTube?
- He did an interview with David Frost.
- Paul was meditating one day
and I came to him in a vision
and I was just standing there saying let it be.
Let it be.
And that's where the song came from.
- But it was when they moved to
the basement of the Apple building in Savile Row,
that they decided Billy Preston would come on board.
And you were instrumental in that, weren't you?
- When I saw "Get Back", it became very apparent
how he changed the whole feeling of that
- Yeah. - Those sessions.
I mean, it was unbelievable.
Everything just changed.
- You were the first person
to put a black man in the White House.
- I did.
(Tony laughs) Thank you.
I'm so happy you said that.
I was, because George,
I think George said, can you find Billy a place to live?
- [Tony] Yeah, yeah.
- So, I looked around.
I don't know how I found it,
but it was apartments called the White House.
We joked at that time saying, oh,
I'm the first person to put a black man in the White House.
- Yeah.
- So, Chris, here we come.
A place that you and I know really well
- Three Savile Row.
- Yep.
And look.
Can you see up there?
The Beatles played their last live performance
on the roof of this building,
3rd of January in 1969.
- [Cameron] Did you get a sense, on the roof,
that this was something very, very special
or groundbreaking?
Or was it just cold?
- The very famous,
very famous, big, worldwide, famous
roof top
- Mm-hm.
- concert.
("Get Back" by The Beatles)
- Being on the roof.
I knew this was gonna be a special moment.
So, to be able to be up there,
thanks to Tony, the cameraman, he got me up there.
I mean, that was amazing, actually.
'Cause nobody else was gonna get up, at that point.
* Jojo was a man who he though he was a loner *
* But he knew it couldn't last *
* Jojo left his home in Tuscan, Arizona *
* For some California grass *
- We had to kind of walk up to my floor to get to the roof.
And we, the girls, we used to go there and sunbathe
when the sun came out. (laughs)
We'd run upstairs
and lie on the dirty old roof and sunbathe.
So, you know, we saw them, kind of, starting to fix it up.
It was a lot of excitement.
But we had had a memo that said we weren't allowed up there
because the roof wasn't stable.
In fact, I think Barbara Bennett even told me,
not that long ago,
that she went shopping with Lori, the switchboard girl.
They didn't even bother to stick around.
What a thing to miss.
But I, being the pushy American,
somehow managed to get up there.
I was so intrigued to see
how the people on the street were gonna react.
* Belonged *
* Get back Jojo *
("Get Back" by the Beatles plays)
* Sweet Loretta Martin thought she was a woman *
* But she was another man *
- I never, in a million years, thought that we would
still be talking about the roof concert
or that I would end up being one of the only four people
that, actually, had a seat on the roof. (laughs)
Why weren't you on the roof top?
- [Pattie] We'd had a domestic.
- [Chris] Seriously?
- Yeah.
George was so cross with me about something or other,
something minor, obviously.
And he didn't say,
he didn't really tell me what was going on.
I don't know if he knew
that they would be playing on the roof.
And of course, you know,
like an awful lot of those situations,
with time, tend become bigger
and more iconic and more interesting.
He didn't want to be there
and he certainly didn't want me to be there.
- Well, he,
If I recall he told you that there weren't people coming.
- Yeah. - There wasn't an audience.
- He said,
It's like that nothing was happening, really.
- But there were only four people
who actually were on the roof, besides them.
- You were there.
- Ken Mansfield,
Yoko, and Maureen.
- Why was Maureen there?
- I guess Ringo had her come
because she hardly ever came to Apple.
- No. - But otherwise,
people think there were all these people on the roof,
but they were coming out of the windows
of the other buildings.
No one on the roof at Apple at the beginning,
except for us four and them,
and the cameramen.
- But I love seeing the film footage of it
from somebody filming it on the ground.
- [Chris] Mm-hm.
- And seeing all these amazing people in shock.
Some of them loved it
and others thought it was a bit of an intrusion.
- Yes, I am Ray Dagg and I was the fool
that was misfortunate enough to be on that roof
the last time The Beatles ever played together.
I reiterate,
I did not know it was gonna be their last time
they ever played together.
And, may I say, neither did they.
Now, in those days, in the police force,
you didn't argue with your Sergeant or report on him
or snitch on him or anything.
He said to me,
shut that noise down at the end of Savile Row.
It's blocking the whole West End.
Traffic is at a standstill right out to Hyde Park corner,
which is a couple of miles away, you know.
So, I walked down the road
and as I got to Apple headquarters,
I could see I was one of many police officers
that were down there already.
I've since discovered, I believe,
that they let me in in those 'cause I looked the youngest,
most fresh faced, libel to cock things up.
So, they let me in.
When we were inside talking to 'em,
we didn't even know they were on the roof.
We thought they were in a studio with the windows open,
playing out to the crowd.
And it was only 15 minutes in
that we found out they were, actually, on the roof.
They spent,
I don't know, 30 minutes stalling us.
Kept asking to see somebody.
Kept being told that they were coming.
They were coming.
But they didn't, eventually.
And I said, well, look, you know,
you're gonna force me to take more drastic action
unless I can speak to somebody about this.
And then about 10 minutes later, Malcolm Evans,
the late Malcolm Evans, nice bloke,
came down, and he was the road manager at the time.
So, he, sort of, handled it all,
and said, would you like to come on the roof?
So, I said, fine.
So, we went up there
and there they were, the four of them.
It was quite cold up there, I remember.
'Cause there had my great coat on.
And they were well wrapped up, as well.
You could see up there.
It was dangerous, actually, because there was,
and all the other rooftops in Savile Row,
people were hanging off chimneys
and sitting on tops of roofs, where they shouldn't be.
You know, it was extremely dangerous.
And there was quite a lot of people up on the roof.
I, sort of, asked
that I needed them to put a finite limit
on how many of these they were going to do.
And came back and said, well, they're The Beatles.
They do what they want to do, you know?
And I, sarcastically, said,
so, road manager with you is just a title, is it?
And he said, yes it is, I'm afraid.
So, I said, fine.
Well, then let's try it this way.
And I said, would you please go over there again
and tell whichever one you want to talk to,
that if they don't stop, I'm going to arrest them.
All four of them and I'm gonna take them down
to West End Central Police Station.
And he said to me, before he went over there,
what's the charges?
And I said, obstructing police in the execution of duty
and highway obstruction.
Now, fortunately, for me,
he didn't know that I couldn't arrest them for that,
because there's no power of arrest on private property.
They have to be on public property.
In other words, out in the road,
for them to be arrested for that.
I suppose taking it to its infinite level,
I could've waited outside
until they came out and arrested them.
But I wasn't gonna do that.
So, that's what I said to him.
He then went over to John
and he started pulling out their amp plugs.
You can see it clearly on the film.
And they turned around and said to me,
You could see them looking going, what's going on?
You know.
And then he talked to them.
And then they came,
he came back to me after a minute or so and said,
can they play one more song?
And I said, one more.
That is definitely it.
And then that's when they played "Get Back".
Fortunately, very fortunately,
I got away with it.
And now people say, didn't you handle that well?
It could have gone so much,
so much worse the other way.
- I can't remember.
I don't know if I was in LA then, or
- You were. - just was out of the office.
I was in LA? - You were in LA.
- Yeah.
I had a feeling that was it.
- Mm-hm. - Yeah.
Because as I say, people keep thinking that I was there.
I've had arguments with people.
People go, no, you were there.
I can see you.
There's your red hair.
I go, that's not me.
It's not my red hair.
That's Kevin Harrington.
I wasn't there. (Chris laughs)
- [Chris] The amazing thing about the Rooftop concert
was that it was six months before the moon landing.
So, we put The Beatles on the roof
before putting astronauts on the moon.
1969, almost mirrored 1964 for most of us in the US.
John F. Kennedy's assassination left us feeling lost.
But then The Beatles came along
to rescue the mood of a country in 1964.
And we were again left stunned
by the assassination of Robert Kennedy in mid 1968,
with The Beatles playing their last concert on the roof
in London in early 1969.
It's strange to think
that there were two assassinations in the USA
that heralded the world's greatest bands
in and out of the first wave of Beatlemania.
- Only one free dress for each customer.
Only one free dress for each customer.
- Good of you to come to Beatles sale.
I've become all peculiar.
(traffic hums)
- One of the things that is never appreciated
about The Beatles and Apple and all of that
is that though we know what they did do
and what did happen,
what very few people know is what didn't happen,
but could have happened
because there was a chance.
Because they were always being offered
the opportunities to do this, that and the other.
Come and be involved in this and that,
like Woodstock,
- [Chris] Mm-hm.
- [Mark] which they weren't going to do.
But had they said yes to any of those things,
they would've gone into the history we know about.
And instead they stay in the history
that very few people know about.
- [Narrator] For all you Millennials
who know, virtually, nothing of Woodstock,
don't worry, just imagine it's EDC,
but with poor last minute planning,
no real super structure or guest limitations.
We are talking over 500,000 people
coming together in the name of free love,
flower power, booze, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
It was a cultural phenomena, unmatched,
or as this guy puts it,
- And it is true,
their music is loud
and they dress weirdly and smoke pot.
- This is something that often doesn't get remembered.
And their presence in the American music,
in the consciousness of American youth
in the late '60s was very, very strong, wasn't it?
(psychedelic music)
- [John] Not many people are noticing
all the good that came out the last 10 years.
The vast gathering of people in Woodstock,
which is the biggest mass of people ever gathered together
for anything other than war before.
Nobody had that big an army that didn't kill somebody.
(dramatic music) (engine roars)
(guns fire)
(dramatic music)
(engines roar) (dramatic music)
(plane whistle)
(dramatic music)
(bombs whistle)
(bombs explode)
(dramatic music)
- [Chris] My husband was a veteran of Vietnam
and I didn't know a lot about the Vietnamese war.
I never expected to be with a veteran.
I don't think I, totally, understood that
that meant very single guy
I'd gone to high school with went to Vietnam.
Mostly everyone.
He was in the Army.
Then he was in Special Forces.
And then he was in the first group of Delta Force.
So, he was serious about that job.
We would sit and realize
how different our lives were, at that time.
I would get letters from some people,
the guys I knew at Apple,
who would send me letters from Vietnam,
just wanting to make a connection.
My husband did have PTSD.
He is, he is deceased now.
And the PTSD had a lot to do with it.
- [Narrator] Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD,
plagues, many veterans.
- [Chris] You know, I learned a lot from him.
I learned another part of life I hadn't experienced
when I, probably, should have.
- So, where are you now in your mind
and what you want to do and your direction
next? - Well, actually,
I got caught slightly off guard by Leon Russell,
who came over and was working on his first album
with Denny Cordell.
And he wrote a song, "Pisces Apple Lady".
And I went into the studio that night
and, suddenly, I heard it
and I heard the words.
And I went, oh, he really likes me.
(both laugh)
Whoops.
That changes everything.
And so, I left Apple to go with him back to Los Angeles.
Um,
It was,
It wasn't for a really long time,
but I lived with him there.
But I really didn't settle
into being some musician's, old lady.
It just didn't work.
It wasn't me.
I wanted to be back with the action.
I wanted to be involved in booking
and doing all kinds of things.
And I just couldn't do that.
Derek happened to have called me.
- [Bob] Yes.
- After I'd made the decision that we weren't,
we were gonna split up.
And Derek just outta the blue called and said,
how are you?
And I said, not so good.
Things aren't working out so well here.
And he said, why don't you come back?
Then I went back to Apple.
By this time things have changed, dramatically.
Alan Klein had really taken over Apple.
It was made very clear to me
that Alan Klein was not gonna hire me.
That was when Neil Aspenall saved me
and said,
come work for me.
You can work for me.
And then a couple,
a week later or two, George called
and asked me to come to Friar Park
to live there. - Right.
It's hard, isn't it,
to even begin to try and describe to people
the sheer size
and how imposing
as a building Friar Park is.
But I guess in those days it must've been
a big old rambling,
unheated. (laughs)
- It was so
- Dusty. - cold.
- Yeah. (both laugh)
- It was almost as cold as the roof
- Yes.
- that day.
No, we pull,
Actually, it was kind of wonderful
because we went,
I was with Kevin Harrington and George
and I met them at the studio at Trident, with my bag.
'Cause he said, bring some stuff with you.
And we drove in the front gate
and there was the lodge,
the front lodge there.
And I went, oh, George, that's so beautiful.
And he went, that's the front lodge.
My brother lives there.
I said, oh, okay.
Then we drive a little further down this long driveway
and there's the middle lodge.
And he goes, no, that's not it either.
Then you do this bend
and there's the house.
And it's just (gasps)
It's stunning.
Friar Park sounded like a fairytale place,
but much of it was in disrepair when George bought it.
I think he paid about 140,000 pounds in 1970,
which doesn't sound much by today's standards,
but would actually be equivalent
to over 2 million pounds today.
George wanted it so that he could have privacy,
something all The Beatles wanted,
but I also think he liked the sheer eccentricity of it all.
Now, mind you, when he got the house,
the lakes were all covered up by the nuns,
so the children,
the orphans who stayed there during World War II,
wouldn't fall in.
The main mansion was, apparently, due for demolition.
And the gardens were overgrown with ivy and brambles.
On top of that,
people had broken in over the years
and used the grounds as a dump.
So, it was pretty basic living
until George got it all under control.
By the time I moved into Friar Park,
they'd only been there a few months
and a lot of that disrepair had been cleaned up.
And we were relegated to no heat
and sleeping on cots.
Well, actually, in sleeping bags.
Terry Doran, who Pattie always called Ted, or Teddy,
was, actually, living at Friar Park when I first met him.
Terry had a great sense of humor.
He was just one long, stringy guy
who kind of jumped around.
Everybody adored him.
He was assistant to George, at the time that I met him,
or managing Friar Park.
And I know he'd worked for John before that.
He was, definitely, part of the Beatle family.
- So, Terry put me in the library,
which is down to the lawn,
just off of the um,
the hall.
- [Chris] Right off the main hall.
- Yeah.
And so, like, I'm like really stunned
and just like, oh, wow.
You know, here I'm.
What's all this?
And it's dark and it's,
you know, spooky,
I think might be the correct expression.
- [Chris] It was spooky.
- [Kevin] It was spooky.
- [Chris] It was very spooky.
- So I,
I think we'd had a couple of drinks by then,
by the time I'm, actually, on to bed.
And I'm just kipping on the floor on a mattress
and all I can see is the light of Henley
shining above the trees right down the end of the garden.
But on the wall, just as the winds blowing,
(Chris laughs) all of these
shadows and everything.
Ah, you know?
And it's like,
oh, whoa. (Chris laughs)
I mean it was,
it did freak me out a bit.
You know, it was like, whoa, okay.
Let's just go to sleep
and wake up sober and you know,
(Chris laughs)
have a joint in the morning.
It was,
it was fabulous.
I'll never forget that night.
- So, most of that time it was George and Pattie,
Terry Doran, you and me,
- Yeah.
- as I recall.
I remember on your birthday at Friar Park,
we had a party.
I know um,
Peter Frampton,
Peter and Mary Frampton.
And George didn't really wanna have a party, necessarily,
but he went along with it,
especially, since he could take them all down in the caves
and show them the caves.
He was very proud of that.
I remember everybody standing around.
There was just like a table in the main hall.
There wasn't really,
And a bench.
There wasn't anything else, I don't think.
And I remember sitting there and going,
oh, I must be part of the inner circle.
- [Pattie] Oh, (laughs) did you?
(Chris laughs) Oh, how sweet.
- The morning the papers came out that Paul,
with Paul's interview,
saying that he wasn't playing with The Beatles anymore.
I came downstairs and I walked in and you were,
for some reason in my mind,
you were always stirring oatmeal. (laughs)
I don't know why.
Anyway, you were in the kitchen
and you went, oh, Chris, you can't believe what's happened.
And then all the papers were there
and it was what, I would probably
say, the end of the band.
They were getting,
having families and girlfriends and you know,
And George was dying to record on his own.
Ringo wanted to go do more movies.
And, you know, I think, John just wanted to go off
and do whatever he wanted to do, his art,
whatever he could do.
So, Paul kept,
he tried the hardest to keep it together.
He really did.
He was the last to quit.
- [Pattie] George certain had, you know,
a huge back catalog of songs he wanted to record.
And John and Paul would only allow him two on each album.
- How did you feel when you found out?
- Well, I mean,
George was going through such a bad phase.
He was always so angry.
I think he was worried about not having any money.
All Beatles are splitting up.
- And he was also caught up between
being very spiritual and still being part of life.
- Yeah, he was confused. - it was difficult.
- He was very confused. - Mm-hm.
- And he never really understood
why he was famous in the first place.
- He didn't wanna be, did he?
- No, he didn't want to be.
Here we are, someone who doesn't want to be famous.
- Mm-hm.
- He didn't want to be.
And it just gnawed at him throughout his life.
And I think this is really what, sort of,
guided him or led him to
have such a fascination with India,
'cause he thought the answer could be there
in Indian culture.
- Once all of these arrived,
my presence almost wasn't needed.
So, which is alright.
Which is all right.
It was a shame.
A bit disappointing.
But it was a shame.
It was, you know,
this is what it was.
The only thing I remember
was when George went on the road with Delaney and Bonnie.
Pattie's upset.
She's going, George is gone.
You know?
And it's like,
yeah, he's gone with the band.
You know, my first thought was, you know, Pattie, sorry.
You know, it was like, wow.
Why didn't he take me?
- I'm saying this as Yoko to John.
You do need to get all this outta your system.
You need to do something.
You know, there's still a certain element
of an unexploded bomb in you.
You've gotta let all this out.
Yoko sensed that this was the time to let John just go.
And that he would,
She knew, somehow, that he would always return to her.
And of course then he did.
- [Chris] Mm-hm.
She knew him very well,
didn't she? - Yeah, that's right.
- I think when I saw the "Get Back" video is when I really,
'cause people have always
continued to blame her for the breakup of The Beatles.
- That's right. - And
there were so many reasons.
She was only just a one of them.
But when I was watching the "Get Back" video,
I suddenly, kind of, got it.
I thought, oh, it's their,
it's their artistic, creative minds.
It's their art that pulls them so closely together.
Their thinking in that conceptual way.
And it really made sense, for the first time.
Back then,
that's not how we saw it.
We saw it as she was an interloper.
Then the interview that came out,
saying that they weren't gonna play together anymore.
He wasn't.
And so, that day John came over without Yoko.
First time I'd seen them, not together.
George's reaction was pretty swift.
He went suddenly, within a very short time,
he's like, I'm gonna make my own album.
And everybody was like, yes.
- Yes. - So,
he started writing things down
and I typed all the lyrics, as he wrote them.
He would leave envelopes.
I would sit in the kitchen,
in the old kitchen
and he'd put envelopes or any pieces of paper down.
And then I would sit and type up all the song lyrics.
- Just the simple thing of the title of this record.
"All Things Must Pass",
if you live your life by that,
it makes sense.
- Mm-hm.
- Because it doesn't matter how great something is
or how awful moments are,
they will pass.
And it's a thing of the universe, somehow,
if you trust the universe and lean back into it
and let it help you guide your life,
it will.
- I was eating all of that up.
- Yes. - All the eastern
religion,
- Yeah. - all the eastern philosophy,
I was ready for it.
So, I was a willing student to just sit there.
Sometimes at night, everybody just leave.
Pattie and Terry would go, oh, god.
Okay.
And I would sit there and he would tell me all these things.
I didn't pick it up in the lyrics, at that time.
I was just doing my job.
But it also was a period of time when the Krishnas moved in.
- Yes.
- So, there was an
awful lot of that - Awful lot of people.
going on at that time. - Yeah, yeah.
- I mean, the dining room became a temple
and there was a lot of meditation and a lot of chanting
and a lot of beads being (laughs) shined.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- So, it was a very spiritual time.
I would say, he was my spiritual mentor.
And actually, I remember John being much more,
um, approachable during that time.
He would, actually, you could have a conversation with him.
And he wasn't doing a lot of drugs and alcohol.
He was a bit more sober around that period of time.
It seemed like when they moved into the beach house
and they started recording "Harry"
things calmed down, somewhat.
- Yeah. - It didn't have
the same craziness to it.
But once,
But the story is that it kept,
it was completely crazy and wild.
Alan Klein and Phil Spector showed up
to spend the day there.
So, we had,
you know, they were there all day and we had dinner.
And that was the first time I'd met Phil.
He's,
He was pretty paranoid.
And I'd see him in LA,
and one night I met him at a restaurant,
Italian restaurant on the strip.
And we were just drinking and talking and laughing.
And suddenly, and he was sitting next to me.
And suddenly, I felt this pressure here.
And I went,
Phil, what's that?
Because we knew he had guns.
I knew what it was. (laughs)
And he said,
it's a gun.
And I said, well, take it away.
It's cold.
And he did.
And that was the end of that.
But we all kind of knew, one day it would end tragically.
- [Mark] A curious thing to do.
What a really bizarre, upsetting, dangerous,
- He had mental health issues.
- thing to do. - I mean, he was mentally ill.
No doubt about it.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He shot a hole in the control room ceiling, didn't he?
At the John Lennon rock and roll sessions.
- He could have shot anybody during those times.
I just thought, well, that's Phil.
He does weird things like that.
And we were in the middle of a restaurant with,
you know, where everybody would've seen.
So, it just, you know, it was like,
oh, Phil, just stop it.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- [Chris] And a part of me also knew, don't show him fear.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- I think, subconsciously, that was the other thing.
Don't show him any fear.
Take over.
Take control.
- I mean, the most frightened, I think,
pretty much my entire life I've ever been,
was in the early '80s.
A now fading rockstar.
I was round at their house and it was quite late,
and they were very, very wired.
And they went to,
it was done in the games room in the house,
and they opened a drawer and there was a gun,
a revolver in the drawer.
And this guy was brandishing it.
In itself was, kind of, really scary.
But he opened it up and spun the barrels.
And there was one bullet in,
There was just one bullet in the,
And he went like this.
He went (hands slap)
and pulled the trigger.
- Oh. - And I could have witnessed
him blowing his brains out.
Thank God it was an empty chamber.
But I,
You know, that freakiness
that you get, - That would've
freaked me out
- round guns.
You get a sense, even right back in the '70s
that he had the capability
of doing something, absolutely, crazy like that.
- Absolutely, he did.
I mean, I can't,
In a way, isn't it crazy that we,
none of us did anything or responded, in any way, to that.
- Hm. - We just all thought,
okay, that's Phil.
- That's just Phil being Phil.
- Yeah, crazy, huh?
(Bob laughs)
- And that was like Jim Gordon,
who was with Derek and the Dominoes,
who butchered his mother up.
- Don't,
'cause I mean, you knew him a little, didn't you?
- I knew him.
Oh, he chased me around with a knife
- Yeah, that's right. - in the flat
in London. - Well, wasn't it
Robert Stigwood that saved you?
- Yes.
Robert came home. - Robert arrived
in the nick of time.
But Robert himself was quite a character,
wasn't he, as well?
I mean, you know. - Well, that moment,
he was the best thing I'd ever seen seen.
- Seen.
(both laugh)
No, but Jim, I mean, he was,
he was the same way.
And we just kind of went, okay, he's a little weird.
You know, we just didn't recognize mental illness,
at that time.
And that's what it was.
One day George called and said, look, I gotta tell you.
You're gonna get fired,
but don't worry.
It's okay.
It's a good thing.
- Oh. - So,
I waited, for a month, for them to fire me.
And what I would do is
I'd go sit in reception a lot with Debbie
and we'd just talk (Natalie laughs)
and,
or I'd just leave - Oh, wow.
- and go shopping or whatever.
- Yeah. - I did all kinds of things.
But I remember it was like, are they ever gonna fire me?
- Just get on with it. - I mean,
I just wanna get outta here.
(Natalie laughs)
And finally I was sitting with her
- Yeah.
- downstairs and her phone rang
and she said, okay, yeah.
Yes, she's here.
Put it down.
And said, Chris, Peter, who was at
whatever his name was, - Yeah.
- wants you upstairs.
And I went, this is it.
- It's happening.
- Oh, God. - So, I went upstairs
and we put on a perfect act.
I said,
He said, I'm sorry, I'm gonna,
I said, oh, my gosh, I'm so surprised.
Okay. (Natlaie laughs)
And then I went downstairs and said to your mom,
finally,
(both laugh)
- [Bob] We've moved into the '70s now.
What's next for you?
- Peter Asher called me and asked me
if I would come back to LA to work for him.
He was managing James Taylor and working with Linda.
So, I flew back to LA and worked for him for about a year.
And I don't know how you found me,
but somehow you found me
and you rang me and said,
would you like to come in to Los Angeles and work for me?
- Right.
- I must not have been horrible.
You found (laughs) - No, no.
I thought you were - You found me. (laughs)
- a very good assistant.
No, no. - Okay, thank you.
- Eric Clapton and Derek and the Dominoes.
Eric's contribution to the concert for George.
And on this rare occasion, Eric was warm,
caring, kind, and just very lovely.
I did a big reevaluation,
a temporary reevaluation I'd say.
(Chris laughs)
This is the soft side of Eric Clapton.
I'm glad I've seen it now.
Because he wasn't the greatest of people.
- It became very apparent that he was after you.
And I was upset because of George.
So, I really got angry at him.
And at that time, I was spending all my time
with Derek and the Dominoes doing their house thing.
Eric asked me to find a flat for them, so I did.
And then I stayed there
and I, kind of, helped them with stuff.
I just would get so angry at him
that he was daring to come into the relationship
of you and George.
That was his best friend,
or certainly one of his best friends.
I think he was very jealous of you.
- [Pattie] He was very obsessive of me.
- [Chris] What really did it was his drinking.
Full stop.
It was his drinking.
- I was gonna talk to you about Bangladesh,
the concert of Bangladesh and how that came about.
And your involvement in it.
- As I know it,
it was Ravi who got in touch with George.
He wrote a song for me called "Miss O'Dell".
And the song really, honestly, was about Bangladesh (laughs)
really.
That had happened when,
at the time that George first sang the song for me.
And then that same summer
is when he and Ravi decided that a concert,
charity concert, raising money somehow
and a concert was the obvious way.
He and Pattie were staying in LA for the summer.
We used Leon's office.
We went through there and got a lot of the musicians
and a musician named Don Nicks, who was from Memphis,
got all the background singers.
It wasn't like it was hard to get musicians to play on it.
I flew to New York
and stayed with mostly with Pattie and George.
We knew how important it was for George
that this was,
that this came off right.
It was really important for him.
'Cause it's the first thing he,
first time he'd ever stepped out
and done anything like that on his own.
- And where was it staged?
- Madison Square Garden.
It was so full.
I mean, it was just,
and the audience loved it.
I mean, can you imagine,
they were getting to see
all these famous musicians on one show.
How does it feel when someone writes a song about you?
- Oh, don't be silly.
(Chris laughs)
(both laugh)
- Well, I got, - People always ask me that.
- Of course they do. - I'm not gonna,
- They ask me that too.
- Well, I'm not gonna bullshit you.
- Well, I just wanna know what you say.
- Oh. - What do you say?
- I say
I'm so flattered.
(Chris laughs)
Stop it.
No, I'm really flattered.
And (laughs)
Now I don't know how to speak properly.
- It's a give no one can ever take away.
- There we are. - You can use that
if you want. - Thank you.
- You're welcome.
How did you feel
when you first heard the song "Miss O'Dell"?
- I must have thought, oh, great.
How nice.
Chris is, (Chris laughs)
It's a song about Chris.
- I think that's what you said.
George was playing it when we were in LA,
at the house you had rented up by Ricky Nelson,
Ricky and Kris Nelson.
And he was playing it.
And you said to me, oh, that's so nice.
You know what he said to me when he first played it?
- What?
- I'm gonna make you famous.
- Did he?
- Mm-hm. - Why?
Did you want to be famous?
- I didn't.
He wanted me to be.
- How funny.
I wonder why.
- I don't know. - I wonder,
I don't understand why people want to be famous.
I still don't understand it.
Do you?
- Um,
- 'Cause they want attention.
They had no attention as children.
- Well,
it could be that.
It certainly is,
make to feel special.
(film rolls)
- [Narrator] Now, the definition of fame
has changed drastically over the decades.
And back in the '70s and the '60s,
using the term fame was reserved for A-listers only.
It was a special hierarchy,
a special in-crowd.
And it wasn't as open and as broad as it is now.
Nowadays, you could, simply,
upload a TikTok video of your cat or dog
and by definition, I guess, become famous.
(upbeat twangy music)
* Or the cat with most hope to fill the Fillmore *
- And then someone told me that The Stones,
Marshall Chess was looking for an assistant
because The Stones were gonna come
and spend a year working on "Exile on Main Street".
When you start with The Beatles,
your resume looks really good.
So, go to The Stones.
That's the next step on the rung, right?
- [Bob] Yes.
- So, I went and I interviewed.
And of course, I knew Mick, which didn't hurt.
And so, I worked for them for a year in LA.
I found them houses.
Um,
and did lyrics again. (laughs)
- Yes.
- I got to always do lyrics.
And just did all their personal stuff.
I was their personal assistant, at that time, for the year.
And then when the tour time came,
when they were doing the '72 tour,
I wasn't included
because I didn't have a job on the tour.
So, they asked me,
Mick said, I'll work something out.
And um, he did.
He called me up after they'd been on the road a few weeks
and said, can you bring,
Would you bring these costumes
that Ossie Clarke has sent to LA up to Chicago?
And I went, all right.
And so, I ended up working on their tour.
But it was a very different experience
than working with The Beatles.
Ronny Wood said to me, once,
you're a Beatle person, aren't you?
And I said, yeah, I really am.
I am more of a Beatle person.
The Stones were great
and they were nice and fun,
but there was just a lot more,
There were a lot more drugs.
There was a lot more staying up late.
It just was a different environment
than it had been with The Beatles.
When we went down to Main Street
and filmed walking along Main Street,
which was a beautiful memory, just walking around
and all the homeless people were kind of going,
is that The Stones?
And they started following us.
It was really nice.
It was kind of like,
Pattie used to say,
musicians were like the Pied Piper going through a village
and everyone just started following them
to the sound of their music.
That's what that day felt like.
It was like, - That's a good,
- we're just walking along.
- [Bob] That's a really good way
of putting it, isn't it?
- Yeah, it was beautiful.
And then getting in a limo
and going back to Beverly Hills or Bel Air
was totally not, (laughs)
it was totally not in line with what we were doing.
We'd go to parties.
It was a lot of fun.
On the tour, that was the problem.
I didn't, actually, have a specific tour job.
That was the first tour I ever went on,
1972.
And, basically, Mick and Keith just said,
well, you just take care of us.
So, if they had laundry, (laughs)
cleaning,
I'd pick it up in the night
and it would come back to my room.
Or if they needed something, I would do that.
I don't really know why I was there,
come to think of it.
- It sounds exhausting
(Chris laughs)
And, kind of, exhausting, stressful, exhilarating,
all at the same time.
- It was definitely exhilarating
because,
I mean, first of all, at every other night
or every couple nights, you got to see The Stones play,
which was pretty wonderful.
And traveling with them,
they had their own plane.
And there were always these people like Truman Capote
popping up on the tour, all of a sudden.
And that was pretty interesting.
But it was extremely exhausting and stressful.
The tour group,
the people who were running the tour, quite rightly,
wanted to get rid of all of the, kind of, riffraff,
because there were a lot of people traveling with us
that weren't on the tour,
that weren't part of the tour.
And so, they had a big meeting
to decide who was gonna have to leave.
And Mick and Keith and Bill made it very clear
that I was not one of them
because all I was doing at that point was their assistant.
I didn't have anything to do
with the actual tour organization.
And they said, nope.
And I went home thinking maybe I,
because we had a break,
and I thought, I don't think I will go back on the tour.
It's just a little bit too stressful.
And you know, I don't feel wanted. (laughs)
And so, I didn't.
When it was time to go back, I didn't.
And Keith called me,
I think the second night they were back on tour
and said, why aren't you here?
And I said, I just didn't feel like I belonged there.
And he said, yes, you do.
Get on a plane, you're coming back.
That's a kindness that you would never expect
from either of them.
And in fact, Mick was the reason I got on the tour
because I wasn't meant to be on it.
I was their assistant in LA
and he called me up after about a week and said,
could you go to the airport,
go to duty free, get my stuff out of,
you know, their costumes that Ossie Clark did,
and can you pick them up?
And I said, okay, where shall I ship them?
And he said, just bring them to Chicago.
You can just bring them.
So, that got me on the tour.
- I wanted to ask you about Mick Jagger.
I heard he was a massive flirt.
- Well, of course. (laughs)
Wouldn't you be if you were Mick Jagger?
- Yes, I would be.
Yeah.
- I totally got into the drugs
and the alcohol.
I didn't,
nobody had to push me into that one.
So, at The Stones, it was a bad time for me
because by the end of the tour,
by the time I got home,
I had to quit everything.
I had to dry out.
But at that time, nobody went to AA
and nobody really talked about, like rehab or doing,
well, there was no rehab,
doing anything to kind of stay clean.
So, it was not easy.
And I couldn't stay that way very long.
I think a year I did with no alcohol and drugs.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- But it was exhausting,
but exhilaratingly exhausting.
- It really was a time of,
Right.
Let's see how far we can go.
- Mm-hm.
- Was that the way that you saw it?
- Yeah, I think so.
There were no boundaries.
- No.
When I was spending time in LA
in the mid 1970s,
and I spent a lot of time in LA, at that point,
and was staying quite often,
if not on Sunset Strip,
but usually, at the Continental Hyatt House.
- Oh know, it, well. - Just complete madness.
- [Chris] The Riot house.
- The Riot house.
And people referred,
there were a lot of girls that, basically,
almost kind of lived at the Hyatt House.
So, they would be there with a band when they were in.
Let's say Led Zeppelin would be there
And Led Zeppelin,
the whole Led Zeppelin entourage would move out.
The Deep Purple entourage would move in.
- They'd move in with them. - The girls would still,
and they'd just kind of reappoint themselves into,
Now those girls, obviously,
the word that described them, at the time, was groupies.
The word groupie, at the time, was not a derogatory,
necessarily a derogatory,
certainly not in my mind it wasn't, anyway.
But some people did refer to you, at the time, didn't they?
That was the word. - Not then.
So, it was when I wrote my book
that it's - Yeah.
- the first time I ever heard that.
- Yeah, that's right. - Yeah.
Yeah. - So, what was your, you know,
what was your feeling about being grouped?
- Well, it, actually, I had to really think about it.
Because, first of all, I was shocked
that they would still use the word in,
what was it, 2009 or something?
- Yes, yes. - I thought, really?
We haven't passed that yet?
But then I had to really think about it.
And I thought, well, I never considered myself a groupie.
I felt like I was a work,
I worked,
I worked my way through all of it.
And there were, absolutely, self-declared groupies.
I mean, Pamela Des Barres.
- Yeah. - You know,
many of these girls said, that's what I am.
And so, I had to respect that.
And yet, at the same time, felt slightly angry
that they had referred to me as that.
But now, you know, my,
the way I dealt with it, I said,
if it hadn't been for the women,
the men would never have made it anyway.
- Yes. - So, we played our
- True. - part somehow.
- And it, you know, it does sound ridiculous
to say this now,
but they did have a status.
- Mm-hm.
- They really did have a status.
And particularly, in Los Angeles, which, you know,
- Particularly - Yeah.
Where it was rock and roll city.
Those women and those girls were parts of the whole,
you know, everything that was going on.
They had their status.
They had their recognition.
You know, it was an ama,
That,
With all the other stuff, that part of it,
that was part of the phenomenon of the time.
- And there's something, you know,
it was only recently someone sent me an article
that called the,
you know, like the top groupies of that period of time.
And it included me.
Thank you. (Bob laughs)
And Pamela Des Barres
and the ones you'd expect.
But it also had Pattie, Marianne Faithful.
- Yeah. - And I'm like,
wow. - Wow.
Yeah. - So, if you
were just associated and married to or anything,
you still got called a groupie.
- You had to break away and stop for a moment
and draw your breath.
- I did.
And I went to work for a friend of mine in LA,
who had a travel agency,
that I had met through Peter Asher, actually.
And I went and worked for her for a year doing touring.
And we came up with these itineraries
nobody had done before.
So, we took it that little step further
and developed itineraries,
so when a band would go into town,
they'd know all of the restaurants that were close.
They'd, you know,
all these different things that we would keep adding to it
to make it better and better.
And from that,
I got a call from Barry Imhoff,
who worked for Bill Graham in LA,
and asked me if I wanted to go out
on the Crosby Stills Nash & Young tour.
That tour was, really, the first time
that I had the responsibility of a lot.
The other time, with The Stones,
I really only had Mick and Keith to worry about.
But this was like, everybody.
And it was traveling with four bands, basically,
- Yes. - because they
were so separated.
- Yes.
Different management, presumably.
Different units of people with each one and
- Different,
They all had their own kind of people.
- Yeah.
- David, who would've been the first to admit it,
was a real pain in the neck
because he had to have cross ventilation.
These are the things you learn. (laughs)
He had to have cross ventilation in every hotel room.
That is not easy, to get cross ventilation.
David didn't like the car he got
or he was upset or something,
so he kicked, (laughs)
he kicked the wall and broke his toe.
- Very dynamically difficult though,
there, isn't it? (Chris sighs)
So, it's like herding cats, I would imagine.
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah.
- Oh, totally.
And that was my job.
- [Bob] Santana and Earth Wind & Fire.
- [Chris] That was my European experience.
- Yeah. - Isn't that
an amazing combination
to get for a takeoff? - It is.
Well, he was early in Earth, Wind & Fire's career,
presumably,
and they hadn't had the big hits yet, had they?
- [Chris] Santana was huge.
- [Bob] Santana was huge, yeah.
- Huge in Europe.
So, they brought him along.
He is one of the nicest people I've ever met.
Just so down to earth.
He certainly was then.
It was a really interesting tour
because I was the advanced person on that.
And I remember we were going to Yugoslavia,
Zagreb.
I'm gonna go get the room keys and get everything together,
'cause that was my job.
And I went in.
Everybody got the crew, sort of, into their rooms
and the man at the desk, (laughs)
These things stick with me.
The man at the desk said,
how do you like the hodell Miss O'Dell? (laughs)
I said, those are things
you'll never forget. - Oh, that's lovely, isn't it?
Say it again. - That was so sweet.
- That just sounded great.
- How do you like the hodell Miss O'Dell?
(Bob laughs)
(Bob claps)
- That's brilliant.
I love that.
- Yeah, those moments stand out.
When we got to London, we went to Eric and Pattie's house
because Eric wanted to see him and Pattie wanted to see me.
So, we went to Eric and Pattie's and spent the night there.
And it was so nice watching the two of them
because they really, really admired each other.
Then I worked with Fleetwood Mac, Phil Collins, Genesis.
Both Phil and Genesis.
Led Zeppelin.
(Led Zeppelin plays)
So, whoever I didn't get in those '70s,
I got in the early '80s.
- [Bob] In the early '80s.
- Yeah.
- And so, Led Zeppelin then.
Your Led Zeppelin experience.
- Oh, it was really short.
- Short.
Yeah, yeah. - It was really short.
I think they were only, actually, doing
a concert in Frankfurt that we worked with them.
- Yeah. - And then we went
out to a club afterwards.
A lot of clubbing.
- Bob Dylan,
(Bob laughs)
I mean, the list as we are walking,
as we are walking our way through your life,
the list of people that you've,
not just worked with,
into whose life you've been woven into the fabric,
as it were,
you know, of their lives.
And it's the same with Bob Dylan.
- I mean, I don't think I appreciated.
He was not one of my favorites,
as The Beatles, the Stones.
That,
The holy trinity, I call it.
- Yes. (laughs) - I worked with
the holy trinity of rock and roll.
- [Simon] What was your impression
of Bob as a personality?
- He was easy to be around.
When you're on tour with a group of people,
they become your whole world.
You forget about everything else around you.
And when you're touring,
even if good friends come on and join,
it's like they don't fit.
You've become so acclimated
to this one little group of people.
And that was, definitely, true with Bob.
I thought he was easy to be with.
I thought it was one of the easier tours I'd ever done.
- Some women have, sort of, said
that he has a very seductive quality to him.
Did you find that?
- I think he's like the,
I've described him in my book as like the bad boy
that you weren't supposed,
in high school, that you weren't supposed to hang out with.
He felt like that.
- He was kind of James Dean.
- Yeah, he was kind of James Dean.
But I met his mother.
(both laugh)
Once you meet the mother,
you know what you're really dealing with.
And he had the sweetest mother.
I mean, totally normal.
- So, do you think Bob Dylan's act is an act?
Or do you think that really is part of his
- No. - real persona?
- I think it really is who he is.
I mean, who knows?
I would not be,
I wouldn't even begin to step out
and say I knew what he was really like.
I didn't.
But I knew what my interaction with him was.
I was with Santana and Earth, Wind & Fire in Europe.
And Barry Imhoff had split with Bill Graham.
And Barry called me,
I was in Paris, I think,
and said, would you,
can you just come to New York now and do the Dylan tour?
- [Bob] So, is this "Rolling Thunder"?
- This is "Rolling Thunder".
- [Bob] Yeah, yeah.
- So, it,
I think there were only a little core of us
who knew the whole tour.
And so, we started working on that,
getting the hotels and everything set up.
They started rehearsing.
Then they were gonna do a film too.
Talk about overextending.
In some ways, it was the perfect thing for him to do
because it was like a traveling circus.
It really was.
And people just kept coming on, staying for a while.
Everybody was there.
It was exhausting.
- [Bob] It was like a train
with loads and loads of coaches, wasn't it?
- Oh, yes. - And people would get on
at certain points and then get off again
at the station further down the line.
And so, the people on and off
that came and appeared on stage, at various moments,
It was incredible, wasn't it?
- It was an amazing tour.
And, of course, Bob started wearing white face.
- Yes.
- Through all of it. (Bob laughs)
And then everybody else started wearing the same thing.
And he was really fun to watch on stage.
Every tour I did, I had a few songs that were my favorite.
And his, I had "One More Cup of Coffee",
a couple of them in a row.
And it was like, I would go out from backstage
and sit and watch it.
Oh, he was amazing to watch.
And today I appreciate what a wonderful poet he is.
Then I was supposed to do the second Dylan tour,
which was gonna be the west coast.
And I asked for more money.
I said, well, I think I should be getting more money.
And they said, oh, no.
We're not gonna pay you.
And that's when I started realizing,
you gotta stick up for yourself in this place.
And I think I asked for 750 a week
and I'd been making 500.
So, I said, well then I'm not going.
So, I didn't go on the second tour when it first started.
And then Barry called me,
- They began to realize
- three weeks later - what they were missing.
Yes. (laughs) - and said,
do you think you can come back. (laughs)
And I went, 750?
- Yeah. - He went, okay.
Okay, 750 and per diem.
- [Narrator] Now, I know what you may be thinking.
750 a week?
That's not that much money.
My unemployment check last week was about 750.
And for those of you out there,
let me just enlighten you a little bit.
750 in 1970 is equivalent to the purchasing power
of about $5,897.73 today.
- [Simon] Chris, do you have any idea who this guy,
who's randomly doing narration on this film, actually is?
- I have no idea.
And by that time, I'd become known as a female
working with females.
So, I went on the road with Linda Ronstadt after that.
Peter hired me to go out, - Oh.
- with her. - What a lovely,
lovely person. - She's wonderful.
And we've kept in touch.
In fact, I went on the road,
the last time I went on the road was in 2004 with her.
- Wow. - Again,
for two separate concert,
not concerts, but two little tours.
And by that time I went,
I was getting my Master's Degree in counseling
and she said, please go on the road.
And I said, I'm waiting to get my Master's Degree.
And she said, well, come anyway.
And I did.
And that's when I went, I'll never this again.
It was just way too much
to stand on my own and say that,
at a time when women really weren't that involved.
I mean, even women musicians, even singers, had a hard,
female, singers had a hard time.
You know, someone wrote me the other day
and said, oh, are Paul and John,
or Paul and Ringo involved in what you're doing?
And it's like, no.
(both laughs)
No.
I can do this all on my own now. (laughs)
It was difficult.
There weren't a lot of women in the business at all.
I was the only woman on tour, basically,
except for the singers.
- Did you find,
I mean, it sounds like everyone was extremely respectful
to you, during that period. - Mm-hm.
- Did you,
did you have to, kind of,
put up boundaries and borders with,
I mean, you don't have to name anyone.
But with certain people,
did you find that you had to be much more
on your guard with certain parts of that,
as, basically, being the only woman on a tour?
- Um.
Well, actually, of all the time that I was on tour,
only one person ever gave me a hard time.
And that's when I was, Linda Ronstadt's tour manager.
And her,
the guy in charge of her roadie, basically,
hated that he had to take instructions from a female.
That really bothered him.
But I think, mostly, my being on the road had,
I had different roles.
It was like, I was organizing.
I was the mother.
I was the girlfriend to go talk to when they were upset.
The counselor.
I had many different hats during that period of time,
but it was the female part that the guys could come and say,
oh, (mumbles)
I had to watch out that the girlfriends
and wives didn't get jealous
because they wouldn't be there most of the time,
but they would come on here and there.
So, it was important to let them know
that I wasn't a threat to them.
I've kept in touch with different people,
Pattie, pretty much, consistently.
Bobby Whitlock.
May Pang and I are still in touch.
But when my book came out,
there were some people who were offended
that I had written a book.
And so, those, friendships, kind of, went away.
- [Bob] Your overall feeling
about what you did, what you achieved,
the people that you knew,
how does that make you feel now?
- A huge amount of gratitude.
I think I was so fortunate to have had the experiences,
to have met the type of people I met,
creative.
To have been given the opportunities that I was given
and yet, I'm still who I am now.
The idea that my parents let me just fly away,
at 20 years old to another country,
at a time when that wasn't the,
that just wasn't what people did.
They just let me take off
is pretty astounding to me, even today.
And then I married an Englishman
and then I had my son in England
and we, eventually, went back to the States.
But this time,
and it's been around 15 years since I've been here,
a dear friend Hillary, who used to work with Ringo,
said to me once,
Chris, you're still just the little town girl.
You just, no matter how much you do,
you still come outta this little town of 500 people.
And I think there's some truth to that.
(upbeat twangy music)
* I'm the only one down here *
* Who's got nothing to say about the war or the rice *
* That keeps going astray on its way to Bombay *
(upbeat twangy music)
* The smog that keeps polluting up our shores *
* Is boring me to tears *
* Why don't you call me *
* Miss O'Dell *
(upbeat twangy music)
* I'm the only one down here *
* Who's got nothing to fear from the waves *
- The thing about your father
that was so, was so unique, at that time,
you can see nobody's even paying attention
to him being there.
He's like a fly on the wall.
I've seen a few photos of his since.
In fact, it's my most favorite photo, of all time.
Because it's the one where I have this really good haircut,
with George. - Yeah.
- Right. - Absolutely.
- And when I,
I was amazed when I realized
he had had taken all those photographs.
- What got me about looking at all of these images,
everybody's smoking.
You know, we've had this change of, you know, culture
and where we are now.
And if you smoke you've gotta go outside.
But I can Is that a cigarette you've got on there?
- Well, hopefully.
(Tony laughs)
Ah, probably.
* Or the cat with most hope to fill the Fillmore *
(upbeat twangy music)
* And you're pushing, shoving, ringing on my bell *
* It's not for me tonight *
* So, won't you call me *
* Miss O'Dell *
(upbeat twangy music fades)