At Home With The Beatles: 1963–66
In Help! The Beatles share a terraced house in an unassuming residential street. When their limousine pulls up there is space to park a train. There are no flashing cameras or fans to jostle them. Even their friendly neighbours, keep a respectful distance. ‘Lovely lads’ they mutter approvingly, waving from across the road.
Off set, these details were as illusory as the ‘one-house-four-doors’ miracle of structural engineering. Every fan wanted to live in their super-cool fun palace, with its vending machine and high tech gadgetry. Perhaps The Beatles did, too. But at the height of Beatlemania that option was not available to them.
The Beatles arrived in London in the summer of 1963, initially staying the Hotel President near the British Museum in Bloomsbury. After years of sharing dingy rented rooms, this was a substantial upgrade in their accommodation.
Soon, however, there were practical problems. Fans began tracking them down. Every day more teenagers laid siege to their hotel. By early autumn, with She Loves You at Number One, staying in any public building had become untenable.
To increase their privacy, Brian Epstein arranged for the band to move into a three-bedroom top-floor flat in Green Street, Mayfair, near Hyde Park. There were three bedrooms, with the Lennon family taking one and the other three Beatles sharing the rest of the apartment.
The Green Street arrangement — the only time The Beatles formally lived together — only lasted a few months. John, Cynthia and the toddler Julian soon moved to their own flat on Emperor’s Gate. George and Ringo followed Brian Epstein to Whaddon House, an exclusive development near Harrods. They shared another apartment there for a year before eventually escaping to the suburbs
By the time they filmed Help (early 1965) only Paul still lived in London. The other three were now near neighbours in the Surrey stockbroker-belt. John was living the suburban life with his wife and young child. He did not show any inclination to keep in touch with cultural events in the capital:
‘John was basically a lazy bastard,’ their former assistant Tony Bramwell remembers. ‘He was quite happy to stay down in Weybridge, doing fuck all’ from Paul McCartney, The Biography by Phillip Norman
When Help was released in 1965 Paul was living in St John’s Wood, close to Abbey Road. In an unusual arrangement, he was a lodger in the attic of Jane Asher’s family home in Wimpole Street.
For the Ashers there was a considerable downside to having a Beatle as a long-term house guest. While Paul did pay for the construction of a separate entrance, his presence meant that love-sick fans were perpetually camped outside the property.
Paul, a family man by instinct, was presumed by all to be a son-in-law in all but name. He ended up staying nearly three years. For most of this time he planned buy a house to share with Jane. This proved a laborious process, because unlike the other Beatles, Paul had very particular tastes.
Or rather, he had a clear idea of what he did not want —which was to follow his bandmates out to the suburbs. Nor did he have the time or the inclination to become actively involved in scouting suitable properties. House-hunting moved very slowly.
In April 1965 Paul finally approved the purchase of a handsome townhouse that suited his exacting requirements: 7 Cavendish Avenue. It was ideally situated, close to Regents Park and a less than a ten minute walk from Abbey Road.
McCartney paid paid £40,000, around £750,000 in real terms. The same property would cost around £7 million at today’s valuations. The difference reflects extraordinary house price inflation, but also the condition of 7 Cavendish Avenue. It had what British estate agents describe euphemistically as ‘scope for the DIY enthusiast’. In other words it needed considerable work.
Characteristically, Paul set about renovating his new property with great gusto. Again, unlike his bandmates, he had always been ‘handy’ and enjoyed painting and decorating. His taste was idiosyncratic: a combination of the ‘same ultra trendiness and ultra tradition as Paul himself’.
This left the interior designers with a baffling brief:
He said he wanted the kind of house where a smell of cabbage floated up from the basement .
‘Cavendish’, as Paul liked to call it, was intended to be an anti-Graceland: elegant and quietly tasteful. Most observers and style gurus applauded his renovation, though one waspish visitor described it as ‘working class posh’.
High Tech
Eventually, Cavendish would resemble ‘The Beatles House’ in its state-of-the-art technology. Unfortunately, it also resembled the film version in that much of the cutting edge gadgetry didn’t quite work:
His bedroom curtains were supposed to open but and close by remote control but seldom did, while his automated home cinema screen jammed so often it was quicker to unroll by hand. His expensive stereo system continually broke down and knobs always seemed to falling off his professional Brenell tape-decks.
from Paul McCartney, The Biography by Phillip Norman
One feature that greatly impressed his friends was one of the first domestic video recorders in the UK. Unfortunately there were only three channels and one of those (BBC 2) was less than a year old.
Nobody in Britain, not even Paul McCartney, would have colour television for another two years.
Their exhausting touring schedule meant that for The Beatles were still seeing more than enough of each other. There were, however, already signs that the lives were slowly disentangling.
John hated suburban living but would spend long periods moping in his Weybridge mansion. Paul dashed around London in his mini, often without his bandmates. George had a new interest in Indian spiritualism and an old one in industrial-scale womanising. Ringo and Maureen liked to entertain at home — Chez Starr even had its own pub-style bar room with dartboard.
The public was largely unaware of this subtle separation until the death of Brian Epstein in August 1967. From that point, internal tensions became increasingly visible and began to threaten the very existence of the band.
