I know I promised you a couple of small excerpts from Eric Sykes book about his neighbour John Lennon and haven't yet got around to it, but here, much more than that for your pleasure, are excerpts from Michael Palin's excellent Diaries book, mostly bits about George Harrison. :)
Saturday November 4th 1972
With Terry and Andre, walked across Regent Street and into Savile Row, where the Apple Studios are situated in a well-preserved row of Georgian town houses. They seem to be the only place that has the technology to cut our multiple B side. Down the stairs to the basement. Into a foyer with heavy carpets, two soft sofas and felt covered walls, all in a rather dark, restful plum colour. A big glass-topped coffee table, designed for only the best coffee table books, was littered with copies of the Daily Mirror. A flamboyant stainless steel strip was sunk into one wall. Immediate impression on entering the cutting room of being in a Harley Street dentist's consulting room. At one point, about 7.00, I had just come back into the studios after having a drink when a slight, thin figure walked towards me. The face was familiar, but, before I could register anything, a look of recognition crossed George Harrison's face, and he shook my hand, and went into a paean of praise for Monty Python - with the same exaggerated enthusiasm that I would have lavished on the Beatles had I met them five years ago. He said he couldn't wait to see Python on 35mm, big screen.
Thursday January 9th 1975
Another sign of the times. 'The Beatles' company, Beatles Ltd, officially and finally ceased to exist today. The company, which held the Beatles group as such together in various legal obligations, has become increasingly obstructive to their various separate careers. The group haven't played together since 1969. We began when they finished.
Friday January 10th 1975
By one of those strange coincidences, today was the day that Python and the Beatles came together. In the last two months we've heard that George H has been using 'Lumberjack Song' from the first BBC LP as a curtain raiser to his US stage tour. So it seemed almost predictable that the two groups would be sooner or later involved in some joint venture. Terry J, Graham and myself on behalf of Python and Neil Aspinall and Derek Taylor on behalf of the Beatles, found ourselves at lunchtime today in a hastily converted office at the Apple Corp's temporary headquarters in smart St. James's, to watch the Magical Mystery Tour - the Beatles' TV film made in 1967. At that time I remember the film being slated by the critics and it vanished, swamped by an angry public who doubtless felt the Beatles had let them down by not subscribing to the image of success and glamour which the public had created around them. When it was suggested at a meeting late last year that we should try and put out the Magical Mystery Tour as a supporting film to the Holy Grail, there was unanimous agreement among the Python group. After several months of checking and cross-checking we finally heard last week that the four Beatles had been consulted and were happy to let the film go out. So today we saw it for the first time since 1967. Unfortunately it was not an unjustly underrated work. There are some poor and rather messy sequences, it's very obvious when the group is miming to playback and there's a cutesie Top Of The Pops-type look at Paul during 'Fool On The Hill', which is very tacky and dated. However, it is extraordinary still, it is far too impressionistic and odd to be just outdated and many sequences are very successful. It's also quite long - nearly an hour, but all in all we were pleased. It will have great curiousity value and should be complementary to the Python film, because much of it looks like familiar Python territory. Ringo was suddenly there, talking with Graham and Terry. He was dressed like a British Rail porter, with a black serge waistcoat and black trousers. I noticed his hair was streaked silvery at the sides. He looked rather ashen-faced - the look of a man who needs a holiday. I was given George Harrison's number by Aspinall, who said he thought George would appreciate a call - he's apparently the all-time Python fan, and it was at his mansion near Henley that they had been last night looking at the last Python TV series. Later in the evening, fortified (why did I feel I needed fortifying?) with a couple of brandies, I phoned George Hargreaves (as Derek Taylor and Aspinall referred to him). An American girl answered - or rather a girl with an American accent. She sounded bright, but when I said I was from Monty P she positively bubbled over and went off to get GH. George and I chatted for about 20 minutes or so. He adores the shows so much - "The only sane thing on television" - he wants to be involved in some kind of way with us in the States. He said he had so many ideas to talk about, but I was a little wary - especially when he told me he envisaged a Harrison-Python road show, with us doing really extraordinary things throughout the show, with us swinging out over the audience on wires, etc. Hold it George, I thought, this is hardly the way to get John Cleese back into showbusiness! But he's clearly an idealist who has warm feelings towards us and it's very flattering to hear one of one's four great heroes of the '60s say he'd 'just like to meet and drink a glass of beer with you, and tell you how much I love you.'
Friday October 3rd 1975
From the Captain's Cabin to the Work House - the studio in Old Kent Road where we are to re-record 'Lumberjack Song'. (George loved the song so much he offered to produce it as a Christmas single. It reached No. 51, but no higher as the Pythons refused to sing it on Top of the Pops.) The Fred Tomlinsons have been rehearsing for an hour by the time I arrive (just after 8.00), and up in the control room are Eric and George Harrison. George grasps me in a welcoming hug and Eric pours me some Soave Bolla. Downstairs, noisy rumblings of Fred Toms. I get down there to find them in the usual hearty good spirits - no Soave Bolla in evidence down there - just huge cans of beer and cider! Instead of dividing the song and introduction up into different takes, we just launch in, and soon we've done three versions straight through and my voice is getting hoarse from all the added shouting at the beginning. But one of the takes seems to please everybody. George, Olivia, Kumar (George's assistant), Eric and I leave in George's BMW automatic for a meal. We drive, if that's the word for George's dodgem-like opportunism, to the Pontevecchio in Brompton Road. George's a vegetarian, but he managed to demolish some whitebait quite easily, and did not pass out when I had duck. (I noticed everyone else ate veg. dishes only.)
Saturday October 4th 1975
At half past four drive up to collect Eric and take him out to George's house in Henley to mix the song we recorded last night. Eric philosophical about his recent separation from Lyn. He laughed rather ruefully when he told me he'd taken Carey out to the zoo this morning - 'With all the other divorcees,' as he put it. But he cheers up when we get to Henley and in through the gates of Friar Park, the magnificent, opulent and fantastical mid-Victorian Gothic pile which George bought seven years ago with the Beatle millions. George's flag flies above its mock embrasures - it's an Indian symbolic design of the sun and the moon and bears 'om' mantra. In the gardens there are grottoes with mock stalactites and stalagmites in mock caves and there are Japanese houses and Japanese bridges and all kinds of other ways in which an enormously rich Victorian can spend money on himself. George has endorsed it all by cleaning everything up and looking after it and generally restoring the place to its former splendours. The nuns whom he bought it from had let it rather go to seed and, according to George, had painted swimming trunks on the cherubs and cemented over the nipples on the some of the statues. It is delightful just to walk around and examine the intricate details of the carving - the recurring naughty friar's head motif - even in evidence in brass on every light switch (the face is the fitting - the switch is the friar's nose). It has none of the feel of a big draughty Victorian house, but one can't escape the feeling of George somehow cut off from everyday life by the wealth that's come his way. Maybe he feels the same way, for almost the first thing we do is to walk through the grottoes, across the lawns and down to the elaborate iron gates and into the world outside. Henley, with its narrow streets and the fine church tower standing protectively over the little town, with thickly wooded Remenham Hil looming behind. This was the town my mother was born and brought up in - in fact, she had been to Friar Park for tea when it was owned by Sir Frank Crisp, a barrister. Strange to think of the circumstances that brought me into Friar Park sixty years after she came here for tea. Anyway, we all walked down to the local pub - where we drank Brakspear's Henley Ales and played darts. George was clearly anxious that we should stay the night, play snooker on his Olympic size snooker table, smoke, drink, mix the record and generally enjoy ourselves. But this was my second evening devoted to the 'Lumberjack Song' and I wanted to be back with Helen, so I reluctantly resisted most of the mind-bending delights of Friar Park and stuck to a couple of glasses of white wine. Half-way through the evening, George went out into Henley and returned with vast amounts of vegetarian food from a new Indain take-away that had just opened. We all ate too much - George dipping in with fingers only. Home about 4.00. Helen not pleased, as she had really expected me a lot earlier - and I very indignantly tried to tell her how much hospitality I had had to refuse, to get back even by 4.00. Still, it's no time of night for an argument.
Tuesday April 20th 1976, New York
At the show tonight George Harrison, looking tired and ill and with short hair, fulfils what he calls a lifetime's ambition and comes on as one of the Mountie chorus in the 'Lumberjack Song'. He's very modest about it, wears his hat pulled well down and refuses to appear in the curtain call. He's now off on holiday to the Virgin Islands. He needs it.
Friday March 4th 1977
Towards the end of the meeting, Eric asks me if I would be interested in writing for a George Harrison TV special in the States. I say no on grounds of time. Eric, too, doesn't think he an do it as he appears to have lined up an £800,000-budget film for NBC on the Rutles (Eric's and Neil's pop group parallel of the Beatles). Clearly he commands enormous respect from NBC, who are letting him direct the thing as well.
Monday March 7th 1977
Eric tells me he's becoming vegetarian. Presumably under the influence of George H.
Thursday April 13th 1978
Anne rings with positive news on John Goldstone's meetings with Denis O'Brien, (American merchant banker introduced to us by George Harrison. He'd been Peter Sellers' financial adviser) our latest, and probably last, hope for Brian backing. Apparently O'Brien has okayed the budget, but is negotiating over above the line costs. So Brian is on the way to a resurrection.
Sunday September 10th 1978
Eric has equally positively decided to move out of London, though only as far as the outer commuter countryside - Oxfordshire, possibly - 'to be near George (Harrison) and near London'. Graham and I talked of Keith Moon, who was to have been in the movie and flying out soon to join us, but who died some time on Thursday night, after a party. Graham, whose abstention from alcohol has increased his appeal a hundred percent - he now sounds like, as well as looks like a very wise old owl - told me that Keith was trying to cut down his Rabelaisain appetite for booze, and had some pills called Heminevrin to help out, but these should be taken under carefully controlled conditions and never with alcohol - for they act to increase the strength of anything you do drink. So Keith had just gone too far and, although his whole life was lived constantly up to the limits, this time, like an adventurous schoolboy on a frozen pond, he'd stepped a little too far out. What a waste. But GC reckons both Peter Cook and Ringo S are also in trouble with booze.
Sunday October 22nd 1978, Monastir
Tom (MP's son) decided he would like to appear in the afternoon's filming, so he was supplied with a long robe and turban and looked very handsome. He was the only one of the Python children to have a go, but was very proud of himself. The room was packed and it was definitely one of the less comfortable scenes, but graced by the presence of the visiting George Harrison, who took the part of Mr. Papadopolous, the impresario in charge of the Mount. At least Tom could say he'd been in a scene with Beatles and Pythons.
Monday November 20th 1978
To the Hemdale Preview Theatre in Audley Square at four to see the assembly of all the Brian material. Apart from the Python team - all looking a lot more like pale-faced Englishmen after a week of British November - Tim Hampton and John Goldstone, Anne Henshaw, George Harrison and Denis O'Brien were there.
Saturday November 25th 1978
Embark for George Harrison's in the Mini. Arrive at Friar Park as the sun has just set. It must be two years since I came here with Eric to complete the mixing of 'Lumberjack Song' (or was it three?). There's a blazing log fire in the galleried hall and George has just come in from planting bulbs in the garden. He seems very relaxed and settled into the role of a country squire - his face has fleshed out a little, he looks less frail and tortured. We have tea and talk about the house and Sir Frank Crisp, the eccentric lawyer who built it. (Crisp [1843-1919] bought Friar Park in 1895. He, like George, was a keen horticulturalist. Unlike George, he was a fully paid -up member of the Royal Microscopical Society.) And died penniless as a result. My mother remembers Sir Frank hiding behind bushes in the garden and jumping out on her and her sister when they visited the place as little girls. (My mother was born and brought up on Hernes Estate, which borders Friar Park.) Saw George's four-month-old boy, Dhani, then his other recent enthusiasm, his book. Called I Me Mine, it's an expensively leather-bound collection of his songs with his own hand-written notes and corrections. We find out that George is just older than me. He was born February 1943. He is quite struck by this and, as a momento of him being just older, gives me one of the glass eyes made for his Madame Tussaud's dummy! Derek Taylor and Joan arrive later and we eat a superb Indian meal cooked by Kumar. Quite delicious and delicate. Derek tells of the horrors of LA that have driven him back to England - to a farmhouse in Suffolk. So humourless and depressing were his colleagues in Warner Records, that Derek took great pleasure in puzzling them by eccentric behaviour. He would insist on playing Hollywood record moguls a tape of Violet Bonham-Carter being interviewed. (Extremely English upper-class daughter of former Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith; leading figure in Liberal politics.) They sat there polite but utterly bewildered. 'Twenty minutes' peace', Derek recalled with feeling.
Friday January 19th 1979
Brian screening. Terry Hughes, Michael White, George H, Jill Foster. John Goldstone issues us with clipboards and little torches to make notes.
Monday June 4th 1979, Los Angeles
Some of us, TJ especially, are concerned over the American funamentalist Baptist backlash - after all, George Harrison, as producer, has already had letters threatening never to buy his records again - but Warner's dismiss all this.
Monday July 2nd 1979
Back into London for some dubbing and post-synching on Brian. The new work on the 'Leper' last week does seem to make the speech clearer, but I see-saw on the effectiveness of the sketch. Terry J is the greatest champion of the 'Leper' at the moment. I think Denis O'B would rather see it out. I dub George Harrison's voice on - another to add to my collection.
Wednesday September 5th 1979
George Harrison calls. He has just come back from appearing in court in his continuous saga of the fight for Allen Klein's Beatle money. He said he was very nervous before taking the stand (he went to the lavatory three times before he even left for the courthouse). He went to see Brian - found a one-third black audience and a row of orthadox Jews - all enjoying it. But he does tell me of an exquisite piece of justice. Whom should George find himself in the first class lounge at Kennedy with, but Bernard Delfont - the man who turned down Life Of Brian. George was not backward in going forward and in an informal way enquired whether or not Bernie was acquainted with the fact that Python had taken $1 million already. George thanked him profoundly. A heartfelt thanks - echoed by us all.
Thursday September 6th 1979
This evening all the Pythons meet at Anne's.... As we sit around, it's John who asks, 'Isn't there someone missing?' We all agree that we have this sensation whenever the Python group assembles nowadays. The unknown Python. The present 'seventh' Python (taking over from Neil Innes) arrives a moment or two later int he person of George Harrison. To Odin's for a nice meal and too much wine. George tells tales of the Beatles - of the hugely dominant Yoko who has reduced J Lennon to a housewife, of George's liking for Paul and his 'ego', and Ringo who's....'You know, very simple'. Other little glimpses into the lives of the rich and famous - like the fact that George admits (with a smile acknowledging the absurdity) that he doesn't buy clothes any more. Clothes come to him. And, having once again outlasted all other diners, we meander back to Park Square West. It's a full moon and the entire kerb is taken up with Python cars - George's little black Porsche, John's dirty Rolls, my Mini, Terry J's yellow Volkswagen Polo, Gilliam's mighty yellow Volkswagen tank and G Chapman's rented Mercedes. Loud farewells, door slams, car tyres reversing on the road and the Python fleet heads off in the moonlight to find a way out of Regent's Park.
Thursday September 13th 1979, New York
Back to the Navarro - this in itself quite an exciting little trip, as The Who's fans are thick outside the hotel, and word has gotten around that Pythons and George Harrison are also in there. George walks with practised skill, firmly ahead and steadfastly refusing to even see anybody. 'Pretend they're invisible, it's the only way.'
Friday September 14th 1979, New York
Finish reading TG's Brazil script. Rather dull characters complicate an otherwise quite striking visual feel. Later in the evening, when we are all taken to Elaine's by Denis and George, TG and I talk about it. He's near desperation on the script - knows what needs to be done, but can't do it himself. Champagne in my suite with Al Levinson and Claudie, the French lady to whom he has lost his heart. She is indeed lovely - slim, long dark hair framing a small face with lively eyes. She is obviously quite taken aback by the champagne and Plaza style - and when George H comes down to join us for a drink, her smashing eyes widen to 70 mill. George, so nice and so straight, disarms her. He brings a tape of some Hoagy Carmichael songs - one of which he's thinking of recording. - whilst the remains of Hurricane Frederick finally reach Manhattan with a brief but impressive display of lightening and sheeting rain outside.
Saturday October 6th 1979
Drop in on George at Friar Park. He's about to have his breakfast (onions, egg and peppers (green)). I apologise for arriving too early, but George (half-way into a new beard) assures me that he's been up a while, and out planting his fritillaries. He takes the gardening very seriously and has a bulb catalogue, which he refers to now and then in between telling me of the $200 million suit the Beatles are bringing against the management of Beatlemania, a live show in the US using their look-alikes. He hasn't heard that Brian is No. 1, but is greatly chuffed at the news and shakes my hand. 'Now you can all have one of these,' says George, nodding round at Friar Park. 'The trouble is,' I have to say, 'I'm really happy where I am.' 'Nonsense, Palin,' replies the Quiet One, 'you'll have a mansion and like it!' I enjoy George's company and I think he mine. Despite all his trappings he's a down-to-earth, easy-to-please character.
Friday November 30th 1979
Collect Terry and Maggie and we drive out in the Citroen to George H's for a Python dinner. George scuttles around putting records on the juke-box, playing silly pieces on the piano and generally trying to make everyone feel at home - whereas all the guests are of good bourgeois stock and far more ill at ease with George's unpedictable caperings than with standing sipping champagne and making polite conversation. Cleese and I decide that the house would make a superb set, for a period film. we agree to write a farce together set in Friar Park. 'Ripping Towers' suggests JC's blonde and lovely girlfriend (whom I've not seen before). The table in the dining room is set splendidly. Table seating has been worked out by Olivia, who clutches a piece of paper as nervously as George earlier pottered with the juke-box. I end up sitting next to George, with Joan and Derek (Taylor) and Eric up our end. Excellent food, especially the salmon, and 1966 claret which was virtually on tap. George confesses to feeling uncomfortable with a 'posh' evening like this, which I find reassuring - all the glitter and glamour that money can buy, all the success and adulation, has only affected our George very superficially.
and lastly...priceless Innes...
Sunday May 5th 1974 Killin
Thirty-one. A birthday on the road again. Slept until 10 or 11 - at half past eleven a knock on the door. It was Neil, complete with a birthday present - three ducks, a yo-yo and a junior doctor's kit!
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I have finished reading Michael Palin's Diaries and shall miss it very much indeed. It has been a great book to dip in and out of each night as I relaxed before sleep - often waking Dee up with my guffaws of laughter at Mr. Palin's delightful way with words. If you need a good read I can highly recommend it...
The Python Years: Diaries 1969-1979
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