Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [127]
Wednesday, January 8th
After the excesses of rain and wind in October and November, the weather lately has settled down into a meek routine of still, lifeless, grey days. The IRA New Year truce lasts until January 16th and the total absence of any bomb attacks since the day the truce started shows how well-controlled the IRA is. The feeling in the press is that we have a bad year to come – increasing unemployment, steeply rising prices, etc, etc, but it’s as if the worst is over. The nation is now entering a year bad enough to bring out all the Dunkirk spirit, whereas last year it was a year of such sudden and bewildering change that no-one knew quite how to react.
Everywhere the talk is of cuts, savings and ‘trimming back’. Notable exceptions, of course, being the now blue-eyed coal industry and the railways – five years ago the twin symbols of decline in a world of technological evolution.
Thursday, January 9th
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
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 Taylor1 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 curiosity 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