На прошлой неделе в Англии вышла очередная книжка (656 страниц!) о «Битлз»: Craig Brown – One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time (4th Estate, 2020), которая …traces the chance fusion of the four key elements that made up The Beatles: fire (John), water (Paul), air (George) and earth (Ringo). It also tells the bizarre and often unfortunate tales of the disparate and colourful people within their orbit, among them Fred Lennon, Yoko Ono, the Maharishi, Aunt Mimi, Helen Shapiro, the con artist Magic Alex, Phil Spector, their psychedelic dentist John Riley and their failed nemesis, Det Sgt Norman Pilcher. No one has remained unaffected by the music of The Beatles. As Queen Elizabeth II observed on her golden wedding anniversary, ‘Think what we would have missed if we had never heard The Beatles.’ Книжка подоспела аккурат к 50-летию распада группы, о котором, как известно, было объявлено 10 апреля 1970 года в газете Daily Mirror:
Одна из историй, которую рассказал автору актёр Виктор Спинетти (1929-2012), снявшийся в фильмах A Hard Day's Night, Help! и Magical Mystery Tour - о том, как во время съёмок Help! в Зальцбурге он простудился, врачи предписали ему постельный режим, а битлы пришли посетить больного:
The Beatles came to my hotel room to visit. The first to arrive was George Harrison. He knocked, came in and said, "I've come to plump your pillows. Whenever anyone's ill in bed they have to have their pillows plumped." He then plumped my pillows and left. John Lennon came in next and marched up and down barking, "Sieg heil, Schweinhund! The doctors are here. They're coming to experiment upon you. Sieg heil! Heil Hitler!" And he left. Ringo then came in, sat down by the bed, picked up the hotel menu and read out loud, as if to a child, "Once upon a time there were three bears. Mummy bear. Daddy bear and Baby bear." Then he left. Paul opened the door an inch, asked, "Is it catching?" "Yes," I said, on which he shut the door and I never saw him again.
