In early March 1969, Paul McCartney phoned me to say that he and Linda Eastman were starting a family. They were like lovebirds on a cloud, thrilled Linda was pregnant.
They wanted to get married as soon as possible and asked if I would make the arrangements. The problem was that as soon as they posted banns to get married in Great Britain it became public information.
I was concerned that the ceremony at the Marylebone Register Office was going to turn into a mob scene, with wailing young girls and a horde of paparazzi, but Paul and Linda were unperturbed about fans finding out.
On March 12, 1969, the day of the wedding, the streets in front of the register were indeed mobbed with fans and had to be shut down by the police. We had to enter through a side door where the garbage bins were kept. Paul’s brother Michael, who was the best man, was half an hour late because the police had closed off all the surrounding streets.
One week and one day after Paul married Linda, I received a phone call from John Lennon. He and Yoko Ono were at the Hotel Plaza Athenee in Paris and wanted to get married, immediately. People believe that John’s desire to get married so soon after Paul’s marriage was a knee-jerk reaction. Perhaps it was psychologically about breaking up with Paul.
When things were at their worst between them, John once said to Paul, “I want a divorce from you like I got from Cynthia.”
At the time, many felt Yoko was a surprising and difficult addition to the Beatles retinue. She was seven years older than John, a small, seemingly fragile yet persistent person, and more than a little kooky. “You know, we didn’t like Yoko at first,” Paul said in his interview. “People did call her ugly and stuff, and that must be hard for someone who loves someone and is so passionately in love with them.”
In the inner circle of Liverpudlians, we thought of Cynthia as family and Yoko’s ascension as First Lady of the Lennons was jarring. John’s pal Magic Alex asks in his transcripts, “Why her?” The reason, many people believed, was that more than a trophy wife, a model or an actress, John needed a chum. His love affair with Paul was ending.
SECRET MISSION
When John called and asked me to arrange his wedding to Yoko, they were insistent that I tell not a soul, no one, not even the other Beatles. I arranged their wedding with the stealth of an M15 agent. It was quite a task to pull off for one of the most famous couples in the world.
They insisted they wanted to be married in Great Britain, but once they posted banns, it would be in the press. The solution was to find a place in Great Britain where John and Yoko could walk in
the door and get married with no residency requirements.
Charles Levinson, the London lawyer who handled John’s divorce from Cynthia, advised me that John and Yoko could tie the knot posthaste in Gibraltar, off the coast of Spain, yet part of the British Isles.
I flew to Gibraltar the following morning, just before John and Yoko arrived in a private jet. Both were dressed in white, like two virgins. They were signalling a fresh start. The couple were married in a brief ceremony by Justice Cecil Joseph Wheeler, to whom I paid four pounds, 14 shillings.
Yoko wore dark sunglasses with a big hat, and John smoked cigarettes during the brief ceremony. They were casual and seemingly unemotional, as if it were an obligation more than a celebration.
Edited extract from All You Need Is Love: The End Of The Beatles by Peter Brown & Steven Gaines. Buy the book for $28.50 from Booktopia here.
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