Leslie Cavendish, hairdresser to The Beatles and many more stars of the 1960s, caused a storm in 1969 when he revealed that John Lennon was worried about going bald. Of course, the story hit the headlines and suddenly everyone wanted to talk to Leslie about it.
Lennon Could Go Bald
Every publication wanted to tell the story of how one of The Beatles, the biggest names on the planet, was worried about their crowning glory, the famous “mop-top”, could be losing that crown.
John Lennon likely to go bald
Leslie’s Book
The Cutting Edge (Paperback)
The Beatles’ hair changed the world. As their increasingly wild, untamed manes grew, to the horror of parents everywhere, they set off a cultural revolution as the most tangible symbol of the Sixties’ psychedelic dream of peace, love and playful rebellion. In the midst of this epochal change was Leslie Cavendish, hairdresser to the Beatles and some of the greatest stars of the music and entertainment industry.
Jimmie Nicol, a Ringo “lookalike”, John, Paul and George in Adelaide
Adelaide can rightly claim to have honoured—and even enriched—Lennon’s life at times. For instance, Adelaide astronaut Andy Thomas used to enjoy listening to Sgt. Pepper’s in space. And in 1964, the Beatles had the biggest reception of their career, with 300 000 fans screeching like corellas along Anzac Highway to the Adelaide Town Hall.
Lennon described the Adelaide crowd as bigger than New York.
George Harrison and Paul McCartney both returned to Adelaide more than once in later years. Although tonsillitis prevented Ringo Starr from making it to Adelaide in ’64 (and made Jimmy Nicol an instant Beatle), Starr finally found his way here in 2013.
Lennon never revisited Adelaide, but Adelaide kept visiting Lennon.
Adelaide cameraman John Howard filmed the Beatles in Adelaide and also co-filmed the Beatles song ‘Revolution’ in London’s Twickenham Studios in 1968. During a break, Lennon approached Howard. They discussed Adelaide and Lennon said: “Jesus. I’ve never seen so many bloody people in my entire life.”
One of those bloody people, in the crowd at Adelaide Town Hall, was Chantal Contouri. The future international film and TV star found herself suspended from Adelaide High for escaping school to see the Beatles. Unfortunately for her, a front-page story in The Advertiser had quoted Contouri as saying “my school is a prison”.
Fast forward to London, 1969. Contouri was working as a waitress at the exclusive Revolution Club. She rubbed shoulders (and her pink suede boots) with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Raquel Welch and bands of brothers famous and infamous, from the Bee Gees to the Krays.
At the Revolution Club, Contouri became friendly with Lennon, who called her by her nickname, Chunky. He was unfailingly nice and polite and always said “thank you” to her.
Contouri arranged for a nervous Molly Meldrum to enter the club and meet Lennon for the first time. Meldrum proceeded to fall over and spill a drink on John and himself. Says Contouri: “John just laughed and then invited him to sit down.” A good friendship was born, thanks to an Adelaidean midwife.
A fellow Adelaide youth who saw Lennon in Adelaide and then London was Jim Keays, the charismatic frontman from Masters Apprentices. In ’64, Keays watched the Beatles travel in their open-top car along Anzac Highway. He froze when Lennon looked straight at him.
In 1970, Lennon made Keays freeze again. Keays was recording an album with the Masters at Abbey Road at the same time Lennon was recording his first solo album. Keays was left speechless when Lennon stood alongside him to pee at the Abbey Road urinal. “Because it was John Lennon, I couldn’t utter a syllable, and I went ‘Aaah, aah, waah, waah!’ And he finished his wee and walked out.”
Another time, Keays sneaked into Abbey Road’s Studio Two, where the Beatles recorded. He thought everyone was at lunch. To his surprise, Lennon was alone in the studio, so Keays hid behind some speakers and watched. “Lennon was fiddling around with a song, and he was singing, ‘A working-class hero is something to be.’ I thought, ‘Ah, that sounds good.’”
In a strangely similar pattern, Glenn Shorrock, lead singer with the Twilights and Little River Band, also experienced the Beatlemania on Anzac Highway. He then heard the Beatles record ‘Penny Lane’ at Abbey Road in 1967.
Shorrock, whose songs were ultimately produced by Beatles producer Sir George Martin, would later switch roles when Lennon listened to Shorrock’s music.
Enter May Pang. Lennon’s lover from 1973 to 1975 during his so-called lost weekend, Pang claims that she and Lennon continued to have secret trysts after Lennon and Ono re-united.
Jim Keays recreating his bathroom encounter with John Lennon. Photo: Michael X. Savvas
“In 1978,” says Pang, “John called me and asked me to come by for a visit. He told me there was a song on the radio that stuck in his head because it reminded him of us. He couldn’t remember the words, but he did know the tune and hummed it to me. That tune was ‘Reminiscing’ by [Adelaide’s] Little River Band, which surprised him. That became an ‘our song’ for us, and as it turned out, the last. Today, every time I hear the song, I know ‘Dr Winston O’Boogie’ is around.”
John Lennon’s son Julian is also convinced his father has shown him he’s still around. John had told him that after he died, he would reveal his presence through a white feather.
When Julian Lennon came to Adelaide in 1998, Aboriginal elders of South Australia’s Mirning people met him at Glenelg’s Grand Hotel. They presented Julian with a white feather (unaware of John’s statement about this). Julian felt John was watching over him, and as result, started his White Feather Foundation.
Perhaps John Lennon had revisited the site of his band’s greatest reception after all.
Michael X. Savvas is co-author (with daughter Olivia Savvas) of One Dream Ago: The Beatles’ South Australian Connections (Single X Publications, 2010).
Get Your Copy of Michael and Olivia’s Book
One Dream Ago
In 1964, The Beatles had their biggest reception ever, with 300 000 people lining the streets of Adelaide to see the band (minus Ringo). Adelaide and South Australia also had other (sometimes surprising) connections to The Beatles, many of which have never been written about before this book. One Dream Ago‘s striking cover artwork was created by Klaus Voormann.
“In My Life” is one of the most critically acclaimed Beatles songs, and one that John Lennon himself, so exacting and self-critical, called “my first real major piece of work.” The song was written in 1965, in part spurred by a conversation he had with a British journalist named Kenneth Allsop. Commenting in the David Sheff biography All We Are Saying, Lennon talked about the song:
I think “In My Life” was the first song that I wrote that was really, consciously about my life, and it was sparked by a remark a journalist and writer in England [Allsop] made after ‘[Lennon’s book] In His Own Write came out…. But he said to me, “Why don’t you put some of the way you write in the book, as it were, in the songs? Or why don’t you put something about your childhood into the songs?” Which came out later as “Penny Lane” from Paul – although it was actually me who lived in Penny Lane – and “Strawberry Fields.”
John Lennon on “In My Life”
Lennon first started writing lyrics as if he were on a bus from home, mentioning all the things he saw. He quickly saw that this was not working. From the same interview for All We Are Saying:
And it was ridiculous…. [I]t was the most boring sort of “What I Did on My Holidays Bus Trip” song and it wasn’t working at all. I cannot do this! I cannot do this!
But then I laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about the places I remember. Now Paul helped write the middle-eight melody. The whole lyrics were already written before Paul had even heard it…. [His contribution melodically was the harmony and the middle eight itself].
Recording “In My Life”
When it came time to record the finished song in the studio, Lennon asked producer George Martin if he could write a Baroque-influenced piano solo for the song. Martin did this with beautiful Bach-sounding section that he could not play well at the tempo of “In My Life.” So, as an experiment, the solo was recorded at half speed, then played back at full speed and higher in pitch. It sounded not like a piano, but a harpsichord, and it worked memorably.
The song’s origin has often sparked speculation, parlor game style, about who Lennon was writing about. He never spoke of this, but years later Yoko Ono said that John wrote it for Paul. And over the years, it has been covered by innumerable artists, including Bette Midler. She didn’t sing “In My Life” then, but it would have fit.
What Can We Learn?
In challenging times our task is somehow to continue to do what we can, day by day, to be whole. Perhaps this can be nurtured by some reflection on “the people and things” that have mattered to us, that can help sustain us when it can feel like we are in basic survival mode.
Tim Hatfield
Discover the meaning behind Beatles songs and how we can apply these lessons in our own lives in Tim’s great book.
What was the story behind “Nowhere Man” by The Beatles?
John Lennon wrote “Nowhere Man” when he was struggling, as was Paul McCartney, to write new material for the album that eventually became Rubber Soul.
Lennon was working at home in Weybridge, feeling isolated and unproductive. In his biography All We are Saying, David Sheff quoted Lennon’s recollection of that time:
I’d spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good and I finally gave up and lay down. Then “Nowhere Man” came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down.
So, at least at that moment, it was Lennon himself who was going nowhere, doing nothing. But something beautiful came of it, indeed. In the studio in October 1965, John, Paul, and George began with the harmonious a cappella introduction, John double-tracked his lead vocal, and the group pestered the recording engineers to make the guitar sound as trebly as they could. Add to that George and John’s tandem guitar solo, followed by the one perfect little note that sounded like a bell, and you have the makings of a beautiful song. It remained in the Beatles’ on-stage repertoire, too, all the way to their last concert performance in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in late August of 1966.
There must be moments while enduring the uncertainties of the hard times in our lives that we all feel like we, too, have been stopped in our tracks. It’s up to us to persevere, though, until we ourselves or someone else lends us a hand.
Get Tim’s Book
Discover more insights into the Beatles songs from Tim Hatfield in his excellent book:
Check out Jude’s fascinating books in the John Lennon series
Shoulda Been There (Vol. 1) 1940 – Dec 1961
In Jude Kessler’s stunning debut narrative biography, you’ll learn the truths behind the Lennon legend. You’ll discover why the popular, rich, famous singer called himself a “Nowhere Man.” There are no hard copies left, but you can get it on Kindle by clicking here for $9.99
But for John Lennon, the hectic rise to glory failed to cure the constant Shivering Inside. He was still searching for something…or someone…to fill the hole in his heart. There are no hard copies left but you can get it on Kindle here for $9.99.
1964 in John’s life! “A Hard Day’s Night”, and created/recorded the accompanying, best-selling soundtrack; a World Tour, a Scottish sojourn, a lengthy North American Tour hitting cities all across the U.S. and Canada.
