Fire and Rain by David Browne Page A

the middle of February.
    Arriving in Los Angeles for the film’s opening, Starr made nice at a press conference. With his usual nonchalance, he deflected most of the Beatle questions, only saying the group would most likely be recording together soon. Hardly anyone seemed to care about the movie; most of the non-Beatle questions had to do with working with his busty costar Raquel Welch.
    Starr couldn’t have been happier to leave the next day for Las Vegas to see Elvis Presley. The previous summer, Presley had returned to live performance with a string of triumphant and inordinately profitable shows at the International Hotel. Coming on the heels of his 1968 comeback TV special, the Vegas shows marked the concert debut of a different Elvis. His voice revealing new layers of emotional depth and velvety richness, he was still undeniably sexual, a prowling cougar onstage. But he was singing far more contemporary pop tunes, he was surrounded by a choir and orchestra, and he was wearing a newly designed one-piece jumpsuit that made his karate stage moves easier to pull off. Before long, Presley would be taking a nearly identical version of the show on the road.
    After being sneaked in through the kitchen entrance at the International, Starr, Maureen, and Brown were escorted to their table. Halfway through the show, Presley introduced the visiting Beatle from the stage and Starr, good-natured as always, took a bow. Afterward, he and Brown were hustled backstage for a quick meeting with Presley. Despite the presence of more beefy security types than he’d ever seen, Brown was pleasantly surprised by how chatty, courteous, and charming Presley was.
Six years before, the Beatles had visited Presley at his Bel Air home, a meeting notorious for Presley’s indifference to their presence. Now, as the new decade arrived, Presley and Starr were on equal ground: two well-compensated, beloved pop aristocrats, each searching for something new in their lives and work.

    Two weeks after John Brower left Denmark, Lennon’s assistant Anthony Fawcett tracked him down at a hotel in Los Angeles, where Brower was being interviewed about his grandiose festival by a writer from the Los Angeles Free Press . Still scrambling to turn his idea into reality, Brower had changed the name of his festival company to Karma Productions. Now, here was Fawcett on the line, telling him Lennon had written and recorded a new song, “Instant Karma,” and offering to play it for him over the phone.
    On January 26, just before the call, American gossip columnist Earl Wilson had written a syndicated column, “Beatles May Not Record Together,” in which he noted there was “increasing conviction among their intimates that they may never record again as a whole.” The following day, Lennon unintentionally backed up Wilson’s story. Having just returned from his Scandinavian trek, he’d woken up with a lyric in his head, written a rudimentary melody on a piano, and then, with the help of Apple employees Mal Evans and Bill Oakes, rounded up a quick cast of musicians (including Harrison and White, substituting for the nowdeparted Starr) to help him put it to tape. To oversee the session, Lennon suggested Phil Spector.
    In rock and roll circles, the diminutive but intense Spector was a controversial and mythical figure. After a flush of early success, he’d retreated into seclusion. Starting with a cameo as a drug dealer in Easy Rider the year before, he’d emerged from semiretirement. He was
strong-willed and strident, yet he and Lennon shared a caustic sense of humor right from the start: The two men joked about starting and finishing the song in a day. As Spector scurried around the studio hooking up tape machines and setting up microphones, the band began rehearsing the tune. “John played the song and we all started playing and it sounded good and was very swinging and came together fast,” recalled