The Beatles and Friends Spill the Beans in a New Tell-All Book

​But the Beatles made it rough on her anyway.

​“We didn’t like her at first, and people did call her ugly and stuff,” McCartney said, “and that must have been hard for someone [John] who loves someone. Looking at it now, I feel a bit sorry for her because, if only I had been able to understand … here’s a girl who’s not had enough attention.” Yoko and John bonded over cruel neglect by their parents in childhood, and Paul wished he’d not made a fuss when Ono invaded the band’s recording studio, sat on their amplifiers, sang on their records and suggested what the Beatles should do.

​Yoko wasn’t easy on the band either.

In the book, Ono revealed that she dressed as an Arab to attend a Beatles meeting with a bunch of Jewish businessmen. “They hated me anyway, but yeah, that made it worse,” she said. “Funny.”

(Left to right) The Beatles receive the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) at Buckingham Palace with Brian Epstein standing nearby.

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Beatles manager Brian Epstein made them stars … but cost them billions.

Epstein did some things right, but, according to Brown and Gaines, he sold the band’s merchandising rights (lunch boxes, Beatle wigs), worth more than half a billion in modern dollars, for a pittance, and he gave away half of their songwriting royalties, worth many billions. He gave the Beatles a fee for the movie A Hard Day’s Night, and the accountants got a percentage, so they made more than the Beatles.

(Left to right) John Lennon, Alex Mardas and Paul McCartney at London Airport on May 11, 1968.

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After Epstein fatally overdosed on pills, the Beatles made even worse decisions.

“It was one lunatic scheme after another,” recalled film producer David Puttnam, whose career began with the Beatles. According to the book, the Beatles trusted sketchy people such as their post-Brian manager Allen Klein, who sued them and later went to prison, and “Magic” Alex Mardas, a handsome and magnetic former TV repairman who convinced them he was a genius inventor. (Klein and Mardas tell their sides of the stories at length in the book.) “They were terrible, terrible judges of character,” said Apple Records President Ron Kass. “They were boys from Liverpool who thought they couldn’t be taken, but they knew nothing.”

Paul revealed the secret of getting along with John and Yoko.

“If I absolutely lie down on the ground and just do everything like they say and laugh at all their jokes and don’t expect my jokes to ever get laughed at and don’t expect any of my opinions ever to carry any weight whatsoever, if I’m willing to do all that, then we can be friends. But if I have an opinion that differs from theirs, then I’m sort of an enemy.”

(Left to right) George Harrison and Alex Mardas at London Airport on Jan. 16, 1968.

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​‘Magic’ Alex Mardas wowed the Beatles for years with his crazy concepts.

Though Harrison told the authors Mardas was “a turkey,” he captivated all the Beatles for years with his planned inventions: wallpaper that functioned as loudspeakers, paint that changed color, a typewriter that sang as the songwriter typed the music, a machine that turned music and words into colors so deaf people could hear through seeing. He actually did create an apple with a radio in it, but most of his inventions either did not work or were sheer fantasy.

John Lennon with his wife Cynthia in Miami during the band's U.S. tour on Feb. 13, 1964.

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John was incredibly awful to his first wife, Cynthia.

According to the book, right after the couple had their son, Julian, Lennon left to vacation in Spain with Brian Epstein to cement more power in the group. (“It was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated,” Lennon said in 1980.) Later, Lennon hatched a horrible plan. He had the charming Mardas seduce Cynthia, so John could sue her for adultery and threaten to take Julian away if she didn’t go quietly. Cynthia gave him an uncontested divorce and settled for about $2 million in today’s dollars. John gave Mardas an Italian Rivolta car now worth $160,000.

Want to learn more? Read All You Need Is Love