Another area where we haven't fully hashed out small details. I can't speak for the others of course but I'm open to suggestions. 🙂
The Three Amigos (Collaborative TL Between Joe Bonkers, TheMann, and isayyo2)
- Thread starter Joe Bonkers
- Start date
Is it too late to butterfly Walt Disney's early death and have him live a bit longer instead? If it isn't too late I did have some ideas for Walt talking up Star Wars.
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It should also be noted that while the profound shift in the attitudes of the 1960s and the "Summer of Love" that began on North America's West Coast in 1967 was only one subset of a major change in people's views towards sexuality and relationships. With economic prosperity a massive thing by then, communism's spread in the world basically completely halted, air travel making new experiences far easier to access and racial bigotry rapidly becoming a thing of the past among both the incoming Baby Boomers and their parents (a great many of which had stories about the people of color who had been their comrades in arms during World War II), it led to the desire for activism and "doing for others" shifting in the direction of religions not as often seen in the Amigos (particularly Islam) and towards the acceptance of differences in sexual orientation, the latter movement picking up steam through the 1960s most of all in cities with huge numbers of LGBT residents, with San Francisco, New York, Miami, Toronto, Acapulco and Mazatlan being notable centers of this, as well the incoming arrivals from other parts of the world that air travel brought with them.
One of the more notable trends of this came from the same place that had given the West such headaches a few years before in the Middle East.
Islam had been seen in North America in small numbers for many years by the late 1950s, but in the aftermath of the Soviet involvement in the Middle East and Turkey, a vast number of Muslims from these places had been forced to leave their homes, including more than a few higher-class members of the societies of these nations. While the relationship between the officially-atheist Soviet Union and the devout nations of the Middle East was in many ways a complicated one, it hadn't been for the millions of refugees that the actions of Nasser, Khrushchev and their acolytes had created. Many of these fled to first to Lebanon (which came to be an important place in the Middle East as a direct result of such movements), Israel (who many refugees found to be much kinder and more accomodating than they originally anticipated), Iran, Greece, the Canal Zone and Socotra. Over time, these flows were far too much for these small areas to handle, resulting in them spreading first across Europe and then eventually in sizable numbers to North America. By 1965, the growing Third Great Awakening and its social constructs - from the Campaign For The Less Fortunate to the vocal denounciations of racial bigotry ans religious hatred to the "Do For Others" ethos to the long history these societies having a century of bringing those of many different colors into their lives - had become highly appealing to the Muslims forced to flee the calcified, oppressive regimes of the Middle East, and as the 1960s went on hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees landed in the Amigos, congregating in places with existing Muslim communities (such as Mexico City, New York, Detroit and Atlanta) or warm weather locales, particularly California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and the Mexican coastal states of Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit and Jalisco. While these new arrivals didn't hide their origins, their disdain for the places that they had left behind and the religious oppression of them was quite obvious and as a result these new arrivals were quick to make themselves as much a part of their new societies as possible, taking advantage of the prosperity of these regions to find jobs and the resources to make their own businesses come back to life in their new homes. Their success at this by the early 1970s led to a much more open-door policy in the Amigos to those from that part of the world, and the new arrivals themselves began to forge their own path of the Great Awakening.
The result by the 1970s was the development of "Modern Islam", as it was originally known as, which indeed drew great inspiration from the steady shift towards tolerance and openness from many of the Christian denominations (and reform-minded Judaism, which was also gathering influence during this period) and seeking to emulate them. This interpretation of the Qur'an was openly and loudly hated by the hardliners of the Middle East and parts of North Africa, but having been driven out of that part of the world by the hardliners, the Muslim communities of the West were in no mood to listen and the open promotion of religious schools in the West by the Saudis in particular ended up drawing more anger than anything else. These people took on many similarities in dress to the newcomers - style combined with a sense of connection for the women meant headscarves and hijabs but no face coverings (these came to be resented by the community as a symbol of oppression), with complete dresses that while covering all of the torso were light enough to not be heavy even in intense heat, and light-colored opera gloves came to be a common accessory among many of these women too. Men dressed closer to their Western counterparts with their suits, slacks and dress shirts (though they developed their own styles of dressy shirts with time) and the big beards of so many of the fundamentalists disappeared in favor of clean-shaven looks or neatly-trimmed facial hair. Their mosques and places of worship also in most cases dispensed with the minarets of the old world in favor of modern designs or those influenced by ancient architecture designs (in the process producing some remarkable buildings, with the Hall Of The Prophet in Las Vegas being one of the most famous examples), while many of the food, visual arts and cultural aspects of their lives came with them. By the late 1970s this movement that had been born in the Amigos had virtually taken over the views of European Muslim communities, had become quite popular among Persians and North African Arabs and was beginning to make inroads into the calcified worlds of Turkey, the Middle East and Pakistan, the latter having put a lot of focus on the harder-line Islamic interpretations as a way of counteracting influence from India, the two countries having a shared enmity that had gone back to independence.
In that part of the world, the events of the late 1950s and the memories of Mohamed Mossadegh and his socialist desires had gotten a point across to the Shah of Iran, and flush with funds from oil, the Shah kicked off what he termed the "White Revolution" in 1962, aiming to transform Iran from a state whose economy was built on oil into a truly modern nation, complete with plans for land reform, heavy industry, massive growth in education and a vast infrastructure program. Acutely aware of the unpredictable Pakistanis to the east (that Iran did make overtures towards with mixed results) and the hostile Arabs, Turks and Soviets to the west and north, the Iranians built a powerful Navy and Air Force in the 1960s and 1970s to ensure the nation would never be isolated by its enemies and openly and lavishly supported the British efforts to build Socotra into a fortress for its interests (and that of its allies, which Iran knew). The growing of Modern Islam was a gift from God for the House of Pahlavi and they were quick to take advantage of it, proudly using it to both promote a future for their religion, highlight the differences between what the Iranians saw as "enlightened" Shi'a Persians and "backwards" Sunni Arabs and promote Iran as the place where the West could turn to as a place where Islam and the modern world could co-exist. While disagreements about the role of religion in life and the Shah's personal largesse did lead to some issues amongst his population (ultimately leading a number of constitutional reforms that his son spearheaded in the 1980s that in effect transformed Iran into a constitutional monarchy), the effect of the huge push for societal and economic development was obvious and it had much of the Shah's desired hopes for Iran and its people, with Iran becoming a key hub for much of the Eurasian world by the late 1970s and becoming a major geopolitical player in the world by the same time, acting as a powerful bulwark against the problems that both Islamic fundamentalism and communist aggression could cause to nations around them, and the difficulties in Pakistan led to Iran and India developing an ever-closer relationship starting in the mid-1970s.
One of the more notable trends of this came from the same place that had given the West such headaches a few years before in the Middle East.
Islam had been seen in North America in small numbers for many years by the late 1950s, but in the aftermath of the Soviet involvement in the Middle East and Turkey, a vast number of Muslims from these places had been forced to leave their homes, including more than a few higher-class members of the societies of these nations. While the relationship between the officially-atheist Soviet Union and the devout nations of the Middle East was in many ways a complicated one, it hadn't been for the millions of refugees that the actions of Nasser, Khrushchev and their acolytes had created. Many of these fled to first to Lebanon (which came to be an important place in the Middle East as a direct result of such movements), Israel (who many refugees found to be much kinder and more accomodating than they originally anticipated), Iran, Greece, the Canal Zone and Socotra. Over time, these flows were far too much for these small areas to handle, resulting in them spreading first across Europe and then eventually in sizable numbers to North America. By 1965, the growing Third Great Awakening and its social constructs - from the Campaign For The Less Fortunate to the vocal denounciations of racial bigotry ans religious hatred to the "Do For Others" ethos to the long history these societies having a century of bringing those of many different colors into their lives - had become highly appealing to the Muslims forced to flee the calcified, oppressive regimes of the Middle East, and as the 1960s went on hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees landed in the Amigos, congregating in places with existing Muslim communities (such as Mexico City, New York, Detroit and Atlanta) or warm weather locales, particularly California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and the Mexican coastal states of Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit and Jalisco. While these new arrivals didn't hide their origins, their disdain for the places that they had left behind and the religious oppression of them was quite obvious and as a result these new arrivals were quick to make themselves as much a part of their new societies as possible, taking advantage of the prosperity of these regions to find jobs and the resources to make their own businesses come back to life in their new homes. Their success at this by the early 1970s led to a much more open-door policy in the Amigos to those from that part of the world, and the new arrivals themselves began to forge their own path of the Great Awakening.
The result by the 1970s was the development of "Modern Islam", as it was originally known as, which indeed drew great inspiration from the steady shift towards tolerance and openness from many of the Christian denominations (and reform-minded Judaism, which was also gathering influence during this period) and seeking to emulate them. This interpretation of the Qur'an was openly and loudly hated by the hardliners of the Middle East and parts of North Africa, but having been driven out of that part of the world by the hardliners, the Muslim communities of the West were in no mood to listen and the open promotion of religious schools in the West by the Saudis in particular ended up drawing more anger than anything else. These people took on many similarities in dress to the newcomers - style combined with a sense of connection for the women meant headscarves and hijabs but no face coverings (these came to be resented by the community as a symbol of oppression), with complete dresses that while covering all of the torso were light enough to not be heavy even in intense heat, and light-colored opera gloves came to be a common accessory among many of these women too. Men dressed closer to their Western counterparts with their suits, slacks and dress shirts (though they developed their own styles of dressy shirts with time) and the big beards of so many of the fundamentalists disappeared in favor of clean-shaven looks or neatly-trimmed facial hair. Their mosques and places of worship also in most cases dispensed with the minarets of the old world in favor of modern designs or those influenced by ancient architecture designs (in the process producing some remarkable buildings, with the Hall Of The Prophet in Las Vegas being one of the most famous examples), while many of the food, visual arts and cultural aspects of their lives came with them. By the late 1970s this movement that had been born in the Amigos had virtually taken over the views of European Muslim communities, had become quite popular among Persians and North African Arabs and was beginning to make inroads into the calcified worlds of Turkey, the Middle East and Pakistan, the latter having put a lot of focus on the harder-line Islamic interpretations as a way of counteracting influence from India, the two countries having a shared enmity that had gone back to independence.
In that part of the world, the events of the late 1950s and the memories of Mohamed Mossadegh and his socialist desires had gotten a point across to the Shah of Iran, and flush with funds from oil, the Shah kicked off what he termed the "White Revolution" in 1962, aiming to transform Iran from a state whose economy was built on oil into a truly modern nation, complete with plans for land reform, heavy industry, massive growth in education and a vast infrastructure program. Acutely aware of the unpredictable Pakistanis to the east (that Iran did make overtures towards with mixed results) and the hostile Arabs, Turks and Soviets to the west and north, the Iranians built a powerful Navy and Air Force in the 1960s and 1970s to ensure the nation would never be isolated by its enemies and openly and lavishly supported the British efforts to build Socotra into a fortress for its interests (and that of its allies, which Iran knew). The growing of Modern Islam was a gift from God for the House of Pahlavi and they were quick to take advantage of it, proudly using it to both promote a future for their religion, highlight the differences between what the Iranians saw as "enlightened" Shi'a Persians and "backwards" Sunni Arabs and promote Iran as the place where the West could turn to as a place where Islam and the modern world could co-exist. While disagreements about the role of religion in life and the Shah's personal largesse did lead to some issues amongst his population (ultimately leading a number of constitutional reforms that his son spearheaded in the 1980s that in effect transformed Iran into a constitutional monarchy), the effect of the huge push for societal and economic development was obvious and it had much of the Shah's desired hopes for Iran and its people, with Iran becoming a key hub for much of the Eurasian world by the late 1970s and becoming a major geopolitical player in the world by the same time, acting as a powerful bulwark against the problems that both Islamic fundamentalism and communist aggression could cause to nations around them, and the difficulties in Pakistan led to Iran and India developing an ever-closer relationship starting in the mid-1970s.
The Swinging Sixties, Part 1
1960 began with the signs of an economic recovery in much of the Western World, a recovery that was sorely needed after the economic issues suffered in the West in 1956 to 1959. The loss of oil supplies and the sudden price shocks had had many effects, but across the Amigos had resulted in a desire to retain the ability to influence the world around them in every way possible, which meant for them the continued expansions of their navies and air forces, and the advancement of technology in it. The Commonwealth influence was profound on Canada, while Mexico tended to find itself more influential within Latin America and its nations, in both cases alongside the United States. The slowdown in the jet airliner industry as a result of the energy crisis was in the Amigos (and Commonwealth) helped out by the large purchases of the Boeing 707 and the Vickers VC-7 by the Amigos for their air forces, and their aerospace industries were hugely benefitted by the introduction of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II and Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow fighter-interceptors, while the Avro Vulcan and Handley-Page Victor V-Bombers had its trial by fire in the evacuation of Aden and the support of Britain's allies in the Gulf, a trial that would lead directly to the bombers being sold to several other countries. The United States Navy and Royal Navy dove into the building of nuclear submarines, including the building of the first nuclear ballistic missile submarines in USS George Washington (in 1959) and HMS Resolution (in 1961). While the USSR built up a massive Navy and air force to counter, throughout the Cold War the western armed forces worked hard and invested huge sums to keep a technological lead on the Soviet Union, even as the thaw in relations between Moscow and the West in the later 1960s reduced the tensions and created new opportunities for both sides.
Despite the victory in the Suez Crisis Britain was absolutely bludgeoned economically by the energy crisis - Britain wouldn't be able to import a drop of oil from the Middle East until the 1980s - and so the Commonwealth went from being a tool of British influence over its former colonies to an organization that had vast influence on Britain itself. Made reliant on Canada and Nigeria for oil by the crisis (and don't think Ottawa and Lagos didn't make sure Britain knew that) and with its slow pullback having proved so disastrous in the Middle East, the Brits dug deep and pushed themselves back onto global affairs, swallowing the huge costs of acquiring the equipment needed to do so. The V-Bombers and their Vickers VC-7 and Hawker Siddeley HS.681 support aircraft, Avro Arrow, Blackburn Buccaneer and Hawker P.1154 fighter and attack aircraft, Dreadnought-class nuclear attack submarines (and their missile submarine derivatives, the Resolution class), the Royal Navy's new surface fleet (including the Bristol-class cruisers, County-class destroyers and Leander-class frigates), the keeping of Britain's amphibious fleet (and its biggest flagships, battleships Lion and Vanguard, which were kept in a state that they could be rapidly reactivated, but they were fully returned to service in 1968) and, of course, the Commonwealth Aircraft Carrier Project, whose three RN vessels were built between 1965 and 1969 alongside its Canadian, Australian and French sister ships[1], took a monumental toll on British finances, but despite this the Brits adeptly handled the cost, helped along in no small amount by the Commonwealth's support of Britain's economy and finances, a situation that Washington also openly approved of, going to considerable lengths in the 1960s to send its own ships out to back up the Commonwealth units, a courtesy that was returned plenty of times in the future. For Canada, matching this commitment meant its own Navy and Air Force had to keep its own strength, with Australia also feeling a considerable need for such investments (and to a lesser extent South Africa, though the South Africans would ultimately become a full and key part of the Commonwealth with the end of racial segregation in the country in the 1970s), but the result of doing so was major diplomatic weight in Europe and a capability that would be proven in Vietnam.
In Mexico, the oil reserves that had proved so diplomatically useful in the late 1950s led to a massive push to massively expand the oil fields of the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico which led to the massive developments in the Bay of Campeche, which began full-scale production in 1962, and the Chicontepec Basin, which began production after the completion of facilities to refine the heavy oil of the region in 1970. The Bay of Campeche fields joined the existing fields known since the Great Depression in making Mexico one of the world's most important oil exporters, giving Mexico a truly vast quantity of money that was, following the Canadian and Australian model (which was rapidly followed by just about everyone), rapidly ploughed into investment funds meant to both advance the interests of the people of Mexico as well as provide for generations after the oil wealth was gone. This money made Mexico City one of the world's largest centers of investment capital by the late 1960s, the progress showing in the skyline of the city as well as the living standards of its residents, while the living standards of rural Mexicans was in particular advanced through this wealth, as the Presidencies of Juan Martín Sarmiento (1955-1961) and his successor Nicolás Velasquez (1961-1967) focused heavily on lowering the gap between the living standards of residents of Mexico's major cities and its rural regions. Mexico, already the wealthiest Spanish-speaking nation of Earth by this time (being well ahead of Spain itself, though Spain's economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s was impressive and closed the gap) was inspired by its own vast new oil wealth to make much more of an impact in the world, wanting to step out of the shadow of its vast neighbor to the north. They accomplished this through a number of actions - the hosting of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City (though Mexico set a precedent by hosting events of the Olympics all across the country), a major pushing of Spanish-speaking movies, television programs (Mexico's now globally-famous telenovela productions saw its gestation here) and music as well as raising the idea of Mexico as a world-class tourist destination in places that hadn't traditionally been markets for Mexican tourists, the last point being matched by the massive growth of Aeromexico in the 1960s, whose huge growth desires led to Boeing establishing a subsidiary in Mexico with the ability to make any aircraft in its catalog, including the famous Boeing 747 (which Aeromexico was involved with the design of and was a launch customer for) and building many Boeing 707s for the Latin American markets in Mexico.
Canada felt many similar desires, and while Canada's natural resource wealth was by then providing a living to a vast number of people the oil price rises suddenly caused a huge explosion in the amount of money inside Canada's natural resource funds, and the fact that Canada derived vast incomes from so many other natural resources beyond oil - grain, minerals, uranium, lumber, hydroelectric power - saw Canada face a vast Dutch Disease problem in the 1960s that the country was basically forced to counteract through economic protectionism and huge government spending, the former being found to be somewhat annoying by London and Washington (though both understood the problem Canada faced) and the latter initially causing consternation among some political stripes and economists until it was clear by the late 1960s that the investments being made would pay dividends for many, many years to come. Canada's huge hydroelectric and nuclear power programs combined with Project Independence in the United States to make Canada a major exporter of electric power to the United States (which the publicly-owned Ontario Hydro and Hydro-Quebec companies made an absolute fortune off of) while adding to the economic closeness in the two nations. Canada and the United States' agreement on the Auto Pact in 1965 saw the near-total elimination of many tariffs on automobiles and auto parts and caused a vast growth in the Canadian automobile industry, as well as establishing the possibilities for similar plans for other industries - steel and aluminum, aircraft, electronics, refined fuels and materials - that would be common in the 1960s and 1970s.
But what set Canada apart in the post-war era was the massive pushing of multilingualism. In something of a contrast to the United States' and Mexico's long tradition of seeking to assimilate immigrants in a single identity that paid little attention to one's racial, ethnic or cultural background, Canada had since the 1920s and the Treaty of Orillia taken the multiethnic "mosaic" approach, with new Canadians encouraged to bring their customs into the Canadian cultural scene (hence referring to it as a mosaic) while also promoting the development of multilingualism in Canadian society. While Mexico had a massive number of English speakers and Spanish had been the most common language in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama and some parts of the Southwestern United States ever since the North American War, Canada took it to another level, publicly talking as early as the 1930s of a society where French was an equal to English as a common language and zealously guarding the right of Canadians of First Nations backgrounds to use their own languages in their daily lives. The education of the Baby Boomers took this to another level, and by the end of the 1960s the vast majority of young Canadians could converse in both of Canada's two "foundational" languages, and new arrivals to Canada in the post-war era often took it upon themselves to keep their language customs alive as well. The massive growth of the spirituality and respect for the ways of other parts of the world in the 1960s only added to this, and while there came to be a gap in the level of devoutness of the Canadian population as a whole compared to the other two Amigos, the Third Great Awakening had many similar effects in Canada that it had had in the United States and Mexico - the sense of "doing for others" was just as strong in Canada as it was in other places, and the Treaty of Orillia and the many rounds of integrations of those less fortunate into Canadian society - starting from the First Nations and Asian Canadians of the early 20th Century, through those fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s (and the Holocaust survivors after the War), the refugees from the War and then the newcomers to Canada of the post-war world - ended up being a dry run of one of the greatest tasks modern Canada had ever faced in the 1960s.
Canada had been responsible for the administration of the former British colonies in the Caribbean since the Royal Tunbridge Agreements in 1922, and while Canada had done incredibly well at the development of the islands - indeed by World War II most of the islands had come to have a similar standard of living to the rest of Canada - the post-war world had seen tens of thousands of Trinidadians, Bahamians, Jamaicans and other islanders take advantage of their rights to come to the Canadian metropole, and many of those who had done so had done a remarkable job of building their own lives, while a generation of investments in the islands by Canada in everything from jobs, economic infrastructure and education to vacation homes and small business financing had made the islands as close to Canada as many portions of Canada were to each other, but as the Canadian Centennial came in 1960, with it came a promise by Ottawa to forever sort out the future status of the islands, moving from colonial administration to figuring out the desires of the islands for their futures.
This debate would define much of Canada in the 1960s, as while there was little debate about the islands viability as nations - that had been settled long ago - the debate about whether to seek self-determination and independence or whether to seek to join Canada's federation were a debate that had a heated, though not unfriendly, effect on the islands. Canadians in the islands were (perhaps not surprisingly) massively in favor of the islands joining Canada for good, and while older generations had mixed views on the idea of the islands formally joining the former colonial power, among the younger generations, who had grown up with the Mounties, French language classes, field hockey and lacrosse, maple syrup, the visions of the great cities of Montreal and Toronto and many other elements of Canadian culture (as well as exporting its own to Metropolitan Canada, particularly with regards to visual arts, music, cricket and football, jerk food and summer sports) were in favor of becoming Canadians. In this case, the sudden and massive wealth that came from the oil boom of the 1960s was almost immediately used by the administrators to "finish the job" with regards to improving the living standards of the islands. It was a debate that reached monumental status as the 1960s went on, before two events ended the debate.
The first was Hurricane Flora. That cyclone, which first brushed Barbados on September 29, 1963, followed by it directly hitting Tobago the following day. Having tracked it for two days before the National Weather Service of Canada as able to organize evacuation measures for at-risk people on Tobago, saving lives. Flora ended up being particularly brutal to Jamaica (which saw the most single-day rainfall in over 25 years on October 2) as well as Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, causing over $1.5 Billion in damage there and on other islands and claiming over 4,500 lives, the majority of them in Haiti. Within days of the hurricane's passing, though, major relief efforts were arriving, with airlifters from all three Amigos and the British and French air forces airlifting vast amounts of supplies, and within two weeks the "Hurricane Flora Relief Fund" originally organized by Jamaican-Canadian businessman Desmond Martinborough had gathered over $150 million from Canadian sources (including a then-record donation of $20 million from the famous Eaton family of Toronto, which was a week later matched by the Desmarais family of Montreal), a number that was matched by the provincial governments of Quebec and Ontario on October 28. By early November the major rebuilding efforts were well underway, and many of the newly-independent younger people who came to the islands as part of relief efforts in October and November 1963 left behind a real mark on the islands' history. That massive relief effort made a mark, and what followed it in January 1964 added to it, when Prime Minister Lester Pearson visited the islands. Canadian Prime Ministers coming to the islands was nothing new - William Lyon Mackenzie King had been the first, in 1928 - but Pearson proposed, in the famous "Islands Of The Sun" speech in Kingston, Jamaica, on January 25, 1964, that if the Caribbean was to join Canada, it could do so with the knowledge that Canada would use that opportunity to seek a complete patriation of Canada's Constitution, with the islanders having a role in writing it - in effect, giving the islanders a chance to shape the relationship between the island's governments and Ottawa. The combination of the response to Flora and the Prime Minister's loud calls for change tipped the scales in favor of the islands joining Confederation.
And in 1964, they all did just that, in a series of plebiscites between April (in the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos and British Guatemala) and August (in Trinidad and Tobago), which came with all of the islands voting to send representatives to Ottawa to negotiate the terms of the islands joining Canada.
The agreements negotiated out between the islands' representatives and Ottawa in 1964 were extensive. The islands would be divided into five provinces - Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Bahamas, Barbados and Caribbean Islands. Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados would be islands as they were, while Jamaica would also include the Caymans and British Guatemala, while the Bahamas would include the Turks and Caicos, while the Caribbean Islands would be everything from Grenada to the British Virgin Islands, including Anguilla, Saint Martin and Saint Barthelemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. All five would immediately gain all rights as Canadians, including all monetary and travel rights, and the rights and responsibilities for social systems, including education, health care, social services, law and order (outside of explicit federal laws and jurisdictions) and many other elements. Such powers were well beyond what had at that point been devolved to the islands' legislatures and came as a surprise to many of the islands' negotiators, and the good faith was obvious. It was also notable that Prime Minister Pearson's chosen head negotiator in his Justice Minister (the charismatic Pierre Trudeau) made multiple trips to the islands and their legislatures to help smooth the process along, and several of the islands' most important leaders, including the heads of government in Jamaica (Hugh Shearer) and the Bahamas (Lynden Pindling), made similar trips, with Pindling causing a stir by making a speech to the Quebec National Assembly in October 1964 in quite-good French, later joking with reporters on the event "My son taught me, so I do hope I wasn't that bad." and Shearer being a high-profile visitor to the 52nd Grey Cup in Toronto in November 1964, where in a spontaneous move, Ontario Premier John Robarts (a loud supporter of the Caribbean islands joining Canada) had him come with him to help him award the Grey Cup to the victorious British Columbia Lions, introducing him as "The next Premier from Jamaica".
The high-profile events may have made many headlines, but in the aftermath of the plebiscites, what made the greatest impact was the massive number of Canadians from the metropole who flooded down to the islands, building vacation homes, establishing hotels and businesses and hiring many islanders. Even some of the biggest businesses in Canada got in on the act, with Canadian Pacific Hotels announcing four "Royal Hotels" for the islands, Alcan announcing the establishment of what was to be at the time the largest aluminum mill in the world in Jamaica, the Bank of Nova Scotia establishing branches across the islands, Canadian Steamship Lines proposing a major shipyard on Trinidad, and countless Canadian industrialists and business owners big and small meeting with their counterparts in the islands to make deals. While in the early 1960s it had been a debate about whether the islands could be better as part of Canada, by mid-1965 the flood of money, influence and proposals and the growing plans for the islands as part of Canada had made it clear that Confederation meant jobs, wealth and futures that were once upon a time unthinkable would now be just a matter of time - and it completed the debate. The agreements were signed in February and March 1965, and Jamaica became Canada's eleventh Province on April 21, 1965, with the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados became the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth provinces on May 5, 1965 and the Caribbean Islands became the fifteenth province on June 19, 1965. In recognition of this, Prime Minister Pearson called an all-Canada election for August 22, 1965, which would include all of the new Members of Parliament for the islands in Ottawa. Pearson was re-elected (though he still had a minority government) and more than a few of the faces of the Confederation movements (including the man who would be Canada's first Caribbean-born Prime Minister, Edward Seaga) became Members of Parliament, and Pearson made a point of appointing Grantley Adams as his first Caribbean minister. True to Robarts' comments, Hugh Shearer was indeed elected as Jamaica's first Premier under Confederation, and the two men would be life-long friends, one of many connections forged during the times.
Mexico and the United States were more than a little happy to see the formal integration - Mexican President Velasquez made a point of personally calling the new Premiers to congratulate them, and American President Nixon, despite his often-frosty relationship with Prime Minister Pearson, made a note of calling him two days after his re-election to congratulate him and ask if he could arrange a visit to the islands by the United States President. (Nixon did indeed make a high-profile series of visits to the islands in the fall of 1967.) Mexico made a point in the years to come to improve road and rail connections to what was now the border with Canada in Belize, while all three nations rapidly advanced the ability of their merchant marine fleets to serve the islands, taking advantage of the rapid growth in merchant trade between the islands that followed Confederation. By the 1980s, such was the tourist industry in the region that many islands would have tourists outnumbering locals for much of the year, and the wonderful warm weather of these regions led to an ever-larger number of arrivals from metropolitan Canada, people who grew the affectionate nickname "Snowbirds" from the residents of the islands.
[1] The Commonwealth carrier program was initially to replace all of the older carriers, but in the end three older carriers lasted in RN service until 1971 (Victorious) and 1974 (Ark Royal and Eagle), the latter two being sold to India in 1976
1960 began with the signs of an economic recovery in much of the Western World, a recovery that was sorely needed after the economic issues suffered in the West in 1956 to 1959. The loss of oil supplies and the sudden price shocks had had many effects, but across the Amigos had resulted in a desire to retain the ability to influence the world around them in every way possible, which meant for them the continued expansions of their navies and air forces, and the advancement of technology in it. The Commonwealth influence was profound on Canada, while Mexico tended to find itself more influential within Latin America and its nations, in both cases alongside the United States. The slowdown in the jet airliner industry as a result of the energy crisis was in the Amigos (and Commonwealth) helped out by the large purchases of the Boeing 707 and the Vickers VC-7 by the Amigos for their air forces, and their aerospace industries were hugely benefitted by the introduction of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II and Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow fighter-interceptors, while the Avro Vulcan and Handley-Page Victor V-Bombers had its trial by fire in the evacuation of Aden and the support of Britain's allies in the Gulf, a trial that would lead directly to the bombers being sold to several other countries. The United States Navy and Royal Navy dove into the building of nuclear submarines, including the building of the first nuclear ballistic missile submarines in USS George Washington (in 1959) and HMS Resolution (in 1961). While the USSR built up a massive Navy and air force to counter, throughout the Cold War the western armed forces worked hard and invested huge sums to keep a technological lead on the Soviet Union, even as the thaw in relations between Moscow and the West in the later 1960s reduced the tensions and created new opportunities for both sides.
Despite the victory in the Suez Crisis Britain was absolutely bludgeoned economically by the energy crisis - Britain wouldn't be able to import a drop of oil from the Middle East until the 1980s - and so the Commonwealth went from being a tool of British influence over its former colonies to an organization that had vast influence on Britain itself. Made reliant on Canada and Nigeria for oil by the crisis (and don't think Ottawa and Lagos didn't make sure Britain knew that) and with its slow pullback having proved so disastrous in the Middle East, the Brits dug deep and pushed themselves back onto global affairs, swallowing the huge costs of acquiring the equipment needed to do so. The V-Bombers and their Vickers VC-7 and Hawker Siddeley HS.681 support aircraft, Avro Arrow, Blackburn Buccaneer and Hawker P.1154 fighter and attack aircraft, Dreadnought-class nuclear attack submarines (and their missile submarine derivatives, the Resolution class), the Royal Navy's new surface fleet (including the Bristol-class cruisers, County-class destroyers and Leander-class frigates), the keeping of Britain's amphibious fleet (and its biggest flagships, battleships Lion and Vanguard, which were kept in a state that they could be rapidly reactivated, but they were fully returned to service in 1968) and, of course, the Commonwealth Aircraft Carrier Project, whose three RN vessels were built between 1965 and 1969 alongside its Canadian, Australian and French sister ships[1], took a monumental toll on British finances, but despite this the Brits adeptly handled the cost, helped along in no small amount by the Commonwealth's support of Britain's economy and finances, a situation that Washington also openly approved of, going to considerable lengths in the 1960s to send its own ships out to back up the Commonwealth units, a courtesy that was returned plenty of times in the future. For Canada, matching this commitment meant its own Navy and Air Force had to keep its own strength, with Australia also feeling a considerable need for such investments (and to a lesser extent South Africa, though the South Africans would ultimately become a full and key part of the Commonwealth with the end of racial segregation in the country in the 1970s), but the result of doing so was major diplomatic weight in Europe and a capability that would be proven in Vietnam.
In Mexico, the oil reserves that had proved so diplomatically useful in the late 1950s led to a massive push to massively expand the oil fields of the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico which led to the massive developments in the Bay of Campeche, which began full-scale production in 1962, and the Chicontepec Basin, which began production after the completion of facilities to refine the heavy oil of the region in 1970. The Bay of Campeche fields joined the existing fields known since the Great Depression in making Mexico one of the world's most important oil exporters, giving Mexico a truly vast quantity of money that was, following the Canadian and Australian model (which was rapidly followed by just about everyone), rapidly ploughed into investment funds meant to both advance the interests of the people of Mexico as well as provide for generations after the oil wealth was gone. This money made Mexico City one of the world's largest centers of investment capital by the late 1960s, the progress showing in the skyline of the city as well as the living standards of its residents, while the living standards of rural Mexicans was in particular advanced through this wealth, as the Presidencies of Juan Martín Sarmiento (1955-1961) and his successor Nicolás Velasquez (1961-1967) focused heavily on lowering the gap between the living standards of residents of Mexico's major cities and its rural regions. Mexico, already the wealthiest Spanish-speaking nation of Earth by this time (being well ahead of Spain itself, though Spain's economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s was impressive and closed the gap) was inspired by its own vast new oil wealth to make much more of an impact in the world, wanting to step out of the shadow of its vast neighbor to the north. They accomplished this through a number of actions - the hosting of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City (though Mexico set a precedent by hosting events of the Olympics all across the country), a major pushing of Spanish-speaking movies, television programs (Mexico's now globally-famous telenovela productions saw its gestation here) and music as well as raising the idea of Mexico as a world-class tourist destination in places that hadn't traditionally been markets for Mexican tourists, the last point being matched by the massive growth of Aeromexico in the 1960s, whose huge growth desires led to Boeing establishing a subsidiary in Mexico with the ability to make any aircraft in its catalog, including the famous Boeing 747 (which Aeromexico was involved with the design of and was a launch customer for) and building many Boeing 707s for the Latin American markets in Mexico.
Canada felt many similar desires, and while Canada's natural resource wealth was by then providing a living to a vast number of people the oil price rises suddenly caused a huge explosion in the amount of money inside Canada's natural resource funds, and the fact that Canada derived vast incomes from so many other natural resources beyond oil - grain, minerals, uranium, lumber, hydroelectric power - saw Canada face a vast Dutch Disease problem in the 1960s that the country was basically forced to counteract through economic protectionism and huge government spending, the former being found to be somewhat annoying by London and Washington (though both understood the problem Canada faced) and the latter initially causing consternation among some political stripes and economists until it was clear by the late 1960s that the investments being made would pay dividends for many, many years to come. Canada's huge hydroelectric and nuclear power programs combined with Project Independence in the United States to make Canada a major exporter of electric power to the United States (which the publicly-owned Ontario Hydro and Hydro-Quebec companies made an absolute fortune off of) while adding to the economic closeness in the two nations. Canada and the United States' agreement on the Auto Pact in 1965 saw the near-total elimination of many tariffs on automobiles and auto parts and caused a vast growth in the Canadian automobile industry, as well as establishing the possibilities for similar plans for other industries - steel and aluminum, aircraft, electronics, refined fuels and materials - that would be common in the 1960s and 1970s.
But what set Canada apart in the post-war era was the massive pushing of multilingualism. In something of a contrast to the United States' and Mexico's long tradition of seeking to assimilate immigrants in a single identity that paid little attention to one's racial, ethnic or cultural background, Canada had since the 1920s and the Treaty of Orillia taken the multiethnic "mosaic" approach, with new Canadians encouraged to bring their customs into the Canadian cultural scene (hence referring to it as a mosaic) while also promoting the development of multilingualism in Canadian society. While Mexico had a massive number of English speakers and Spanish had been the most common language in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama and some parts of the Southwestern United States ever since the North American War, Canada took it to another level, publicly talking as early as the 1930s of a society where French was an equal to English as a common language and zealously guarding the right of Canadians of First Nations backgrounds to use their own languages in their daily lives. The education of the Baby Boomers took this to another level, and by the end of the 1960s the vast majority of young Canadians could converse in both of Canada's two "foundational" languages, and new arrivals to Canada in the post-war era often took it upon themselves to keep their language customs alive as well. The massive growth of the spirituality and respect for the ways of other parts of the world in the 1960s only added to this, and while there came to be a gap in the level of devoutness of the Canadian population as a whole compared to the other two Amigos, the Third Great Awakening had many similar effects in Canada that it had had in the United States and Mexico - the sense of "doing for others" was just as strong in Canada as it was in other places, and the Treaty of Orillia and the many rounds of integrations of those less fortunate into Canadian society - starting from the First Nations and Asian Canadians of the early 20th Century, through those fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s (and the Holocaust survivors after the War), the refugees from the War and then the newcomers to Canada of the post-war world - ended up being a dry run of one of the greatest tasks modern Canada had ever faced in the 1960s.
Canada had been responsible for the administration of the former British colonies in the Caribbean since the Royal Tunbridge Agreements in 1922, and while Canada had done incredibly well at the development of the islands - indeed by World War II most of the islands had come to have a similar standard of living to the rest of Canada - the post-war world had seen tens of thousands of Trinidadians, Bahamians, Jamaicans and other islanders take advantage of their rights to come to the Canadian metropole, and many of those who had done so had done a remarkable job of building their own lives, while a generation of investments in the islands by Canada in everything from jobs, economic infrastructure and education to vacation homes and small business financing had made the islands as close to Canada as many portions of Canada were to each other, but as the Canadian Centennial came in 1960, with it came a promise by Ottawa to forever sort out the future status of the islands, moving from colonial administration to figuring out the desires of the islands for their futures.
This debate would define much of Canada in the 1960s, as while there was little debate about the islands viability as nations - that had been settled long ago - the debate about whether to seek self-determination and independence or whether to seek to join Canada's federation were a debate that had a heated, though not unfriendly, effect on the islands. Canadians in the islands were (perhaps not surprisingly) massively in favor of the islands joining Canada for good, and while older generations had mixed views on the idea of the islands formally joining the former colonial power, among the younger generations, who had grown up with the Mounties, French language classes, field hockey and lacrosse, maple syrup, the visions of the great cities of Montreal and Toronto and many other elements of Canadian culture (as well as exporting its own to Metropolitan Canada, particularly with regards to visual arts, music, cricket and football, jerk food and summer sports) were in favor of becoming Canadians. In this case, the sudden and massive wealth that came from the oil boom of the 1960s was almost immediately used by the administrators to "finish the job" with regards to improving the living standards of the islands. It was a debate that reached monumental status as the 1960s went on, before two events ended the debate.
The first was Hurricane Flora. That cyclone, which first brushed Barbados on September 29, 1963, followed by it directly hitting Tobago the following day. Having tracked it for two days before the National Weather Service of Canada as able to organize evacuation measures for at-risk people on Tobago, saving lives. Flora ended up being particularly brutal to Jamaica (which saw the most single-day rainfall in over 25 years on October 2) as well as Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, causing over $1.5 Billion in damage there and on other islands and claiming over 4,500 lives, the majority of them in Haiti. Within days of the hurricane's passing, though, major relief efforts were arriving, with airlifters from all three Amigos and the British and French air forces airlifting vast amounts of supplies, and within two weeks the "Hurricane Flora Relief Fund" originally organized by Jamaican-Canadian businessman Desmond Martinborough had gathered over $150 million from Canadian sources (including a then-record donation of $20 million from the famous Eaton family of Toronto, which was a week later matched by the Desmarais family of Montreal), a number that was matched by the provincial governments of Quebec and Ontario on October 28. By early November the major rebuilding efforts were well underway, and many of the newly-independent younger people who came to the islands as part of relief efforts in October and November 1963 left behind a real mark on the islands' history. That massive relief effort made a mark, and what followed it in January 1964 added to it, when Prime Minister Lester Pearson visited the islands. Canadian Prime Ministers coming to the islands was nothing new - William Lyon Mackenzie King had been the first, in 1928 - but Pearson proposed, in the famous "Islands Of The Sun" speech in Kingston, Jamaica, on January 25, 1964, that if the Caribbean was to join Canada, it could do so with the knowledge that Canada would use that opportunity to seek a complete patriation of Canada's Constitution, with the islanders having a role in writing it - in effect, giving the islanders a chance to shape the relationship between the island's governments and Ottawa. The combination of the response to Flora and the Prime Minister's loud calls for change tipped the scales in favor of the islands joining Confederation.
And in 1964, they all did just that, in a series of plebiscites between April (in the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos and British Guatemala) and August (in Trinidad and Tobago), which came with all of the islands voting to send representatives to Ottawa to negotiate the terms of the islands joining Canada.
The agreements negotiated out between the islands' representatives and Ottawa in 1964 were extensive. The islands would be divided into five provinces - Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Bahamas, Barbados and Caribbean Islands. Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados would be islands as they were, while Jamaica would also include the Caymans and British Guatemala, while the Bahamas would include the Turks and Caicos, while the Caribbean Islands would be everything from Grenada to the British Virgin Islands, including Anguilla, Saint Martin and Saint Barthelemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. All five would immediately gain all rights as Canadians, including all monetary and travel rights, and the rights and responsibilities for social systems, including education, health care, social services, law and order (outside of explicit federal laws and jurisdictions) and many other elements. Such powers were well beyond what had at that point been devolved to the islands' legislatures and came as a surprise to many of the islands' negotiators, and the good faith was obvious. It was also notable that Prime Minister Pearson's chosen head negotiator in his Justice Minister (the charismatic Pierre Trudeau) made multiple trips to the islands and their legislatures to help smooth the process along, and several of the islands' most important leaders, including the heads of government in Jamaica (Hugh Shearer) and the Bahamas (Lynden Pindling), made similar trips, with Pindling causing a stir by making a speech to the Quebec National Assembly in October 1964 in quite-good French, later joking with reporters on the event "My son taught me, so I do hope I wasn't that bad." and Shearer being a high-profile visitor to the 52nd Grey Cup in Toronto in November 1964, where in a spontaneous move, Ontario Premier John Robarts (a loud supporter of the Caribbean islands joining Canada) had him come with him to help him award the Grey Cup to the victorious British Columbia Lions, introducing him as "The next Premier from Jamaica".
The high-profile events may have made many headlines, but in the aftermath of the plebiscites, what made the greatest impact was the massive number of Canadians from the metropole who flooded down to the islands, building vacation homes, establishing hotels and businesses and hiring many islanders. Even some of the biggest businesses in Canada got in on the act, with Canadian Pacific Hotels announcing four "Royal Hotels" for the islands, Alcan announcing the establishment of what was to be at the time the largest aluminum mill in the world in Jamaica, the Bank of Nova Scotia establishing branches across the islands, Canadian Steamship Lines proposing a major shipyard on Trinidad, and countless Canadian industrialists and business owners big and small meeting with their counterparts in the islands to make deals. While in the early 1960s it had been a debate about whether the islands could be better as part of Canada, by mid-1965 the flood of money, influence and proposals and the growing plans for the islands as part of Canada had made it clear that Confederation meant jobs, wealth and futures that were once upon a time unthinkable would now be just a matter of time - and it completed the debate. The agreements were signed in February and March 1965, and Jamaica became Canada's eleventh Province on April 21, 1965, with the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados became the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth provinces on May 5, 1965 and the Caribbean Islands became the fifteenth province on June 19, 1965. In recognition of this, Prime Minister Pearson called an all-Canada election for August 22, 1965, which would include all of the new Members of Parliament for the islands in Ottawa. Pearson was re-elected (though he still had a minority government) and more than a few of the faces of the Confederation movements (including the man who would be Canada's first Caribbean-born Prime Minister, Edward Seaga) became Members of Parliament, and Pearson made a point of appointing Grantley Adams as his first Caribbean minister. True to Robarts' comments, Hugh Shearer was indeed elected as Jamaica's first Premier under Confederation, and the two men would be life-long friends, one of many connections forged during the times.
Mexico and the United States were more than a little happy to see the formal integration - Mexican President Velasquez made a point of personally calling the new Premiers to congratulate them, and American President Nixon, despite his often-frosty relationship with Prime Minister Pearson, made a note of calling him two days after his re-election to congratulate him and ask if he could arrange a visit to the islands by the United States President. (Nixon did indeed make a high-profile series of visits to the islands in the fall of 1967.) Mexico made a point in the years to come to improve road and rail connections to what was now the border with Canada in Belize, while all three nations rapidly advanced the ability of their merchant marine fleets to serve the islands, taking advantage of the rapid growth in merchant trade between the islands that followed Confederation. By the 1980s, such was the tourist industry in the region that many islands would have tourists outnumbering locals for much of the year, and the wonderful warm weather of these regions led to an ever-larger number of arrivals from metropolitan Canada, people who grew the affectionate nickname "Snowbirds" from the residents of the islands.
[1] The Commonwealth carrier program was initially to replace all of the older carriers, but in the end three older carriers lasted in RN service until 1971 (Victorious) and 1974 (Ark Royal and Eagle), the latter two being sold to India in 1976
Really enjoyed the last entries a lot. I'm real curious to see MLK's bio in this timeline and if the Black Panthers are a thing or not.
Black Panthers are not a thing as we know them in our world. MLK here doesn't have a civil rights leadership (as its not really needed here) but instead is a leader of a movement meant to help those less fortunate (of all colours) which (in part thanks to the aforementioned Third Great Awakening) has massively positive results in the post-war era.
Enter Vietnam
The Vietnam War was one of the defining events of the 1960s, a massive event that became a critical turning point in the modern history of most of Asia for a variety of reasons, a few bad but most good. It's events were the end result of a long list of issues that went back to World War II, but the end result, while it was indeed highly controversial in many nations as it happened, ended up being highly approved of across much of the world, and had a critical effect on many aspects of geopolitics across the world. It exposed a number of societal issues (in particular the exposure of a number of young soldiers to hard drugs, particularly opium and heroin, had a massive effect on drug policies in the Amigos in the later 1960s and into the 1970s) but in the end ended up being the point where the incoming baby boomer generation began to make their voice very much heard in the world.
The story began during France's retaking of its colonies in Southeast Asia from the Japanese. Helped by the Japanese Navy being destroyed and their logistics being crippled, the presence of much of the French Navy and the British, Indian and Commonwealth forces having destroyed a vast portion of the Japanese forces in Southeast Asia in 1943 and 1944, the French Navy's retaking of its colonies had been done with the understanding that it would be a mere intermediary step on the road to independence for them, but fate ended up acting in a different way. The fall of Prime Minister Paul Reynaud led to the new French government going back on its word with the Vietnamese, attempting to re-assert control over the colony in its entirety - but the duplicity of the French was highly disliked by the Vietnamese, and while the Vietnamese leaders, including Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, attempted to negotiate out the end of French involvement in Indochina, these talks ended in abject failure, with the result being the first Indochina War, with Ho Chi Minh's forces being amply supported by the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists (though the latter's support fell off dramatically after 1951, owing to the attempt by Chiang to destroy the Chinese Communists) and the French being supported by the British and Americans, though in a much more clandestine way than the open support from the Communists.
The French ended up losing thanks to the guerilla tactics of the Vietnamese being adapted into tactics that involved full-scale weapons, including the use of massed anti-aircraft gunfire, direct fire from artillery weapons, convoy ambushing and hiding in prepared positions, as well as the French being unwilling to have recruits for the conflict from Metropolitan France (a decision that would haunt the French, as the colonial troops they used were far less effective in many cases). After the catastrophic defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the French government under Joseph Laniel fell, replaced by the left-leaning government of Pierre Mendes France, which promptly negotiated an end to the First Indochina War and France's withdrawal. The bitter conflict between the Communists and their opponents among the Vietnamese led to a coup in South Vietnam by Ngo Dihn Diem in October 1954, removing Emperor Bao Dai and establishing himself as the ruler of South Vietnam. Meanwhile in the north, the battles between Ho Chi Minh and and his Viet Minh against their Chinese-backed counterparts led to an attempt by Giap to attempt to remove the KMT factions from involvement in Vietnam's government. This succeeds initially but results in a bitter insurgency in North Vietnam and as many social problems for Ho Chi Minh as Ngo Dihn Diem was dealing with in the South.
The Malayan Emergency made intervention more likely, though in that case the British and Australian forces in Malaya were able to militarily suppress the revolt, though as with the French in Vietnam they were unable to keep the country as a colony, granting it complete independence in 1957, gathering into the nation of Malaysia in 1963, which subsequently expelled Singapore from the federation in 1965, resulting in Singapore's independence. The success of the British in militarily suppressing the communists in Malaya resulted in the government of Malaysia being rather anti-communist (though the Singaporeans were even more so) and resulted in the expansion of military support to the Viet Minh, though this was met with a similar response from the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-Shek, who was more than a unlittle unhappy with how China was being treated by the West - he regarded the Formosa Affair as an insult and was openly displeased by the West's lack of heavy support for the Great Northern Offensive in 1951 that had ended the Korean War. Stalin's death and the fall of the Beria-Malenkov-Molotov troika in 1954 gave Chiang an opportunity, and he began talking much more with the Soviet Union, aiming to both improve his position with the West and undermine Mao, an improvement in relations that sped up markedly after the Energy Crisis.
The Energy Crisis changed a lot. Having succeded where the French had failed in Southeast Asia, loudly supporting Singapore, a desire to stop communism basically drilled into their heads by the crisis and the success of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force in their evacuation of Aden and support of Oman and Iran, Britain and the Commonwealth were keen on trying to arrest the spread of the Soviet Union's satellite states, and having had to run themselves ragged and engage in massive efforts to keep NATO from being shattered by the crisis, Canada and Mexico (and Venezuela, which supported them loudly) were in no mood to play nice. All joined Washington in supporting the ARVN in South Vietnam, though Diem's corruption and nepotism drove everyone involved nuts. At the same time, Chiang's support of the pro-KMT faction in Vietnam became a thorn in Ho Chi Minh's side, as it led to an increasingly-troublesome self-sustaining cycle - Chiang's fears about a powerful Soviet-backed Vietnam on his border leads to greater support for the KMT factions, which led to a breakdown in relations with the Soviet Union, as Khrushchev and his ministers were far more likely to openly support ideologically-committed Communists like Mao and Minh than 'mercenary' leaders like Chiang. As the 1950s turned into the 1960s, the Soviet Union acquired its first nuclear weapons (which led China to do the same) and more and more frequent skirmishes between the KMT and Communist forces along the borders between Manchuria and the rest of China, leading to the Hebei incident in May 1960, where the PRC and ROC fought their first full-scale armed conflict since 1952 over the mining districts around Chengde. The battles, which were fought on an on-off basis over three months, led to a complete break between the USSR and ROC as well as Red Army troops deployed to the region, as well as a cut-off of oil supplies to the ROC from the Soviet Union that was supported by their allies in the Middle East, causing a major energy crunch in China. The move, which was followed by Mao saying that the Communist takeover of all of China was "inevitable", led to major deployments of the Amigos' navies and air forces to Japan, Korea, the Philippines and Hong Kong, as well as a British deployment to Hong Kong and Singapore.
The break in relations, however, ends up having some changes few expected, and in many ways those changes had begun in Japan.
Having been so startled by World War II, many Japanese historians and journalists were eager to chase down whatever could be found out about Japan's actions during the War. This in turn led to the sensational publishing of "The Medical Mad Men of the Kwntung Army: The Truth of Unit 731" in March 1958. The book, which several Japanese veterans groups had tried unsuccessfully to stop being published, told in truly lurid detail the crimes of so many of the members of the infamous Unit 731. The book caused a massive uproar, which was followed by several more similar tell-all books in the months and years to come, showing before-then-unimaginable research into many, many Japanese war crimes - the Hell Ships, the Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanking, comfort women - into broad daylight in a society that had, before then, never truly known what had been done in their name.
The result was predictable. Japan's society, left absolutely speechless and disgusted by the actions, was quick to go after those involved who had escaped trial. The infamous commanders of Unit 731, Generals Shiro Ishii and Otozo Yamada, were among the first to be prosecuted for their actions - despite their pleas of them being mere cogs in a machine, both men were convicted of war crimes in April 1960 and were promptly sentenced to death. (Ishii died in prison in February 1962, and Yamada was executed for his crimes in March 1964.) They would be among many, and there began to be loud calls by the summer of 1959 for Hirohito himself to abdicate his throne as a sign of respect for the crimes committed under his watch. Hirohito was unwilling to do this, instead diving head-first into supporting the research into Japan's past personally, loudly admonishing those who denied such actions (including personally dismissing the Grand Steward of the Imperial Household Agency, Takeshi Usami, for such conduct in July 1960) and pushing for major investigations into Japan's crimes, including a willingness to make trips abroad for the specific purpose of trying to make amends for these actions. Relations between Japan and Korea were established in 1959, with the first ambassador from Korea being personally welcomed to Japan by Hirohito himself. It was a sign of a bigger deal to come, that came in July 1961 when Hirohito made his famous trip to Beijing.
Meeting with Chiang and his government (he offered to meet with Mao in Shenyang as well, but Mao - though Zhou Enlai counseled him to meet with Hirohito - chose not to do so), Hirohito made a number of startling admissions during the visit and speeches during it, including publicly apologizing on behalf of Japan and its people for several specific events, actions and units, including Unit 731, the Nanking Massacre and the Three Alls Policy. This admissions were far more than had been expected by Chiang (or for that matter, anyone else outside of Japan), and as if to prove the point, the first person to be executed by Japan for "crimes against the citizens of the Republic of China", in this case former Unit 731 surgeon Colonel Yeni Nishimura, was hanged at the Tokyo Detention House on August 19, 1961. It was a powerful statement, and it made the desired effect in Asia, with Hirohito and many other Japanese people making many research visits, trips, missions and investigations in the 1960s, discovering the true width and breadth of Japan's actions.
What made the most impact on the future, though, was Hirohito counseling Chiang to make peace with the West, pointing out the problems that Mao and Minh posed to the Kuomintang and that Japan would do whatever it could to help smooth out the relationship issues between China and the West. Chiang would indeed take this advice to heart, and he made his first visit to an Amigos country, in this case Canada, in March 1962, being enthusiastically met in Vancouver by many members of the Chinese-Canadian community along. During this visit, Chiang held two private meetings with Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, where Diefenbaker is said to have spoken at length with Chiang about the possibility of China seeking greater respect in the West and Diefenbaker pointing out that if China wanted to move closer to the West, the two most important people would be American President Richard Nixon and British Prime Minister Harold McMillan, both of whom Diefenbaker suggested would be receptive to the idea of meetings with the goal of improving relations. Chiang, accepting this advice, had his first phone call with McMillan on June 11, 1962, talking of sorting out the differences between China and the West. Meanwhile, the KMT factions in Vietnam, at the behest of Beijing, began negotiations with Diem, starting a long and often-difficult negotiations for a power-sharing agreement for the future of Vietnam. Diem's position had been improved over the late 1950s by the success that his government and the ARVN had had in fighting back against the Viet Cong, and by the early 1960s Saigon was in a good position to fight back, even as the USSR, increasingly concerned over both China and Vietnam, began adding to the supplies sent to Hanoi.
Chiang met McMillan in person for the first time after making a visit to the Commonwealth of Nations summit in Bombay, India, in April 1963, after McMillan and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru both approved of the visit. Chiang was able to speak at the summit and make a number of agreements over trade and commercial rights, while in the process (as a sign of good faith) offering McMillan the ability to make Britain's ownership of Hong Kong permanent in return for military aid (an offer McMillan accepted) and Nehru proposed to Chiang that China remain as an independent power that had better relations with the West, pointing out that India's desire to remain as a non-aligned power hadn't stopped it from having a prominent and powerful position in the Commonwealth of Nations, stating "nations of power will always be able to chart their own paths", a statement that was seen as an acknowledgement of China's power and influence. To the surprise of Chiang, his diplomatic efforts in 1962 and 1963 saw him nearly universally respected, and a high-profile trip to Tokyo in June 1963 (where he was invited for a private meeting with Hirohito at the Imperial Palace, something once unimaginable to both men) led to the fateful call phone call with President Nixon's brilliant young National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, in January 1964.
Kissinger and Chiang were in agreement by then that it would be in the best interests of all to take the Vietnamese Communists out of the equation for good, and Chiang was reportedly stunned to learn that Washington was willing to commit its armed forces to such an operation - indeed, Kissinger proposed that Chiang in such a conflict focus on supporting the pro-KMT components of the South Vietnamese government (the idea being that such elements would temper Diem's worst impulses) and deploy as many troops as possible to northern China in order to serve as a warning to the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists to stay out of the action. Kissinger also surprised Chiang by stating that Washington was absolutely confident of support from other sources - unbeknownst to Chiang, after the Commonwealth meetings McMillan had proposed full-scale intervention into Vietnam as a way of hitting back against the Communists, and that the British and Commonwealth would be involved out of a desire to make a powerful statement about the continued power of Britain and its diplomatic influence, and Nixon had already talked to both Lester Pearson (who had replaced Diefenbaker as Prime Minister of Canada in April 1963) and Mexican President Nicolás Velasquez, both of whom hadn't been hard to convince - the memories of what the Soviet Union had done in 1957-58 had lived on in both nations. With this agreement in place, the detailed planning began, with the planned attack being expected after the United States' Presidential elections in November 1964. President Nixon was easily re-elected in these elections, and true to form, on November 26, 1964, the Invasion of Vietnam began with the massive amphibious landings at the city of Vinh.
The alliance gathered by Washington was impressive. Canada and Mexico had, as everyone expected, supported Washington, and Britain was also in, as were Australia, New Zealand and South Africa supporting the Commonwealth corps. The Filipinos and Koreans also sent troops to support the invasion, while Japan was providing logistical support for both the forces on the ground and the naval components. Nearly 400,000 troops arrived in the space of just over two months, rapidly deployed to the region in a major show of force, and these troops and airmen were backed up with vast commitments, with the fleet on hand for the occasion including no less than eleven aircraft carriers (five American, two apiece from Britain and Canada and one apiece from Mexico and Australia), four battleships (two each British and American) and a vast surface support fleet. Bombers flew missions from Clark Air Base in the Philippines and Korat Air Force Base in Thailand on heavy strikes and countless fighter bombers flew from air bases in South Vietnam and Thailand as well as from aircraft carriers, bringing with them the first uses of multiple new weapons, including the first precision-guided munitions in the AGM-62 Walleye TV-guided bomb and AGM-45 Shrike and AGM-78 Standard ARM anti-radiation missiles. The operation saw a number of new technologies and fighting styles deployed, with the first uses of the impressive Bell AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter by the Americans and the first operational uses of several types of fighter and interceptor aircraft, including the American F-4 Phantom II, British P.1154 and Canadian CF-105 Arrow, all three facing teething initial problems but ultimately proving successful aircraft, while the lessons learned about the Viet Cong's tactics were absorbed quickly by the West, while they played more than a few tricks of their own, both in terms of fighting and setting the rules on the ground - the latter ultimately being more important in the end.
The initial intervention's objective was to create a wall between the communists in North Vietnam and Laos and the South by creating a line from Vinh to Nakhon Phanom province in Thailand, sealing off the south end of the Ho Chi Minh trail and thus removing the resupply abilities of the Viet Cong south of the line. The invasion forces reached the Thai border on January 11, 1965, sealing off the border and shifting their focus to containing PAVN attacks on the line. Despite this, only limited offensives were launched by the units on the line, the massive invasion force instead focusing their efforts on providing an anvil that the ARVN could beat the Viet Cong on, an overall strategy that was very successful in 1965, sealing off the border between the two sides and effectively closing the Ho Chi Minh trail. Even as the Viet Cong and People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) attempted repeatedly to break the cordon, the forces deployed to the region quickly got to work both keeping the line sealed as well as supporting the Vietnamese.
The forces that deployeed to the region were quick to adapt many of the Viet Cong's own tactics, paying close attention to the way the Vietnamese had beaten the French a decade before and using their own tactics against them. Highly-mobile infantry units were backed up by large quantities of field artillery and armored personnel carriers. The new M113 armored personnel carrier became an iconic vehicle of the war, while the forces also deployed ever-larger quantities of artillery weapons, namely 155mm and 203mm weapons, to hammer on Vietnamese positions. Mexican mountain force units added to this through the use of large numbers of 60mm patrol mortars, while the Canadians also employed a large number of license-built French Panhard EBRs as fast mobile fire support vehicles (usually equipped with 90mm guns, though some would be equipped with mortars) to support troops on missions. The engineering units of the Army were quick to establish fortifications in many strategic places, as if to dare the PAVN to come after them (usually not to their benefit) and by mid-1965 all the nations involved were figuring out "Fireforce" airborne assault tactics, where artillery fire missions and attacks by attack aircraft or even bombers would be followed by the deployment of troops or (more commonly) helicopter-borne infantry escorted by attack helicopters, the objective being to destroy the VC and PAVN positions and then withdraw, moves that at first were surprising to both sides but by the fall of 1965 had come to be well known by both sides for their purpose - namely to reduce the strength of the VC and PAVN - and both sides responded to it in their own ways. The PAVN began in late 1965 to deploy large numbers of BM-14 and BM-21 rocket artillery weapons in an attempt to suppress Western artillery, which led to the rushing into service of American rocket artillery and the develop of ever-longer range artillery weapons by both sides. VC and PAVN booby traps began to be answered by those by Allied troops, and as the VC saw their supply problems increased, their developments of supply tunnels and hidden pathways led to further fights along the trail and further changes in tactics.
The ARVN had started the 1960s struggling to contain the VC insurgency, but as the decade went on their officers got better, their soldiers' problems with discipline improved dramatically with time and their combat effectiveness grew as they gained experience and got their hands on better equipment. The ARVN was by 1964 meeting the VC head on, and after the invasion of 1964-65 the VC's sudden logistical problems dramatically improved the ARVN's position in the conflict. While the Catholic-Buddhist problems that racked South Vietnam in the 1950s initially had a marked effect on the ARVN, that once again had become much less important as the ARVN went on the offensive. With the Ho Chi Minh trail severed by the Allied cordon and with access to ever-improving equipment and support, the ARVN by 1965 was able to absolutely bludgeon the Viet Cong, to the point that by mid-1966 they had been almost entirely wiped out south of the Allied cordon, stabilizing the country and leading, by the summer of 1966, for calls for the Allies and the Vietnamese to go north from the cordon and destroy the Vietnamese communists.
While the initial plans for the war had centered on the eradication of the Viet Cong, the strategic situation shifted in 1966. Having seen the Viet Cong almost entirely destroyed by the ARVN (and with the Vietnamese in Saigon fully in control of their own destiny by that) and the countless PAVN operations against the Allied forces on the border having been unsuccessful in moving the border in any appreciable way, the sealing of the northern border by China and the massive naval superiority of the Allies had by the summer of 1966 dramatically reduced the effectiveness of the PAVN, even as some support continued to trickle in for the North Vietnamese from the Eastern Bloc. With the majority of Chiang's forces deployed to Xinjiang and the borders with Mongolia and Mao's People's Republic of China in northeastern China, getting support overland to the Vietnamese had proved almost impossible, resulting in the summer of 1966 the Soviet Union supporting the North Vietnamese to the best degree they could through air bridges from Myanmar. While these air bridges were well-known (and at times intercepted by the Chinese and Thais, who despite this were somewhat unwilling to shoot down Soviet airlifters out of a fear of a conflict with the USSR) there was little that could be done for many types of supplies, and the land bridges from Myanmar to Laos and Vietnam were bombed regularly by everyone involved, with everything from attack helicopters to B-52s being used to shut down supply convoys. The massive interdiction of ground supplies was followed in January 1966 by the Allied navies sealing off the Vietnamese ports. The Vietnamese Navy made multiple attempts at breaking the blockade, but these operations ended in abject failure, a situation that resulted in both the blockade holding but also the increasing use of naval gunfire support by the Allies - a situation that for the Vietnamese got considerably worse when battleships Arizona and Texas, reactivated by the United States in early 1965, arrived for their first Vietnam tours in May 1966. The American battleships in particular were a monstrous problem for the Vietnamese, and it got ever-larger quantities of fire-support vessels on the lines near the coast of Vietnam, making it by the late summer of 1966 that it was genuinely dangerous for Vietnamese units to be in coastal regions, lest they be fired on by the battleships or by American, British or Canadian cruisers. The Soviet support was seen in the presence of ever-larger number of Warsaw Pact advisors and specialists, and the ever-increasing sophistication of the PAVN's equipment, including the use of all kinds of new equipment, including Scud ballistic missiles (which were almost always aimed at ARVN bases) and P-15 Termit anti-ship missiles.
By the fall of 1966, the losses for the PAVN had reached a crisis point, as the country was facing legitimate difficulties with fuel and ammunition supplies owing to the extreme difficulties in bring in supplies. With these problems mounting, the Vietnamese leadership prepared for one big do-or-die offensive for 1967, the Tet Offensive, which would include holdouts in South Vietnam attacking positions there and a massive push against the border in both Vietnam and Laos, aiming to re-open supply routes and do as much material damage to the Allied forces as possible.
The problem? The Allied forces, and the ARVN, knew it was coming.
Over the previous two years the ARVN and the Allied forces had pushed hard to create a major intelligence network in Vietnam and Laos, and the Allied troops and ARVN had both worked hard on reducing civilian casualties and improve their image among the populations of Vietnam. The Allies had used their air superiority and their massive number of helicopters to act as medical evacuation units on thousands of occasions, and the stories of VC fighters taking hostages and using human shields had become well known in South Vietnam, contributing to a growing public support problem for the VC. In addition, the holdout pro-KMT forces in North Vietnam had made sure the message made it across the border, and by the fall of 1966 the troops of the Amigos in particular had a good repute in Vietnam, helped along by billions of dollars in support and aid for the civilians. Many Vietnamese farms in the South had seen equipment, fertilizer and know-how brought to them by the Allied forces, and the Allied forces paid cash for tips on the VC, tips which often as not turned out to be true. By the end of 1966 the engineering corps of the Amigos and their allies were as often building infrastructure for civilians as they were supporting their fighting forces, with paved roads, bridges, railroads, power plants, water treatment facilities, schools and hospitals being built in numbers. All of this was in contrast to the North, which was suffering from the economic issues of years of war, and making matters even better still was the common viewpoints broadcast in the Media. The ARVN's ferocious exploits had by the fall of 1966 made them famous in their own right, and the image of the Vietnamese being proud, tough soldiers had made their way to the Amigos and back again. Vietnamese refugees from the War found enthusiastic supporters in all of the Amigos, as well as Britain and the Commonwealth. It all contributed to a sense among the South Vietnamese that their victory was merely a matter of time, and that they would one day be kicking in the doors of Hanoi. This sense of victory also made it to the Amigos troops, and by Tet Offensive's launch on January 30, 1967, the amount of intelligence on the operation was immense, and the ARVN and the troops on the line were ready for it.
The VC's last-ditch attempts to attack cities and towns in the South ended up being abject failures, with the ARVN easily claiming ten times as many VC members as they lose themselves, and General Giap's attempt to break through the Allied lines at Kim Lien ended up being interdicted in dramatic fashion by the men of the First Canadian Division, which had been ready for the assault - and had been armed with the best equipment they could get, including the new Chieftain tanks the Canadians and British had developed that were to replaced the older Centurions they used, and they were backed up by the Canadians' first use of their new M109 self-propelled artillery vehicles, and the Canadians also gave the Vietnamese back a taste of their own tactical missiles by peppering the Vietnamese rear guard with Honest John missiles. Mexican troops north of Pho Chau faced a similar attack, and while the Canadians took advantage of their heavy armor to stop the Vietnamese pretty much cold, Giap, initially pleased at the success of his further-out divisions, made a grave strategic error by pushing through the lines, only to have the Mexicans move from behind the Canadians and encircle the troops south of the line, costing Giap five divisions in a bitter battle that lasted four straight days from February 5 to 9, 1967. The losses from the early phases of the armed conflict were made worse after, once the Canadians and Mexicans had done such crippling damage the PAVN at Kim Lien and Pho Chau, saw a force of their troops over 150,000 strong move north from staging bases around Tran Phu and roll right into North Vietnamese territory, following the coast (and getting lots of fire support help from the Allies in the process) and rapidly blasting up the coast. Having taken such grievous losses in the attack on the lines the PAVN was virtually powerless as the ARVN stormed north, reaching Hoang Mai and Thai Noa in just over four days.
As this happened, the Allies finally got on the move, and the Americans, having left the defense of the lines to the Canadians and Mexicans, saw the second Marine Division land at Haiphong on February 17, while the American 101st Airborne pulled one of the most audacious maneuvers of the war by landing on a line from Nga Trahn to Trach Quang, forcing the nexus of a new defensive line that trapped four Vietnamese divisions behind them, divisions that the Vietnamese attempt to break out by racing them northward to avoid the American attack, but thanks to the 101st Airborne being incredibly well equipped and supported (with everything from A-37 and A-48 light attack aircraft to B-52H bombers and cruisers gun Oregon City and Belfast on call to back them up) the Vietnamese divisions were basically decimated at the American stop line, taking with it over half of the PAVN's combat power in just over three weeks. The ARVN quickly made its way up to the American lines, arriving on February 22 at Nga Trahn and basically forcing the remnants of the PAVN who had survived the assaults into the mountains west of the main thrust, the survivors chased by infantry in their helicopters and lighter vehicles.
On February 26, 1967, Ho Chi Minh passed away suddenly in his sleep from a massive stroke, adding to the problems the Vietnamese faced. Giap was quick to re-organize his troops into defensive positions to the south and east of Hanoi and using blocking forces to attempt to keep assaults out from the valleys that lined the edges of the mountains of Vietnam near their coastline, but having lost virtually the entirety of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the massive assault by the Allies and ARVN, he was forced to attempt to keep his government alive with whatever he had at this disposal. The successful assault on the Nga Trahn-Trach Quang line forced him to abandon the city of Nihn Bihn to avoid Allied artillery fire, rapidly setting up defensive lines north of there, forming a line from Gian Khau through Nam Dinh and then straight north from there, the northward run of the line the direct result of the Americans' assault on the Haiphong. This line, however, simply didn't have time to form before the ARVN and Allies showed up, particularly as it was peppered with artillery fire, air strikes and Fireforce operations almost from the start and the logistical problems for the PAVN.
On March 7, Hoang Van Xiem, the commander of the Viet Cong, was killed by an American airstrike on his forward command post ast Trahn Ha, causing further command and control problems for the Viet Cong's remnants, and on March 11, the ARVN directly assaulted Giap's lines at Gian Khau. Having anticipated this, Giap committed his armored forces to a southward meet of the surging ARVN, but the ARVN had a trick up its sleeve - they had been training up its helicopter forces, and they committed (in addition to numerous fighter-bombers) over 150 Bell AH-1 Cobra and Aerospatiale Gazelle helicopters, armed with TOW anti-tank missiles, which despite the presence of PAVN anti-aircraft guns, absolutely shredded the Vietnamese tanks on the flat terrain of north-east Vietnam. The losses taken by the numerically-superior but clearly less well trained, equipped and motivated PAVN showed, and Giap's vaunted line broke in dramatic fashion on March 14, with Nguyen Huu An, probably Giap's best subordinate, being among those killed in the battles for Gian Khau and Nam Dihn.
Having failed to secure his country, Giap was shot dead by his own soldiers on March 22, 1967, and as the ARVN charged northwards on their final assault on Hanoi, the Allies moved aside and followed them, wanting the Vietnamese to have the honor of reunifying their country, though the support from the air and ground was still substantial. The ARVN arrived in Hanoi on April 2, arriving as members of the Vietnamese government scrambled to board planes for the Soviet Union or China. Not a few of the surviving PAVN troops turned on their own commanders during this assault, with political commissars getting particular attention by the troops, While more than a few loyalist troops scrambled to run for the hills or fly their planes to Laos or Myanmar. Troops of the ARVN raised the flag of South Vietnam over the Presidential Palace in Hanoi on April 9, 1967, in a highly-symbolic moment that signalled the end of the Vietnam War's conventional phase. Within a week, the remaining PAVN units had surrendered to the ARVN, and Ngo Dinh Diem, Ngo Dinh Nhu and Nguyen Van Thieu arrived in Hanoi on April 25, 1967, proclaiming the reunification of Vietnam and offering terms for all remaining PAVN troops.
The fall of Hanoi was the fight key moment in what would go on to be a world-changing series of political earthquakes. Having successfully liberated the country, the Vietnamese were quick to transition to the process of rebuilding, and they had little difficulty finding support for the process of doing this. The massive economic support that had turned the public tide in the South followed the ARVN northwards, and Vietnam by the end of 1967 had already begun the long task of rebuilding. The Pathet Lao fell in January 1968, and by the end of 1968 the support for communism in Southeast Asia had all but evaporated, a situation that would be one much approved of by the West. Thailand and the unified Vietnam established relations in August 1967, followed by the rest of Asia during 1967 and 1968, with the first very high-profile visit to the newly unified Republic of Vietnam was - to the surprise of few by this point - Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who was welcomed to Hanoi by Diem on May 11, 1968, and as was the usual by then, the Japanese visit included many discoveries and desires about Japan's past, which Vietnam appreciated just as much as everyone else.
By the end of 1968, the Vietnamese had pushed for - and gotten - approval in theory for a Pacific version of NATO to replace the seen-to-be-largely-toothless SEATO, resulting in the formation of the Asia Pacific Treaty Alliace, or APTA for short, in June 1971. The "Asian Tigers" economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s that had begun with Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Singapore had spread to Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Indonesia, while China, buoyed by the success in defeating communism in Vietnam, had basically sorted out their differences with their neighbours, while the failure of Communist movements in Southeast Asia basically forced Mao and the Chinese Communists into complete dependence on the Soviet Union, them fearing the increasingly-powerful Chiang and Republic of China. True to form, after the success of the Vietnam War, Chiang signed the Final Treaty With Respect to Hong Kong in June 1968, guaranteeing Hong Kong's future in the United Kingdom, and also signed the Treaty of Honolulu in March 1969, sorting out for the territorial differences among China and its neighbours. Formosa was granted to Japan for good along with the rest of the Ryukyus, while the Spratlys were granted to the Philippines (who had occupied them since 1956 in any case) while the Paracels were granted to China by Vietnam in recognition of China's role in ending the Vietnamese communist regime. The major naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam was in 1970 offered to the nations of the incoming APTA for their unrestricted use, and both the United States and Canada began to use it in 1972.
Culturally, the success of Vietnam all but ended the anti-war protests in North America in 1965 and 1966, and the late 1960s saw the massive growth of many elements of Asian culture into the cultures of the Amigos and Europe. The troops who had so successfully fought the War were cycled home in the spring of 1967, bringing with them a swagger that came with successfully fighting a war, as well as bringing with them thousands of Vietnamese and Laotian wives and girlfriends and more than a few children, returning to a nation which was culturally changing in a dramatic fashion as the Baby Boomers became a part of the nation's cultural fabric. For Southeast Asia, the presence of the Amigos had brought with them many elements of their culture being brought to Vietnam and widely adopted by the Vietnamese. From American cars to baseball, rock and roll music to blue jeans and cowboy boots, Vietnam post-war took much in terms of cultural influence from the Amigos and gave back many of their own. More than a few Vietnamese learned to speak English and Spanish, the warm climate and incredible history of Vietnam led to a tourist boom to the region that grew dramatically in the 1970s, leading to many Vietnamese also being seen abroad. The traditional Vietnam Ao Dai and Ao Dan garments were part of the collection of fasionable Asian clothing styles that came to the Amigos in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while the food and culture of Vietnam came across the Pacific like so many other of its Asian neighbors in the 1970s. The massive bauxite reserves of Vietnam's Central Plateau began to be developed by the Vietnamese with open support from the likes of Alcoa, Kaiser Aluminum and Alcan in the 1970s, while the Vietnamese economy swelled at a such a rate that by the 1990s Vietnam's per-capita income was fourth-highest in Asia (behind only Singapore, Japan and Korea, ahead of Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, China and equal to most of Europe.
China began to grow at a similar rate in the early 1970s. Nehru's comment to Chiang about how nations of power will always be able to have influence in the world proved entirely accurate, and while China started its economic and social progress rather later than many of its neighbors, it began it nonetheless and went to considerable lengths to make its influence be seen as a positive in Asia. While this had mixed results - old prejudices died hard in more than a few cases - it had the effect desired. China and India would become good neighbors in the 1960s and 1970s, as the two massive nations sought to show that there was a way for nations to have a path outside of the world's two major power blocs, and while China's relations with the United States would be cordial for decades to come and India's position and influence within the Commonwealth grew dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, the two countries would become real players in the world's geopolitics by the 1980s.
The Vietnam War was one of the defining events of the 1960s, a massive event that became a critical turning point in the modern history of most of Asia for a variety of reasons, a few bad but most good. It's events were the end result of a long list of issues that went back to World War II, but the end result, while it was indeed highly controversial in many nations as it happened, ended up being highly approved of across much of the world, and had a critical effect on many aspects of geopolitics across the world. It exposed a number of societal issues (in particular the exposure of a number of young soldiers to hard drugs, particularly opium and heroin, had a massive effect on drug policies in the Amigos in the later 1960s and into the 1970s) but in the end ended up being the point where the incoming baby boomer generation began to make their voice very much heard in the world.
The story began during France's retaking of its colonies in Southeast Asia from the Japanese. Helped by the Japanese Navy being destroyed and their logistics being crippled, the presence of much of the French Navy and the British, Indian and Commonwealth forces having destroyed a vast portion of the Japanese forces in Southeast Asia in 1943 and 1944, the French Navy's retaking of its colonies had been done with the understanding that it would be a mere intermediary step on the road to independence for them, but fate ended up acting in a different way. The fall of Prime Minister Paul Reynaud led to the new French government going back on its word with the Vietnamese, attempting to re-assert control over the colony in its entirety - but the duplicity of the French was highly disliked by the Vietnamese, and while the Vietnamese leaders, including Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, attempted to negotiate out the end of French involvement in Indochina, these talks ended in abject failure, with the result being the first Indochina War, with Ho Chi Minh's forces being amply supported by the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists (though the latter's support fell off dramatically after 1951, owing to the attempt by Chiang to destroy the Chinese Communists) and the French being supported by the British and Americans, though in a much more clandestine way than the open support from the Communists.
The French ended up losing thanks to the guerilla tactics of the Vietnamese being adapted into tactics that involved full-scale weapons, including the use of massed anti-aircraft gunfire, direct fire from artillery weapons, convoy ambushing and hiding in prepared positions, as well as the French being unwilling to have recruits for the conflict from Metropolitan France (a decision that would haunt the French, as the colonial troops they used were far less effective in many cases). After the catastrophic defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the French government under Joseph Laniel fell, replaced by the left-leaning government of Pierre Mendes France, which promptly negotiated an end to the First Indochina War and France's withdrawal. The bitter conflict between the Communists and their opponents among the Vietnamese led to a coup in South Vietnam by Ngo Dihn Diem in October 1954, removing Emperor Bao Dai and establishing himself as the ruler of South Vietnam. Meanwhile in the north, the battles between Ho Chi Minh and and his Viet Minh against their Chinese-backed counterparts led to an attempt by Giap to attempt to remove the KMT factions from involvement in Vietnam's government. This succeeds initially but results in a bitter insurgency in North Vietnam and as many social problems for Ho Chi Minh as Ngo Dihn Diem was dealing with in the South.
The Malayan Emergency made intervention more likely, though in that case the British and Australian forces in Malaya were able to militarily suppress the revolt, though as with the French in Vietnam they were unable to keep the country as a colony, granting it complete independence in 1957, gathering into the nation of Malaysia in 1963, which subsequently expelled Singapore from the federation in 1965, resulting in Singapore's independence. The success of the British in militarily suppressing the communists in Malaya resulted in the government of Malaysia being rather anti-communist (though the Singaporeans were even more so) and resulted in the expansion of military support to the Viet Minh, though this was met with a similar response from the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-Shek, who was more than a unlittle unhappy with how China was being treated by the West - he regarded the Formosa Affair as an insult and was openly displeased by the West's lack of heavy support for the Great Northern Offensive in 1951 that had ended the Korean War. Stalin's death and the fall of the Beria-Malenkov-Molotov troika in 1954 gave Chiang an opportunity, and he began talking much more with the Soviet Union, aiming to both improve his position with the West and undermine Mao, an improvement in relations that sped up markedly after the Energy Crisis.
The Energy Crisis changed a lot. Having succeded where the French had failed in Southeast Asia, loudly supporting Singapore, a desire to stop communism basically drilled into their heads by the crisis and the success of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force in their evacuation of Aden and support of Oman and Iran, Britain and the Commonwealth were keen on trying to arrest the spread of the Soviet Union's satellite states, and having had to run themselves ragged and engage in massive efforts to keep NATO from being shattered by the crisis, Canada and Mexico (and Venezuela, which supported them loudly) were in no mood to play nice. All joined Washington in supporting the ARVN in South Vietnam, though Diem's corruption and nepotism drove everyone involved nuts. At the same time, Chiang's support of the pro-KMT faction in Vietnam became a thorn in Ho Chi Minh's side, as it led to an increasingly-troublesome self-sustaining cycle - Chiang's fears about a powerful Soviet-backed Vietnam on his border leads to greater support for the KMT factions, which led to a breakdown in relations with the Soviet Union, as Khrushchev and his ministers were far more likely to openly support ideologically-committed Communists like Mao and Minh than 'mercenary' leaders like Chiang. As the 1950s turned into the 1960s, the Soviet Union acquired its first nuclear weapons (which led China to do the same) and more and more frequent skirmishes between the KMT and Communist forces along the borders between Manchuria and the rest of China, leading to the Hebei incident in May 1960, where the PRC and ROC fought their first full-scale armed conflict since 1952 over the mining districts around Chengde. The battles, which were fought on an on-off basis over three months, led to a complete break between the USSR and ROC as well as Red Army troops deployed to the region, as well as a cut-off of oil supplies to the ROC from the Soviet Union that was supported by their allies in the Middle East, causing a major energy crunch in China. The move, which was followed by Mao saying that the Communist takeover of all of China was "inevitable", led to major deployments of the Amigos' navies and air forces to Japan, Korea, the Philippines and Hong Kong, as well as a British deployment to Hong Kong and Singapore.
The break in relations, however, ends up having some changes few expected, and in many ways those changes had begun in Japan.
Having been so startled by World War II, many Japanese historians and journalists were eager to chase down whatever could be found out about Japan's actions during the War. This in turn led to the sensational publishing of "The Medical Mad Men of the Kwntung Army: The Truth of Unit 731" in March 1958. The book, which several Japanese veterans groups had tried unsuccessfully to stop being published, told in truly lurid detail the crimes of so many of the members of the infamous Unit 731. The book caused a massive uproar, which was followed by several more similar tell-all books in the months and years to come, showing before-then-unimaginable research into many, many Japanese war crimes - the Hell Ships, the Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanking, comfort women - into broad daylight in a society that had, before then, never truly known what had been done in their name.
The result was predictable. Japan's society, left absolutely speechless and disgusted by the actions, was quick to go after those involved who had escaped trial. The infamous commanders of Unit 731, Generals Shiro Ishii and Otozo Yamada, were among the first to be prosecuted for their actions - despite their pleas of them being mere cogs in a machine, both men were convicted of war crimes in April 1960 and were promptly sentenced to death. (Ishii died in prison in February 1962, and Yamada was executed for his crimes in March 1964.) They would be among many, and there began to be loud calls by the summer of 1959 for Hirohito himself to abdicate his throne as a sign of respect for the crimes committed under his watch. Hirohito was unwilling to do this, instead diving head-first into supporting the research into Japan's past personally, loudly admonishing those who denied such actions (including personally dismissing the Grand Steward of the Imperial Household Agency, Takeshi Usami, for such conduct in July 1960) and pushing for major investigations into Japan's crimes, including a willingness to make trips abroad for the specific purpose of trying to make amends for these actions. Relations between Japan and Korea were established in 1959, with the first ambassador from Korea being personally welcomed to Japan by Hirohito himself. It was a sign of a bigger deal to come, that came in July 1961 when Hirohito made his famous trip to Beijing.
Meeting with Chiang and his government (he offered to meet with Mao in Shenyang as well, but Mao - though Zhou Enlai counseled him to meet with Hirohito - chose not to do so), Hirohito made a number of startling admissions during the visit and speeches during it, including publicly apologizing on behalf of Japan and its people for several specific events, actions and units, including Unit 731, the Nanking Massacre and the Three Alls Policy. This admissions were far more than had been expected by Chiang (or for that matter, anyone else outside of Japan), and as if to prove the point, the first person to be executed by Japan for "crimes against the citizens of the Republic of China", in this case former Unit 731 surgeon Colonel Yeni Nishimura, was hanged at the Tokyo Detention House on August 19, 1961. It was a powerful statement, and it made the desired effect in Asia, with Hirohito and many other Japanese people making many research visits, trips, missions and investigations in the 1960s, discovering the true width and breadth of Japan's actions.
What made the most impact on the future, though, was Hirohito counseling Chiang to make peace with the West, pointing out the problems that Mao and Minh posed to the Kuomintang and that Japan would do whatever it could to help smooth out the relationship issues between China and the West. Chiang would indeed take this advice to heart, and he made his first visit to an Amigos country, in this case Canada, in March 1962, being enthusiastically met in Vancouver by many members of the Chinese-Canadian community along. During this visit, Chiang held two private meetings with Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, where Diefenbaker is said to have spoken at length with Chiang about the possibility of China seeking greater respect in the West and Diefenbaker pointing out that if China wanted to move closer to the West, the two most important people would be American President Richard Nixon and British Prime Minister Harold McMillan, both of whom Diefenbaker suggested would be receptive to the idea of meetings with the goal of improving relations. Chiang, accepting this advice, had his first phone call with McMillan on June 11, 1962, talking of sorting out the differences between China and the West. Meanwhile, the KMT factions in Vietnam, at the behest of Beijing, began negotiations with Diem, starting a long and often-difficult negotiations for a power-sharing agreement for the future of Vietnam. Diem's position had been improved over the late 1950s by the success that his government and the ARVN had had in fighting back against the Viet Cong, and by the early 1960s Saigon was in a good position to fight back, even as the USSR, increasingly concerned over both China and Vietnam, began adding to the supplies sent to Hanoi.
Chiang met McMillan in person for the first time after making a visit to the Commonwealth of Nations summit in Bombay, India, in April 1963, after McMillan and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru both approved of the visit. Chiang was able to speak at the summit and make a number of agreements over trade and commercial rights, while in the process (as a sign of good faith) offering McMillan the ability to make Britain's ownership of Hong Kong permanent in return for military aid (an offer McMillan accepted) and Nehru proposed to Chiang that China remain as an independent power that had better relations with the West, pointing out that India's desire to remain as a non-aligned power hadn't stopped it from having a prominent and powerful position in the Commonwealth of Nations, stating "nations of power will always be able to chart their own paths", a statement that was seen as an acknowledgement of China's power and influence. To the surprise of Chiang, his diplomatic efforts in 1962 and 1963 saw him nearly universally respected, and a high-profile trip to Tokyo in June 1963 (where he was invited for a private meeting with Hirohito at the Imperial Palace, something once unimaginable to both men) led to the fateful call phone call with President Nixon's brilliant young National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, in January 1964.
Kissinger and Chiang were in agreement by then that it would be in the best interests of all to take the Vietnamese Communists out of the equation for good, and Chiang was reportedly stunned to learn that Washington was willing to commit its armed forces to such an operation - indeed, Kissinger proposed that Chiang in such a conflict focus on supporting the pro-KMT components of the South Vietnamese government (the idea being that such elements would temper Diem's worst impulses) and deploy as many troops as possible to northern China in order to serve as a warning to the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists to stay out of the action. Kissinger also surprised Chiang by stating that Washington was absolutely confident of support from other sources - unbeknownst to Chiang, after the Commonwealth meetings McMillan had proposed full-scale intervention into Vietnam as a way of hitting back against the Communists, and that the British and Commonwealth would be involved out of a desire to make a powerful statement about the continued power of Britain and its diplomatic influence, and Nixon had already talked to both Lester Pearson (who had replaced Diefenbaker as Prime Minister of Canada in April 1963) and Mexican President Nicolás Velasquez, both of whom hadn't been hard to convince - the memories of what the Soviet Union had done in 1957-58 had lived on in both nations. With this agreement in place, the detailed planning began, with the planned attack being expected after the United States' Presidential elections in November 1964. President Nixon was easily re-elected in these elections, and true to form, on November 26, 1964, the Invasion of Vietnam began with the massive amphibious landings at the city of Vinh.
The alliance gathered by Washington was impressive. Canada and Mexico had, as everyone expected, supported Washington, and Britain was also in, as were Australia, New Zealand and South Africa supporting the Commonwealth corps. The Filipinos and Koreans also sent troops to support the invasion, while Japan was providing logistical support for both the forces on the ground and the naval components. Nearly 400,000 troops arrived in the space of just over two months, rapidly deployed to the region in a major show of force, and these troops and airmen were backed up with vast commitments, with the fleet on hand for the occasion including no less than eleven aircraft carriers (five American, two apiece from Britain and Canada and one apiece from Mexico and Australia), four battleships (two each British and American) and a vast surface support fleet. Bombers flew missions from Clark Air Base in the Philippines and Korat Air Force Base in Thailand on heavy strikes and countless fighter bombers flew from air bases in South Vietnam and Thailand as well as from aircraft carriers, bringing with them the first uses of multiple new weapons, including the first precision-guided munitions in the AGM-62 Walleye TV-guided bomb and AGM-45 Shrike and AGM-78 Standard ARM anti-radiation missiles. The operation saw a number of new technologies and fighting styles deployed, with the first uses of the impressive Bell AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter by the Americans and the first operational uses of several types of fighter and interceptor aircraft, including the American F-4 Phantom II, British P.1154 and Canadian CF-105 Arrow, all three facing teething initial problems but ultimately proving successful aircraft, while the lessons learned about the Viet Cong's tactics were absorbed quickly by the West, while they played more than a few tricks of their own, both in terms of fighting and setting the rules on the ground - the latter ultimately being more important in the end.
The initial intervention's objective was to create a wall between the communists in North Vietnam and Laos and the South by creating a line from Vinh to Nakhon Phanom province in Thailand, sealing off the south end of the Ho Chi Minh trail and thus removing the resupply abilities of the Viet Cong south of the line. The invasion forces reached the Thai border on January 11, 1965, sealing off the border and shifting their focus to containing PAVN attacks on the line. Despite this, only limited offensives were launched by the units on the line, the massive invasion force instead focusing their efforts on providing an anvil that the ARVN could beat the Viet Cong on, an overall strategy that was very successful in 1965, sealing off the border between the two sides and effectively closing the Ho Chi Minh trail. Even as the Viet Cong and People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) attempted repeatedly to break the cordon, the forces deployed to the region quickly got to work both keeping the line sealed as well as supporting the Vietnamese.
The forces that deployeed to the region were quick to adapt many of the Viet Cong's own tactics, paying close attention to the way the Vietnamese had beaten the French a decade before and using their own tactics against them. Highly-mobile infantry units were backed up by large quantities of field artillery and armored personnel carriers. The new M113 armored personnel carrier became an iconic vehicle of the war, while the forces also deployed ever-larger quantities of artillery weapons, namely 155mm and 203mm weapons, to hammer on Vietnamese positions. Mexican mountain force units added to this through the use of large numbers of 60mm patrol mortars, while the Canadians also employed a large number of license-built French Panhard EBRs as fast mobile fire support vehicles (usually equipped with 90mm guns, though some would be equipped with mortars) to support troops on missions. The engineering units of the Army were quick to establish fortifications in many strategic places, as if to dare the PAVN to come after them (usually not to their benefit) and by mid-1965 all the nations involved were figuring out "Fireforce" airborne assault tactics, where artillery fire missions and attacks by attack aircraft or even bombers would be followed by the deployment of troops or (more commonly) helicopter-borne infantry escorted by attack helicopters, the objective being to destroy the VC and PAVN positions and then withdraw, moves that at first were surprising to both sides but by the fall of 1965 had come to be well known by both sides for their purpose - namely to reduce the strength of the VC and PAVN - and both sides responded to it in their own ways. The PAVN began in late 1965 to deploy large numbers of BM-14 and BM-21 rocket artillery weapons in an attempt to suppress Western artillery, which led to the rushing into service of American rocket artillery and the develop of ever-longer range artillery weapons by both sides. VC and PAVN booby traps began to be answered by those by Allied troops, and as the VC saw their supply problems increased, their developments of supply tunnels and hidden pathways led to further fights along the trail and further changes in tactics.
The ARVN had started the 1960s struggling to contain the VC insurgency, but as the decade went on their officers got better, their soldiers' problems with discipline improved dramatically with time and their combat effectiveness grew as they gained experience and got their hands on better equipment. The ARVN was by 1964 meeting the VC head on, and after the invasion of 1964-65 the VC's sudden logistical problems dramatically improved the ARVN's position in the conflict. While the Catholic-Buddhist problems that racked South Vietnam in the 1950s initially had a marked effect on the ARVN, that once again had become much less important as the ARVN went on the offensive. With the Ho Chi Minh trail severed by the Allied cordon and with access to ever-improving equipment and support, the ARVN by 1965 was able to absolutely bludgeon the Viet Cong, to the point that by mid-1966 they had been almost entirely wiped out south of the Allied cordon, stabilizing the country and leading, by the summer of 1966, for calls for the Allies and the Vietnamese to go north from the cordon and destroy the Vietnamese communists.
While the initial plans for the war had centered on the eradication of the Viet Cong, the strategic situation shifted in 1966. Having seen the Viet Cong almost entirely destroyed by the ARVN (and with the Vietnamese in Saigon fully in control of their own destiny by that) and the countless PAVN operations against the Allied forces on the border having been unsuccessful in moving the border in any appreciable way, the sealing of the northern border by China and the massive naval superiority of the Allies had by the summer of 1966 dramatically reduced the effectiveness of the PAVN, even as some support continued to trickle in for the North Vietnamese from the Eastern Bloc. With the majority of Chiang's forces deployed to Xinjiang and the borders with Mongolia and Mao's People's Republic of China in northeastern China, getting support overland to the Vietnamese had proved almost impossible, resulting in the summer of 1966 the Soviet Union supporting the North Vietnamese to the best degree they could through air bridges from Myanmar. While these air bridges were well-known (and at times intercepted by the Chinese and Thais, who despite this were somewhat unwilling to shoot down Soviet airlifters out of a fear of a conflict with the USSR) there was little that could be done for many types of supplies, and the land bridges from Myanmar to Laos and Vietnam were bombed regularly by everyone involved, with everything from attack helicopters to B-52s being used to shut down supply convoys. The massive interdiction of ground supplies was followed in January 1966 by the Allied navies sealing off the Vietnamese ports. The Vietnamese Navy made multiple attempts at breaking the blockade, but these operations ended in abject failure, a situation that resulted in both the blockade holding but also the increasing use of naval gunfire support by the Allies - a situation that for the Vietnamese got considerably worse when battleships Arizona and Texas, reactivated by the United States in early 1965, arrived for their first Vietnam tours in May 1966. The American battleships in particular were a monstrous problem for the Vietnamese, and it got ever-larger quantities of fire-support vessels on the lines near the coast of Vietnam, making it by the late summer of 1966 that it was genuinely dangerous for Vietnamese units to be in coastal regions, lest they be fired on by the battleships or by American, British or Canadian cruisers. The Soviet support was seen in the presence of ever-larger number of Warsaw Pact advisors and specialists, and the ever-increasing sophistication of the PAVN's equipment, including the use of all kinds of new equipment, including Scud ballistic missiles (which were almost always aimed at ARVN bases) and P-15 Termit anti-ship missiles.
By the fall of 1966, the losses for the PAVN had reached a crisis point, as the country was facing legitimate difficulties with fuel and ammunition supplies owing to the extreme difficulties in bring in supplies. With these problems mounting, the Vietnamese leadership prepared for one big do-or-die offensive for 1967, the Tet Offensive, which would include holdouts in South Vietnam attacking positions there and a massive push against the border in both Vietnam and Laos, aiming to re-open supply routes and do as much material damage to the Allied forces as possible.
The problem? The Allied forces, and the ARVN, knew it was coming.
Over the previous two years the ARVN and the Allied forces had pushed hard to create a major intelligence network in Vietnam and Laos, and the Allied troops and ARVN had both worked hard on reducing civilian casualties and improve their image among the populations of Vietnam. The Allies had used their air superiority and their massive number of helicopters to act as medical evacuation units on thousands of occasions, and the stories of VC fighters taking hostages and using human shields had become well known in South Vietnam, contributing to a growing public support problem for the VC. In addition, the holdout pro-KMT forces in North Vietnam had made sure the message made it across the border, and by the fall of 1966 the troops of the Amigos in particular had a good repute in Vietnam, helped along by billions of dollars in support and aid for the civilians. Many Vietnamese farms in the South had seen equipment, fertilizer and know-how brought to them by the Allied forces, and the Allied forces paid cash for tips on the VC, tips which often as not turned out to be true. By the end of 1966 the engineering corps of the Amigos and their allies were as often building infrastructure for civilians as they were supporting their fighting forces, with paved roads, bridges, railroads, power plants, water treatment facilities, schools and hospitals being built in numbers. All of this was in contrast to the North, which was suffering from the economic issues of years of war, and making matters even better still was the common viewpoints broadcast in the Media. The ARVN's ferocious exploits had by the fall of 1966 made them famous in their own right, and the image of the Vietnamese being proud, tough soldiers had made their way to the Amigos and back again. Vietnamese refugees from the War found enthusiastic supporters in all of the Amigos, as well as Britain and the Commonwealth. It all contributed to a sense among the South Vietnamese that their victory was merely a matter of time, and that they would one day be kicking in the doors of Hanoi. This sense of victory also made it to the Amigos troops, and by Tet Offensive's launch on January 30, 1967, the amount of intelligence on the operation was immense, and the ARVN and the troops on the line were ready for it.
The VC's last-ditch attempts to attack cities and towns in the South ended up being abject failures, with the ARVN easily claiming ten times as many VC members as they lose themselves, and General Giap's attempt to break through the Allied lines at Kim Lien ended up being interdicted in dramatic fashion by the men of the First Canadian Division, which had been ready for the assault - and had been armed with the best equipment they could get, including the new Chieftain tanks the Canadians and British had developed that were to replaced the older Centurions they used, and they were backed up by the Canadians' first use of their new M109 self-propelled artillery vehicles, and the Canadians also gave the Vietnamese back a taste of their own tactical missiles by peppering the Vietnamese rear guard with Honest John missiles. Mexican troops north of Pho Chau faced a similar attack, and while the Canadians took advantage of their heavy armor to stop the Vietnamese pretty much cold, Giap, initially pleased at the success of his further-out divisions, made a grave strategic error by pushing through the lines, only to have the Mexicans move from behind the Canadians and encircle the troops south of the line, costing Giap five divisions in a bitter battle that lasted four straight days from February 5 to 9, 1967. The losses from the early phases of the armed conflict were made worse after, once the Canadians and Mexicans had done such crippling damage the PAVN at Kim Lien and Pho Chau, saw a force of their troops over 150,000 strong move north from staging bases around Tran Phu and roll right into North Vietnamese territory, following the coast (and getting lots of fire support help from the Allies in the process) and rapidly blasting up the coast. Having taken such grievous losses in the attack on the lines the PAVN was virtually powerless as the ARVN stormed north, reaching Hoang Mai and Thai Noa in just over four days.
As this happened, the Allies finally got on the move, and the Americans, having left the defense of the lines to the Canadians and Mexicans, saw the second Marine Division land at Haiphong on February 17, while the American 101st Airborne pulled one of the most audacious maneuvers of the war by landing on a line from Nga Trahn to Trach Quang, forcing the nexus of a new defensive line that trapped four Vietnamese divisions behind them, divisions that the Vietnamese attempt to break out by racing them northward to avoid the American attack, but thanks to the 101st Airborne being incredibly well equipped and supported (with everything from A-37 and A-48 light attack aircraft to B-52H bombers and cruisers gun Oregon City and Belfast on call to back them up) the Vietnamese divisions were basically decimated at the American stop line, taking with it over half of the PAVN's combat power in just over three weeks. The ARVN quickly made its way up to the American lines, arriving on February 22 at Nga Trahn and basically forcing the remnants of the PAVN who had survived the assaults into the mountains west of the main thrust, the survivors chased by infantry in their helicopters and lighter vehicles.
On February 26, 1967, Ho Chi Minh passed away suddenly in his sleep from a massive stroke, adding to the problems the Vietnamese faced. Giap was quick to re-organize his troops into defensive positions to the south and east of Hanoi and using blocking forces to attempt to keep assaults out from the valleys that lined the edges of the mountains of Vietnam near their coastline, but having lost virtually the entirety of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the massive assault by the Allies and ARVN, he was forced to attempt to keep his government alive with whatever he had at this disposal. The successful assault on the Nga Trahn-Trach Quang line forced him to abandon the city of Nihn Bihn to avoid Allied artillery fire, rapidly setting up defensive lines north of there, forming a line from Gian Khau through Nam Dinh and then straight north from there, the northward run of the line the direct result of the Americans' assault on the Haiphong. This line, however, simply didn't have time to form before the ARVN and Allies showed up, particularly as it was peppered with artillery fire, air strikes and Fireforce operations almost from the start and the logistical problems for the PAVN.
On March 7, Hoang Van Xiem, the commander of the Viet Cong, was killed by an American airstrike on his forward command post ast Trahn Ha, causing further command and control problems for the Viet Cong's remnants, and on March 11, the ARVN directly assaulted Giap's lines at Gian Khau. Having anticipated this, Giap committed his armored forces to a southward meet of the surging ARVN, but the ARVN had a trick up its sleeve - they had been training up its helicopter forces, and they committed (in addition to numerous fighter-bombers) over 150 Bell AH-1 Cobra and Aerospatiale Gazelle helicopters, armed with TOW anti-tank missiles, which despite the presence of PAVN anti-aircraft guns, absolutely shredded the Vietnamese tanks on the flat terrain of north-east Vietnam. The losses taken by the numerically-superior but clearly less well trained, equipped and motivated PAVN showed, and Giap's vaunted line broke in dramatic fashion on March 14, with Nguyen Huu An, probably Giap's best subordinate, being among those killed in the battles for Gian Khau and Nam Dihn.
Having failed to secure his country, Giap was shot dead by his own soldiers on March 22, 1967, and as the ARVN charged northwards on their final assault on Hanoi, the Allies moved aside and followed them, wanting the Vietnamese to have the honor of reunifying their country, though the support from the air and ground was still substantial. The ARVN arrived in Hanoi on April 2, arriving as members of the Vietnamese government scrambled to board planes for the Soviet Union or China. Not a few of the surviving PAVN troops turned on their own commanders during this assault, with political commissars getting particular attention by the troops, While more than a few loyalist troops scrambled to run for the hills or fly their planes to Laos or Myanmar. Troops of the ARVN raised the flag of South Vietnam over the Presidential Palace in Hanoi on April 9, 1967, in a highly-symbolic moment that signalled the end of the Vietnam War's conventional phase. Within a week, the remaining PAVN units had surrendered to the ARVN, and Ngo Dinh Diem, Ngo Dinh Nhu and Nguyen Van Thieu arrived in Hanoi on April 25, 1967, proclaiming the reunification of Vietnam and offering terms for all remaining PAVN troops.
The fall of Hanoi was the fight key moment in what would go on to be a world-changing series of political earthquakes. Having successfully liberated the country, the Vietnamese were quick to transition to the process of rebuilding, and they had little difficulty finding support for the process of doing this. The massive economic support that had turned the public tide in the South followed the ARVN northwards, and Vietnam by the end of 1967 had already begun the long task of rebuilding. The Pathet Lao fell in January 1968, and by the end of 1968 the support for communism in Southeast Asia had all but evaporated, a situation that would be one much approved of by the West. Thailand and the unified Vietnam established relations in August 1967, followed by the rest of Asia during 1967 and 1968, with the first very high-profile visit to the newly unified Republic of Vietnam was - to the surprise of few by this point - Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who was welcomed to Hanoi by Diem on May 11, 1968, and as was the usual by then, the Japanese visit included many discoveries and desires about Japan's past, which Vietnam appreciated just as much as everyone else.
By the end of 1968, the Vietnamese had pushed for - and gotten - approval in theory for a Pacific version of NATO to replace the seen-to-be-largely-toothless SEATO, resulting in the formation of the Asia Pacific Treaty Alliace, or APTA for short, in June 1971. The "Asian Tigers" economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s that had begun with Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Singapore had spread to Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Indonesia, while China, buoyed by the success in defeating communism in Vietnam, had basically sorted out their differences with their neighbours, while the failure of Communist movements in Southeast Asia basically forced Mao and the Chinese Communists into complete dependence on the Soviet Union, them fearing the increasingly-powerful Chiang and Republic of China. True to form, after the success of the Vietnam War, Chiang signed the Final Treaty With Respect to Hong Kong in June 1968, guaranteeing Hong Kong's future in the United Kingdom, and also signed the Treaty of Honolulu in March 1969, sorting out for the territorial differences among China and its neighbours. Formosa was granted to Japan for good along with the rest of the Ryukyus, while the Spratlys were granted to the Philippines (who had occupied them since 1956 in any case) while the Paracels were granted to China by Vietnam in recognition of China's role in ending the Vietnamese communist regime. The major naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam was in 1970 offered to the nations of the incoming APTA for their unrestricted use, and both the United States and Canada began to use it in 1972.
Culturally, the success of Vietnam all but ended the anti-war protests in North America in 1965 and 1966, and the late 1960s saw the massive growth of many elements of Asian culture into the cultures of the Amigos and Europe. The troops who had so successfully fought the War were cycled home in the spring of 1967, bringing with them a swagger that came with successfully fighting a war, as well as bringing with them thousands of Vietnamese and Laotian wives and girlfriends and more than a few children, returning to a nation which was culturally changing in a dramatic fashion as the Baby Boomers became a part of the nation's cultural fabric. For Southeast Asia, the presence of the Amigos had brought with them many elements of their culture being brought to Vietnam and widely adopted by the Vietnamese. From American cars to baseball, rock and roll music to blue jeans and cowboy boots, Vietnam post-war took much in terms of cultural influence from the Amigos and gave back many of their own. More than a few Vietnamese learned to speak English and Spanish, the warm climate and incredible history of Vietnam led to a tourist boom to the region that grew dramatically in the 1970s, leading to many Vietnamese also being seen abroad. The traditional Vietnam Ao Dai and Ao Dan garments were part of the collection of fasionable Asian clothing styles that came to the Amigos in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while the food and culture of Vietnam came across the Pacific like so many other of its Asian neighbors in the 1970s. The massive bauxite reserves of Vietnam's Central Plateau began to be developed by the Vietnamese with open support from the likes of Alcoa, Kaiser Aluminum and Alcan in the 1970s, while the Vietnamese economy swelled at a such a rate that by the 1990s Vietnam's per-capita income was fourth-highest in Asia (behind only Singapore, Japan and Korea, ahead of Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, China and equal to most of Europe.
China began to grow at a similar rate in the early 1970s. Nehru's comment to Chiang about how nations of power will always be able to have influence in the world proved entirely accurate, and while China started its economic and social progress rather later than many of its neighbors, it began it nonetheless and went to considerable lengths to make its influence be seen as a positive in Asia. While this had mixed results - old prejudices died hard in more than a few cases - it had the effect desired. China and India would become good neighbors in the 1960s and 1970s, as the two massive nations sought to show that there was a way for nations to have a path outside of the world's two major power blocs, and while China's relations with the United States would be cordial for decades to come and India's position and influence within the Commonwealth grew dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, the two countries would become real players in the world's geopolitics by the 1980s.
This brought a tear to my eyes as someone whose family lived, fought and died in the ARVN throughout the Vietnam war. Maybe in this timeline, my grandfather would have lived to see the end of the war and fulfill his dream of being headmaster of the ARVN's military academy at Da Lat, his home after being forced to flee the North. He was KIA in 1969. Fun fact but his commander at the academy during the late 1950's was Nguyen Van Thieu.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Ngo Dinh Diem's travels in the US during the 1950's. In our timeline, he traveled throughout the US during the 1950's to gain as many allies as he could to back the founding of the RVN, notably meeting with JFK and others. Perhaps, in this timeline, given Mexico and Canada's greater importance as well as their sizable Catholic communities, he would have also traveled there to be lobby for assistance and perhaps even be influenced by them. In addition, in our timeline, there was a congregation of Catholic Vietnamese that settled in Quebec before the war kicked off. Perhaps, in this timeline, they could be more spread out throughout North America and could have created ties between them and the Mexican, Canadian and American Catholics as well?
I'm surprised you didn't mention Ngo Dinh Diem's travels in the US during the 1950's. In our timeline, he traveled throughout the US during the 1950's to gain as many allies as he could to back the founding of the RVN, notably meeting with JFK and others. Perhaps, in this timeline, given Mexico and Canada's greater importance as well as their sizable Catholic communities, he would have also traveled there to be lobby for assistance and perhaps even be influenced by them. In addition, in our timeline, there was a congregation of Catholic Vietnamese that settled in Quebec before the war kicked off. Perhaps, in this timeline, they could be more spread out throughout North America and could have created ties between them and the Mexican, Canadian and American Catholics as well?
I've got some pop-culture vignettes it's now appropriate to post. Here's the first one:
ELVIS PRESLEY
On March 5, 1967, during the filming of Clambake, Elvis passed out and suffered a mild concussion. He was examined and found that there was no evidence of bone fractures or other serious injuries, although he was suffering muscle spasms.
Larry Geller, a recent addition to the "Memphis Mafia," as Elvis calls his entourage, had been providing Elvis with books on yoga, spirituality and similar topics. Elvis' manager, Colonel Tom Parker, distrusted Geller and assumed that he's going to reveal his "con" eventually (Parker, like most con men, assumed everyone else is as sleazy as he was). Furthermore, this was an aspect of Elvis that he could not control, so he didn't like it. He used the incident as an opportunity to pounce on Geller: "no more damn books!" he thundered.
[OOC: Here's where we depart from OTL:] However, in an adjoining United Artists soundstage, as it happened, Ann-Margret was rehearsing a TV special. Hearing about Elvis' injury, she rushed to visit him. Although there had been rumors about Elvis and Ann-Margret, they were really just good friends; but Elvis was indeed fond of her. After all, of all the schlock movies he'd made since getting out of the Army in 1960, the best one was Viva Las Vegas, down as much as anything to the on-screen and off-screen chemistry between Elvis and Ann-Margret. Elvis told her about Geller, and she said, "That's ridiculous. You can't tell me that reading books about yoga made you pass out." She then wheedled out of Elvis the real reason he passed out: the studio executives had been pressuring him about his supposed weight gain, so he'd been crash-dieting to try to take off weight. "Don't listen to any asshole who tells you something like that," Ann-Margret insisted. "Take a woman's opinion: you look just fine." Nonetheless, she had her own suspicions: she'd long mistrusted Parker and believed he'd been pressing Elvis too hard. Going back to her dressing room, she phoned her agent, and he quickly made contact with one J.P. Richardson.
Formerly known as "the Big Bopper," J.P. Richardson was a former rock and roll singer. He'd been a one-hit wonder anyway, and he quit performing after a particularly hectic tour of the Midwest in early 1959 called the Winter Dance Party. This tour was booked on such a tight schedule that one night he, Buddy Holly, and Ritchie Valens had tried to rent an airplane to fly them to the next town, just to have time to get some shirts washed; J.P still remembered Buddy fuming and cursing when the engine on the little Beechcraft Bonanza failed to start in the cold weather, and they had to get back on the bus anyway. Since then, J.P. had gone into artist management, and he represented several popular acts, including Mitch Ryder, Jan and Dean, Jay and the Americans, and Paul Revere and the Raiders. But he'd always dreamed of working with Elvis.
Talking to J.P., Ann-Margret brought up a rumor they'd heard before, but that no one had pursued: that "Colonel Tom Parker" was in fact Andreas van Kujik, an illegal Dutch immigrant. J.P. had made many connections in the last six years, and he got them on it. Sure enough, a few weeks later, Ann-Margret got what she was looking for: documented proof that Parker was in fact van Kujik. She presented it to Elvis on March 22, the day filming on his movie resumed. Elvis had of course heard the rumors himself, but he'd never seen solid proof before. He suddenly announced, to the stunned surprise of everyone concerned, that he was flying back to Memphis that night. Ann-Margret and some of the Memphis Mafia flew with him, but Elvis insisted that he didn't want Parker along.
Parker flew back himself the next day, and at Graceland, confronted Elvis. Expecting to give Elvis a tirade about leaving the movie set, he was unprepared for what Elvis threw back at him:
Elvis: You been lyin' to me all these years, you sumbitch! I don't even know who the hell you are!"
Parker: Now, calm down, boy...just wait a minute, heah...
Elvis: GODDAMMIT, stop talkin' in that fake Loosiana accent! You're a goddamn DUTCHMAN, you lyin' sack of shit!"
Parker left, then returned with some goons, with the intention of intimidating whoever told Elvis this. But Ann-Margret was there, with her own goons; and so were the Memphis Mafia, now turned totally against Parker: no sooner did his car loop around the driveway and up to the carport at Graceland than Sonny and Red West marched up to it, snarling menacingly; "What the hell you want here, old man?"
The upshot was that - in return for not revealing Parker's secret - Elvis agreed to buy out his management contract for $1.4 million. Parker took the money and promptly made a beeline to Las Vegas, where he hit the gambling tables and blew the entire amount. He died a few years later in Vegas, a penniless, forgotten vagrant.
Meanwhile, Elvis signed a new contract, with J.P. Richardson. Elvis agreed to go back to finish Clambake and the rest of the movies he'd contracted to do ("he has a very strong sense of duty," J.P. tells the press). However, J.P. started working on getting him real roles in movies - even small parts, with the logic that it's better for Elvis to get a small part in a good movie than starring roles in yet more dreadful ones. He began working his way up the Hollywood food chain.
J.P. also tore up the publishing contract with Hill and Range that Parker had written, and renegotiated Elvis' recording contract with RCA. Elvis still made his landmark 1968 TV comeback special, and went on the road after that, but without the Colonel-inspired Vegas-style cheesiness that might have otherwise resulted, his shows were far better.
Under his new record contract, he also made better records. He continues to make commercial songs, returning to the top of the charts - "Suspicious Minds" (1969), "Burning Love" (1972), "I Can Help" (1975) - but he also did a straight country album, not Nashville countrypolitan but all fiddles and banjos; he did gospel albums in the same vein, with one even titled From the Field; he did an album of gutbucket blues; and he did an album of smooth soul ballads, showing that he could still out-sing most of the competition. He had further number one hits in 1978 with a song specifically written for him by Dolly Parton, "I Will Always Love You," and in 1984 with Lee Greenwood's patriotic hymn "God Bless the USA."
His film career finally took off too, as he discovered his niche, which was playing cops. His big breakthrough finally came in 1975, when he landed the role of Chief Brody in a movie about a killer shark terrorizing a beach resort. Jaws was a smash hit, and Elvis finally accomplished a goal that had eluded him till then: an Oscar, for Best Actor.
In the early 1970s, he did briefly become addicted to prescription pills. But a wiser Memphis Mafia - with Larry Geller restored to the group - helped get him off the drugs, and in 1974 he founded the Gladys Presley Centers, a chain of rehabilitation clinics that takes a holistic approach to helping people overcome addictions, including medical, psychological, and even spiritual regimens.
Ann-Margret continued to act as one of Elvis' best friends, but despite the rumors, she and Elvis remained just that. One who was not convinced was the young girl Elvis was preparing to marry at the time of the Clambake incident, one Priscilla Beaulieu. She angrily broke off the engagement. Elvis was deeply upset, but managed to recover; spoiled princess Priscilla slipped back into obscurity, while Elvis in 1972 married Linda Thompson, a former Miss Tennessee.
In 1985, he closed the Philadelphia show of Live Aid [OOC: more on that later].
And in 1989, he again amazed the world by recording in an genre few had realized him capable of - opera. After several years of study, he recorded La Traviata with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. "Even after all these years, no one has truly grasped the depth of Elvis' talent," one critic gushed.
ELVIS PRESLEY
On March 5, 1967, during the filming of Clambake, Elvis passed out and suffered a mild concussion. He was examined and found that there was no evidence of bone fractures or other serious injuries, although he was suffering muscle spasms.
Larry Geller, a recent addition to the "Memphis Mafia," as Elvis calls his entourage, had been providing Elvis with books on yoga, spirituality and similar topics. Elvis' manager, Colonel Tom Parker, distrusted Geller and assumed that he's going to reveal his "con" eventually (Parker, like most con men, assumed everyone else is as sleazy as he was). Furthermore, this was an aspect of Elvis that he could not control, so he didn't like it. He used the incident as an opportunity to pounce on Geller: "no more damn books!" he thundered.
[OOC: Here's where we depart from OTL:] However, in an adjoining United Artists soundstage, as it happened, Ann-Margret was rehearsing a TV special. Hearing about Elvis' injury, she rushed to visit him. Although there had been rumors about Elvis and Ann-Margret, they were really just good friends; but Elvis was indeed fond of her. After all, of all the schlock movies he'd made since getting out of the Army in 1960, the best one was Viva Las Vegas, down as much as anything to the on-screen and off-screen chemistry between Elvis and Ann-Margret. Elvis told her about Geller, and she said, "That's ridiculous. You can't tell me that reading books about yoga made you pass out." She then wheedled out of Elvis the real reason he passed out: the studio executives had been pressuring him about his supposed weight gain, so he'd been crash-dieting to try to take off weight. "Don't listen to any asshole who tells you something like that," Ann-Margret insisted. "Take a woman's opinion: you look just fine." Nonetheless, she had her own suspicions: she'd long mistrusted Parker and believed he'd been pressing Elvis too hard. Going back to her dressing room, she phoned her agent, and he quickly made contact with one J.P. Richardson.
Formerly known as "the Big Bopper," J.P. Richardson was a former rock and roll singer. He'd been a one-hit wonder anyway, and he quit performing after a particularly hectic tour of the Midwest in early 1959 called the Winter Dance Party. This tour was booked on such a tight schedule that one night he, Buddy Holly, and Ritchie Valens had tried to rent an airplane to fly them to the next town, just to have time to get some shirts washed; J.P still remembered Buddy fuming and cursing when the engine on the little Beechcraft Bonanza failed to start in the cold weather, and they had to get back on the bus anyway. Since then, J.P. had gone into artist management, and he represented several popular acts, including Mitch Ryder, Jan and Dean, Jay and the Americans, and Paul Revere and the Raiders. But he'd always dreamed of working with Elvis.
Talking to J.P., Ann-Margret brought up a rumor they'd heard before, but that no one had pursued: that "Colonel Tom Parker" was in fact Andreas van Kujik, an illegal Dutch immigrant. J.P. had made many connections in the last six years, and he got them on it. Sure enough, a few weeks later, Ann-Margret got what she was looking for: documented proof that Parker was in fact van Kujik. She presented it to Elvis on March 22, the day filming on his movie resumed. Elvis had of course heard the rumors himself, but he'd never seen solid proof before. He suddenly announced, to the stunned surprise of everyone concerned, that he was flying back to Memphis that night. Ann-Margret and some of the Memphis Mafia flew with him, but Elvis insisted that he didn't want Parker along.
Parker flew back himself the next day, and at Graceland, confronted Elvis. Expecting to give Elvis a tirade about leaving the movie set, he was unprepared for what Elvis threw back at him:
Elvis: You been lyin' to me all these years, you sumbitch! I don't even know who the hell you are!"
Parker: Now, calm down, boy...just wait a minute, heah...
Elvis: GODDAMMIT, stop talkin' in that fake Loosiana accent! You're a goddamn DUTCHMAN, you lyin' sack of shit!"
Parker left, then returned with some goons, with the intention of intimidating whoever told Elvis this. But Ann-Margret was there, with her own goons; and so were the Memphis Mafia, now turned totally against Parker: no sooner did his car loop around the driveway and up to the carport at Graceland than Sonny and Red West marched up to it, snarling menacingly; "What the hell you want here, old man?"
The upshot was that - in return for not revealing Parker's secret - Elvis agreed to buy out his management contract for $1.4 million. Parker took the money and promptly made a beeline to Las Vegas, where he hit the gambling tables and blew the entire amount. He died a few years later in Vegas, a penniless, forgotten vagrant.
Meanwhile, Elvis signed a new contract, with J.P. Richardson. Elvis agreed to go back to finish Clambake and the rest of the movies he'd contracted to do ("he has a very strong sense of duty," J.P. tells the press). However, J.P. started working on getting him real roles in movies - even small parts, with the logic that it's better for Elvis to get a small part in a good movie than starring roles in yet more dreadful ones. He began working his way up the Hollywood food chain.
J.P. also tore up the publishing contract with Hill and Range that Parker had written, and renegotiated Elvis' recording contract with RCA. Elvis still made his landmark 1968 TV comeback special, and went on the road after that, but without the Colonel-inspired Vegas-style cheesiness that might have otherwise resulted, his shows were far better.
Under his new record contract, he also made better records. He continues to make commercial songs, returning to the top of the charts - "Suspicious Minds" (1969), "Burning Love" (1972), "I Can Help" (1975) - but he also did a straight country album, not Nashville countrypolitan but all fiddles and banjos; he did gospel albums in the same vein, with one even titled From the Field; he did an album of gutbucket blues; and he did an album of smooth soul ballads, showing that he could still out-sing most of the competition. He had further number one hits in 1978 with a song specifically written for him by Dolly Parton, "I Will Always Love You," and in 1984 with Lee Greenwood's patriotic hymn "God Bless the USA."
His film career finally took off too, as he discovered his niche, which was playing cops. His big breakthrough finally came in 1975, when he landed the role of Chief Brody in a movie about a killer shark terrorizing a beach resort. Jaws was a smash hit, and Elvis finally accomplished a goal that had eluded him till then: an Oscar, for Best Actor.
In the early 1970s, he did briefly become addicted to prescription pills. But a wiser Memphis Mafia - with Larry Geller restored to the group - helped get him off the drugs, and in 1974 he founded the Gladys Presley Centers, a chain of rehabilitation clinics that takes a holistic approach to helping people overcome addictions, including medical, psychological, and even spiritual regimens.
Ann-Margret continued to act as one of Elvis' best friends, but despite the rumors, she and Elvis remained just that. One who was not convinced was the young girl Elvis was preparing to marry at the time of the Clambake incident, one Priscilla Beaulieu. She angrily broke off the engagement. Elvis was deeply upset, but managed to recover; spoiled princess Priscilla slipped back into obscurity, while Elvis in 1972 married Linda Thompson, a former Miss Tennessee.
In 1985, he closed the Philadelphia show of Live Aid [OOC: more on that later].
And in 1989, he again amazed the world by recording in an genre few had realized him capable of - opera. After several years of study, he recorded La Traviata with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. "Even after all these years, no one has truly grasped the depth of Elvis' talent," one critic gushed.
Not really. India and China both don't want to get pigeonholed into one bloc or the other. China has a very negative view of communism (for all of the obvious reasons) and loudly supports the APTA, but isn't keen on being forced into commitments by anyone. In practice, however, the disagreements through Asia when it comes to foreign policies are going to shrink over time, particularly as prosperity makes the consequences of such disagreements get more serious.
India is a bit more complicated. They aren't keen on communism either and are living with the Naxalite insurgency, but India has long recognized that it's former status as the jewel in the crown of the British Empire gives it a position of authority in the Commonwealth and they are keen to use it. They don't directly spurn Moscow (indeed they act as a mediator between the USSR and the Commonwealth frequently) but while Nehru was much more left-leaning socialist, the time of Indira Gandhi will see the beginnings of the end of the License Raj and will see India begin throwing more weight in the world around. Pakistan is a particular thorn in India's side (and will be for some time to come) and India will seek to get the Commonwealth more on their side, something that will cause a few "must you really do that?" among Commonwealth members and their neighbors in later years but has benefits for both India and the Commonwealth in the future.
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It's safe to say here that their sacrifices weren't in vain. By early 1967 the ARVN was the pound for pound equal of any army on the planet, well supplied, well equipped and battle hardened, but fully aware of what their ultimate responsibility is - freedom for Vietnam and all of its people. And after Giap made the mistake of trying to break the Allied cordon to save the Viet Cong from extinction, they got the opportunity to unify their country and they took it. The ARVN here will have that institutional memory live on for a long time to come.
We might be able to make that happen.... 😉
I thought about that, but with how long that post is how much more of a novel did I want people to have to read. Either way, Diem did indeed travel all of the Amigos widely in the 1950s (as well as the UK and Australia) looking for support for the RVN.
A certainty. His travels in particular in this world did have an impact in his handling of the divide between the Buddhist and Catholic populations of the RVN. His family's corruption and nepotism still proves a problem (far less than OTL though) and his ultimate fate will be to retire from the Presidency during a transition to democracy in Vietnam at about the same time as it comes to several of the other Asian Tigers in the early 1980s.
Quite possible, and in the context of the aforementioned Third Great Awakening probably much more likely to build upon and strengthen those links.
See above. Diem's worst excesses needed to be toned back for the South Vietnamese to be able to take the fight right to the VC and ultimately to the PAVN, and the Amigos and the Brits made sure Diem knew that. He took the lesson both to save his own skin and make it easier to sort out the differences he had with the pro-KMT factions in the government and society of Vietnam.
I was wondering but would you guys be open to the idea of a snippet or two about South Vietnam's history in this written by me? I was thinking of a bio of Ngo Dinh Diem in this timeline as well as a story or two about ARVN soldiers marching north in 1967. Given what I know about both subjects, it could make for an interesting story.
July 17, 1963
Ford Motor Company World Headquarters, Dearborn, Michigan
"That two-timing bastard." Henry Ford II growled deeply at the group of men in his office. "He used us."
"Yes, Sir, it appears he did." Lee Iacocca was just as mad as his boss, but then again it wasn't his family getting spit on by Enzo Ferrari. "Sir, I don't need to tell you that that isn't true in the slightest, what they say about us being incapable of making sports cars." Both men knew what was less than a year away, and was a direct response to the car introduced at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle the year before. "Enzo is gonna get a surprise in a few months about Ford and fun cars."
Henry looked out the windows, his mind focused. He didn't need to be told about how good his company's management staff was, and Ford, a veteran of World War II who had almost singlehandedly rescued an empire from the failings of his dying father and the thugs, the likes of Charles Sorensen and Harry Bennett, guided it through a world change, the energy crisis and the ever-growing competition from General Motors, which was instigating design wars, Chrysler and American Motors, which had scored a grand slam in the AMC Javelin, which was selling faster than the company could produce them.
Ford had wanted to work with Ferrari because Henry Ford respected Enzo Ferrari....well, had respected him. Both were empire builders, and Ford had the assets to allow Ferrari to race anywhere.
But this....this to Henry Ford II, Hank the Deuce to many who knew him, this was personal. Ferrari's using of Ford to get a better deal out of Fiat, well, that was just business.
But saying Ford could never build a thoroughbred....all right Enzo, you're gonna learn about American thoroughbreds.
And you're gonna learn about them when they bury you under the front stretch at Le Mans.
Ford turned back to the lively room filled with his top lieutenants, their discussion heated but not angry. All knew what Ferrari had said. All wanted payback.
"Gentlemen."
The conversation stopped and the room turned to look at Henry, who picked up and sipped a drink, then spoke.
"We have a problem in a way. We have the boys on Woodward starting a war of design, and the Corvette is proof. They're taking that thing racing too, and we know AMC is gonna race the Javelin too. It's time we joined them."
Bunky Knudsen spoke first. "I agree Sir, but we don't really have a rival to the Corvette ready, and...."
"We're not going after the Corvette. We're going after Ferrari." He paused. "And we're gonna destroy him. Everywhere they race their sports cars, we're gonna too. Here, Europe, Australia, Latin America. We're gonna stick that thoroughbreds comment straight up his ass." A sip of his drink. "The Mustang, the Cobra, that's where it starts. But we're gonna become a company that builds cars that
race and win, no matter where it is."
Iacocca spoke first. "A big ask, Hank, do you think we can...."
"We've faced greater enemies before and defeated them. You don't think we can do this too, Lee?"
"Its not a matter of whether we can Sir, but I don't need to tell you such an endeavor will be very costly."
"General Motors isn't giving us much choice. And beyond that, every one of us got mad when we heard of that Pasta-monkey's comments. Is there anyone else that doesn't want to destroy him?" He didn't have to look very hard at his men, as he knew the answer already. "The GT40, that's our tool, that's what we're gonna use to pound that prick into the pavement."
Iacocca looked a bit concerned. "Not that the car doesn't have potential, but it hasn't exactly set the world on fire in its Lola form."
Henry nodded at Lee's point. "Correct me if I'm wrong though, that was with a four-cylinder engine. It's gonna have one of our V8s in it now."
"It will, but there will need to be a lot of engineering work to make it right. That's going to be expensive."
Ford showed off a big, devilish grin to his people. "Does it look like I give a fuck? We're going to be committed to dusting that asshole on every continent of the world. Better to make it work right the first time, and if it costs a little more to do so, so be it." A pause. "We're gonna show that bastard what happens when his little thoroughbreds have to fight some big American Clydesdales. And if he thinks we're gonna back down to this challenge, he's gonna be very mistaken."
July 20, 1963
Shelby American Racing Cars, Los Angeles, California
"Jesus, he said that?" Carroll Shelby's disbelief was palpable. "It's not like the Cobra program is any surprise to anyone now, but he's really willing to go that far?"
"Taking a shit on someone's family name doesn't go over any better in America than in Italy, Carroll, you know that." Lee Iacocca smiled. "I seem to recall a time or two of you throwing punches at people for crap like that."
"Guilty as charged." Shelby accepted the point. "First task for us is probably the Cobra Daytona then, isn't it?"
"That and getting the Lola to carry a 289 in the back of it and now twist itself to bits or go flying off the track." Lee smiled. "I got your go-ahead for the test program you wanted."
"Oh, thank you." Shelby hadn't been expecting that, and it pleased him. He listened to Iacocca explain the reasoning for a brief moment, then had a thought.
"Lee, you got a minute?"
"What for?"
"I wanna show you what I have in mind, why I want that test program, so you can take it back to Detroit and tell Hank the Deuce about it."
Iacocca knew if Carroll was wanting to tell Henry something, it was something special. "What have you got for my show and tell then, Carroll?"
A few minutes later, Carroll and Iacocca, along with a number of others, were inspecting one particular Cobra, which Iacocca noticed had its rear bodywork removed, exposing a radically-different rear suspension design. It had coil springs where the previous Cobras had been leaf springs, but what set this one apart was the mountings, as well as what appeared to be hydraulic lines connecting the suspension linkages. Shelby did the show and tell.
"You know how the Corvette has its independent rear suspension thanks to its transaxle, right?" Lee nodded, curious to see where Shelby was going. "We've got a similar arrangement here, a fully-independent coil spring setup with double A-arms and" - he pointed to the hydraulic lines - "hydraulic suspension damping."
"Hydraulic damping?" Iacocca asked. "What's the point of connecting the shock absorbers on both sides of the car if you're making the car have independent rear suspension? Doesn't that kinda defy the point of it?"
A good question, Shelby thought to himself, pleased a suit like Iacocca could make the connection. "The purpose is two fold. The first part is to allow the car to shift more damping to the outside tire of a corner to stiffen the suspension on the loaded side. That way, we can run softer springs for better traction and still have the car have excellent grip."
"And the second?"
"This car's suspension design is meant to adjust the camber of the car. In the corners the hydraulic system will pull the tire in, allowing it to counteract weight transfer, basically making the tire have more contact with the road the harder you corner, which would mean...."
"Better grip on the road when you need all you can get."
"Yes, exactly." A smile. "But there is a real.trick to this, too."
"What's that?"
"The amount of effect the system has is controlled by how much hydraulic line pressure there is, and that's adjustable from the driver's seat." He paused. "It's also independently adjustable for pitch, stiffening it up for smooth roads and softening it for bumpy ones." He smiled. "This is why I want the test program, so we can make the system work properly and get suggested settings for all kinds of roads and tracks. This way, we can make the car stick better than the Corvette or anything Ferrari has ever could."
That statement made a light bulb go off in Iacoccas head. "Could this work on the GT40?" He paused, thinking. "Or other Fords?"
"I don't see why not, but it does require independent suspension to work and...." Carroll connected the dots. "Oh, right."
"Yeah, that car." Iacocca smiled. "Could it?"
"Assuming it uses independent rear suspension as well as in the front, I don't see why not." A pause. "But didn't we already sort out for the Mustang that...."
"Yes we did, but that says nothing about the car in the future, does it?" A smile. "If it works on the race cars, would you develop it for the vehicles?"
"Give the resources and we can make it work on anything." Shelby said confidently.
"This time next week I may be holding you to that promise, Carroll."
"You go right ahead and do that." A big smile escaped the Texan's face. "I'm all for finding unfair advantages."
"I was hoping you'd say that."
Ford Motor Company World Headquarters, Dearborn, Michigan
"That two-timing bastard." Henry Ford II growled deeply at the group of men in his office. "He used us."
"Yes, Sir, it appears he did." Lee Iacocca was just as mad as his boss, but then again it wasn't his family getting spit on by Enzo Ferrari. "Sir, I don't need to tell you that that isn't true in the slightest, what they say about us being incapable of making sports cars." Both men knew what was less than a year away, and was a direct response to the car introduced at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle the year before. "Enzo is gonna get a surprise in a few months about Ford and fun cars."
Henry looked out the windows, his mind focused. He didn't need to be told about how good his company's management staff was, and Ford, a veteran of World War II who had almost singlehandedly rescued an empire from the failings of his dying father and the thugs, the likes of Charles Sorensen and Harry Bennett, guided it through a world change, the energy crisis and the ever-growing competition from General Motors, which was instigating design wars, Chrysler and American Motors, which had scored a grand slam in the AMC Javelin, which was selling faster than the company could produce them.
Ford had wanted to work with Ferrari because Henry Ford respected Enzo Ferrari....well, had respected him. Both were empire builders, and Ford had the assets to allow Ferrari to race anywhere.
But this....this to Henry Ford II, Hank the Deuce to many who knew him, this was personal. Ferrari's using of Ford to get a better deal out of Fiat, well, that was just business.
But saying Ford could never build a thoroughbred....all right Enzo, you're gonna learn about American thoroughbreds.
And you're gonna learn about them when they bury you under the front stretch at Le Mans.
Ford turned back to the lively room filled with his top lieutenants, their discussion heated but not angry. All knew what Ferrari had said. All wanted payback.
"Gentlemen."
The conversation stopped and the room turned to look at Henry, who picked up and sipped a drink, then spoke.
"We have a problem in a way. We have the boys on Woodward starting a war of design, and the Corvette is proof. They're taking that thing racing too, and we know AMC is gonna race the Javelin too. It's time we joined them."
Bunky Knudsen spoke first. "I agree Sir, but we don't really have a rival to the Corvette ready, and...."
"We're not going after the Corvette. We're going after Ferrari." He paused. "And we're gonna destroy him. Everywhere they race their sports cars, we're gonna too. Here, Europe, Australia, Latin America. We're gonna stick that thoroughbreds comment straight up his ass." A sip of his drink. "The Mustang, the Cobra, that's where it starts. But we're gonna become a company that builds cars that
race and win, no matter where it is."
Iacocca spoke first. "A big ask, Hank, do you think we can...."
"We've faced greater enemies before and defeated them. You don't think we can do this too, Lee?"
"Its not a matter of whether we can Sir, but I don't need to tell you such an endeavor will be very costly."
"General Motors isn't giving us much choice. And beyond that, every one of us got mad when we heard of that Pasta-monkey's comments. Is there anyone else that doesn't want to destroy him?" He didn't have to look very hard at his men, as he knew the answer already. "The GT40, that's our tool, that's what we're gonna use to pound that prick into the pavement."
Iacocca looked a bit concerned. "Not that the car doesn't have potential, but it hasn't exactly set the world on fire in its Lola form."
Henry nodded at Lee's point. "Correct me if I'm wrong though, that was with a four-cylinder engine. It's gonna have one of our V8s in it now."
"It will, but there will need to be a lot of engineering work to make it right. That's going to be expensive."
Ford showed off a big, devilish grin to his people. "Does it look like I give a fuck? We're going to be committed to dusting that asshole on every continent of the world. Better to make it work right the first time, and if it costs a little more to do so, so be it." A pause. "We're gonna show that bastard what happens when his little thoroughbreds have to fight some big American Clydesdales. And if he thinks we're gonna back down to this challenge, he's gonna be very mistaken."
July 20, 1963
Shelby American Racing Cars, Los Angeles, California
"Jesus, he said that?" Carroll Shelby's disbelief was palpable. "It's not like the Cobra program is any surprise to anyone now, but he's really willing to go that far?"
"Taking a shit on someone's family name doesn't go over any better in America than in Italy, Carroll, you know that." Lee Iacocca smiled. "I seem to recall a time or two of you throwing punches at people for crap like that."
"Guilty as charged." Shelby accepted the point. "First task for us is probably the Cobra Daytona then, isn't it?"
"That and getting the Lola to carry a 289 in the back of it and now twist itself to bits or go flying off the track." Lee smiled. "I got your go-ahead for the test program you wanted."
"Oh, thank you." Shelby hadn't been expecting that, and it pleased him. He listened to Iacocca explain the reasoning for a brief moment, then had a thought.
"Lee, you got a minute?"
"What for?"
"I wanna show you what I have in mind, why I want that test program, so you can take it back to Detroit and tell Hank the Deuce about it."
Iacocca knew if Carroll was wanting to tell Henry something, it was something special. "What have you got for my show and tell then, Carroll?"
A few minutes later, Carroll and Iacocca, along with a number of others, were inspecting one particular Cobra, which Iacocca noticed had its rear bodywork removed, exposing a radically-different rear suspension design. It had coil springs where the previous Cobras had been leaf springs, but what set this one apart was the mountings, as well as what appeared to be hydraulic lines connecting the suspension linkages. Shelby did the show and tell.
"You know how the Corvette has its independent rear suspension thanks to its transaxle, right?" Lee nodded, curious to see where Shelby was going. "We've got a similar arrangement here, a fully-independent coil spring setup with double A-arms and" - he pointed to the hydraulic lines - "hydraulic suspension damping."
"Hydraulic damping?" Iacocca asked. "What's the point of connecting the shock absorbers on both sides of the car if you're making the car have independent rear suspension? Doesn't that kinda defy the point of it?"
A good question, Shelby thought to himself, pleased a suit like Iacocca could make the connection. "The purpose is two fold. The first part is to allow the car to shift more damping to the outside tire of a corner to stiffen the suspension on the loaded side. That way, we can run softer springs for better traction and still have the car have excellent grip."
"And the second?"
"This car's suspension design is meant to adjust the camber of the car. In the corners the hydraulic system will pull the tire in, allowing it to counteract weight transfer, basically making the tire have more contact with the road the harder you corner, which would mean...."
"Better grip on the road when you need all you can get."
"Yes, exactly." A smile. "But there is a real.trick to this, too."
"What's that?"
"The amount of effect the system has is controlled by how much hydraulic line pressure there is, and that's adjustable from the driver's seat." He paused. "It's also independently adjustable for pitch, stiffening it up for smooth roads and softening it for bumpy ones." He smiled. "This is why I want the test program, so we can make the system work properly and get suggested settings for all kinds of roads and tracks. This way, we can make the car stick better than the Corvette or anything Ferrari has ever could."
That statement made a light bulb go off in Iacoccas head. "Could this work on the GT40?" He paused, thinking. "Or other Fords?"
"I don't see why not, but it does require independent suspension to work and...." Carroll connected the dots. "Oh, right."
"Yeah, that car." Iacocca smiled. "Could it?"
"Assuming it uses independent rear suspension as well as in the front, I don't see why not." A pause. "But didn't we already sort out for the Mustang that...."
"Yes we did, but that says nothing about the car in the future, does it?" A smile. "If it works on the race cars, would you develop it for the vehicles?"
"Give the resources and we can make it work on anything." Shelby said confidently.
"This time next week I may be holding you to that promise, Carroll."
"You go right ahead and do that." A big smile escaped the Texan's face. "I'm all for finding unfair advantages."
"I was hoping you'd say that."
I'd love to see it. Can you PM it to one of the three of us so we can make sure it fits? If it does, have at it. 🙂
We're now posting some pop-culture vignettes (preapproved, of course). Here's another:
The Beatles
In a small office room in the London offices of NEMS Enterprises, London, England, in the wee hours of a Wednesday in May 1966, the office lights were on. A visitor to this office would have been greeted with a most unexpected sight: Brian Epstein, the manager of the Beatles, seated at a desk, and two members of the world's most popular musical act, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, both sitting on the floor, all three of them going through a stack of Beatles albums and carefully writing down the names of the songs listed on the album covers.
What prompted this task - one which Epstein and the two Beatles had decided it was one they needed to perform personally, and not delegate to an office worker - was a request from Capitol Records which had finally pushed the group into taking action on something that had for years irritated them.
In the early months of 1964, a huge push from Capitol had, after several earlier failed attempts, broken the Beatles in America - their current single, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," had spent seven weeks at Number One in the States, and Beatlemania had crossed the Atlantic in full force. Capitol, the American arm of the Beatles' British label, EMI, hot on the heels of the single had released their second British album, With the Beatles - retitled Meet the Beatles for the American market - and it too had dominated the LP chart. But it wasn't the same as the British release.
In Britain at that time, there were virtually no radio stations that played rock and roll. The government-owned BBC, which by definition had to be all things to all people, confined rock and roll to a few hours on Saturday. This of course was in contrast to America's plethora of local commercial radio stations, many of which played pop music only.
This meant that in America, sales of records were driven by the radio; American teenagers would never buy an album, the conventional wisdom went at the time, that didn't include a hit single they'd heard on the radio. In Britain, it was the opposite; record sales were driven more by word of mouth, so British teenagers would resent buying an album that included singles they already owned on 45s; they wanted all-new material on albums. Until 1967 or so it was considered very bad form in Britain to include albums on singles. This meant that "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was not a track on With the Beatles.
Furthermore, some of the songs on With the Beatles were covers of recent American hits like "Please Mr. Postman," and Capitol had feared that American teenagers would find them old-hat, an important consideration for a group trying to break through from Britain, from which no group had yet successfully made it in America. So Capitol decided to solve the problem by leaving some of the cover versions off the retitled Meet the Beatles and instead putting "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and its British and American B-sides (respectively, "This Boy" and "I Saw Her Standing There") on the album.
This had planted an idea in the mind of Dave Dexter, the head of international A&R for Capitol. Dexter was a jazz fan who hated rock and roll and didn't much like the Beatles either musically or personally. But he did like money, and it occurred to him to take the leftover cover versions, a recent British EP, and some older singles like "She Loves You" that had flopped in America before being revived by the January 1964 Beatlemania explosion, remix them, and slam them together into a new album called (with cynicism) The Beatles' Second Album. Capitol ended up making double the profits it would have made from just one hit album - and a tradition of tampering with British releases was born.
For just about every release since then, Dexter had applied the same formula: take the British album, cut it in half, throw some singles onto it, and voila, the cigar smoke clears to reveal two new albums instead of one. Dexter's remixes were often more atmospheric than the original mix, but he cared not a whit for the fact that the resulting albums were often so short they could have fit on side of a vinyl album (and were thus a ripoff to the fans), nor for the fact that he was interfering with the careful work the Beatles had put into sequencing the albums to sound exactly they way they wanted them to sound. In Dexter's view, rock and roll was trash anyway, so what difference did it make?
Other record companies picked up on the idea as the British Invasion spread beyond the Beatles, and all the new British bands - the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Animals, the Yardbirds, you name it - were plagued by the same efforts on the part of their record companies to squeeze extra releases out of their work.
But as the Beatles' work had grown more sophisticated through records like late 1965's Rubber Soul, Dexter's kind of disdain became harder and harder to justify. And the Beatles themselves, as their artistry grew, got to be more and more impatient with Capitol's interference.
The argument finally hit the fan in late spring 1966. The Beatles' summer US tour was upcoming, and Dexter had decided a new release was appropriate, to be titled Yesterday and Today ("Yesterday," an album track only in England, had been released separately as a single in the US; now it was time for it to feature on an album, Dexter had decided). But, even with leftover tracks and singles Dexter had held back from Help! and Rubber Soul in their British versions, the album was still too short by three songs.
The group was working on a new album, and Dexter, upon learning that three new songs were finished for the upcoming album (to be titled Revolver), sent a message to EMI in London to have the tapes flown to America to be included on the new album.
However [OOC: here's our butterfly], Paul White, Dexter's counterpart in Capitol Canada, but a hip transplanted Brit who was much more sympathetic to the Beatles and to rock and roll, got wind of this request from a friend in the London offices, and promptly told Epstein, who told his band. The lads were duly outraged - here they were trying to make Revolver a real statement of how far they had come musically, and here was Dexter disassembling the album before it was even finished.
A phone call from Epstein to Dexter indicated that the new album was short by three tracks; what the hell, Dexter insisted, was he supposed to do? And so this had prompted the late-night session: Epstein, John, and Paul had sat down with carefully-obtained stacks of all of their British and American releases to date, and carefully compared each and every track to see whether or not every song they'd released up until then had made it onto an album.
That Friday, Epstein called Dexter back, this time with John and Paul on the line. They were ready for him: if Dexter really needed three tracks, they said, their brand-new single, with the A-side "Paperback Writer" and the B-side "Rain", would provide two; and a 1965 B-side, "I'm Down", hadn't made it onto any album to date. Dexter, a bit sheepishly, admitted that he'd been intending to hold the new single for the NEXT release, and that "I'm Down" had simply been forgotten about. But he refused to budge, and the call ended with no resolution.
That is, until Monday. Dexter's secretary told him he had a call on the line: Sir Joseph Lockwood, the chairman and chief executive officer of EMI.
"Sir Joseph!" Dexter said cheerily, but with his shaky voice giving away his nervousness. "How are you?"
"David," Lockwood said curtly. This was obviously not going to be a friendly call, Dexter quickly realized.
"David," Lockwood said, in clipped tones, "you are of course aware that the Beatles represent EMI's most successful musical act?"
"Oh, absolutely," Dexter said, "I'd have to be a fool to..."
Lockwood cut him off. "And of course you do realize that therefore, the Beatles represent a very large source of income to EMI?"
"Yes," Dexter said nervously, now afraid to speak too much. It was crystal clear where Lockwood was going. But Lockwood was determined to dress Dexter down.
"And you do realize that the lads' contract with EMI is due for renewal at the end of this year?" Dexter assented.
"And of course you do understand that EMI should be very keen to continue our relationship with the Beatles, which means that we should be quite keen to avoid antagonizing them...because the slightest hint that they are unhappy with us would immediately lead to overtures from Decca, Pye, HMV, and American labels like Columbia , RCA, Warners and the like...do you not?"
"Uh, yes, Mr. Lockwood...."
"And you do understand clearly," Lockwood said icily, coming to his point, "that a loss of the Beatles due to problems with Capitol would lead us at EMI to decide that certain personnel changes might be necessary in the Capitol offices?"
"The Beatles will have no problems with us," Dexter said hoarsely.
"See that they don't," Lockwood snapped, and hung up.
A quick phone call to Epstein created an agreement. Yesterday and Today would be released to include "Paperback Writer," "Rain," and "I'm Down." The three new tracks - "I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing", and "Dr. Robert" - would be held for Revolver, as the Beatles intended. All future Beatles albums would be released as the group intended. Dexter did win one small concession from Epstein and the group: with the British record market changing, they would in the future be OK with including their singles on their albums to begin with, or to allow periodic compilation albums for those that were not.
Yesterday and Today was released in June, with an admittedly blah cover shot of the Beatles grouped around a trunk - the Beatles had done a surrealistic photo shoot wearing butcher smocks and holding baby dolls and slabs of meat, but Paul had urged the group to forego using that as the album cover after Dexter's surrender - let's not poke the poor guy more than necessary, he insisted. Revolver would be held in the US until November release. The group began their 1966 tour around the same time. It was to be their last tour for five years.
--
The irony of the Beatles' pledge to Dave Dexter was that in 1967 the first single they issued ended up on their next album, though it was not originally planned that way.
Along with the Allied victory in the Vietnam War and the Summer of Love, 1967 was also the year the Beach Boys released Smile, their masterpiece, in April. The Beatles were duly impressed by the record - so much so, in fact, that they felt that their own under-construction masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, felt a bit thin in comparison. Paul, in particular, backed by producer George Martin, felt the album needed some beefing up. So it was decided to include "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the album, even though those two songs had already been issued as a single in February. This meant Sgt. Pepper wouldn't be all-new, to the chagrin of both John and Paul, but it would at least sound better side by side with Smile.
So one song, "She's Leaving Home," was abandoned, never to be returned to by the group; while another, "When I'm 64," was set aside for the next LP. The addition of "Strawberry Fields Forever" had also the side effect of adding another Lennon track to the heavily McCartney-dominated album.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released June 1967
Side One:
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
With a Little Help from My Friends
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Getting Better
Fixing a Hole
Strawberry Fields Forever
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Side Two:
Within You Without You
Penny Lane
Lovely Rita
Good Morning, Good Morning
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise)
A Day in the LIfe
Meanwhile, the November 1966 release of Revolver, which had included "Yellow Submarine" (released as a single in the US as well, where it reached Number One in December), had inspired the commencement of work on a psychedelic animated feature to serve as the Beatles' next film, prompted by a 3 am phone call from John Lennon to one of the creative minds at King Features: "Wouldn't it be great if Ringo were followed down the street by a yellow submarine?" The Beatles needed to make another film anyway to fulfill their contract with United Artists, and they liked the idea of doing voiceovers for an animated feature, as it would save them the trouble of going outside of a studio to record their lines.
However, Brian Epstein did some checking and came back to the boys with some bad news: the contract would require at least 25 percent of the content of the film to be live-action; animation alone would not do. Briefly they all thought of scrapping the animated film, but then George Harrison had the brainstorm of suggesting that the Beatles film some live-action sequences that could be mixed in with the story, making the film an unusual experiment for the time - a mixed live-action and animated movie.
Paul had written a song, "Magical Mystery Tour," that was too late for Sgt. Pepper; but he suggested that somehow a storyline could be woven around it. Paul's original idea was to emulate the Merry Pranksters, a group of California acid-heads led by Ken Kesey who had traveled around in a psychedelic-painted bus in 1965 filming whatever they saw. Epstein suggested that Paul watch the Prankster's film sober instead of stoned; when he did, he realized how boring it was, and agreed with Epstein that a proper screenwriter should work on the Beatles' animated sequences.
The resulting story began with the animation, wherein we were introduced to a world of peace and love called "Pepperland," which had been taken over the Red Meanies (widely believed to be an allusion to the Soviet Communists). Old Fred had fled in the Yellow Submarine to try to find help. Then the live-action sequence began with the Beatles boarding a Mystery Tour in Liverpool (a common British pastime, where travelers would take a day trip to an unannounced destination). The trip quickly turns into a "Magical Mystery Tour", in the course of which the Beatles encounter Old Fred, who has come to them for help. The Beatles - transformed into their animated versions - return with Old Fred to Pepperland, break the rule of the Red Meanies, and restore Pepperland to peace and love.
The resulting film was titled Yellow Submarine: A Magical Mystery Tour. It was the perfect Christmastime 1967 release to cap off the year of the Summer of Love, and it received wide acclaim for both its (trippy and groovy) animated and live-action sequences, both of which featured the Beatles' music. A soundtrack album was released as well:
Yellow Submarine, released December 1967
Side One:
Magical Mystery Tour
The Fool on the Hill
Flying
Blue Jay Way
Your Mother Should Know
I Am the Walrus
Side Two:
Yellow Submarine
Only a Northern Song
When I'm 64
All Together Now
Hey Bulldog
It's All Too Much
The Beatles also released two non-album singles in 1967. One was their Summer of Love anthem, "All You Need Is Love," backed with "Baby You're a Rich Man" on the flip side. Then, with the Beatles, encouraged by George Harrison, having discovered the joys of transcendental meditation, John Lennon had written one of his most beautiful songs, "Across the Universe." Paul, for one, was impressed enough by the song that he declared it should be the next single, and he put a great deal of work into it, adding vocal harmonies and a stunning bass guitar solo at the end, while George added both sitar and wah-wah guitar to the song. John was deeply pleased at his mates' contributions (Paul was happy that John was happy, as it had felt as though John's commitment to the group was beginning to waver), and everyone was pleased that the Beatles had squared the difficult circle of creating a song about a religious/spiritual experience that managed to be both majestic enough to evoke the awe of such an experience and to be gentle enough to convey the peace and serenity of being in such a moment. "Across the Universe" was the group's December 1967 single release, with Paul's "Hello Goodbye" on the B-side (John particularly appreciated this gesture, since Paul's more-commercial songs were usually picked for the A-sides of the group's singles).
The tragic death of Brian Epstein in late August 1967, meanwhile, while it didn't derail the Yellow Submarine project, made the group deeply apprehensive about their futures. They had begun the process of setting up their own company, originally as a means of reducing their tax bill but eventually with the idea that they could promote other creative artists with it, to be called "Apple Corps" (after a Magritte painting Paul had purchased). The plans for Apple threatened to come undone without clarity as to who would be in charge. The Beatles would act as Apple's board of directors, but the idea, floated briefly by Paul, that they handle the business themselves was scotched by the other three - they had no interest, aptitude, or desire to become businessmen. It was clear that they needed to hire a manager. And it was at this point, in early 1968, that the figure of Allen Klein entered their lives.
--
Allen Klein wasn't the type of hipster that formed the stereotype of the rock music manager. A fat, dumpy accountant, he lacked both the urbane sophistication of a Brian Epstein or Kit Lambert and the "cool" factor of Kinks manager Ian Lawson and the Yardbirds' later manager, Peter Grant. Klein, however, was very good at forcing money out of record companies, and that made him very well liked by his clients. That far more of that money than was appropriate found its way into Klein's pockets was generally something that his artists found out only later.
Klein had long dreamed of managing the Beatles, and had tried to strike a deal with Epstein, but the normally polite Epstein had refused even to shake Klein's hand when they met. Klein, who had previously managed the late soul singer Sam Cooke, scored a number of British Invasion consolation-prize clients - Herman's Hermits, Donovan, finally the Rolling Stones - but his ultimate goal remained the Beatles, and when Epstein died in August 1967, Klein was sure his opportunity had come. When a contact told Klein in December that he'd overheard John Lennon remark in a group of people "unless we get someone to manage [Apple], we're fucked," he wasted no time in flying to London to present his credentials.
Paul McCartney was ambivalent; from the start, there was something about Klein that didn't feel right. But the Rolling Stones spoke well of him, and besides, Paul had no alternative candidates. The group had talked of approaching Lord Beeching, notorious for applying the "Beeching axe" in a major cutback of British Rail services, but no one was sure whether he would be interested in running a music-film-publishing company (he wasn't). Robert Stigwood, the Australian impresario behind the Bee Gees, had approached the group; but the Beatles were unimpressed with the Bee Gees, who at that time tried to emulate the Beatles' own sound, and they'd heard enough bad things about Stigwood that they wanted no part of him. Paul wasn't yet seeing his future wife, Linda Eastman; in fact, at the end of 1967 he and actress Jane Asher had announced their engagement. Paul would end up marrying Linda instead, and would seek to get his classy new father-in-law, Lee Eastman, at that time involved in Apple (he became general counsel); but in January 1968 Lee Eastman wasn't yet on Paul's radar. So, reluctantly, he went along with the rest of the group, hiring Klein to serve as the group's personal manager and as CEO of Apple Corps.
Klein kept a tight rein at Apple. The Beatles made it clear they were interested in new musicians, filmmakers, writers, artists - anyone creative - but Klein insisted on running a traditional A&R department to sort through the inevitable deluge of submissions that would arrive at the Beatles' doorstep. The Beatles were free, of course, to carry on whatever nonsense they pleased, but Klein kept the staff on a short leash regarding expenses and made sure that random hangers-on were chased out of the offices on Savile Row without getting a change to mooch off the Beatles.
Klein delegated his authority: Ron Kass was put in charge of the Records division, Dennis O'Dell in charge of Films, Neil Aspinall in charge of Music Publishing, Peter Brown in charge of Books. An Apple Foundation for the Arts was also promised, though Klein kept putting it off. "Magic Alex" Mardas, a crony who had weaseled his way into the Beatles' confidence, had likewise been promised an Apple Electronics division on the basis of his claim to be an electronics expert. Klein told him to submit some prototypes; when he kept failing to do so but kept asking for money, Klein cut him loose, his protests to Lennon and McCartney unavailing.
Apple seemed to be in good hands, so the Beatles were content to let Klein run the show. At this point, they didn't ask too many questions about the money.
After releasing the single "Lady Madonna" backed with "The Inner Light" in February 1968, the group went off to India for a several-weeks-long course on transcendental meditation run by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The group came back discouraged; Lennon in particular felt let down at not having received an immediate answer that would make him blissfully happy. (He had yet to learn that spirituality is a journey, not an overnight thing.)
They had written a large pile of new songs in India, though, due to the lack of distraction, and they set about working on their next album once they arrived back in London. Originally they planned on releasing much of their new work as a double album, but George Martin convinced them to winnow the record down to a single LP, completed for release in October and titled A Doll's House [OOC: I'm assuming the British group Family split up before recording Music from a Doll's House in TTL, so the Beatles didn't feel compelled to change the album title; they also used the originally-intended artwork: https://jiggy22.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-beatles-dolls-house-alternate.html]
A Doll's House, released October 1968:
Side One:
Back in the USSR
Dear Prudence
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
I'm So Tired
Rocky Raccoon
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Side Two:
Birthday
Yer Blues
Blackbird
Sexy Sadie
Long Long Long
Helter Skelter
Good Night
In contrast to the previous three albums of freewheeling psychedelic experimentalism, A Doll's House was a return to more straight-ahead rock and roll, with out-and-out rockers like "Birthday" and "Helter Skelter" interspersed with meditative acoustic-guitar-dominated pieces like "Long Long Long" and "Blackbird."
Two singles were also released separately from the album. In May ,the group issued "Revolution," John's insistence - after watching news reports of rioting in France - that changing the world should be a matter of "free[ing] your mind" rather than violence; "When you talk about destruction/Don't you know you can count me out." The hard rocker had as its B-side "Savoy Truffle," a sardonic, soulful number from George.
Then, in August, Paul's stunning "Hey Jude" was released as the second single, with George's "Not Guilty" on the flip side. "Hey Jude," a truly stirring anthem about finding strength from each other and supporting one another, topped the charts for most of the fall of 1968.
But the recording sessions had not been without problems. Some of those stemmed from the restlessness of George Harrison. A junior partner in the group, he was now writing songs as prodigiously as John and Paul, and they were getting better and better. He was becoming frustrated at his lack of an outlet.
Also, somehow the India experience seemed to have scrambled the group's communications. All of them later said they felt alienated from one another during the Doll's House sessions. Communication seemed weak within the group.
But the biggest problem of all was John's new girlfriend.
Yoko Ono was known in the avant-garde community of New York well before she came to London in 1966, with the express purpose of latching onto the Beatles, hoping to get them to finance her art projects. She was known, but not respected; at a party once, when another person asked famed pop artist Andy Warhol about her, he answered, "Oh, yeah, her. She's always around. She's always stealing other people's ideas."
Yoko, who was twice divorced, had set her sights originally on Paul, but upon receiving a cold shoulder had focused on John instead. She had chosen her target well. John resisted her at first, but he was very unhappy in his marriage to the former Cynthia Powell and felt as though he were stuck at home while the art explosion of the Sixties was passing him by - in contrast to Paul, who was always at the latest art shows and galleries. Yoko, who was quirky if nothing else, seemed to promise John a means of breaking free of the box he felt he was in. Around May 1968, when he got back from India, they finally began a relationship, and John quickly fell deeply in love.
John insisted on having Yoko at his side at all times, which meant that she sat next to him in the Abbey Road studios while the Beatles were working on the album. That itself was not the problem - it was the fact that she freely offered suggestions, gave critiques on the songs and performances, even tried to perform herself in her truly unique caterwauling style, that irked the other three Beatles, Paul in particular. It had always been only the four of them, along with George Martin, who made musical decisions; when other musicians played on Beatles records, they did so at the group's and Martin's direction. Now Yoko was nonchalantly inserting herself into the group's working dynamic - and John allowed it to happen, convinced of the brilliant artistic merit of her ideas. The friction this caused with the group threatened to undo all the good that had happened up till then as the Beatles headed into 1969.
(More Beatles to come)
The Beatles
In a small office room in the London offices of NEMS Enterprises, London, England, in the wee hours of a Wednesday in May 1966, the office lights were on. A visitor to this office would have been greeted with a most unexpected sight: Brian Epstein, the manager of the Beatles, seated at a desk, and two members of the world's most popular musical act, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, both sitting on the floor, all three of them going through a stack of Beatles albums and carefully writing down the names of the songs listed on the album covers.
What prompted this task - one which Epstein and the two Beatles had decided it was one they needed to perform personally, and not delegate to an office worker - was a request from Capitol Records which had finally pushed the group into taking action on something that had for years irritated them.
In the early months of 1964, a huge push from Capitol had, after several earlier failed attempts, broken the Beatles in America - their current single, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," had spent seven weeks at Number One in the States, and Beatlemania had crossed the Atlantic in full force. Capitol, the American arm of the Beatles' British label, EMI, hot on the heels of the single had released their second British album, With the Beatles - retitled Meet the Beatles for the American market - and it too had dominated the LP chart. But it wasn't the same as the British release.
In Britain at that time, there were virtually no radio stations that played rock and roll. The government-owned BBC, which by definition had to be all things to all people, confined rock and roll to a few hours on Saturday. This of course was in contrast to America's plethora of local commercial radio stations, many of which played pop music only.
This meant that in America, sales of records were driven by the radio; American teenagers would never buy an album, the conventional wisdom went at the time, that didn't include a hit single they'd heard on the radio. In Britain, it was the opposite; record sales were driven more by word of mouth, so British teenagers would resent buying an album that included singles they already owned on 45s; they wanted all-new material on albums. Until 1967 or so it was considered very bad form in Britain to include albums on singles. This meant that "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was not a track on With the Beatles.
Furthermore, some of the songs on With the Beatles were covers of recent American hits like "Please Mr. Postman," and Capitol had feared that American teenagers would find them old-hat, an important consideration for a group trying to break through from Britain, from which no group had yet successfully made it in America. So Capitol decided to solve the problem by leaving some of the cover versions off the retitled Meet the Beatles and instead putting "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and its British and American B-sides (respectively, "This Boy" and "I Saw Her Standing There") on the album.
This had planted an idea in the mind of Dave Dexter, the head of international A&R for Capitol. Dexter was a jazz fan who hated rock and roll and didn't much like the Beatles either musically or personally. But he did like money, and it occurred to him to take the leftover cover versions, a recent British EP, and some older singles like "She Loves You" that had flopped in America before being revived by the January 1964 Beatlemania explosion, remix them, and slam them together into a new album called (with cynicism) The Beatles' Second Album. Capitol ended up making double the profits it would have made from just one hit album - and a tradition of tampering with British releases was born.
For just about every release since then, Dexter had applied the same formula: take the British album, cut it in half, throw some singles onto it, and voila, the cigar smoke clears to reveal two new albums instead of one. Dexter's remixes were often more atmospheric than the original mix, but he cared not a whit for the fact that the resulting albums were often so short they could have fit on side of a vinyl album (and were thus a ripoff to the fans), nor for the fact that he was interfering with the careful work the Beatles had put into sequencing the albums to sound exactly they way they wanted them to sound. In Dexter's view, rock and roll was trash anyway, so what difference did it make?
Other record companies picked up on the idea as the British Invasion spread beyond the Beatles, and all the new British bands - the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Animals, the Yardbirds, you name it - were plagued by the same efforts on the part of their record companies to squeeze extra releases out of their work.
But as the Beatles' work had grown more sophisticated through records like late 1965's Rubber Soul, Dexter's kind of disdain became harder and harder to justify. And the Beatles themselves, as their artistry grew, got to be more and more impatient with Capitol's interference.
The argument finally hit the fan in late spring 1966. The Beatles' summer US tour was upcoming, and Dexter had decided a new release was appropriate, to be titled Yesterday and Today ("Yesterday," an album track only in England, had been released separately as a single in the US; now it was time for it to feature on an album, Dexter had decided). But, even with leftover tracks and singles Dexter had held back from Help! and Rubber Soul in their British versions, the album was still too short by three songs.
The group was working on a new album, and Dexter, upon learning that three new songs were finished for the upcoming album (to be titled Revolver), sent a message to EMI in London to have the tapes flown to America to be included on the new album.
However [OOC: here's our butterfly], Paul White, Dexter's counterpart in Capitol Canada, but a hip transplanted Brit who was much more sympathetic to the Beatles and to rock and roll, got wind of this request from a friend in the London offices, and promptly told Epstein, who told his band. The lads were duly outraged - here they were trying to make Revolver a real statement of how far they had come musically, and here was Dexter disassembling the album before it was even finished.
A phone call from Epstein to Dexter indicated that the new album was short by three tracks; what the hell, Dexter insisted, was he supposed to do? And so this had prompted the late-night session: Epstein, John, and Paul had sat down with carefully-obtained stacks of all of their British and American releases to date, and carefully compared each and every track to see whether or not every song they'd released up until then had made it onto an album.
That Friday, Epstein called Dexter back, this time with John and Paul on the line. They were ready for him: if Dexter really needed three tracks, they said, their brand-new single, with the A-side "Paperback Writer" and the B-side "Rain", would provide two; and a 1965 B-side, "I'm Down", hadn't made it onto any album to date. Dexter, a bit sheepishly, admitted that he'd been intending to hold the new single for the NEXT release, and that "I'm Down" had simply been forgotten about. But he refused to budge, and the call ended with no resolution.
That is, until Monday. Dexter's secretary told him he had a call on the line: Sir Joseph Lockwood, the chairman and chief executive officer of EMI.
"Sir Joseph!" Dexter said cheerily, but with his shaky voice giving away his nervousness. "How are you?"
"David," Lockwood said curtly. This was obviously not going to be a friendly call, Dexter quickly realized.
"David," Lockwood said, in clipped tones, "you are of course aware that the Beatles represent EMI's most successful musical act?"
"Oh, absolutely," Dexter said, "I'd have to be a fool to..."
Lockwood cut him off. "And of course you do realize that therefore, the Beatles represent a very large source of income to EMI?"
"Yes," Dexter said nervously, now afraid to speak too much. It was crystal clear where Lockwood was going. But Lockwood was determined to dress Dexter down.
"And you do realize that the lads' contract with EMI is due for renewal at the end of this year?" Dexter assented.
"And of course you do understand that EMI should be very keen to continue our relationship with the Beatles, which means that we should be quite keen to avoid antagonizing them...because the slightest hint that they are unhappy with us would immediately lead to overtures from Decca, Pye, HMV, and American labels like Columbia , RCA, Warners and the like...do you not?"
"Uh, yes, Mr. Lockwood...."
"And you do understand clearly," Lockwood said icily, coming to his point, "that a loss of the Beatles due to problems with Capitol would lead us at EMI to decide that certain personnel changes might be necessary in the Capitol offices?"
"The Beatles will have no problems with us," Dexter said hoarsely.
"See that they don't," Lockwood snapped, and hung up.
A quick phone call to Epstein created an agreement. Yesterday and Today would be released to include "Paperback Writer," "Rain," and "I'm Down." The three new tracks - "I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing", and "Dr. Robert" - would be held for Revolver, as the Beatles intended. All future Beatles albums would be released as the group intended. Dexter did win one small concession from Epstein and the group: with the British record market changing, they would in the future be OK with including their singles on their albums to begin with, or to allow periodic compilation albums for those that were not.
Yesterday and Today was released in June, with an admittedly blah cover shot of the Beatles grouped around a trunk - the Beatles had done a surrealistic photo shoot wearing butcher smocks and holding baby dolls and slabs of meat, but Paul had urged the group to forego using that as the album cover after Dexter's surrender - let's not poke the poor guy more than necessary, he insisted. Revolver would be held in the US until November release. The group began their 1966 tour around the same time. It was to be their last tour for five years.
--
The irony of the Beatles' pledge to Dave Dexter was that in 1967 the first single they issued ended up on their next album, though it was not originally planned that way.
Along with the Allied victory in the Vietnam War and the Summer of Love, 1967 was also the year the Beach Boys released Smile, their masterpiece, in April. The Beatles were duly impressed by the record - so much so, in fact, that they felt that their own under-construction masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, felt a bit thin in comparison. Paul, in particular, backed by producer George Martin, felt the album needed some beefing up. So it was decided to include "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the album, even though those two songs had already been issued as a single in February. This meant Sgt. Pepper wouldn't be all-new, to the chagrin of both John and Paul, but it would at least sound better side by side with Smile.
So one song, "She's Leaving Home," was abandoned, never to be returned to by the group; while another, "When I'm 64," was set aside for the next LP. The addition of "Strawberry Fields Forever" had also the side effect of adding another Lennon track to the heavily McCartney-dominated album.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released June 1967
Side One:
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
With a Little Help from My Friends
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Getting Better
Fixing a Hole
Strawberry Fields Forever
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Side Two:
Within You Without You
Penny Lane
Lovely Rita
Good Morning, Good Morning
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise)
A Day in the LIfe
Meanwhile, the November 1966 release of Revolver, which had included "Yellow Submarine" (released as a single in the US as well, where it reached Number One in December), had inspired the commencement of work on a psychedelic animated feature to serve as the Beatles' next film, prompted by a 3 am phone call from John Lennon to one of the creative minds at King Features: "Wouldn't it be great if Ringo were followed down the street by a yellow submarine?" The Beatles needed to make another film anyway to fulfill their contract with United Artists, and they liked the idea of doing voiceovers for an animated feature, as it would save them the trouble of going outside of a studio to record their lines.
However, Brian Epstein did some checking and came back to the boys with some bad news: the contract would require at least 25 percent of the content of the film to be live-action; animation alone would not do. Briefly they all thought of scrapping the animated film, but then George Harrison had the brainstorm of suggesting that the Beatles film some live-action sequences that could be mixed in with the story, making the film an unusual experiment for the time - a mixed live-action and animated movie.
Paul had written a song, "Magical Mystery Tour," that was too late for Sgt. Pepper; but he suggested that somehow a storyline could be woven around it. Paul's original idea was to emulate the Merry Pranksters, a group of California acid-heads led by Ken Kesey who had traveled around in a psychedelic-painted bus in 1965 filming whatever they saw. Epstein suggested that Paul watch the Prankster's film sober instead of stoned; when he did, he realized how boring it was, and agreed with Epstein that a proper screenwriter should work on the Beatles' animated sequences.
The resulting story began with the animation, wherein we were introduced to a world of peace and love called "Pepperland," which had been taken over the Red Meanies (widely believed to be an allusion to the Soviet Communists). Old Fred had fled in the Yellow Submarine to try to find help. Then the live-action sequence began with the Beatles boarding a Mystery Tour in Liverpool (a common British pastime, where travelers would take a day trip to an unannounced destination). The trip quickly turns into a "Magical Mystery Tour", in the course of which the Beatles encounter Old Fred, who has come to them for help. The Beatles - transformed into their animated versions - return with Old Fred to Pepperland, break the rule of the Red Meanies, and restore Pepperland to peace and love.
The resulting film was titled Yellow Submarine: A Magical Mystery Tour. It was the perfect Christmastime 1967 release to cap off the year of the Summer of Love, and it received wide acclaim for both its (trippy and groovy) animated and live-action sequences, both of which featured the Beatles' music. A soundtrack album was released as well:
Yellow Submarine, released December 1967
Side One:
Magical Mystery Tour
The Fool on the Hill
Flying
Blue Jay Way
Your Mother Should Know
I Am the Walrus
Side Two:
Yellow Submarine
Only a Northern Song
When I'm 64
All Together Now
Hey Bulldog
It's All Too Much
The Beatles also released two non-album singles in 1967. One was their Summer of Love anthem, "All You Need Is Love," backed with "Baby You're a Rich Man" on the flip side. Then, with the Beatles, encouraged by George Harrison, having discovered the joys of transcendental meditation, John Lennon had written one of his most beautiful songs, "Across the Universe." Paul, for one, was impressed enough by the song that he declared it should be the next single, and he put a great deal of work into it, adding vocal harmonies and a stunning bass guitar solo at the end, while George added both sitar and wah-wah guitar to the song. John was deeply pleased at his mates' contributions (Paul was happy that John was happy, as it had felt as though John's commitment to the group was beginning to waver), and everyone was pleased that the Beatles had squared the difficult circle of creating a song about a religious/spiritual experience that managed to be both majestic enough to evoke the awe of such an experience and to be gentle enough to convey the peace and serenity of being in such a moment. "Across the Universe" was the group's December 1967 single release, with Paul's "Hello Goodbye" on the B-side (John particularly appreciated this gesture, since Paul's more-commercial songs were usually picked for the A-sides of the group's singles).
The tragic death of Brian Epstein in late August 1967, meanwhile, while it didn't derail the Yellow Submarine project, made the group deeply apprehensive about their futures. They had begun the process of setting up their own company, originally as a means of reducing their tax bill but eventually with the idea that they could promote other creative artists with it, to be called "Apple Corps" (after a Magritte painting Paul had purchased). The plans for Apple threatened to come undone without clarity as to who would be in charge. The Beatles would act as Apple's board of directors, but the idea, floated briefly by Paul, that they handle the business themselves was scotched by the other three - they had no interest, aptitude, or desire to become businessmen. It was clear that they needed to hire a manager. And it was at this point, in early 1968, that the figure of Allen Klein entered their lives.
--
Allen Klein wasn't the type of hipster that formed the stereotype of the rock music manager. A fat, dumpy accountant, he lacked both the urbane sophistication of a Brian Epstein or Kit Lambert and the "cool" factor of Kinks manager Ian Lawson and the Yardbirds' later manager, Peter Grant. Klein, however, was very good at forcing money out of record companies, and that made him very well liked by his clients. That far more of that money than was appropriate found its way into Klein's pockets was generally something that his artists found out only later.
Klein had long dreamed of managing the Beatles, and had tried to strike a deal with Epstein, but the normally polite Epstein had refused even to shake Klein's hand when they met. Klein, who had previously managed the late soul singer Sam Cooke, scored a number of British Invasion consolation-prize clients - Herman's Hermits, Donovan, finally the Rolling Stones - but his ultimate goal remained the Beatles, and when Epstein died in August 1967, Klein was sure his opportunity had come. When a contact told Klein in December that he'd overheard John Lennon remark in a group of people "unless we get someone to manage [Apple], we're fucked," he wasted no time in flying to London to present his credentials.
Paul McCartney was ambivalent; from the start, there was something about Klein that didn't feel right. But the Rolling Stones spoke well of him, and besides, Paul had no alternative candidates. The group had talked of approaching Lord Beeching, notorious for applying the "Beeching axe" in a major cutback of British Rail services, but no one was sure whether he would be interested in running a music-film-publishing company (he wasn't). Robert Stigwood, the Australian impresario behind the Bee Gees, had approached the group; but the Beatles were unimpressed with the Bee Gees, who at that time tried to emulate the Beatles' own sound, and they'd heard enough bad things about Stigwood that they wanted no part of him. Paul wasn't yet seeing his future wife, Linda Eastman; in fact, at the end of 1967 he and actress Jane Asher had announced their engagement. Paul would end up marrying Linda instead, and would seek to get his classy new father-in-law, Lee Eastman, at that time involved in Apple (he became general counsel); but in January 1968 Lee Eastman wasn't yet on Paul's radar. So, reluctantly, he went along with the rest of the group, hiring Klein to serve as the group's personal manager and as CEO of Apple Corps.
Klein kept a tight rein at Apple. The Beatles made it clear they were interested in new musicians, filmmakers, writers, artists - anyone creative - but Klein insisted on running a traditional A&R department to sort through the inevitable deluge of submissions that would arrive at the Beatles' doorstep. The Beatles were free, of course, to carry on whatever nonsense they pleased, but Klein kept the staff on a short leash regarding expenses and made sure that random hangers-on were chased out of the offices on Savile Row without getting a change to mooch off the Beatles.
Klein delegated his authority: Ron Kass was put in charge of the Records division, Dennis O'Dell in charge of Films, Neil Aspinall in charge of Music Publishing, Peter Brown in charge of Books. An Apple Foundation for the Arts was also promised, though Klein kept putting it off. "Magic Alex" Mardas, a crony who had weaseled his way into the Beatles' confidence, had likewise been promised an Apple Electronics division on the basis of his claim to be an electronics expert. Klein told him to submit some prototypes; when he kept failing to do so but kept asking for money, Klein cut him loose, his protests to Lennon and McCartney unavailing.
Apple seemed to be in good hands, so the Beatles were content to let Klein run the show. At this point, they didn't ask too many questions about the money.
After releasing the single "Lady Madonna" backed with "The Inner Light" in February 1968, the group went off to India for a several-weeks-long course on transcendental meditation run by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The group came back discouraged; Lennon in particular felt let down at not having received an immediate answer that would make him blissfully happy. (He had yet to learn that spirituality is a journey, not an overnight thing.)
They had written a large pile of new songs in India, though, due to the lack of distraction, and they set about working on their next album once they arrived back in London. Originally they planned on releasing much of their new work as a double album, but George Martin convinced them to winnow the record down to a single LP, completed for release in October and titled A Doll's House [OOC: I'm assuming the British group Family split up before recording Music from a Doll's House in TTL, so the Beatles didn't feel compelled to change the album title; they also used the originally-intended artwork: https://jiggy22.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-beatles-dolls-house-alternate.html]
A Doll's House, released October 1968:
Side One:
Back in the USSR
Dear Prudence
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
I'm So Tired
Rocky Raccoon
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Side Two:
Birthday
Yer Blues
Blackbird
Sexy Sadie
Long Long Long
Helter Skelter
Good Night
In contrast to the previous three albums of freewheeling psychedelic experimentalism, A Doll's House was a return to more straight-ahead rock and roll, with out-and-out rockers like "Birthday" and "Helter Skelter" interspersed with meditative acoustic-guitar-dominated pieces like "Long Long Long" and "Blackbird."
Two singles were also released separately from the album. In May ,the group issued "Revolution," John's insistence - after watching news reports of rioting in France - that changing the world should be a matter of "free[ing] your mind" rather than violence; "When you talk about destruction/Don't you know you can count me out." The hard rocker had as its B-side "Savoy Truffle," a sardonic, soulful number from George.
Then, in August, Paul's stunning "Hey Jude" was released as the second single, with George's "Not Guilty" on the flip side. "Hey Jude," a truly stirring anthem about finding strength from each other and supporting one another, topped the charts for most of the fall of 1968.
But the recording sessions had not been without problems. Some of those stemmed from the restlessness of George Harrison. A junior partner in the group, he was now writing songs as prodigiously as John and Paul, and they were getting better and better. He was becoming frustrated at his lack of an outlet.
Also, somehow the India experience seemed to have scrambled the group's communications. All of them later said they felt alienated from one another during the Doll's House sessions. Communication seemed weak within the group.
But the biggest problem of all was John's new girlfriend.
Yoko Ono was known in the avant-garde community of New York well before she came to London in 1966, with the express purpose of latching onto the Beatles, hoping to get them to finance her art projects. She was known, but not respected; at a party once, when another person asked famed pop artist Andy Warhol about her, he answered, "Oh, yeah, her. She's always around. She's always stealing other people's ideas."
Yoko, who was twice divorced, had set her sights originally on Paul, but upon receiving a cold shoulder had focused on John instead. She had chosen her target well. John resisted her at first, but he was very unhappy in his marriage to the former Cynthia Powell and felt as though he were stuck at home while the art explosion of the Sixties was passing him by - in contrast to Paul, who was always at the latest art shows and galleries. Yoko, who was quirky if nothing else, seemed to promise John a means of breaking free of the box he felt he was in. Around May 1968, when he got back from India, they finally began a relationship, and John quickly fell deeply in love.
John insisted on having Yoko at his side at all times, which meant that she sat next to him in the Abbey Road studios while the Beatles were working on the album. That itself was not the problem - it was the fact that she freely offered suggestions, gave critiques on the songs and performances, even tried to perform herself in her truly unique caterwauling style, that irked the other three Beatles, Paul in particular. It had always been only the four of them, along with George Martin, who made musical decisions; when other musicians played on Beatles records, they did so at the group's and Martin's direction. Now Yoko was nonchalantly inserting herself into the group's working dynamic - and John allowed it to happen, convinced of the brilliant artistic merit of her ideas. The friction this caused with the group threatened to undo all the good that had happened up till then as the Beatles headed into 1969.
(More Beatles to come)
The Beatles (cont.)
Track listing for Yesterday and Today, 1966:
Side One:
Drive My Car
Nowhere Man
Act Naturally
Rain
Yesterday
I'm Down
Side Two:
Paperback Writer
If I Needed Someone
We Can Work It Out
What Goes On
Day Tripper
The first month of 1969 was the low point of the Beatles' history. The group came very close to splitting up at this time.
Paul had had the idea of doing a "back-to-basics" album - no frills and no psychedelic experimentation, just straightforward music, sharpened by the sophistication the Beatles had attained as musicians over the years. This in and of itself was very appealing to John, who, partially due to Yoko's influence, was thinking in terms of "no bullshit."
But Paul's other ideas which were put into effect in January 1969 were less appealing to the group, John in particular. Paul had proposed that the Beatles be filmed "cinema verite" style working on a new album, which they would then perform live as the climax of the film. So the group found themselves in a soundstage at Twickenham, out of the familiar confines of the Abbey Road Studios, with cameras filming them while they tried to work.
At first the new digs seemed to energize them; John in particular had been urging the group to get out of their Abbey Road "castle" and record in different locations. But the cameras and the fact that they were recording in the daytime, after years of being accustomed to working at night and sleeping during the day, soon made them uncomfortable and irritable. Also, it didn't help that Paul hadn't arranged for a concert venue before the filming started, and the ideas he came up with - an ocean liner, a Roman amphitheater in North Africa - were dismissed by the group as too grandiose. George and Ringo soon proved reluctant about the whole idea of performing live anyway, fearing a return to the madness of Beatlemania. And worst of all, the problems that had arisen during the Doll's House sessions returned with a vengeance: Yoko's constant presence and interference, George's frustration at having an outlet for his work, the overall sense that Paul was ordering everyone around.
George actually quit the group for a few days, until coaxed back by Paul, and John later admitted he considered doing the same. The group finally hammered their way through the sessions until they came up with a usable album. Without a venue for the concert climax, they decided to simply perform their new songs on the roof of the Apple office building in London in an unannounced, impromptu set that had locals climbing onto nearby rooftops to see them. The concert ended up being the only film footage the group deemed usable, and it was released as a TV special, The Beatles on the Rooftop, in Britain and North America.
All four were in very sour moods by the time the sessions ended, and were not convinced that they should even bother releasing the album. The desultory attitude nearly ended the group right then and there.
What turned things around during the next few months were a series of unexpected events seized upon by Allen Klein.
John's divorce from Cynthia became final during the sessions, which now freed him to marry Yoko. Since Yoko had still retained her Japanese citizenship, though, this required permission from British authorities. While they were waiting for this to clear, Yoko made a serious mistake: she confided in Klein that she had quietly retained an attorney on the side, in the case the marriage fell through - or failed - to try to ensure that she would have the share of John's property she felt she was entitled to. What she didn't know was that Klein surreptitiously taped all conversations in his office. He now had taped proof that, whatever her actual feelings for Lennon, she had an undeniable mercenary side.
Klein, knowing Paul's dislike of Yoko and eager to convince Paul once and for all that he was the right manager for the group, promptly played the tape for Paul. In turn, Paul - as Klein knew he would - told John what he had heard, in the Apple offices, one day in February, when Yoko was "away" (visiting her lawyer, ironically).
John, predictably, blew up at Paul, and the two got into a blazing argument. But the fact that this was on tape continued to bother John even as he stalked off, with the intention of returning to the flat he shared with Yoko after moving out of his and Cynthia's former home in Weybridge. Instead, after briefly stopping at Ringo's home for a brief visit, he returned to Klein's office. Klein, at John's request, nonchalantly played him the tape.
John angrily told Klein to stop taping conversations. But now he couldn't deny what he heard, either. He went back to the flat and confronted Yoko, who by then had returned home.
She denied it at first, but then admitted the truth, telling John she only wanted to "make sure." John was less infuriated by her interest in his money than in her betrayal and lack of faith in a love he had believed was the great love of his life. He had, ironically, performed a song for the January sessions titled "Don't Let Me Down" - and his new love had done exactly that. After a lot of angry words punctuated by thrown objects in the flat, John demanded that she leave. She returned the next day for her belongings after finding a hotel room.
John was miserable and morose after his breakup with Yoko, so much so that the other Beatles and Klein were concerned that he might do something drastic - they weren't thinking actual suicide, but a hefty dive into drugs leading to an overdose was far from out of the question. It was then that Paul did something dramatic. Even though he was about to wed Linda Eastman - their wedding was scheduled for March 12 - he told Linda he needed to spend a weekend alone with his friend. He then invited John up to the retreat he had recently purchased, an isolated farm on the coast of Scotland.
John went along glumly, still in his perverse way partially blaming Paul for what had happened. But as they chatted, just John and Paul with no one around - something they hadn't done in a long time - the strength of their friendship asserted itself. John began to open up, not only about his complaints about the group and the bossy way Paul had been acting (Paul was genuinely surprised that the others thought of him as being bossy; in his mind, he was just being meticulous) but about his doubts, fears and the pains of his life in general, going all the way back to his childhood abandonment by his parents. Paul soon found himself opening up too, and by the time the long weekend together was over, the two old friends were hugging one another and weeping. What John later always called "the lost weekend" in Scotland had rekindled their friendship and partnership as nothing else could. Above all else, Paul assured John, the real love of John's life was sure to come along soon; John was simply too amazing a human being to be alone for very long.
When the pair got back to London, Klein, unfortunately, had some bad news for them. Dick James, the Beatles' publisher - and therefore the holder of the copyrights to the many classic songs Lennon and McCartney had written since 1962 - had become unnerved by the squabbling in the group and had sold out his shares in Northern Songs, their publishing company, to ITV, the entertainment conglomerate run by showbiz magnate Sir Lew Grade. This potentially meant the Beatles' copyrights could be under another person's control.
Klein, John, and Paul decided the thing to do was to have Paul approach Grade and see if a deal couldn't be worked out: Klein was abrasive, so was John, but no one could turn on the charm like Paul McCartney. Grade later said, "I don't know how, but he talked me into it": Grade worked out a deal where, in exchange for a multimillion-pound payment, Apple and ITV would split ownership of Northern Songs on a 52-48 basis.
Paul maintained his connection with Sir Lew Grade, and about a year later, when Paul mentioned that Klein was looking for someone to run Apple's operations in North America, Grade suggested a friend: Bernie Brillstein, an up-and-coming artist manager and TV show producer in the States. Brillstein was contacted and flew to London to meet with the group and Klein. He had fewer credentials than some other possible candidates, but what sold John Lennon was the identity of one of Brillstein's major clients: Jim Henson, the American puppeteer and creator of the Muppets. Although the Muppets were generally thought of in the States as children's fare, seen most prominently on the new educational show Sesame Street, puppeteering has a more respectable reputation in Europe, and John eagerly told the others about Henson's innovations: Other puppeteers, he explained, had appeared on TV simply showing the traditional proscenium arch in which the puppets appeared on the TV screen; but Henson was the first to realize that on TV, the TV screen WAS the proscenium arch, and he was able to have his Muppets do things on TV traditional puppets couldn't do, like appearing from the sides or above, or going far to the back or close to the camera. He didn't tell the others, but he also thought that perhaps the Muppets might make a handy outlet for the "bubblegum" songs Paul occasionally came up with, which then wouldn't be foisted on the Beatles.
Henson later told an interviewer, "I was a little upset at first, because I thought Bernie would be distracted from handling me....then it occurred to me, 'My God, what am I complaining about? I'll be working next to the Beatles! I might get original Lennon-McCartney songs for the Muppets!'" The relationship was to prove a very strong one in the years ahead.
In the meantime, in March 1969, Klein had called a group meeting to get the band out of its funk once and for all. He proposed a plan of action: the tapes from the January sessions would be given to George Martin, who had been shunned in January, to mix into a decent album, to be released in the summer. The group would take a few months off to clear their heads, then go back into the studio with Martin to make an album for Christmas 1969 release. Then, in the new year of 1970, they would all take a breather from the group, and they would each release at least one solo album (this, he hoped, would help George feel he had an opportunity to get his music heard). On the first Monday in January 1971, they would all regroup, and then decide if they wanted to continue as the Beatles.
Martin's version of the January sessions was released in June under the title Let It Be. Side One consisted of studio songs, including some brilliant, anthemic ones written by Paul. Side Two would be tracks from the rooftop concert.
Let It Be, released June 1969:
Side One:
Two of Us
Brother Sam
Dig It
Let It Be
For You Blue
The Long and Winding Road
Side Two:
One After 909
I Dig a Pony
I've Got a Feeling
I Me Mine
Don't Let Me Down
Get Back
The album, while a little uneven, was better than the group had the right to expect based on the misery of the January sessions.
In November, Apple released their second album of 1969, Abbey Road, titled after the studio where it was made. The title was, unbeknownst to the fans, also a kiss-off: one way or another, the Beatles intended not to go back there.
With the end of 1969, the Fab Four went off to do their individual projects, and to see whether, after doing so, they would want to stay the Beatles.
---
Given that Paul McCartney was the most reluctant member in committing to Allen Klein's idea for the Beatles each to do a solo album in 1970, it's ironic that his was the first to come out. Recorded in large part in a homemade studio he had built in his London home on Cavendish Avenue (except for some overdubs added at Abbey Road), McCartney, as it was titled, was a deliberately low-key affair. Paul recorded mostly simple love songs, to Linda and even to Martha, his English sheepdog (a leftover from A Doll's House), along with instrumentals. The strongest song he demoed in these sessions, "Maybe I'm Amazed," he decided to set aside in anticipation of the next Beatles album, closing the record instead with "Come and Get It," a song he'd written originally for the group Badfinger. Because he recorded the album at home and played most of the instruments himself, the album had a definite DIY demo flavor.
McCartney, released April 1970
Side One:
The Lovely Linda
That Would Be Something
Why Don't We Do It in the Road
Junk
Every Night
Hot as Sun/Glasses
I Will
Man We Was Lonely
Side Two:
Martha My Dear
Honey Pie
Momma Miss America
Mother Nature's Son
Oo You
Teddy Boy
Come and Get It
Some critics, let down by the quiet and unassuming effort from the writer of "Hey Jude," "Let It Be," and "The Long and Winding Road," panned the album, which led John Lennon to come to his old friend's defense: "Paul was just knocking about in the studio, having some fun, and that's how he decided to put out the album. He never said it was intended to be some great thing; he didn't tell anyone to expect Sgt. McCartney's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Paul the story of a deaf dumb and blind snooker player. It's your fault if you can't enjoy it on its own terms."
John's own album, titled simply John Lennon, and recorded in Montreal, was more an exploration of his psychic pains, ranging from his childhood ("Mother") to his past drug problems ("Cold Turkey") to his ugly breakup with Yoko (the sardonic "Ballad of John and Yoko"). He also included "Revolution #9," an experimental avant-garde composition made up of tape loops and sound effects that had been left off of A Doll's House for lack of space (Yoko's bits were edited out). Some of his more introspective songs explored his personal pains, but he stopped at a certain point, partly due to the influence of his new love, a Chinese-American filmmaker named May Ling [OOC: I'm swiping the character from my book; she's Chinese-American because John had a "thing" for Asian women]. He'd begun reading a book called The Primal Scream written by a quack psychiatrist named Arthur Janov, but, partly because of what May thought of it, he dismissed it as "rubbish": "It's good to understand what happened in your early childhood," he told an interviewer, "but Janov never mentions forgiveness, and unless you forgive people, you can't ever let things go; it just stays inside you and eats you up." After Yoko, John's fellow Beatles and all his other friends thought May was a breath of fresh air, especially since while she inspired John artistically, she was content to do film work and leave the music to John.
John Lennon, released June 1970
Side One:
Mother
Hold on John
Glass Onion
Everybody's Got Something to Hide
Isolation
The Ballad of John and Yoko
Julia
Side Two:
Cold Turkey
Love
Well Well Well
Cry Baby Cry
Look at Me
Revolution #9
My Mummy's Dead
Ringo was at a loss as to what do for his album, until during the sessions for George's album he encountered Pete Drake, a Nashville session pro and producer whom George had brought in to play pedal steel guitar on some tracks. Ringo confided in Drake his desire to do an album of country music, and Drake told him that in exchange for just two weeks of Ringo's time, he could whip one together using his Nashville connections, complete with a pile of songs written by Nashville tunesmiths with titles like "$15 Draw" and "The Fastest Growing Heartache in the West." Ringo's album, Beaucoup of Blues, released in September, fulfilled this lifelong dream of Ringo's, and while less successful commercially than the other solo albums, also fulfilled Ringo's promise to Klein. [Same album as in OTL except for "Don't Pass Me By" substituted for "Silent Homecoming" as the final track.]
George's album, All Things Must Pass, was the total opposite of Paul's, a lavish, heavily-produced double album, in which George dipped deeply into his backlog of religiously-inspired songs - most of which had been considered unsuitable for the Beatles for that reason - to produce a stunning, majestic work that amazed everyone who had heard it. Even the fact that George had penned the best two songs on Abbey Road, "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun," didn't prepare the world for the explosion of pent-up talent that astounded even his fellow Beatles. George's album, with its dozens of overdubbed musicians and singers, recorded at Olympic Studios in London and at Ontario Sound in Toronto, took the longest to finish, not being released until November. But when it was released, not only did it garner rave reviews, it was the most commercially successful of the solo albums, with both it and its debut single, "My Sweet Lord," reaching Number One on both sides of the Atlantic. [Same album as in OTL, but with the third disc of in-studio instrumental jams discarded.]
With the biggest hit of all the solo records, George therefore had the wind at his back when the Beatles regrouped along with Allen Klein on January 4, 1971, at the Apple offices....
---
When the Beatles and manager Allen Klein regrouped on January 4, 1971, there was an air of genuine excitement and happiness in the room. The members of the group, whatever differences they had had, weren't having any particular trouble getting along personally, now that Yoko was out of the picture; the frustrations of George and John at being drowned out by Paul hadn't really risen to the level of disagreement as such; and they had no business disagreements at all. In other words, they had no personal beefs with each other that threatened their friendship. They had discovered that they liked being around one another and liked the way they worked together and made music together. They were ready to be Beatles again.
But according to some terms.
George had the cachet of having had the biggest hit of the four solo albums by far, still holding down the Number One spot on the charts as the meeting commenced, and thus he was in a stronger position than he'd ever been before in the group. He threw out a proposal, which John immediately supported: all future Beatles albums must include a minimum of four songs each by John, Paul, and George. They could each write more, and if Ringo had a song or two that was good enough to include, they could do that, but each of the three songwriters had to be guaranteed at least four spaces on the album. Paul put up a halfhearted argument against "making a rule, like we're the army or something," but eventually he came to the realization that he would have to go along with the idea to ensure that everyone would be satisfied.
John, for his part, liked the idea of working on his own for a while; he felt that, instead of pulling him away from the group, it had made him more energized for the next round of working with the Beatles. John therefore proposed that the schedule of the last two years remain in place: the Beatles would do a group project in 1971, including an album and - to Paul's amazement and delight - a concert tour. "It's been five years since we played live," John said. "It's time." Once the tour was over, the group would again take 1972 as a year for solo projects, then do a group project again in 1973 - maybe an album and another movie that time around; and continue to alternate between Beatles and solo projects in similar fashion going forward. "We breathe in, we breathe out," he said. John also said he wanted to continue working in studios other than Abbey Road - and to this no one had the least objection.
Paul was much more of the opinion that the group would be better served by working together as much as possible, but he nevertheless went along with John on this as well, in part because now that John was at last enthusiastic about performing live again, he'd have John along with him in talking Ringo and George into it. Ringo, amiable as always, declared his willingness to go along with whatever the rest of the group wanted to do; to him it mattered more that the bad vibes of January 1969 were gone than the specifics of performing live. That left George, who finally caved when he came to realize that he'd be seen as the stick-in-the-mud that ruined the possibility of a Beatles tour for the fans otherwise. Once he warmed to the idea, though, George laid out another condition: he wanted Ravi Shankar and his Indian musicians to open for the Beatles. Paul reluctantly agreed, so long as the group booked another opening act as well.
And so it was that, in the second week of January 1971, the Beatles found themselves in the Commonwealth land of South Africa, beginning work on their next album.
Aside from a few cover album cover photos of the Beatles encountering some of the local fauna while on a safari, there seemed little in the way of local influence on the album's music; but the general feeling of things having been loosened and the relaxed atmosphere combined to create a decidedly peaceful-sounding record. John, now married to May, who was expecting their first child in May, was in a happy place; he brought no rough-sounding tunes like "Cold Turkey" to the sessions; indeed, one of his strongest new songs was the gentle ballad "Oh My Love," written for May. Paul similarly came up with songs celebrating his new life at his farm in Scotland ("Heart of the Country"). A surprisingly strong entry came from Ringo, who, with the help of George, completed a track, "It Don't Come Easy," that was strong enough to be released as the album's debut single. The record, titled We All Shine On from a line in another of John's contributions, "Instant Karma," was a fine return to form for the Fab Four.
As the group worked on the album, Klein, back in London, and Bernie Brillstein in the States announced that the 1971 tour would focus on North America (somewhat to the dismay of the group's British fans).
The album was released in May; to give John some time with his newborn son, christened Sean, the tour didn't start until July. The group had been faced with the dilemma of what kind of venues to play and how to accommodate the hordes who would no doubt want to see them live after the five-year hiatus. Paul had argued for small venues, even clubs, in order to reconnect with their audiences; John had argued for large Watkins Glen-like festivals. George wanted to help the people in Bangladesh, who had been devastated by a recent cyclone. Ringo thought they should film the concerts, and Klein wanted to make sure a worldwide audience (preferably a paying one) would be reached.
To accommodate all this, a series of compromises were made. The group cheekily opened their tour by playing a week of engagements at a relatively small hall in Las Vegas ("roll the dice, big payoff," John had joked in the group's tour-opening press conference), and sprinkled surprise engagements at small clubs and other small venues throughout the tour, to appease Paul, while focusing on the bigger venues like Madison Square Garden and the Palacio in Mexico City, as John had wanted. Ravi Shankar opened the tour along with a series of rotating opening acts that included (at different shows) Stevie Wonder, T. Rex, and Jethro Tull; and the proceeds from the MSG show were designated for relief for Bangladesh, to make George happy. The Maysles brothers, who had previously worked with the Rolling Stones, were tapped to film the tour at Ringo's request.
And Klein came up with the extravaganza he wanted: the final show of the 26-scheduled-date tour, held at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, was broadcast live via satellite to literally hundreds of movie theaters worldwide, which had arranged to receive the broadcast. So fans that hadn't been able to get tickets in the scenes of coast-to-coast pandemonium that had occurred in the United States, Canada and Mexico when the tickets had gone on sale, still had a chance to see their idols performing live if only on screen. Excerpts from the concert were used for the Maysles' movie, titled Get Back and released at Christmas 1971, along with a soundtrack album. No one could doubt by the end of 1971 that the Beatles were back.
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With the group again turning to solo recordings in 1972, per John Lennon's idea, Paul McCartney was again first out of the gate, with another record of homespun music, recorded at his farm in Scotland, Paul McCartney's Wild Life (Beatles humor entered the picture, as the cover shot, naturally, was of Paul slumped in a chair looking as bored as possible). Ringo had the second release of the year this time, with an odd album titled Sentimental Journey, wherein the Beatles' most limited vocalist sang an album's worth of Forties and Fifties standards like "Night and Day" and "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing." Ringo told bemused reviewers that the album was "a present for me Mum."
For his second solo album, New York City (named for the town where he recorded it), John wandered a bit into George's territory, making songs with a spiritual message, his beliefs having been fanned by his new love, May. However, the album also included one of John's most caustic songs ever. Yoko Ono, still hoping to profit from her association with the Beatles, had resurfaced early in the year with a sleazy tell-all book about her relationship with John. After Apple unsuccessfully tried to prevent the book from being published, John and Paul went on the offensive, calling on all Beatles fans to boycott the book. The book did make Yoko some money, but it ruined her reputation in the eyes of those who still sympathized with her. And it inspired John to write the vicious "How Do You Sleep," which he included on New York City.
George's album, Living in the Material World, continued the spiritual concerns of his previous album, although the arrangements were less busy. (He also included his own comment, as a bystander, on the John vs. Yoko feud: "Sue Me Sue You Blues.")
As 1973 began, the Fab Four regrouped again, this time in the sunny climes and Caribbean ocean breezes of the Canadian island of Montserrat, to begin their next album. John dipped heavily into the local culture and fell in love with the new reggae sound coming out of nearby Jamaica. He invited a group of reggae musicians, including Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Junior Murvin, to come to Montserrat and jam with the Beatles. They taught the reggae rhythms to the Beatles' rhythm section, Paul and Ringo, and were impressed by how readily they picked it up ("Dem have the feel for it," Marley declared). John decided that one of the best of his new songs for the LP, "Mind Games," should be done in a reggae rhythm. It became the title track of the album as well as one of the first records with a reggae sound to reach Number One in the States and Britain, helping to popularize reggae outside of the islands. John was so chuffed, meanwhile, he invited Marley and his group, the Wailers, to open for the Beatles, along with David Bowie, on their upcoming world tour (the reggae sounds of Bob Marley and the Wailers, the glam-rock sounds of Bowie, and the Beatles' classic sound made for quite the varied concert program; Lou Reed substituted for Bowie on a number of the shows).
The tour was held at the insistence of Klein, who wanted to capitalize on the success of the 1971 tour by reaching much of the rest of the world, and by making another concert film (the Beatles also ended up filming a few pre-staged comedy bits for the film, entitled Across the Universe). The concert itinerary was grueling. The "1973 Across the Universe Tour" began in Britain, where the Beatles finally obliged their British fans with their first series of concert dates there in seven years. Then they traveled to Europe, playing dates in Paris, Berlin, Munich, Prague, Vienna, Rome, and Constantinople. This was followed by two shows that the Beatles were widely applauded for making: one in Israel and one in Egypt, a region of the world that had not fully settled down yet. They then appeared in South Africa before playing a date in Nairobi, the first performance by major rock artists in sub-Saharan Africa other than South Africa, and one where Bob Marley was particularly well-received.
On to a few dates in India, and the Beatles played some more precedent-setting shows, in Bangkok, Singapore, and Saigon, before flying on to Australia and New Zealand for a series of shows there. Then they broke another barrier, becoming the first major Western rock stars to perform live in China, with shows in Shanghai and Beijing, before wrapping up the tour in Japan. ("Yoko didn't come around," John joked to Rolling Stone.)
The successful 1973 tour was followed by another year of solo projects. George's album was released first, but it proved to be a misstep: Dark Horse, released in April 1974, suffered from the fact that George had temporarily lost his voice, a combined result of the long 1973 tour and an unfortunate (though mercifully brief) foray into cocaine use. But the songs weren't all that great either, and the arrangements were weak. George was disgruntled to receive the first true bad reviews of his career: many critics labeled the album Dark Hoarse.
John, in June, released Rock 'n' Roll, an album of covers of some of the early Fifties rock classics that had inspired him to pick up a guitar in the first place - tracks like "Be-Bop-A-Lula," "Rip It Up," and "Stand by Me." Paul finally dispensed with the homemade albums and released a true professional LP, Red Rose Speedway, that gave him his first solo Number One hit with "My Love." The real surprise of the year, though, was Ringo's solo LP. Ringo, released in September and made with the help of the other Beatles as well as many of his rock-star friends, was a slick, commercial - but highly successful - LP, and it gave Ringo a solo Number One as well with his cover of "You're Sixteen."
But by the time the band regrouped for their 1975 album, Venus and Mars, which they had decided to record in New Orleans, ominous rumors about their manager, coming from various Apple employees, were starting to reach the Beatles about their manager, Allen Klein: that he had taken more than his allotted percentage of their royalties; that, likewise, more of the tour profits than were appropriate had stuck to his fingers; most alarmingly, that he had borrowed money from Apple, without the Beatles' knowledge, to pay Capitol for the masters to their recorded catalog prior to 1968, which he intended to place under the ownership umbrella not of Apple but of his own company, ABKCO, upon renegotiation of the Beatles' and Apple's distribution contract with Capitol, which was due to expire at the end of 1975.
Paul, in particular, had never fully trusted Klein, and a series of meetings between Klein and the band ended badly. Klein was irritated that the group had decided against touring again in 1975. He accused them of having become "lazy": as evidence, he pointed to the fact that Paul's recent hit "My Love" had almost the same title as John's 1971 song "Oh My Love." Paul, visibly angry, snarled at Klein, "Allen, how many number one songs have you written?" John, equally angry, chimed in: "Or any songs at all for that matter?"
Paul and John asked Bernie Brillstein, as manager of Apple's North American operations, to investigate the issues as quietly as he could. What Brillstein found out confirmed the Beatles' worst suspicions. On May 17, while the group were still mixing their new album in New Orleans, Klein received a certified letter stating that "his services were no longer required" as CEO of Apple. Brillstein was to be the Beatles' new manager and the new head of Apple.
Klein hit back with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, charging the Beatles and Apple with breach of contract (he had an ironclad management contract that was not due to expire until December 31, 1980, and he had cleverly inserted a codicil stating that any disputes - even including accusations of wrongdoing - must be submitted to arbitration; by failing to do so, he declared, the Beatles had violated the terms of the contract). He insisted, among other things, that the extra take on the concert earnings had been for "legitimate business expenses" (though he did not itemize what those were).
The case went before a judge in London in August, Klein having requested a non-jury trial and a speedy resolution. In September, the judge handed down his decision: the verdict was in Klein's favor, as there was no way around the fact that by firing Klein the Beatles technically had breached his contract, however unfair the contract may have been. But the award "given" to Klein made it clear what the judge thought of Klein's contract and his attempt to exploit the Beatles.
Klein would receive a relatively small payment, all things considered (sealed, but rumored to be about 4 million pounds). In return, he was to release all rights of ABKCO to the Beatles' masters, which were to revert to Apple. In addition, as "compensation" for his the underpayment he alleged (which, he claimed, the "loans" from the Beatles' royalties were an attempt to cover), he was to receive 100 percent of all royalties on all new - and only on new - Beatles or solo recordings released between January 1, 1976, and December 31, 1980. He was to waive all future income from live performances, and his relationship with the Beatles and Apple was severed as of the day of the court's decision.
Klein, although technically the winner, unsuccessfully tried to appeal the decision - and no wonder. For any fool could see what the Beatles would do: take a five-year hiatus from recording. Klein would get nothing other than the payout from the earlier catalog; he would get nothing in the next five years, since the Beatles would avoid recording anything; and he would get nothing from live performances - and the band quickly decided that their means of staying in the public's eye from 1976 to 1980 would be to tour as much as possible.
Paul recorded one more solo single, "Silly Love Songs," a riposte to Klein for his comment about "laziness" earlier in the year. It was released on December 29, 1975 - just before the curtain dropped. Then the band went on hiatus from the recording studio - but not from the concert stage.
The group toured almost without stop from early 1976 to the fall of 1980, crisscrossing the world repeatedly, playing both the largest and the tiniest venues, appearing in cities that had never before seen them. The performances at small, out-of-the-way venues, in particular, brought them an unexpected benefit in the form of giving them a cachet of cool with the emerging punk and New Wave movements that would be denied to other older rock stars like the Rolling Stones: "The Beatles were kept from recording by a fat greedy wanker," the Clash's Joe Strummer said, "so they took their music back out to the people."
Though there wasn't any reason they had to do so, for the sake of fun, the Beatles chose to treat their tours as if they were fugitives on the lam, playing under assumed names as if they were hiding from Allen Klein. They came up with a lengthy array of aliases - dipping into their past, they were "the New Quarrymen" or "Johnny and the Moondogs"; they were "Klaatu" and "Ricky and the Red Streaks" and "I Wonder Who"; and on and on. John and Paul would go on TV talk shows and cheekily deny that the group was on tour at all: "We're not on tour, so it's not as if I can say that we'll be appearing at the Spectrum in Philadelphia on August 17, at the LA Forum on the 20th...." Ringo called it the "Ssssh Tour." George dubbed it the "Scarlet Pimpernel Tour: seek us here, seek us there." The tour had the nice side effect of helping to smooth out any remaining vestiges of conflict in the group; by the time the hiatus ended in 1981, the group were more together than they had been since 1967, with even the urge to make solo albums having largely fallen away.
Klein, for his part, soon grew tired of being scorned by the world as the "man who stopped the Beatles." He decided to make the rounds of TV talk shows himself to lay out what he considered his side of the story. But the effort backfired badly. Klein was singularly inept as an interview subject, somehow managing to come across as both arrogant and whiny. He changed his image all right, but not in the way he intended: he had now transformed himself into an international laughing stock.
Comedians had a field day, even older comedians like the Tonight Show's Johnny Carson, since the Beatles crossed generational boundaries. Johnny used Klein's name to replace his earlier favorite target, Merv Griffin, for his end-of-monologue digs: "We've a great show tonight - a good friend, Mr. Burt Reynolds!...(applause)....always a pleasure, from the San Diego Zoo, Joan Embery!....(applause)....a great young comedian, Jay Leno!....(applause)....and (Johnny dons a smirk) Allen Klein (loud chuckle from Ed McMahon) will be here later to discuss his new Puppy-kicking campaign."
Younger comics, of course, were even more relentless. On NBC's new late night hit, Saturday Night Live, John Belushi worked up a truly hilarious impression of Klein, flanked by Dan Aykroyd as John Lennon and Bill Murray as Paul McCartney. Belushi's Klein appeared a number of times, including a sketch where he and Yoko Ono (Laraine Newman) plot the downfall of the Beatles, and even making his way into a Coneheads sketch (Beldar: "Beatles?" Prymaat: "Beatles: Four Earth humans who are widely acclaimed for the pleasing nature of the sound patterns they produce.") On Sabado Noche - Mexico's Saturday Night Live - Klein ripped off his disguise to reveal himself as an original member of the group: a fifth, accordion-playing Beatle who had been fired in 1962 just before their career took off, who had plotted a long-term revenge against the group. On Canada's equivalent to SNL, Third City TV, the sketches examined the nighttime dreams of Allen Klein (John Candy), in which he, Klein, was the superstar, with John Lennon (Rick Moranis) his butler, Paul McCartney (Dave Thomas) his chauffeur, George Harrison (Joe Flaherty) his gardener, and Ringo Starr (Eugene Levy) his handyman. And in England, the Monty Python troupe came up with a whole hour-long "documentary' on the "history and table manners" of Klein, titled All You Need Is Cash.
Klein was probably as happy as anyone when, on January 4, 1981, the Beatles released their first album since 1975, a double-record set called Band on the Run - again, an allusion to their "fugitive" status over the last five years. It debuted at number one on the album charts worldwide, and produced three hit singles - Paul's title track; John's "One World," a powerful reggae tune with a message about world peace; and George's "Love Comes to Everyone." The album dominated the charts until it was replaced later that year by The Beatles in North America, a three-record live set culled from the 1976-80 shows.
The Beatles were back on top, and their recorded output would stay strong - but, understandably, they avoided performing live again, at least until the 1985 Live Aid concert.
Track listing for Yesterday and Today, 1966:
Side One:
Drive My Car
Nowhere Man
Act Naturally
Rain
Yesterday
I'm Down
Side Two:
Paperback Writer
If I Needed Someone
We Can Work It Out
What Goes On
Day Tripper
The first month of 1969 was the low point of the Beatles' history. The group came very close to splitting up at this time.
Paul had had the idea of doing a "back-to-basics" album - no frills and no psychedelic experimentation, just straightforward music, sharpened by the sophistication the Beatles had attained as musicians over the years. This in and of itself was very appealing to John, who, partially due to Yoko's influence, was thinking in terms of "no bullshit."
But Paul's other ideas which were put into effect in January 1969 were less appealing to the group, John in particular. Paul had proposed that the Beatles be filmed "cinema verite" style working on a new album, which they would then perform live as the climax of the film. So the group found themselves in a soundstage at Twickenham, out of the familiar confines of the Abbey Road Studios, with cameras filming them while they tried to work.
At first the new digs seemed to energize them; John in particular had been urging the group to get out of their Abbey Road "castle" and record in different locations. But the cameras and the fact that they were recording in the daytime, after years of being accustomed to working at night and sleeping during the day, soon made them uncomfortable and irritable. Also, it didn't help that Paul hadn't arranged for a concert venue before the filming started, and the ideas he came up with - an ocean liner, a Roman amphitheater in North Africa - were dismissed by the group as too grandiose. George and Ringo soon proved reluctant about the whole idea of performing live anyway, fearing a return to the madness of Beatlemania. And worst of all, the problems that had arisen during the Doll's House sessions returned with a vengeance: Yoko's constant presence and interference, George's frustration at having an outlet for his work, the overall sense that Paul was ordering everyone around.
George actually quit the group for a few days, until coaxed back by Paul, and John later admitted he considered doing the same. The group finally hammered their way through the sessions until they came up with a usable album. Without a venue for the concert climax, they decided to simply perform their new songs on the roof of the Apple office building in London in an unannounced, impromptu set that had locals climbing onto nearby rooftops to see them. The concert ended up being the only film footage the group deemed usable, and it was released as a TV special, The Beatles on the Rooftop, in Britain and North America.
All four were in very sour moods by the time the sessions ended, and were not convinced that they should even bother releasing the album. The desultory attitude nearly ended the group right then and there.
What turned things around during the next few months were a series of unexpected events seized upon by Allen Klein.
John's divorce from Cynthia became final during the sessions, which now freed him to marry Yoko. Since Yoko had still retained her Japanese citizenship, though, this required permission from British authorities. While they were waiting for this to clear, Yoko made a serious mistake: she confided in Klein that she had quietly retained an attorney on the side, in the case the marriage fell through - or failed - to try to ensure that she would have the share of John's property she felt she was entitled to. What she didn't know was that Klein surreptitiously taped all conversations in his office. He now had taped proof that, whatever her actual feelings for Lennon, she had an undeniable mercenary side.
Klein, knowing Paul's dislike of Yoko and eager to convince Paul once and for all that he was the right manager for the group, promptly played the tape for Paul. In turn, Paul - as Klein knew he would - told John what he had heard, in the Apple offices, one day in February, when Yoko was "away" (visiting her lawyer, ironically).
John, predictably, blew up at Paul, and the two got into a blazing argument. But the fact that this was on tape continued to bother John even as he stalked off, with the intention of returning to the flat he shared with Yoko after moving out of his and Cynthia's former home in Weybridge. Instead, after briefly stopping at Ringo's home for a brief visit, he returned to Klein's office. Klein, at John's request, nonchalantly played him the tape.
John angrily told Klein to stop taping conversations. But now he couldn't deny what he heard, either. He went back to the flat and confronted Yoko, who by then had returned home.
She denied it at first, but then admitted the truth, telling John she only wanted to "make sure." John was less infuriated by her interest in his money than in her betrayal and lack of faith in a love he had believed was the great love of his life. He had, ironically, performed a song for the January sessions titled "Don't Let Me Down" - and his new love had done exactly that. After a lot of angry words punctuated by thrown objects in the flat, John demanded that she leave. She returned the next day for her belongings after finding a hotel room.
John was miserable and morose after his breakup with Yoko, so much so that the other Beatles and Klein were concerned that he might do something drastic - they weren't thinking actual suicide, but a hefty dive into drugs leading to an overdose was far from out of the question. It was then that Paul did something dramatic. Even though he was about to wed Linda Eastman - their wedding was scheduled for March 12 - he told Linda he needed to spend a weekend alone with his friend. He then invited John up to the retreat he had recently purchased, an isolated farm on the coast of Scotland.
John went along glumly, still in his perverse way partially blaming Paul for what had happened. But as they chatted, just John and Paul with no one around - something they hadn't done in a long time - the strength of their friendship asserted itself. John began to open up, not only about his complaints about the group and the bossy way Paul had been acting (Paul was genuinely surprised that the others thought of him as being bossy; in his mind, he was just being meticulous) but about his doubts, fears and the pains of his life in general, going all the way back to his childhood abandonment by his parents. Paul soon found himself opening up too, and by the time the long weekend together was over, the two old friends were hugging one another and weeping. What John later always called "the lost weekend" in Scotland had rekindled their friendship and partnership as nothing else could. Above all else, Paul assured John, the real love of John's life was sure to come along soon; John was simply too amazing a human being to be alone for very long.
When the pair got back to London, Klein, unfortunately, had some bad news for them. Dick James, the Beatles' publisher - and therefore the holder of the copyrights to the many classic songs Lennon and McCartney had written since 1962 - had become unnerved by the squabbling in the group and had sold out his shares in Northern Songs, their publishing company, to ITV, the entertainment conglomerate run by showbiz magnate Sir Lew Grade. This potentially meant the Beatles' copyrights could be under another person's control.
Klein, John, and Paul decided the thing to do was to have Paul approach Grade and see if a deal couldn't be worked out: Klein was abrasive, so was John, but no one could turn on the charm like Paul McCartney. Grade later said, "I don't know how, but he talked me into it": Grade worked out a deal where, in exchange for a multimillion-pound payment, Apple and ITV would split ownership of Northern Songs on a 52-48 basis.
Paul maintained his connection with Sir Lew Grade, and about a year later, when Paul mentioned that Klein was looking for someone to run Apple's operations in North America, Grade suggested a friend: Bernie Brillstein, an up-and-coming artist manager and TV show producer in the States. Brillstein was contacted and flew to London to meet with the group and Klein. He had fewer credentials than some other possible candidates, but what sold John Lennon was the identity of one of Brillstein's major clients: Jim Henson, the American puppeteer and creator of the Muppets. Although the Muppets were generally thought of in the States as children's fare, seen most prominently on the new educational show Sesame Street, puppeteering has a more respectable reputation in Europe, and John eagerly told the others about Henson's innovations: Other puppeteers, he explained, had appeared on TV simply showing the traditional proscenium arch in which the puppets appeared on the TV screen; but Henson was the first to realize that on TV, the TV screen WAS the proscenium arch, and he was able to have his Muppets do things on TV traditional puppets couldn't do, like appearing from the sides or above, or going far to the back or close to the camera. He didn't tell the others, but he also thought that perhaps the Muppets might make a handy outlet for the "bubblegum" songs Paul occasionally came up with, which then wouldn't be foisted on the Beatles.
Henson later told an interviewer, "I was a little upset at first, because I thought Bernie would be distracted from handling me....then it occurred to me, 'My God, what am I complaining about? I'll be working next to the Beatles! I might get original Lennon-McCartney songs for the Muppets!'" The relationship was to prove a very strong one in the years ahead.
In the meantime, in March 1969, Klein had called a group meeting to get the band out of its funk once and for all. He proposed a plan of action: the tapes from the January sessions would be given to George Martin, who had been shunned in January, to mix into a decent album, to be released in the summer. The group would take a few months off to clear their heads, then go back into the studio with Martin to make an album for Christmas 1969 release. Then, in the new year of 1970, they would all take a breather from the group, and they would each release at least one solo album (this, he hoped, would help George feel he had an opportunity to get his music heard). On the first Monday in January 1971, they would all regroup, and then decide if they wanted to continue as the Beatles.
Martin's version of the January sessions was released in June under the title Let It Be. Side One consisted of studio songs, including some brilliant, anthemic ones written by Paul. Side Two would be tracks from the rooftop concert.
Let It Be, released June 1969:
Side One:
Two of Us
Brother Sam
Dig It
Let It Be
For You Blue
The Long and Winding Road
Side Two:
One After 909
I Dig a Pony
I've Got a Feeling
I Me Mine
Don't Let Me Down
Get Back
The album, while a little uneven, was better than the group had the right to expect based on the misery of the January sessions.
In November, Apple released their second album of 1969, Abbey Road, titled after the studio where it was made. The title was, unbeknownst to the fans, also a kiss-off: one way or another, the Beatles intended not to go back there.
With the end of 1969, the Fab Four went off to do their individual projects, and to see whether, after doing so, they would want to stay the Beatles.
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Given that Paul McCartney was the most reluctant member in committing to Allen Klein's idea for the Beatles each to do a solo album in 1970, it's ironic that his was the first to come out. Recorded in large part in a homemade studio he had built in his London home on Cavendish Avenue (except for some overdubs added at Abbey Road), McCartney, as it was titled, was a deliberately low-key affair. Paul recorded mostly simple love songs, to Linda and even to Martha, his English sheepdog (a leftover from A Doll's House), along with instrumentals. The strongest song he demoed in these sessions, "Maybe I'm Amazed," he decided to set aside in anticipation of the next Beatles album, closing the record instead with "Come and Get It," a song he'd written originally for the group Badfinger. Because he recorded the album at home and played most of the instruments himself, the album had a definite DIY demo flavor.
McCartney, released April 1970
Side One:
The Lovely Linda
That Would Be Something
Why Don't We Do It in the Road
Junk
Every Night
Hot as Sun/Glasses
I Will
Man We Was Lonely
Side Two:
Martha My Dear
Honey Pie
Momma Miss America
Mother Nature's Son
Oo You
Teddy Boy
Come and Get It
Some critics, let down by the quiet and unassuming effort from the writer of "Hey Jude," "Let It Be," and "The Long and Winding Road," panned the album, which led John Lennon to come to his old friend's defense: "Paul was just knocking about in the studio, having some fun, and that's how he decided to put out the album. He never said it was intended to be some great thing; he didn't tell anyone to expect Sgt. McCartney's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Paul the story of a deaf dumb and blind snooker player. It's your fault if you can't enjoy it on its own terms."
John's own album, titled simply John Lennon, and recorded in Montreal, was more an exploration of his psychic pains, ranging from his childhood ("Mother") to his past drug problems ("Cold Turkey") to his ugly breakup with Yoko (the sardonic "Ballad of John and Yoko"). He also included "Revolution #9," an experimental avant-garde composition made up of tape loops and sound effects that had been left off of A Doll's House for lack of space (Yoko's bits were edited out). Some of his more introspective songs explored his personal pains, but he stopped at a certain point, partly due to the influence of his new love, a Chinese-American filmmaker named May Ling [OOC: I'm swiping the character from my book; she's Chinese-American because John had a "thing" for Asian women]. He'd begun reading a book called The Primal Scream written by a quack psychiatrist named Arthur Janov, but, partly because of what May thought of it, he dismissed it as "rubbish": "It's good to understand what happened in your early childhood," he told an interviewer, "but Janov never mentions forgiveness, and unless you forgive people, you can't ever let things go; it just stays inside you and eats you up." After Yoko, John's fellow Beatles and all his other friends thought May was a breath of fresh air, especially since while she inspired John artistically, she was content to do film work and leave the music to John.
John Lennon, released June 1970
Side One:
Mother
Hold on John
Glass Onion
Everybody's Got Something to Hide
Isolation
The Ballad of John and Yoko
Julia
Side Two:
Cold Turkey
Love
Well Well Well
Cry Baby Cry
Look at Me
Revolution #9
My Mummy's Dead
Ringo was at a loss as to what do for his album, until during the sessions for George's album he encountered Pete Drake, a Nashville session pro and producer whom George had brought in to play pedal steel guitar on some tracks. Ringo confided in Drake his desire to do an album of country music, and Drake told him that in exchange for just two weeks of Ringo's time, he could whip one together using his Nashville connections, complete with a pile of songs written by Nashville tunesmiths with titles like "$15 Draw" and "The Fastest Growing Heartache in the West." Ringo's album, Beaucoup of Blues, released in September, fulfilled this lifelong dream of Ringo's, and while less successful commercially than the other solo albums, also fulfilled Ringo's promise to Klein. [Same album as in OTL except for "Don't Pass Me By" substituted for "Silent Homecoming" as the final track.]
George's album, All Things Must Pass, was the total opposite of Paul's, a lavish, heavily-produced double album, in which George dipped deeply into his backlog of religiously-inspired songs - most of which had been considered unsuitable for the Beatles for that reason - to produce a stunning, majestic work that amazed everyone who had heard it. Even the fact that George had penned the best two songs on Abbey Road, "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun," didn't prepare the world for the explosion of pent-up talent that astounded even his fellow Beatles. George's album, with its dozens of overdubbed musicians and singers, recorded at Olympic Studios in London and at Ontario Sound in Toronto, took the longest to finish, not being released until November. But when it was released, not only did it garner rave reviews, it was the most commercially successful of the solo albums, with both it and its debut single, "My Sweet Lord," reaching Number One on both sides of the Atlantic. [Same album as in OTL, but with the third disc of in-studio instrumental jams discarded.]
With the biggest hit of all the solo records, George therefore had the wind at his back when the Beatles regrouped along with Allen Klein on January 4, 1971, at the Apple offices....
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When the Beatles and manager Allen Klein regrouped on January 4, 1971, there was an air of genuine excitement and happiness in the room. The members of the group, whatever differences they had had, weren't having any particular trouble getting along personally, now that Yoko was out of the picture; the frustrations of George and John at being drowned out by Paul hadn't really risen to the level of disagreement as such; and they had no business disagreements at all. In other words, they had no personal beefs with each other that threatened their friendship. They had discovered that they liked being around one another and liked the way they worked together and made music together. They were ready to be Beatles again.
But according to some terms.
George had the cachet of having had the biggest hit of the four solo albums by far, still holding down the Number One spot on the charts as the meeting commenced, and thus he was in a stronger position than he'd ever been before in the group. He threw out a proposal, which John immediately supported: all future Beatles albums must include a minimum of four songs each by John, Paul, and George. They could each write more, and if Ringo had a song or two that was good enough to include, they could do that, but each of the three songwriters had to be guaranteed at least four spaces on the album. Paul put up a halfhearted argument against "making a rule, like we're the army or something," but eventually he came to the realization that he would have to go along with the idea to ensure that everyone would be satisfied.
John, for his part, liked the idea of working on his own for a while; he felt that, instead of pulling him away from the group, it had made him more energized for the next round of working with the Beatles. John therefore proposed that the schedule of the last two years remain in place: the Beatles would do a group project in 1971, including an album and - to Paul's amazement and delight - a concert tour. "It's been five years since we played live," John said. "It's time." Once the tour was over, the group would again take 1972 as a year for solo projects, then do a group project again in 1973 - maybe an album and another movie that time around; and continue to alternate between Beatles and solo projects in similar fashion going forward. "We breathe in, we breathe out," he said. John also said he wanted to continue working in studios other than Abbey Road - and to this no one had the least objection.
Paul was much more of the opinion that the group would be better served by working together as much as possible, but he nevertheless went along with John on this as well, in part because now that John was at last enthusiastic about performing live again, he'd have John along with him in talking Ringo and George into it. Ringo, amiable as always, declared his willingness to go along with whatever the rest of the group wanted to do; to him it mattered more that the bad vibes of January 1969 were gone than the specifics of performing live. That left George, who finally caved when he came to realize that he'd be seen as the stick-in-the-mud that ruined the possibility of a Beatles tour for the fans otherwise. Once he warmed to the idea, though, George laid out another condition: he wanted Ravi Shankar and his Indian musicians to open for the Beatles. Paul reluctantly agreed, so long as the group booked another opening act as well.
And so it was that, in the second week of January 1971, the Beatles found themselves in the Commonwealth land of South Africa, beginning work on their next album.
Aside from a few cover album cover photos of the Beatles encountering some of the local fauna while on a safari, there seemed little in the way of local influence on the album's music; but the general feeling of things having been loosened and the relaxed atmosphere combined to create a decidedly peaceful-sounding record. John, now married to May, who was expecting their first child in May, was in a happy place; he brought no rough-sounding tunes like "Cold Turkey" to the sessions; indeed, one of his strongest new songs was the gentle ballad "Oh My Love," written for May. Paul similarly came up with songs celebrating his new life at his farm in Scotland ("Heart of the Country"). A surprisingly strong entry came from Ringo, who, with the help of George, completed a track, "It Don't Come Easy," that was strong enough to be released as the album's debut single. The record, titled We All Shine On from a line in another of John's contributions, "Instant Karma," was a fine return to form for the Fab Four.
As the group worked on the album, Klein, back in London, and Bernie Brillstein in the States announced that the 1971 tour would focus on North America (somewhat to the dismay of the group's British fans).
The album was released in May; to give John some time with his newborn son, christened Sean, the tour didn't start until July. The group had been faced with the dilemma of what kind of venues to play and how to accommodate the hordes who would no doubt want to see them live after the five-year hiatus. Paul had argued for small venues, even clubs, in order to reconnect with their audiences; John had argued for large Watkins Glen-like festivals. George wanted to help the people in Bangladesh, who had been devastated by a recent cyclone. Ringo thought they should film the concerts, and Klein wanted to make sure a worldwide audience (preferably a paying one) would be reached.
To accommodate all this, a series of compromises were made. The group cheekily opened their tour by playing a week of engagements at a relatively small hall in Las Vegas ("roll the dice, big payoff," John had joked in the group's tour-opening press conference), and sprinkled surprise engagements at small clubs and other small venues throughout the tour, to appease Paul, while focusing on the bigger venues like Madison Square Garden and the Palacio in Mexico City, as John had wanted. Ravi Shankar opened the tour along with a series of rotating opening acts that included (at different shows) Stevie Wonder, T. Rex, and Jethro Tull; and the proceeds from the MSG show were designated for relief for Bangladesh, to make George happy. The Maysles brothers, who had previously worked with the Rolling Stones, were tapped to film the tour at Ringo's request.
And Klein came up with the extravaganza he wanted: the final show of the 26-scheduled-date tour, held at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, was broadcast live via satellite to literally hundreds of movie theaters worldwide, which had arranged to receive the broadcast. So fans that hadn't been able to get tickets in the scenes of coast-to-coast pandemonium that had occurred in the United States, Canada and Mexico when the tickets had gone on sale, still had a chance to see their idols performing live if only on screen. Excerpts from the concert were used for the Maysles' movie, titled Get Back and released at Christmas 1971, along with a soundtrack album. No one could doubt by the end of 1971 that the Beatles were back.
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With the group again turning to solo recordings in 1972, per John Lennon's idea, Paul McCartney was again first out of the gate, with another record of homespun music, recorded at his farm in Scotland, Paul McCartney's Wild Life (Beatles humor entered the picture, as the cover shot, naturally, was of Paul slumped in a chair looking as bored as possible). Ringo had the second release of the year this time, with an odd album titled Sentimental Journey, wherein the Beatles' most limited vocalist sang an album's worth of Forties and Fifties standards like "Night and Day" and "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing." Ringo told bemused reviewers that the album was "a present for me Mum."
For his second solo album, New York City (named for the town where he recorded it), John wandered a bit into George's territory, making songs with a spiritual message, his beliefs having been fanned by his new love, May. However, the album also included one of John's most caustic songs ever. Yoko Ono, still hoping to profit from her association with the Beatles, had resurfaced early in the year with a sleazy tell-all book about her relationship with John. After Apple unsuccessfully tried to prevent the book from being published, John and Paul went on the offensive, calling on all Beatles fans to boycott the book. The book did make Yoko some money, but it ruined her reputation in the eyes of those who still sympathized with her. And it inspired John to write the vicious "How Do You Sleep," which he included on New York City.
George's album, Living in the Material World, continued the spiritual concerns of his previous album, although the arrangements were less busy. (He also included his own comment, as a bystander, on the John vs. Yoko feud: "Sue Me Sue You Blues.")
As 1973 began, the Fab Four regrouped again, this time in the sunny climes and Caribbean ocean breezes of the Canadian island of Montserrat, to begin their next album. John dipped heavily into the local culture and fell in love with the new reggae sound coming out of nearby Jamaica. He invited a group of reggae musicians, including Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Junior Murvin, to come to Montserrat and jam with the Beatles. They taught the reggae rhythms to the Beatles' rhythm section, Paul and Ringo, and were impressed by how readily they picked it up ("Dem have the feel for it," Marley declared). John decided that one of the best of his new songs for the LP, "Mind Games," should be done in a reggae rhythm. It became the title track of the album as well as one of the first records with a reggae sound to reach Number One in the States and Britain, helping to popularize reggae outside of the islands. John was so chuffed, meanwhile, he invited Marley and his group, the Wailers, to open for the Beatles, along with David Bowie, on their upcoming world tour (the reggae sounds of Bob Marley and the Wailers, the glam-rock sounds of Bowie, and the Beatles' classic sound made for quite the varied concert program; Lou Reed substituted for Bowie on a number of the shows).
The tour was held at the insistence of Klein, who wanted to capitalize on the success of the 1971 tour by reaching much of the rest of the world, and by making another concert film (the Beatles also ended up filming a few pre-staged comedy bits for the film, entitled Across the Universe). The concert itinerary was grueling. The "1973 Across the Universe Tour" began in Britain, where the Beatles finally obliged their British fans with their first series of concert dates there in seven years. Then they traveled to Europe, playing dates in Paris, Berlin, Munich, Prague, Vienna, Rome, and Constantinople. This was followed by two shows that the Beatles were widely applauded for making: one in Israel and one in Egypt, a region of the world that had not fully settled down yet. They then appeared in South Africa before playing a date in Nairobi, the first performance by major rock artists in sub-Saharan Africa other than South Africa, and one where Bob Marley was particularly well-received.
On to a few dates in India, and the Beatles played some more precedent-setting shows, in Bangkok, Singapore, and Saigon, before flying on to Australia and New Zealand for a series of shows there. Then they broke another barrier, becoming the first major Western rock stars to perform live in China, with shows in Shanghai and Beijing, before wrapping up the tour in Japan. ("Yoko didn't come around," John joked to Rolling Stone.)
The successful 1973 tour was followed by another year of solo projects. George's album was released first, but it proved to be a misstep: Dark Horse, released in April 1974, suffered from the fact that George had temporarily lost his voice, a combined result of the long 1973 tour and an unfortunate (though mercifully brief) foray into cocaine use. But the songs weren't all that great either, and the arrangements were weak. George was disgruntled to receive the first true bad reviews of his career: many critics labeled the album Dark Hoarse.
John, in June, released Rock 'n' Roll, an album of covers of some of the early Fifties rock classics that had inspired him to pick up a guitar in the first place - tracks like "Be-Bop-A-Lula," "Rip It Up," and "Stand by Me." Paul finally dispensed with the homemade albums and released a true professional LP, Red Rose Speedway, that gave him his first solo Number One hit with "My Love." The real surprise of the year, though, was Ringo's solo LP. Ringo, released in September and made with the help of the other Beatles as well as many of his rock-star friends, was a slick, commercial - but highly successful - LP, and it gave Ringo a solo Number One as well with his cover of "You're Sixteen."
But by the time the band regrouped for their 1975 album, Venus and Mars, which they had decided to record in New Orleans, ominous rumors about their manager, coming from various Apple employees, were starting to reach the Beatles about their manager, Allen Klein: that he had taken more than his allotted percentage of their royalties; that, likewise, more of the tour profits than were appropriate had stuck to his fingers; most alarmingly, that he had borrowed money from Apple, without the Beatles' knowledge, to pay Capitol for the masters to their recorded catalog prior to 1968, which he intended to place under the ownership umbrella not of Apple but of his own company, ABKCO, upon renegotiation of the Beatles' and Apple's distribution contract with Capitol, which was due to expire at the end of 1975.
Paul, in particular, had never fully trusted Klein, and a series of meetings between Klein and the band ended badly. Klein was irritated that the group had decided against touring again in 1975. He accused them of having become "lazy": as evidence, he pointed to the fact that Paul's recent hit "My Love" had almost the same title as John's 1971 song "Oh My Love." Paul, visibly angry, snarled at Klein, "Allen, how many number one songs have you written?" John, equally angry, chimed in: "Or any songs at all for that matter?"
Paul and John asked Bernie Brillstein, as manager of Apple's North American operations, to investigate the issues as quietly as he could. What Brillstein found out confirmed the Beatles' worst suspicions. On May 17, while the group were still mixing their new album in New Orleans, Klein received a certified letter stating that "his services were no longer required" as CEO of Apple. Brillstein was to be the Beatles' new manager and the new head of Apple.
Klein hit back with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, charging the Beatles and Apple with breach of contract (he had an ironclad management contract that was not due to expire until December 31, 1980, and he had cleverly inserted a codicil stating that any disputes - even including accusations of wrongdoing - must be submitted to arbitration; by failing to do so, he declared, the Beatles had violated the terms of the contract). He insisted, among other things, that the extra take on the concert earnings had been for "legitimate business expenses" (though he did not itemize what those were).
The case went before a judge in London in August, Klein having requested a non-jury trial and a speedy resolution. In September, the judge handed down his decision: the verdict was in Klein's favor, as there was no way around the fact that by firing Klein the Beatles technically had breached his contract, however unfair the contract may have been. But the award "given" to Klein made it clear what the judge thought of Klein's contract and his attempt to exploit the Beatles.
Klein would receive a relatively small payment, all things considered (sealed, but rumored to be about 4 million pounds). In return, he was to release all rights of ABKCO to the Beatles' masters, which were to revert to Apple. In addition, as "compensation" for his the underpayment he alleged (which, he claimed, the "loans" from the Beatles' royalties were an attempt to cover), he was to receive 100 percent of all royalties on all new - and only on new - Beatles or solo recordings released between January 1, 1976, and December 31, 1980. He was to waive all future income from live performances, and his relationship with the Beatles and Apple was severed as of the day of the court's decision.
Klein, although technically the winner, unsuccessfully tried to appeal the decision - and no wonder. For any fool could see what the Beatles would do: take a five-year hiatus from recording. Klein would get nothing other than the payout from the earlier catalog; he would get nothing in the next five years, since the Beatles would avoid recording anything; and he would get nothing from live performances - and the band quickly decided that their means of staying in the public's eye from 1976 to 1980 would be to tour as much as possible.
Paul recorded one more solo single, "Silly Love Songs," a riposte to Klein for his comment about "laziness" earlier in the year. It was released on December 29, 1975 - just before the curtain dropped. Then the band went on hiatus from the recording studio - but not from the concert stage.
The group toured almost without stop from early 1976 to the fall of 1980, crisscrossing the world repeatedly, playing both the largest and the tiniest venues, appearing in cities that had never before seen them. The performances at small, out-of-the-way venues, in particular, brought them an unexpected benefit in the form of giving them a cachet of cool with the emerging punk and New Wave movements that would be denied to other older rock stars like the Rolling Stones: "The Beatles were kept from recording by a fat greedy wanker," the Clash's Joe Strummer said, "so they took their music back out to the people."
Though there wasn't any reason they had to do so, for the sake of fun, the Beatles chose to treat their tours as if they were fugitives on the lam, playing under assumed names as if they were hiding from Allen Klein. They came up with a lengthy array of aliases - dipping into their past, they were "the New Quarrymen" or "Johnny and the Moondogs"; they were "Klaatu" and "Ricky and the Red Streaks" and "I Wonder Who"; and on and on. John and Paul would go on TV talk shows and cheekily deny that the group was on tour at all: "We're not on tour, so it's not as if I can say that we'll be appearing at the Spectrum in Philadelphia on August 17, at the LA Forum on the 20th...." Ringo called it the "Ssssh Tour." George dubbed it the "Scarlet Pimpernel Tour: seek us here, seek us there." The tour had the nice side effect of helping to smooth out any remaining vestiges of conflict in the group; by the time the hiatus ended in 1981, the group were more together than they had been since 1967, with even the urge to make solo albums having largely fallen away.
Klein, for his part, soon grew tired of being scorned by the world as the "man who stopped the Beatles." He decided to make the rounds of TV talk shows himself to lay out what he considered his side of the story. But the effort backfired badly. Klein was singularly inept as an interview subject, somehow managing to come across as both arrogant and whiny. He changed his image all right, but not in the way he intended: he had now transformed himself into an international laughing stock.
Comedians had a field day, even older comedians like the Tonight Show's Johnny Carson, since the Beatles crossed generational boundaries. Johnny used Klein's name to replace his earlier favorite target, Merv Griffin, for his end-of-monologue digs: "We've a great show tonight - a good friend, Mr. Burt Reynolds!...(applause)....always a pleasure, from the San Diego Zoo, Joan Embery!....(applause)....a great young comedian, Jay Leno!....(applause)....and (Johnny dons a smirk) Allen Klein (loud chuckle from Ed McMahon) will be here later to discuss his new Puppy-kicking campaign."
Younger comics, of course, were even more relentless. On NBC's new late night hit, Saturday Night Live, John Belushi worked up a truly hilarious impression of Klein, flanked by Dan Aykroyd as John Lennon and Bill Murray as Paul McCartney. Belushi's Klein appeared a number of times, including a sketch where he and Yoko Ono (Laraine Newman) plot the downfall of the Beatles, and even making his way into a Coneheads sketch (Beldar: "Beatles?" Prymaat: "Beatles: Four Earth humans who are widely acclaimed for the pleasing nature of the sound patterns they produce.") On Sabado Noche - Mexico's Saturday Night Live - Klein ripped off his disguise to reveal himself as an original member of the group: a fifth, accordion-playing Beatle who had been fired in 1962 just before their career took off, who had plotted a long-term revenge against the group. On Canada's equivalent to SNL, Third City TV, the sketches examined the nighttime dreams of Allen Klein (John Candy), in which he, Klein, was the superstar, with John Lennon (Rick Moranis) his butler, Paul McCartney (Dave Thomas) his chauffeur, George Harrison (Joe Flaherty) his gardener, and Ringo Starr (Eugene Levy) his handyman. And in England, the Monty Python troupe came up with a whole hour-long "documentary' on the "history and table manners" of Klein, titled All You Need Is Cash.
Klein was probably as happy as anyone when, on January 4, 1981, the Beatles released their first album since 1975, a double-record set called Band on the Run - again, an allusion to their "fugitive" status over the last five years. It debuted at number one on the album charts worldwide, and produced three hit singles - Paul's title track; John's "One World," a powerful reggae tune with a message about world peace; and George's "Love Comes to Everyone." The album dominated the charts until it was replaced later that year by The Beatles in North America, a three-record live set culled from the 1976-80 shows.
The Beatles were back on top, and their recorded output would stay strong - but, understandably, they avoided performing live again, at least until the 1985 Live Aid concert.
Another pop culture vignette:
The Rolling Stones
In April 1963, a 19-year-old English hustler named Andrew "Loog" Oldham made one hustle too many. He got in deep to an Irish Mob guy from whom he borrowed five thousand pounds. He decided he needed to skip the country for a while and go live in Canada until the heat died down. (He ended up talking his way there into becoming a major concert impresario in Toronto and other big cities.)
So Oldham never went to the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond with a journalist friend one night in April 1963. He never encountered there a six-man rhythm and blues group consisting of vocalist Mick Jagger, guitarist Keith Richards, pianist Ian Stewart, bass player Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts, all led by guitarist and harmonica player Brian Jones. He never signed on as their manager.
Without Oldham, the Stones went on for a time being informally managed by Giorgio Gomelsky, the owner of the club, and later by Eric Easton and Larry Page [OOC: the OTL manager of the Kinks]. Finally, in the spring of 1964 [a year or more ahead of OTL] the American artists' manager Allen Klein, excited by the possibilities of the emerging British Invasion, hired on with the Stones. Klein's influence would ultimately be bad for the Stones, but that wasn't apparent at the time.
More to the point, Oldham didn't get the opportunity to put into play one of his pet notions: that, with the Beatles exploding in Britain and later in the rest of the world, the audience would want an "anti-Beatles" opposite, a band that deliberately went out of its way to be provocative, as opposed to simply being that way by nature (there'd always been provocation in rock and roll: "If you're looking for trouble, you came to the right place," Elvis sang. But he was provocative like that more because of who he was: he didn't specifically court it and in fact went out of his way to be polite and accommodating in interviews). What Oldham had in mind was a band that would behave almost as revolutionaries, spitting disdain for society both on and off stage. How he thought such a band could succeed without offending its own audience is hard to understand, but the world never found out, because without Oldham, the Stones never blazed the idea of a band purposely behaving outrageously for shock value. (Without their example, no one else did either.)
The Stones were indeed scruffier than the Beatles, and more rebellious; Mick Jagger was much more likely to give a sharp reply to the taunt "get a haircut" than Paul McCartney (though not perhaps John Lennon). But despite being scruffier and wilder, and despite playing blues music that was often edgier and more controversial (to name one example, "It's All Over Now", a single from 1964, didn't escape the radio censors' notice for the line about "half-assed games"), without Oldham's propaganda Fleet Street never picked up on the idea of regarding this band as a menace to all that is good and decent in the world. The Stones instead were viewed more or less the same as the Kinks, the Who, the Animals, or the Yardbirds: longer hair than the Beatles, yes, and scruffier clothes, and wilder music; but not as the seeming onset of the apocalypse. It was entirely possible for parents to reassure themselves that, like the Beatles, the Stones, despite their wildness, were "really good kids" under it all. Headlines like "Would you let your daughter date a Rolling Stone?" were not seen in the papers. (By the time they began releasing records, Stewart had quit over a personal conflict with Jones, bringing the lineup down to five.)
More importantly to the band, Oldham's absence affected their songwriting credits. Their earliest songwriting efforts were credited to the group as a whole under the psuedonym "Nanker Phelge," a reference to a former flatmate of Jagger, Jones and Richards named James Phelge (the "nanker" nickname referring to some icky personal habits). Oldham wasn't around to insist on a Jagger-Richards songwriting credit as a supposed answer to the Beatles' Lennon-McCartney. When Klein came in, he persuaded the group to drop the "Nanker Phelge" pseudonym (among other things, he was worried the real Nanker Phelge would sue) and instead simply credit all self-written songs to "the Rolling Stones." This made sure the songwriting royalties were split five ways, and furthermore it ensured that Brian Jones, in particular, did not end up being marginalized. Brian's clever arrangements, his piano melody for "Ruby Tuesday," Bill Wyman's invention of the riffs for "Paint It Black" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash," Charlie Watts' right-on-the-one drumming, all got the credit they deserved. And since Brian was not marginalized, he made a stronger effort to write more of the actual songs and lyrics himself; for example, their first US single to chart, "Tell Me," written mostly by Jagger and Richards, was backed by "Sure I Do," written mostly by Jones, on the B-side.
Eventually, Jones did drift apart from the rest of the band, and in 1969 he left the Stones, having found God and declaring that he wanted to record gospel music. He was replaced in the Stones by Mick Taylor. Jones worked with Billy Preston among others, but soon got back into rock and roll, forming a new band called Blind Faith with Rod Stewart on vocals, Ron Wood on guitar, Brian as multi-instrumentalist, and former Small Faces Ronnie Lane on bass and Kenney Jones on drums; Eric Clapton also came and went, Neil Young-fashion. Jones remained close friends with his ex-bandmates, though, as the Stones carried on in the Seventies - still scruffy as ever, with even longer hair and even wilder music, but nevertheless still someone that grandmother would be willing to share a cup of tea with.
The Rolling Stones
In April 1963, a 19-year-old English hustler named Andrew "Loog" Oldham made one hustle too many. He got in deep to an Irish Mob guy from whom he borrowed five thousand pounds. He decided he needed to skip the country for a while and go live in Canada until the heat died down. (He ended up talking his way there into becoming a major concert impresario in Toronto and other big cities.)
So Oldham never went to the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond with a journalist friend one night in April 1963. He never encountered there a six-man rhythm and blues group consisting of vocalist Mick Jagger, guitarist Keith Richards, pianist Ian Stewart, bass player Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts, all led by guitarist and harmonica player Brian Jones. He never signed on as their manager.
Without Oldham, the Stones went on for a time being informally managed by Giorgio Gomelsky, the owner of the club, and later by Eric Easton and Larry Page [OOC: the OTL manager of the Kinks]. Finally, in the spring of 1964 [a year or more ahead of OTL] the American artists' manager Allen Klein, excited by the possibilities of the emerging British Invasion, hired on with the Stones. Klein's influence would ultimately be bad for the Stones, but that wasn't apparent at the time.
More to the point, Oldham didn't get the opportunity to put into play one of his pet notions: that, with the Beatles exploding in Britain and later in the rest of the world, the audience would want an "anti-Beatles" opposite, a band that deliberately went out of its way to be provocative, as opposed to simply being that way by nature (there'd always been provocation in rock and roll: "If you're looking for trouble, you came to the right place," Elvis sang. But he was provocative like that more because of who he was: he didn't specifically court it and in fact went out of his way to be polite and accommodating in interviews). What Oldham had in mind was a band that would behave almost as revolutionaries, spitting disdain for society both on and off stage. How he thought such a band could succeed without offending its own audience is hard to understand, but the world never found out, because without Oldham, the Stones never blazed the idea of a band purposely behaving outrageously for shock value. (Without their example, no one else did either.)
The Stones were indeed scruffier than the Beatles, and more rebellious; Mick Jagger was much more likely to give a sharp reply to the taunt "get a haircut" than Paul McCartney (though not perhaps John Lennon). But despite being scruffier and wilder, and despite playing blues music that was often edgier and more controversial (to name one example, "It's All Over Now", a single from 1964, didn't escape the radio censors' notice for the line about "half-assed games"), without Oldham's propaganda Fleet Street never picked up on the idea of regarding this band as a menace to all that is good and decent in the world. The Stones instead were viewed more or less the same as the Kinks, the Who, the Animals, or the Yardbirds: longer hair than the Beatles, yes, and scruffier clothes, and wilder music; but not as the seeming onset of the apocalypse. It was entirely possible for parents to reassure themselves that, like the Beatles, the Stones, despite their wildness, were "really good kids" under it all. Headlines like "Would you let your daughter date a Rolling Stone?" were not seen in the papers. (By the time they began releasing records, Stewart had quit over a personal conflict with Jones, bringing the lineup down to five.)
More importantly to the band, Oldham's absence affected their songwriting credits. Their earliest songwriting efforts were credited to the group as a whole under the psuedonym "Nanker Phelge," a reference to a former flatmate of Jagger, Jones and Richards named James Phelge (the "nanker" nickname referring to some icky personal habits). Oldham wasn't around to insist on a Jagger-Richards songwriting credit as a supposed answer to the Beatles' Lennon-McCartney. When Klein came in, he persuaded the group to drop the "Nanker Phelge" pseudonym (among other things, he was worried the real Nanker Phelge would sue) and instead simply credit all self-written songs to "the Rolling Stones." This made sure the songwriting royalties were split five ways, and furthermore it ensured that Brian Jones, in particular, did not end up being marginalized. Brian's clever arrangements, his piano melody for "Ruby Tuesday," Bill Wyman's invention of the riffs for "Paint It Black" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash," Charlie Watts' right-on-the-one drumming, all got the credit they deserved. And since Brian was not marginalized, he made a stronger effort to write more of the actual songs and lyrics himself; for example, their first US single to chart, "Tell Me," written mostly by Jagger and Richards, was backed by "Sure I Do," written mostly by Jones, on the B-side.
Eventually, Jones did drift apart from the rest of the band, and in 1969 he left the Stones, having found God and declaring that he wanted to record gospel music. He was replaced in the Stones by Mick Taylor. Jones worked with Billy Preston among others, but soon got back into rock and roll, forming a new band called Blind Faith with Rod Stewart on vocals, Ron Wood on guitar, Brian as multi-instrumentalist, and former Small Faces Ronnie Lane on bass and Kenney Jones on drums; Eric Clapton also came and went, Neil Young-fashion. Jones remained close friends with his ex-bandmates, though, as the Stones carried on in the Seventies - still scruffy as ever, with even longer hair and even wilder music, but nevertheless still someone that grandmother would be willing to share a cup of tea with.
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