In chapter 16 of his auto-biography "As time goes by" Derek Taylor describes the Apple perspective of the day John Lennon was busted (18th October 1968).

The advertising man had come because the night before Paul had said we should get something very good going for the new album, 'You know, really make a scene out of it because it is a great album: made a new man of me just listening to it.'

Thirty tracks on the new albums and it had taken five months, only. What a long, long haul from May to October, but we got plenty time for the waiting game. Variety had become confused and said that the new Beatles album would feature John Lennon and Yoko Ono nude and would be called 'Yellow Submarine'. Who was to blame them except a few words with someone would have got it right for them. The press is full of good eavesdroppers and bad listeners.

Well, so much for the good morning and the advertising man. At about noon Neil [Aspinall] came into the room and said, 'Could I have a word with you?'
He said he had just phoned John and it looked as if John had been busted. He said he had phoned John at the flat and a strange voice had answered the phone. 'One of those voices. One of THEM' said Neil and the voice had said John was not there.
'Who are you ?' the voice had said, and Neil had replied, 'Never mind, I want John.' 'Who are you ? ' the voice asked again, with no name of its own. Who behaves like that, who but the Law of the land? Come along with me.
'Who are you, who are you?’
Neil said, 'Neil Aspinall' hoping he had nothing to fear, and the voice said John was occupied and couldn't speak. Neil heard John muttering in the background, and then after a silence, John's voice said into the phone: 'Tell Derek to cancel that press conference today,' Neil said, 'OK, but why?'
John had replied. 'Imagine your worst paranoia, because it's here.'

That was what Neil told me and he said it seemed as if John had been busted.

Busted? BUSTED!

Two American girls had come in; they said they worked with a disc jockey whom I knew in Hogsville. One girl was dark and one was fair. The dark one was Katy and she was chewing gum, rolling it out, now and again, pink and gnarled, on the tip of her tongue. They were mannerly and conditioned in the American way, working to a unified script, that had been not memorized, but rather dyed into their conversation. 'You must be Mr Taylor; gee this place is really neat. Quite a building to work in; you must be very happy working here. I hope we're not interrupting anything.' 'No. Have a glass of champagne.' 'Wow, thanks. I wish I worked here. Really neat. Thanks'
I gave the fair one, Laurie, a copy of George's album Wonderwall and the conversation inexplicably took a curve into the elections : 'I think I'll vote for Nixon' said Laurie 'He seems safer .'
Safer?

I went downstairs for a copy of the Beatles biography by H. Davies of Malta. Neil was settling down talking to someone about something which had nothing to do with busts. It looked as if it may have been a false alarm after all. I got a biography, signed 'John, Paul, George, etc.' and took it upstairs to hand to Laurie who said this was their lucky day, really neat.
Katy looked very down. I found a second copy of Wonderwall and gave it to her. She brightened up and I said 'The book is for both of you, by the way. You'll have to share it: Laurie's grip on it tightened, and she hugged it to her and said, 'Wow. I've got it. It's mine.'
I took it back and wrote on the inside, 'To Katy and Laurie,' and Katy would have hugged me if she'd been five and mine, but at twenty it was too late for innocent hugs if you come from Hogsville.

Ronan O'Rahilly, Pirate King of the Sixties, told of the mystery of John (by Jeremy Banks who'd been whispered to by me) phoned Neil and offered any help he could give. Neil came upstairs, and took Jeremy outside the room and left the door open. We heard the beginnings of one of the 'whydidyoutellhim', 'I thought he ought to know', 'Youhadnoright', 'Ihadeveryright', discussions that punctuate the day in corporations large, and corps small, so I closed the door so we couldn't hear any more. I hate earwigging rows.

Then Neil asked me to go down, and while he was repeating much the same thing to me, the phone rang. 'It's Peter Brown,' said Barbara, the secretary with the mostest secrets.
It had been a bust.
'Where are you? ' said Neil down the phone.
'At John's.’
'The police there?’
'Yes, more later, must go’
Action Stations, OK.

I phoned Joan [Mrs Taylor] and asked how was she, because John had been busted. 'Oh, poor man,' she said, 'poor fellow, the bastards do that' She said, 'What a day' Cohn-Bendit had been refused an entry permit to stand for the Rectorship of Edinburgh University. 'The bastards,' said Joan. 'The fuckin' swine,' said I, and we had a couple of minutes like that and then we said a warm goodbye and Ray Connolly phoned.

'John's been arrested' he said. The Evening Standard are very quick on tip-offs. They appear to know things simultaneously with Caxton Hall, Scotland Yard, The Royal Docks, The London Clinic, Guys, the Krays, you name it, the Standard has it. Many pieces of silver change hands between Beaverbrook Newspapers and the fawn raincoats who whisper second-hand secrets down the public phone.

Ray is a good man, and very straight. 'He is a fool, isn't he,' he said, 'I said it would happen’
Jeremy [Apple employee] said the phones were probably bugged. 'I have feedback which says they're tapping the lines,' he muttered.
So I told Ray in a voice which was obviously unnaturally loud, and therefore more unconvincing than ever. 'We never take drugs, Ray. It is most improper of you to say so, ON THE TELEPHONE. HOW DARE YOU LIBEL US.' 'Cops,' said Ray, 'I'm very sorry’ Don Short was on the other line; 'It's happened,' he said. I said I knew.
Don was sympathetic, then he laughed; 'Trouble is, I've got a couple of other dodgy stories for tomorrow. One is that John's dad has married. The other is that Yoko's pregnant.'
'Thanks Don, thanks man’
'Can you confirm?'
 'No, Don. Not at the moment. Can we leave it over? Till Monday?'
'Yes, better, much better,' he said. 'I mean drugs, adultery and his father. It's a bit much, all in one day, even for the leader of the Beatles.'
Don too is a good man who must be rescued from Fleet Street, or who better still, must save himself.

It started to feel as if it were lunchtime or maybe later, but in the circumstances we didn't feel like eating and in the circumstances we didn't feel we should smoke anything and in the circumstances even Jeremy's offer of prescribed Librium appeared unsafe, so we did what we'd always done, what we used to do all the time in the old days. We drank.

Jeremy had Scotch and I had brandy; ice came from upstairs. The phones were buzzing pretty hard by now. Michael Housego from the Sketch called and said, 'I suppose you've heard.'
'Suppose so, Michael.'
'Not much you can say is there, Derek?'
'No, Michael, there isn't'
I wished I could see his face, find out if he were smiling I was glad I couldn't see his face. He was certain to be smiling. They were all certain to be smiling. Do the press ever weep? Well, it was in newspaper terms, a good story. No doubt about it. It was what some of them call a biggie. A very biggie. The Evening Standard called again. Ray said,'They're at the station now. They've been charged with obstruction.' Well now.

That would mean they hadn't wanted the police to come in the house. Does anyone want the police in their house, ever? I suppose if you'd been burgled you would want the police in your house. I dare say you would. I hope I'm never burgled. I don't ever want the police in my house, especially two of them at once. There's always one of the two who doesn't smile. You see him at all the police gigs. He's the one who looks you up and down, from the top of your louse-ridden head, down past the dark immorality of your private parts to the tip of your improper shoes, and then he looks you up and down, again and again, and he does not smile.
Even as a child he didn't smile.

Tony Barrow phoned. He said, 'Hello mate' Mate ? 'Hello mate,' he said. 'Keep me posted.'

Woman's Own phones. It was Maggie Peters wanting to know which famous people, apart from Twiggy and Paul McCartney, Mary Hopkin had met since she came to London. I said we were a little busy with a domestic problem and would she please talk to Jack Oliver about the famous people -apart from Paul McCartney and Twiggy, whom Mary Hopkin had met since she came to London.... and I was glad later that I hadn't said, 'As if it fucking matters, Maggie, which famous people any of us ever meet,' because it crossed my mind that our world must seem very strange to come-up-the-hard-way journalists like Maggie Peters, confronted as they now are, in the pursuit of stories of pop musicians, with pictures of scrotums, tales of cocaine, cannabis, heroin, lysergic acid, methedrine, abortions and idols who refuse to marry. It's a long way from the days of Doris. It is far away, and thank God for that I think but I am too conditioned to know for sure. Maybe I want to be a traditionalist but I am too disturbed to allow myself to stay where it's safe and old.

Dorothy Bacon from Life called. She wanted immediately one final picture of Mary to complete the cover story. She hadn't heard the news of John either, and one wondered whether sometimes the immediate media -TV, the evening papers, didn't overestimate their power, for there are in truth many people out and about in the thick of city life, who have no idea what is going on around them.
I phoned Mary at the Caprice restaurant and she gave me a medium but not rare hard time about the picture for Life because, as she explained, 'I'm with my mother, so I don't want my picture taken.' It took a couple of minutes to persuade her, and not for the first time I was glad to be under pressure, because a minor issue becomes easy to accomplish. However nice Mary's mother, her needs seemed very small fry compared to the dilemma of John and Yoko.

Bob Barr of Westinghouse phoned and, with the smoothness of the better American journalists asked for some quick background. I told him what had happened and how it could come about and what could overtake even a Beatle with the MBE, and much of his adult life devoted to the making of music, the spreading of fun and fantasy when, having pulled up his roots and fled his home, he had finally and completely forfeited the protection of the Establishment by posing naked with a woman not his wife for the cover of his own record album.

Ringo was in Sardinia and I phoned him, clear as a bell and softened the conversation's opening by telling him the album was finished, 'All thirty tracks, Ringo'. 'I know' he said without puzzlement, though he must have wondered why one phoned at noon on a Friday when he was on holiday to tell him something he must have known for the last twenty-four hours. Neil brought a proper sense of direction to the conversation by taking the phone and saying: 'Hi Ring; Neil here. I've got bad news ...' Neil is very blunt.

We couldn't trace George in Los Angeles, and we couldn't work out why, until much later that night when we discovered that Zsa Zsa Gabor had not been able to vacate her home in time for George's arrival as temporary tenant, and that as a result, his agents in LA had placed him, in the meantime, in what must be the only dwelling place in all of that electronic city not to have a telephone.

Newsweek, The People, Women's Wear Daily, and a German disc jockey had to be phoned and asked not to turn up to discuss John's record album with him. 'For obvious reasons', we said with some archness. Some archness, but not enough for The People whose Peter Cakes, with extraordinary single-mindedness pursued his needs to the point of asking, 'Do you know when John will be able to get together with us?'

Aunt Mimi, said Peter Brown, 'was in tears.'
What sort of boy had she brought up. How had she gone wrong with John?
Wrong?
Four photographers in raincoats, stone-faced, irritable, sour, tense, arrived at Savile Row in search of John and Paul. 'Can we be blunt?' asked one. Certainly. 'We need pictures' he said. Amazing.

Paul returned, chatty and cheerful and sort of shaved. Inwardly he must have felt terrible and not only inwardly was this shown. He ruffled his hair endlessly and cracked the sort of jokes with which the best uncles seek to soften the horrors of the worst funerals.

Ivan Vaughan was with him, the Ivan who had introduced him at fourteen to John, drunk at sixteen, at a Saturday afternoon garden fete in Liverpool, many centuries earlier. Peter Shotton arrived, Pete from Quarrybank school, never far from John's side in emergencies in the sixties. Tom Wilkes from A & M Records in Hollywood rang and said he'd heard about it on the LA radio. It was not, he said, unexpected. No it wasn't. When, we all wondered, would they come for us? I dare say some of us wished it could be soon; let's get it over.

I phoned the New Musical Express to sound them out for an ad we might put in, raising a 'legalise freedom' petition. Percy Dickens said he didn't know. The same paper had earlier turned down the picture of two naked backsides. What's worse, hashish or a bare arse? Both probably; or neither.

The evening papers arrived. 'Lennon and Yoko' was the main story. Not John anymore - 'Lennon'. A fan called, tearfully, for news and said, 'God bless you'. Mick Jagger was phoned and told on the set of his movie. He offered advice and love. Brian Jones called and sympathized. Now we're truly all one and the Beatles were as personna non Scotland Yard grata as the Stones. And the thought for one and all was who has the right to say it must be John who fronts for our drug-smoking. Should we all present ourselves at the police station and surrender? We may have thought we should on Friday, but I notice none of us actually did it. Cowards or Men of Discretion ? I don't know. Cowards, would be more likely, I think. Lazy and cowardly.
They lost. They paid.
We all won. We don't go to jail no more. No small thanks to them.

(C)1973 Derek Taylor

Seven months after the bust John spoke of his ordeal during a British Television interview (How late it is, BBC1 May 2nd 1969)
 "Well, I mean, it's their job, it's called, to intrude......... it was a bit strange, because we were lying in bed, as is our want, and there was a sort of knock, and Yoko opens the door, doesn't open it, it's one of those flat bits, she goes to the front door and says, 'Who is it?' and a voice says 'Uh, I'm the postman,' said a woman's voice. And Yoko says, 'A postman is a man!' And then, 'I have a special message for you,' and Yoko, we're panicking, because it's either the press or some mad fan, so anybody that knocks like that. So, this goes on for a bit, so she's too intrigued, . . . the fucker opens the door, excuse me, and I'm still in the bed but I can hear it going on, and I just stop in a peep and there's a few people at the door, all in plain clothes, so you couldn't tell what it was. So she runs back in, 'What is it? What is it?' And she's all panicking and pregnant and that, 'What is it? What is it?' People at the door and all that. And she's just sort of recovering on the floor and there's this banging on the window, I thought, oh, they've got me, you know, not the police, but whoever it is that's trying to get me. And I open the curtains and this giant, like super-policeman is against the window, and we didn't have any clothes on, just sort of nighties, the guy is against the window, I'm trying to hold it down, 'What is it? What is it?' And he says, 'Huuuuuuh!' And I don't know whether he said 'I'm the police' I never heard it, but I'm saying, 'Ring, ring the police' you know. And it just went on, it was like Marx Brothers, but it didn't feel like that at the time.

This page was last updated November 2005