(Credits: Far Out / Apple Corps)
Picture it: 1964. Four friends from Liverpool, after having some success in the charts, are all stuffed into a plane and flown across the world, not knowing that the moment the wheels touch the tarmac, their lives will change forever. Once The Beatles arrived in America, Beatlemania and the British invasion kicked into full gear, music changed forever, and so did the lives of the four boys at the centre of it all.
Of course, cracks in The Beatles eventually became too big, and the band broke up as a result. There were a number of reasons as to why friction in the band led to them calling it quits, but the main issue was that they were too committed to their craft. Ideas about how the band should sound and what the priority should be when writing songs created a divide, and this eventually meant that The Beatles had to part ways.
External factors put a lot of pressure on the band. Record labels and executives were breathing down their necks, asking them for more songs, more revolutionary gems that would change the face of music as people knew it. They also had a fanbase that was relentless in their adoration, constantly trying to spend time with The Beatles and get some form of acknowledgement from their heroes.
In a bid to focus on their work and try to alleviate these constant sources of pressure, the eFab Four had a brief moment of inspiration. The band’s success meant that money wasn’t a problem, and after a trip to Greece, after seeing how deserted some of the islands were, it made sense to the band that they buy a selection of them so they could live and work in peace with their family and friends.
“We rented a boat and sailed it up and down the coast from Athens, looking at islands,” recalled George Harrison. “Somebody had said we should invest some money, so we thought: ‘Well, let’s buy an island. We’ll just go there and drop out.’”
These plans steadily evolved, changing from buying an island where the band could do acid and get high without fear of being harassed to becoming a Beatles-based paradise, somewhere the band could walk around freely, enjoying their lives and making music at the same time. Their closest personal and professional friends, including the journalist Derek Taylor, who previously discussed the plan, would also have a place on the island.
“We were all going to live together now in a huge estate,” he said. “The four Beatles and Brian would have their network at the centre of the compound: a dome of glass and iron tracery (not unlike the old Crystal Palace) above the mutual creative/play area, from which arbours and avenues would lead off like spokes from a wheel to the four vast and incredibly beautiful separate living units.”
Who is to say whether or not The Beatles would have stayed together longer if they had removed themselves from the pressures of the outside world? The biggest problem they encountered was their creative differences, so it may well have been the case that time spent in isolation, only working on music, would have brought an end to the band even sooner. Now, The Beatle’s utopia remains a pipe dream, something thought up a lifetime ago that only exists as hypothetical.
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