Author(s): Alistair Taylor

Music | Biographies & Memoirs

When we went to the Palace to get The Beatles their OBEs John Lennon had some acid with him. 'I'm gonna slip it into the Queen's tea,' he told me. 'I want to open her mind and try to get her to declare war on somewhere nice and warm so we can all go and fight on the beaches.' After Jane Asher dumped Paul McCartney he literally used to cry on my shoulder. We hit the bottle together. Hard. 'I had everything and I threw it all away,' he would say. The stories Alistair Taylor has to tell will change forever the way the band are perceived. He was a witness to the fun, the high life and the music and the end of the greatest band the world has ever seen. He was privy to all the secrets that we were never suposed to know. Now, on the 50th anniversary of Ringo's appointment as drummer, he reveals for the first time what it was really like to ride the rollercoaster that was the sixties with The Beatles.