In a taxi on the way to a recording session at Abbey Road, John shows her lyrics he had written on a fan’s birthday card to Julian—“When I get home to you / I find my tiredness is through.” Maureen balks at “tiredness” and, borrowing her pen, John changes the lines to: “When I get home to you / I find the things that you do / Will make me feel all right.”

John takes full creative credit, saying that “I did practically every single with my voice except for “Love Me Do.” Either my song, or my voice, or both”—though he acknowledges, “The only reason he [Paul] sang on ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ was because I couldn’t reach the notes.”

But they can always deliver. Of the songwriting process, John says, “Sometimes we write together. Sometimes not. Some of them take four hours; some twenty minutes. Others have been known to take as long as three weeks.”

“John needed Paul’s attention to detail and persistence,” says Cynthia. “Paul needed John’s anarchic, lateral thinking.”

Before the film even premieres, the Beatles perform songs from the sound track on their first world tour, which takes them as far as Australia. On June 11, Australian television—in operation only since 1956—makes the Beatles’ arrival in Sydney live news.

The response delights Derek Taylor, press manager for the 1964 world tour, but it doesn’t surprise him. Taylor met the band in May of 1963 as a reporter for the Daily Express covering a show at the Odeon Cinema in Manchester. “I’m obsessed with them,” he says during the Australian tour. “Isn’t everybody?”

“Each time we’d arrive at an airport,” Taylor recalls, “it was as if de Gaulle had landed, or better yet, the Messiah. The routes were lined solid, cripples threw away their sticks, sick people rushed up to the car as if a touch from one of the boys would make them well again, old women stood watching with their grandchildren and as we’d pass by I could see the look on their faces. It was as if some savior had arrived.”

John has brought along a personal savior on the world tour—Aunt Mimi. Despite their early antagonisms, “I owe her a lot,” he says. “She practically brought me up single-handed after my mother died. A wonderful woman.”

And one who was kept separate from tour antics. “There were lots of girls who were very keen to party with anybody from the tour,” recalls Noel Tresider, keyboardist with Melbourne supporting act the Phantoms, but John takes the music as seriously as ever. When issues with the sound equipment in Wellington, New Zealand, can’t be resolved, he threatens to cancel the remaining concerts. The shows go on until days before the film opens.