John tells Paul that he’s waiting for the maharishi to “slip me the real secret mantra which would give me happiness.”

The fantastical transaction never materializes, not even when John flies high over the Ganges on a helicopter ride with the guru.

“Why were you so keen? You really wanted to get in that helicopter,” Paul says to John after he returns to the ashram.

John replies, “I thought he might slip me the answer!”

Cynthia has hers.

“Something had gone very wrong between John and me,” she says. “It was as if a brick wall had gone up between us.”

In April, on their return flight to London, John demolishes it. He makes a long, drunken confession detailing the numerous transgressions he’s committed against their marriage—with groupies, with reporters, with other musicians, with the wives of friends, and countless others. In fact, he’s never been faithful; he’s “always had some kind of affairs going.” In the close confines of the airplane, Cyn is forced to listen.

But it’s a one-way street. “We had no problems at home” is Cynthia’s viewpoint. “We really didn’t have a cross word.” Though even she sees that John is slipping further and further away. “At home he would be lost in a daydream: present, but absent. I’d talk to him, but he wouldn’t hear me.”

*  *  *

“We are going in with clear heads and hoping for the best,” Paul says as the band prepares to record the dozens of songs he and John wrote while in India.

But first, they fly to New York. On May 14, they’ll announce the launch of Apple Records.

Though cynics hear the refrain of “Taxman,” John emphasizes his creative, altruistic vision for the multifaceted company (incorporated in London in April of 1967 and headquartered at 94 Baker Street) that is to produce not only music but also film and even clothing. “We hope to make a thing that’s free,” he says in a television interview, “where people can come and do and record.”

John has even more to do. He sends Cyn to relax with friends in Greece (Julian stays with the housekeeper), then goes on holiday—from his marriage. The gravitational pull of Yoko Ono is too strong for him to resist.

John calls Yoko. “Are you coming?” he asks. “Take a taxi.”

It’s midnight when she arrives at Weybridge.

John is normally cool. But in Yoko’s presence, he’s sweating, unsure of himself.

“We can do two things,” he says to her while they’re sitting in his living room, in the uncomfortable company of Pete Shotton, John’s friend and former bandmate in the original Quarry Men. “One is sit here and chat, or go up and make music.”