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The Beatles Secret NYC Hideaway: Nat Weiss’ Apartment
The Beatles Secret NYC Hideaway: Nat Weiss’ Apartment
by Woody Lifton
(The-Beatles-History.com)
Paul and Linda
Excerpted from “Linda McCartney: A Portrait” by Danny Fields
The advent of John and Paul’s utopian concept called Apple Corp. gave Linda Eastman the chance she wanted and needed to get Paul’s attention.
Paul McCartney and John Lennon were so enthusiastic about Apple, and it’s potential to advance art, science, music and retail fashion merchandising that they planned to announce its inception as guests of Johnny Carson on his indisputably number one late-night talk show.
Their appearance was booked for 5/15/68, and they flew to New York on the 12th. They tried to sneak in the U.S. as quietly as possible, but some DJ got hold of their schedule and there was the usual airport nightmare. No hotel wanted to put up with the security and crowd-control problems that the presence of the two big Beatles would involve, and Paul and John were not wild about the idea of being imprisoned in one.
The solution was to stash them away in NAT WEISS’ luxurious two-bedroom apartment on E. 73rd Street (where they signed the door to his study…see that story in our Misc. Share Your Beatles Story section) and hope that their presence could be kept a secret. Weiss replaced the elderly housekeeper because he felt it would be all too much for her, and John Lennon had expressed the wish that whoever was cleaning the place be young and attractive. She was; John was happy and took her frequently to bed.
As it happened the boys were also tidy. “Lennon really surprised me- he was very neat, he would fold all his towels. I’ve never forgotten that.’ Nat told me. “Paul too, but that was the sort of thing you would expect of him.”
One person who knew the Big Secret of the Beatles New York hideaway was Nat’s friend Linda Eastman… Nat told Linda that Paul was coming to town and, lo and behold, was going to stay at his own apartment. Not surprisingly, she begged Nat to be allowed to visit and he ran the request past Paul, who approved. And so, during the week Paul and John were in New York, the only two women ever in Nat’s apartment were the saucy maid and Linda. The routine was that Linda arrived early in the afternoon and stayed until evening, chatting away with Paul. When she left to go home and be a good mom, Weiss would take Paul and John out to dinner, or to a club (where they met Has Howard…see that story in our Misc. Share Your Beatles Story section) to hear music.
The attempt to keep quiet the fact that the Beatles were in town failed within two days of their arrival at Nat’s apartment. Thousands of screaming and fainting girls lined the area around the building where Weiss lived creating a major nuisance in what ordinarily a quiet neighborhood. “The doormen were getting blow-jobs from teenage girls who wanted to get upstairs,” Weiss recalls, Most unhappy were the residents of Weiss’ building, and the building manager, who wrote him a letter that he framed and hung on the wall in his study. Dear Mr. Weiss, Two clients of yours, the Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney, stayed at your apartment. There are not the run-of-the-mill guests. Crowds of unruly girls have disrupted life in the neighborhood, and certainly this building. If any such future visits are contemplated by the Beatles or any other clients of yours, we need one week advance notice so that we can review the situation. Yours Truly, etc, etc Paul and John had come to New York mainly to tout the advent of apple on the Johnny Carson Show, and although the magnificently witty Derek Taylor, Apple’s Press Officer, had come with them to oversee a bunch of telephone interviews on the subject, the Carson appearance was far and away the most important event on their official agenda. Ironically, the night they were scheduled to appear, the king of late-night, Johnny Carson, was not hosting his own show and the Beatles were doomed to face on of the great mediocrities in the history of broadcasting, someone named Joe Garagiola. Making things even worse, was the presence of Tallulah Bankhead, the heavy-drinking, flamboyant baritone American actress, who kept telling John and Paul how beautiful they were. One last thing, during their stay at Nat Weiss’ apartment John had sent Cynthia a telegram telling her he wanted a divorce.
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