Press conference: Warwick Hotel, New York City

Q: This question is addressed to all of you. Do any of you ever get tired of all this hocus-pocus, the press conferences, the screaming girls, the crowds, and decide that you would like to just sit back on your fat wallets and forget the whole thing?

John Lennon: Well, when we feel like that, we take a fat holiday on our fat wallets. And then you get fed up with that and you feel like coming out and doing this.

Q: How would you describe the reception you received on this trip to the States? Has it increased, diminished, or remained the same?

Paul McCartney: The actual numbers of people, erm, recepting, or whatever the word is, is bigger. So I hear. Who knows?

Ringo Starr: Yeah.

McCartney: Well, Brian [Epstein] knows. You know, ask him.

George Harrison: We’re playing to more people on this trip than we have on the last tours.

Q: You said that you and Dylan are heading towards the same thing. Where do you see your music going? Things have changed.

McCartney: Well, it’s going… I don’t know. The thing is, it’s going forwards. I don’t know toward what, but it’s gonna go forward. We’re trying to take it forward, and Dylan’s trying to take his forward, but it just looks as though it’s going backwards. You know, I’m not trying to be funny, but it does. It’s gone from very complicated to less complicated.

Q: But certainly it’s changed since your advent. I’m wondering where you consider yourself to be now, music-wise.

Lennon: On Decca Records.

Q: Do any of you have plans to record on your own?

Lennon: We do at home, you know. We might.

Harrison: In fact, we have done, I think.

Lennon: I think so.

Harrison: Eleanor Rigby was Paul on his own.

Lennon: We were just drinking tea.

Q: No, the thing that I’m trying to get at is, do you have plans like anything definite at all?

McCartney: Not for separate recording careers, if that’s what you mean.

Q: Have you written any good books lately, John?

McCartney: Blues?

Lennon: Books?

McCartney: Books?

Lennon: Books or blues, I haven’t written anything, you know.

Q: Paul, according to wire reports you became a little ill after you got off the plane last night. What happened? Air sickness?

PAUL: Yeah, something. You know, I haven’t been too well on the tour. I just felt a bit ill, that’s all, and I was sick.

Q: One of you, I beleive it was George, said that you couldn’t comment on Vietnam in this country but you could in England. Could you elaborate on that a little bit?

Harrison: I didn’t say that. Maybe one of us said that, but I didn’t.

McCartney: It was me. I mean, you know about that, anyway, you know. I mean, we could say a thing about… like John’s religious thing in England and it wouldn’t be taken up and misinterpreted quite as much as it tends to get here. I mean, you know it does. The thing is that, I think you can say things like that in England and people will listen a bit more than they do in America, because in America somebody will take it up and use it completely against you and won’t have many scruples about doing that. You know, I’m probably putting my foot in it saying that, but…

Lennon: You’ll be explaining to the next bunch.

McCartney: Yeah, I know. Oh well, it’s just wonderful here.

Q: There appear to be a much smaller number of fans outside the hotel, and the concert tomorrow night at Shea Stadium is far below a sellout. How do you feel about this…

Lennon: Very rich.

Q: …not being quite as popular as you were?

Lennon: It doesn’t matter, you know.

Q: Do you make the same money?

McCartney: Well, I don’t know, but the thing is, do you expect us just to go on for ever making more and more money, making more and more figures, bigger and bigger? You can’t just go forever.

Harrison: And if certain people have decided they don’t like us after John’s statement then, you know, we don’t want…

Lennon: We’ll have to get rid of them.

Harrison: We’d rather just have people who like us, and really like us, rather than pretend to like us because we’re the in thing.

Lennon: The first house in Memphis, 200 didn’t turn up who were meant to, or something like that, but the second house was wild, you know, and we thought that would be the place that would show any sort of real doubt about what was going on.