Maureen Cleave

Did You Know?

• Cleave was born in Mussoorie, British India, on 20 October 1934.
• She grew up in Ireland, her mother Isabella's country of origin, with an English father, Major John Cleave, of the 7th Rajputs.
• At Oxford, she had the distinction of being the first woman asked to speak at the Oxford Union.

Career

After graduating, Cleave took a secretarial job at the Evening Standard but talked editor Charles Wintour into letting her cover show business and write a pop column called "Disc Date." Acting on a tip from a friend in Liverpool, she went there in January 1963 to interview the Beatles. Her piece, "Why the Beatles create all that frenzy," came out the next month and was one of the first serious looks at the band. It also sparked a lasting friendship with them as their fame grew. In 1964, she started appearing as a guest on the TV panel show Juke Box Jury, alongside Millicent Martin, Matt Monro, and Bobby Vee.

In early 1966, Cleave sat down with each of the four Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein for a series of one-page profiles called "How Does a Beatle Live?" These ran in the Evening Standard on five consecutive Fridays from March 4 to April 1. During her interview with John Lennon, he told her the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus now." Five months later, just before a 14-city US tour, an American magazine reprinted the comment, triggering a backlash against the band across much of the United States, especially in the South and Midwest.

According to Bob Spitz's biography of the Beatles, Lennon claimed he had a relationship with Cleave that inspired the song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)." Lennon's friend Pete Shotton also pointed to Cleave, but she insisted Lennon never made a pass at her, and Lennon later said he couldn't recall who the song was about. Another theory names Sonny Freeman, wife of photographer Robert Freeman, who shot the covers for With the Beatles, Help!, and Rubber Soul. Cleave ended her connection with Lennon in 1966, the same year she got married.

In the 1960s, Cleave also interviewed Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. She preferred talking to people who weren't celebrities and avoided actors and politicians because they had nothing new to say. Her subjects included Guinness heiress Aileen Plunket, rock star Little Richard, and Donald Maclean, chairman of the National Vegetable Society. A decade after Lennon was murdered in December 1980, she wrote a warm tribute to him in The Telegraph Weekend Magazine.

Personal life

Maureen Cleave and Francis Nichols, who met as Oxford students, married in September 1966. They spent three years in Peru during the late 1960s for his work as an economist and farmer. Following his mother’s death in 1972, they moved to his family home, Lawford Hall, and stayed married until he died in 2015. The couple had three children: Sadie, Dora, and Bertie. In August 1992, Cleave collapsed on the platform of Tottenham Court Road tube station and was later diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. She died on 6 November 2021, two weeks after turning 87, following a short illness.