With money to burn and time on his hands, Webb spent most of the Seventies on his sailplane "getting to know the desert." Unusually, he was at home at 5am one morning, when John Lennon - in the middle of his 18-month Bacchanalian "lost weekend" - and mutual friend Harry Nilsson knocked on the door of his Los Angeles home.
Lennon had punched a photographer out at the Troubadour and needed an alibi. Webb accompanied them to the police station.
"I sat there like a cherub and swore false testimony that I was there and Lennon had hit nobody.
"You see, there was a secret code which said that because The Beatles were such a force for good, you would do whatever they asked you to. I was so proud of myself, but the amateur psychologist in me remembers that because of his cleverness, John was a very difficult man to approach and ensured people kept their distance."
