Magical Mystery Tours

by Tony Bramwell

  All the opinions offered to Brian were negative but he ignored them. For Brian, managing a beat group—as they were then called—promised something that running the record store did not: an escape from crushing boredom.

  The topic of conversation was often this wealthy young businessman who was so interested in the Beatles. At the Casbah, Mona Best—who in fact had made the original telephone call that got them their residency at the Cavern—often sarcastically asked what Mr. Epstein had said about his intentions, in a way that suggested it would come to nothing. She felt protective of the group, which she always referred to as “Pete’s group,” not seeming to notice how much it irritated the others. But it was only because Mona thought of it as her son’s group that they got use of a van, a telephone and elegant, brainy Neil to drive them around.

  His homework done and his mind made up, Brian arranged a meeting with the Beatles just before Christmas, on December 6, 1961. None of the Beatles took him seriously enough to arrive on time. A stickler for punctuality, Brian was driven almost to distraction before three Beatles wandered in late to his offices, while Paul almost didn’t come at all. He had gone home after their lunchtime session at the Cavern and was wallowing in a bathtub well over an hour past the appointed time. Uncharacteristically, Brian kept his cool and when the meeting finally got off the ground two hours late—with a very clean and cheeky Paul now in attendance—Brian almost promised to love, honor and obey them. Astonishingly for someone who didn’t know what he was talking about and who had no prior experience in show business (beyond an abortive year as a student at RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London), he said he would get a release from Bert Kaempfert; he would double whatever they were getting from local gigs; he would book them in at major venues further afield; and he would get them a record deal on a major label.

  The Beatles looked at each other, shrugged, and in his deadpan way, John held out his hand and said, “Right, where’s the contract? I’ll sign it.”

  “My solicitor will draw a fair one up,” Brian said smoothly, not revealing how fast his heart was beating beneath his handmade Turnbull and Asser shirt and plain silk tie. (In fact, Brian did have a standard industry contract in his desk drawer, one he had gone out of his way to get ahold of, but some time later, when working on his memoirs in Devon, he admitted that he felt it was too one-sided in his favor, even in an era when musicians were considered scum.) He stood up and shook their hands. “Meanwhile, before you sign with me, to show my good faith, I’ll prove to you what I can do.”

  Afterward I heard about it because they all joked about the meeting, particularly about how Paul wouldn’t get out of the bath for Brian Epstein. The details were related over and over again until everyone knew the sequence of events as if it had happened to them.

  Brian immediately wrote to someone named Disker, who wrote a music column that reviewed records in the Liverpool Echo, the city’s daily evening newspaper. He told him all about the Beatles and their growing following of clamoring fans. To Brian’s surprise, the letter he received by return post was postmarked London and written on Decca Records’ distinctive notepaper. Disker turned out to be Tony Barrow, whose day job was to write sleeve notes for Decca albums. He also moonlighted as a freelance journalist under a nom de plume. Coming originally from Liverpool, he knew what NEMS was and had heard—vaguely—of the Beatles.

  Brian put in a trunk call to him at once and they arranged to meet in London to “listen to a record by the Beatles.” For Brian, the meeting was initially disappointing. Disker refused to review Brian’s record, a poor-quality acetate of a performance at the Cavern, because it wasn’t a bona fide record available for sale in shops. No record deal—no review, was his rule. But, even as Brian was returning depressed on the train to Liverpool, Tony Barrow was ensuring that Dick Rowe, head of A & R (artists and repertoire) at Decca, had been informed that the owner of an important store in Liverpool that sold hundreds of their records would appreciate an appointment to pitch a new group he was managing.

  News traveled fast that Decca in London was sending a scout to the Cavern to check out the Beatles. It was Wednesday, December 13, 1961, just a week after Brian’s meeting with the Beatles in his offices, so things had moved fast. The day before the great man’s visit, Bob Wooler had announced that a talent scout was coming up from London, and asked us—the usual Cavern crowd—to be keen and enthusiastic. “Give it your best,” he said. “Get everyone to come and put on a big show for our lads.”

  Brian anguished a bit about what the boys should wear. He personally loved the whole skintight black leather jeans and jacket look, so he suggested that, plus black T-shirts. The Beatles were tickled, because that was what they often wore anyway, along with their winklepickers. But Brian had the last word: “Make sure your shoes are clean. People notice, you know.”

  John thought this was hilarious. “We’re just a bunch o’greasers, you know, Brian,” he said. “Scruffs. Dunno if you can clean us up much.”

  I think that the others did clean their shoes, but John didn’t. However, their moptop hair was clean and shining; only Pete stuck to the old rock ’n’ roll DA. I don’t think he ever changed it.

  There were only two trains a day between Liverpool and London at the time, one in the morning and one in the evening. The scout, Mike Smith, an assistant A & R man from Decca, took the sleeper, checked into a hotel in Lime Street and then came to the Cavern for the lunchtime and evening shows. He didn’t introduce himself, neither did he stick out like a sore thumb, but everyone still knew. There was an undercurrent of curiosity and excitement. By then, we’d all been primed. Fans and friends crammed into the cellar to ensure the two best shows ever. The Beatles leaped about, rocked like dervishes and gave it plenty of wellie, as we say up north.

  Mike Smith wasn’t knocked out, but he was impressed enough to tell his boss that he should audition the group. This was arranged for New Year’s Day 1962, one of the coldest winters on record. While Brian traveled southward in the comfort of a heated railway carriage, Neil drove the boys down the day before in the back of a freezing van through a snowstorm. The uncomfortable journey took ten hours and they arrived battered, cold and hoarse. After they had settled into their modest hotel off Russell Square, they roamed around a snowed-in city that soon lived up to expectations when a drug dealer accosted them in the street and offered to sell them some pot. They ran a mile. (As a matter of fact, this was the only thing about their entire trip that I heard about on their return, and it was George who told me, “It was just like Hamburg, Tone.”)

  The next day, they fumbled through fifteen songs, chosen by Brian to reflect their full repertoire, and that was it. Dick Rowe said he would let them know.

  Returning home, cold and depressed, the Beatles crouched in the back of the freezing van and brooded. They brooded because they felt the studio environment didn’t allow them to shine, they said that Brian’s choice of songs was wrong—only three of which were Lennon-McCartney numbers—and they had been dismissed with little comment or clue as to Dick Rowe’s overall impression. Brian, on the other hand, smoking a cigarette in the comfort of the train, was upbeat and confident. Had they known that Dick Rowe intended auditioning another group, Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, before making up his mind, they would have been even more nervous.

  No one said a word about what had happened on their return. It wasn’t the sort of thing they would brag about, as if talking about it would bring them bad luck. If anything, they acted as if it was not going to happen. In fact, on their immediate return there was a general air of gloom about them, so much so that nobody dared ask them how it went. However, on the way to a gig in the new year there was a bit of a postmortem. I heard John mumble something about the choice of songs being wrong. Paul said they were in the studio just over an hour, during which time they recorded fifteen songs. “It was too rushed,” he said. George was embarrassed over his rendition of the “Sheik of Araby.” Paul did “Besame Mucho” at Brian�
��s insistence. He muttered that it was a silly ballad. “We should have just done our own stuff,” he said. “It’s what we’re all about, and at least it’s different.”

  Despite this, Tony Barrow certainly thought they were in. Writing as Disker in the Liverpool Echo almost a month later, on January 27, he reported: “Latest episode in the success story of Liverpool’s instrumental group, The Beatles: Commenting upon the outfit’s recent recording test, Decca disc producer Mike Smith tells me that he thinks The Beatles are great. He has a continuous tape of their audition performances that runs for over thirty minutes and he is convinced that his label will be able to put The Beatles to good use. I’ll be keeping you posted....”

  This little write-up was what Brian was waiting for to finally convince the boys that he was the right manager for them. By now he had what he believed to be a fair contract drawn up; he had been around to talk to Paul and George’s parents and had even braved Mimi’s skepticism, winning her over with a mixture of charm, earnestness and flattery, first having taken care to park his big, shiny car in the drive of course, where she could see it. Then he went to the Casbah where they were playing that night, had a word with Mo Best, and got them all to sign on the dotted line. The only one who didn’t sign was Brian himself. Perhaps he was flustered and forgot. Personally, I think he didn’t want to be that committed. He said a gentleman’s word was binding. On another occasion, he told me that the contract wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on, but I didn’t know what he meant.

  He was right. It didn’t matter. The contract wasn’t legal, anyway, because Paul and George were both under twenty-one.

  In those days the whole pop music industry was all hit-and-miss—just like the early TV show, Juke Box Jury—and to a certain extent it probably still is. It’s something I beat the drum a bit over, but these days, when the head honchos at the music-industry conglomerates listen they don’t hear hit or miss, great songs or great music: all they hear is product. When the Beatles were at their peak, records had to sell in the half millions before they hit the top ten, where often they stayed for weeks. Today a record just has to sell a few thousand before it charts. Most of them fade unmemorably, as fast as melting snow.

  The apocryphal legend that much-maligned Dick Rowe of Decca screwed up by uttering one short comment never made much sense to me. He reputedly stated that guitar groups “are going out of fashion” when he famously turned the Beatles down in favor of Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. That quote, which followed poor Dick around to the day he died and even beyond the grave, was unlikely. At the time of the Beatles’ audition in January 1962, Decca Records had decided to sign only one of the two groups they had under consideration, and they signed the Trems—a guitar group. They signed them instead of the Beatles simply because the Trems lived closer. They came from just down the road in Dagenham, Essex—just outside London—which was a great deal more convenient for meetings and rehearsals than Liverpool. Just as Allan Williams had found a couple of years earlier when he had tried to persuade Bruno Koschmeider to book the Beatles, most blinkered London-based record executives dismissed the rest of the country. The idea that a hot group could come from the bleak north, where any telephone call was long distance and usually subject to numerous delays, was unthinkable.

  For a long time we fondly thought Brian was brilliant, but the reality was he had huge gaps in his knowledge of how the industry worked. Andrew Loog Oldham, later to manage the Stones, and a youngster who hustled the Beatles press-agent gig out of Brian Epstein when he was still only eighteen years old, neatly summed up this attitude. Barely out of the famous public school where he’d been educated, he was an enthusiastic amateur in love with pop. When asked how he came to get the influential job of press agent to the Beatles, he said, “Because I asked.”

  Andrew was in Birmingham at the taping of the TV show, Thank Your Lucky Stars, while repping Jet Harris and Tony Meehan—the ex-Shadows—who were massive. The Beatles did “Please Please Me” and Andrew couldn’t believe how powerful it was. He went over to John Lennon and told him he was very good and was amused when John instantly agreed with him: “I know.”

  Andrew said, “So I asked him who repped them and he pointed over his shoulder to this straight, public school–looking guy in a suit, overcoat and paisley scarf who was chatting in a corner to Ringo.” It was Brian Epstein, who, to Andrew, seemed a most unlikely manager. However, he approached him and Brian instantly hired him as the Beatles’ press agent.

  No, guitar groups being on the way out doesn’t play. The Trems had three guitars—just like the Beatles. If anything, guitar groups were coming in. The only real difference was that the Trems had Brian Poole out front with no instrument. “And that’s how it should be. Just like Cliff Richard and the Shadows,” said Brian Poole’s mum in a newspaper interview. A year later, despite scoring a three-week number one with “Do You Love Me” and a top five hit with a cover of “Twist and Shout!” Decca dumped the Trems. Mike Smith, the producer at Decca who liked the Beatles, went with the Trems to CBS (now Sony), where they were very successful.

  The Dick Rowe legend seems to have originated with a letter written by Len Wood, managing director of EMI, on December 17, 1963, to a journalist, explaining how the Beatles ended up with them. He states: “Dick Rowe’s … reaction was that electric guitars were now ‘old hat’ and he was not interested in the Beatles.” Well, if Dick Rowe did say that, it’s possible he was thinking of the huge success of “Telstar” with its wonderful quirky production and use of electric organ; but, two years on, and secondhand at that, did Len Wood make this up as a good story?

  Everyone seemed to be in a quandary over this guitar group business. We all wondered—which Beatle should be the leader? Who would be out front? John or Paul? Even George Harrison was a possibility. It didn’t take us too long to figure out what we all knew anyway: they were indivisible.

  Before Brian even got to see George Martin, he had spent several months growing ever more despondent, being turned down by all the big labels in London, including Philips/Fontana, CBS, Pye and Polydor (U.K.). He always sat the Beatles down in a local milk bar on his return from London to tell them frankly what had happened. He tried to remain positive during these postmortems, even when they started muttering among themselves that quite possibly he was all frock and no knickers. This is a northern expression, which means all show. In Brian’s case, it hit home and he was deeply upset.

  Annoyed because she felt she’d been sidelined in favor of “a queer Jew boy,” Indian-born Mo Best told Neil Aspinall that the boys had better watch their arses. Rumors had flown around ever since Brian had made a misjudgment and been beaten up by a queer-basher he had tried to pick up in Liverpool. Normally, Brian would prowl further afield to Manchester or Southport with friends like Peter Brown, who he had brought in to manage a new NEMS shop. But sometimes, fueled by amphetamines, Brian liked the risk of risk itself. He was a gambler.

  After mentally playing eeny-meeny-miney-mo in his mind with the Beatles, wondering which one he could truly fall in love with, with his inbuilt sense of masochism, Brian had settled on John as the object of his adoration. John was angry, he was given to fits of violence, had a cruel tongue and knew how to play Brian, how to bring him to the brink of hopeful anticipation—then destroy him with a word. Even in my youthful naiveté, I had noticed that Brian would rarely look John in the face, that he would glance down and flush while John looked at him with a tight, wolfish grin.

  Brian, who lived very comfortably with his parents in one of Liverpool’s wealthier suburbs less than a mile from Mimi’s home, secretly rented a small love nest on Falkner Street in the city center. It wasn’t long before we found out about it. It became the in-joke to ask, “Has he asked you up there yet?” But despite the gossip and innuendo that swirled about him, with the exception of John, we were always very courteous to Brian. At first, until we got to know him, we formally called him Mr. Epstein, then it was Brian. The Beatles called him Epp
y when they discussed him among themselves, as in “Will Eppy go along with this or that?” Or, “Where’s Eppy?” Despite the superficial respect—and there was always respect—it didn’t stop the nudge-nudge giggling type of gossip.

  When George went to Brian’s home—not to the flat but to his mother Queenie’s house—and spent the day there, everyone was smirking and saying, “Oooh, George has been there all day! What do you think they’ve been up to?” When we saw George, he was mercilessly teased. Now George always appeared quiet and laid back, but he had quite a temper. He flew off the handle, snarled that he and Brian just talked and he wouldn’t discuss it. Eventually we shut up about it.

  5

  Even though Brian had been unable to land a record deal, in April 1962 he issued a press release that grandly stated that he had arranged a European tour for the Beatles. In fact, it was a six-week season back in the trenches of Hamburg’s notorious Star Club. To make a splash, the boys flew from Liverpool Airport at Speke. In those early days of flying, very few people that we knew ever flew anywhere, so this was pretty special, if hair-raising. The local airline had the wonderful name of StarDust, or Starlight Airlines, run by a Mr. Wilson, who made a fortune as a rag-and-bone man. It became a running joke that his planes, old Dakotas, were made from bits of scrap iron. People used to laugh that they’d fall apart, and it really did happen. Once, when we took off from Speke, the door fell off into the River Mersey. Everyone was terrified, waiting to be sucked out of the door. (When telling this story later, John used to say that it was a window that fell out; it wasn’t. It was a door.)

  The night before they went to Germany, they had a farewell gig in the Cavern. It was one of the most crowded nights ever, one of the best I can remember. On the actual question of “going to Germany” not a lot was said. The Beatles were very cagey; people were very cagey back then. There were no farewell hugs and kisses, no tears, no fare-thee-wells. So many things were private and left unsaid. It was just “See ya,” and that was it. (Which makes the screaming, shrieking, sobbing, dawn of Beatlemania that was about to break all the more remarkable.)