Finally, Brian got that recording date from George Martin, along with a song on an acetate disc that George wanted them to learn: “How Do You Do It,” which was published by Dick James. There was an immediate argument when Brian called the boys in to play it to them. Neither John nor Paul would even consider it, having decided right from the start that they wanted to record their own compositions.
“It’s a nice song, please give it a chance,” Brian pleaded, not wanting to upset George Martin.
“Bollocks, tell him to stuff it up his arse,” John snarled.
Earnestly, Brian assured them it was for their own good and making waves wouldn’t help their career. “We can discuss it with George Martin when we’re in London,” he said. “Don’t make him think you’re difficult. We can work it out when we’re actually in the studio. Making waves now could be most undiplomatic.”
John told him to fuck off, stalked out and Brian sighed, looking down at his lily-white, beautifully manicured hands. “John can be so difficult.”
With his usual tact, Paul said, “John will be okay. We’ll learn the song and work it out later.”
A week later, they were back in London, re-recording their material—this time, without the despised “How Do You Do It,” which (ably demonstrating Paul’s idea of “working it out”) they had sung so boringly straight that George threw up his hands, grimaced and agreed to drop it. Much to their chagrin—and Brian’s delight because by then he had signed up Gerry Marsden—it went on to be a huge number-one hit for Gerry and the Pacemakers.
In the studio, Ringo was depressed because George Martin had brought in Andy White, a top session drummer. Ringo, ever the consummate pro, didn’t throw a wobbler. However, when the single was released, “Love Me Do” was the A side and “PS I Love You” was the flip side (with the standby drummer), so Ringo’s honor was 50 percent intact.
I happened to be in NEMS record store when the records were shipped early in October and was amazed to see carton after carton of the virgin single unloaded into Brian’s stockrooms, all ten thousand of them. “They’ll soon go,” Brian said defensively and immediately got his team on a campaign to help ensure that they did.
I thought the actual real live record of “Love Me Do” was quite wonderful. “My Bonnie” had been a disappointment. It didn’t sound like them. It was an old song, and they’d only sung backing. Apart from the acetate demos that you couldn’t buy, until that point nothing at all had been recorded with the Beatles. They were a live band, without a record. Suddenly, they were authentic. They had a record! It was amazing. Even better was that these were their own songs that they’d been playing for about a year. I’d heard it a million times before but now it sounded authentic and different. “Love Me Do” was tremendous, every harmony, every note. You could sing along to it as well, something we didn’t much do when they played live.
I can still remember the first time I heard it on radio one evening. Radio Luxembourg—208—was “our” station because it played practically all night and you could listen to it in bed. I turned it up really loud and shouted at everyone—Mum and my brothers—to come and listen. We sat there with big grins on our faces, and when it ended, I wished we could hear it again—on air, that is, because naturally, I had a copy of the record. I think everyone in Liverpool did. (I never bought a Beatles record. I was given every single one.)
We put it on the Dansette and listened to it over and over until it was almost worn out like that first flimsy acetate. I felt I had been on the journey with them every step of the way and was very proud. We all were. Mum didn’t even tell us to turn it off. And then we heard it on the radio again and again. I knew then that it would happen for them. Oddly enough, it seemed to change things. Before, they were “our” boys, our mates. Now they seemed to gain in stature, to become someone we were sharing with the world. I know that I personally never treated them any differently, but many people did.
Paul even said it once. “It’s not the same anymore. When I walk into a room of old friends and even family, there’s a kind of shyness, a distance. I just want to shout, ‘It’s me—Paul!’ ”
Three days later, on Saturday, October 6, the day after the record’s official release, Brian celebrated by formally signing a new management contract with the Beatles, one that no longer embarrassingly included Pete Best. This time, Brian remembered to sign it: or perhaps he hadn’t forgotten before. Who knows?
Everyone, especially a primed network of fans, wrote and telephoned radio stations, disc jockeys and the press. Even our mums and girlfriends were roped in to write hundreds of letters. Everywhere the Beatles played, the machine swung into action, pestering radio stations, demanding the record at local record shops—and when it crept onto the charts at number forty-nine, we all went wild. Brian walked around beaming. The running joke was that probably his mum, Queenie, had bought all the ten thousand copies and stacked them in her drawing room. Even though it didn’t get anywhere near the number-one spot, peaking at seventeen on December 27, George Martin was very pleased. By then, the Beatles had started appearing on national television and had made national popularity polls in magazines like the New Musical Express.
The Beatles had one more booking to fulfill, made before their growing fame. It was in Hamburg again, the city that had been their testing ground. Without that grueling apprenticeship, they would not have been as tight nor as good. As if going into training to take on the world, they returned to the Star Club just before Christmas, but they were tired and jaded with an old scene that seemed light years removed from where they were now. But by the time they returned to England, when I saw them next in the New Year, they were ready for anything.
7
Before real fame hit, the Beatles did summer gigs, a week here and there at seaside resorts, a mix of a week at Southport, then a one-night stand in Aberdeen, a Sunday in Torquay and a week in Great Yarmouth or Bournemouth. My job description at that time was what you might call a “clerk” to Brian, but a lot of the time, if the gig were in Merseyside, I’d be off with them in the van at lunchtime to wherever the gig was and afterward we’d come home. If they went further afield, on weekends I’d take them their pay packets and stay over.
Their first van was the secondhand Bedford provided by Neil. It had two bench seats and was pretty basic. Neil would drive, with John often sitting up front with him. We’d push the other bench seat forward to make room for all the gear and then basically sit on it and be bounced around. It didn’t make for a great deal of comfort, but we were used to it. Sometimes, when we were really tired, we’d try to find space on the floor and curl around the equipment and each other, lying on our coats, but it was a crush. Mostly, we’d talk or play cards on an amp.
If John and Paul were in the mood for writing songs, Paul might sit up front with John and they’d get engrossed, or they’d sit in the back and go into a huddle scribbling in their old exercise books and maybe one of them would pick a few notes on a guitar. I know I heard dozens of songs emerge while we were on the road, but none of them were ever finished—it was all bits and pieces, written down and polished later. Sometimes, John or Paul would wake up in the middle of the night; the last verse had come to them. Often we wouldn’t hear a finished version until later, sometimes a lot later, perhaps when they were in the studio, short of a song for a new album. Then one of the exercise books would be dredged up and the pages thumbed through while John or Paul said, “What about this?”—and one of them would sing a few lines.
I can’t say that at the time this “songwriting” was filled with earth-shattering, iconic moments. It didn’t dawn on any of us, and certainly not on me, that in years to come each and every one of the songs would be deconstructed and analyzed, the stuff of theses. Sometimes a situation or a name would be the inspiration, but often the song was pure invention, its genesis just an idle notion, pure imagination. None of us, including John and Paul, took them seriously, probably because it came easily to them. It even took Brian
a long time to realize that these scribblings were valuable. They were old-fashioned songwriters in their approach, writing wherever they happened to be, whether in the back of a van or a hotel room. They had nobody to clue them in about the song business. They didn’t have a Brill Building as support. If only they’d had a manual, the songwriting equivalent of Bert Weedon’s Play in a Day guitar book to teach them that “the song you do belongs to you,” and that writing songs was a bona fide job, perhaps they would not have given so much away.
When bookings took them further afield, Brian invested in a brand new van. The Commer had better suspension and wasn’t as prone to breaking down, but it still wasn’t any bigger and only fractionally more comfortable than the old Bedford. Unremarkably, given the distances we traveled nearly every day, in all weather, we had quite a few crashes. But, remarkably, none of us were ever hurt. George—who had a license—once was driving the van in thick snow, heading home from Hull. Just outside Goole, he skidded on the icy road alongside a canal and we ended up on an embankment. As usual, no one was hurt and we eventually set off again. Another time, John, who didn’t have a license and was blind as a bat, especially at night, wanted to drive. We were in North Wales, heading up the Horseshoe Pass, just above Llangollen. Back then, the road was dangerously narrow and steep. It zigzagged in a series of loops and Z-bends up the sides of an almost sheer slate cliff that marked one side of the River Dee. Suddenly, John lost control. We spun about a bit and for a moment I thought we were going right over the edge, but John managed to turn the wheel and we ended up on the moorland side, in the heather. No one ever mentioned it again, but that could have been the end of the Beatles.
A more dramatic event, though one that didn’t involve an accident, was when the Beatles were appearing at the Royal Pavilion in Bath. Now, Bath is a very beautiful town, filled with classical Georgian buildings that lend it an air of elegance and style, and of all the places that we went, it was the last place we thought we would suffer from vandalism. Perhaps it was a few disgruntled boyfriends of some of the girls who were screaming their heads off—but the van was vandalized. The headlights and the mirrors were smashed, the panels battered and the windows shattered. However, we had to get back to Liverpool with the equipment for another gig. It was night and dark, too late even to consider renting another van or taking a train.
The police were wonderful. An inspector said, “We’ll get you back home, boys.” And he did. He laid on a police escort before and behind us, with lights flashing. We turned on the indicator lights that gave a little light, and headed out driving blind for some two hundred miles, with the wind whistling in, and squinting into the darkness. But the inspector was true to his word—he did get us home.
Much of the time, like homing pigeons, we traveled back and forth from gigs, always returning to Liverpool. Those days when the boys had a gig at home were wonderful because we could stay in bed all day. Staying in one place for a week was a real luxury. When the lads were away I’d usually be based in Liverpool doing whatever Brian wanted. When I did travel with the lads, after shows we would perhaps go off to the Wimpy bar for a hamburger and chips. Then we would go back to the hotel bar, drink some Scotch and Coke and go to bed when the bar closed. We hardly ever “made the scene.” In fact, what scene? There weren’t any “scenes” to make, no clubs to go clubbing at. The only after-hours joints were the odd casinos. They were private, and we didn’t gamble anyway.
We never knew where to go to amuse ourselves outside Liverpool. Before the Beatles, Britain was severely monotone. It wasn’t like America. Our outlook was restricted. Most English movies were austere kitchen-sink dramas, like our way of life. The feel of them was black and white like the TV. The Movietone newsreel at the cinema was in black and white. Clothes were drab. You weren’t supposed to enjoy yourself. Just occasionally if there was somebody that we knew in the town where we were, we would maybe go and visit them and have a couple of light ales and listen to some records. But it wasn’t Hamburg where the Beatles played into the early hours and took a load of speed, drank beer and chased girls. All England was closed by ten o’clock. If we were away from our familiar haunts in Liverpool it was all, “Get on stage. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! ‘Twist and Shout,’ shake your moptop, run out the door. Then Wimpy and chips and good night Fab Four, see you in the morning.” (On second thought, it was bloody great!)
Strange though it may seem now, despite the fans and the growing press, the Beatles’ private lives were very normal—even provincial. Take George, for example. One of his regular activities on a day off was to take me and my mum out for a drive on a Sunday afternoon in his new car. George was the Beatle Mum was closest to. She adored him. Shortly after “Love Me Do” was launched, the Harrisons were able to afford to move just round the corner from us in Hunts Cross. Their new house was modern and slightly more upmarket than the previous one. It became well known when the fans started flocking there. The Harrisons welcomed them all in and the fans fitted right in with the family. Some of them took over the kitchen and made bacon butties or cooked beans on toast for everyone. Mrs. Harrison used to laugh when she recounted to my mum how the fans loved to do her housework. “They’re busy little bees and tell me to put my feet up and read a magazine. They like ironing George’s shirts best of all,” she said with a smile. In fact, shortly, there were to be so many fan letters that both of George’s parents would sit up all night answering them.
With money coming in from bookings, George bought his first car, a hot off the production line dark blue Ford Anglia with a sloping back windscreen—probably made at the local Ford factory at which I no longer worked. Until then, Ringo had been the only Beatle with a car. His was a very gaudy Standard Vanguard, sprayed bright orange, with railway track–type massive girders welded on like a stock car. With its blown exhaust and souped-up engine, it sounded like a tank coming down the road. I can still visualize Ringo, looking slightly manic and goggle-eyed behind the steering wheel.
George’s new car was sedate in comparison. It became well known because it appeared in many of the early photographs. I can remember the first time that George zoomed around to our house in it, a big smile pinned to his face. He honked the horn and Mum and I came running out.
“Get in, Mrs. Bramwell,” he shouted. “I’m taking you for a spin!”
We climbed in, and off we went on what was to be the first of many Sunday afternoon drives. It was the kind of thing that families did back then, going for a drive after lunch on a Sunday and stopping off at some quaint little old-world teashop for a pot of tea and a few sticky buns. We would go to little landmarks like the famed Transporter Bridge at Runcorn, or to local beauty spots like Frodsham, where there were sandstone crags you could scramble up. Sometimes we went to the medieval black-and-white Tudor town of Chester, which on a Sunday was mostly shut up. We were quite happy to stroll around window-shopping and then have tea in a cobwebby little teashop down a cobbled alley, or we’d go to Chester Zoo, one of George’s favorite destinations, not far from the stately pile owned by the teenage Duke of Westminster.
To give an idea just how provincial it all was, Arthur Howes, the agent who did all the Beatles’ early tours, was based in Peterborough. Americans have a rude phrase for such rural locations, but I’ll just say it was a little place in the middle of nowhere. In the early days Brian was so troubled by his lack of management experience that he was always thinking of taking on a partner—almost any partner would have done, as long as he appeared to know what he was doing. The partners Brian needed were Lew and Leslie Grade and Bernard Delfont, a cartel who practically ran the British entertainment industry. They owned ATV (Associated Television Corporation), the biggest independent station, and a host of dance halls and theaters. They had even offered to sign up the Beatles to their agency for 10 percent, leaving Brian 15 percent but, apart from the loss in his earnings, Brian didn’t trust them.
He’d pluck other names out of the air. “What about Larry Parnes?” he asked me.<
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It was Larry Parnes who had booked the fledgling Beatles to back Johnny Gentle in Scotland. He had the opportunity of managing them then, but had turned them down because it was said he didn’t think Stuart Sutcliffe could play. He was right, he couldn’t, but if Larry couldn’t see beyond that he shouldn’t have been in the business. Parnes was famous for his campness, his aggressive ways, his admitted dirty dealings and for getting into show business by accident. He was running his own clothes shops from the age of seventeen, until the night in a London nightclub when he won a whisky drinking contest and got so drunk he invested all his money in a loss-making West End play, The House of Shame. Stuck with an unpromising show that none of the papers would review, Parnes changed its name to Women of the Streets and made the female cast dress as hookers and parade outside the theater during the intermission. They were promptly arrested, the story was splashed in all the newspapers, and the show sold out.
From there, Parnes dumped the clothing shops and hustled around, booking every unknown cod Elvis lookalike he could lay his hands on, changing their names to the likes of Billy Fury and Marty Wilde.
I think perhaps Brian admired Parnes’s ruthless energy, his in-your-face rudeness and the fact that their backgrounds in trade at least were similar. He said, “A fellow like Larry Parnes who knows his way around is what we need. What do you think, Tony?”
I was barely seventeen and didn’t know what to think. I would nod and say, “You know what’s best, Brian.”
The trouble was, for a long time Brian didn’t know what was best. He might have given the appearance of being coolly in control, but he was floundering all the way to the top. It caused him great angst. He often used to turn up at a Beatles gig in his Ford Zephyr Zodiac, wearing an expensive suit and a silk tie and smile and frown and watch and worry and wonder if he was doing the right thing or whether the real professionals were just laughing at him. In the end a partner really didn’t matter because it turned out that nobody else knew what was going on either. That kind of woolly thinking stayed with him, and us, throughout the early days—luckily. Sometimes not knowing enough can allow you to think you can achieve anything.
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