They’d never wanted to use it in Liverpool, but being new boys down south, perhaps they wanted to show that they were cool. They had a lot of energy and braggadocio, but underneath it, not a lot of confidence at first. Despite their time in Germany and all the gigs, they still felt out of their depth with more sophisticated, worldly people. It didn’t dawn on them for a long time that they were really cool, that just being seen with them was cool. Their shyness and early diffidence was part of their charm and why journalists took to them and rarely wrote a bad thing about them. Girl reporters in particular were very protective of them. I remember the girls at Fab magazine in particular. Fab was influential, but tight. Their girl reporters were so poor they could barely eat because Fab wouldn’t pay their expenses. If interviews went on late, as they often did because the girls were pretty and the pop stars they interviewed were good fun, they ended up missing the last tube or bus home and slept on the floor or in our bathtubs.
It had been drummed into us all by Brian—the Beatles themselves, as well as the staff—that we were never to give interviews to the press, nor answer their questions when waylaid. If we had stepped outside the line, Brian would have gone through the roof. The girl reporters were fine and knew how to keep secrets. If they hadn’t, they knew they would have been permanently blacklisted. There were two male journalists in particular we could trust: Don Short, who did showbiz for the Daily Mirror, and Mike Housego, who I think was at the Daily Sketch. They used to travel with us, drink with us and crashed out on many a hotel room carpet. We could tell them anything, and true to their word, they printed the official releases allowed out of the office by Brian. In exchange, they—especially Don—got a huge amount of special access and “scoops.” (The system worked: there wouldn’t be a whiff of scandal until 1967.)
We started to make friends and “date chicks,” particularly the long-legged, blond Scandinavian lookalikes who were running around London in droves. Everyone was convinced that we were into orgies, but I didn’t see one. Plenty of sex, yes, but not a bona fide orgy. The darker, harder-edged rockers who followed—like the Stones—experimented with bizarre sex and every drug known to man, embracing every aspect of a new creed that said, “If it feels good, do it!” but everybody—including the Beatles, me and all our friends—jumped in and out of bed with London girls in the most normal heterosexual way. Sometimes, we’d find ourselves in bed with two girls at a time, and think, “This is it! Thank you God!” We believed we were really living it up when the reality was, we hadn’t a clue.
Our favorite haunt in the early days was a tall townhouse in Gunterstone Road, West Kensington, which had been divided up into bedsits, one to each floor. We—the Beatles, the Stones, I and others—were drawn to it like moths to a flame. It seemed to be bursting at the seams not only with some of the most gorgeous girls in London, but with musicians. The Moody Blues lived there. Angie King, who married Eric Burdon of the Animals, shared a flat with Cathy Etchingham (Jimi Hendrix’s girl) and Ronnie, who would eventually become Zoot Money’s wife. A lovely girl named Marie was George’s girlfriend for a while before she married Justin Hayward. Billie Davis lived next door, in the same house as Brian Jones of the Stones. All the girls worked in the “in” clubs like the Speakeasy or the Bag O’Nails. A few were models or aspiring actresses.
Gunterstone Road was very free and open. John and Ringo would drop in all the time, because essentially they were without a woman in London. Brian still insisted that they had to keep Cynthia and Maureen dark secrets in Liverpool. John and Ringo, therefore, acted as if they were footloose and fancy free, which—thanks Brian!—they rather liked. Also regular visitors were Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Paul, before he met Jane Asher. Separately, or together in a crowd, we would drop in at all hours. It was great fun, a nonstop party, where we drank slightly fizzy pink Mateus Rose—the nicely shaped bottle you could stick a candle in for a bit of atmosphere—or spirits from a few miniatures that the girls had purloined from the clubs. Whatever the hour, someone was always at home, the jar of Nescafé always available, and the bag of sugar open with a sticky spoon stuck in it.
There were three girls in particular, waitresses at the Speakeasy, who seemed to be the most fun and drew us like magnets. It wasn’t just that they were pretty and sexy—they were all that—we just liked to be there. For the Beatles it was a lot more welcoming than the austere discomfort of the flat that Eppy had rented for them. At the end of a hard night’s clubbing we would wind up back at Gunterstone Road and crash out in bed with some girl or another, it didn’t seem to matter who, while they, bless their hearts, loved us all equally and impartially. If several boys dropped by, sweetly they moved over in bed to make room for us, then snuggled up in a warm embrace.
When our same laddish crowd discovered the Ada Foster School for Drama in Golders Green, it was as if we’d found the big pot of honey. It was like that famous line in Paul Simon’s song that refers to “The Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Boys and Girls,” only ten times better—and all ours for the taking. We called it the Ada Foster School for Dirty Little Slappers. There were hundreds of lovely horny little nymphets. Several of them were in Dick Lester’s film, The Knack. They were also invited to pad out (as a fake audience) the TV shows on which the Beatles appeared, like Ready Steady Go, the BBC’s Beat Room, and Search for a Star. Some of them were even known as the Cuddle Pups—precursors of the delectable Pan’s People, the all-girl dancing group that had every boy in England drooling—not to mention their dads.
Six of them lived together in a flat on the Fulham Road. “No! Don’t bother to get up!” we’d say when we went in to collect them for a date. It was like a sinful St. Trinian’s up there, pure giggling delight, all neat in black stockings. I had a girl from Ada Foster’s who was in A Hard Day’s Night. One? Who am I kidding? I had a lot of girlfriends from Ada Foster’s over the early years. In fact, now that I think about it, I should have just gotten a flat near there. See Golders Green and die happy. Everyone had girls from Ada Foster’s. They were the original all-singing, all-dancing, all-acting, all f-f-f-fucking ambitious, the lot of them. Nothing wrong with that, they had fun and we had fun.
My address book was a cornucopia of hot numbers. I had all of the Beatles’ numbers and addresses from the year dot—with the old ones crossed out and new ones added since we were all constantly moving—and it was stuffed full of the girls from Ada Foster’s. It was, “Help! … I need somebody. Help! Not just anybody. Help! You know I need someone . . . Call Ada Foster’s now. . . .”
John or George or Paul would say, “Christ knows what they do to graduate.”
“They marry someone rich, like you,” was my reply.
Presumably the girls got their diploma from Ada, did the secret handshake like some Willie-and-the-hand-jive thing and shacked up with a rock star or a celeb. Ada’s girls got to be in all the Beatles’ films. They would brazenly court and spark and flash anyone who they thought might get them a break. Nothing wrong with that either. Pattie Boyd was from there and she was okay. It was probably because George knew so much about Ada’s girls that he grew so obsessively jealous over Pattie from the moment he met her. She was a lovely lady, or, more to the point a “lovely Layla,” as Eric Clapton wrote about her when he came to steal her from George.
9
In the spring of 1963, Paul embarked on a five-year on-again off-again affair with seventeen-year-old Jane Asher, a stunning titian-haired daughter of a Wimpole Street surgeon. They already had a nodding acquaintance from their times when the Beatles appeared and Jane was a regular panelist on Juke Box Jury, a top-rated TV show which awarded a bellhop’s ding! for a hit, and a silly car hooter for a miss on that week’s pop releases, but they weren’t formally introduced until they met backstage at a Beatles’ concert at the Albert Hall on April 18, 1963 when Jane was asked to interview the Beatles by the Radio Times. Paul was impressed by her . . . professionalism. That evening, both George and Paul made a play for the fine-boned young bea
uty, but it soon became apparent that she was smiling mostly at Paul. He was so entranced with her style and breeding that to the surprise of everyone there, he made no attempt to put the make on her. Jane was an up-and-coming young actress, as much a catch in her field as Paul was in his. They soon made an attractive and hip young couple and were invited everywhere.
I wasn’t surprised when Paul moved in with the Asher family in their big, friendly—though grand—house in Wimpole Street, just off Oxford Street, London’s main shopping district. At first he seemed more in love with Jane’s intellect and her fabulous family than he was with her. Dr. Asher, a physician, had identified and named Munchausen’s syndrome, but could talk in a warm and understandable way on any topic under the sun, despite suffering from severe bouts of depression. All three children were a delight—bright, smart, attractive and funny—but it was obvious that Paul adored Jane’s mother, Margaret, often praising her high energy levels, her great cooking and her motherliness. I often popped in to see Paul and was treated like another son, so I understood the family’s appeal. Margaret was a lovely and vivacious woman, who managed to fit in running a large and happy home with a job as a professor of music. Breakfast was a big deal for her. She always insisted that everybody who was there sat down properly even if you had a hangover and couldn’t eat anything. It was an arresting scene, with Dr. Asher sitting there with his black hair and the rest of the family, Mrs. Asher included, as carrot-topped as a row of marigolds.
Officially, Paul was still the most eligible bachelor in the world. He was Paul McCartney, and while he could set seventy thousand women alight, he wasn’t free; he was with Jane Asher, prim little actress, into Shakespeare and all that gear, though the fans didn’t know it for some time. They would have been very surprised if they knew that Paul was living with Jane, not in Jane’s bedroom as her live-in lover, but almost as another brother. He slept up in the attic in a tiny garret room next door to Jane’s brother Peter.
Peter Asher had already started the folk duo, Peter and Gordon, while he and Gordon Waller were still schoolboys at Westminster, the famous public school. Imagine: it’s 1963, you’re Peter of Peter and Gordon. You’re upper class but you want to be a pop star. You don’t really look like a pop star with your red hair and your round face and your old-fashioned glasses, but then your sister goes out with Paul McCartney who moves into the house and gives you a hit song to sing (“World Without Love”) which goes straight to the top of the charts in the U.K. and the States. Talk about good fortune. Gordon and I often went out for a beer and a bit of a laugh. Despite attending such a posh school, he was something of a rough diamond and good company.
Just across the street was the house where the artist Magritte once lived. The walls of the Asher home were covered with paintings and prints of the works of many artists, including Magritte, who was often discussed at family dinners. Paul became very curious about his work. This interest was to lead to him becoming a serious collector of art, and also to being an accomplished painter in his own right. Perhaps buried in that interest was an envy and admiration of John’s artistic ability. They were equals in music, but to Paul, who had dropped out of high school with no qualifications. John’s role as an art student had always given him an edge. John never stopped drawing from the time he left art school. He filled books with doodles and cartoons, and wrote short stories and poems as well as songs. His letters were works of art, with amusing sketches and plays on words. Many survive, but boxes full just disappeared over the years. Paul didn’t have a similar interest, so to him Jane gave him an entrée into a different kind of creativity. She could offer him art, an intellectual family atmosphere and an introduction to a world he had not known existed.
Paul came of age through the Ashers. He delighted in going to tea with Jane’s numerous aunts in their solid London homes. He found particular pleasure in visiting an ancient maiden aunt of Jane’s in Westminster, between Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. They would be let in by a maid in a black frock and a little apron with a starched cap, and served a proper English tea from a large Georgian silver tray, with cucumber sandwiches and slices of caraway seed cake. Another aunt lived in a genteel manor house in the country, the kind of place where dogs lounged before the fire and horses were saddled up in the cobbled stable yard. Visits to the Asher’s gentrified friends in the country introduced Paul to wood-paneled libraries and literary books placed next to his bed to read. Paul had read “good” books at school, but not with much interest. This was a very different world from a council estate in Liverpool. It was the world of the country-house set, one of breeding and style.
It was a world I happened to have grown up in during my holidays with my mother’s family, so I understood what Paul was talking about when he said he was flattered that his hosts thought he was the kind of young man who read good books. For the first time ever, he started to read seriously and with real enjoyment. Crucially, he could go to all these places without ever tripping over a fan.
From Peter’s window overlooking Wimpole Street, Paul could gaze down on the girl fans who started camping out day and night, even on the doorstep, once they discovered where he was. Dr. Asher would often go out and ask them to clear a path so his patients could come in. Feeling sorry for Paul, he also devised an escape route over the rooftops, into a retired colonel’s flat, and out through a distant neighbor’s back door. It always baffled the fans but they never figured it out. (Five years later Dr. Asher committed suicide for a reason known only to himself.)
When Brian, who always did the right thing, learned from somewhere about the conditions Cynthia had been living in, he was very worried. “I don’t think John sees how it looks,” he said. “If the papers find out that he is married with a baby son and then they find out that his wife and son are living in a slum in Liverpool while John is in a luxury flat in London, it could cause a great scandal. She’ll have to come to London and I’ll find them something nice.”
John wasn’t all that happy with his bachelor freedom being curtailed. He pointed out that recently Cynthia and her mum had moved back to the family home in Hoylake, a nice middle-class district where Cynthia had been brought up, but Brian was insistent she’d been practically hung out to dry. The boys were his family and by extension so were Cynthia and John’s son. Before he could do anything, the cat was out of the bag. One morning Brian opened his daily newspaper and saw photographs of “Beatles’ wife” Cynthia pushing a baby to the shops in a big Silver Cross pram. Instantly, Brian arranged a delayed honeymoon in Paris for John and Cynthia and on their return, flew them to London for official photographs that would present this happy and ideal family group to the world.
As he snapped away, the Beatles’ photographer, Bob Freeman, mentioned that a top-floor flat was available above his own flat not far from Brian’s block at Emperor’s Gate in Knightsbridge. John had so little interest in where they lived that he took the flat sight unseen in November 1963, while Cynthia returned home to pack up and fetch Julian. Very quickly she discovered that having a baby and a large pram on the fourth floor of a building with no lift was a mistake, that living in the heart of London with fans camping on her doorstep was a bigger mistake, but she stuck it out for nine exhausting months. During the months they lived in London she and John did go out around town, but Cynthia always felt out of her depth.
Ringo continued to share the apartment with George—with whom he got on remarkably well—for another year, while sneaking Mitch down for covert weekends. When their affair got more serious, she left Liverpool altogether and moved in with him in the ground floor and basement of an elegant Georgian town house in Montagu Square he took on a long lease. They were in a nice little clique, close to Neil Aspinall who was sharing a flat with Mal Evans in Montagu Mews, and near Wimpole Street where Paul lived with the Ashers.
There was so much demand for the Beatles that, as well as releasing a Christmas record exclusively for the burgeoning fan club, Brian decided to put on a Chris
tmas show at the Finsbury Park Astoria in December of 1963. I was drafted to organize it. It was a pop concert with a selection of Brian’s acts, including Cilla, the Fourmost, Billy J. Kramer and Rolf Harris, who all came on for a few minutes each. The Beatles put on a musical skit, which Brian devised, but they ad-libbed wildly. It was fun, being around them while the crazy and over-the-top ideas were bounced back and forth between them. It ended up a kind of cod Perils of Pauline. Paul was the hero in a flat cap and red suspenders, John the villain, with a huge villainous mustache, top hat and cape. George was the heroine in a spotted headscarf, who was tied down by John on the railway line (the audience went wild and wolf-whistled pretty George like crazy). I can’t remember what part Ringo played. Probably the landlord, the sheriff of Nottingham or the girl’s father. It was all very loose with a great deal of ad-libbing when they forgot their lines or what part they were each playing.
We did two special northern previews of the show—without the skit or the costumes—at the Gaumont Cinema in Bradford, and Liverpool Empire on December 22. Then we shot down to London and opened on Christmas Eve. Late that night—the twenty-fourth—Brian arranged for us all to fly home to Liverpool for Christmas Day, but we had to be back for Boxing Day, the twenty-sixth, for another two weeks. It was grueling—but just as we arrived in London and got to the theater, we heard that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had gone to number one in the U.K.
We were still pretty hungover from the previous day, stuffed full of home cooking and worn out—but we raised the roof, or at least, the dressing-room roof, while Brian sat in the corner like a benign fairy godmother and beamed.
As soon as the show ended, the Beatles did a booking for Sunday Night at the London Palladium, where they met Alma Cogan, who was to become a good friend. The next day, they flew to Paris for a three-week booking at the Olympia. It was cold and foggy when they arrived, they were tired, and only a handful of teenagers turned up at Le Bourget—a sign of the chilly welcome Parisians were to bestow on the Beatles. Overall, a general air of gloom cast a damper on their mood. John made a few of his usual sarcastic comments, within Brian’s hearing. Brian shot him a glance, but didn’t say anything, perhaps hoping that none of the fans could hear, or speak English—a pretty safe bet, back then.
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