The crowd at the Olympia was mostly middle-aged and stuffy, though, to Ringo’s embarrassment, a wildly cheering gay contingent turned up and whooped for him. He sat behind his drums and bashfully shook his Beatle mop, looking dazed.
Don Short covered the Paris booking for his paper and described it to me when we met up for a drink on his return. I knew Paris because when I was a teenager, I had gone on a walking holiday around France with my Bohemian and eccentric aunt—a sort of Travels with My Aunt. In Paris, we’d been caught up in the Algerian crisis and the students’ riots. We were arrested and, incredibly, thrown into the Bastille.
“The Bastille sounds much like the George V,” Don commented, referring to the grand hotel they stayed in. “The suites were great gilded rooms you could get lost in with ceilings so high you couldn’t see up that far. The bathrooms were echoing limestone caves, all ancient white marble and sinks as big as baths, and a bathtub in the middle as big as the Titanic.”
He told me that the lads went back to their suite after a performance at the Olympia and got changed into pajamas and dressing gowns. They were sitting around having a nightcap, when Brian walked in with a cable, his face wreathed in smiles.
“Boys, you’re number one in the U.S. charts,” he announced.
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” had jumped from number forty-three to the pole position within days of going on sale.
Harry Benson, a photographer on the Independent who happened to be there, suggested they have a pillow fight to celebrate, to give him something interesting to snap. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard,” sneered John. Harry, who was more used to dealing with politicians than pop stars, subsided in some embarrassment.
Then, Don said, “What d’you know, next moment, biff! John’s got a pillow in his hand and he’s whacked Paul around the back of the head. Paul’s drink goes flying. Then they’re all up on this huge Empire bed, bashing at each other with pillows. Harry was right—it made a great photograph.”
The celebrations continued when another telegram arrived confirming their booking on Ed Sullivan and Brian was so ecstatic that he stuck a potty on his head during supper. Sat there, looking silly. However, topping the charts in America was enormously important to him. He had always told me that if they could get into the U.S. they’d break the world. He brooded long and hard about how to do it. In a way, it was a catch-22. He couldn’t get a big tour there without a big chart success, which so far had eluded them, and everyone said they’d never get charted unless they went. He said that opening in some little venue like the American equivalent of the Cavern or the Casbah was out of the question. They had to make a huge splash, be noticed. And the only way was coast-to-coast TV. In Brian’s eyes, the top show was Ed Sullivan—but for months, throughout 1963 he couldn’t even get a look in. The U.K. newspapers did it for him when headlines splashed that magic word: “Beatlemania.”
Armed with a stack of newspapers, Brian had flown to New York for talks with the Ed Sullivan people, almost twisting their arms to get the promise of a booking “if they chart well.” No wonder he had sat in the starchy George V hotel in January of 1964 with a potty on his head. He must have felt potty with delirium and relief.
Three days after they closed in Paris, they were winging their way to New York and the pop-music history books were being rewritten. Their arrival at the newly named Kennedy Airport, to the screams of thousands of hysterical fans, startled them. The Beatles—who like most of us in Liverpool, had been in love with all things American since childhood—couldn’t believe that this welcome was for them, four Scousers from Liverpool. John loved it, but summed it up when he remarked, “Why do they want us? Don’t they have enough stars of their own?” I don’t think John would have asked that question had he known that in New York alone, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was selling ten thousand copies an hour.
But, here they finally were, in their spiritual home, and ready to “make a show” with all the verve of their Hamburg days. They appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show twice, first in New York on February 9 (when the highest viewing figures of over 23 million was achieved) and then at Miami Beach on the 16th, when over 22 million switched on. To appear on such an iconic show, twice within a week, was remarkable and broke them in the States and the world.
I didn’t go. Brian had left me behind to help take care of his other people like Gerry and Cilla and to be there if he telephoned with an urgent request. Daily, I would open the newspapers and read the latest on their exploits. It was stunning that so much of earth shattering (to us at least) import was going on halfway around the world, and we knew only what we read in the papers, along with the rest of England. None of it seemed real: they could have been on Mars.
The Beatles didn’t top the bill on their second appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show (on Sunday, February 16, at the Deauville Hotel, Miami Beach), that honor going to Mitzi Gaynor, the very cute singing and dancing star of There’s No Business Like Show Business and South Pacific. Afterward, they hung out in Miami, but didn’t get in much sight-seeing because of the furor their presence caused.
On their return to London on Saturday, February 22, Brian had arranged a huge press conference at Heathrow Airport. They were on television, on radio and on the Pathe News at cinemas. I didn’t see them in person that day, nor on the next, a Sunday, when they went straight into the ABC studios at Teddington, to rehearse all day for an evening performance of Big Night Out before a live audience. They spent Monday sleeping because on Tuesday they were up bright and early and at Abbey Road first thing in the morning—George Harrison’s twenty-first birthday—recording their next single: “Can’t Buy Me Love” and the B side, “You Can’t Do That.” In the afternoon, they recorded the first two tracks for the LP that was to be released as the soundtrack for their first film: A Hard Day’s Night, which they would start shooting in just six days time. With a break of a day to record a second bank-holiday special show for the BBC at their studios in Piccadilly, almost the entire soundtrack was done in three days.
I dropped in at Abbey Road briefly, waved to the boys when I went in and chatted with them during a break, all very low-key. I knew they hated too much attention—they got more than enough of that from the gushing wives of mayors and town councilors. The idolatry of fans and press alike wore them out. They liked things relaxed and normal among friends, so we said, “Hi, how’s it going?” cracked a couple of jokes, I said “Happy birthday” to George, the others ribbed him a bit, and that was about it. I don’t think we even touched on America. Already, the huge impact of America seemed a million miles behind them.
By then, they’d lived through a couple of years of stardom in England. They’d grown used to being too big to go to pubs, to hang out as a group. Oddly enough, I got the impression that America was just one more “big experience” in hundreds of big experiences. If it weren’t for the crowds of fans hanging out by the railings outside Abbey Road and trying to break in, everything would have seemed normal. They were back in their familiar surroundings, doing what they had done nonstop for the past few years: working their asses off. I don’t say that cynically. I don’t think anyone worked as hard as the Beatles. But they played hard too, a lot of which was done very strictly among friends and peers and in private. At all costs Brian’s lovable moptop image still had to be maintained.
John was probably the first one to break the mold—but then, we all knew he just wasn’t moptop material. In the spring of 1964, P. J. Proby, a Texan rocker from a wealthy oil and banking background, who looked and sounded like Elvis, was invited to appear on the first big Beatles TV show, Around the Beatles. Beyond his obvious talent, John was almost hypnotically fascinated by P. J’s demonic, destructive nature. P. J. was like John’s dark twin, a man who quickly found his way into the wilder circles and excesses of London society. He was a Jack Black man, lots of it, but John wasn’t. To Cynthia’s dismay, John started to hang out with the lean Texan who dressed like a cowboy during the day and in velv
ets, ruffled pirate shirts and buckled shoes by night. P. J. had charted in the top ten with hits like “Hold Me” and “Somewhere” and “Maria” from West Side Story—but ironically, not with the song John and Paul wrote for him, “That Means A Lot.”
One evening they met up at the Ad Lib. P. J. just cruised through the booze, but John got hammered. P. J. roared with laughter when he told me the details of how the evening went from there, how Cynthia miserably trailed in their wake, begging John to take her home when they went on to a party in a basement apartment of a redbrick Victorian mansion block in Bayswater, where I had my bedsit. Cyn was horrified when she realized that many couples—some of them titled—were into voyeuristic sex, while others were watching a blue movie. John was passed a massive reefer and took a deep, chest-convulsing drag. He passed it to Cynthia and she declined, so he took another drag. Poor John. Tough nut and Joe Cool felt waves of nausea sweeping over him and rushed to the bathroom, where he threw up into the large white bathtub. As Rod Stewart used to say to his drunken girlfriends, it was “homey time.” (And this was still several months away from the hot August night when Bob Dylan would be famously credited with turning the Beatles on, in a New York hotel.)
The deal for A Hard Day’s Night, a poor one by financial standards, had been put together by Brian with United Artists, using Richard Lester, an unknown commercials director and written by Liverpool playwright, Alun Owen. By the time they returned from triumphantly breaking America, they could have asked for a much higher fee than twenty-five thousand pounds between them, but Brian never reneged on a deal.
At the time, he was privately mortified because, through lack of experience, he had agreed to 7.5 percent of the producer’s net when UA had been willing to go to 25 percent. He never publicly showed his embarrassment with poor deals, but one could tell something wasn’t right because inside, he anguished. Chewed his knuckles and grew pale.
Their records were selling in the millions. “She Loves You” had hit the number-one spot in the U.K. and the U.S. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had a million advance orders, something that had never happened before. By April 1964 they had the first five slots in the Billboard charts—something else that had never happened before and probably never will again.
They had written hits for the Stones, Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black and a host of other top acts. There were merchandising deals, concerts, films. Money was flooding in so fast, and not just for the Beatles: Brian started signing up more acts and setting up limited companies by the dozen. Unable to keep on top of it, he consumed Benzedrine in ever-larger quantities in order to stay awake and focused. When things got to be too much he rushed off to Crockfords or any of the other high-stakes, discreet, private gaming establishments in Mayfair he had started to frequent. Next day, he would be at his desk, immaculately presented, not a hair out of place. On the surface he remained calm and pleasantly courteous, outwardly he gave no clue as to the turmoil in his mind. Except for rare occasions when he let his guard down, Brian remained an enigma.
Until we moved to London it didn’t occur to us that promoting records was a branch of the industry, because we hadn’t seen it done as such. In Liverpool, we’d sit in the office and put the records in stiff envelopes and mail them off with a little newsletter to all the main BBC offices in Manchester or Scotland. Gradually, we spread our net and we’d send them to all the places where we had troops stationed, like Cologne, Aden, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malta and Gibraltar for broadcasting on the British Forces radio stations. As for the TV shows of the time, Dick James had his connection with the producer Philip Jones at Thank Your Lucky Stars, and he also had a thing with Robin Nash, who did Juke Box Jury. Up north we had friends at Granada TV because we often did live slots. I knew the Top of the Pops crowd because at the time it was done in a church hall outside of Manchester. I’d go with all our people who were booked that week. We’d fly up, do the show, stay the night and fly back the next day. TOTP moved to London about 1967–1968, but by then, we supplied our own videos.
Before I was asked by Brian to “Pop along to a deejay or two,” there was virtually nowhere to promote a record. Only the Light Program at the BBC played popular music. In fact on the BBC, which was supposed to be impartial, you could only get played on some lunchtime programs, Saturday Club or Easybeat on Sunday morning. It was the Dark Ages. Most teenagers listened to Radio Luxembourg, but their programs were sponsored by record companies who insisted on a playlist of their own records. Obviously it did work, but while it was very popular, it was also very restrictive. Some programs were sponsored by Horlicks, by American evangelists, or by sweets companies like Spangles. But then again there were only about ten records released per week in those days. That was the entire industry.
It was probably about the time of “Help,” or maybe “I Feel Fine,” possibly even “Ticket to Ride,” when I went into the BBC and actually said the words: “Will you play this record?” I have to say that whichever record it was that I had in my sweaty mitt, it wasn’t an enormously difficult mission. Asking producers if they wanted the new Beatles record to put on their turntable was like asking them if they would like a bucket of free gin and tonic. By that time I knew a lot of the people from going along with the Beatles to live sessions for Saturday Club or Easybeat, or for specials like Pop Go the Beatles. Any spare minute the Beatles had, they would be asked to do something for the Beeb so I got to know everybody. I knew the Rons, and the Brians, and the Bernies—all the producers.
When the pirate stations started up, it was like opening a whole new world for promotion. They played nonstop pop, whereas the BBC still had only a few selective programs on which pop music was allowed. It was difficult to be friends with both and not seem to be full of glee at Auntie Beeb’s predicament. A fine balancing act was called for. We were feeding the pirates while we were also still exploiting the BBC. Some wanted us to choose sides, but for most people at the BBC it was a wake-up call. Its ruling board of governors had dragged their feet for too long and now the public—who, after all, paid for the BBC in the first place—wanted something back. This finally led to a big change: customer’s choice. Of course the government tried to take the easy way out and sink the pirate ships instead of competing with them. The Labour government under Comrade Wilson and the Postmaster General, John Stonehouse, went for the pirates.
We used to meet up with the pirate deejays when they were ashore and ply them with rum and records. Sometimes we would even charter a little boat at Southend, Harwich, Margate or Frinton and go out to the ships, laden down with booze, which was thoroughly illegal. Apparently, giving aid and succor to pirate radio ships was punishable by imprisonment. We didn’t care. We were like BumBoats bobbing around on the waves with the latest Fab Four records. It was such fun in those days.
I was on some of the Hard Day’s Night shoots in the West End. At the Scala Theater I organized the hundreds of screaming fans, who were in fact students from the Central School of Speech and Drama and of course, Ada Foster, and were paid the extras’ rate. Some of them were also paid to chase the Beatles along the Marylebone Road and Charlotte Street while the cameras rolled, but it was hardly necessary. Real fans came in the thousands, called by the jungle telegraph, and the police went potty. My job was to be there and attend to whatever was required. There wasn’t much I could do, apart from rustle up lunch for the Beatles, pick up their suits and keep hold of their guitars to make sure they weren’t stolen. It was bedlam. I don’t think Dick Lester had a clue what was going on—nobody did. It was impossible to keep control of the script (what script?) or even control of the shoot. In the end, it was a happening and filmed as such.
Meanwhile, the accountants had seen a vast flood of money cascading in from records, tours, films and merchandise and suddenly they woke up to the fact that this was serious. Brian’s golden geese weren’t going to stop laying in the near future. But, just in case the money did stop rolling in, they advised the Beatles to invest in property. Bricks and mortar,
they said, was solid. Brian wanted the Beatles to live in St. George’s Hill, Weybridge, a secure, private estate in Surrey, near James Isherwood, their accountant and a partner in Northern Songs. This way, he felt, business could be conducted conveniently and discreetly. Apart from Paul—who was having none of it—the others were more than willing to comply with establishing a kind of “Beatles’ enclave” in the countryside within striking distance of each other and London. But none of them seemed to believe that this was real, that they could afford such palatial properties.
George spotted Pattie Boyd on the very first day of shooting A Hard Day’s Night and was instantly smitten. Her part in the film was small. She hadn’t done a great deal of film work and was working as a model, but she was cute and very pretty, like a baby doll, with long blond hair and big blue eyes. Amused, we all watched George follow her around like a puppy, repeatedly asking her out. She said she was engaged, but, just like when he wanted to join the group and John kept telling him to go away, he wouldn’t give in. Day after day, ignoring teasing from his compadres (who fancied her themselves) he banged the gong until she agreed. As she herself said, she would have been a fool not to date a Beatle, given the chance.
Like a bowerbird, George decided he would show her the nest he wanted to put her in. He went house hunting and in record time, came up with Kinfauns, a modern ranch-type of bungalow with spacious grounds on the Claremont Estate at Esher, not far from Weybridge. This was within the envelope of the area where Brian had ordained the Beatles should live, close to John’s Kenwood—a mock-Tudor monstrosity—and Ringo’s Sunny Heights, a large but cozier thirties house.
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