by Bob Spitz
Thus, Rowe let the most popular band in history slip through his fingers.
To insulate himself against the Beatles’ headstrong manager, Rowe had recruited Sidney Beecher-Stevens to join them for lunch in a private dining room at Decca House, where, without beating around the bush, he delivered a polite but final rejection. Brian seethed with indignation. It was clear the end had come; the expectations fanned by the productive recording session were dashed. Brian was convinced that he and the Beatles had been slighted and strung along by Decca. At one point during lunch, voices were raised. Struggling to recover his composure, Brian announced quite pompously that they were making the mistake of their careers. Now Rowe had heard enough. He had been listening to this babble about “the Beatles’ potential” for over an hour. Through clenched teeth, he offered Brian a piece of advice: “You have a good record business in Liverpool, Mr. Epstein. Stick to that.”
Brian left Decca House “completely shattered.” He had failed to deliver what he had promised. Even more unsettling was the absence of options. He was out of places to shop the Beatles. Against the backdrop of failure, Brian reached out to a London acquaintance for some constructive advice. The previous year he had gone to a retail record management seminar in Hamburg, where he’d hit it off with a young man named Bob Boast. At first, they seemed like an improbable pair, but the more the two men talked, the more a rapport developed between them. They both liked the same kind of music, were devoted to their jobs, and possessed the same direct, earnest attitude toward record sales. Boast managed the tony HMV record store, and Brian dropped in on him as a measure of last resort.
Boast listened to the Beatles’ Decca tapes without much enthusiasm. There was no way he could help, other than to suggest that Brian convert several of the songs to discs, which, in the future, would allow A&R men to hear only the highlights, the killer songs, without having to wade through everything else. Right away, that suggestion made excellent sense. One flight above the record store was a studio where acetates could be cut while Brian waited. This, too, proved providential, inasmuch as Jim Foy, the engineer on duty, happened to listen and liked what he heard. When Brian bragged that his favorite songs were written by the Beatles themselves, Foy introduced him to Sid Coleman, the general manager of Ardmore & Beechwood, who expressed interest in acquiring the publishing rights. The offer was significant principally because it corroborated Brian’s impression of the Beatles as viable talents. It was not, he recognized, the kind of deal dangled to many groups without a record in the marketplace. Intrigued, Brian promised to explore it, but at the moment, he explained, a recording contract was more crucial to his agenda. Coleman, eager to pursue matters, volunteered to help. No extraordinary effort was necessary, he assured Brian—everything was all in the family; HMV and Ardmore & Beechwood happened to share the same corporate parent, EMI. “Now, who hasn’t [already] got a group in EMI?” he speculated aloud, running his finger down a list of company telephone extensions. “Let me see, Norrie’s got the Shadows….” On and on Coleman went, puzzling over a chore in which he seemed to match the entire roster to their respective in-house producers. The label and its affiliates were inundated with pop acts whose lineups bore too close a resemblance to the Beatles. None of the producers on the list were likely to take on a project that duplicated an act already under contract, and each had his own respectable share.
Except for one.
Coleman’s finger lingered over the name, a wild card, and not even that—more like a shot in the dark. He must have felt uneasy at the prospect of taking such a shot; it had “misfire” written all over it. No doubt he deliberated over how Brian Epstein would react at the end of yet another hopeless audition. It would be easy to judge Coleman’s assistance as inappropriate, a waste of time. He was savvy enough to know that if there was any value in these Beatles, such a miscue might scare off Epstein or, worse, steer him to a competitor. Still, it seemed like the only alternative. There was no one else at the label likely to give him the time of day. So, without any more debate, Coleman picked up the phone and called George Martin.
[III]
Even before he had become famous, George Martin had the aura. He was a tall man, well over six feet, with a fine head of thick, wavy, swept-back hair and dramatic features: a wide, helmet-shaped forehead; long, sloping jawline; liquid blue eyes; and an afterglow of masculine beauty that filled out and crystallized with age. He also conducted himself with such natural deference that every gesture seemed informed by a graciousness and decency beyond him. Nevertheless, for all Martin’s personal poetry, at EMI he was something of a joke.
From the moment he arrived at the record company, in 1950, George answered his EMI telephone with the punch line: Parlophone. The label, once a vital German imprint, had dwindled in stature to the extent that it existed primarily as a repository for EMI’s most insignificant acts. In a company loaded with up-and-coming stars, Parlophone was lit by baroque ensembles, light orchestras, dance bands, and obscure music hall luminaries whose commercial prospects were as dim as their material. HMV and Columbia got the heavy hitters licensed from their American affiliates; even when EMI bought Capitol Records in 1956, its artists landed everywhere but Parlophone, which was insular and self-contained. “It was the bastard child of the recording industry,” says a musician familiar with the scene, “kept locked away in the clock tower and treated with disdain.”
Martin inherited Parlophone’s reins in 1955 and, for a brief period, continued along much in the same timeworn tradition, flogging such pedestrian artists as Jimmy Shand, Jim Dale, Humphrey Lyttelton, Ron Goodwin, and “a lot of traditional Scottish bands that actually sold themselves.” With the upswing of pop, it became increasingly clear that if Parlophone was ever to be productive again—and not just productive, but vital—Martin would have “to do something” bold to forge a distinct and profitable identity using material that fell “between the cracks” at other labels, or risk increased alienation from within the corporate hierarchy.
Most A&R men would have studied the competition and staked a similar claim. But for whatever reason, George Martin demurred. He had spent most of his life in thrall of serious music—and serious musicians. He had studied piano and oboe in earnest at London’s Guildhall School of Music, idolized Rachmaninoff and Ravel, swooned over Cole Porter, befriended Sidney Torch and Johnny Dankworth. Clearly, pop music was out of his register.
Rather than leap the scales, Martin pitched a note no one else had struck and one loaded with gold. Comedy was enormously popular in England and relatively cheap to record; there were no musicians to pay, no arrangements to write, no copyrights to secure. Of course, comedy didn’t present the creative challenge of a Mozart serenade. Nor was it studded with finely crafted highlights like the intricate phrasing of a Dankworth Seven record or the lushly produced orchestrations of Eve Boswell. But the payoffs were handsome. Martin scored a smash with At the Drop of a Hat, a two-man show starring Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, which sold steadily for more than twenty-five years. That was followed by the hugely innovative, and every bit as lucrative, Beyond the Fringe. It’s irreverent cast—Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore—cracked the whole silly scene open, sparking a “satirical movement” among the highbrow university crowd. They also gave George Martin purchase on a genre that rang up untold sales points at EMI.
If the Fringe gang gave Martin cachet, Peter Sellers put him over the top. Sellers was a comic phenomenon—a mimic and impressionist and master of the ad-lib, the verbal grenade which had taken on a cultural but dubious significance. Young people especially, such as John Lennon, considered Sellers an icon because of his brilliant eccentricity and outrageous offbeat humor. And somehow George Martin managed to capture all of that on tape. Martin and Sellers made a series of records over the years—some alone, others with Spike Milligan, even ensemble pieces with the entire Goon squad (Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe)—that transformed Parlophone’s position at EMI. “We had gone f
rom being known as a sad little company to making a mint of money,” says Ron Richards, Parlophone’s “song plugger” at the time.
But while providing the label with substantial security, comedy alone wasn’t enough to satisfy Martin. He was a musician; it was in his blood. And though there were some marginal contemporary singers on the roster, what Martin lusted after, what he determined would raise Parlophone’s jokey image, was a legitimate pop act, the same kind of hit pop act that fueled every other label in the marketplace. The closest it had come was a single called “Who Could Be Bluer,” by Jerry Lordan, who went on to write the Shadows’ biggest hits. It bulleted to the Top Ten for a week or two, whetting Parlophone’s appetite for pop. But when it came down to the nitty-gritty, Lordan wasn’t a rallying force; he was too sedate to cause much of a sensation. And Shane Fenton, whose voice was “so soft the engineers had enormous difficulty getting it on tape,” eventually “ran out of steam.”
Ron Richards says, “George was desperate to get something off the ground in the pop department.” It “humiliated him” the way Parlophone got upstaged by its sister labels, so much so that when Sid Coleman phoned about a promising group he’d heard—so promising, in fact, that they’d already been turned down by EMI—Martin agreed to book a meeting on Tuesday, February 13, 1962, with their manager, Brian Epstein.
Each time Brian returned empty-handed from London, the Beatles had listened without grumbling. But with the passes piling up, the Beatles’ patience had worn thin. Only a few weeks before, Brian had assured them that the Decca deal was all but cinched. Now, over a long, tense dinner, he scrambled to account for its startling demise, stuttering over the details like a deeply rutted record. At one point in the strained encounter, John, still smarting about the audition tape repertoire, warned him “not to be so clever.” The silence that followed was brittle. The hostility in the exchange was impossible to ignore. Brian sat there, looking awkward and embarrassed, until finally John, having made his point, snapped: “Right. Try Embassy.” That had broken the ice. Embassy was Woolworth’s in-house label, devoted to novelty and children’s records. Everyone, including Brian, appreciated the absurdity of his remark and especially how deftly John had wielded it as a tension breaker.
Nevertheless, the incident brought to the surface the resentment that was brewing. The Beatles felt they had done their share; in addition to jacking up their show several notches, they had reshaped their act to suit Brian’s specifications. It was his turn to be tested. They expected some results.
Brian reminded them about an upcoming audition in Manchester for the BBC dance show Teenager’s Turn and several other promotions that carried his imprimatur. Most were harmless schemes designed to boost the band’s image, but one, at a club in Southport, stirred some dormant internal strife. Ron Appleby, who promoted the show, recalled an incident that would soon have far-reaching repercussions. “Brian Epstein decided that everyone who came into the dance before eight [o’clock] would be given a photograph of the Beatles.” It was a nice incentive, although an unusual practice for a Liverpool dance, and it went over in a big way before taking an unforeseen turn. “The girls were ripping up the photograph and sticking the picture of Pete Best onto their jumpers.”
No one, especially Pete, had counted on that happening. He was “embarrassed” by the attention, but it wasn’t an isolated incident. “Almost since he joined the band, Pete was the most popular Beatle,” says Bill Harry, expressing a view shared by many early fans. “He was certainly the best-looking among them, and the girls used to go bananas over him.” This phenomenon was nothing new. Best had immense stage presence. Unlike the other Beatles, who mugged shamelessly for the girls, Pete, unsmiling, ignored the crowd, attacking the drums with his long muscular arms, which only heightened his mystique.
One can only imagine how much resentment and envy that stirred, especially in Paul, who was sensitive to being upstaged. He’d already gotten bent out of shape by the way Stuart Sutcliffe used to steal the limelight. Now suddenly Pete was crawling up his back. “If one of the others got more applause, Paul would notice and be on him like lightning,” recalls Bob Wooler, whose own behavior did nothing to tone down the jealousy. Wooler had worked out a little rap he delivered at the end of a band’s set to introduce individual musicians. A poster for The Outlaw he’d seen described Jane Russell as being “mean, moody, and magnificent,” which Wooler borrowed and applied to Pete Best. “He was the only Beatle I mentioned by name every time, and it sparked enmity between them—especially with McCartney.”
Every day at the Cavern, whether intentionally or not, Wooler twisted the knife. “And on the drums, our very own Jeff Chandler,” he’d intone over an orgasm of shrieks. “Mean, moody, and magnificent… Mr. Pete Best!” Paul would seethe as he listened to the swell of female approval, although he didn’t need a cheering section to know that he was being overshadowed. To him, the implications were all too clear: if this was allowed to continue unchecked, Pete would wind up the Beatles’ heartthrob. “That had always been Paul’s role,” says Bill Harry. “He always promoted the girl fans. He’d stop and talk to them, take their requests, be friendly. Now, unintentionally, Pete had cut into his territory.”
Paul must have known it wouldn’t be difficult to rally the other Beatles against Pete. Privately, they all grumbled their discontent about the way he murdered the backbeat. He was too much of what drummers call “a bricklayer” to suit their interests, too hamfisted, an unimaginative musician. What’s more, he was always the odd man out. Whenever the band went out together after a gig, Pete either clammed up or left early. In a spirit that demanded the battle cry “All for one and one for all,” it made him seem aloof and distant.
For the time being, however, Paul kept any resentment to himself. This was a fight that, for a lot of reasons, didn’t seem worth picking. The Beatles were on a roll; it would have been foolish to upset the momentum. And as they knew only too well, drummers—no matter how detached or heavy-handed—were still at a premium in Liverpool.
On February 5 Pete called in sick a few hours before a prearranged gig at the Cavern. His timing couldn’t have been worse. Not only were the Beatles due to play a lunchtime session, but they were also booked for an evening performance at the Kingsway Club, in Southport, where their fee had swollen to £18. No one wanted to give that up; they’d take too great a hit. A few phone calls later, the Beatles determined that their buddies, the Hurricanes, happened to have a rare day off and were willing to loan out their drummer—Ringo Starr.
For Pete Best, it was the beginning of the end.
On February 13, in a desperate last-ditch attempt to make good, Brian doubled back to London for his interview with George Martin. Although officially a label chief, Martin preferred a more relaxed approach in his dealings with hopeful, young managers, most of whom consulted him with great humility.
Brian was leaving nothing to chance as he strode into the Parlophone office on Manchester Square all charged up about the Beatles. He turned up the juice, describing the band as “brilliant” and proclaiming, in no uncertain terms, that “they were going to conquer the world.” That took real nerve, inasmuch as Sid Coleman had already explained to Martin how the Beatles had “been completely rejected by everybody, absolutely everybody in the country.” Brian may have suspected as much. Nevertheless, he plowed ahead in a manner Martin interpreted as “blind faith,” painting Liverpool as an untapped rock ’n roll mecca in which these Beatles reigned supreme. Martin, who thought he “had seen it all before,” found it gallingly outrageous when Brian fell back on an old drama-school trick. “He… expressed surprise that I hadn’t heard of [the Beatles],” Martin wrote in his autobiography. Brian arched an eyebrow, leaned back presumptuously, and donned a look of disbelief. It was a desperate tactic, and one that might have earned him the boot from a busier record executive, but Martin was charmed by such “unswerving devotion…. I kind of inwardly laughed” and forgave Brian for what he recognized as “a b
ig hype.”
One thing Brian couldn’t hustle, however, was Martin’s ears. It didn’t take them long into a preview of the Decca tapes to determine that the Beatles weren’t worth more effort. Martin considered them to be “a rather unpromising group,” with tired material. Even the original songs, which Epstein had gone on about quite glowingly, were “very mediocre” in his opinion. But something in the vocalists’ delivery raised his antennae a few inches. Paul’s voice proved rather enjoyable, and “a certain roughness”—obviously John’s contribution—pleased him.
When the tape ended, Martin had to decide: bite or pass. It was too difficult. He remained on the fence; there wasn’t enough to go on—either way. Issuing a pass would have been simple enough, but what if he was wrong? What if there was more to this backwater band than a surface listen allowed? It wouldn’t serve him to make a snap decision. “You know, I really can’t judge it, on what you’re playing me here,” he recalled telling Brian. “It’s interesting, but I can’t offer you any kind of deal on this basis. I must see them and meet them. Bring them down to London and I’ll work with them in the studio.”
Another audition. Brian tried not to let his disappointment show. He had hoped to return to Liverpool with more positive news, but this slim overture would have to do. Unfortunately, it meant replaying the trip they had made to Decca, which had been hard on everyone involved, as well as his underwriting it, picking up hotels and expenses to the tune of several hundred pounds.