The Beatles

by Bob Spitz

  “The Beatles made little or no impression on the first few nights of the tour,” singer Kenny Lynch, one of the other performers, recalled years later. “They played their hearts out, like everyone else, but it would have taken a blowtorch to get those audiences to warm to us.” The response in Bradford, and again in Doncaster, reflected the brutal chill gripping England, especially in the Northeast, where the flatlands, naked and defenseless, were hammered by howling North Sea winds. There was little cheer in the lonely towns around Yorkshire that winter. Blizzards—one right after another—had ripped across the country, isolating villages and their people from one another, and a fresh covering of snow, layered in strata on the pitted roads, swept down from Scotland, keeping many of the faithful fans away. The Beatles appear not to have minded the inconvenience. Even the shabby accommodations—fifteen-shilling guesthouses, some of which “looked like something out of Vincent Price’s cellar”—failed to dampen their spirits. As John noted, they were happy “just to get out of Liverpool and [to] break new ground.” Those dire jive-hall gigs, the endless lunchtime sessions, even Hamburg, where they were regarded as stars—all had run their course, and the Beatles, bored and restless, aspired to new challenges, no matter the Siberian conditions.

  By the time they reached Carlisle, the ice had thawed. At the ABC Cinema, a grand, slightly tattered, old picture palace where they were booked to play two shows, the seats were packed with kids who had been shut inside all month. Besides the insurgent relief they felt, there was palpable anticipation in the room. “Please Please Me” was proving an efficient calling card. The record—along with fairly heavy buzz dispatched by favorable disc jockeys—had sparked serious interest in the Beatles, and fans scattered among the crowd began to react with tremendous enthusiasm. Gordon Sampson, covering the show for NME, found the behavior incredible. A buildup for the Beatles erupted from the moment the houselights went down, as “the audience repeatedly called for them while other artists were performing.” The response was unprecedented.

  That night the Beatles were fourth on the bill, following three professionally tight but insipid acts. Kenny Lynch was on right before them. Before he left the stage, a murmur was rippling through the hall. “It was clear from the middle of my set,” Lynch recalls, “that [the] audience was waiting for them.” Lynch remained onstage while his backing band unplugged their instruments and fled, then looked into the wings for his cue. John and George, standing practically on top of each other, waggled the necks of their guitars. Lynch put the microphone to his lips and said, “And now…” But the rest of it was drowned out by an uproar as the Beatles bounded onto the stage.

  Looking back over the Beatles’ set, the repertoire seems unexceptional. They opened with a jaunty cover version of “Chains,” then more covers—“Keep Your Hands Off My Baby” and “A Taste of Honey”—which provided a comfort zone for the audience who expected as much, no more and no less, from young British bands. But the Beatles’ showmanship, that mix of aggression coupled with those dazzling, seductive smiles they’d hit upon at the Cavern and perfected in Hamburg, scored instantly with the kids. And it was in sharp contrast to the canned arrangements pumped out by the previous bands. By the time they launched into “Please Please Me”—jacking up the excitement with that raucous harmonica-bass intro and shaking their heads in unison—the place just went wild.

  “I think the Beatles shook those crowds up, even scared them a little,” says Kenny Lynch, who watched every set from the cinema wings. “They were so different, so tight, so confident, really playing their hearts out. It was like no experience those kids ever had before. Every girl thought they were singing straight to her, every boy saw himself standing in their place.

  “It all changed from that night. We took a break a day or two later, before the next leg of the tour, but when we went back out on the road you could tell the whole balance had shifted, because all anyone wanted to hear was the Beatles.”

  The next day, instead of accompanying the coach tour to Peterborough, the Beatles traveled by van to London, where, on Monday, February 11, they were expected at Abbey Road. Just before the tour began, George Martin had contacted Brian Epstein about plans to schedule another recording session, this time for an album to be released sometime that spring. Martin was determined to capitalize on the success of the first two singles. “Please Please Me” had shot to number five on the charts, and conventional wisdom dictated that an album sold best shortly after a single broke into the Top Twenty, which is when most kids would decide to buy it. That meant working fast to get an album into the stores before the record peaked.

  It also left little time to come up with a concept. For a while, George Martin toyed with the idea of recording a live album. He’d been captivated by the raw energy of the Beatles’ Cavern performances and thought that if there was somehow a way to duplicate the magic of it—if he could sneak the outside world into the party for a night—then the songs would take care of themselves. That sounded good in theory, but it soon became evident to him that the logistics for such a session made the reality impossible. This wasn’t like recording the cast album for Beyond the Fringe, when his producer sat under a stage for three nights, operating a tape recorder. Acoustically, the Cavern was a nightmare, all cement-and-brick entrails, with nothing to absorb the reverberation. They’d never be able to control sound levels or get any kind of balance there. And how would they mix those gorgeous harmonies? Or cover up the inevitable clams? It was more practical, Martin decided, to work in a controlled environment.

  Instead, Martin prepared a list of fourteen songs—highlights gleaned from the Cavern sessions—and suggested that the Beatles run down all of them when they got to the studio. To fill the album, they needed ten songs in addition to the two singles and their B-sides, and from their repertoire Martin had selected mostly covers—some pop hits, a few rock ’n roll gems, a schmaltzy ballad or two—along with a number of Lennon-McCartney songs to show off their originality. The entire album had to be cut in a daylong, ten-hour session.

  To complicate matters, sessions ran “strictly to time” at Abbey Road, which meant working from ten o’clock in the morning until one; taking an hour off for lunch; returning to the studio from two until five (with a tea break at 3:45); followed by an evening session from seven until ten, when the studio closed.

  It didn’t help matters that John had arrived sick. He had developed a cold during the Helen Shapiro tour that was festering in his chest by the time they arrived in London. “[His] voice was pretty shot,” recalled engineer Norman Smith, who glowered at the tin of Zubes throat lozenges and cartons of cigarettes the boys stockpiled on the piano. As it was, Smith had his hands full trying, as Martin requested, to capture “the sound of the Beatles singing and playing as [if] they’d [be] perform[ing] on stage.” Earlier in the week they’d decided to lay down the rhythm tracks first, before adding any vocals, in order to imitate the atmospherics of live sound, and as such, Smith allowed the brown coats extra time that morning to double-check the configuration of the patch bays on the recording console.

  In the meantime, George Martin ran over the song list with the Beatles to make sure they were all on the same page. Paul seemed adamant about recording “Falling in Love Again,” the overstylized Marlene Dietrich torch song, and it took some time for Martin, who considered the number “corny,” to talk him out of it. The same for “Besame Mucho,” which the Beatles had performed regularly since 1960. As a ballad, it meant more to them, Paul argued, than “A Taste of Honey,” which Martin preferred, but the producer stood his ground, insisting that he knew what would sound best on tape and asking them to trust his judgment. Ordinarily, the Beatles might have resisted. If anything, they were confident about their choice of material and stood up for their choices when they believed they were right, but neither John nor Paul pressed the point.

  All their attention was focused on the original songs, which Martin had shuffled evenly into the album sequence. The singles�
��“Love Me Do” and “Please Please Me,” along with their B-sides—were a lock, but since the last string of Cavern dates John and Paul had been writing steadily, just churning out songs, and some seemed to warrant strong consideration. Huddled in a corner of the big studio while technicians swarmed around, the boys picked up guitars and launched into three of them for Martin: “Misery,” “There’s a Place,” and “17,” the latter two which they had finished some time before.

  When they were done, there was no doubt that all three should be recorded. These numbers were more fully developed than their predecessors, more well crafted and rhythmically textured, allowing for dramatic shifts in the melodies with transitions suited to all sorts of imaginative orchestration. Martin was duly impressed; the boys seemed to get better each time they walked through the door.

  The first session started about twenty minutes late, with the Beatles getting right to work on the newest songs. They cut “There’s a Place” (the title pinched from West Side Story) first thing that morning, a stirring, melodic tune that showed off the lushness of their interlocking harmonies, singing it again and again—ten takes in all—until everyone was satisfied with the result. From the beginning, it was clear that John’s voice was ragged, tearing at the seams. As the opening word uncoils—“There-re-re-re’s”—he struggles to stay with Paul, almost growling the bottom part of the duet while the low, sepulchral phrase threads its uneasy approach. Once aloft, however, there is a sweet synthesis of their voices, as beautiful as they ever sound on record, climaxing with a powerful, dramatic finish riding over John’s haunting harmonica.

  With enough time left before lunch, they recorded “17,” a number the Beatles had been performing to great acclaim since Hamburg. It was a breathless, all-out rocker whose opening lines—“She was just seventeen, and she’d never been a beauty queen”—Paul had written down in the van one night in 1962 on his way home from a gig. The melody and the first stanza came right away, but by the next afternoon, when he showed it to John, both boys agreed that the second line was “useless.” Sitting on the living-room floor at Paul’s house, with a Liverpool Institute notebook open at their feet, they ran through the alphabet looking for acceptable rhymes. It’s a tribute to their cleverness, and perhaps a prophetic gesture toward the blasé shorthand of disaffected youth, that they went for a complete throwaway: “You know what I mean.” What cheek! And yet, how effective. It said it all, without really saying a thing.

  “She was just seventeen, you know what I mean” eventually became the cornerstone of this album, certainly the heart of the song, which they retitled “I Saw Her Standing There.” Nothing the Beatles had done so far packed more excitement into a number. From the opening bar, when Paul counts off the time, the song takes off, fairly well soars, with all the spark and spirit of a rave-up. Clearly, they put everything they had into it—raspy, suggestive vocals; twangy, rhythmic guitars; syncopated handclaps; falsetto oooohs; and a galloping bass line that Paul claimed to have lifted, almost note for note, from Chuck Berry’s album cut “I’m Talking About You.” For two minutes and fifty-five seconds, the Beatles find the groove and never let go.

  When they were done, George Martin called for a lunch break, inviting the band to join him, Norman Smith, and the second engineer, Richard Langham, “for a pie and a pint” at the Heroes of Alma pub around the corner from the studio. The Beatles were visibly tired and in need of a break—besides touring, they’d traveled hours to get to the session and had worked under extreme pressure since their arrival—but they passed on the offer in order to continue rehearsing the material.

  After lunch the producers returned to find the Beatles still at it. “We couldn’t believe it,” Richard Langham later told chronologist Mark Lewisohn. “We had never seen a group work right through their lunch break before.” Sometime during that stretch, they had traipsed down to the studio canteen and bought containers of milk on the premise that it would soothe their ragged voices. Milk was hardly an elixir—the relief it brought was temporary and produced a phlegmy wheeze—but as the afternoon session began, John swigged often from the wax containers stacked by the steps of the control room. His voice gained a brief reprieve while Paul sang lead on “A Taste of Honey,” followed by “Do You Want to Know a Secret,” a lilting, innocent confession of adolescent love that John had written, based on the tune of “I’m Wishing” from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as a vehicle to showcase George’s vocal debut.

  No doubt George wasn’t the same intuitive stylist as his bandmates, nor in their rarefied category. But while his voice wasn’t yet cultivated or as confident as John’s or Paul’s, neither was it feeble or ineffective. His rendition of “Do You Want to Know a Secret” (which Paul considered a “hack song”) may not have been as exciting as some of the other tracks, but it was entirely capable, even charming. And there was nothing to disassociate it from the overall Beatles sound; it caused no disruption to the flow of the album that might prove jarring or out of place.

  After the Beatles came back from a tea and dinner break, Paul stumbled through thirteen takes of “Hold Me Tight,” a song he’d written that they were still on the fence about. (It was eventually left off the album.) Five songs remained—a sizable workload by any reasonable standard, especially with three hours left on the studio clock. But these were songs the Beatles could—and occasionally did—play in their sleep: “Anna,” “Boys,” “Chains,” “Baby It’s You,” and one more to be chosen from their trusty playlist. Since the concept had been to simulate a Cavern gig, the boys determined to let it rip.

  “They just put their heads down and played” was how Brian explained it to a friend. And when they did, as George Martin predicted, echoes of Garston, Litherland, Mathew Street, and Hamburg flooded the studio. The infectious excitement and the raw and ragged beat, all the ingredients vital to a live Beatles show, come right through. In the scheme of things, the covers are the least interesting aspect of the Beatles’ remarkable output. But they cook with the true spirit of the band, from the distinctive American influence to the energy and power of the beat.

  The four songs required only four or five takes each, with the first take, in most cases, enough to do the trick. By ten o’clock, they had finished. Abbey Road was packing up for the night; technicians switched off the equipment and looped miles of extension cables over their arms, musicians said good night at the door, lights were dimmed. There was still a great deal that might be done with the evening, but the Beatles were spent, physically and emotionally. Over the years there were places they’d played longer and harder, but never with as much on the line. They’d put everything they had into the session. George Martin was understandably ecstatic, but wouldn’t it be perfect, he speculated, if they wrapped the whole project that night? The album was still one song short. The way they’d smoked through the others, it would take only another half an hour or so to cut a final track.

  If he expected reluctance on the Beatles’ part, there was none forthcoming. At this point in the game, they were willing to do whatever Martin asked, so they followed him downstairs to the canteen, where, over coffee, they sorted through songs, looking for a killer finale. The way Norman Smith recalled it, “someone suggested they do ‘Twist and Shout,’ ” a staple of their shows throughout the past year. It was a kick-ass song, an early teen anthem, usually wound out into an extended jam, that never failed to jack up an audience. But it required a tremendous vocal performance, pushing every line to the limit of the register. “A real larynx-tearer,” as George Martin would later refer to it. And it was John’s song to carry. Was he up to it? No one, including John, was sure. If his voice was shot that morning, it was certainly worse for all the wear now. He’d been burdening it all day, straining and draining it like a car running on fumes. There was enough left, he insisted, though admittedly his voice felt “like sandpaper” when he swallowed.

  Everyone knew they’d have to get it on the first take—the band, the engineer, everyone had to d
o his job, without a missed note or a glitch. There would be nothing left of John’s voice after that.

  The band returned to the studio and tuned up while Brian and the production staff climbed the stairs to the control booth. It was cold and stale-smelling in the room: lived in. The air inside seemed thicker, sad, vaguely intimate. In the vast paneled space, ceilinged with fluorescent lamps, the light cast a calm and creamy umbrella over the boys, who went about their work like seasoned professionals. It took some concentration to pull the guitars together, which the Beatles wrote off to fatigue. Their fingers grew impatient. Coaxing, dwoing-ing the strings, the instruments eventually complied under protest. Not more than ten minutes passed until Martin, invisible behind the glass booth, signaled that they were ready.

  John tore open a wax carton and gargled noisily with milk. He’d played most of the day in a rumpled suit, but sometime after dinner the jacket was removed and two fingers yanked down the tie. Now, without a word, he stripped off his shirt. He draped it over a bench, then walked over to the mike and nodded to the others: good to go.

  It is obvious from the very first notes that John was straining for control. “Shake it up bay-be-eee…” was more of a shriek than singing. There was nothing left of his voice. It was bone-dry, stripped bare, with all the resonance husked from the tone, and the sound it made was like an angry, hoarse-voiced fan screeching at a football match. Between clamped jaws, contorting his face, he croaked, “Twist and shout.” He had been struggling all day to reach notes, but this was different, this hurt. And it was painful to listen to. Still, John held nothing in reserve. Trancelike, as the band rocked harder, building excitement with their impetuous energy, the struggle grew more intense. “C’mon, and twist a little closer” broke up into an agonizing, demonic rasp, until on the last refrain the tortured throatiness strangled every word before Paul, in admiration, shouted, “Hey,” celebrating, as they miraculously crossed the finish line.