The Beatles

by Bob Spitz

  Brian shared their dream and persisted in his belief that an American tour should happen without delay. He had first brought it to EMI’s attention after “Love Me Do” cracked the charts, but the brass couldn’t promise anything other than that they would try to find a suitable outlet. Now, with “Please Please Me” at number one and the third single in the can, he stepped up his efforts, pestering George Martin to get something done.

  The stumbling block seemed to be Capitol Records, which, according to its president, Alan Livingston, had the right of first refusal on EMI products in the States. EMI had bought Capitol in the late 1950s, cashing in almost immediately in Europe with Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mercer, and Nat King Cole. “The idea was that [Capitol] would also be useful for launching EMI’s roster in the USA,” says Roland Rennie, who had come up through the ranks of the British organization and functioned as its chief traffic coordinator, fighting to get product released overseas, and vice versa. “But the Capitol Tower in Hollywood was very much its own master. They called all the shots—and they frankly refused to put out any of our records.” Every two weeks EMI sent packages to Capitol, stuffed with their latest releases, and within days always got back the same terse response: Not suitable for the U.S. market. “They turned everything down.”

  Most parent companies would simply demand that their subsidiaries follow orders, but EMI took a very hands-off position with Capitol. Its lawyers had warned that such interference might summon up antitrust litigation, which, Rennie says, “put the fear of God in the British.” EMI never said so much as peep to Capitol about its A&R responsibilities. “Think of that,” he muses, “not a word—they only owned it.”

  In America, Alan Livingston claims he “didn’t even hear the first Beatles record”—it was just one more bloodless import that Capitol chucked on the overflowing slush pile. Earlier, he had appointed a producer named David Dexter to screen every EMI artist that was sent to Capitol for consideration. And according to Dexter, the Beatles were “nothing.” According to his Capitol colleagues, Dexter was “a jazz man… who couldn’t see [sic] pop records.” Out of “courtesy,” Alan Livingston says, they would occasionally put out an English artist to satisfy the parent company, but it was merely a gesture, never bearing any fruit.

  That left matters in the hands of Leonard G. Wood, known to everyone as L.G., who was EMI’s managing director and “very sympathetic” toward the company’s growing “American problem.” Rennie had first brought the Beatles to Wood’s attention in late 1962, after George Martin had turned up the heat. “He was polite but noncommittal, warning me again about this antitrust business,” Rennie remembers. But there was another course of action that Wood recommended he explore. A year earlier, frustrated by Capitol’s rigid resistance toward EMI releases, he commandeered a Capitol employee named Joe Zerger and set up a company in America—the absurdly important-sounding Transglobal Music—which was to lease EMI’s repertoire throughout the States once Capitol had turned it down.

  Zerger, whose heart wasn’t in it, “didn’t do anything much,” says Rennie. But his partner was a young man named Paul Marshall, a dapper, dynamic, raspy-voiced lawyer with a passion for music and a finely tuned ear for quality. Behind a perfectly coiffed head of cotton-white hair and a blinding smile lurked an impetuous deal maker. Marshall had placed dozens of foreign masters with independent labels and undertook EMI’s offer as a personal challenge.

  Having listened to a few dozen EMI releases, Marshall was determined to push the record business in a radically new direction. He chose a handful of those records he considered American in spirit, and in early January 1963, with Roland Rennie replacing Joe Zerger, Marshall set out to find British artists a home for their music in the New World. Coincidentally, the first record he put his hands on was by a group called the Beatles.

  Marshall could not, he felt, make hay at Capitol Records. “I wasn’t going to call [Dave] Dexter back,” he recalls. “He’d already said no to Len Wood.” So, without any hesitation, Marshall scratched Capitol off the list of prospective labels. Instead, he sent copies of “Love Me Do” and “Please Please Me” to Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records. Atlantic was enjoying a blistering hot streak, churning out hit after hit by Ray Charles, the Coasters, Ben E. King, the Drifters, Solomon Burke, and Bobby Darin. The label was the most successful independent of its kind—and it abounded in cachet. But after a week—and then two—without return calls from Wexler, Marshall began to grow impatient. He called Noreen Woods, who was Wexler’s and Ahmet Ertegun’s joint secretary, for Jerry’s response and got an evasive reply. Which meant that Wexler “was probably too distracted” and hadn’t gotten around to listening to it yet. The next time Marshall called for an answer, Woods informed him: “I haven’t got one. Jerry says, ‘If you can’t wait—then go ahead.’ ” And Marshall couldn’t wait.

  Cursing his luck, Marshall decided to go for broke and hastened to send the Beatles’ material out en masse—to Columbia, RCA, London, Mercury, United Artists, all the major New York labels. That way, it eliminated the weeks of waiting between submissions. By the middle of January, however, he had come up empty-handed. No one expressed interest in the Beatles, even at a bargain-basement royalty rate. Perhaps this was related in some way to the cold winds blowing from the north: Capitol’s Canadian affiliate label had put out both singles on the heels of their British releases and, according to its Canadian A&R rep, they “fell right to the bottom.” With the majors impassive, Marshall merely turned his sights to the independents. The most attractive outlet was Vee-Jay Records, a reservoir of fresh waters from which Marshall had drunk long and greedily in the past. Its owners were a married couple named Vivian and James Bracken, who owned bars on the South Side of Chicago and had scored over the years with a roster of classy R&B artists such as Jimmy Reed and the Dells. In the past two years alone, they’d put together an incredible string of crossover hits that included “Raindrops,” by Dee Clark, “Duke of Earl,” by Gene Chandler, and a million-seller by Jerry Butler called “He Will Break Your Heart.” They also feasted on a string of hits by another of Marshall’s clients, Frankie Valli and the 4 Seasons, with “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” and “Walk Like a Man” winning the trifecta for Vee-Jay in 1962 and early 1963.

  On January 25, 1963, NME broke the story that Vee-Jay had signed the Beatles, in a deal that had been brokered in London the previous Monday. The band might still be considered a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies from the provinces, but in the world of rock ’n roll, where merely being British doomed an artist to provincialism, an American release gave them admittance to a select circle.

  According to Roland Rennie and others, EMI sent the Beatles’ tapes to Chicago, where they were to be pressed for a timely Vee-Jay release. Shortly before their arrival, the record company’s president, Ewart Abner (who would one day head Motown), went to Las Vegas with a Scandinavian distributor to celebrate Abner’s fortieth birthday. During the second weekend of festivities, the distributor uncharacteristically placed a call to Paul Marshall at his home. Marshall immediately heard the alarm in the man’s voice. He said, “I carried [Ewart] away from the tables an hour ago. But he’s back at the tables. Watch out, Paul.” By the time Marshall could leap into action, however, it was too late. Not only had he gambled away the money earmarked to pay for the hotel rooms, but with it went a sizable chunk of Vee-Jay’s operating expenses. “[The company] was blown by Abner in Vegas,” Marshall recalls. “Two weekends—done.”

  [II]

  For the Beatles and Brian Epstein, the next few months were a blur of intense activity, so much so that they were blissfully ignorant of the problems at Vee-Jay. The Helen Shapiro tour had alerted promoter Arthur Howes to the Beatles’ soaring popularity, and without wasting a beat, he negotiated a deal for them to segue into another tour—opening for teen idols Tommy Roe and Chris Montez—beginning on March 9, a few days after the Shapiro gig ended. Then, in the February 8 issue of NME, an article appeared under the banner
BEATLES HEAD PACKAGE SHOW, announcing plans for the band to headline “a nationwide package tour” in May, with “a U.S. artist” who was “being sought to share top billing with them.” Booking another tour—their third in a row—looked like a bad move on Brian’s part; between all the recording sessions, the songwriting, and endless months of performing, the Beatles appeared to be driven to the point of exhaustion. But a small follow-up in Melody Maker, which revealed their costar to be none other than Roy Orbison, made an apparent miscue seem like a perfectly calculated move.* Orbison already had a mystique about him. An early crony of Buddy Holly’s in Texas, he’d recorded his own songs, among which “Only the Lonely,” “Running Scared,” “Crying,” and “Dream Baby” became instant classics. He’d written “Claudette” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream” for the Everly Brothers, and fans were awestruck by his incredible vocal range, clocked somewhere around E above high C—territory frequented by Enrico Caruso. The Beatles loved him and he had another hit—the intensely soulful “In Dreams”—currently clawing its way up the British charts. Three weeks on the road with him would be a treat for the Beatles. Besides, their stamina was hardly in question, not after Hamburg, not after all those marathon jams. If problems arose, there was always speed to fall back on, to which, according to his biographer, Orbison was also “devoted.”

  To accommodate his growing roster, which included Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas, and the Big Three—and to mollify his growing-angrier-by-the-day father—Brian leased office space in a stately old building on Moorfields Avenue. A stone staircase swept up to the second floor, where letters painted on a glass door announced the new headquarters of NEMS ENTERPRISES. Brian’s private office was the focal point. “Eppy’s Epitorium,” as it was called—although never within his earshot—was a bright, airy room, with an enormous teak desk, a tufted black-leather chair, and a “posh,” hand-knotted Abyssinian carpet that looked large enough to land a plane on. Waterford crystal tumblers were arranged on a silver tray atop a credenza, and above that, the room’s only other decoration: a huge picture of the Beatles with Little Richard taken at the 1962 Tower Ballroom show. The most memorable effect, however, was a traffic signal positioned just outside the door. Frieda Kelly recalls how everyone who worked at NEMS kept one eye peeled on those lights, which Brian controlled like the Great Oz. They all lived in dread of having to cross Brian’s threshold, even on green. He was too unpredictable, too quick to “jump down [their] throats.” With green, at least, the odds edged slightly in your favor. “No way you’d enter on red,” Frieda says. “Amber was touch and go—you’d take a chance if you were brave enough.” Only the Beatles, who were impetuous drivers in their own right, barreled straight through that signal, no matter what color was lit.

  But the Beatles were seldom in town anymore. They came home as often as humanly possible, for a day at the most, then they were off again, to play a gig or to plug their latest record on one of the myriad radio shows that Brian managed to line up on an appallingly regular basis. Through the spring of 1963 the Beatles phenomenon steadily built momentum. With their records leading the way and the music press dewy-eyed with fascination—their sharp, cheeky banter made good copy—the Beatles single-handedly spurred interest in the Merseyside rock ’n roll scene. When John claimed that “there are three groups in Liverpool for every top Yank act,” even his fans rolled their eyes. But the comment also raised eyebrows. Chris Roberts, writing in Melody Maker, explained how a hastily arranged trip to Liverpool—a place so alien to him, it might as well have been Zanzibar—made a believer out of him. Breathlessly, he described a music “scene that could only find its counterpart in the USA” and concluded that the “Beat City,” a nickname appropriate in every respect, qualified as “Britain’s Nashville.” The sheer number of clubs, dances, and groups made his head spin. “You say London’s got it all?” he speculated, but the question was gratuitous—readers already knew the score. Truly, there was something incredible going on up in Liverpool, and across Britain, kids beat the jungle drums.

  Throughout the end of February and most of March, the Beatles still managed to get home, although more and more on an irregular basis. All of them needed to reconnect with their families—and vice versa. If to the fans, the Beatles were the young heartthrobs taking the country by storm, there were four loving families left behind, a collection of common, unpretentious Scousers, not all of whom understood what all the fuss was about and whose sons—not one of them yet twenty-two years old—were especially missed.

  For Elsie Graves, the Beatles’ success was a particularly difficult burden. The way she doted on Ritchie, her only child, touched friends, who felt as though she “idolized him.” Theirs wasn’t just a conventional mother-son relationship. They were friends as well, having been through so much together. Now, with the Beatles, everything had changed. “Elsie felt they were taking him away from her,” says Marie Crawford, “and that terrified her.” Even the unexpected perks, like money and popularity, failed to appease her. “Of all the parents, she found it quite difficult to cope,” remembers Frieda Kelly, who visited Elsie every Wednesday on her half day off from NEMS. “She could have done without any of the success. Elsie would have preferred Ritchie to be ordinary, to live down the road with four children she could visit every day.”

  It was easier for Paul and George. Both the Harrisons and Jim McCartney “were thrilled” by what was happening to the Beatles. Friends close to Louise Harrison recall how much pleasure she got from George’s new success. “She followed the Beatles as avidly as any of their fans,” says Arthur Kelly, who received regular updates from the Harrisons. It was the same at Forthlin Road, where fans who turned up at the door were treated to tea and biscuits. “Jim was probably the Beatles’ biggest fan,” recalls Bill Harry, who frequently ran into Paul’s father on his rounds through the city. “He was so proud of what was happening,” remembers Shelagh Johnson, a local girl and, later, director of the Beatles Museum. “Outwardly, all his attention occasionally embarrassed Paul, but I think secretly Paul loved it and enjoyed coming home.”

  Only John was anxious about being away. Cynthia’s pregnancy, nearing term, had encountered some unforeseen bumps. Scarcely two months along, she began “showing blood,” at which point, as a precautionary measure, the doctor confined her to bed. This only served to alarm the naturally timid Cynthia, who was on her own and scared. With John on tour and her mother in Canada, she was happy when Paul’s old girlfriend, Dot Rhone, moved into the “dank, awful basement” flat just below them on Falkner Street. “Once I arrived, Cynthia seemed to be fine,” Dot recalls. “It upset her that John wasn’t around, but she got used to it after a while.”

  Even when John managed to get home, the atmosphere bristled with tension. Flush with excitement from another triumph with the Beatles, he’d bound in unannounced to find Cynthia—languorously pregnant—like an anchor, a jolt of reality. For John, the situation was too emotionally charged—and confusing. “There were a lot of fights,” says Dot. “He would drink an awful lot—just get drunk and mean. And then he’d say such awful things to Cyn. He was so moody. One moment he could be so funny and wonderful, and the next—so damn cruel.” Having grown up around an alcoholic father, Rhone recognized the symptoms that ignited his rage. “John told me that there had never been a day in his life when he didn’t feel he needed some kind of drug,” Dot recalls.

  The prospect of fatherhood made John increasingly resentful and merely turned up the heat in an already smoldering domestic cauldron. Falling into black moods, he’d storm out of the flat, claiming to need cigarettes, and just disappear. Instead of blowing off steam and returning, he’d spend late evenings at the Jacaranda or drinking at the Blue Angel. Paddy Delaney, the Cavern’s bouncer, remembered encountering him there sometime in late February, grafted to the bar, where they “drank whiskey after whiskey” until well after four in the morning.

  That spring friends often saw John wandering from cl
ub to club in the company of Ida “Stevie” Holly, a tall, “spunky” seventeen-year-old with jet-black hair to the middle of her back. According to reports, they’d been hanging out together, on and off, for a period of several months. “We presumed he’d broken up with Cynthia and had got a new girlfriend,” says Bill Harry, who, like most of the old crowd, was unaware that Cynthia was pregnant, let alone that she and John were married. Harry and his girlfriend, Virginia, who would eventually become his wife, remembers barging into the Blue Angel one night in March and finding John and Stevie at the bar “all over each other, like a couple of wildcats.” Tactfully, the Harrys avoided them, scooting downstairs before they were seen. Virginia was already in enough trouble with John, who had lent her a pile of notebooks filled with the poems he’d written. During Mersey Beat’s move from their tiny attic office to larger space on a lower floor, she’d absentmindedly “thrown them in the bin.” A few weeks earlier they’d run into John—again at the Blue Angel—and Bill insisted that Virginia confess. “I crept over and admitted what I’d done with his poems,” she recalls, “and he just started sobbing.”

  Stevie Holly had been with him that night, too. And there were other nights at the Cavern. And afternoons, strolling lazily through the Walker Art Gallery. Even with the Beatles. “He had no shame,” Bill Harry says in a voice flattened by scorn. “He acted as if he were still a bachelor—even after the baby came.”

  In the first hours of April 8, Cynthia, who had been staying at Aunt Mimi’s house with her friend Phyllis McKenzie, was rushed by ambulance to Sefton General Hospital, where just after 6 A.M.* she gave birth to a six-pound, eight-ounce boy. Had it been a girl, she was to be called Julia, after John’s mother. For the birth certificate, however, Cynthia confidently recorded his name as John Charles Julian Lennon.