The Beatles

by Bob Spitz

  Jim McCartney, too, attacked Paul’s stacks of letters with the dedication of a press agent. He and Mike diligently sorted through the exuberant requests, providing whatever they could in terms of a “personal” response from Paul. Occasionally, on his daily trek to the Pegasus Pub, Jim dropped off excess bundles of fan mail with Shelagh Johnson, a local schoolgirl who volunteered to help out. When the volume got unwieldy, Johnson recalls, she enlisted a girlfriend, Pat Riley, to help collect the fan mail at Forthlin Road.

  From John, on the other hand, there was rarely any effort. Cynthia, already overburdened, was practically cross-eyed from caring for her new son, and Mimi dismissed fan mail as “utter nonsense,” discarding most if it with the trash. Humble, unassuming Ringo had other fish to fry. When it came to the mail, he was predictably befuddled. As Frieda Kelly recalls: “Ritchie came in [the office] one day and asked politely if I would do his mail. I told him he must be joking. ‘Get your mum and dad to do it. All the other parents do.’ But he just stood there pathetically and said, ‘Me mum doesn’t know what to put. Anyway, I don’t get a lot.’ I felt so sorry for him, so I said, ‘All right, bring it in, but just this once.’ The next day he came in with one of those small poly bags that tights come in—that was all his mail, stuffed inside. Paul got two feet of mail, but Ritchie only had that small sack, with ten letters in it.”

  As an emergency measure, Tony Barrow stemmed the flow of mail to Kelly by splitting the fan club—which had already grown to forty thousand members in England alone—in two: a northern division, which Frieda relocated to the NEMS office in Liverpool, and a southern division housed at Monmouth Street. Barrow also invented a national secretary, “Anne Collingham,” to act as a diversion and to whom fans could write. “It was actually an act of mercy,” he recalls. “An outfit of northern teenagers was shouldering responsibilities better suited to a multinational corporation. We were flying by the seat of our pants, and it was all I could do to keep things afloat—until we could figure out what came next.”

  To everyone’s surprise, it was the press that turned up. Pop music was still an anomaly to the London newspaper establishment, which shunned any coverage of the scene. Even the show-business editors remained skeptical that pop stars had worthwhile appeal or that readers would care about this feeble and superficial genre. Tony Barrow, to his credit, didn’t flinch from the task. But instead of knocking his head against the wall trying to pitch uninterested London papers, he relied on his strength in the provinces, where support was fairly strong. “Few record companies ever dealt with anything called the Sheffield Star or the Birmingham Post or the Manchester [Evening] News or the Liverpool Echo,” Barrow recalls. “I’d put the four of them on the phone to these provincial editors—one right after the next,” says Barrow, “and the lads just came alive. They were such naturals.” Most subjects they dealt with were as dry as British toast, but again and again the Beatles fired off perfect ad-libs, playing off one another, cutting up. Their timing was absolutely remarkable. If Tony hadn’t known better, he’d have thought it was rehearsed.

  Right off the bat, Paul took charge of an interview’s ebb and flow. A slick and tactful diplomat, he knew instinctively just how to deal with every journalist, turning on the charm, humility, wit, sincerity, deference, enthusiasm, flattery—whatever the situation called for. A note strategically placed by the phone allowed Paul to address a reporter by name, as if they were old chums. For instance, to a question about tour dates, he’d respond, “I’m glad you brought that up, Graham” or “Russell” or “Dibbs” or “Monty.” If the interview was with a paper from, say, Wolverhampton, Paul might mention how much he liked the town gardens or another of its prized attractions. Listening to him pour it on, one could swear he had been there only yesterday. He was as smooth as silk. And he came loaded with statistics; without the luxury of notes, he rattled off the group’s chart listings and upcoming tour dates with pinpoint accuracy.

  When he was satisfied that the reporter had been properly softened up, Paul passed the phone to the other Beatles, who did their respective parts: Ringo shared his feelings about joining the band in midstream, George talked music, and John provided color, offering witty recollections about life on the road.

  The role of media darlings was a new one for the Beatles. Like most teenage bands, they had spent most of their professional life onstage, bashing out rock ’n roll songs. In front of an audience, they were extroverts, exuding confidence and control. No one said anything about being articulate—or quotable. This was quite a departure for four young, unworldly, largely unsophisticated Scousers, but they rose to the occasion with remarkable flair.

  Such finesse made Barrow’s job that much easier. All he had to do was to ply the Beatles with cigarettes and “tumblers of scotch and Coke,” both of which they consumed with almost superhuman appetites. “I thought I was the world’s worst chain-smoker until I went to work with this lot!” Tony marveled. They went through hundreds of cigarettes each day, lighting new ones off the smoldering end of the last. Ashtrays overflowed with stubby butts; smoke as thick as marmalade filled the room. And he learned to top up their tumblers “without waiting for the broad hints.”

  In those days, before rock ’n rollers were regarded—or regarded themselves—as “serious musicians,” most interview questions were barely a notch above inane. Reporters asked the Beatles about their families and their favorite foods; whether they preferred blondes, brunettes, or redheads; what they planned to do after music ran its course. With the Beatles, nothing was off-limits—except for questions about John’s marriage.

  Cynthia paid dearly for this. Forced to deny her marriage—even her name—to anyone who asked, she skulked around Liverpool as a sort of nonperson, leading what she referred to as an “undercover existence.” Out of necessity as well as obedience, she kept a low profile, never wore a wedding band, walked her son at odd hours, rarely attended gigs. When John showed up at home, they carefully avoided going out together in public.

  “For up to eighteen months after the birth of Julian Lennon, we were denying that John was married, let alone that he had a son,” recalls Tony Barrow. At first, the press was totally indifferent—and stupefyingly compliant. At the time, if a personality asked reporters politely not to reveal a personal matter, they didn’t reveal it! A wanton tabloid mentality had not yet wracked the British press; journalists weren’t obsessed with exposing an icon’s private life, nor was there an audience slavering for it. Nothing better demonstrates the cozy relationship between the Beatles and the press than an interview that Judith Simons, of the Daily Express, conducted with the boys later that fall. “We still can’t mention your marriage, can we, John?” she inquired as a matter of record. As the band undoubtedly knew, the request for her silence would be readily granted.

  There were some who didn’t know, but they too were easily dealt with. One journalist visiting NEMS “browsed through the pile of NEMS singles beside the office stereo and eventually reached the Beatles’ Please Please Me album.” On the back sleeve, beside John Lennon’s name and after the words rhythm guitar, someone had penned in the word married. Barrow instantly recognized the handwriting as John’s. He needed to think fast. Married? It must have been one of the flighty typists, he speculated aloud, who fantasized about marrying John and, well, wrote it as some ludicrous form of wish fulfillment. Preposterously, the writer bought the whole story and moved on to examine other records in the stack.

  [II]

  Throughout May and early June, the Beatles appeared on the air with astounding frequency—just about every five days—which practically made them a household name in the country. Nothing mattered as much to them as being as successful as the pop stars—such as Del Shannon and Roy Orbison—with whom they performed. But the momentum of their acclaim seemed to stop at the British shores. Their first U.S. release, “Please Please Me,” had gone nowhere. Even by Paul’s account, it was “a flop.” Vee-Jay’s perfunctory efforts at promotion produced
more frustration than airplay. Now there were indications from abroad that “From Me to You” might fare the same. It was issued by Vee-Jay on May 27, 1963, and picked up glowing reviews in the music trades (Cash Box pounced on it as its “Pick of the Week”), but the Ewart Abner Las Vegas fiasco had drained the record company of funds, leaving it empty-handed as far as promotion went.

  In the meantime, the Beatles continued to reap the profits of their runaway British success—though nowhere as much as their label.

  About the time “Please Please Me” had hit number one, George Martin began to feel guilty that he’d hornswoggled the Beatles. Brian had been so desperate when he first came to Parlophone that he would have taken anything in exchange for a contract. At the end of the Beatles’ first full year, should EMI deem to pick up their option, they were contractually guaranteed a 25 percent raise that would kick in at the start of each successive option year. That might have seemed generous on paper, but at a quarter of a penny per disc, it was worse than beggarly, considering this was a group larding EMI’s vaults. Martin knew it; he thought “it was patently unfair.” So as option time approached, he talked to L. G. Wood about doubling the Beatles’ royalty immediately. Wood approved, provided that the Beatles agreed to another five-year option—at which point Martin balked. “No, you don’t understand,” he explained, “I don’t want to ask for anything [in return].” He wanted to give it to the Beatles unconditionally, to reward them for their dramatic success.

  Little did Martin realize what a tempest he’d uncorked. Although dependent on recording artists, EMI operated much like the Crown, gazing down on its subjects like a benevolent patron while tolerating no impertinence. The company functioned with royal prerogative; what it gave artists wasn’t negotiable, especially on the whim of an employee. Raising the royalty rate without getting something in return? Unthinkable! In EMI’s eyes, George Martin had committed an act of effrontery so egregious as to be unpardonable. “From that moment on, I was considered a traitor within EMI,” Martin recalled. But in the end, Martin’s determined efforts made a difference. The day after “From Me to You” was released in America, Parlophone exercised its option, extending the Beatles’ contract for another year, and increased the group’s royalty from one penny to two pennies.

  Along with every rapid-fire achievement, the new contract gave the Beatles definite cause to celebrate. But there wasn’t a moment to spare: every day was booked with a concert, a TV appearance, or some long-standing PR obligation that could not be broken. Finally, on June 18, 1963, following a few scheduled dates in the North, the Beatles pulled the plug and threw a party on the occasion of Paul’s twenty-first birthday. It was originally going to be held in the garden at Forthlin Road, but because of the Beatles’ sweeping success—and the threat of huge crowds of slightly hysterical fans determined to crash the gates—it was rerouted to Paul’s aunt Jin Harris’s house, across the Mersey in Huyton, where a lovely back garden assured them of privacy.

  It was the perfect night for a party: fair and balmy. Summer was coming on strong and the trees surrounding the property were dubbed in a new patchy growth of green. The brilliant northern sky was filled with almost as many stars as had arrived bearing gifts: Gerry Marsden, Billy J. Kramer, the Fourmost, random members of the Merseybeats, the Searchers, the Remo Four, and the Hurricanes, and perhaps starriest of all—the Shadows, all the way from London, sans Cliff Richard, who was off making a movie. Brian arrived alone, as did Bob Wooler, and other old Liverpool chums showed up. The guests pressed under a large striped tent filled with food and flowers, and spilled out onto the lawn. Glasses clinked, toasts were made, and the babble of conversation was especially joyful and raucous.

  As the night wore on, it was clear that John was descending into a black funk that radiated hostility. Perhaps all the attention focused on Paul was more than he could tolerate. In the past John never fared well for long when not reaping his share of the spotlight. He’d consumed a staggering amount of alcohol, gulping down drink after drink, and he wove through the midst of the crowd, getting continuously drunker and meaner, his vocabulary sinking deeper into obscenity.

  Sometime after ten o’clock Pete Shotton went in search of the bathroom while John plunged back into the crowd. John, who remembered being “out of my mind with drink,” elbowed past Bob Wooler, who was also “sinking a fair bit of booze.” For all his cozy rapport with the bands, Wooler could also be remarkably glib. Bill Harry says, “Bob has a sarcastic note in his voice that often rubs people the wrong way, and the way he talked to John that night set John off.”

  There are various accounts of exactly what was said, but no one disagrees that Wooler made a snide reference to John’s vacation with Brian Epstein—something on the order of “Oh, John and Brian’s just come back from their honeymoon in Spain.”* Impulsively, without warning, John leaped on Wooler, beating him viciously with “tightly closed fists.” When that didn’t do enough damage, he grabbed a garden shovel that was left in the yard and whacked Bob once or twice with the handle. According to one observer, “Bob was holding his hands to his face and John was kicking all the skin off his fingers.” In a more lucid moment, John recalled: “I was beating the shit out of him, hitting him with a big stick, and for the first time I thought, ‘I can kill this guy.’ ”

  It took two big men—the Fourmost’s bass player, Billy Hatton, and Billy J. Kramer, who had just arrived late, on the heels of a gig—to haul John off Wooler and hold him down. “He was completely out of it,” Kramer recalls, “like someone who’d gone mad.” Pete Shotton returned in time to drag John away, into the garden, while others called an ambulance for the injured and badly shaken Wooler. (Wooler suffered a broken nose, a cracked collarbone, and three broken ribs.)

  Before long, however, John went on another drunken rampage. While Cynthia watched in horror, he accosted a girl and grabbed her by the breast, refusing to let go. Once again Billy J. stepped in, pulling them apart. According to Kramer: “He was flailing his arms, screaming, ‘You’re nothing, Kramer—you’re fuck-all! We’re the greatest band.’ And he was getting aggressive. So I showed him my fist and said, ‘I’ll fucking KO you if you don’t shut up.’ ”

  Kramer, who was a much bigger man than John, hustled him out to the curb, where he endeavored to subdue John and calm down Cynthia, who “was freaking out,” until a taxi arrived to take them home.

  Before the dust even settled, Bob Wooler made a beeline for Rex Makin’s office. “He arrived with a black eye and a swollen nose,” Makin recalls, “and instructed me to claim damages from Lennon.” Normally, a situation like this put a lawyer in an awkward position. As Brian’s—and thereby John’s—solicitor, it presented a clear conflict of interest. But the ever-resourceful Makin wasn’t troubled by such issues. “I merely rang Brian up and I acted for everybody,” he says smugly. “For my trouble,” says Wooler, “I got two hundred pounds and a rather halfhearted apology from John.”

  A few days after the party, Tony Barrow received a call from Don Short, the pesky entertainment flack for the Daily Mirror, who was nosing around about a punch-up involving the Beatles. Barrow did everything he could to play it down, but when other papers also got wind of it, he was forced to make a statement. “I first called John in Liverpool to get his side of the story,” Barrow recalls, “but he was absolutely belligerent. His response was ‘So fucking what? That bastard called me a bloody queer. He got what he deserved.’ ” Barrow would learn to endure these passing storms, but at the time he sensed a professional disaster looming and moved to head it off. On his instructions, John was ordered away from the phone, while Barrow, fielding all calls, “put a mighty big spin” on the incident. The Mirror went to press on June 21 with an eye-catching headline splashed across the back page: BEATLE IN BRAWL—SORRY I SOCKED YOU:

  Guitarist John Lennon, twenty-two-year-old leader of the Beatles pop group, said last night: “Why did I have to go and punch my best friend? I was so high I didn’t realize what I was doing.
” Then he sent off a telegram apologizing to twenty-nine-year-old Liverpool rock show compère and disc jockey Bob Wooler… who said: “I don’t know why he did it. I have been a friend of the Beatles for a long time. I have often compèred shows where they have appeared. I am terribly upset about this, physically as well as mentally.”

  John Lennon said: “Bob is the last person in the world I would want to have a fight with. I can only hope he realizes that I was too far gone to know what I was doing.”

  In fact, neither Wooler nor John ever spoke for the record. The quotes in the copy were the handiwork of Tony Barrow. For better or worse, the Beatles had finally bagged their first national press article.

  [III]

  Only hours after Paul’s birthday party, the Beatles returned to the road for the busy summer season ahead, “racing up and down the country,” playing a solid block of one-nighters. Delirious Beatles fans carried on with an intensity never before experienced. They wanted more than music. They wanted contact with the Beatles, wanted to get at them, touch them. Fans thrashed themselves into a frenzy, screamed and cried uncontrollably, leaped from balconies onto the stage, threw themselves in front of the group’s van—and worse. In the North, a reporter watched nervously as “girls were plucked from the front row in a state of collapse.” The next week a group of teenage boys suffered dehydration after hiding in a hotel room for seven hours just to shake their heroes’ hands.

  Even the Beatles weren’t safe from the mayhem. Fans ripped at their clothes for souvenirs, stripped antennae and mirrors from their cars, hurled precious gifts at them. In Blackpool on July 21, prior to a Sunday afternoon concert at the Queen’s Theatre, police abandoned their efforts to disperse a mob of “nearly five thousand fans” thronging the stage door and wisely decided to detour the Beatles’ arrival. The boys had to climb a scaffolding in a nearby yard and cross the roofs of adjoining buildings until they could be lowered into a ceiling loft above the stage.