by Bob Spitz
When the album finally appeared, it was clear that the cover was every bit as alluring as they had hoped. Stores were besieged with jacked-up Beatles fans throughout the afternoon of November 22. Peter Brown, who was managing the NEMS record department in Brian’s absence, recalls being unprepared for the runaway demand. “I’d never seen anything like it,” he says. “No record in my experience had ever caused this kind of frenzy. There were hundreds of kids trying to get into the store; a crowd had gathered on the street. Police showed up to keep things under control. Our cashiers were so overwhelmed that everyone, myself included, worked the counter until the store closed.”
This scene wasn’t restricted to Liverpool. All over Great Britain, teenagers mobbed the local record stores to get their hands on copies of With the Beatles. If a cult of personality had surrounded the group, there was now also a retail phenomenon to go with it. On that first day alone, an impressive 530,000 copies of the album were sold, along with another 200,000 more singles of “She Loves You,” which had pushed beyond the vaunted million mark. No album had ever aroused this much interest. It was generally acknowledged by record companies that teenagers bought singles and, occasionally, the rare album; right up to the release of With the Beatles, EMI was still unsure if a market for it would materialize. Now all that had changed.
EMI couldn’t afford to let a slipup burst the bubble, but neither did it want to interfere with the fantastic flow of sales. Please Please Me was still selling like hotcakes, too, and by the end of sales on November 22, it was keeping pace alongside With the Beatles. Two albums by the same artist on the British charts was rare indeed; the last time it had happened was in 1960, with Elvis Presley. But by that evening, NME decided that the sales situation was so unique that it launched the new album into the Top Thirty at the number fifteen position.*
These facts and figures dominated the conversation on a DC-3 overrun with Beatles fans as it took off from Speke Airport en route to Hamburg that same afternoon. The Cavern sponsored the chartered excursion to coincide with the release of the new Beatles album and about thirty teenagers signed on, along with Allan Williams, Bob Wooler, Bill Harry, and other supporting cast members associated with the Beatles’ rise in Liverpool. Everyone spent the flight time singing the songs on With the Beatles—songs they knew by heart from the gigs—and swooning over the dramatic events of the past few months. At the moment, everything else seemed unimportant. The boys had come not only so far but so fast: from the side streets of Liverpool to the royal roads of London, where the Queen herself had crossed their path. Only a year before, they had alternated between a basement club and the back of a creaky van, with nothing more than a substandard demo tape and the fierce, unquenchable dream to make records, to be rock ’n roll stars. Now they were poised again to build upon that dream, and the entire country’s attention had swung toward Liverpool. It was a fairy tale come true, and the fans aboard the flight—those who had been there all along, who had known from the beginning—were so giddy that at even 25,000 feet up in the air they seemed only a stone’s throw from the stars.
When the plane touched down in Hamburg, not only was there no carpet, there was no move initiated to help them disembark. “We stood on that tarmac for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for a coach to take us to the Star-Club,” Wooler remembers. The usual busyness that hastens an airport seemed eerily stalled; aside from a few planes landing in the distance, it was as quiet as a car parking lot outside church services. The passengers began to grow edgy, then irritable. Finally, an official pulled up in a car and bumbled around them in a fluster. “Oh, terrible, terrible news about JFK,” he said, all aquiver. The American president had been shot—he was dead; the world was in mourning. “You’ll find most of the Reeperbahn closed, as I’m sure you’ve closed your Cavern tonight.”
But from the Grosse Freiheit, the American tragedy and its reverberations seemed as far away as the banks of the Mersey. The seedier bars—those where even cataclysmic events took a backseat to debauchery—ran at full tilt, dispensing fantastic quantities of alcohol to the teenagers and chaperones alike, all of whom held on to the Beatles like a life raft against such terrible tides. For three days and nights, they drank themselves silly, putting the real world and its problems out of their mind. Although history may have turned a wicked corner, there were glimmers of “hope and consolation” to be found in the Beatles’ music. Of course, it was only the beginning of a generation’s dependency on rock ’n roll as an escape from the harsh changes that rocked the world at large. For the next six years—and beyond—music and other intoxicants would be liberating forces, the kind of distractions that helped kids avoid the wicked corners. On the way back to Liverpool, Wooler says, “we were so diminished by our indulgences that when the pilot delivered the news about the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, many of us, sitting there like zombies, were unable to open our eyes.”
By the last week in November, “She Loves You” returned to the top spot on the Record Retailer chart, along with word that the band’s next single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” had more than a million advance orders. The next week “She Loves You” held its position, while “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was number three, Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas’ version of “I’ll Keep You Satisfied,” written by John and Paul, hovered at number six, and “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones entered at number thirty. NME’s album chart was even more rewarding, listing With the Beatles and Please Please Me as vying for the very top, with three EPs—Twist and Shout, The Beatles Hits, and Beatles No. 1—padding close behind. The dominance was unprecedented. In a single outburst, the Beatles had hijacked the charts.
Finally America took notice. In mid-November all three U.S. networks sent film crews to the Winter Gardens Theatre in Bournemouth in an attempt to report on the Beatles phenomenon. The clips they sent back received only scattered coverage, but one viewer’s impression touched off a storm of unexpected interest. A teenager named Marsha Albert was so intrigued by the music that she wrote a letter to her local deejay, at WWDC in Washington, D.C., asking to hear something by the Beatles. That station in particular was a curious place to handle such a request; it played “a real mixed bag” of pop standards, catering to a devoted Frank Sinatra–Nat King Cole audience, with only the occasional rock ’n roll song slipping onto the playlist. But the disc jockey, a genial straight arrow named Carroll James, hunted down an import copy of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and invited Marsha Albert to introduce it on the air.
On December 17, 1963, she read a few lines of copy that James had scrawled on the back of a traffic report, then launched the Beatles into the American airwaves for the first time ever. When it was over, James invited the audience to pass on their opinion of the record. As he recalled it, “the switchboard just went totally wild.” Every line lit up. Completely unprepared for such a reaction, James “played it again in the next hour, which is something I’d never ever done before.” He continued programming “I Want to Hold Your Hand” every night that week, fading in the middle of the song and interjecting, “A WDDC exclusive!” in order to prevent WPGC, the area’s main teen station, from taping it.
The circumstances at WDDC sounded an alarm at Capitol Records, which was planning to release the single in late January. Eventually, after days of memos flying back and forth, Capitol decided to move up the American release of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to December 27. It would not arrive in time for Christmas, but the Beatles didn’t care. It was the best gift they could have asked for that holiday season, and at long last it was under the tree.
After “I Want to Hold Your Hand” struck gold, Beatles Fan Club membership was no longer just an indulgence of former Cavern groupies. Applications poured in from all over the country, more than even a sophisticated mail-order company could handle. “There came a time when we had a backlog of many thousands of unopened mailbags, each one containing hundreds of applications, accompanied by money orders for membership,” recalls Barrow
, who’d been awakened to the danger of their negligence. “Goodness knows how many mailbags were stolen from the rickety staircase leading to the office above the dirty bookstore.”
Complaints followed, and it wasn’t long before the media, especially the tabloids, picked up the story. What happened, reporters wondered, to all the money sent to the Beatles? How did they intend to placate thousands of unhappy teenagers?
Faced with a public relations catastrophe, Epstein directed Tony Barrow to run damage control and propose a solution. Barrow decided to get everyone immediately onto a mailing list and appease those who were slighted by giving them something special for Christmas. But what? All the standard options—key chains, bracelets, T-shirts—took too much of a bite out of the NEMS budget. It had to be something, Brian insisted, “that only cost a few pence to produce.” Finally, when it looked all but hopeless, Barrow struck gold. Paging through Reader’s Digest, he came across something called a flexi-disk—a plastic record the size of a seven-inch forty-five but played at the speed of a thirty-three. The magazine used it quite cleverly, to preview selections from its record club. “My idea was to get out a humorous message from the Beatles to their fans, giving them something that was totally exclusive—and free. I ran it by the lads, who loved the idea and were eager to do their share.”
Portions of the record were leaked to the press, which called it “the craziest Xmas greeting of all [time].” Following a loosely scripted sketch that skipped around for roughly five minutes, it delivered more of the “likable, crazy” Scouse-inspired zaniness fans had come to expect from the Beatles. Each musician delivered a personal greeting (in which more than a few of the band’s devotees detected John’s handprint) loaded with puns and loony wordplay. There were parodies of Christmas carols. Everyone sang a few bars of his favorite, the most bizarre rendition, perhaps, being Ringo’s “Buddy Greco-style version” of “Good King Wenceslas,” after which George deadpans: “Thank you, Ringo—we’ll phone you.”
At times the band responded to fans directly. “Somebody asked us if we still like jelly babies,” Paul mentioned, referring to a comment John had made during an interview earlier that year in which he expressed fondness for the candies. Back then, John had joked that George had eaten his supply. “The next day,” John recalled, “I started getting jelly babies with a note saying, ‘Don’t give George any.’ And George got some saying, ‘Here’s some for you, George; you don’t need John’s.’ And then it went mad.” From that day on, whenever the Beatles took to the stage, a hailstorm of jelly babies pelted them from the seats—whole bags and occasionally even boxes were lobbed—with fans often winging them sidearm from overhanging balconies. Eventually it resembled a combat zone, with candy projectiles ricocheting off guitars and cymbals, once even cutting John above the eye. For the first time, Ringo said, “it felt dangerous” onstage. “Anyway, we’ve gone right off jelly babies!” Paul avowed on the flexi-disk, hoping that put an end to the gesture.
To preserve the edge of lunacy that was interrupted with words of sincere thanks, the Beatles signed off with another parody, “Ricky the Red Nosed Ringo,” which collapsed into uncontrollable laughter before regrouping for a final inspirational message.
The result was a resounding success. Long-neglected fan-club members, delighted by the record, were content with what all fans ultimately want—to have something that nobody else can get their hands on, something personal that was in short supply. With the exception of a few disgruntled parents, no one registered so much as a complaint over the way in which membership was handled. And if some head case wanted to make trouble, Barrow had the power to launch the ultimate defensive weapon: a personal phone call from one of the boys. “In that respect, we never had to worry,” he says, “because we knew the effect something like that had.”
None of the Beatles liked how success had reshaped their appearance. The way Paul saw it, they were way off their stride, still “on the cusp of showbiz.” And John, who made no bones about regretting their phony clean-cut image, bristled when a fan described the Beatles’ music as “genuine.” Sentiments like that were already becoming a liability to the boys, who felt the edge they’d honed in Liverpool and Hamburg eroding even further.
The latest bit of puffery was the Beatles Christmas Show, which, since its announcement in September, had taken on a life of its own. Conceived primarily as “a resident show”—that is, a show where the Beatles would remain situated at one location over a period of weeks—it relied on the old-fashioned British tradition of incorporating comedy, music, and pantomime toned down to attract a family audience.
Theatrical production in London was a closed shop: a small, inbred clique of sharp, cunning, and ruthless deal-brokers governed by impresario Lew Grade and his brother Bernie Delfont. Details of every major production in the city eventually crossed their desks. Most legitimate theaters fell under the Grades’ grudging jurisdiction, as did actors and agencies, with an industry’s fortunes tied to their discretionary nod. Outsiders were looked upon as cockroaches.
The Grades were interested only in what they could control, and, in fact, they’d already approached Brian with an offer to absorb NEMS into their kingdom. Delfont suggested he accept the princely sum of £150,000 in exchange for half equity in the company. Brian was tempted. He had taken on a good deal more than he was rightfully equipped to handle, and the strain was beginning to “drive him crackers.” But when he sounded out the Beatles, they disapproved in four-part harmony. “They said they would rather break up than leave me,” Brian reported, somewhat self-servingly, to a friend. Then, in a more forthright account, he added: “John told me to ‘fuck off,’ which was very moving.”
Whatever the case, it was clear that moving NEMS to London was long overdue. With Brian away so much of the time, the Liverpool office had fallen into a long decline, its day-to-day operation, according to Alistair Taylor, “a shambles, just chaos.” There was no one with authority to call the shots. And the office manager, Barry Leonard, proved incapable of picking up the slack. In the meantime, Brian toured office buildings in London, finding affordable space on the fifth floor of Sutherland House, at 4–5 Argyll Street. For the most part it was unfinished, a loftlike open-floor plan that was considered “quite revolutionary” for the time, with two enclosed offices and the rest partitioned off in a maze of impersonal cubicles. “They weren’t terribly good offices,” says Taylor, but the location was ideal, right next door to the Palladium. According to Tony Barrow, “[Brian] loved the idea that on the other side of those walls, Judy Garland might be rehearsing.”
In any event, Brian dreaded returning to Liverpool. As far as talent went, the cupboard was bare; the best local bands were already on the NEMS roster. And there was a strange, lingering local resentment. Part of it had to do with the perception that Brian had drained the city of its best bands without any regard for their fans. John had felt it even before the Merseyside musical explosion. “When I left Liverpool with the group,” he recalled, “a lot of Liverpool people dropped us and said, ‘Now you’ve let us down.’ ” It was an understandable reaction.
Brian, always an outsider but not one with a gift of assimilation, didn’t help. The last time Brian returned to NEMS from London he “showed up at the office in a brand-new Jaguar XK-E,” recalls Frieda Kelly, who watched him pull up from the window. It was a sight to behold, especially in Liverpool, whose factories mass-produced budget-priced Fords and Z-cars. In a way, the Jaguar only confirmed what everyone suspected: that NEMS was rolling in money, growing beyond all expectations. But it also embarrassed the Scousers, who considered such extravagance vulgar.
An hour later Billy Hatton, the Fourmost’s bass player, showed up bearing gifts. His mother operated a kiosk in Moorfields, from which he’d lifted a box of ice pops for the NEMS’ staff. “Have you seen Eppy’s car?” he asked, with a snickering grin. “Who threw acid all over it?” Kelly, who was talking to a friend at the time, remembers laughing at Billy’s sick sense
of humor. “Then we realized he wasn’t kidding,” she says. “Everyone rushed outside, and sure enough, it was true. What a mess. All the paint had bubbled and began peeling back. It was destroyed.”
The next morning Brian announced the firm was moving to London.
The Beatles Christmas Show was the first item launched from NEMS’ new London office. Brian was determined to pull out all the stops and had enlisted help from an old-line variety agent, Joe Collins, whose daughters, Joan and Jackie, happened to be Beatles fans. Collins hooked him up with Peter Yolland, who specialized in producing Christmas pantomimes in major provincial cities across Great Britain.
“My idea was to make the Beatles do things they had never done before,” says Yolland. As far as the music went, he’d leave that up to the individual acts, but during the course of the evening he intended to present them in sketches designed around the age-old pantomime form, with the dramatization of a fairy tale followed by broad comedy and a script full of topical references that encouraged audience participation. As stories went, it was predictably hokey: at the top, the heroine, Ermyntrude, gets thrown out of the house because she’s had a baby; abandoned and alone, she falls into the clutches of a mustachioed villain, Sir John Jasper (played rather villainously by John Lennon, in a top hat and brandishing a whip), who ties her to the railroad tracks, only to be rescued in the nick of time by Valiant Paul the Signalman. There was never a question that the “leggy lovely” in white headscarf and fishnet thighs would be played en travestie by anyone other than George; as the youngest Beatle, the time-honored role of panto boy fell naturally to him. That left a hole for Ringo. After some deliberation, he was cast as Fairy Snow, a derelict elf in head-to-toe black, who leaped around the stage, sprinkling white confetti over the other Beatles.