The Beatles

by Bob Spitz

  Unlike in the U.K., New York was covered by a web of independent airwaves. Show formats were insanely flexible, disc jockeys basically playing whatever interested them. All those songs the Beatles had been dying to hear, the obscure hits by their American R&B heroes that the BBC ignored, were finally within earshot. All they had to do was pick up the phone and ask for them—which is exactly what they did all night long. “We phoned every radio [station] in town,” John explained, “saying, ‘Will you play the Ronettes’ ” or Marvin Gaye or Smokey Robinson or the Shirelles? Mostly, however, they besieged Murray the K with requests until the excitable jock jokingly complained to listeners: “This is the Beatles’ station! They’ve taken over! They’re telling us what to play.” Then, coining a phrase that he would exploit for the rest of his life, Murray said, “One more week of this, and I’m going to become the fifth Beatle.” The fifth Beatle! It was an ingenious claim that might have earned the boys’ scorn under routine circumstances, but not now. They were having too much fun and let it slide. Besides, they were amused by Murray. “[He] was as mad as a hatter, a fabulous guy… [who] knew his music,” according to Ringo. And as Paul quickly concluded: “[He] was the man most onto the Beatle[s’] case.” From the minute they hit town, Murray functioned as their personal promo man, playing their records repeatedly and doing his number, his shtick.

  The next morning, when George’s temperature nudged past 102, Jules Gordon, the hotel doctor, was finally summoned. George was ordered to bed, with Neil Aspinall standing in for him at rehearsals for The Ed Sullivan Show.

  In the meantime, the Beatles entertained a suite full of local press, who conducted what seemed like interminable interviews, one right after another, and shot hundreds of rolls of film. Throughout the day their sitting room was filled with reporters who asked the dopiest questions. “What is your favorite food?” “What does your haircut mean?” “What do you think of American girls?” “How long do you think all this will last?” Incredibly, anyone able to present somewhat professional-looking credentials gained entrance, so that LIFE shared the same couch with Tiger Beat, the New Yorker with the New York Post, and Cousin Brucie with Norman Cousins. To make matters worse, Albert and David Maysles wandered freely around the suite, shooting footage for a Grenada TV documentary. The BBC’s Malcolm Davis made himself at home; Jack Hutton, Melody Maker’s editor, came in with rival NME columnist Chris Hutchins. It was a free-for-all. The Beatles did their best to get through it without incident, putting on a show for the cameras, but it was clear as time wore on that they chafed under the intrusion.

  Once word got out that the Beatles were at the Plaza, every hustler and promoter angled to get Brian on the line. It was impossible for him to field these calls, yet inexpedient to entrust them to the overloaded hotel switchboard. The hawkeyed Walter Hofer, who stood by to offer advice, wasn’t about to answer phones. After complaining about the situation to a Capitol A&R rep, the record company, apparently to ingratiate itself, quickly came up with a solution. Someone in the West Coast office knew a classy English woman in New York who could serve as Brian’s secretary while he was in the States.

  Much like Brian, Wendy Hanson was from the North, Yorkshire, a posh-spoken girl from “a rather nouveau-riche family”; and much like Brian, she was slavishly proper, sharp-tongued, and meticulous about her appearance. If she seemed self-reliant to a fault, it was because she’d had lots of practice. After her parents died tragically young, Hanson took an au pair job in the States, where she met a number of important figures in the classical music field, perhaps none more impressive than Leopold Stokowski, for whom she worked as a secretary, and later Gian Carlo Menotti, who eventually hired her as his personal assistant. Menotti, as it happened, was off in Italy, which left Wendy free to work for Brian, and she set about this mission with a remarkable show of efficiency. “He was in a terrible state when I walked in there,” she recalled. “There was a queue of people in the hall, many of whom had been waiting for hours and all of whom he seemed to be trying to avoid. Some were hucksters; others were demanding the return of signed documents. There were record-company executives, television commentators, promoters, friends.”

  One of the first visitors admitted was a blustery Englishman named Nicky Byrne. A small-time hustler who “trolled with a bunch of characters” nicknamed the Kings Road Rats, Byrne had never dedicated himself to anything long enough to put his name on it. Over the years he had worked in music publishing, designed clothes, staged theater productions, run a nightclub, the Condor, in London—he even tried his hand at marriage—none of which succeeded in holding his interest. What Byrne wanted most, what he had his heart set on, was making a big score.

  As Byrne recalled it, he was “sitting around doing nothing for half of [19]63,” when several of his mates began tying up rights to all sorts of Beatles merchandise. David Jacobs, the slightly daft celebrity lawyer who represented NEMS, had let them sweet-talk him out of several exclusive contracts for Beatles dolls, lockets, stationery, wigs, songbooks, photos, badges, calendars, sweaters, figurines, scrapbooks. A sculptor in London advertised wall-size panels of the Beatles carved in relief, which was “useful as a thermometer, too.” There were Beatles bubble bath and Beatles wallpaper. Most of these products weren’t even licensed by NEMS.

  From what Byrne could see, they hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of this phenomenon. “Brian’s made a terrible mess out of this,” Jacobs groaned during his initial meeting with Byrne. That was all Nicky needed to hear. Dazzling the lawyer with an infusion of names and numbers—real or fictitious, it is impossible to say—he spun out a plan to blanket the world in Beatles products and basically walked out with the promise of worldwide rights, excluding the U.K. Jacobs was so uninterested in the whole matter that he instructed Byrne to have his own contract drawn up, stating the terms that were desirable.

  On December 4, a contract was delivered to Jacobs’s office. “We left it blank about the percentages,” Byrne recalled, noting that he was prepared to accept a small, but reasonable, royalty for his efforts. “So, what are you going to pay the Beatles?” Jacobs wondered. Byrne gulped hard and said, “Oh, look, just put in ten percent.” It was a ridiculous response, the first thing that popped into his head; 75 or 80 percent was a more realistic figure. Byrne fought to swallow a shit-eating grin as he watched Jacobs fill in the blank as instructed: 10 percent. Byrne suspected that Epstein would fire this lawyer’s ass over such a miscue, “but to my utter amazement it came back signed—the whole thing. They’d initialed in the right places, they’d read the contract. They couldn’t wait to get somebody else to do this, because they were in a mess themselves.”

  By the time Brian arrived in New York, however, he realized what a monstrous mistake he’d made. Apparently Nicky Byrne had done a bang-up job, opening a Fifth Avenue office under the corporate name Seltaeb—Beatles spelled backward—and licensing North American companies to manufacture every kind of Beatles paraphernalia. The Wall Street Journal predicted: “U.S. teen-agers [sic] in the next 12 months are going to spend $50 million on Beatle [sic] wigs, Beatle dolls, Beatle egg cups and Beatle T-shirts, sweatshirts and narrow-legged pants.” Another story outlining Nicky’s handiwork, in the New York Times, reported that Reliance Manufacturing Company, whose factories were “smoking night and day to meet… demand” had already sold “Beatle [sic] merchandise valued at… more than $2.5 million retail,” with plans in the works to produce dozens of new products. The Lowell Toy Company was “turning out Beatle [sic] wigs at the rate of 15,000 a day.” Sheridan Clothes claimed to be “a month behind on orders for Beatle-type suits.” Bobblehead dolls, along with other games, were soon to be introduced by Remco Industries. And all these articles referred to the mastermind behind the project: Nicky Byrne.

  Nicky Byrne. Nicky Byrne. Nicky Byrne. Every time Brian read that name, it drove a spike into his heart. One thing was certain: Brian had botched this deal something fierce. “Seltaeb was… in a business that I felt th
ey knew very little about,” Walter Hofer explained. There was “a great deal of money” at stake, millions and millions of dollars, and he’d given away 90 percent of it just like that, and to a total stranger. Brian had never even met Nicky Byrne until that Friday night at the Plaza, when he arrived unannounced at the Beatles’ suite with a sackful of gifts—“all sorts of gear we could manufacture,” Byrne recalled. Negotiations with Byrne to revise the deal promptly began.

  Meanwhile, the Beatles, sans George, posed for photographers at the boathouse in Central Park, then rode north in a couple of limousines donated by CBS for an impromptu tour of Harlem, where John instructed the driver to “cruise past the Apollo Theater.” Forecasters had been predicting a major snowstorm, and breath rings froze on the tinted windows where all three boys pressed their faces against the glass. They gazed out at the jumble of blighted brownstones and bodegas with their crumbling wrought-iron balconies strung across the facades like tatty jewelry. The busy, narrow streets were a confusion of mongrel cars parked bumper to bumper, and everywhere there were people jostling on the sidewalk, spilling from stores and jackknifing through traffic at a dizzying speed. Suddenly the car turned onto a wide, fidgety boulevard—125th Street—and the Apollo rose up like a neon-and-concrete castle. TONIGHT—THE MARVELOUS MARVELETTES! read the marquee. De-liveh de-letteh, de-sooneh, de-betteh: the girls themselves! The proximity of it made the Beatles catch their breath with wonder.

  There were more sites the Beatles wanted to visit—among them the specialty record shops that beckoned from every corner, but as it was, they barely made it back in time for the first round of Ed Sullivan rehearsals.

  Afterward, Brown Meggs showed up with a group of Capitol Records execs—the surest sign there had been a breakthrough. Capitol found itself in an awkward position, having repeatedly rejected the Beatles. Now not only were they Capitol’s star attraction, their records causing gridlock on the U.S. charts, but the label’s pressing plants were so overburdened by the unprecedented demand that RCA Victor had been hired to press Beatles records as well.

  Meggs extended greetings from Alan Livingston, who was en route to New York with two gold records for them, and from Brian Wilson, currently in the studio working on a new single with the Beach Boys. Otherwise, Meggs put himself entirely at the Beatles’ disposal. Anywhere the boys wanted to go, anything they wanted to do, could be arranged. He was there to show them a good time, beginning with a sightseeing tour around Manhattan—stopping outside the United Nations and the Empire State Building—followed by dinner at “21,” where Ringo ordered a bottle of “vintage Coca-Cola.”

  When they returned to the Plaza, however, it was inevitable there would be no peace. Edwin Newman and John Chancellor were waiting in the hall with their network camera crews, Tom Wolfe was taking notes for an impressionistic article in Esquire, and their suite was overrun with visitors, all entertained by Cynthia Lennon and George’s sister, Louise, who had to fight her way through security to visit her brother. To make matters worse, that notorious motormouth Murray the K barged in, trailing the Ronettes, to stage a remote broadcast from George’s sickbed.

  By that time, Murray’s shtick was beginning to wear increasingly thin. It seemed like every time they turned around, he was there, hogging the spotlight, “asking dumb questions and making bad jokes about their hair.” The Ronettes, on the other hand, were a sight for sore eyes. They’d hooked up with the Beatles in London during a January promotional tour with the Rolling Stones and spent a string of evenings in each other’s company, eating, smoking, dancing, and talking about everything from American rhythm and blues to the burden of fame. The boys found the Ronettes as fascinating as they were attractive, as the girls spun out outrageous backstage tales of working rock ’n roll revues at the Brooklyn Fox with the likes of Ben E. King, Frankie Lymon, Stevie Wonder, and the Impressions. Music aside, John and George quickly developed serious crushes on Ronnie Bennett and her sister, Estelle, who were both knockouts as well as first-rate singers. They’d gone on a series of double dates that crackled with sexual innuendo, but despite some feverish late-night necking, the couples remained platonic. Both girls had steady boyfriends in the States—Ronnie, especially, was devoted to her Svengali, Phil Spector, whom she would eventually marry—which precluded any serious involvement. And, of course, John already was married, not that that stood in his way of having some fun.

  Meanwhile, the girls had brought along a copy of their latest single, “Baby, I Love You,” which the Beatles already had in the suite. “There were portable record players in every room, and 45 rpm records scattered everywhere around the floor,” Ronnie recalled. “The Beatles had every record you could think of up there, including a few that hadn’t even come out in the stores yet.” The sound of a mob drifted up from the street below, there were guards posted outside their door, cranks calling every few seconds. Ronnie was struck by the contrast to those idyllic few weeks in London. For all the apparent triumphs that winter, she came to the painful realization that “the Beatles really were like prisoners.”

  It was almost a relief to get down to work on Sunday. Feeling nauseous and unsteady, George arrived at Studio 50 along with the other Beatles for an afternoon dress rehearsal. A troop of mounted policeman patrolled Seventh Avenue in front of the theater, where two hundred fans had gathered, hoping to talk their way inside. There was no chance of that, with all the 728 tickets spoken for long in advance. Normally, a sound check and run-through was staged in front of an empty house, but Sullivan had talked Brian into filming the dress camera rehearsal as an extra performance that would air a week after the boys’ departure, so the audience was already in their seats before the Beatles arrived.

  The boys got comfortable backstage in the well-upholstered dressing room, drinking tea and listening to their transistor radios, each tuned to a different Top 40 station. They were unusually relaxed, even for the Beatles—reading fan mail, clowning, almost oblivious to the fact that they were making their American debut. A stack of telegrams lay unopened on a ledge by the mirror. One, marked URGENT in red pen and addressed to each of the Beatles individually, caught Paul’s attention, and as he read it his face corkscrewed into a mad grin.

  “It’s from Elvis!” he shouted to the others.

  John looked up blank-faced. “Elvis who?” he asked.

  Paul ignored him and read the cable’s contents aloud. “ ‘CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR APPEARANCE ON THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW AND YOUR VISIT TO AMERICA. WE HOPE YOUR ENGAGEMENT WILL BE A SUCCESSFUL ONE AND YOUR VISIT PLEASANT. GIVE OUR BEST TO ED SULLIVAN.’ ” He looked up, beaming. “Signed, Elvis and the Colonel.”

  The filming came off without a hitch. Standing near the wings, before a closed curtain—his trademark—Sullivan in his role as emcee portentously thanked “these youngsters from Liverpool” for their exemplary conduct while in America and appreciated how they would “leave an imprint on everyone over here who’s met them.” Before he could get another word out, the high-pitched screams started.

  The curtain opened as the spotlights snapped on. Opening with “Twist and Shout,” the Beatles stood center stage and belted out a tame but rock-solid version against a backdrop of pastel-colored modular designs. It provided a good contrast to their dark mohair suits and blinding smiles, turned up a few watts higher than usual as a hedge against unfamiliarity. If there was any concern about the impression they’d make, however, it was scrapped before the first “c’mon baby.” Every time they grinned, converged on a mike, or—especially—shook their heads, propelling those famous haircuts, the largely female audience screamed its approval. And before anyone had a chance to cool down, the band launched into “Please Please Me,” followed by “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

  Few had known what to expect. Until that moment, all that Americans had really seen of the Beatles were scattered newspaper photographs, depicting them in a crowd or mugging for publicity stills. A Beatles performance was something else entirely, and the power of it, the emotional
charge they sent through the audience, moved teenagers in ways they’d never been moved before. For starters, there was the charisma, that boyish charm, which the Beatles (especially Paul) had perfected as an art form. Several times during the set, Paul stared directly into the camera—or, as a viewer might interpret it, directly at her—opened up his face, and projected, literally, the most innocent, adorable eyeful that American girls had ever witnessed. Hearts melted in an instant when he flipped that particular switch. John was more coy in how he went about it, but he also knew the right moment to flash a winning grin. From time to time he’d glance sidelong at Paul, then turn it on, just for a few seconds, until he’d produced the desired effect. Nor were George and Ringo wholly innocent of striking a theatrical pose, displaying an innate sense of timing when it came to raising an antic squeal.

  So, too, did they flaunt their musical skill. At a time when few rock ’n roll acts got a shot on TV, those with the opportunity rarely appeared with a band. Networks favored young pop singers who performed their hits in front of a studio orchestra. It was rare they were allowed to bring their own musicians. For one thing, most teenage bands couldn’t cut it as pros, and unlike playing a concert hall, where horrible acoustics masked most slipups, TV was unforgiving; for another, a four-piece guitar band usually sounded thin and tinny on TV. Even self-contained bands such as Buddy Holly and the Crickets or Little Stevie Wonder adjusted their act to work with a canned ensemble that included horns and strings. On a show like Bandstand, where groups lip-synced to their records, there was no live music at all. Therefore, seeing the Beatles perform by themselves, working, so to speak, without a net, was a fairly eye-opening experience. And how those boys could play! This wasn’t just a hunk strumming chords, like Ricky Nelson. This was a batch of boys as nimble as they were energetic, spanking their guitars and executing tasty licks and fills seamlessly. It would be a mistake to overlook the sexual heat they delivered.