The Beatles

by Bob Spitz

  The Beatles were back in the land of jelly babies.

  If the fans’ behavior distressed the Beatles, they refused to let it show as they were herded into the crowded Kingsford-Smith Suite at the terminal to face the homeland press. More than one reporter remarked at the civil disorder on the tarmac in terms that encouraged the Beatles to distance themselves from the hooligans, but the boys knew better than to buy into that business. Instead, they saluted the crowd as “healthy and British and lads and mates and friends.”

  The Beatles defused any potential controversy with their now-expected witty one-liners, stumbling only when it came to the news that while they were overseas, the prime minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, named the Beatles as his “secret weapon” in diplomatic relations with the Americans. It actually “flattered” the boys that the PM knew their names. “The thing is, I don’t get the bit where [he] said, ‘Earning all these dollars for Britain,’ ” George said with a shrug, paraphrasing the item. He would learn the hard way—and before long write a song about it he called “Taxman.”

  As it turned out, it was impossible to put a real dollar value on their worth to Great Britain. No one knew about the $253,000 check from Capitol Records in Brian’s pocket—the Beatles’ share of royalties so far—but it was hot news that the Barclays Bank Review had declared them an “invisible export,” estimating their overseas record sales at something over $7 million. But there was no clear picture of what the Beatles actually brought in. Aside from records and performances, merchandising remained a vast gray area. The Seltaeb compact was practically minting money—published reports put it somewhere around $50 million—but who knew how much of that would ever find its way back to the source. Income from the enormous number of bootleg products was impossible to peg.

  Their cultural impact, however, was easier to calculate. If the Beatles had left London as explorers to the New World, they returned as conquering heroes. No other British pop star had ever scored so strongly in America. Now, practically overnight, the whole scene cracked wide open. The pop music pipeline that until their appearance had flowed one way—from America to Great Britain—suddenly reversed direction. The U.S. market was flooded with singles by topflight British acts, from the Dave Clark Five to Dusty Springfield to the Yardbirds to the Searchers, none of whom imitated American rock so much as adapted it in ways that brought new energy to the form. For the first time in the history of the English charts, British records occupied the top fourteen places. The days of second billing and second-class citizenship for British rock ’n roll seemed over. “With this transition,” wrote pop music historian Greg Shaw, “British rock became real.”

  The day after their return, the Beatles headed straight back to work, taping a segment of the TV variety series Big Night Out, in which they performed three comedy sketches as well as five songs, then huddling with Walter Shenson to iron out a few details for their upcoming film. Ringo, feeling dispensable, managed to disappear for a day, flying home to Liverpool to visit his folks and keep a date with Maureen Cox, a Liverpool girlfriend to whom he was engaged.

  The next morning, Tuesday, February 25—George’s twenty-first birthday—the boys checked into the Abbey Road studio to work on songs for a new album. They could hardly wait to get started. Since the beginning of the year, they had barely played a note that wasn’t drowned out by screams and, as musicians, they had become clearly frustrated by the emptiness of it.

  This time—for the first time—the scale of the work had changed. Instead of balancing six or eight original songs with a smattering of well-known American covers, practically all the selections were to be Lennon-McCartney compositions. Most of the numbers were slated for the movie soundtrack, requiring immediate attention so they could be synced to some specific action on the screen, or vice versa; the rest, for the tie-in album, weren’t as urgent.

  John and Paul had written steadily over the past few months, so material wasn’t going to be a problem. They had a ton of songs to choose from and, said Paul, “we knew they were good.” A version of “Can’t Buy Me Love” was already in the can, but a lyric change was needed and the Beatles redid the vocals. They sketched out three songs the first day, one of which—“You Can’t Do That”—was pretty much completed before lunch. John had written most of the hard-nosed rocker, with Paul contributing the tart B7 chord that electrifies the bridge. The vocal, however, gives the song its most cutting edge. John delivers a stinging emotional attack in the form of a reprimand, practically spitting out the warning “because I told you before,” while Ringo reinforces it by punching out the beat.

  If there was one highlight, it was Paul’s reading of “And I Love Her,” a lushly melodic ballad that he’d written on the piano at Jane Asher’s house. Paul’s gift for immediacy had never been sharper. The plaintive lyric is simple and direct, the feeling achingly poignant. From the opening notes, his voice expresses an honesty that wrings the heart out of every word. “It was the first ballad I impressed myself with,” Paul recalled, pointing to the “nice chords” and the “imagery” as its irresistible assets. There is real power in the song, but after two takes the Beatles couldn’t find the right way to harness it. Dick James, who was visiting the studio, felt the song was “just too repetitive” and during a tape change he mentioned as much to George Martin. Apparently Martin agreed because he called for a short recess and left the control room briefly to discuss it with the band.

  James claims that Martin suggested they write a middle eight to break up the repetitious verses. “I think it was John who shouted, ‘OK, let’s have a tea break,’ and John and Paul went to the piano and, while Mal Evans was getting tea and some sandwiches, the boys worked at the piano,” he said. “Within half an hour they wrote… a very constructive middle to a very commercial song.” Paul, on the other hand, maintained that John “probably helped” on some minor adjustments, but otherwise, “the middle eight is mine…. I wrote this on my own.” No matter which account is accurate, the arrangement still lacked the right touch, and they abandoned the song for another day.

  The same fate befell “I Should Have Known Better,” which was temporarily scrapped after three wasted takes. The Beatles were frazzled, wiped out from jet lag and the endless work, and after seven hours of recording, they succumbed to a case of terminal giggles. It was all they could do to get through one complete take. No one even felt like celebrating George’s birthday, least of all George, who was “tired and depressed” from the brutal grind. Grudgingly, he’d devoted an hour that morning to posing for pictures as a favor to the press. (The Daily Express made George’s birthday front-page news.) There were over fifteen thousand cards waiting for him, along with four postal hampers stuffed with presents from fans, none of which he had the energy to open. Dick James had given him a pair of gold cuff links, and from Brian, a gorgeous Rolex that George wore throughout his life. But what he prized more than anything was sleep, precious sleep.

  Two days later another productive session yielded two more songs: “Tell Me Why” and “If I Fell.” Just before the lunch break, they ran right through “Tell Me Why,” a spirited, up-tempo number that John later described as mimicking “a black New York girl-group song,” nailing it in eight takes. “If I Fell” proved more elusive. It was John’s first attempt at a ballad, wrapped in a snug, intertwining harmony that is easily one of the most beautiful and appealing duets the Beatles ever performed. John and Paul opted to record it together, on a single microphone, which only served to intensify their delivery. The symmetry of their voices is perfect; they come to the center with such precision that it is often hard to tell who is singing which part. It sounds easy—but isn’t. The way John structured it demanded chord changes on almost every note of the verse—“dripping with chords,” as Paul explained to a reporter—and it took them fifteen takes to get it right.

  The album was beginning to take shape. A Sunday session was highly unusual, but since the Beatles were to begin work on their film the next day, Martin su
ggested they grab a few hours in the studio to keep up the flow. The Beatles worked only the morning session, until breaking for lunch. Still, they managed to lay down three tracks in three hours: a retooling of “I Call Your Name,” written originally for Billy J. Kramer as a B-side to “Bad to Me”; a tear-ass version of “Long Tall Sally” that was captured in one live take; and “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You,” a “bit of a formula song” that Paul and John had cobbled together for George.

  “The Beatles didn’t get totally immersed in record production until later on, when they stopped touring,” recalled George Martin. But they were no longer intimidated by the recording process, getting it right in the first few takes—or else. Most rock ’n roll groups were still expected to complete an entire album in a day, but for the Beatles that pressure had been eliminated thanks to their huge success. As a result, they could work at their own pace. “We don’t stop until we’re confident there is no possibility of further improvement,” Martin explained. With time to spare—and the advancement of the four-track system—they had the luxury of recording the rhythm tracks and the vocals separately, instead of all at once. Another factor was George Martin’s extraordinary confidence in their ability. It was impossible for Martin to ignore the Beatles’ instincts, and he gave them considerable leeway to explore new techniques. In songs like “You Can’t Do That” and “I Should Have Known Better,” George had begun to experiment with a twelve-string Rickenbacker 360 he’d bought in New York, an instrument so new that there were only two in existence. Offbeat percussion flourishes were introduced in the form of cowbells and bongos. The Beatles were quickly fascinated with the mysteries of overdubbing and double-tracking. Contrary to what they originally feared, the studio didn’t restrict their songs; it opened up a world of options that gave the songs freedom and new color.

  The world of film, however, was alien and precarious.

  The Beatles began production on their as-yet-untitled movie on Monday, March 2, in London. Early that morning, a good-size crowd had gathered along Platform Five at Paddington Station, from where the cast and crew were scheduled to depart for six days of shooting aboard a slow-moving British Rail car that would shuttle between various locations in the West Country.

  Awkward introductions were made in haste. The Beatles met several of their costars, including Wilfrid Brambell, John Junkin, and Norman Rossington, then joined Actors’ Equity at the behest of a union official who painstakingly wrote out four membership cards amid the pushing and shoving on the platform. Director Richard Lester, who stood on the periphery, held his breath as he watched the scene unfold. The first day of a movie was always a bit ticklish, but this one was riddled with uncertainty. The Beatles seemed perfectly comfortable performing onstage, but as Lester realized, film was an altogether different medium, requiring a different set of skills. He had no idea if they could deliver lines without appearing and sounding foolish. Those Scouse accents were nothing to sneeze at. Should they consider a dialogue coach? Or subtitles? Damned if he knew. The plan was to keep everything simple—no tricky monologues, no long-winded speeches. The way the script was constructed, “they spoke in sentences of five or six words each,” recalled Alun Owen, who scaled down his original talky screenplay to a collage of manageable sound bites. “The director knew we couldn’t act, and we knew,” John admitted. “So he had to try almost to catch us off guard.” It was a gamble from the start. But, as Walter Shenson notes, “the Beatles fell right into it, they were naturals. And the script was so good, it sounded like they were making it up as they went along.”

  Owen had done his homework. As promised, he kept the story achingly simple. The Beatles would play the Beatles and do what Beatles normally did—minus the smoking, drinking, swearing, and sex. Geoffrey Stokes, in the essential history Rock of Ages, summarizes the movie as a “high-speed pseudodocumentary posing the sole question: will the lads make it through a typical day of press conferences, fan pursuit, encounters with disapproving elders, manic playfulness and occasional self-doubt in time to play a concert for their adoring fans?” From spending only two days with them in Dublin, Owen had managed to pin down the nature of the Beatles’ camaraderie, all the nuances and the special give-and-take that insiders found so “disarming and refreshing.” It was all there, Paul recalled, the “little jokes, the sarcasm, the humor, John’s wit, Ringo’s laconic manner; each of our different ways. The film manages to capture our characters quite well.” But the goal was not accuracy. “We were like that,” John explained—when it was advantageous to be cute and lovable. But overall, he saw it as “a comic-strip version of what was going on” in their lives. The few scenes that dramatize the constant scrutiny they were under are but a shadow of the real thing; according to John, “the pressure was far heavier than that.”

  The work itself was more demanding than they’d expected. For one thing, they had to report for costume and makeup at six o’clock in the morning, which meant getting up at five—an ungodly hour for most people but especially for a Beatle. Moreover, they were seriously out of their element. Learning lines was an uphill battle on top of everything else that was going on in their lives. Victor Spinetti, another of their costars, observed how “the lads never touched the script.” In fact, they “frantically” gave it a once-over in the car each morning on their way to the studio, then simply winged it. “You never knew what they were going to say or do.” “We’d make things up because of our being so comfortable with each other,” recalled Ringo. Some real gems came out of their mouths, the same kind of spontaneous witty stuff that dazzled at their press conferences, but for a seasoned film crew it was a hair-raising way to work. To counteract the Beatles’ lack of preparation, Dick Lester kept five cameras running, even after a scene technically ended. “Dick just went on shooting,” Spinetti recalled, “shooting everything…. [H]e just pointed the cameras at them and let them go…. And I just used to keep going…. [W]hen he caught them actually talking amongst themselves, it was just magical.”

  The magic was everywhere, it seemed. Yet the Beatles were still skeptical, still unsure of how long it would last. They remained convinced, to a man, that it might all end suddenly tomorrow, so despite the grind of making a movie, to say nothing of its potential upside, they turned up the heat, working simultaneously on a slew of other projects, pushing harder, persevering, to keep the fantasy alive.

  [II]

  The most dependable resource, the one that offered the most immediate response, was music. During the last week in February, Columbia Records released “A World Without Love,” by Peter and Gordon, most of which Paul had written when he was sixteen and recently salvaged for a Billy J. Kramer session. True to form, Billy J. rejected it as being “too soft.” A few weeks later Paul made a few minor changes to the lyric and gave the song instead to Peter Asher, Jane’s brother, as a favor to help launch his singing career. “A World Without Love” was soft, a delicate harmonic soufflé in the style of “I’ll Follow the Sun,” lacking the more wiry sophistication of the Beatles’ recent releases. It would have never made the cut for their current session, but Peter and his boarding-school mate, Gordon Waller, sang it with a pleasant laid-back yearning that transformed the song into a perfectly acceptable pop hit.

  At the Ashers’, Paul and Peter had grown accustomed to hanging out when the Beatles were in town. Though entirely different in nature—unlike Paul, Peter was serious and self-involved, with rust-red hair, black horn-rimmed glasses, and an imperiously arched eyebrow that made him look slightly peevish—they established a comfortable, unforced rapport, the perfect antidote to the Beatles’ incestuous relationship. “I could talk to him about anything,” Paul recalled, pointing to the merits of their unique living arrangement. The boys had an almost comic claim on the house’s attic floor: it was an obstacle course littered with guitars, records, books, tape recorders, phonographs, suitcases, and other “bric-a-brac in a jumble” that resembled a typical college dorm. “Their bedrooms were next door to each ot
her,” John Dunbar recalls, “so it was kind of a boy’s scene upstairs. They would sit there for hours, discussing art and music, endlessly playing the latest records. It was where the rest of us went to hear new music—and to groove.”

  The place always seemed filled with inherently restless young men who fancied themselves amateur intellectuals, smoking, discussing poetry and politics, paging through magazines, and trading harsh criticism of the establishment. Often Paul would just listen, amazed by the ideas flying around that room. The cool, intellectual agility, while raw and shapeless, was still formidable, providing a glimpse of the future. Many students who congregated at the Ashers’ house were refugees from universities and art schools, “the laboratories” for the emerging sixties culture, where being hip and aggressively clever were as crucial to success as pure artistry. And many, though in denial, were patently upper-class. But if Paul felt the wide gap in their background and education, he was never made to feel inadequate. “Somehow it wasn’t to do with which area you were from,” Paul realized, “it was more just a level of thinking.” To that extent, Paul was learning to hold his own. Besides, he was a Beatle, and they envied his enormous success, to say nothing of his talent, along with the freedom it brought him.

  While Peter and Gordon promoted “A World Without Love,” the Beatles prepared to release their own new single, which had already attracted an inordinate amount of buzz. EMI had wasted no time—or expense—beating the drums for “Can’t Buy Me Love,” which the label fully expected to break all existing sales records. In the United States, Capitol already had advance orders for 1.7 million copies, allowing it to be issued as a gold record, an unprecedented feat. The British trades were giddy with excitement. “Well, here it is!” Derek Johnson panted in his windy NME review. “A pounding, vibrating, fast-medium twister in the r-and-b mould, with a fascinating trembling effect in the middle eight”—he’s referring to the instrumental break, actually, in which George’s double-tracked guitar solo produces a riveting echo—“it’s not so strong melodically as their last two discs—but there’s rather more accent on beat.”