by Bob Spitz
But only half the battle had been won. What Shenson knew, and what the studio had pointedly reminded him, was that a musical with a new title needed a title song. He despaired about burdening John and Paul with it. They’d already been pushed to the wall, filming all day while looping at night to replace lines that were lost to extraneous noise. Sometimes he knew they’d finish work well after ten o’clock, rush off to attend a cocktail party or do a late press interview over dinner, then head out to various clubs until nearly dawn before being dragged from their beds an hour or two later for makeup. It was a brutal, seven-day routine that more than qualified the film’s new title, so it took some temerity to ask for any more of them.
It was at a looping session, as Shenson remembers it, that he finally made his plea. He pulled John aside during a coffee break and broached it without beating around the bush. “I’m afraid we’re going to need a song called ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ something up-tempo that can be played over the main titles.” They had already shot the opening scene at Marylebone Station, in which a throng of half-crazed girls chase the Beatles onto a train. If the song was as impetuous as the on-screen action, it would establish the perfect mood. Driving back into London from the studio, he recalls, John brooded, chain-smoking sullenly, no doubt in response to the annoying request.
The next morning on the set, the assistant producer paged Shenson and told him: “John Lennon wants to see you in his dressing room.” The producer went through every imaginable scenario, wondering how he’d respond to the young man’s irritation. “He and Paul were standing there, with their guitars slung over their shoulders,” Shenson recalls. “John fiddled with a matchbook cover on which were scrawled the lyrics to a song—‘A Hard Day’s Night’—which they played and sang to perfection. This was ten hours after I’d asked for a song.” When they’d finished, John glanced at the producer and said, “Okay, that’s it, right?” It was all Shenson could do to feebly mutter, “Right.” “Good,” John said, “now don’t bother us about songs anymore.”
“A Hard Day’s Night” was recorded the next day, on April 16, and from the extraordinary opening chord, it was evident that once again the Beatles had raised the bar for all of pop songwriting. The “strident” chord is a powerful attention-grabber—a G7, with an added ninth and a suspended fourth, so unique that it is considered neither major nor minor—that hangs in the air with disturbing inevitability. How George came up with it remains a mystery to this day; he never discussed it, even though the chord has become as identifiable as the song that follows. As it uncoils, there is nothing left to chance. The energy it delivers is explosive, full of fireworks—“It’s been a haaaard daaaays night…”—and musically as daring, with a vocal track that gathers so much steam that the middle eight (sung by Paul, John explained, “because I couldn’t reach the notes”) comes as almost a relief.
While the Beatles wrapped up work on A Hard Day’s Night, as the movie was now readily being called, Brian left for the Devon coast, where he planned to begin work on an autobiography that had been commissioned by a small London publisher. Derek Taylor, the trusted Daily Express reporter who’d been handpicked to ghostwrite the book, joined him in a sumptuous suite at the Imperial Hotel, in Torquay, for a weekend of protracted interviews that would hopefully serve as the foundation for the work. Like Brian, Taylor was from an affluent Liverpool suburb, the eldest son of a gregarious Welsh ex-officer and a sickly housewife who, at some point, relinquished all hope that Derek would pursue a respectable career “in the world of commerce.” Taylor was everything a banker wasn’t: effusive, generous, entertaining, impractical, and wonderfully glib. “There are only a few journalists like Derek, who are a joy to listen to in the pub,” recalls Tony Barrow, who, though often at loggerheads with his “inscrutable” colleague, found him equally mesmerizing. “He had such an amazing way with words. He wrote and spoke beautiful prose. And he made rapport an art form I’ve never seen duplicated.” Taylor could also be, like Brian, cynical and obstinate. Having recently moved from covering comedians to pop music, he concluded that the Beatles “painted a new rainbow right across the world, with crocks of gold at each end, and then some,” which ultimately beckoned him to their doorstep. His several meetings with the boys cultivated a remarkable rapport. Of all the journalists they encountered, and perhaps ever would encounter, Taylor’s dervish intellect brought him closest to being a trusted confidant. “He’s one of those people that clicks as soon as you meet him,” John remarked that same month. There was no doubt: he was on their wavelength.
Trust. Brian needed to confide in his cowriter. Two days into their amiable “fact-gathering expedition,” Brian poured large gin and tonics to facilitate a tricky exchange. He wondered aloud (although not too loud) if Taylor had heard rumors that he, Brian, “was queer.” Derek may not have known about this dark secret in early 1964, but he no doubt sensed the underlying torment and vulnerability. The always eloquent Taylor became tongue-tied, stammering as Brian admitted: “I am homosexual and have known it all my adult life and there’s nothing I can do about it.” This was a startling confession, not so much for the context in which it was conveyed as for the information it carried. In Britain, laws still regarded homosexuality as a punishable offense, thereby casting its current pop icons in a web of deceit. Its disclosure was fraught with danger. Brian was mortified that it would bring harm to the Beatles, but he found it just as offensive to fabricate a personal—and absurd—romantic past.
Fortunately, Taylor was a sympathetic figure, completely at ease in a world from which most straight men felt alienated. The secret, he assured Brian, was safe with him. Besides, Taylor knew how to handle it with discretion so there would be no awkward references to women in the book. Not only was Brian relieved, he felt unthreatened, even secure in Derek’s degree of understanding. Several soul-searching conversations with Taylor were Brian’s first opportunity to explore territory that had previously been forbidden with a straight colleague. At breakfast the next day, he felt comfortable enough to share the details of a drunken late-night date that had culminated in rough sex. This was all so fantastic to Taylor, who managed to maintain a straight face throughout. Brian’s entire life, it seemed, was suffused with the contingencies of indulgence and risk. Soon after he and Taylor went out together for some serious drinking and gambling, Brian arrived at a decision. “I would like you to become my personal assistant,” he proposed, “and come to work at NEMS in London, in the office next to mine.”
It was an inspired idea. Taylor had great antennae, which made him sensitive to Brian’s volatile moods. No one was more compatible or eager to please; he mixed as easily with the Beatles as he did with the press, and he made friends easily. “The entire office took to him thirty seconds after he walked in,” says Tony Bramwell. Everyone at NEMS already knew him as a northerner, their own kind. There was never any question he’d function as Brian’s eyes and ears.
A rough draft of the autobiography was finished in slightly under two weeks, a thin, abstracted affair that Taylor facetiously referred to as “a potboiler.” He considered it “ridiculous” to write the autobiography of someone who was not yet thirty years old, and felt constrained by the material, much of which was an acknowledged whitewash. When it came time to title the book, Derek drew a blank. Instead, Brian sounded out his friends, hoping to come up with something catchy. “Why don’t you call it Queer Jew?” John suggested, within earshot of the other Beatles and some guests. To appease John, Brian made a show of chuckling at the needling abuse. Some part of him probably even liked being humiliated by John—after all, it was part of his dark nature. But after the book was submitted as A Cellarful of Noise, he was visibly wounded each time John referred to it as A Cellarful of Boys.
“My early days at NEMS resembled nothing so much as a crazy bazaar,” Taylor recalled. “There were dozens, hundreds of visitors, all with pressing needs…. Epstein demanded all my time and all my energy.” Brian put him through one wringer after
the next, threatening to sack Derek at the first sign of a slip. “The heat was immediately on.” But as it happened, it was only an appetizer.
Chapter 26 In the Eye of a Hurricane
[I]
The usual shock wave shuddered through Copenhagen Airport as the Beatles’ plane approached from the north. More than two thousand kids had been waiting since dawn for the boys to arrive, and as the plane broke through the clouds there was the kind of chain reaction that had at one time put a smile on Dr. Teller’s face. There was a deafening roar; bodies collided. Then all hell broke loose on the ground as the cabin door popped open and out bounded the Beatles: John, Paul, George, and Jimmy.
Say what?
There had been no time to warn the crowd that Ringo wasn’t aboard. Only a day earlier, on the morning of June 3, he’d collapsed during a particularly stressful photo session for the Saturday Evening Post. Despite a blissful three-week vacation with Paul in the Virgin Islands, he’d been experiencing spells of fatigue, which were blamed on the drastic change in climates. His throat was especially sore, owing, Ringo was certain, to his excessive smoking habit. Although stricken by waves of dizziness, he’d soldiered through a June 1 and 2 recording session, as well as several telephone interviews with British teen magazines. But during the photo session he suddenly sank to his knees, and Neil, who “didn’t like it one bit,” rushed him to University College Hospital, where it was diagnosed he’d scored a double whammy of laryngitis and pharyngitis.
Back at Abbey Road studios, Brian, Derek, George Martin, and the rest of the Beatles debated how to handle the situation. It seemed pointless to continue without their drummer, the boys argued. “Imagine, the Beatles without Ringo!” George scoffed. The tour, as he saw it, should be postponed immediately. “Brian argued with us for more than an hour to change our minds about abandoning the tour,” Paul recalled, “pleading that thousands of Dutch and Australian fans had already bought tickets, and that it would be cruel to disappoint them.”
According to George, they were “bullied by Brian Epstein and George Martin into accepting the situation that [they] had to go.” But how? Who would supply the right beat? Pete Best? Not a chance, according to John, who explained to a reporter: “It might have looked as if we were taking him back. Not good for him.” Martin ran through his Rolodex of drummers, pulling the names of those he deemed adequate, with emphasis on a chap named Jimmy Nicol. In Martin’s estimation, not only did Nicol have great hands, but it so happened that he looked the part as well. Nicol was twenty-four, from the East End of London, with the kind of round, cherubic face that would have suited any Scouser. He’d put in time drumming with Georgie Fame and, aside from a decent amount of session work, fronted a band called Jimmy Nicol and the Shub Dubs that had a minor hit single with “Humpity-Dumpity.”
There are various versions as to what happened next, and over the years Nicol has related them in any number of ways, but his assertion that “I nearly shit in me pants” seems utterly reliable.
After three months paired off with the girlfriends and wife, the Beatles hit the road like prisoners on furlough. The moment they touched down in Denmark the scene was swarming with girls: young and older girls, blondes and raven-haired beauties, full-breasted and elfin girls, hookers and virgins. The most beautiful creatures in the world paraded through the Beatles’ set of suites seemingly without end and without restriction. The rate of turnover was breathtaking, as was the boys’ endurance. It was party time, day and night, and as the newcomer, Jimmy Nicol viewed it with incredulity. He had never witnessed such an extravagance of “mischief and carrying-on. I thought I could drink and lay women with the best of them until I met up with these guys,” he admitted.
“Wherever we went, there was always a whole scene,” John recollected, calling it “Satyricon” as a frame of reference, “with four musicians going through it…. When we hit a town, we hit it—we were not pissing about…. We were the Caesars.”
In Copenhagen, where they broke the ice, John especially uncoiled, drinking so much, according to an observer, that “his head was a balloon”; he was nearly unrecognizable onstage, sweating and bloated. Then in Amsterdam the next day, he struck out for the city’s notorious red-light district, trolling through brothels at an impressive breakneck clip, enlisting the services of a police escort to avert possible scandal. There seemed to be no limit to John’s binges of alcohol and sex—nor reason that adequately explained them. His marriage to Cynthia, after all, provided a source of security as well as comfort. They’d enjoyed “the most relaxing and happy holiday” in Tahiti with George and Pattie, mulling over plans to find the house of their dreams upon his return. It seemed almost irrational that he threw himself into these scenes with such self-destructive determination. Friends close to the Lennons at the time insist that their relationship was mutually gratifying and harmonious. Cynthia herself refers to that period as “happy families time for all concerned.” Perhaps the debauchery was just general therapy for John’s troubled soul, a form of emotional decompression. Maybe it was a way of asserting his independence—or merely blowing off steam. God knows, Beatlemania was a pressure cooker—“like being in the eye of a hurricane,” as John put it. Whatever the reason, he and the other Beatles plunged ahead on an excursion of drinking and screwing that rivaled the frenzy at their concerts.
Somehow, Jimmy Nicol took it all in stride. “He played well,” Paul admitted with customary graciousness. There were no slipups, barring the odd, tricky count that only Ringo would have anticipated; there were no star trips or ugly scenes. George had been right to object that it wasn’t the Beatles without “the Four Fabs,” as he called them, but not even the fans seemed to mind the last-minute replacement. Wherever they went, the Beatles were welcomed like conquering heroes. Their arrival in Amsterdam was greeted by an elaborate motorcycle escort that wound through the city, flanked by auxiliary units of police and the civil guard. The next morning a glass-topped boat collected the Beatles from a ledge outside their hotel for a ten-mile trip through the Amstel Canal. “We passed at least 100,000 cheering people who lined the streets on each side of the water to wave, and sometimes almost touch, the Beatles as they passed,” Andy Gray wrote with breathless exaggeration in an edition of the NME. “Six police boats accompanied us on the water and they were kept busy, picking up dozens of boys who swam to the boat, some climbing on to shake the Beatles’ hands.” Fans leaped from canal bridges as the boat passed underneath.
But sometimes the vibe turned rude and unpredictable. For example, that same night before the concert, the mayor of Blokker, the Dutch suburb where the old arena was located, approached George in the dressing room with a key to the city. “Fuck off, yer bald owd crip!” George snapped, oversaturated by the parade of grinning well-wishers.
Every city, every situation, brought out people who wanted to, in some way, touch them—and wanted to be touched back. Insisted on it: promoters demanded that the Beatles meet their families and friends; security men demanded autographs; the hotel manager, driver, waiter, chambermaid, reporter, nurse, newspaper vendor, flight attendant, everyone they came into contact with at every hour of the day, demanded a piece of the boys. And the fans—everywhere they went, fans expected, demanded, some sort of personal response: sign this, wave, say hello, touch me, heal me, call me, kiss me, fuck me. And they stopped at nothing: invading the Beatles’ suites, throwing themselves in front of their cars, jumping from balconies, stalking wives, girlfriends, family members, pets! In Copenhagen a reporter from the Express admonished Paul for his seemingly callous disregard of a telegram that read: CHILD DYING IN THIS FAMILY, TWO DAYS TO LIVE. PLEASE CALL. CHILD IS MARY SUE.” Paul was convinced that it was a hoax, and if not, then a tragedy that was beyond his mortal powers. The world was filled with such tragedies, he argued. Were the Beatles expected to alleviate each one? To prove his point, he instructed Derek Taylor to place a call to the sputtering Mary Sue, who, as it so happened, was in tip-top health and not at all embarrass
ed.
There were other obligations, too—press conferences, civic receptions, charity balls, processions, literary luncheons, awards ceremonies, record-shop appearances, social engagements… it was unrelenting. On the Beatles’ sixteen-hour flight from London to Hong Kong, there were “welcomes” planned at every refueling stop—in Zurich, Beirut, Karachi, Calcutta, and Bangkok. Far from being honored, the Beatles felt abused. Over Derek Taylor’s objections, they refused to get off the plane anywhere other than Bangkok, fueling their dark mood with a steady diet of stimulants. “We’d been sitting on the floor, drinking and taking Preludins for about thirty hours [sic],” George recalled. Then, arriving in Kowloon, exhausted and grimy, they were expected to judge the finals of the Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant.
In Australia five thousand fans staged a vigil in a torrential rainstorm when the Beatles’ 707 descended into Sydney. Fierce crosswinds tugged perilously at the plane, raindrops heavy as hail slashed at the cockpit windows and drummed on the roof, making the landing on the puddled tarmac a nail-biter—none of which deterred local officials, who put the boys “on the back of a flat-bed truck so the crowd could see them.” Their skeletal umbrellas were useless, and the dye in the new capes they had had made in Hong Kong ran, turning their skin a cadaverous blue.