The Beatles

by Bob Spitz

  Still, even an insignificant incident could put a torch to their careers. John got a taste of it in Las Vegas, after two thrilling shows at the Convention Center. Two young twin girls—perhaps no more than fourteen years old—managed to talk their way into the Beatles’ suite at the Sahara and fell asleep in his room at an extremely indelicate hour. As Derek Taylor maintained, “It was all perfectly respectable,” but, of course, he was being paid to call it respectable. No matter what, it didn’t look good. John was a married man after all. And it looked even worse when the girls’ mother showed up in the lobby, concerned that her daughters were still somewhere upstairs with the Beatles.

  “Mal knocked on my door about two-thirty in the morning,” remembers Larry Kane, “and he told me there was a problem. ‘Put on a jacket and tie,’ he said. ‘We need a clean-cut-looking suit with an authoritative voice.’ ” Kane, having joined the tour only two days earlier, did as he was asked and followed the roadie back to the Beatles’ suite, where he understood John’s dilemma at a glance. Kane was dispatched to the lobby, where he found the girls’ mother waiting, and charmed her into believing that “Mr. Lennon [had] been spending some time with [her] young ladies, signing autographs.” John and Derek were so “badly shaken” by the experience that they had consulted a lawyer by the time they reached Los Angeles.

  Perhaps in response, the Beatles steered clear of rabid female fans in Seattle, secluding themselves instead in a suite at the Edgewater Hotel on Elliott Bay, where they dropped fishing lines from their window and idled away the downtime. Officials had taken extraordinary precautions to ensure they wouldn’t be disturbed. A makeshift barricade constructed out of plywood and razor wire had been positioned around the hotel to discourage fans from storming the entrance, in conjunction with a Coast Guard detail patrolling the immediate bay area, but despite these extreme measures, a number of stowaways still managed to breach security. Girls were eventually discovered hiding in a restroom, another in a closet, and several under beds. Later the Beatles learned about a plan by the hotel’s housekeeping staff to sell the sheets and shag carpeting from their rooms to a local promotional firm, which offended their sensibilities enough to sabotage the scheme by urinating on everything in sight.

  In Vancouver, at Empire Stadium, police security was unprepared for the “explosive situation” that erupted on the field, as five thousand kids rushed the stage “to jam up against… four crush barriers” separating them from the Beatles. In the process, kids got trampled and had to be rescued from the melee. Even the Beatles had to intervene. “If you don’t stop, we’re going to have to leave,” Paul warned the audience halfway through the show, but it had little effect on the situation. “These people have lost all ability to think,” complained a greatly agitated police inspector as he surveyed the scene, trying to redirect his men. Variety reported that “some 160 females, mainly in the 10 to 16 year age brackets, required medical attention.” Others were treated backstage or at a nearby hospital for broken ribs and legs, heat prostration, hysteria and “overexcitement,” along with an assortment of cuts and bruises.

  “It was pretty scary just about everywhere we went,” recalls Chris Hutchins, who never strayed far from the Beatles’ long shadows. “Even those of us who had experienced Beatlemania in the U.K. were amazed at the disorder lurching around those shows in ’sixty-four.” Hutchens himself got a taste of the danger in Denver when the car he was riding in was mistaken for the Beatles’ and wound up being “badly damaged” by fans outside the Brown Palace Hotel. In New York the situation grew more serious during a security lapse at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. “Dozens of fans stormed [the] stage,” he reported in NME, “and at one point Ringo was knocked off his stool by [an] overenthusiastic girl who had leaped over steel-helmeted police kneeling in front of the stage.”

  But that was only the tip of the iceberg. In Boston on September 12, a series of ferocious fistfights erupted on the sidewalk outside the Garden, followed by a wave of pushing and shoving during which two glass doors to the building were smashed and several gates overturned. Cops immediately converged from all sides, with a mounted police team stampeding through the mob and knocking young fans indiscriminately to the ground. “The police were truly awful,” recalled Derek Taylor in his memoir of the tour.

  Boston was only a warm-up for Cleveland. A force of five hundred uniformed police circulated through Public Hall, clamoring roughly for order by knocking their nightsticks on chairs. They kept a lid on things while the opening acts were on, but as soon as the Beatles hit the stage, all civility broke down. Jelly beans, toys, and much heavier objects were launched at the band’s heads. Then, in the middle of “All My Loving,” the audience rose as one and stood on their seats as a swarm of teenage girls “surged toward the stage in a spontaneous banzai charge,” as one reporter called it. A cordon of forty cops tried to hold back the girls but eventually collapsed against the attack, “as did a brass railing… bolted to the floor which was ripped out” in the ensuing scuffle.

  Instead of regrouping to restore order, the officer in charge, Deputy Inspector Carl Bare, charged onto the stage and attempted to stop the music. At first the Beatles ignored him, continuing to play. Undaunted, Bare elbowed Paul aside and commandeered the mike. “Sit down, sit down—this show is over!” he bellowed. When the Beatles refused to respond, the battle line was drawn. Bare advanced on John, who squibbed away, mocking the policeman with a little dance and making a face. A “hurricane of boos” flooded the arena. Another policeman, Inspector Michael Blackwell, joined Bare onstage and waved the Beatles into the wings. Predictably, the boys refused to yield, but Blackwell, known locally as Iron Mike, grabbed George by the elbow and steered him forcefully off the stage, at which point the rest of the Beatles reluctantly followed.

  Art Schreiber, who was standing in the wings, grew terrified by the crowd’s response. “It touched off a kind of screaming I’d never heard before,” he recalls, “a violent, angry, bone-chilling roar that somehow demanded a comparable reaction.” He could see packs of kids roaming aimlessly, menacingly, around the dark hall, pursued by wary policemen. Several windows were shattered as disgruntled fans tried to reach the backstage area through an adjoining building.

  Calm prevailed thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Derek Taylor. Sensing a disaster in the making, he volunteered to go onstage and plead with the audience for order in return for twenty minutes of additional showtime. The police were reluctant to accept at first, as were the Beatles, who had already changed out of their stage clothes and were relishing an early escape. Much like a cagy U.N. negotiator, Taylor swung between both camps in an attempt to broker an agreement, and in the end, the show went on.

  In Los Angeles on August 23, the Beatles played to a worshipful crowd of almost nineteen thousand at the Hollywood Bowl, the gilded open-air amphitheater at the foot of the Hollywood Hills. Behind them, reaching into the spectacular starlit sky, another ten or fifteen thousand gate-crashers were massed in the sparsely populated woodlands. John swung his head around reflexively, like a child discovering new scenery, taking in the unexpected guests. “Welcome to you in the trees!” he shouted, as the other Beatles plugged in. It was “a gorgeous California night, just magnificent” and moistly warm, with incomparable hibiscus-scented breezes. A lot of importance had been placed on this gig, what with the celebrity-studded crowd and Capitol Records headquartered a few miles away, and the band fed on it to get wired.

  George Martin had arranged with Capitol Records to record the evening’s concert in the hope that it would serve as an interim release, and so the clamshell stage was cluttered with booms and cables. Live albums were still something of an anomaly in the rock ’n roll business, but Martin, who’d struck gold with the Beyond the Fringe soundtrack, felt that Beatles fans would support such an effort if it captured the excitement the boys put out onstage. “They were great as a live band,” he observed, having seen them dozens of times. But from the moment the tape rolled, there wa
s no containing the screaming. Martin worked frantically with Capitol’s crew, struggling to filter out the noise, but the VU meters were hopelessly redlined throughout the Beatles’ set. “It was like putting a microphone at the tail of a 747 jet,” he said. “It was one continual screaming sound, and it was very difficult to get a good recording.”

  Still, while the Los Angeles Times critic claimed that “not much of the mop-haired quartet’s singing could be heard” over the shrieking, the crowd was comparatively low-key for a Beatles concert. “It was almost too well behaved,” John told KRLA’s Jim Steck over lunch the next afternoon. For a change, he said, the Beatles could actually hear what they were playing, which, coupled with the lush surroundings, made the show the highlight of the tour.

  Afterward, the boys were feted until nearly dawn by about thirty of the city’s “best-looking” starlets, including the Mod Squad’s Peggy Lipton and Joan Baez, who were shipped up to the gated mansion the Beatles were renting on St. Pierre Road in a neighborhood known as Hidden Hills. In an unprecedented move, the traveling press corps was also invited, as were wives and girlfriends and a few local deejays. Ray Hildebrand and Jill Jackson, who performed as Paul and Paula, showed up as someone’s guests, along with Billy Preston, whom the Beatles had first met in Liverpool and later at the Star-Club during his tenure in Little Richard’s band. It was a cozy little crowd, “very casual,” recalls a guest. The boys, lounging in the living room, introduced the newcomers to their friends on the tour, and as the evening stretched on and the Beatles dropped their guard, the party developed into a predictably wild scene. Guests enjoyed the general run of the house, including the pool and the bedrooms, where the action was in full swing.

  Brian, who had been looking forward to enjoying L.A. nightlife, had actually turned in early and was asleep in his sprawling pink and green suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel in anticipation of two important events scheduled for the next day. He’d arranged to have lunch in the Polo Lounge at noon on August 24 with Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s wily old mentor, so they could check each other out and compare notes on managing their two rock phenomena. Then, later, with the Beatles in tow, he would head to a charity garden party in Brentwood to benefit the Hemophilia Foundation hosted by Capitol Records’ president Alan Livingston, whose wife, actress Nancy Olson, was on the foundation’s board.

  At the party Livingston went to great lengths to accommodate the Beatles, who, after being cold-shouldered by the label, had rocketed Capitol’s profits into the stratosphere. No expense had been spared to stage a Hollywood-style spectacular. A festive striped tent had been set up in the spacious backyard, where vendors dispensed soft ice cream and lemonade to a litter of gorgeously groomed children. There were pony rides and games. Security was unparalleled, befitting a presidential visit, with a fully armed riot squad stashed in the garage, just in case. The guest list was a who’s who of local dignitaries, complete with a selection of handpicked celebrities, each of whom was required by the hosts to bring a child: Edward G. Robinson had in tow his granddaughter, Francesa; Lloyd Bridges, his son Jeff; Rita Hayworth, her daughter, Princess Yasmin Khan; Donald O’Connor, his son, Freddy, and daughter, Alicia; Jack Palance, his daughter, Holly; Eva Marie Saint, her son, Darrell, and daughter, Laurie; Barbara Rush, her son, Christopher; Jeanne Martin brought five of Dean’s children a few feet in front of Jerry Lewis, who bolted as soon as he saw them, leaving his son, Gary, behind rather than risk an encounter with his estranged partner.

  If the Beatles were at all starstruck, they didn’t show it. Longtime movie fans, they always enjoyed meeting their screen heroes, but the turnout at the party seemed on the slim side, rather far from the hip. “We saw a couple of film stars,” John relented, but added: “We were expecting to see more.” Then an invitation arrived that absolved the anemic turnout.

  Burt Lancaster was screening the new Peter Sellers movie, A Shot in the Dark, at his Bel-Air estate and thought the Beatles might get a kick out of joining him. Was that the Burt Lancaster, they asked Derek—the man with all the teeth? Ringo was absolutely beside himself. A stone cowboy freak, he’d seen Lancaster in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Apache, The Kentuckian, and Vera Cruz the moment they were released and had the actor’s persona, with the leer and cobra smile, down pat. Burt Lancaster! Sure, they’d watch a movie with him. They’d shop for groceries with him, if that was the offer.

  Lancaster’s pad, in George’s opinion, “was a very expensive, impressive Hollywood home,” with a sunken Olympic-size pool buried in a grotto of lighted waterfalls and lagoons with a tributary that fed directly into a bedroom—you could just swim right in—and a panoramic view of West Los Angeles that seemed lifted from a movie backdrop. But it wasn’t nearly as impressive as Lancaster himself, a bronzed god “about eight feet tall” whose aura probably set off car alarms up and down the hills. Ringo, who came dressed in western-style gear, with a holster and toy guns strapped around his waist, drew on their host as he lumbered through the door. “Hold ’em up there now, Burt—this town ain’t big enough for the two of us,” he drawled. It was the equivalent of some goofball meeting the Beatles and bleating, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” But Lancaster played along, flashing his dazzling grin and going for an imaginary weapon. “What have you got there?” he frowned at Ringo’s plastic gun. “Kids’ stuff.” The Beatles were in heaven.

  The next day, during a fatiguing heat wave, more stars—and more guns—continued to show up, beginning right after lunch when Colonel Parker arrived in a station wagon loaded with presents for the Beatles. A huge box carried to the patio spilled over with rhinestone-studded leather belts and holsters with each of the boys’ names engraved on the back and “From Elvis and the Colonel” burned inside. The Beatles expressed their thanks, but that was as far as they were willing to go. There was something slightly off base, something condescending about the spirit of the gift-giving that registered on the boys’ shit detectors. “Bang, bang,” Paul deadpanned, aiming his gun at the Colonel, who was sitting across the table from him. Ominously, John pointed a gun at his own head and mimicked Paul—“bang!”—as George grumbled: “I wish we had real guns.” It cast an awkward hush over the table, broken finally by the Colonel’s twangy appeal to “have fun, fellas,” before hightailing it out of their compound.

  Soon afterward, Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee stopped by to pay their respects, followed by Jayne Mansfield, a tough little number who had “harangued and hassled” Derek Taylor for days in an attempt to have her picture taken with the Beatles. Brian had laid down the law about using the Beatles in photo ops: it was out of the question, especially with cheesy celebrities, but Derek occasionally made exceptions. Mansfield wasn’t to be one of them. Having gotten the tactful Lancashire brush-off, she finally showed up at the house, “adamant about meeting them.” She refused to take no for an answer. It set up an awkward situation, awkward for its exchange in front of the boys and awkward because of its inexcusably harsh pitch, but in the clamorous give-and-take, Mansfield’s suggestion that everyone meet at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go seemed like a solution they could live with—anything, as long as it removed her from their doorstep.

  Truth be told, the Beatles were itching to get out, tired of being cooped up and handled, eager to sample L.A. nightlife without being on a leash. John, Neil, and Derek had actually gone clothes shopping at Beau Gentry earlier in the day and were encouraged by the fact that no one had accosted them. Maybe, Derek concluded, they could survive an outing to the Whiskey. Brian wouldn’t approve, but he had disappeared again, leaving Derek in charge.

  Calls were made to the club, whose press agent guaranteed the Beatles “absolute privacy.” Johnny Rivers was playing, and George and Ringo set out at 10:30 in a white Cadillac convertible, while John followed in a police car with Mansfield and a few guys from the press corps, leaving Paul curled up in a hammock. “It was bad from the get-go,” recalls Larry Kane, who had squeezed into the backseat before Derek could give him the boot. “Before anyone knew what
was happening, John grabbed Mansfield and they started making out like mad. It was almost obscene the way they went at it like that, right there in front of us.”

  It was evident from the moment they pulled into the Whiskey’s parking lot on Sunset Boulevard that “Beatlemania [was] in full frenzy, the owners having broadcast [the] visit all over town.” Somehow, John elbowed his way inside the jam-packed club, where a banquette had been reserved, but George and Ringo had to be literally lifted and passed over the crowd to keep them from being trampled. Instantly “the whole of Hollywood paparazzi descended,” George remembered. Photographers zeroed right in on the money shot: busty Jayne Mansfield sandwiched between three-quarters of the Beatles. Wordlessly, the boys let them do their bit, withstanding an explosion of flashbulbs. It was over soon enough—except that Robert Flora, a stringer for UPI, refused to cut the Beatles any slack. “He just kept snapping pictures of them with one of those old-fashioned box cameras that flashed real big,” says Larry Kane, “and they wanted to be left alone.” After a suitable grace period, George warned Flora “to get lost,” which worked for about a minute. Soon he drifted back, peppering the table with flashes. “Will you just move him?” John asked a bouncer diplomatically, waving Flora aside. “Tell him to drop his camera, come over and join the table. Anything, but stop flashing.”