With the Beatles

by Alistair Taylor

  The following morning, Brian was first there on the snowy opening day of 1962 and he waited with the nervous foursome for Mike Smith who was late. Punctuality was part of being professional for Brian and he struggled to hide his irritation. He felt he and the Beatles were being treated as if they did not matter. It was not a good beginning. At last their turn came, but when they produced their battered old amplifiers they were firmly told they weren’t required.

  Brian didn’t want to ruffle too many feathers. He was keen for the Beatles to be conservative and to demonstrate their ability to deliver some standards. George sang ‘The Sheikh of Araby’ while Paul chipped in with a melodic version of ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’ and ‘Like Dreamers Do’. John wanted to do more of their usual Cavern act which was full of rasping rock numbers but he allowed himself to be advised by Brian. Paul’s version of ‘’Til There Was You’ went down well and Brian and the Beatles were through their nervous ordeal. The Beatles thought the session went well. Pete Best noted that Mike Smith was pleased and had said the tapes were terrific. Brian took the Beatles out to a restaurant in Swiss Cottage to celebrate.

  Then followed a long period of waiting. This was very disappointing after such a promising flurry of activity since we had signed up the Beatles. We all knew they had something. But we were still unsure about what would happen next. I remember once remarking, ‘There’s such an awful lot of groups around nowadays,’ and John snapped, ‘There’s such a lot of awful groups around nowadays, you mean.’

  The silence from Decca was deafening. Brian was like a cat on hot bricks as he desperately tried to maintain the momentum and get an answer from Decca. His dad Harry used to get extremely irritated that Brian was always down in London chasing some record company executive or other. I would always have to try to pretend that he’d just popped to one of the other shops but I never was a very good liar.

  Finally in March, after weeks of pestering for the big decision, Brian got a telephone call from Beecher Stevens inviting him to London to hear Dick Rowe’s verdict. Brian was by then gloomy about the prospects. He told me, ‘If it was good news, we’d have heard it by now.’ In the expensive confines of Decca’s seventh floor Albert Embankment executive club, the record company bosses treated Brian to a long lunch before they raised the delicate subject which was occupying his every waking thought. Then, over coffee, Dick Rowe said charmlessly, ‘Not to mince words, Mr Epstein, we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups are out; four-piece groups with guitarists particularly are finished.’

  Brian was in a cold fury but he was determined to disguise it. He said, ‘You must be out of your mind. These boys are going to explode once they appear on television. They will be bigger than the Shadows. I am completely confident that one day they will be bigger than Elvis Presley.’

  Personally, I never blamed Dick Rowe, even though it was a decision that was to haunt him forever afterwards. At least he took the trouble to have the Beatles down to London to take a look at them. And he later showed that he wasn’t as daft as everyone thought when he signed a scruffy-looking group called the Rolling Stones.

  The Beatles were not nearly so charitable. Years later, they discovered that he had signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead of them. Paul said, ‘He must be kicking himself now.’ And John added typically, ‘I hope he kicks himself to death!’

  Stevens and Rowe were startled by Brian’s response that the Beatles would one day be bigger than Elvis. He wasn’t the first pop figure to promise them the stars but he was the coolest and the most well-spoken. Brian found their indifference to his new charges very hard to take. Rowe went on to add, ‘The boys won’t go, Mr Epstein. We know these things. You have a good record business in Liverpool. Stick to that.’

  Brian was determined to hide his disappointment. His faith in the Beatles kept him talking up their chances. He couldn’t believe that the group that held the youth of Liverpool enraptured did not deserve to have some sort of a future in the rest of the country. He had heard the music and seen its effect. The Decca executives became a shade uneasy. Brian Epstein was a very good customer and a charming man to do business with. It would be churlish to send him back north with nothing to show for his trip. Rowe sensed it was time to soften the blow and suggested Brian should talk to Tony Meehan, the former Shadows drummer who was making a name for himself as a Decca A&R man. But the idea was that Brian would be given the benefit of Meehan’s advice and the use of a studio on payment of £100.

  To Brian, this was coming close to adding insult to injury. He couldn’t understand why a mighty company like Decca could be asking for £100 from him for the privilege of listening to a group who could make them untold millions of pounds. But to the carefully calculating businessman in Brian, it was impossible to turn down the only concession he had won from Decca.

  So the next day, Brian arrived at Decca’s West Hampstead studios and, after again being kept waiting for half-an-hour, Dick Rowe said, ‘Tony, take Mr Epstein out and explain the position.’ Brian was starting to feel as if he was back at one of his prep schools, in deep trouble with his housemaster again.

  Tony Meehan had encountered plenty of managers with astronomic aspirations for their groups and tersely told Brian, ‘Mr Epstein, Mr Rowe and I are very busy men. We know roughly what you require so will you fix a date for tapes to be made of these Beatles. Telephone my secretary to make sure that when you want the session I am available.’

  Brian was seething inwardly. He walked out of Decca full of frustration and fury. It was so blindingly obvious to him by then that the Beatles were stars of the future. He simply could not believe that anyone, let alone senior executives of a successful record company, could not grasp this simple fact. He decided not to take Meehan up on his half-hearted offer of help. And he was crestfallen that he had to break the bad news to the boys.

  Brian tried to hide his feelings when he came back but I knew him pretty well by then and I could see he was deeply upset. He attempted to put on a brave front for the boys. When his train got back into Liverpool’s Lime Street Station he telephoned Paul and asked him to round the boys up for a meeting in Joe’s Café in Duke Street. There, over a tidal flow of tea, they talked for a time about everything but the crucial Decca verdict, until George asked, ‘What about Decca, Brian?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s no use,’ said Brian. ‘I’ve had a flat “No”.’

  They took it pretty well, but then they had been trying to break through for a long time before we arrived. Brian found rejection much harder to take. He began a round of trips to London and meetings with executives from Pye, Phillips and other smaller companies and they all turned him down flat. I often used to find him crying in his office. He could not understand why none of them could hear what he could hear in the tapes. But they were tears of anger and frustration, not sorrow. He just could not understand why no one could see what was so obvious to him.

  The boys seemed able to hide their feelings with humour. With the nonchalance of youth, at times they would send up the whole idea of getting to the top. John had a jokey routine where he would shout, ‘Where are we going, fellas?’

  The others would shout back, ‘To the top, Johnny.’

  ‘What top?’ he’d shout.

  And they would yell, ‘To the Toppermost of the Poppermost, Johnny!’

  On the local scene, the Beatles were going from strength to strength. They were busy most nights playing for Brian’s new minimum rate of £15 per night. And they came top of a Mersey Beat popularity poll, thanks largely to them filling in loads of entry forms under assumed names putting the Beatles first and their main rivals Gerry and the Pacemakers last. Mind you, all the groups were voting for themselves so it hardly altered the vote, but Brian was quick to use the triumph for publicity purposes. For an appearance on 24 March 1962, posters screamed in huge capital letters that they were ‘MERSEY BEAT POLL WINNERS! POLYDOR RECORDING ARTISTS! PRIOR TO EUROPEAN TOUR!’ The fact that the concert was at Barnston Women’s
Institute with tickets priced at 7s 6d was surprisingly given rather less prominence.

  The European Tour was, in fact, their third visit to Hamburg in April 1962. Before Brian and I met them, the boys had undertaken two wild stints of working in Hamburg. They had travelled over in an old van and worked excruciating hours, lived in squalid circumstances and generally experimented with as many aspects of the local low-life as they had time for.

  This time, they flew to Hamburg which was a first for the boys, and they loved it. They were playing the Star Club, which was definitely a step up from the previous venues they used to play. ‘It even had proper curtains on stage,’ said George.

  But back in Liverpool, Brian was really up against it. His father was by now seriously irritated that Brian was spending his time obsessed by this group of scruffy musicians when he should have been running the shops. Harry was very polite. He would come into the shop, find me in charge, and launch into a string of direct questions: ‘Alistair, are the record stocks sufficient?’ ‘Alistair, did you order enough copies of that record?’ ‘Alistair, are the staff being managed adequately?’ ‘Alistair, could you tell me just exactly where Brian is, please?’

  But there was no diverting Brian. He was dedicated to getting the boys launched. I had come to respect his musical judgement so much by then that I shared his frustration and impatience.

  The first Beatles engagement under the new Epstein contract was at the Thistle Café on the seafront at upmarket West Kirby some ten miles from Liverpool. The Beatles fee was £18 and Brian took his 36s commission which he noted, ‘just about covered petrol, oil and wear on tyres’. It wasn’t exactly the big-time.

  At the Aintree Institute, Brian received the £15 fee in bags of silver coins which horrified him. He angrily told promoter Brian Kelly that the Beatles must be paid in a civilised manner. He stalked off leaving the coins behind and shouted, ‘Send me a cheque,’ over his shoulder as he went out of the room in undisguised disgust.

  People like Bill Harry – who was a friend of John’s at art college – have suggested that this was the time when Brian changed the Beatles from being John’s group into being Paul’s group. Bill reckons John’s position as the early leader was gradually usurped by Paul, with Brian’s help. To me, this has never sounded convincing. One of the important qualities of the Beatles when I first met them was that they did not have a leader. Perhaps the drummer was always taking a back seat by necessity. Pete Best – and later, Ringo Starr – were both quiet, easy-going guys by nature. And they had to be at the back because that’s where the drums were and John, George and Paul were always out front. John had been the leader in the early days certainly, but by the time Brian became involved in 1961 it seemed like a genuine partnership to me.

  Indeed, the thing that made the Beatles so great in those early days was their strong sense of togetherness. After years of struggling through grotty clubs and battling along through those endless Hamburg sessions, John, Paul and George were rock solid.

  Brian loved the way the Beatles were so completely unconventional. They weren’t remotely like Cliff Richard and the Shadows, heaven forbid, or even Gerry and the Pacemakers. They were four different, highly-talented people who would probably have done perfectly well as individuals. But as a team they were absolutely unbeatable. It never was John’s group and it never became Paul’s group. The last thing Brian wanted the Beatles to do was have any leader other than himself.

  We went together to watch an early concert over the river at the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton. It was a huge hall which could hold more than 1,000 people. The Beatles were sharing the bill with three other local groups – Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Derry and the Seniors, and Dale Roberts and the Jaywalkers. There was just no competition. The Beatles were phenomenal. Now they had taken on board Brian’s tips about smartening up their appearance and their act they simply oozed confidence on stage. Brian and I shared a table at the side while the boys performed and the improvement in the look and the sound of the boys was so extraordinary that we simply could not keep from grinning at each other. We were delighted with what we saw and heard.

  Brain faced pressure from all sides and it didn’t always make him easy to work for. I was sacked several times in the ’60s. The first occasion was the most frightening, because I thought he really meant it.

  The day had started like many others. Brian came rushing in first thing, announcing he was going to be out all day. I was in charge. About five minutes later, the phone in his office rang and I rushed through to answer it. It was good news, a booking for the Beatles! I glanced through Brian’s big desk diary and saw that there was nothing already booked. ‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Just send us the contracts for the booking and we’ll have them to you by return.’

  My trouble started when I couldn’t find a pen. I’d left it in the shop. All I had was a pencil, so I took a note on a piece of scrap paper intending to transfer it later neatly into the diary in pen, as Brian preferred. You’ve guessed it. I forgot.

  It was a very busy day and towards closing time I took another call for the Beatles and duly wrote it into the diary which seemed clear for that day. Brian returned and generously said, ‘You look shattered. Go on home and put your feet up.’

  I didn’t need to be told twice. But the next morning, when I arrived Brian came over to me and hissed, ‘Alistair, I want to see you in my office at once.’ He had that tight, carefully-controlled look which comes over him when he is angry. So I left everything and followed him to the back office, wondering what was wrong. There were two contracts laid out on Brian’s desk. He stood behind the desk and pointed to them as if they were my death warrants.

  ‘Alistair, these are two contracts which came to me this morning from different promoters. They are both for the same night at clubs which are 15 miles apart! The Beatles cannot possibly fulfil both bookings! What explanation can you give me which might prevent me asking for your resignation?’

  I was baffled. I looked at the contracts. Surely I had never done anything so stupid. Then I remembered I had written down the details of the first booking on the piece of paper and forgotten to transfer them to the desk diary. The second booking was the one I had written in. I fished in my pocket and found the crumpled piece of paper.

  ‘Well, Brian …’

  Brian was furious. His voice was shaking with rage as he delivered the most stinging lecture I’d heard since I left school. He said, ‘Do you realise that our professional reputation as managers depends on us keeping our word and fulfilling our bookings? How can we expect anyone to take us seriously if we act like clowns? Everything has to be done properly and I will accept no excuses. What you did has cast a shadow on the reputation not only of me but also of the Beatles. It is up to you to remedy the situation at once. Your job depends upon it.’

  Fortunately for me, the first promoter I rang happily accepted my snivelling apology and agreed to reschedule the Beatles for another night. He said, ‘Don’t worry, we get double bookings all the time. We’ll get another group for that night. The kids will never notice.’

  I could have kissed him down the line, even if I did not think much of his musical taste. I was still trembling as I put the phone down. But Brian had made his point.

  I was still feeling wretched and offered to resign if he thought I was not up to doing my job. Brian had now reverted to the charming chap I thought I knew so well. ‘Alistair, I don’t want your resignation. You are essential to the running of this whole project and I am sorry if I have been overloading you. I hope it won’t be for too long because I intend to break out of Liverpool and move to London as soon as possible. With your help, I want to put the Beatles at the very top of the music business. But remember, no more mistakes.’

  I got the message. Brian was an inspirational boss and he never asked anyone to work harder than he was prepared to slave himself. He desperately strived to stay 100 per cent on top of things at the shop and still found time to go off to London to
find someone in the record business who shared his high opinion of the Beatles. But the knock-backs continued.

  At Pye, he was rejected by genial artists’ manager Alan A Freeman who said Brian’s tape from the Decca audition was not good enough, although he might consider listening again to a better presentation. Brian tried the independent label Oriole, but boss Morris Levy was out and Brian’s time in London was very limited. He telephoned Philips Records to ask if he could meet an executive and a secretary told him coldly to ‘write in’.

  Brian spent hours on the train to London and back and he found it desperately disheartening not to return with better news. As the weeks went by, Brian became increasingly depressed and gradually the attitude of the Beatles began to change. There was a shade more edge in their questions when he returned and John and Paul particularly started to lose faith.

  They didn’t blame Brian to his face, but among themselves and sometimes to me they would question what was happening. John asked me if I thought they’d ever get a deal and I tried to be upbeat and explain that Brian was doing everything possible but they seemed less and less convinced.

  Every month, Brian would issue each of the boys with their financial statements, all neatly and accurately itemised, and sealed in a white manila envelope. They reacted very differently. John would instantly crumple it up and stuff it in his pocket. George might have a look. Ringo certainly couldn’t understand it and didn’t waste any time trying. Paul was the one who opened it carefully and would sit in the corner of the office for hours going meticulously though it. He would read every detail and question Brian on anything he didn’t understand.