After our meal, we found a thick fog had fallen and we had great difficulty finding the right road to get us to the venue. Eventually, we were stopped by a mounted policeman. He leaned down to tell Brian that we couldn’t go any further because a concert by the Beatles was causing widespread traffic chaos. ‘Oh good,’ said Brian, ‘I’m their manager.’
He let us go through and we parked, this time without drama. The long queues of girls in short skirts snaked right round the cinema, much to Brian’s delight. We stepped confidently past them for a quick word with the boys before the concert started. Near the lobby, we actually had to step over the prostrate bodies of girls totally overcome by the prospect of being in the presence of the Beatles. But we were stopped in our tracks by a deeply officious steward who refused to let us in. Brian explained politely who he was and the official actually used the immortal line that letting us into the building was ‘more than his job was worth’. I’m afraid I lapsed into my roughest Liverpool accent and told this guy that if he didn’t get out of the way instantly, then he would never work again. I think Brian was shocked, but at least a little impressed. We got in.
It wasn’t long before the Beatles were due on stage so Brian and I just had a quick word to check that everything was OK. The sound of the fans was already deafening but when the boys walked on stage it was even louder.
The noise of the fans made me feel dizzy. Once the Beatles struck up the distinctive opening chords of the first song, ‘Michelle’ you couldn’t hear a thing from them. Then I noticed that every so often, John, Paul and George would turn their backs on the audience and I realised they weren’t really singing or playing a note. George came quite close to me to give the knobs on his amplifier a serious twiddling and it was clear he was not making a sound. When George wandered within a foot or so of me, I shouted, ‘What are you playing at?’
‘Saving our voices,’ he yelled back and went off grinning widely. This unscheduled on-stage rest period lasted for about three minutes.
As General Manager of NEMS, I replaced a lovely lad called Barrie Leonard, who had been struggling in the job. At first, I was horrified that I would have to return north to Liverpool but my first job once I’d rejoined Brian was to find offices in London. I still had about five months of travelling north for the week, although Brian paid all my expenses. Initially, it was long train journeys until Brian’s brother Clive suggested that taking the plane would be much quicker. I had never flown in my life before. I got a taxi from the office to Liverpool’s Speke Airport to get on a terrifying World War II DC4. It was pouring with rain and we got stuck in traffic. We arrived at the airport as the plane was about to leave and a Scouse porter told me in no uncertain terms, ‘Bloody run.’ So I did and just caught it. We took off and almost immediately landed. I was shocked and said to another passenger, ‘My, that was quick.’ Nobody told me that the plane had landed to pick more people up at Hawarden just outside Chester. So much for my jet-set image.
I found a London base for NEMS Enterprises in Sutherland House in Argyll Street, appropriately next door to that bastion of showbusiness, the London Palladium. And Brian sent all staff an official letter spelling out his mission statement: ‘NEMS Enterprises provides the finest and most efficient management/direction of artistes in the world.’ By then, the stable of talent included The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J Kramer and The Dakotas, Cilla Black, The Fourmost, Tommy Quickly, Sounds Incorporated and The Remo Four. All of a sudden, NEMS had hit records all over the place and Brian was the hottest manager in town by a mile.
Brian always liked me to be in the office at least half-an-hour before anyone else to open all the mail and check on the running of the business. He wanted me to try to pick up any glitches before they became serious. So if anyone was writing in to complain, I would find out.
I got a shock on one of my early morning stints when I opened a slim white envelope from EMI which turned out to contain a cheque to NEMS for more than £6 million. It was for three months’ royalties. The size of it was a surprise to me as Brian always kept the boys’ financial details pretty close to his chest, but I couldn’t believe a sum this size could simply arrive in the normal morning mail. It wasn’t even a registered letter. It was a Friday and Brian was away so I took it home for the weekend for safety. On Monday, I showed the cheque and the scruffy compliments slip that accompanied it to Brian and he went absolutely bananas. He picked up the phone and rang Sir Joseph Lockwood, the Chairman of EMI, and raised the roof with his opinions of EMI business practices. A senior executive brought the next cheque round in person.
A lot of my time was spent thinking up ways to get the Beatles in and out of cinemas and theatres. The size of the crowds and the level of frenzy the fans used to get themselves worked up into were just amazing. They just used to go completely crazy. So I worked out quite a few strategies. We used decoy cars going round to the front of the building and the Beatles sneaking in at the back. And if ever there were any secret exits or little-known passageways, then we would always use those.
By the end of 1963, the Beatles had become absurdly overexposed. Having ignored their desperate early attempts to get a foot on to the bottom rung of the ladder to success, the national Press now discovered the Beatles in a big way. You couldn’t buy an issue of any paper without reading a story and seeing pictures of the group. At first, it seemed like a tremendous vindication of everything we had been trying to do. But Brian soon became wary. He wrote in his autobiography, ‘At first, the sight of the Beatles in all of the newspapers, accompanied with detailed discussion of their views, their habits, their clothes was exciting. They liked it and so did I because it was good for them and it was good for business. But, finally, it became a great anxiety. How much longer, I wondered, could they maintain public interest without rationing either their personal appearances or their newspaper coverage? In fact, by a stringent watch on their contacts with the Press and a careful and constant check on their bookings, we just averted saturation point. But it was very close, and other artists have been destroyed by this very thing.’
Brian’s insight really impressed me. He always seemed to be ahead of the game. I remember he was already working out ways to reduce the level of the coverage when the boys were still desperate to be on every page of every paper. He knew the old showbiz maxim of ‘leave them wanting more’ and he knew that if we let the Beatles become too available, we risked cheapening the brand.
But as 1964 dawned, the Beatles became the most sought-after humans on the planet. They were distinctly working-class and proud of it, but their appeal stretched from council estates to castles. Everyone wanted to know them. They were on top of the list for invitations from every socialite worth her tiara, in demand for every charity appeal, and the must-have guests at every party. It was suddenly fashionable to be a Beatles fan. Brian and I were absolutely astonished at the reaction. We had expected acclaim and success, but this was too much for anyone, surely. Yet the boys took it all in their stride. Brian could not believe how easily they took to fame and fortune but, as we discussed it happily into the night, he considered, ‘I suppose I did not realise that they wanted to succeed so much. I know they said they craved success, but I always thought I wanted it much more. It made me sick when we kept getting turned down but I see now that it must have made them even sicker.
‘John and I talked in Spain about whether I would lose interest before they did. I think he thought I was some kind of playboy who would get bored with every toy he played with. I tried to explain that I was as committed as he was and he laughed at me. It was cruel but not unkind. John said rich bastards like me didn’t know what it was to want to succeed. I had the family business to fall back on. He said he didn’t even have a family, which I thought was a bit hard on Cynthia and his son. But John said he just wanted to show the bastards who had laughed and sneered at his dreams. He knew the music was good. He said it was the best. And he was so sure of himself and of Paul and George and Ringo. He
kept saying, “We’re really going to show the bastards,” and I realised he was much more committed to the Beatles than I’d thought. John never liked to let you think he was taking anything seriously, but he took success seriously and he wanted a lot of it.’
7
THE WORLD
John got his wish as 1964 turned this British success story into an international pop phenomenon. And it happened quite quickly. When the Beatles went to Paris in January, they were greeted by a handful of French Press at Le Bourget airport but no fans. The journalists had been sent because their bosses had heard reports of a lot of fuss across the Channel and wanted to know if the latest British craze was worth writing about. Brian was concerned at the lack of interest in France and not all the tickets at the Olympia Theatre had been sold. But by the end of three weeks of Beatles performances, there were wailing, chanting mobs of Beatles fans laying nightly seige to the theatre and hundreds of baton-waving gendarmes were stretched to the limit to stay in control. Paris fell to the Beatle invasion and so did Copenhagen and Amsterdam.
Perhaps Brian’s greatest achievement was breaking the Beatles in America. Lots of British artists had been across the Atlantic and died a death. Cliff Richard invaded the United States and nobody noticed. But Brian was determined that the Beatles would be different and he knew that timing was the absolute key.
I remember meeting him at Heathrow after one of his many early trips just after the Royal Variety Show. We took the car back to his house and I politely asked how it had gone.
‘Oh, quite well,’ said Brian quietly. ‘I turned down an Ed Sullivan Show.’
‘Brian,’ I gulped, ‘surely you know that The Ed Sullivan Show is the biggest show in America? It would be fantastic to get the boys on that.’
Brian was very cool. He said, ‘Yes, I know. But we’re not ready yet.’
My amazement was clearly still showing.
Brian continued, more pointedly, ‘Alistair, we don’t have the right record.’
He was not prepared to go over to America, use the fabulous platform of the coast-to-coast Ed Sullivan Show, without having the right record to back it up. I recall some time later I went into his office and he said casually, ‘Oh, while you’re here, listen to this,’ and he had this white acetate of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’. I thought it was a knockout and said so.
Brian smiled and sat back in his big black leather chair and said, ‘Now we assault America.’ That is what he wanted – a record strong enough to back it up. He was a genius of a manager, he really was. They’d had several number ones by then but he was not prepared to go to America without what he thought was the right record. He kept saying he did not want the Beatles to be another British failure in America. Brian just had this remarkable nose for knowing the right song for the right moment.
Capitol Records, the American side of EMI, could have given us a lot more encouragement to go over there a lot sooner. They didn’t do us any favours. But Brian wanted to control everything – he always did. One of those myths has come up that Ed Sullivan saw the British reaction and decided to bring them over. That is not how it happened.
And, to be fair, Brian didn’t always get it right. Later, he took Cilla Black over to sing in the Rainbow Room, one of the top cabaret spots in New York and she died a death. But on that occasion he didn’t have a record lined up to back her up. Brian knew that ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ was the one that was going to make America sit up and listen.
* * *
So far, the Beatles hits which had been so richly appreciated in Britain had passed unnoticed in America. Traditionally, British pop stars struggled to survive the Atlantic crossing, but Brian Epstein was determined to prove that the Beatles were different. He had turned down one appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show but now he was ready to take on the programme that he knew could make the Beatles in the States. Sullivan, once famous for insisting that Elvis Presley be filmed only from the waist upwards, was keen to have the Beatles.
Sullivan had been on a talent-spotting trip to Europe and found first-hand evidence of the Beatles’ appeal when his flight from Heathrow was delayed by fans rioting, as the Beatles flew back in from Sweden. Sullivan wanted the Beatles as a minor novelty act but Brian insisted they were to be taken seriously. He showed how serious he was by offering the Beatles at Sullivan’s lowest fee so long as they received top billing. The Americans were delighted with the bargain but Brian knew what he was doing. It would have been worth mortgaging his house to pay Sullivan to let them appear. The show really was that powerful.
Thanks to a crash publicity programme which had New Yorkers waking up to ‘Beatle-time on their radios’, and the growing interest from kids on the streets for a chance to see and hear this group that Europe was going crazy for, the Beatles’ visit to the Ed Sullivan Show became a major event before it even happened.
The boys were totally knocked out by the reception they got immediately on their arrival in America. Of the four of them, only George had ever even been there before to visit his sister and in those days British acts simply did not seem to work across the Atlantic. The Beatles changed all that, thanks to Brian’s brilliant timing which saw the boys arrive to follow up a number-one single. What better introduction could there be than a chart-topper?
John was particularly wary. He knew that even Cliff Richard had died a death in the States and he did not want to see the Beatles embarrassed. Right up until just before departure, John was saying they were just going over to buy some LPs and take a look at the place as tourists. But the hit status of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ changed all that.
The reception at the airport was astonishing. There were thousands of kids in Beatles wigs all screaming their heads off. Brian visibly relaxed as he saw it was going to work and the boys just had an absolute ball. The show received more than 50,000 applications for the 700 available seats to watch the filming in the studio. Even Elvis and his famously gyrating body had not generated this much interest.
The reception at the airport was sensational and the Beatles humour went down well at the introductory press conference. The boys’ refusal to answer any questions seriously astonished many of the straight-faced American reporters. But when you heard the banality of the questions you could understand the boys’ reactions. One ace columnist asked brightly, ‘What do you do when you’re cooped up in your rooms between shows?’
‘We ice skate,’ George deadpanned back.
John was even better. He was asked, ‘Was your family in show business?’ And he could not resist replying, ‘Well, my dad used to say my mother was a great performer.’
Brian brought the press conference to a halt as gales of laughter started to ring round the airport. The American reporters were busy trying to describe the Beatles as the new Marx Brothers as the boys were ushered into waiting limos to be escorted by two motorcycle cops and no fewer than four New York City police cars to the unsuspecting Plaza Hotel. They had no idea who the Beatles were when they took the booking and the staff there were collectively astonished to be already besieged by fans. And this was even before they had appeared on television. Next day, 37 sacks of fanmail arrived at the Plaza.
Not everything went perfectly. George was suffering from tonsillitis and Neil Aspinall stood in for him during rehearsals for the Ed Sullivan Show. But George recovered after taking a variety of drugs – many of them prescribed by a doctor who was called in to get him back on his feet.
Ed Sullivan was a cynical old showbusiness pro but even he was amazed at the reaction the boys inspired. Brian decided he needed to know how the veteran host was going to present his precious stars to the American public and asked him just before recording started, ‘I would like to know the exact wording of your introduction.’ Sullivan did not miss a beat as he responded, ‘I would like you to get lost.’
Brian was concerned, but he need not have worried. Sullivan began by reading a telegram of welcome from Elvis Presley which delighted the boys waiting to go on. The
y did learn much later that Elvis had no knowledge of the good luck note but by then it hardly mattered. Sullivan reported the Beatles’ astonishing success in Britain to date and waved them into action with the words, ‘America, judge for yourself.’
The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964 was watched by an estimated 73 million people – more than half of America’s viewers. The reviews were mixed, to say the least. The New York Herald-Tribune called the Beatles, ‘75 per cent publicity, 20 per cent haircut and 5 per cent lilting lament,’ while the Washington Post called them, ‘Asexual and homely’.
But the fans loved it. In their millions. Brian’s brilliant deal to go on for a cut-price performance must have repaid itself hundreds of thousands of times over in promotional impact. It’s obviously a good idea with hindsight, but in those pioneering days, no other manager would have allowed his act to go on for such a low fee. Even Billy Graham watched the Beatles, breaking a lifetime’s rule not to watch TV on the Sabbath, and America’s crime rate that night was the lowest in half a century.
Two days later, the Beatles gave their first live concert performance in the United States at the Washington Coliseum to scenes of extreme Beatlemania. America had fallen in love with the Beatles just as fervently as Britain. Brian told me afterwards that this was the finest single moment of his time with the Beatles. Once he knew that fans in the United States felt the same as their British counterparts he knew that we could conquer the whole world. They played a second concert on that first American trip at Carnegie Hall, the first time the famous venue had played host to a rock group, and hysteria broke out all over again.
With the Beatles Page 8