“One night Brian punched”: Wyman, Stone Alone, 82.
“Brian fixed anyone with his big baby eyes”: Norman, The Stones, 51.
“Botticelli angel with a cruel streak”: Christopher Sanford, Keith Richards: Satisfaction (London: Headline Books, 2003), 39.
As a teenager, Michael Jagger: cf. George Harrison, on his Liverpool childhood: “You couldn’t get a cup of sugar, never mind a rock ’n’ roll record.”
“I never got to have a raving”: As quoted in Christopher Sanford, Mick Jagger: Rebel Knight (London: Omnibus Press, 2003), 16.
“wasn’t particularly impressed”: As quoted in David Dalton and Mick Farren, eds., The Rolling Stones: In Their Own Words (London: Omnibus, 1980), 11.
“Rock and roll got me”: As quoted in A. E. Hotchner, Blown Away: The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 52.
Instead, Richards found himself: Journalist George Melly described the British art schools of the 1950s as “the refuge of the bright but unacademic, the talented, the non-conformists, the lazy, the inventive, the indecisive: all those who didn’t know what they wanted but knew it wasn’t a nine-to-five job.” The list of noteworthy rock musicians who spent time in art school is remarkable; in addition to John Lennon and Keith Richards, it includes Ray Davies, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, David Bowie, Roxy Music’s Brian Ferry, and Dick Taylor, who very briefly played with the Stones before helping to start the Pretty Things.
“free-spirited . . . pest”: Christopher Sanford, Keith Richards, 34.
“the most stylish young man”: Wyman, Stone Alone, 91.
“Charlie’s concession to joining the Stones”: James Phelge, Nankering with the Stones: The Untold Story of the Early Days (Chicago: A Capella, 224), 44.
“The major difference between the Stones”: Wyman, Stone Alone, 111.
“The place was an absolute pit”: Wyman, Stone Alone, 112.
“I never understood why”: Wyman, Stone Alone, 112.
When the “Rollin’ Stones”: When their debut gig was announced in Jazz News, they were misidentified as “The Rolling Stones,” but they meant to go by the “Rollin’ Stones” (apostrophe after the n) and that is how they were known until they met Andrew Loog Oldham in the spring of 1963.
“They seemed accomplished”: As quoted in Oldham, Stoned, 207.
“but on stage they were”: Wyman, Stone Alone, 131.
“R&B was a minority thing”: As quoted in Stephen, Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-Year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones (New York: Broadway Books, 2001), 52. Additionally, rock ’n’ roll was associated with the working class. “Nice respectable grammar school boys preferred jazz,” Peter Doggett wrote me in an informal email, “and so they might have reached the blues via that direction. Liking rock ’n’ roll in the ’50s was an admission that you were, or wanted to be seen as, a kind of hoodlum. Many boys from middle-class homes used to pretend they didn’t like pop and rock ’n’ roll because their friends would have laughed at them if they admitted that they did.”
“waffly white pop”: As quoted in John Strausbaugh, Rock Til You Drop (London & New York: Verso, 2001), 40.
“Liverpool’s best-dressed bachelor”: Ray Coleman, The Man Who Made the Beatles, 29.
“They used to drive us crackers”: As quoted in Coleman, The Man Who Made the Beatles, 76.
“Inside the club it was as black”: Brian Epstein, A Cellarful of Noise (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1964), 39.
“fascinated” by their “pounding bass beat”: Epstein, Cellarful of Noise, 39.
“They were not very tidy”: Epstein, Cellarful of Noise, 39.
“This accusation has been”: As quoted in Brian Epstein: Inside the Fifth Beatle (DVD, Passport, 2004).
“he looked efficient and rich”: The Beatles Anthology, 65.
“The Beatles are going”: As quoted in Pritchard and Lysaght, An Oral History, 86.
Except for on one slightly infamous occasion: One late night circa 1963, while the Beatles were working, Epstein unexpectedly showed up with one of his paramours at Abbey Road Studios. No doubt eager to impress, he leaned into the intercom and made a suggestion about Paul’s vocals. Lennon’s voice boomed back at him: “You look after your percentages, Brian. We’ll take care of the music.” It was the type of remark that would have sent the Beatles’ fragile manager reeling.
“Brian wanted to be a star himself”: As quoted in Geller, Brian Epstein Story, 58.
“It was a choice of making it”: As quoted in The Beatles Anthology, 67.
“After that . . . I got them to wear sweaters onstage”: As quoted in Pritchard and Lysaght, An Oral History, 87. So seemingly reluctant were the Beatles to wear Epstein’s outfits that on April 5, 1962, they played the first half of a show at the Cavern Club in their old leather outfits; then they came out and played their second set in tailored suits.
They must “stop swearing”: As quoted in Geller, Brian Epstein Story, 43.
“He was a director”: As quoted in Pritchard and Lysaght, An Oral History, 49.
“posthumous, wise-after-the-event”: As quoted in Geller, Brian Epstein Story, 42.
“It was really hot”: As quoted in http://www.thebeatlesinmanchester.co.uk/page16.htm.
“there we were in suits and everything”: As quoted in Coleman, Lennon, 268.
“Paul was keen on the changes”: Cynthia Lennon, John (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006), 106.
“Brian Epstein made them behave”: As quoted in Oldham, Stoned, 294–95.
“I’d never seen anything like it”: Oldham, Stoned, 191.
“a new public personality”: As quoted in Oldham, Stoned, 44.
“a nasty little upstart tycoon shit”: As quoted in James Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947–1977 (New York: Touchstone, 2000), 203.
“He was the most concerned-about-clothes”: Oldham, Stoned, 71.
“he had all the confidence in the world”: As quoted in Oldham, Stoned, 101.
“I will always thank Mary”: Oldham, Stoned, 95.
“He didn’t want me to be a model”: As quoted in Oldham, Stoned, 99. Another time, while in a furious anger, Oldham apparently knocked his mother down a stairwell. According to one of his bosses, he was completely inconsolable for days afterward. Andrew says he doesn’t remember hurting his mom but concedes that he might have done so and then suppressed the traumatizing memory.
“were a nightmare together”: As quoted in Oldham, Stoned, 169.
some radio shows and press interviews: This was the type of thing the Beatles learned to do assiduously, but only after being coached by Epstein. “Trying to get publicity was just a game,” Lennon remembered. “We used to traipse round the offices of the local papers and musical papers asking them to write about us, because that’s what you had to do. It was natural we should put on our best show. We had to appear nice for the reporters, even the very snooty ones who were letting us know they were doing us a favor. We would play along with them, agreeing how kind they were to talk to us. We were very two-faced about it.”
“Onstage, you could not hear the Beatles”: Oldham, Stoned, 182–183.
“I met the Rollin’ Stones”: Oldham, Stoned, 185.
The first person he phoned for help was Epstein: It is sometimes said that the story about Oldham offering to partner with Epstein is apocryphal, but in his latest book, Stone Free, Oldham affirmed it. “As for whether Brian might have had the Stones, it’s true. He might have. Back when I first saw the Stones, I knew I would need an experienced partner. The band needed work above all else, and I was not a booking agent, nor at 19 could I have been legally licensed as such. I had terrible doubts about partnering up with my landlord, Eric Easton, who was a booking agent. Besides, it was my duty, based either on the ethic my mother had taught me or that I had picked up in the cinema, to call my present employer, Brian Epstein, and let him know what I was up to, and at least sort of offer him an interest i
n the Rolling Stones. I did, but I hoped he was not listening; he was not, so I made my bed with agent Eric Easton and the Stones jumped in with me.”
“Andrew was the young go-getter”: As quoted in Oldham, Stoned, 217.
“the most brilliant self-selling job”: Norman, The Stones, 93.
“He probably said, ‘I am the Beatles’ publicist’”: As quoted in the Rolling Stones, ed. Dora Loewenstein and Philip Dodd, According to the Rolling Stones (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003), 56.
“was looking for an alternative to the Beatles”: As quoted in Oldham, Stoned, 197.
“looked more pop”: Bockris, Keith Richards, 40. Richards restored the s in 1977.
“marched us up to Carnaby Street”: Wyman, Stoned, 192.
“obvious” that “Andrew was”: Wyman, Stone Alone, 136.
“a jumbled assortment of jeans”: As quoted in Wyman, Stone Alone, 162.
“the band your parents loved to hate”: Oldham, Stoned, 294.
“made sure we were as vile as possible”: As quoted in Strausbaugh, Rock Til You Drop, 39.
“If people don’t like us”: As quoted in Hotchner, Blown Away, 100.
“most vivid dreams”: As quoted in The Beatles Anthology, 8.
“salmon fisherman”: Impressively, outside of music (and related activities), Lennon never once held steady employment in his life.
“loved rock and roll”: From www.robertchristgau.com/xg/music/stones-76.php.
“more like [what] we’d done before”: The Beatles Anthology, 101.
“Sure, they were very creative”: As quoted in Dalton and Farren, eds., In Their Own Words, 107.
“We saw no connection between us”: As quoted in Stark, Meet the Beatles, 202.
“For the first time, London”: Edward Luci-Smith, ed., The Liverpool Scene (London: Garden City Press, 1967), 5.
“the center of the consciousness of the human universe”: Luci-Smith, The Liverpool Scene, back cover.
“They feel you don’t tell”: As quoted in Coleman, The Man Who Made the Beatles, 323.
2: “SHIT, THAT’S THE BEATLES!”
Inside the venue, it was: See Paul Trynka, ed., MOJO’s The Beatles: Ten Years That Shook the World (USA & Great Britain: DK Publishing, 2004), 72.
Still, the “fans loved it”: As quoted in Pritchard and Lysaght, An Oral History, 126.
the Beatles’ press officer, Tony Barrow: Tony Barrow to author, email, 2/21/10.
“Certain groups are doing exactly”: Here, Lennon was no doubt referring to Freddie and the Dreamers, who had scored a top-five hit with a cover of James Ray’s “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody,” which the Beatles said had been swiped from their set-list. McCartney even maintained that he knew precisely where the “theft” took place: “Freddie Garrity saw us playing that song in the Oasis Club in Manchester and took it,” he said. Though it may sound odd to hear the Beatles grumbling about other bands “copying” songs that they themselves had just gotten from American artists, they had a legitimate complaint. At the time, it was unusual for British groups to perform their own material; most acts put together set-lists that consisted almost entirely of obscure American numbers. Once a group discovered a song they liked, however, and then added it to the repertoire, it was widely understood that in some sense, they “owned” that song.
“And in a final blast, an angry Lennon said”: Ray Coleman, “Boiling Beatles Blast Copy Cats,” Melody Maker (October 1963).
“the Liverpool-London controversy”: As quoted in MOJO’s The Beatles, 67.
“a popular misconception”: Wyman, Rolling with the Stones, 55.
“it was always a very friendly relationship”: Keith Richards, Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2010), 141.
“very good friends of ours”: As quoted in MOJO’s The Beatles, 152.
“I know it sounds daft”: As quoted in MOJO’s The Beatles, 154.
“Our rivalry was always a myth”: As quoted in Wyman, Stone Alone, 511.
“Art students have had this”: “Peter Goodman,” Our Own Story, by the Rolling Stones (New York: Bantam, 1965), 92. Emphasis added. The Stones continued with this line at least as late as February 1964. When Ray Coleman, the Melody Maker journalist, sat them down for an interview, he said, “There was a groan of horror at the mere suggestion” that the Stones’ haircuts were Beatle-ish. “ ‘Look,’ said Keith, ‘These hairstyles have been quite common down in London long before the Beatles and the rest of the country caught on. At art school, and years ago, ours had always been the same.’ ‘Look at Jimmy Saville,’ urged Jagger. ‘He had it like it is long before others started that style. It’s the same with us.’ ‘And Adam Faith,’ added Bill Wyman. ‘He had hair like the Beatles years ago, didn’t he?’ ‘I dunno,’ Richard said to Wyman. ‘I reckon your style came direct from the Three Stooges.’ ”
“Brian Jones had been bending”: As quoted in Strausbaugh, Rock Til You Drop, 41.
But Gomelsky recalls that snow: Gomelsky even claims to remember who the three attendees were. “They all joined the music business,” he said. “One of them, Paul Williams, became a blues singer; another, Little H, [became] a famous roadie who worked for Jimi Hendrix and later died in the crash with Stevie Ray Vaughan; and the third started his own venue somewhere and became an agent. They were cool guys.”
“He was the kind of guy”: As quoted in According to the Rolling Stones, 42.
“Giorgio, there’s six of us, and three of them”: As quoted in Strausbaugh, Rock Til You Drop, 41–42.
“detected a certain Neanderthal”: Alan Clayson, The Rolling Stones: The Origin of the Species (Surrey: Chrome Dreams, 2007), 140.
“two hundred pair of arms”: As quoted in Strausbaugh, Rock Til You Drop, 42.
“No one had seen anything”: As quoted in According to the Rolling Stones, 50.
“formula-ridden commercial popular music”: As quoted in Oldham, Stoned, 203–204.
“My motivation in all this”: Gomelsky’s partnership with the Stones attenuated after Andrew Oldham and Eric Easton swooped in and offered the group a manager’s contract while Gomelsky was out of the country (at his father’s funeral, no less). “Sure, I was broken up about what happened,” Gomelsky later admitted. “Brian’s betrayal was very underhand, he was my friend, supposedly. . . . I guess I didn’t cut it with the vanity-driven mentality prevailing among those guys, particularly Brian and Mick.” Soon after Oldham and Easton signed the Stones, they met with Gomelsky. Supposedly they wanted to talk about compensating him for the work he’d already put into the group, but Gomelsky figured their main goal was to see that the Stones wouldn’t lose their precious Sunday-night gigs at the Crawdaddy. Magnanimously, Gomelsky let them continue their residency, even though he came to hold Oldham and Easton in poor regard. They were “two pretty low-flying characters with no interest in blues, underdog culture or social justice!” he said. “Dollar signs were pointing their way.”
“good, fluent band”: As quoted in Strausbaugh, Rock Til You Drop, 44.
“to bring about the still unperceived wit”: Philip Norman, The Stones, 80–81. Beatlemania is difficult to date. After examining various regional newspapers, Beatles authority Mark Lewisohn concluded that “Beatles-inspired hysteria had definitely begun by the late spring [of 1963], some six months before it was brought to national attention by Fleet Street press officers.” But the Beatles’ press agent, Tony Barrow, prefers a more precise date for Beatlemania: October 13, 1963, when the group debuted on the hugely popular television program, Sunday Night at the Palladium. The word “Beatlemania” did not appear in print, however, until November 2, 1963, when a writer for London’s Daily Mirror used it.
“explosive enthusiasm as just another”: As quoted in Strausbaugh, Rock Til You Drop, 47.
“I suppose I should remember”: As quoted in Strausbaugh, Rock Til You Drop, 47. Plans for the film were finally scotched when United Artists, the American film studio, swooped in and offered to finance three moti
on pictures with the Beatles. According to Clayton, Epstein “unethically” gave the synopsis they’d been working on to the American studio executives, and eventually it morphed into Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night. But it’s hard to know if this really happened. Clayton also says that he misplaced the letter that Epstein sent him a couple of years later “in which he apologized. He said he didn’t know, he was naïve, blah blah.”
“to find out what was happening”: As quoted in The Beatles Anthology, 101.
“Hey you guys, you’ve got to listen”: As quoted in Dalton, The First Twenty Years, 26.
Dylan “represented everything that Lennon”: Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin, 226.
“It was like meeting Engelbert Humperdinck”: As quoted in Spitz, The Beatles, 583.
“[W]e were provincial kids”: As quoted in Barry Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now (New York: Holt, 1998), 100.
who claims to be the “Mr. Jimmy”: He could be correct, but more likely the reference was to Jimmy Miller, the Stones’ producer when they recorded that song. The Chelsea Drugstore mentioned in the song was actually a chic King’s Road shopping center that opened in 1968.
but as musicologist Ian MacDonald points out: Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (London: Fourth Estate, 1997), 53.
Probably the Beatles got the idea: Another song from the era that featured a harmonica, which the Beatles covered, was “I Remember You,” which was a hit for Frank Ifield in 1962.
Phelge recounts the scene this way: Phelge, Nankering with the Stones, 29. Phelge claimed that the BBC show that captured Brian and Keith’s attention was Saturday Club, which featured the Beatles on January 26, 1963. On that show, the Beatles played “Love Me Do,” but they didn’t follow up with a Chuck Berry number later in their set, as Phelge maintains. The Beatles also played “Love Me Do” on Talent Spot on December 4, 1962, and Parade of the Pops on February 20, 1963, but they didn’t play Chuck Berry songs on those occasions either. Thirty-five years after the fact, it would be unusual if Phelge’s memory of the Beatles set list was perfectly accurate. No one, however, has risen to dispute his general account.
Beatles vs. Stones Page 27