Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  Stuart’s piece, half a painting hanging in what the catalog grandly called “room V,” befuddled Mimi. It was one of many abstract pieces and she couldn’t make head nor tail of it. “What is it?” she asked, at which point John hustled her back out to the atrium and said, “How can you say a thing like that, Mimi?” Thumping his chest, he impatiently explained to this 53-year-old (who’d been reading art history for decades, and knew), “Art comes from in here.”43

  While Stuart waited to find out whether he was in line for one of the prizes, Paul won one. In the last Liverpool Institute Speech Day of the 1950s, in the Philharmonic Hall on December 15, he had to walk on stage to collect a special “Prize for Art”—a sweet if nerve-racking moment in his final school year, watched by his proud father in the balcony. It came in what must have been a good period for Paul. For the Quarrymen, the weekly residency at the Casbah was like having their own venue, where they got to entertain out front and also enjoy a life behind the scenes. It was in West Derby, not their own patch but a series of bus journeys away, so they were being seen by people who didn’t know them or their history. Pam Thompson was one of the first Casbah regulars to spend time in their company:

  Sometimes we had private parties upstairs after the club had closed. Not everyone was there, just a select few. Paul was the nice one—I think everybody liked Paul. George was the youngest and always seemed so. I had a soft spot for him—he was very sweet and naive. John and Paul were so much older and more streetwise whereas George seemed like the little boy among them. John was very charismatic but I was always a little bit wary of him. He came across as being strong, hard, with a good opinion of himself. He kissed me on the cheek once. George got so drunk one time that he turned green: we made him a cocktail of tomato juice and all sorts of awful things to help him be sick, and he was, on the steps just outside.44

  One of these parties developed into a sleepover because the last bus had gone and there was no way anyone could get home. Quiet was required because Mrs. Best’s 70-year-old bedridden mother was in the room opposite, but on this night everything was so hushed that Mona became suspicious, as Pete’s friend Bill Barlow remembers:

  There were about twenty of us—a few with girls—in the front room, and it was two or three o’clock in the morning. Some of us were lying on the floor, the lights were off and it had gone quiet, people sleeping. Paul was with a young lady and Mrs. Best came in, put the lights on and said, “Paul, what are you doing?” and this head popped up and said, “Nothing Mrs. Best! Nothing Mrs. Best!” I knew the young lady he was with, so I can imagine what was going on.45

  If Paul was having any joy it was more than George, whose success in the sex department was, at most, what Liverpool lads cunningly called “finger pie.” His abiding memory of these late-night parties was of all but breaking his hand trying to get beyond bras and corsets that appeared to be made of reinforced steel. “I’d be snogging with some girl and having a hard-on for eight hours till my groin was aching—and not getting any relief. That was how it always was. Those weren’t the days.”46

  Also in John, Paul and George’s orbit at the Casbah was Neil Aspinall. Paul and George hadn’t seen him for months, not since he’d left the Institute in the summer, but West Derby was his patch—he lived close by. Neil now got to know John Lennon and enjoy the Quarrymen, and he also came into contact with the Best family for the first time, striking up a firm friendship with Pete.

  It was at the Casbah, one evening toward the end of 1959, that John and Paul laid eyes on a sweet-faced blonde dancing a few feet away from them. Both made a beeline for her at the next break; she was Dorothy Rhone, a 16-year-old from Childwall who’d just left Liverpool Institute High School for Girls. “They were so fast on their feet, sparking off each other with jokes and cracks, that it was impossible to keep up,” she recalled. “I liked John’s face—I thought he was rugged-looking; Paul was handsome in a softer way. John was also the dominant one, a very different personality … more compassionate.”47 John called her “Bubbles” because she wasn’t—she was quiet and innocent, though at the same time not afraid to maneuver for what she wanted. When she found John was “going steady” she switched to Paul. Feigning faintness, she said she needed fresh air and asked him to follow her into the garden; the night ended on a kiss and the promise of a date. They went to the pictures, and as Paul saw her safely onto a bus back to Childwall they agreed to see each other again at the Casbah—and then they were boyfriend and girlfriend, beginning the first long-term relationship either had had.

  Another to break into the Casbah scene at this time was Richy Starkey, whose group made their debut appearance there on November 29 when Mrs. Best first opened up her cellar on a Sunday. As usual, Al Caldwell was fiddling about with his band’s name: after a week as Jett Storm and the Hurricanes they became Rory Storm and the Hurricanes for a Jive Hive appearance on November 11, and—finally—this one stuck. “Rory,” said Al, came from the London rock musician Rory Blackwell; he and Johnny Byrne had met him at Butlin’s, Pwllheli, during the recent summer holiday. It could also be that it came from Rory Calhoun, an American screen actor famous for western roles. The Hurricanes had a thing for cowboys: Byrne was now calling himself Johnny Guitar, from the 1954 western movie of that name, and drummer Richy had passed quickly through the nickname Rings to style himself Ringo Starr.d

  Mostly he was Ringo because of his three rings—a variant of his existing nickname—but anyone who followed the cowboy scene knew it well. There was Johnny Ringo, famed for the gunfight at the OK Corral and the film of that name, and especially there was the movie Stagecoach in which John Wayne became a star playing fugitive hero The Ringo Kid.

  The reasoning behind “Starr” is less obvious. Richy knew, as did everyone, the American singer Kay Starr, who had number 1 hits in Britain during the 1950s; but more than that, quite simply, he liked the name as an abbreviation of Starkey, and for its twist on “star.” His definitive statement on the name change is this: “It was going to be Ringo Starkey but that didn’t really work, so I cut the name in half, added an ‘r’ [and] had it put on the bass drum.”48

  Like anyone who adopts a new name, Richy started off confused when people called him by it, and had to accept strangers addressing him as Ringo because they knew nothing else. But though he was Ringo on stage and in the clubs, he would always be Richy to Elsie, Harry and the wider family, to his fiancée, girlfriends, pals, bandmates and workmates.

  He gained not only a new name at this time but also transport. Lugging drums on and off buses was beyond a joke, and with the kit paid off and plenty of Hurricanes bookings to bolster his Hunt’s wages, Richy got his first car. It was a red and white Standard Vanguard, bought for £50 cash from the Cassanovas’ drummer John Hutchinson, known on the scene as Johnny Hutch.49 Its origin was uncertain. Richy would always say that Hutch built the car from spare parts, and boasted of it being “hand-painted” as if this was an attraction and not an amateur alternative to spray-painting. Richy didn’t care: he loved the car and bragged about it too, even though it wouldn’t shift into second gear and had endless tire trouble.50 It went places, it looked great, it had a back seat. While he had “wheels” there were certain things he didn’t have, like motor insurance, road tax or a license to drive, but none of this stopped him. Illegal, yes; unusual, no. Richy knew several who did it.

  December 1959 was John and Cyn’s first Christmas together, and they’d only just made it in one piece. Though regularly unfaithful himself, John was manically insecure about Cyn’s fidelity and one day became so enraged in his belief that she’d considered another man, he slapped her. The exact circumstances have varied with retelling, but it seems John heard Cyn had danced with a man at a party; the next day he followed her into the ladies’ toilet at college, accused her, and lashed out. Cyn was found crying by her best friend Phyllis McKenzie—“Apparently, he’d slapped her face. I thought, ‘He’s a right bastard.’ And that did worry me. He could be very cruel.”
51

  John commented in 1967: “I was just hysterical. That was the trouble. I was jealous of anyone she had anything to do with. I demanded absolute trust from her, just because I wasn’t trustworthy myself. I was neurotic, taking out all my frustrations on her.”52

  Cyn was encouraged by friends to break off the relationship, and did for a short while—until John apologized and swore he’d never strike her again. In 2005 she wrote, “John was true to his word, he was never again physically violent to me.”53

  That first Christmas she received a fantastic eight-page handmade card. The front featured a Lennon ink drawing of them looking into each other’s eyes, profile view: John a self-portrait with Teddy Boy quiff and glasses, check jacket and drainpipe trousers, Cyn with long light locks, hairy coat, black-and-white-check skirt worn above the knee, and high heels. OUR FIRST XMAS! John exclaimed. The backside had a second drawing, rear view this time, their arms around each other, love hearts popping from their heads, above which he wished I HOPE IT WON’T BE THE LAST. The rest of it was simply one long love message, a scribbled outpouring of devotion that could have left Cyn in no doubt: she was loved. As declarations of worship go, I LOVE YOU LIKE GUITARS was unsurpassable.

  Another piece of Lennon writing, probably from this time, is the short story “Henry and Harry,” seemingly based on George Harrison’s dilemma. On Christmas morning, unwrapping his gifts at 25 Upton Green, George was dismayed to find a set of screwdrivers and electricians’ tools from his dad. He felt the implication was clear: Harry expected his youngest boy to make electrics his life’s work. Dad had a plan too: George’s big brother Harry was a motor mechanic, his other brother Peter was a panel beater, and, ultimately, George could join them as the electrician in a family-owned motor garage; he himself would be the manager, leaving his job as bus driver after all these years. John was “astoundagasted” on behalf of his young pal: to him, all such jobs came into one category, “brummer striving,” a phrase he’d cooked up to represent dead-end industrial work or bogstandard labor of any kind. Asked in a TV interview in 1968 to define it, John replied, “Brummer striving is … brummer striving—all those jobs that people have that they don’t want. And there’s probably about 90 percent brummer strivers watching in at the moment.”54

  “Henry and Harry” encapsulated George’s predicament: the school-leaving son at their “quaint little slum” expected to follow into the father’s business, the dad batting away his son’s protests. Get out! John was urging his young friend, who little needed the encouragement. Tell him to fuck off! George could, but wouldn’t, at least not in those words.55 And it wasn’t as if his first experiences as an electrician promised much anyway: given the job of maintaining the lights in Blackler’s Christmas grotto, he’d fused them, casting a Scouse Santa and a queue of excited kiddies into darkness. It was something for George and Arthur Kelly to laugh about during Blackler’s Christmas dance at the Grafton Ballroom. The finest photograph of these best buddies was taken here, their hair defying all known laws of gravity, two 16-year-old working men wearing smart suits and big natural smiles for the camera before they moved in to check out the birds.

  Paul had a job that Christmas too, sorting mail as a temporary worker for the GPO (General Post Office), and it was also his first Christmas with Dorothy Rhone.e Dot, as he called her, was faithfully present at the Casbah every week to watch the Quarrymen entertain the club members. Four months into their Saturday-night residency they were now an established fixture here, but not the only attraction. Some Sunday sessions still featured Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and a new group made its debut on December 20. The Blackjacksf were a four-piece: Bill Barlow and Chas Newby (formerly of the Barmen) on guitar along with Ken Brown (still with the Quarrymen) and Pete Best on drums. They mostly did Carl Perkins numbers, and Chas was the singer. Pete was a beginner. He’d shown little musical inclination before now, but an interest in percussion was sparked when someone left a snare drum and a pair of brushes in the house and he’d enjoyed tinkering with them. Mo rushed him down to Rushworth & Dreaper’s and bought him a smart-looking Premier kit in blue mother-of-pearl.

  According to the Daily Mirror headline, Thursday, December 31, 1959, was THE GAYEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR. The lemonade fizzed and flowed at its grand Teenage Ball at the Waldorf Hotel in London, graced by celebrities Lonnie Donegan, Shirley Bassey and another Larry Parnes discovery, Vince Eager. Two hundred miles north, Ringo Starr had returned to Maxwell Fyfe Hall—the Conservative Club at Back Broadway, near Norris Green—as Rory Storm and the Hurricanes twanged out the old and sang in the new at Sam Leach and Dick Matthews’ latest promotional venture, Chez Jazrok. The decade that began with peace secured by an austere, law-abiding, backward-looking Britain, ended with an earsplitting dose of American rock and roll.

  The Quarrymen had no booking this evening and one can only surmise where they were: Paul probably getting bevvied at his family’s annual Aintree knees-up; George maybe at home with his family; John perhaps somewhere in town with Cyn, shouting to make themselves heard in pubs even more uproarious than usual because New Year’s Eve licenses allowed boozing beyond midnight.

  And when they all woke up the following morning, it was the Sixties.

  * * *

  * Parlophone released many US masters, primarily through its arrangement with the Cincinnati-based King Records. George Martin was rarely involved in deciding these issues—it was usually handled by another EMI department.

  † Two hours of music “designed for teenage appeal,” Saturday Club was presented by Brian Matthew and broadcast by the BBC Light Programme every week from October 4, 1958, a successor to the half-hour Saturday Skiffle Club launched on June 1, 1957. David Jacobs also hosted BBC-tv’s newest pop show, Juke Box Jury, copied under license from its American originator, the LA DJ Peter Potter. It went out every week from June 1, 1959, a panel of four guests voting a selection of new 45s a “Hit” or a “Miss.”

  ‡ Just as the spelling was never definitively settled 1956–8, Quarry Men or Quarrymen, the same holds true for this revival. It survives written in only three places: twice in local newspaper articles (though one informed the other) and once in Mona Best’s hand in a Casbah club diary. These have it as Quarrymen, so that is the spelling used here; however it could still have been Quarry Men. As before, no one cared.

  § His brother Mike was still there, now in the Removes.

  ‖ The rest of the Hurricanes’ lineup was fluid at this time but the two main guys were bass guitarist and occasional singer Walter Eymond, known as Wally, and rhythm guitarist Charles O’Brien, known as Chas. There’s a tendency in Liverpool to stress the final syllable of words, so “Hurricanes” is usually pronounced to fully include “canes” at the end.

  a Twenty years later, George remembered his weekly pay as thirty bob (£1 10s), but one of his friends there, on the same money, is certain it was £3 10s. This was before he had to surrender a slice to the taxman.

  b George liked to repeat the popular line about buying a guitar on the drip from Frank Hessy—to pay a certain sum down and the rest “when Frank catches me.”

  c George kept his Club 40 but didn’t use it. Paul didn’t buy it from him and doesn’t seem to have had access to it. The guitar was given away as a prize in 1966.

  d It’s not possible to say precisely when Richy Starkey became Ringo Starr. His new name first appeared in print in a souvenir brochure for an eight-day jazz festival at the Cavern that began on January 10, 1960. The event was arranged before Christmas 1959 and it’s probable the information was received and souvenir brochure laid out before the holidays.

  e She says Paul disclosed that he wrote “Love of the Loved” for her. It was written in this period (as previously noted) but he hasn’t publicly mentioned if he had a particular person in mind.

  f Like Rory Storm, this name came from Rory Blackwell and the Blackjacks.

  YEAR 3, 1960

  COMPETENCE, CONFIDENCE & CONTINUITY

  T
WELVE

  THE SWISH OF THE CURTAIN

  The new year and decade meant expansion at Nems. Liverpool was a city of strong shopping affiliations, and this record/electrical store was liked and trusted by its customers—a reputation earned, not handed out. Nems had operated solely in the north end until 1957, when—with the energy shot of two new directors, Brian Epstein and his brother Clive, 23 and 21—the company became suddenly more progressive, opening up on Great Charlotte Street in the heart of town. Now it was taking prime space in a new development on Whitechapel, a four-floor store with offices above, everything to be managed hands-on by the brothers. It was another big step up, a flagship for a family business that stretched back sixty-four years, back to the arrival of a Russian émigré fleeing ethnic genocide.

  Born 1877 in Konstantinovo in Lithuania, Isaac Epstein sailed into Liverpool at 19 speaking only Yiddish and praying life would be better here for his children, if he should be so lucky.* Two million Jews were fleeing an extermination policy known as the Pogroms, forcing a mass exodus across Europe and to America. Isaac stopped in Liverpool and started working. By 1900, when he married Dinah Hyman (parents from Poland), he’d opened up his own furniture shop on Walton Road. It served the impoverished suburbs of Walton, Anfield, Everton and Kirkdale, and took off rapidly. Customers’ money here was hard-earned, and Epstein’s (so called) had a reputation for honest value and modernity.1

  The shop survived ever-present anti-Semitism and the onset of the Depression, and in 1929 Isaac bought his neighboring business when its owners decided to sell up. This was Nems (North End Music Stores), established in 1886 to sell pianos, organs and sheet music.† Jim McCartney played a Nems piano. The two companies, Epstein’s and Nems, were now in the joint hands of Isaac and his sons Lazarus (known as Leslie) and Harry. Born in 1904, Harry was bright and courteous, educated at one of the city’s great grammar schools, Liverpool Collegiate. His destiny, along with that of his elder brother, was decided young—the company name became I. Epstein & Sons and Harry would run the businesses for the next thirty-five years, until 1964. His appetite for work and know-how were matched by his urbanity and ethics: underpinning the Epsteins’ success was a family principle handed down generation to generation—“The fair deal is the right deal.”2