Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  Just such a look, immaculately blended with boredom, is manifest in one of Roland’s photographs, a single shot that caught Hutch as a temporary Silver Beatle. The subsequent exposures—the first photographs of the group for perhaps eight months and the first of the Beatles, or whatever they were called—prove that Moore did eventually arrive from work, lacking their uniform, looking disheveled, borrowing Hutch’s kit and playing with the four guitarists for the first time. Cyn Powell had also arrived at the Wyvern and sat watching from a discreet distance, keeping fingers, arms and legs tightly crossed for luck. “They were all nervous but they looked so lovely,” she would recall, “all clean and trying their best. It was wonderful.”58

  The auditioning groups did two or three numbers. Roland’s photos show that in one song John put down his guitar and took the microphone in his hand, à la Elvis; Paul sang lead in another; a third appears to have been instrumental. The photos also show, with comical clarity, Stu Sutcliffe fully turning his back on Parnes, Fury and Forster while he played. It was one thing for them to hear the wrong bass notes, it was another for them to follow his fingers wandering where they oughtn’t. Paul claims ownership of the idea that Stu make a deflective feature of his inadequacy by “doing a moody”—by making it look like he’d had enough, that he couldn’t be bothered to face the front; it was like exhibiting the reverse side of a painting, and completed the coolly disdainful image already framed by his beard and dark glasses.59

  Were Long John and the Silver Beatles any good? Probably not, given that they incorporated a beginner bass player and used two drummers, one who didn’t want to play with them and the other who hadn’t played with them before, arrived late and used the first man’s kit. George would remember it as “a bit of a shambles … it felt pretty dismal,”60 and Johnny Gustafson confirms that “They made an awful racket, a raucous row. George’s guitar playing was poor, stumbling—anything with a scale in it and he was finished. They were amateurish, but they could sing. John and Paul’s vocals were pretty good, enough for me to notice them, Paul’s high-pitched screaming and John’s raucous R&B voice.”61

  The key question was what Billy Fury and the men from London thought, and it’s here that the facts become especially murky, regular retelling possibly pulling it further from the truth. Allan Williams’ version is that Fury, with Parnes’ support, ignored all the groups who really could perform and chose Long John and the Silver Beatles to back him. The prized Yarmouth contract was theirs … provided they ditch the guy who couldn’t play bass. Faced with this dilemma, between brummer and summer, John manfully stood by his friend and turned it down, barking, “You take us all or you take none of us.” Lennon was surely nothing if not a loyal friend, but the scenario seems unlikely. John, Paul and George never corroborated it, nor Fury or Parnes, but Williams has always said it’s true and it has been supported by Millie Sutcliffe, who recalled, “He was quite upset, Stuart. He said, ‘Mother, I think I’ve let the boys down.’ ”62

  This particular scenario seems even less likely in view of the fact that Cass and the Cassanovas were chosen by Parnes for the Scotland jobs backing Duffy Power and Johnny Gentle. Were Long John and the Silver Beatles really too good for them, worthy only of the top division, a summer with Billy? No one was, it seems. Parnes had only one further thought about these groups: to consider Derry and the Seniors for a place in Idols on Parade, his act-packed summer show at Blackpool.

  John Lennon soon shrugged off the Long but they stayed the Silver Beatles maybe another few days, long enough for it to become embedded in Allan Williams’ mind as their true name. It would take a while to shift it, and as they never explained the spelling (or, if they did, he forgot), he came to know them as the Silver Beetles. Names were Williams’ weakness: he called Paul John and John George and George Paul, and variations thereof, and they always teased him. “They used to crack jokes about it,” he admits. “John used to say, ‘Allan, I’m Paul!’ ”63 The one he really knew was Stuart, and it was this friendship that gained them all playing access to the Jacaranda cellar; Williams let them use the space for sharpening up their act. It isn’t clear if Tommy Moore was now properly their drummer or whether his late minutes at the audition were likely to be the only time they’d lay eyes on him.

  As Cyn concedes, the magic of the group when they played in the Jac was “so indefinable as to be almost nonexistent at times.”64 Their sound was rough and so was the setting: no stage, just a concrete base, and no PA because the steel band didn’t need one. While Williams was able to find them a microphone, he had no stand; one day, George asked if he could borrow a broomstick; when Williams next ambled downstairs, Cyn was holding it in front of the singer, the microphone tied to its top.

  It was here that Ringo Starr first set eyes on the Silver Beatles. He turned up with Rory and Johnny and paid them little attention, just a quick glance, enough to notice they were scruffy and that they were just three guitarists, two showing the other one how to play bass. The gulf between the groups seemed unbridgeable: Rory & Co. were about to head off for their £100-a-week Butlin’s season, pin-sharp professionals, while the Silver Beatles were, in George Harrison’s words, “amateur and hopeless.” Ringo flaunted a motor, Beatles queued for the bus.

  All the same, Ringo was still prevaricating about Butlin’s, and Johnny Guitar’s diary entry for Saturday, May 14, specifies what seemed to be his final decision: “Ritchie [sic] says he’s not going to Butlin’s now, getting married next June.”

  With all that pressure from his immediate and wider family, and from Gerry, and from his boss and colleagues at H. Hunt & Son, Richy had allowed himself to be swayed. Elsie was plying the argument her own mother had used on her: “If I’d had the chances you’ve had … I didn’t have it as easy as you … you young people, you don’t know you’re born.”65 All Elsie was asking, pleading, was that he finish his apprenticeship, that he carry on at Hunt’s and get the piece of paper that proved he had a trade “to fall back on,” and so break the line of laborers that ran through her family’s history. Echoing the words shouted at John by Aunt Mimi, Elsie told her Richy that drumming was all very well as a hobby but he wouldn’t earn a living from it.66 This and more lay behind his statement to Johnny Guitar on May 14 … but meanwhile he was still thinking.

  This same Saturday, the Silver Beatles made their first appearance in a Liverpool rock venue, a “jive dance” at the former electric cinema that was Lathom Hall in Seaforth, at the north end of the docks. Brian “Beekay” Kelly was the promoter here and the Silver Beatles cadged an audition interval spot Cliff Roberts and the Rockers couldn’t make. The Lathom was a roughhouse, like most of Kelly’s venues, though that was merely the misfortune of operating in this area. Sometimes the fighting began from the stage: Bobby Thompson, guitarist with King-Size Taylor and the Dominoes, would be ashamed to recall how they thought it was clever to pick fights with the audience, starting something off and then jumping from the stage to get stuck in.67 Of course, it helped that Ted “King-Size” Taylor was 6ft 5in and weighed twenty-two stone.

  It was this giant of a man that the Silver Beatles—in his eyes, wimps—asked to borrow Dominoes drummer Dave Lovelady when they arrived at Lathom Hall. Tommy Moore wasn’t showing up, or maybe they hadn’t asked him. Opinions are mixed about how good or bad they were. Despite their inadequate equipment, Thompson thought them exciting and impressive, but Taylor insists they were terrible and that later in the evening, when his group performed the star turn, the Silver Beatles “all sat in a row and took down one line each of all the songs we did—‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy,’ ‘Slow Down,’ ‘Money,’ all of those—and the next time we saw them they were playing all our stuff.”68

  It seems Beekay didn’t like them either, and yet he did agree to book them for the following Saturday, perhaps on the understanding they have a full lineup and get themselves together a bit more. He took their name to be Silver Beats, which was how he advertised them in the Bootle Times of May 20, 1960, an associ
ated blurb hyping their audition as a “sensational appearance.” It was the first time the Beatles’ name (or something close to it) appeared in print … and yet, when that Saturday rolled around, when their first proper booking in Liverpool lay on a plate for them, they were not in Seaforth but the north of Scotland, 367 miles away.

  * * *

  * Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe was born June 23, 1940, at Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavilion in Edinburgh. Both his parents were Scottish and spoke with Scots accents. His father Charles (1905–66) was a Protestant, married with four children, when he and Martha “Millie” Cronin (1907–83) conceived Stuart. She was a staunch Roman Catholic who until becoming pregnant had been studying to become a nun. Charles was an engineer/fitter with literary leanings and talent. Disowned by their families, by 1943 they’d moved to Roby, just east of Liverpool, where Charles became a wartime inspector of aircraft engines. No record of a marriage can be found but they had two further children, Joyce (1942) and Pauline (1944), and they stayed in the area, for the most part residing in council houses in nearby Huyton. Millie became a schoolteacher and Charles a merchant navy engineer who spent long stretches at sea.

  Stuart was a naturally bright child who went to grammar school, passed five O-Levels and began at Liverpool College of Art in 1956, leaving home soon after to share nearby bedsits with Rod Murray. The writer Nik Cohn would describe Stuart’s mother as “a fiercely emotional woman who protected and possessed him with quite obsessive energy. A dramatic lady by any standards, she was always convinced she had a genius on her hands. They hoped he’d become a doctor but at 15 he decided he wanted to paint.” [Observer, September 8, 1968.] While Stuart’s relationship with Millie remained intact he fought to resist her controlling influence and gave the clearest of impressions about this to John Lennon and George Harrison, as John would recall: “He hated her … except she gave him twenty ciggies a day and five bob.” Rod Murray says Stuart adored his father—“He was like a dog with two dicks when his dad came back from sea. He obviously loved him. Mr. Sutcliffe would take us out to the Cracke and we’d all get absolutely bladdered before he went home to his wife. He was a larger than life character, ebullient and fun.”

  Stuart, who had no discernible Liverpool accent, stayed delicate and never grew tall, reaching no more than 5ft 7in. College friend Jon Hague remembers him as “very skinny, weak and sick looking,” while Rod Murray notes “He was often unsteady and wobbly. If someone was going to fall over something, he would.” Stuart’s musical background was limited: apart from singing in the church choir at nine and ten he had a few piano lessons and a Spanish guitar he rarely touched. Though his youngest sister claims he was always a great rock and roll fan, and a girlfriend claims he was Elvis-obsessed, few of his college contemporaries saw it. The primary record collector and fount of musical knowledge there at the time, Tony Carricker, says “Stuart was always the most cerebral and intellectual of all of us: I don’t remember him being into rock or having records. I once loaned him about ten 45s and they came back warped—the ultimate sin.”

  It was as a painter that Stuart excelled. His work was often brilliant. He obtained a first-class pass in the college Intermediate exam in 1958 and exhibited in Bradford and Liverpool in 1959. He was a quiet but determined and utterly committed young man … and, as Tony Carricker adds, “He always understood image.”

  † The English pronunciation, “Shtyew.”

  ‡ Ringo was speaking from experience when he told a US news reporter in 1964, “Say you’re a Protestant and the girl’s a Catholic, as long as you love the girl and she loves you … [then] the families get on to you. You’re quite happy with the girl, and then her family will start picking on her, saying, ‘What are the children going to be?’ or ‘Is he going to change religion for you?’ Then your family’ll say, ‘You’ll never have any luck because you’re marrying a Catholic!’ But if you were just left alone I think there’d be a lot more mixed marriages. They break up because of the other people, they never break up because of the actual pair.” (Interview by Larry Kane, September 2, 1964.)

  § Made on March 5, 1960, the recording was issued for the first time in 2012 as the album Live at the Jive Hive. Though depicted on the front and back covers, Ringo Starr doesn’t seem to be present on the tape. Johnny Guitar wrote in his diary that they used a substitute drummer earlier that week after Ringo went down with flu, and the tape strongly suggests there was more than one such occasion. The playing is so poor on some of these tracks that it simply can’t be Ringo, whose attributes—his unfussy style and rock-steady timekeeping especially—were always well recognized. When he heard the recording in 2012, Ringo confirmed it wasn’t him.

  ‖ John probably had no idea he was partying in the same house where his mother had lived at the time she married Alf Lennon. As for Alf, nothing is known of his movements between 1960 and 1962: they’re further lost years. From 1960, John’s branch of the Lennon family tree was gone from Liverpool: the electoral roll shows new occupants at 57 Copperfield Street for the first time in almost half a century.

  a As Cynthia’s every trip to Liverpool entailed a return train journey from Hoylake, and she was involved in the song’s creation, one might surmise there was a 9:09 train … but the timetable confirms not. The lyric includes the phrase “cold as ice,” which was in “Treat Me Nice,” sung by Elvis in Jailhouse Rock.

  b This letter provides the only reference to the song “Keep Looking That Way,” evidently a Lennon-McCartney Original with words and music. Nothing more is known of it.

  c The reference to their sound being recently “accompanied by a faint on-beat” may be an allusion to Stu, an attempt to make a virtue of erratic timing issues. Paul’s suggestion their sound was even vaguely reminiscent of jazz was merely a device to introduce the connection to Jim Mac’s Band, a relative piece of trumpet-blowing; it also suggests John didn’t see this draft, or that if he did the letter went no further in this form, because jazz was complete anathema to him. Paul being 18 and “reading English Literature at Liverpool University” was fanciful, but he was there in his head. The letter screams versatility but the recipient would have seen they didn’t have a drummer no matter how flowery the writing or how undeniably impressive it was that Paul and John had written fifty tunes. (Thirty would have been nearer the truth, but, still, this was remarkable.) Indeed, if sent, the letter achieved no discernible result.

  d Asked about it twenty-plus years later, Mike Robbins wondered if the Nerk Twins had also played during the pub’s Sunday lunchtime drinking session, but couldn’t be certain.

  e John Askew, a 22-year-old ship’s carpenter from Litherland, had become Larry Parnes’ second Liverpool signing in February 1959. He was good-looking and could sing; Parnes renamed him Johnny Gentle and got him a contract with Philips Records.

  FOURTEEN

  MAY 18–30, 1960

  “WHERE’S THE BLOODY MONEY?”

  The Beatles grabbed their first “professional experience” not on merit but because no one else could fill the bill and they shifted everything to make it happen.

  Cass and the Cassanovas had won the May 10 audition determining who might play Scotland in June with a pair of Larry Parnes boys … but seven days later Parnes was back on the phone hoping Allan Williams could help him out of a hole. Johnny Gentle wasn’t only working north of the border next month, he was up there for a nine-day sweep around some ballrooms from the coming Friday, the 20th, and didn’t have backing musicians. It was short notice, but was there any chance Williams could rush him a group?

  A month previously, Williams had got the Cassanovas a regular Saturday-night booking on New Brighton Pier for ten guineas a time. Their spot the coming Saturday had been formally contracted and advertised and they couldn’t be withdrawn, any more than they could pull out of a Cavern booking midway through the next week: they were scheduled to appear with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes in the jazz club’s first-ever designated Rock Night. (Times really were ch
anging.) Rory and Johnny Guitar confirmed as much when Williams approached them about Scotland. Gerry and the Pacemakers, his third port of call, also couldn’t do it: they all had jobs and wouldn’t be able to get time off. Likewise the guys in Derry and the Seniors.

  So it was—on, now, Wednesday the 18th—that Allan Williams asked Stuart Sutcliffe if “the Silver Beetles” could do a week in Scotland … and be up there by Friday night. There was £75 on the table from Parnes if they could, £15 each for the five of them, but only if there were five of them. Tommy Moore had to be found, pronto, and there were several other obstacles to be hurdled.

  The next twenty-four hours, May 18–19, 1960, was the turning point in their lives.

  It seems John never told Mimi about it. After moving into Gambier Terrace there was even more in his life about which she knew nothing. John didn’t need to hear her reaction to the suggestion he cut college during exams and go “gallivanting” around the Highlands with his guitar, so he didn’t tell her. Though further elements of his course work needed to be done, Cyn could do them in his name. Stuart was approaching his Finals, the last exams in a four-year study at which he had dazzled, so he had a tough decision. Millie was livid that he was even entertaining the idea, no matter that he’d be touring his mother country, which she missed so much. Charles Sutcliffe felt the same, branding his son “a strolling minstrel.”1 But Stuart was also a rocker now. Deciding he could accommodate a week off and still pass the tests, he announced his availability.