“Money” became John Lennon’s song, one he always sang, a scarred boy who craved money and sex and was injecting passion into every performance. It was almost certainly the lyrics of “Money,” released in April, that prompted him to say the line “The best things in life are free” when Johnny Gentle had been looking for help with his song in Inverness.*
All the Beatles, but especially George, were Duane Eddy fans, and his ultra-twangy “Shazam!” lodged in their minds, as did “Road Runner” by Bo Diddley (“I’m a rooooooad-runner honey!”), and they liked “Only the Lonely,” a richly dramatic record by Roy Orbison, a name new to them though he’d been around in the States for some years. “Cut Across Shorty,” a storytelling B-side of the late Eddie Cochran’s “Three Steps to Heaven,” was another big one, and Paul was especially enamored of the Coasters’ new take on the 1940s Spanish song “Besame Mucho,” issued in Britain at the end of April.†
Another hot record was the novelty number “Alley Oop,” by the Hollywood Argyles. It was a guaranteed crowd-pleaser: part-spoken, part-sung and allowing for lots of audience participation, ideally suited to someone who could sing but didn’t have the greatest range, someone who’d never sung on stage before and needed to experience a microphone in front of his face. And so it proved for Ringo Starr at Butlin’s, six nights a week in the Rock and Calypso Ballroom in the summer of 1960. He’d decided to go, and had gone.‡
Iris Caldwell says her brother helped Ringo make the decisive move. Mere days away from leaving for Wales, the Hurricanes needed Ringo even more than he needed them, so Rory generously bought him one or two new pieces for his kit and laid it on thick about all the fun they’d have at Butlin’s. More than that, he went to Admiral Grove and pleaded with Elsie and Harry to let Richy go. For at least a short while afterward, recalls Iris, “they said Rory ruined his life.”4
The ultimate decision, though, was Richy’s alone, and after seesawing since February his mind was made up. He was earning £6 a week at Hunt’s and about £8 extra from playing in Liverpool with the Hurricanes, but at Butlin’s he’d pocket £16 for twenty-five hours’ work a week. Work? Just loads of drumming and the time of his life, combined. He’d said in 1958 “This is the job for me,” and now, two years on, here was his big opportunity, onward and upward to the London Palladium. He told Elsie and Harry the news they dreaded. “I said I wanted to take the chance—and, in the end, they said, ‘OK, it’s your life, if you want to mess it up. We’ve tried our bit.’ ” As they would tell inquiring journalists just over three years later, “We knew it was the one thing that would make him happy.”5
Richy quit his apprenticeship with only a year to go. People at Hunt’s told him he was stupid. He’d started in the factory a sickly lad coming up 16; he was leaving a tough-minded bugger of almost 20. On Friday, May 27, he gave Roy Trafford his T-square, handed in his union card and punched the clock for the last time—and while the Beatles were up in Nairn, playing with Johnny Gentle, Richy was down the boozer with his ex-workmates, sinking farewell ales.
Meanwhile, what of Gerry McGovern? She’d put up with her fiancé’s musical sideline all the time they’d been together, and latterly had been making her position clear: me or the drums. Richy was blunt: she could hang around and wait for him if she wanted, but he was off to Butlin’s and wouldn’t be back for three months.
There were a few things to do in what would be his last week in Liverpool until September. Having just relinquished his engineer’s union card, Richy went straight into the Musicians’ Union. Rory and the Hurricanes had to be members to play at Butlin’s—the weekly subscription was one shilling, whether they liked it or not. They also bought matching gray suits and rock ’n’ roll shoes and played the Cavern’s second weekly Rock Night.
Saturday, June 4, was the big day. Rory and Johnny Guitar managed to get the use of a van, and Elsie and Harry waved their Richy off by the Empress pub. By six in the evening the Hurricanes had navigated their way through North Wales to the Butlin’s camp at Pwllheli, and were unloading. Johnny’s diary records that, to begin with, they didn’t stay in the camp but in digs outside, a bus ride away. Johnny shared a room with bass guitarist Wally, rhythm guitarist Chas with Ringo, and Rory had one to himself … except that wasn’t exactly who they were now: as Rory, Johnny and Ringo all had cowboy names, so Chas O’Brien and Wally Eymond changed theirs too, to Ty Brian and Lu Walters.
Saturday was campers’ changeover day at Butlin’s and the live band didn’t play, but there they were in the Rock and Calypso come Sunday night at eight. Butlin’s official photographer lined them up for the camera, five of them sharp in big quiffs, broad smiles, gray suits, matching top-pocket handkerchiefs and black-and-white winkle-pickers, watched all the while by the young men and women for whom they were about to rock. They jived and swung until 11:15 and then—before everyone went back to the chalets, though not necessarily their own—they joined with Redcoats and campers to sing (to the tune of Ray Noble’s “Goodnight Sweetheart”) Butlin’s nightly close-down anthem. It was going to be a long, cracking and very British summer.
The same day the Hurricanes were heading for Wales, June 4, an ad hoc group of 2i’s rockers calling themselves the Jets were heading for Hamburg. In the last days of May, a squat German with a Klumpfuss had journeyed to England looking for a group to bring custom to his bar. It was Bruno Koschmider from the Kaiserkeller, and though it’s impossible to say for sure, he probably arrived looking for Allan Williams, the little entrepreneur who’d visited his bar earlier in the year, talking the talk but playing him a kaput tape.§ Seemingly, Koschmider didn’t know Williams was from Liverpool, or he’d forgotten, or he decided to go to London first. Whichever it was, he hobbled his way to the 2i’s Coffee Bar at 59 Old Compton Street, the only surefire place to find rock and roll, where the sound of electric guitars sliced the air in aromatic Soho, shooting up from the cellar.
Talking through a local interpreter, Koschmider fell into conversation with one of its denizens, Iain Hines, a pianist, and from then on it all happened fast. It took only hours for Hines to put together a scratch group of talented scruffs happy to go to Hamburg and rock for good money, one being a guitarist called Tony Sheridan, as unreliable and temperamental as he was brilliant.‖ Five guys and their gear took the boat-train over, and on the night of Sunday, June 5, almost on the beat the Hurricanes struck up at Butlin’s, the Jets opened in the Kaiserkeller and ballsy British rock and roll was up and running in the notorious red-light area of Hamburg. Here was a cultural turning point of great proportion.
And again that same June 4, the Beatles were under way on Merseyside at last—they were the resident group for council-run “Dances for Youth,” staged every Saturday at the Grosvenor Ballroom, an attractive red-brick hall in Liscard, Wallasey. It was one of three good contracts—all over the water from Liverpool—that Allan Williams fixed for them while they were in Scotland: there was also a deal with a local dance promoter to present them (and Gerry and the Pacemakers) at the same venue on the coming Whitsun bank holiday, and for six consecutive Thursday nights at a hall in Neston, deeper into rural Wirral.a
There was constant confusion over their name. To Williams they were the Silver Beetles and, because he wrote this into the contracts, the promoters billed them that way. The Whitsun dance was also advertised in the Liverpool Echo—the Beatles’ first mention in their city’s great nightly paper; even though it said “the Silver Beetles,” Paul (or Mike) tore out the tiny classified and kept it always. Given the chance to explain themselves, however, the Beatles made sure it was written properly. A Wirral newspaper reporter spoke to them on their opening night at Neston Institute on Thursday, June 2—the Beatles’ first headlining and advertised performance anywhere—and the resulting article had it right: they were the Beatles with an “A.” As for their individual names, though, the Scotland legacy was (mostly) lingering on: “John Lennon, the leader, plays one of the three rhythm guitars, the other guitarists being Paul Ram
on and Carl Harrison. Stuart Da Stael [sic] plays the bass, and the drummer is Thomas Moore.”6
Tommy had yet to lay down his sticks—he continued to put his factory job on the line in pursuit of a little extra cash. John and Stu returned to the art school from Scotland probably unscathed from taking the time off. Paul was back in a school blazer, a professional musician fibbing his way into Liverpool Institute, delivering the forged letter from his father and reassuring teachers he was feeling much better now thanks, but no, he didn’t know about the written Art test that meant he was sure to fail.
Carl had the most miserable task. Returning hungry and broke from a rotten tour was one thing, being idle about the house quite another. He’d thrown away his Blackler’s apprenticeship and left without a reference, so finding another job was going to be tough. He had no exam passes, nothing to suggest he was fit for anything other than laboring, and instead of contributing to the household he was back to cadging. Beyond all that, he was falling behind with the sixteen-shilling weekly drip for the Futurama. Harry Harrison was a patient and fair-minded father but he’d always been a hard worker. Also, through his role on the transport employees’ social committee, he knew just how tough it was for a man to earn a living from entertaining. How on earth was George going to manage it, playing his guitar?7 Louise continued to give her youngest child every support, but she also worked industriously; never a shirker, she couldn’t approve of George being one. The Harrisons always paid their way honestly.
Get out and get a job, son.
To begin with, George quietly took the heat. He kept his head down and his heels dug in and showed them the shillings earned from Williams’ bookings. All the same, demands that he do something mounted inexorably until, by about the third week of June, George couldn’t stand being got at any longer and got out. He quit, moving out of the family home and into Gambier Terrace.
It was a boldly independent step for a 17-year-old, and obligingly generous of John and Stu to shove aside some debris and make space. Though the studio room was a pigsty, from George’s point of view here was sanity, space to think, to smoke, to play his guitar, to be with John and Stu. No one here would be beating his drum about finding a job or telling him what to do. Louise realized the situation had to be handled with care; in the meantime, George was safe with his gang, three Beatles in one room.b
They were pocketing maybe six stage hours a week now and, on the back of Scotland, starting to smooth out a few of the rough edges. Chris Huston, lead guitarist with Wallasey group Bob Evans and his Five Shillings, went along to the Grosvenor every week and remembers them as “rowdy”—a Liverpool group off their turf, coming to Wallasey. The boundaries of our world were very small, so if you were a Liverpool group playing the Wirral you felt like you needed a passport.
Their stage presentation was totally absent—they just rock and rolled with a fury. Stuart was off to the side and obviously couldn’t keep up with them. He had no image to project yet—in fact, his image was not projecting. He was very slight, with a big Hofner bass. The lasting impression I have of them at the Grosvenor is Stuart standing to one side, sort of on the outside, and the others having a rare old time playing “Red Sails in the Sunset” and Chuck Berry, good old rock and roll.8
The Grosvenor setup was common to most town ballrooms in Britain: girls stood on one side of the hall, boys on the other. Patrons (as managements liked to call them) might arrive in mixed groups but they’d separate at the door, even couples. Girls danced together in ones, twos and groups, often around their handbags, and occasionally went across to fetch their boyfriends to jive with them. The lads stood in groups, sneering, smoking, posing, eyeing up the birds and sizing up the next fight. Musicians had to be tough to play such places—being caught up in battles was always a possibility, merely observing them enough to turn the stomach. Skirmishes could be ignited in an instant. Paul recalls one Grosvenor night when a huge fight broke out and he found himself involved. “I tried to save my Elpico amp, my pride and joy at the time, and one Ted grabbed me and said, ‘Don’t move son or you’re fucking dead.’ ”9
Violence was commonplace in leafy Neston as well as in urban Wallasey. The Beatles saw plenty of it when they played the Institute those six Thursdays from June into July. Supporting them here some weeks were Heswall group Keith Rowlands and the Deesiders, and their guitarist Pete Bolt still remembers the unique impact made on him by John and Paul, and also the unusual reaction they got from girls on the dance floor: “It was the first time I’d heard people singing in harmony. They weren’t just a backing group with a singer out front, it was the two of them together at the microphone—most unusual, and good. I was also impressed with their clean starts and finishes to songs, and how they engaged the audience with a bit of chat, especially some girls who positioned themselves around the stage.”10
The Beatles’ routine on Saturdays was to rendezvous at the Jacaranda and be driven across to Liscard. One time—perhaps the second week, June 11—Tommy Moore failed to show. His kit was there but he wasn’t. Allan Williams was at home when Stuart phoned to say they still hadn’t left, even though they were due on stage imminently. Williams had a Jaguar and was, by unconquerable compulsion, a lethally fast driver; he dashed over to the Jac, collected the four Beatles and they roared off to Tommy’s house in nearby Toxteth. Their hammering on his door was answered from an upstairs window: it was Moore’s woman, shouting, “What do you want?” Williams said, “Where’s Tommy? He’s supposed to be playing,” and the woman gave them all a right Liverpool mouthful: “Yez can piss off—’e’s not playing with yez any more, we’ve ’ad enough, ’e’s at the bottle factory.” Williams and the Beatles sped down to Garston—to “Brummer Striving Street,” factory after strike-ridden factory—and there was Moore, in his overalls, doing the 3–11 shift. They pleaded with him to play but it wasn’t on: he was stuck at work and his old woman had made it clear—ditch the group and stick to the job or I’m off.
Williams shot the Beatles through the Mersey Tunnel and up to Liscard, where he dropped them off and returned home. Setting up was a simple affair: you put the amps down on stage, plugged in and started. Soundchecks didn’t exist. They set up the drums too, and before the opening number John asked if anyone fancied helping them out. He hadn’t reckoned on a great bruising Ted, the leader of the gang, stepping up and having a thrash, nor still his insistent suggestion they use him every week from now on, OK? Williams had to speed back across later in the evening to talk them out of trouble.
Being drummerless was their old, old problem, though their brain-racking on the matter didn’t extend to calling on Pete Best, the quiet lad who, they knew, had a kit and was idle up at his mum’s Casbah. “A series of drums came and went and came,” John wrote of this period a few months later. History doesn’t record all the names and the Beatles never remembered them.
With money from their weekly dates over the water, on June 14 the Beatles bought an amplifier at Hessy’s. It does seem to have been a group purchase, possibly involving a spot of subterfuge. George was believed by Hessy’s to still have a job, so he went down as the main name. Unable to use his mother as guarantor this time, they embroiled Glynne Trower, a mature student at Liverpool College of Art who’d supported the buying of Stu’s bass. More than the entire fee from one of the Wirral dates, £10, was staked as deposit on a Selmer Truvoice (fifteen watts, two inputs and a carrying handle), by far the best amp they’d had, and it was put to good use right away when, around Paul’s 18th birthday, June 18, and probably at his house, the Beatles made further amateur recordings of themselves. As Paul remembers, “Sometimes I’d borrow a tape recorder—a Grundig with a little green eye—[or] John would manage to borrow one, and we’d go around my house and try to record things. I seem to remember recording ‘Hallelujah, I Love Her So,’ because I had the Eddie Cochran record. They were very much home demos, very bad sound quality.”11
It’s the second such tape to survive from 1960, and of far greater v
alue than the first. It runs about forty-seven minutes and has nineteen distinct songs or jams, enabling a clearer insight into the Beatles’ abilities, ideas and humor, illustrating where they were good and where they weren’t. There’s no drummer and also little or no George—either he wasn’t at these sessions (there seems to have been more than one) or was present only briefly. A few songs feature only John and Paul but mostly it’s three guitarists, John and Paul plus Stu.
The performance is unpolished but there’s greater confidence and cohesion than before, the result of their stage time. Stu’s bass playing has improved, and though he’s far from accomplished he’s also beyond a beginner: some fingers find the right notes some of the time. His greatest struggles come in the few untitled and uninspiring jams, even though their twelve-bar structure is suited to less technical musicians. In these, the Beatles sound positively bad.
It’s when they sing that it works. They do several “current” numbers. Paul takes “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” and two good versions of “Wild Cat” (Gene Vincent, 1959); he also does Les Paul and Mary Ford’s “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise,” as sung by the Nerk Twins in the pub at Easter. John sings “Matchbox” (Carl Perkins) and a pair of recently revived oldies, “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin” (recently recorded by Elvis) and “I’ll Always Be in Love with You” (by Liverpool’s Bing Crosby soundalike Michael Holliday), and they riff through a couple of Duane Eddy instrumentals, “Ramrod” and “Movin’ and Groovin.’ ”
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