Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  The session wasn’t all bad. No group, first time in a studio, cold and with unfamiliar gear, was going to make fifteen scorching tracks. There was about enough to make a couple of singles. Despite weak moments, “Love of the Loved” and “Hello Little Girl” turned out fairly well, the latter benefiting from a combined lead vocal by John and Paul. The Beatles’ harmony unit, always held to be their greatest strength in this period, was surprisingly underused here at Decca, although Paul sings an attractive line toward the end of “Take Good Care of My Baby.” They all spark on “Three Cool Cats.” George’s self-created guitar solo isn’t great but this is still the real sound of Beatles ’61—John slips into Peter Sellers mode to sing his two lines “Hey man, save one chick for me!,” the first done in an Indian accent, the second in cod-German. It’s hokey, but the Beatles could make hokey attractive.

  The fifteen tracks were recorded straight, in mono, mostly in one take, though they also had run-throughs of each number to get themselves together and in tune, and to enable Mike Savage to rebalance the instrument and vocal levels. The Beatles were allowed to hear the tape, but not in the control room. “If we played anything back to them we would have done it on the studio floor,” Savage says. The image is of them standing around the basement studio, smoking hard and experiencing the dubious pleasure of hearing themselves not playing well. “We didn’t sound natural” was John’s recollection two years later—words that pinpoint the essence of his disappointment.11

  “At the end of the session I said to them, ‘I’ll let you know,’ ” recalls Mike Smith. He knew the decision about the Beatles’ contract was going to be delayed at least three weeks. He was supposedly empowered to make such judgments himself, but, this early in the revamped A&R setup, he’d been told to consult Dick Rowe, and the head of department was busy. Rowe was deeply involved in a Billy Fury film, Play It Cool!, and then he was heading straight to America to study the music scene. So many times had trends and ideas broken in Britain secondhand from the States, Rowe was flying to New York to get an early clue to the new direction. Also going was Tony Meehan, the trophy figurehead of Decca A&R’s “dynamic new policy”; Smith was the only one staying home, so he’d be busy.

  The following day, amid still-atrocious weather, the Beatles battled the roads back to Liverpool. The Cavern was calling them again—their 1962 bookings diary kicked off with lunchtime and evening sessions on January 3. They got home to tell their friends and families that Decca had been nerve-racking … but the arrival of a letter confirming a prized recording contract was surely just a matter of time.

  • • •

  The fourth day of 1962 delivered Vol. 1 No. 13 of Mersey Beat and its big front-page headline BEATLES TOP POLL! Here they were, in the photo that would publicize them in the opening weeks of the year: no-nonsense, unsmiling Beatles in rough-looking black leather outfits with three guitars and drums; three young men with their hair down in a modish continental European style, one with it up. There was, oddly, no editorial about the winning group, just a caption under the photo in which (no doubt to John’s delight) Bill Harry reverted to calling Paul McArtrey.

  A day later, Friday, January 5, “My Bonnie” was released in Britain. The Beatles were a recording group, fact, their sound pressed into seven inches of black plastic obtainable in shops nationwide.12 It picked up coverage in Record Retailer and the British column of Cash Box, sent to every corner of the United States, and this itself was mentioned in the Liverpool Echo by Disker, whose positive review was accompanied by the publicity picture—the Beatles’ debut sighting in their city’s beloved newspaper. They also made the national weekly music press for the first time. Record-review vocabulary was standard and formulaic: in the NME, Keith Fordyce said “My Bonnie” was “worth a listen for the above-average ideas,” both Disc and Record Retailer gave it three stars (“Good” and “Possible” respectively), Melody Maker praised both sides and, having assumed Sheridan and the Beatles were a permanent team, concluded “We should be hearing a lot more of them”; The World’s Fair, so often best for reviews, called “My Bonnie” “a real gone rocker which will please the youngsters,” and reckoned it was “likely to receive steady plays [on jukeboxes].”13

  It didn’t. “My Bonnie” failed to crack even the bottom of the paper’s Top 100 jukebox chart. In fact, it disappeared from sight virtually on issue, the fate of most weekly record releases. Neither Deutsche Grammophon nor the song’s British publisher, Progressive Music, managed to get it a single plug on Radio Luxembourg, the BBC Light Programme or TV programs Juke Box Jury and Thank Your Lucky Stars. Launched by ABC-TV in April 1961, Lucky Stars (as everyone called it) was a new-style pop show for British television, with performers in the studio miming to their latest chart hit or new release. It was an obvious idea but hadn’t been done like this before. The sets were imaginatively designed but the show’s scheduling wasn’t: it was placed opposite the BBC’s Juke Box Jury, so the week’s only two TV pop shows were on at the same time. John Lennon, a restless viewer at the best of times, spent the early part of every Saturday evening—before going out to be a Beatle—in “the morning room” at Mendips, jumping up and down from his chair to the set, switching the channels back and forth.

  He was probably hoping to catch “My Bonnie” on one show or the other, unaware it had been overlooked; but he didn’t need David Jacobs’ pinged bell to know “My Bonnie” was a hit for someone—to the great surprise of all, Mimi thought it a wonderful record. For the first time, she said she understood how John might be able to earn a living from his guitar. This is remembered by one of the university student lodgers, Frank Duckworth: “Mimi was very proud of the fact that they’d made a record of My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean. She brought it into our room and played it to us. ‘They’ve done a record!’ ”14

  “My Bonnie” did achieve some success in Germany, breaking into a few charts, but it didn’t sell much in Britain.15 Brian did all he could to boost it, ordering a hefty quantity to sell at both the city-center Nems … and ended up burdened by unsold stock because “My Bonnie” hardly did a thing. The fans who really wanted it had already bought the German import, and few others bothered because the Beatles were only the backing group, it wasn’t their Beatles. Two facts emerge from Nems’ Top Twenty charts compiled in mid- and late January 1962, as published in Mersey Beat: “My Bonnie” was selling so poorly that it didn’t make even the lowest rung, and Brian held so scrupulously to an avowed principle about “honest charts” that he resisted giving “My Bonnie” a false position even though it might have been useful to them and no one could have challenged it.

  On Wednesday, January 24, the Beatles signed their management contract with Brian Epstein, to take effect from February 1. It was the third draft but the only one they saw, and it embodied the concerns of a businessman so determined to be honest and open that he’d deliberately weakened his own position. “The fair deal is the right deal” was the Epstein ethic passed generation to generation, and Brian was taking it to masochistic extremes.

  The legal procedure called for each contracted party to put his signature across a postage stamp. Five sixpenny ones were affixed to the final page, across which flowed four signatures: J. W. Lennon, George Harrison, James Paul McCartney and R. P. Best. J. A. Taylor—Brian’s personal assistant Alistair Taylor—witnessed the contract in five places, but one of his signatures is next to an unmarked stamp.16 Brian’s best explanation for not signing would appear in his autobiography: “It was because even though I knew I would keep the contract in every clause, I had not 100 percent faith in myself to help the Beatles adequately. In other words, I wanted to free the Beatles of their obligations if I felt they would be better off.”17

  It’s not certain if the Beatles realized Brian didn’t sign. Of equal importance, and unnoticed by everyone, the contract wasn’t legal anyway. Against the advice of his lawyers, Brian had ordered the removal of James McCartney, Harold Harrison and John Best as parties to the agreement. Paul
, George and Pete were under 21, minors in the eyes of the law; without their parents’ involvement the contract wasn’t worth even one of those sixpenny stamps. They were present in the first two drafts but not in the third, Brian sabotaging a perfectly good document to give the Beatles an easy way out anytime they wanted one.†

  As far as John, Paul, George and Pete were concerned, however, they were appointing Brian as their manager for five years, until February 1967, via a contract that could be terminated by either side after one year by giving three months’ notice. Paul then raised a late objection to Brian’s commission rate. The typed contract stated 10 percent, rising to 20 if their individual gross annual earnings exceeded £1,500, and Paul would later recall how his objection was based on the old tactic of holding out for less no matter what was being asked. “He asked for 20 percent and I argued with him. I said, ‘Twenty, man? I thought managers only took 10 percent.’ He said, ‘No, it’s 20 these days.’ I said, ‘OK, maybe I’m not very modern.’ ”18

  It was a point on which Brian was prepared to concede. As signed, the contract has a penned amendment: 20 was crossed out and 15 written instead as the upper limit.

  At 10 rising to 20 percent this would already have been a generous contract; at 10 rising to 15 it was a steal for the Beatles, and they’d no idea how much. It was standard for artists to pay two sets of commission, having not only a management contract but, separately, an agency agreement; the managers took their cut for managing, agents took a further 10 percent for fixing all the paid work. Brian was shooting to do both jobs, providing the Beatles with this ambitious, all-inclusive service for the single 10–15 percent commission.

  The risk was one-way. John, Paul and George had a record of being hard with managers, but Brian—who’d never committed himself to anything for five years—went into the contract demonstrating his belief, investing his money and risking his family’s good name … as well as their wrath for pursuing this distraction from his full-time Nems responsibilities. If the Beatles turned out to be badly behaved, aggressive, unprofessional, not honoring the engagements he secured for them, turning up late or not at all, his reputation was at stake as well as his cash. But Brian believed in them, and knew they wouldn’t let him down. More to the point, if any trouble came their way, he’d shield them from it.

  Throughout the second half of 1961 the Beatles had held out, instinctively, for someone to represent them as they would have represented themselves, only with the right amount of flair and finesse necessary to open doors. They’d found their man. In Brian Epstein they had a manager who wouldn’t buckle at the first misfortune, a manager who wouldn’t kowtow in a business meeting, but who had the belief, arrogance, perseverance and style to push the Beatles’ cause, holding firm, but politely, for what they wanted and felt they deserved. They had a Liverpool man with Mayfair manners to give them the best of reputations in the business, and they had someone who would manage their lives and provide direction yet consult them over all the important decisions and not smother them, so they remained free to be themselves. They’d found a partner—or, as master of brevity John Lennon put it, “one of us.”19

  Just 10 percent of their income—and surely soon 15—got the Beatles all this. At the same time, the Beatles gave Brian his first outlet for genuine creative expression since 1957, when he’d returned unfulfilled from RADA and buried himself in the business of directing and managing shops. As George would reflect, “We needed somebody to elevate us out of that cellar, and he needed somebody to get him out of the hole that he was in. It was mutually beneficial.”20

  In January 1962, Brian Epstein opened up the Beatles’ business on a number of fronts. There were many days when Beryl Adams typed as many letters for them as she did for her real employer, Nems Ltd. Brian instructed her to type BEATLES in uppercase every time they were mentioned, so their name stood proud from the scores of documents that left Liverpool 1 and went all around the nation. Though Brian used Nems Ltd. stationery in his dealings with record companies, most of the early correspondence in the Epstein-Beatles file is on his own personal octavo notepaper, the top of each sheet embossed with his monogrammed initials, B and E stylishly formed into an oval.

  Using this stationery, Brian obtained and submitted an application for the Beatles to have an audition for BBC radio. As a commitment to public service broadcasting, the BBC gave free auditions to every applying actor or entertainer, and everyone but rank amateurs had the right to be seen, at the expense of studio time and producers’ nerves. Applications from Liverpool were sent to Manchester, and—in the case of pop music—landed on the desk of Light Entertainment producer Peter Pilbeam. “Most of the applications we received had abysmal handwriting,” he remembers, “but Brian Epstein’s was different.”21 The typed form brimmed with crisp efficiency, and Brian submitted the document with promotional materials and the publicity photo. The BBC was well organized too—Pilbeam granted the Beatles an audition in Manchester on February 8; pass this and they’d be given a national radio broadcast. It was as easy as that, though the Beatles had never done it for themselves.

  Still, the everyday business of management was the stage. No “pop stars” could live off broadcasting fees and only the very biggest of chart stars could live off record royalties, so minuscule were the percentages. No one even tried. The sole object of making records was to attract a bigger profile and so earn higher fees from concert and ballroom shows—and, if the artists were lucky to be chosen, to appear in summer seasons in seaside resorts. Brian’s pledge to earn the Beatles more money from broader horizons was his greatest challenge.

  Their hectic, frightening, unforgettable nights of playing for the youth of north and east Liverpool were over. It was a 1961 thing only. Anyone there who wanted to see the Beatles now had to hop on a bus and head for the Cavern. This was the one club Brian kept firmly in the Beatles’ schedule—in fact, it became the Beatles’ base in 1962. Though they could be seen at an ever-wider variety of venues, the place to catch them was in the fantastically hot, noisy, smelly, smoky cellar right under the metropolis. Brian formed a mutually respectful, give-and-take working relationship with both Bob Wooler and Ray McFall through which all their and the Beatles’ needs were met. McFall knew times were changing when Brian invited him to lunch at his club, the Rembrandt, merely to show goodwill; no one else had ever done such a thing.22

  From now on, the Beatles rarely saw cash for their night’s work. The period of being paid in door money, collected by Pete then divvied up in the van, was over. They really were professional now—their money was taken by Brian or Neil, mostly as checks, and each Beatle collected cash in a pay-packet from Beryl’s office every Friday. Here again was Brian’s skill as an administrator: every penny was accounted for in typed individual statements that deducted group expenses and his commission from “group fees received” to make a total that was then divided equally by four; any individual expenses were then subtracted to leave each Beatle with a unique Nett total that matched the content of his pay-packet.

  Despite the loss of old opportunities, Brian had the Beatles equaling and then exceeding their previous earnings within about three weeks. There was no more effective way of keeping them content in a period of such change. As George would recall, “We got £25 a week when we were first with Brian Epstein, when we played the clubs. But £25 a week each was quite good. My dad earned £10 a week, so I was earning two-and-a-half times more than my father.”23

  Among the Beatles, George paid the closest interest to Brian’s way of doing business, setting in motion a reputation for being especially attentive about their money. In spite of later protestations of unfair branding—“The press once had me as ‘The Business Beatle’ because I asked Brian Epstein how much we got paid for one gig!”—it was George’s mother who effectively fixed this reputation in print. Louise would recall how “He was always very serious about his music, and the money. He always wanted to know how much they were getting.”24

  A sec
ond sheet of typed paper, and often a third, would be attached by Beryl to the pay statements: Brian’s list of their coming week’s engagements by date and venue, along with any additional commentary or instruction to emphasize why a booking was important and worthy of their best efforts and punctuality. He also set out their playing time. Except at the Cavern, most of the Beatles’ new engagements were fixed by a formal contract in which the duration of their performance was specified. This was business.

  Brian preferred them to play sixty minutes but frequently agreed to two sets of forty-five. He told the Beatles they must have a program, the night’s music decided in advance, the right number of songs for the duration, paced for impact. They didn’t need much telling. It is no coincidence that at least seven set-lists survive from 1962 in a Beatle’s handwriting (mostly Paul’s), whereas in the five years before this there are one and a half. It’s also no surprise that the Beatles continued to play a different set in every lunchtime and evening performance, such was their astounding repertoire.