Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

Everybody wanted a good suit—a nice, sharp, black suit. We liked the leather and the jeans but we wanted a good suit, even to wear offstage. We allowed Epstein to package us, it wasn’t the other way around.46

  PAUL: He [Brian] quite wisely said, “If I get a huge offer, they won’t take you in leather,” and I didn’t think it was a bad idea because it fitted with my “Gateshead group philosophy,” that you should look similar. And because we got mohair suits it was a bit like the black acts.

  I was attached to the leather as much as anyone, but it was time to change to the mohair suits. It wasn’t just me—we all loved those suits.47

  GEORGE: I didn’t really see it as selling out. I just saw it as playing a game: if it takes suits to get us on the television, and if we need to be on television to be able to promote ourselves, then we will put on suits. We would wear fancy dress, whatever it took to get the gigs. The only thing we didn’t like about the suits was [that it was like] Cliff and the Shadows.48

  There were suits and there were suits. Rory Storm did his thing in vivid turquoise and his Hurricanes flaming red, Gerry and the Pacemakers had their royal blue blazers with a G/P crest and gold buttons, Faron’s Flamingos had royal blue velvet jackets with black corduroy trousers, the Undertakers dressed in funereal suits and top hats, black and heavy. The Beatles, as usual, went the other way. They decided to make their suits cool. These were tailored creations, and they demanded—and had—a voice in their design. The afternoon of Monday, January 29, Brian took them all over the water to Birkenhead, to the establishment of master craftsman Beno Dorn, where they were attended by senior tailor Walter Smith.

  We were the best tailors in the northwest—we had cloths other tailors hadn’t even seen, and we had exclusive rights on several brands. This brought in a very good clientele and Brian Epstein was a regular customer, as was his brother Clive. One week Brian said to me, “I’m going to bring you four lads in next week, musicians. I’m managing them.” He said they were called the Beatles which I thought was a damn stupid name, associating them with the insect. But we had girls working upstairs and they said the Beatles were fab.49

  The Beatles hadn’t done this before, so it was great fun; there was much riffling through racks and raising of voices as they considered cloths and styles. Smith remembers them having “very strong views about the kind of suits they wanted—in fact, they were very lively lads all round, and their swearing was appalling. I had to remind them they were in a tailor’s shop and should moderate their language.”

  They finally settled on a dark-blue mohair, single-breasted, three-button suit with especially narrow lapels. The cloth wasn’t plain but had a little weave, and the general look was Italian—progressively becoming Mod fashion in London but cutting-edge for Liverpool in 1962. As Walter Smith recalls, “They insisted the lapels had to be narrow and they wanted their trousers extremely narrow—we reduced and reduced the legs about three times before we got them the way they wanted.” Older men still wore turn-ups but the Beatles’ suit trousers went straight down to the Cuban-heel Spanish flamenco boots that now became even more integral to their appearance.

  “The price was twenty-eight guineas but we ended up charging twenty-three,” says Smith. “Brian was telling us the Beatles would be big and we’d get more orders when that happened.” The bill then went higher because they also ordered matching white shirts, cuff-links, slim black ties and collar pins. Each Beatle was expected to pay for his own outfit, putting down a deposit to show good faith; the balance would be invoiced to Brian Epstein (and then deducted) when the finished articles were ready for collection—though, because of all the alterations, this would take longer than expected. In the meantime, they continued to perform in their leathers or, for certain shows, leather jackets or sweaters and ordinary trousers. By the time the suits were finished, they were ready for them.

  • • •

  The Saturday before this Monday tailoring appointment, Liverpool Echo’s Disker had again written about the Beatles. Tony Barrow’s day job at Decca gave him the inside scoop on A&R deliberations, and the word he heard was that everything looked positive there for the Beatles. On top of this, the BBC audition was coming up, and the university triple engagement, and so much else. Everything looked rosy. When Brian was invited to lunch at Decca, he boarded the overnight London train with only one expectation, that he would be returning to Liverpool with a contract.

  But he didn’t, because Decca had chosen to turn the Beatles down.

  * * *

  * Until 1975, Scotland was the only place in Britain where New Year’s Day was a national holiday; in England and Wales it was a normal working day.

  † Also gone from previous drafts was the clause that would have enabled Brian to split up the group into individual performers. This was never seen by the Beatles and its origin will probably always be obscure.

  ‡ At now 11.2 Deutsche Marks to the pound, 2,000 was approximately £179; 500 was £45; 425 was £38; 1,000 was £89.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  FEBRUARY 6–MARCH 8, 1962

  “A TENDENCY TO PLAY MUSIC”

  Two months after Brian Epstein first told Decca about the Beatles, he was back in the same executive dining room on the Thames south bank. If his account of events is true—and this cannot be said with certainty—the bad news came with coffee.

  With him, probably, were the head of A&R Dick Rowe and sales manager Steve Beecher-Stevens with one of his assistants, Arthur Kelland. The presence of sales staff, and the executive lunch, reflects Decca’s awareness that Nems was an important company client; they didn’t want Epstein’s group but they valued the business he put their way.

  Two years later, in his autobiography, Brian quoted Rowe saying, “Not to mince words, Mr. Epstein, we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups of guitarists are on their way out.”1 Rowe always denied being at any such lunch and saying those words—understandably, given every subsequent event and his continuing role in signing artists and making records. And perhaps he wasn’t and didn’t, for not only was it a terrible prediction, guitar groups had never been in. The Shadows were the only British band of significance, but vocal-instrumental groups, beat groups, didn’t appeal to record companies and the public at large didn’t even know they existed.

  What seems certain is that any Rowe forecast was based not on British trends but American. The Beatles decision followed hard on the heels of his fact-finding mission to New York, a twelve-day trip to see where the music was heading, and the Billboard Hot 100 current during his visit had no noticeable use of electric guitars at all and nothing even vaguely like the Beatles’ self-contained sound of three vocals, three guitars and drums. It was a chart dominated by solo acts … and one record flying the flag for Britain: George Martin’s production of “My Boomerang Won’t Come Back,” which went on to reach 21.

  Brian was cut to the quick by Decca’s decision. The Beatles were his obsession, and getting them a recording contract was the single most important thing in his life at this moment, and perhaps ever. He flourished at them a copy of Mersey Beat—the one headlined BEATLES TOP POLL!—and told Rowe and his colleagues what they’d be missing. “You must be out of your mind. These boys are going to explode. I am confident that one day they will be bigger than Elvis Presley.”

  Elvis was unassailable. The Decca men knew this better than anyone in Britain—and, according to Brian’s autobiography, they said to him, patronizingly, “The boys [Beatles] won’t go, Mr. Epstein. We know these things. You have a good record business in Liverpool. Stick to that.”2

  Whatever was said, it was strange that Decca’s Beatles rejection came at the precise time the company was blowing trumpets about its A&R department’s “dynamic new policy” and focused pro-British approach. The current (February 3) issue of Disc—perhaps carried and read on the London train by Brian—included an interview with Rowe headlined DECCA GET READY FOR BIG POP DRIVE. Among many interesting comments, Rowe explained how he (and thereby Decca, with a 40
percent market share of the British record business) analyzed the singles market three years into the Sixties:

  I think there are about five separate markets for discs. We talk about teenagers but even that section is divided into three.

  Those between twelve and fourteen are not romantically inclined, and like the thumping rock style best.

  Those between fourteen and eighteen are romantically minded and enjoy the ballad style of people like Presley and Cliff Richard.

  Those between eighteen and twenty-two go for artists like Sinatra, and people older than that have other tastes.

  Rowe also told Disc’s Nigel Hunter how his A&R team was working unhampered by directives from on high or by budget limitations; he said his colleagues were free to follow their ideas with artists and material without reference to him. But he very much interfered in the decision of his A&R junior Mike Smith. The man who’d twice seen the Beatles had also auditioned another vocal-instrumental group, Brian Poole and the Tremilos. Smith says (and his colleagues support him on this) that he wanted to offer Decca contracts to both groups but Rowe said he could have only one and must choose between them. “I took the band that had been better in the studio—it was the only measure I had,” Smith says, though this isn’t quite true because he’d also seen the Beatles live, amid the hot excitement of the Cavern.3 But certain facts spoke for themselves. Poole and his group were so much more tidy than the Beatles—they’d played American air bases and a 1961 Butlin’s summer season and made two hallowed Saturday Club radio broadcasts; they had smart suits, Mayfair management, were paid-up members of the Musicians’ Union, and claimed to own £2,500 worth of musical equipment. When they went into Decca they were allowed to use their own amps.

  There were also geographical factors. Smith planned to put his signed group to regular use, not just in making their own records but contributing to other sessions as backing singers and musicians. This was unworkable with a band two hundred miles away in Liverpool, but Poole and the Tremilos lived around the corner from Smith, in Barking, on the eastern fringe of London. They were friends and saw one another socially—Smith says that after they’d signed Decca’s contract they came round to his mum’s house for Sunday tea … and there was also a comical, extra connection: both Poole and Smith wore heavy black horn-rim glasses (like Buddy Holly and Hank Marvin) and it was their optician who’d brought them together. It made a good press story—and was used as one.

  For a multitude of reasons, then, when Rowe forced Smith to decide between the Beatles and the Tremilos, there was only going to be one winner.4

  Almost certainly, Brian Epstein knew none of this. He was still at lunch, devastated, smarting, but fighting his corner. He pushed so hard that Rowe looked for a possible compromise. He suggested Brian speak to the new star name in Decca A&R, ex–Shadows drummer Tony Meehan, about producing the Beatles by private arrangement. For a fee approaching £100, Meehan would make their record and Decca would put it out. Rowe’s own quoted analysis had the Beatles down, at most, as something for 12- to 14-year-olds, so Meehan, all of 18, had what Rowe called “first-hand experience of what the teenagers want.”5

  Brian was tempted and insulted by turn, but it was some kind of concession. Rowe said Meehan would be in the West Hampstead studio the next day, and offered to make the introductions. It meant Brian staying in London another night, which would greatly irritate his father.

  And so the tale of “Decca turning down the Beatles” gathers yet another layer of complexity.

  Meehan’s recollection of events was straightforward enough—there he was at 18, trying to handle an orchestral session, when Dick Rowe walked into the control room and interrupted.

  He said, “There’s a chap here I’d like you to meet. I know you’re busy but can you fit him in? He’s a very, very interesting man and he’s got another one of these groups.” That’s exactly what he said, “another one of these groups.” Dick seemed more interested in Brian Epstein than the Beatles, for some strange reason.

  I just said, as any professional person would do in the middle of their work, “Look, I’m busy, contact me later and I’ll be available.” That’s all that happened. Dick never told me anything about them, and I never discussed them with Brian.6

  Brian’s own account had it that he and Meehan did discuss the Beatles, and the young producer was brisk: “Mr. Rowe and I are very busy men … phone my secretary and make sure that when you want the session I am available.” A letter written by Brian at the end of this week may indicate that he left Decca this day saying yes, he was prepared to pay close on £100 to finance the Beatles’ first real record.7

  There could be more to it than this—but (almost inevitably) all the accounts conflict. Paul McCartney would remember Meehan being in the studio with them on New Year’s Day, though they didn’t meet him, and he says the subsequent bargaining confirmed for him some previously half-heard tales of sordid show-business life in London.8

  George would always bitterly resent the way the Beatles were treated by Decca. While he spoke often and with pleasure about how cocky he, John and Paul were, no matter their youth and inexperience, he held a grudge against Meehan for being arrogant and young. (Despite all he’d achieved in the Shadows, Meehan was five days younger than George, born in March 1943.) “Tony Meehan was really cocky,” George would say. “He was the star and he decided he could choose who would be on the label or not … and he was this kid!” George’s bitterness about Meehan, unshakable even in the face of enlightening evidence, would one day be manifested when he had the chance to tell Meehan, and at some length, just what he thought of him.9

  John more or less agreed with Paul. Thirteen years after the event, he spoke in some detail, and with certainty, that it was Meehan who made the thirty-five-minute tape that has gone down as the Beatles’ Decca test: “Tony Meehan was a producer and we paid £15 or something to make the tape. We made it in a Decca studio but it was an independent production.”10

  In the end, by definition, Decca didn’t turn down the Beatles. Brian Epstein rejected Decca. Back in his office on February 10 (What are you doing here, Brian? It’s Saturday. You’re not supposed to be doing anything) he dictated a letter to Dick Rowe, copied to Beecher-Stevens and Kelland, in which he expressed thanks for Rowe’s “kind offer of co-operation in assisting me to put the Beatles on records,” but then stated, “Whilst I appreciate the offer of Mr. Meehan’s services I have now decided not to accept.” He concluded with a bluff designed to make Decca regret everything: “The principal reason for this change of mind is that since I saw you last the Group have received an offer of a recording Contract from another Company.” Had they heck.

  The bottom line seems to have been that Brian couldn’t accept the Beatles’ records being made by someone who didn’t appreciate them and was doing it only for the money. In a perfect world they would come under the wing of a man who, like him, could see their potential and was interested in adding his talents to theirs. He also didn’t agree with the idea of being forced into paying for the chance to be commercially creative. Other managers might have been prepared to accept Decca’s crumbs, but Brian didn’t, because it wasn’t right.

  Brian walked away from the Decca experience with the bitter taste of rejection … but, preciously, a spool of tape comprising some or all of the fifteen recorded songs. Such a goodwill gesture wasn’t normal practice but, says Mike Smith, “who ever knew what Dick Rowe got up to?” Life carried on and Decca management had no cause yet to dwell on events. But it wasn’t long before they realized with horror that not only had they missed out on the Beatles in Britain, their US subsidiary London Records had lost the Beatles for America, Decca’s other companies had lost them around the world, and their in-house publishing company Burlington Music had probably missed out on Lennon-McCartney’s songs.

  Stupidity had ruled, as it did at most record companies. If Brian Epstein was such an important company customer to warrant Decca twice seeing his group (and this w
as always suggested as the reason the Beatles were considered in the first place), what purpose was being served by rejecting them? And what anyway was the block that stopped Decca giving them something for nothing? Almost no one was given an advance or signing-on fee, and Brian would have accepted the offered contract, the industry-standard one-penny royalty on 85 percent of records sold, payable in arrears. It also can’t have been because of costs, since Decca’s recording, pressing and distribution were all self-owned, the charges internal and not even computed. Naturally, Decca couldn’t sign everyone (not even at the outset of their heralded backing-British campaign), but if they rejected the Beatles because their records might not sell, here was a manager whose shop would order enough copies to give them an instant profit.

  Logic also cannot explain why Decca rejected a group who’d won a newspaper popularity poll, had a fan club and were the biggest band in Liverpool and Hamburg, playing 350 bookings a year, sometimes to as many as three thousand people a night, but then signed and issued records by several semi-professional, non-performing nonentities during 1962, one of whom they promoted as a singing decorator. And … Decca spent more money treating Brian Epstein to lunch to tell him they weren’t signing the Beatles than it would have cost to sign them. As Tony Meehan summed up, speaking from long experience in the business, “It was just a complete mess, as things generally are—a dreadful corporate blunder.”11

  John, Paul and George were shocked, stunned, by Decca’s rejection. They’d had no real setback in eighteen months, since they first went to Hamburg, and, such was their self-belief, they weren’t expecting one. This was a low point, the lowest they’d known—and how ironic that “toppermost of the poppermost,” the cynical call-and-response chant that rallied them at such moments, was a Dick Rowe catchphrase and they didn’t realize it.