Wild Tales

by Graham Nash

  The most unforgettable Beatles-Hollies double gig, of course, had to be at the Cavern, in Liverpool. It was in late 1962 and they owned that city. Meanwhile, the Cavern was like no place on earth. It was three tunnels linked by archways that made one room, wall-to-wall kids—hundreds of them—hot and sweaty, filled with dense cigarette smoke. No ventilation to speak of. Condensation streamed down the walls from the 100 percent humidity; circles of water pooled on the floor. The club was a cellar: literally underground. There was only one way in and one way out, via an endless flight of stone stairs that were always wet with sweat or urine. A real death trap. It was intense, a great rock ’n’ roll scene. That was the first time I ever saw Ringo, who didn’t even have a Beatle haircut at the time.

  Ringo didn’t change the sound of the band much, but he definitely changed the groove. Simpler and more understated than Pete Best’s style. Ringo plays a heartbeat, which is a sound I love. It’s one of the secrets of great drumming, because, in life, everything starts with the heartbeat. Your mother’s heartbeat is the very first thing you hear when you are conceived, and that sets the rhythm for the rest of your life. There’s no way around it. The heartbeat is the most important part of music if you want to connect on a personal level. And it’s very subtle: Ringo’s right foot on that kick drum. He’s an incredible drummer, one of the most underrated. And the Beatles were very lucky to get him.

  In general, that band was flat-out amazing, and everybody knew it. They played a molten, scruffy brand of rock ’n’ roll. And they had attitude in spades. They’d swear and smoke onstage, tell off the audience, all of which just added to their mystique.

  The Hollies didn’t have that kind of power. Oh, we had our share of loyal fans, we could put on a damn good show, pulled enough birds, but we hadn’t hit our sweet spot, that point where you take the stage by storm and everything just falls your way. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe we hadn’t played enough gigs; perhaps we needed different material. Who knows? For one thing, there was still too much uncertainty within the band. We were playing more than a couple of nights a week and had gotten a residency at a place called the Twisted Wheel. A great little club, funky as hell, where you’re on a stage the size of a skateboard and about as stable, no real PA system to speak of, jammed every night, the kind of room every rock ’n’ roll band needs to cut its teeth. The money was respectable. Hard to believe, but I was making more with the Hollies than at my day job and could support myself pretty well. Most of us thought it was time to go for broke, to turn professional and just play music full-time. Unfortunately, Vic Steele didn’t see it that way. In the north of England, there was a union hierarchy: You apprenticed at a job and worked your way up, the payoff being a lifetime gig to support your family. And Vic wasn’t willing to give that up, which was too bad because he was a pretty good player.

  That meant we’d need a new lead guitarist, someone willing to stick with us to the next level. We’d been hearing good things about the Dolphins, a group from Colne, a dozen miles from Manchester. Their lead guitar player was a guy named Tony Hicks who was supposed to be fabulous, much like Pete Bocking. So we sent word, inviting him to come play with us.

  A few days later, during a jam-packed show of ours at the Twisted Wheel, we heard there was a weird fucker lurking around outside, acting suspicious. This was our first encounter with Tony Hicks. He had come up on a bus from Colne and was too shy to come inside to see us. Instead he listened to our set through an outside air vent. From what he could hear, he knew the Hollies had their shit together and was intrigued about becoming a member of the band.

  In retrospect, Tony was an ambitious lad. He also knew he could play rings around most guys in Manchester. The Dolphins were a band on the upswing, they had a rising reputation, which is why we went after Tony in the first place. As it happened, later, after Eric Haydock and Don Rathbone left the Hollies, we got Bernie Calvert and Bobby Elliott from the Dolphins as their replacements, so the Hollies were actually the Dolphins, with Allan and me as frontmen. But stealing Tony away was a real coup. In addition to being an incredible guitar player, he had a great set of ears. He could smell a hit a mile away. Also, he was an impeccable arranger, and his leads produced identifiable melodies before you even got to the first verse of a song. Just listen to the intros to “Look Through Any Window,” “Stop! Stop! Stop!,” and “Bus Stop,” and you’ll know right away how inventive this guy was. Plus he could sing, which meant that Allan and I could expand the harmonies to three-part, with Tony going underneath us for support.

  Tony was a north of England boy through and through. Not particularly great looking; his nose was too big, teeth typically at odd angles. But his eyes were set on bigger and better stages. A couple of years later, we were playing just outside of London following a monthlong break that led into a new tour. Tony showed up and his nose was in a bandage, two beautiful shiners blackening both eyes. Of course, we all wanted to know what had happened to him. “Oh, man, I got into this ugly fight,” he explained. “Some guy insulted my girlfriend. We exchanged a couple punches and he broke my nose.” And we believed him. That was Tony to a tee. Like I said, he was an ambitious lad.

  But he was also cautious, and before he agreed to join the Hollies there were certain assurances he needed, the most important being money in his pocket. In order to turn professional with us, he had to make an amount each week that at least equaled what he made as an engineer at the firm his father worked for. Hell, we were already pulling down more than that much. We made ten or twenty pounds night after night; my share alone was more than my father was earning, which allowed me to quit my day job. So we knew we could guarantee Tony a respectable income. But he also wanted to make sure we were heading in the right direction.

  That issue would resolve itself soon enough.

  WITH TONY HICKS on board, the Hollies started putting it all together. Basically, we were just a three-piece band: drums, bass, and Tony’s guitar, with a little rhythm from me, but that was about it. Allan didn’t play anything. Overall, we developed a solid, identifiable sound, crisp and cool, with vocals right out of the Everly Brothers playbook. Allan and I were tighter than ever. Our voices just wrapped around each other like a warm embrace. We were tighter than tight. Didn’t even have to talk about it: We just sang and it came to the table perfectly cooked. I always knew where Allan was going and was right there with him. That doesn’t happen often in life, when you wind up on the same unique wavelength as someone else. But I was lucky. I bonded twice: first to Allan and later to Crosby. What are the odds?

  The Hollies hung out together most days, working on material, perfecting our sound. Adrian Barrett was around in those days. He was the son of the owner of Barrett’s, the main music store in Manchester, where we bought records and a lot of our gear. Adrian was a very kind, stand-up guy. He was in charge of the store and gave us generous discounts, and occasionally he’d loan us a guitar to try out. We were always looking for places to rehearse, and he came to our rescue at a key time, getting us into a spare room above the Wimpy Bar next to Barrett’s on Oxford Street, where we could bash around to our heart’s content. Before that, we rehearsed in a run-down Victorian house that belonged to an old woman who charged us a quid a week, so I guess we were happy to be saving the bread.

  This was a pretty amazing time in my life. Gigs were rolling in and we were great for business, packing houses and getting kids off righteously. I was working with a great band, playing music full-time, and generally grooving on an excellent set of circumstances. Don’t forget, I’d come from the Salford council estate and had only recently shed a Salvation Army wardrobe. You can’t imagine the feeling of shaking that legacy. I have to hand it to my parents. They were in my corner every step of the way. Never gave me shit about leaving school or playing rock ’n’ roll or forgoing a day job. They always seemed to know that I’d be okay in the universe. So many kids I knew—really talented kids—never got the opportunity to live out their dreams because of paren
ts who insisted they stay the course. They lived and died in really shitty circumstances, working boring jobs, earning just enough to get by. “Yes sir, no sir,” all their lives. My parents were so supportive. My dad was proud because I wasn’t down the mine. They were really happy for me, and I was grateful for the chances they gave me. I knew how lucky I was. I used to take my weekly pay, which was in cash in those days, and give it to my family, no questions asked. I had everything I needed—and more.

  Talk about things going my way—one day I walked into the Two J’s and fell in love for the first time in my life. There, in a dark corner of the coffee bar, I noticed a petite raven-haired girl with eyes that mesmerized me from the very first moment. Her name was Angie Holmes, and she was a beauty on so many levels. Did I mention those eyes? Well, you get the idea. But beyond the obvious was a lovely spirit. She was full of life, funny and articulate. We started dating, and it got heavy pretty fast. We wanted to be together all the time, and I don’t quite recall how this came about, but I ended up living with her and her family in Didsbury, just outside of Manchester. Give her parents credit: They were broad-minded people. They let us be together without laying a lot of crap on us.

  In another respect, it allowed me to move out of my parents’ house, which was a very big deal for an eighteen-year-old guy. Not that things weren’t good at home. I loved my parents, never had a quarrel in that regard. But moving out was a rite of passage that I’d been looking forward to since quitting my day job. Living with Angie and her parents wasn’t like being on my own, but it was putting one foot in that direction. Plus I got to live with my girlfriend, which was a lovely change of pace.

  It seemed like no time before Angie and I got engaged at the Parrs Wood Hotel in Didsbury. That’s what you did after leaving school and getting a job. It was the next big step toward the expected north of England life. Allan had already taken it with his girlfriend, Jeni, and I kind of liked the idea of a steady relationship. But I was starting to live the life of a rock ’n’ roll musician and wound up being gone a great deal of the time. You know how it is. You come in wicked late—or not at all. “Where you been?” “Who were you with?” All reasonable questions, but better left unanswered. And, in time, Angie and I drifted apart. Sadly, the last time I visited Manchester a few years ago, I learned she had died from a brain tumor, and her husband told me he’d buried a great bottle of fine wine with her. That was Angie in a nutshell—a sip of fine wine.

  Music and the Hollies started to consume me. There were so many great bands emerging and as many new places to play, so the scene in the north was incredibly vibrant. You’d play a coffee bar or club on a double bill one night, then meet a whole new group of musicians in another club the next. One of the most intriguing gigs was the lunchtime show at the Cavern in Liverpool. Bands were used to playing there at night, a grueling four- or five-hour stretch usually shared with a handful of local groups on the bill. We did a lot of those evening shows. But sometime around 1961 they instituted a little rock ’n’ roll show from noon to one for the girls who worked in nearby offices. Instead of going to a fish-and-chips joint for lunch, they came to the Cavern with a bag lunch and paid a shilling for an hour of music before going back to work. It was always packed, a vigorous scene. And the girls locked right into us. They used to hang around and chat us up, wanting to form Hollies fan clubs.

  It was great doing those shows, especially in the heart of Liverpool. The Beatles had just gotten a recording contract—the first northern group to break through the north-south divide—and we all hoped their luck would rub off on us. It was every band’s dream to make a record with a major label, to hit the big time just like the Beatles. So playing at the Cavern, on their turf, we thought, brought us closer to that goal. At this time, we had a pretty good reputation going for us. The Hollies were fairly well known in the north. It hadn’t filtered down to London, because we couldn’t get past the social line: Everybody south of Birmingham was posher than we were. We were peasants to them. Probably still—that’s the way it goes. All we had to do was to open our mouths; we had funny accents, we were almost like aliens in the south. But when the Beatles opened that door, we all wanted to run screaming through it.

  One day, in February 1963, we finished a particularly energetic lunchtime show at the Cavern. The girls had left, the lights came up, and people were cleaning the place, picking up popcorn packages and cheese wrappers, wiping up piss. We were hauling our meager gear into the tiny side dressing room when a short, older man with glasses pushed his way into the cubicle.

  “I’m Ron Richards,” he said, thrusting out a hand. “I work at EMI and I liked your show. I especially liked the guy who was playing without any guitar strings.”

  Would the guilty party please step forward? Okay, that would be me. The night before, we had played at Colston Hall in Bristol, and during the show I’d broken my last string and couldn’t afford new ones. So I did the lunchtime show at the Cavern with my Harmony guitar—and no strings. What did it matter? Tony, Eric, and Don made up the Hollies’ dynamic rhythm section. I strummed along, except I didn’t plug in, so it didn’t make any difference whether I had strings on or not. Ron didn’t care. In fact, he found it intriguing. He loved our energy, and we’d gone down great. That was all he needed to make the next move.

  “I’d be very interested in recording you,” Ron said. “What do you think?”

  What do we think? Are you kidding! We were thrilled to death. Truth be told, we never saw it coming. Oh, we’d heard an A&R man was in the audience that day, and we’d turned up the heat, but that was about it. Still—a recording opportunity?

  “How does that work?” one of us managed to ask.

  Ron smiled circumspectly. “Well, you’ll have to come down to London to record.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible,” he said. “I’ve got another week in the north, hitting various clubs and scouting new bands. Why don’t you meet me in London in early April and we’ll see what happens.”

  This was an incredible development. The Hollies wanted to make records—it was every band’s fantasy—but we weren’t actively searching for a label contract. Everything just kind of fell into our lap. Don’t get me wrong: We were good, as good as any English band on the upswing. We had what it took to hit the big time. The offer to record, now, simply caught us by surprise.

  You’ll have to come down to London. I could have made that trip in record time, sprinted there if I had to. I was ready, ready for anything, but the band still had some loose ends to tie up. We were involved with a manager of sorts, a guy named Allen Cheatham, whose father owned a shirt factory just outside of Manchester where we used to rehearse. A nice guy, although not necessarily someone sharp enough to negotiate a major recording contract. The Hollies needed to move on and up, and we did, changing very quickly to a manager named Michael Cohen, who owned a store in Stockport called the Toggery. His father coincidentally also owned a clothing factory, bespoke tailors, real stuff, and had given Michael money to open a boutique—teenage clothes, bright leather, rock ’n’ roll wear. And I worked there to earn extra money. “Would you like that in black, sir?” Just like Spinal Tap.

  Otherwise, everyone was on board. Tony Hicks still had a day job, but he agreed to give it up when we promised we’d pay him at least eighteen quid a week, which is what he was getting at work. Don worked for his dad at the mortuary in Wilmslow and was happy to escape that grind. And Eric had some kind of job, but not one that would keep him from going to London to record. Allan and I were all ready to go—we’d been there since we were six years old and sang the Lord’s Prayer in assembly. We always knew this was where we were headed, so in our minds London was a fait accompli.

  So we all drove down to London in Don Rathbone’s Commer van, which had the mortuary name on the side panels. It was an incredibly upbeat trip; everyone’s spirits were higher than high. And we stayed in some fleabag joint in Shepherd’s Bush, a working-class neighborhood jus
t outside the city, in one big room with seven beds in it, two sets of bunk beds and three singles. Decidedly cheap, since we were picking up the tab ourselves. We kept reminding ourselves, This isn’t a record deal, it’s only an audition. But somehow we knew this was our ticket to the top.

  We made an audition tape the next day, not at EMI, but at a studio called Delane Lea at 129 Kingsway. Nothing very sophisticated. The tape was two-track, so basically we played live, no overdubs, which was okay because we knew what we were doing. We knew how to play and we had the energy, so when we did “(Ain’t That) Just Like Me” and “Whole World Over,” it went down fantastic. Ron ran a smooth ship, we were in and out of there in no time, and he had help from a London guy named Tommy Sanderson. Tommy was a piano player and bandleader who also happened to be a manager. Once you hit London, they immediately got rid of your north of England manager—“What the fuck do they know? You need a manager”—and hooked you up with someone who knew the ropes. So Tommy came on board as our manager, and he and Ron had a business relationship with Dick James, who published John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s songs. Should the audition prove successful, we were wrapped up for everything: recording, management, and publishing. A neat little package.

  We got the word right away that EMI wanted to sign us. The deal was for a recording contract on Parlophone, the same label as the Beatles. The mechanism for hits was already in place, so it was like a cookie-cutter process, you just stamp ’em right out. “Let’s put these boys in the studio and use the same energy and distribution that sold the Beatles records.” Hey, I had no problem with that. It was exactly what we wanted, a shot with a proven strategy.