Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - the Definitive Life

by Tim Riley

  And Epstein doubtless admired Martin’s gentlemanly bearing and BBC English. He was the kind of gentleman Epstein saw himself as: intelligent, well-spoken, courteous, officious, and yet open-minded, willing to learn, a professional in the best sense; somebody who was not just out to make a buck, but devoted to his product, who had earned a certain standing by taking care with what he put his name on. Epstein’s homework probably told him that Martin had a serious reputation in an industry where there was almost no such thing: to the EMI brass he was eccentric, but if Martin “stooped” to comedy, he had pretty much invented that market; and among sound enthusiasts it was clear he knew what he was doing. Surely Epstein would have made some calls and figured this out; at the very least he would have recognized Martin’s stable from stocking records by the Vipers, Peter Sellers, and Matt Monro. Epstein also noted Martin’s connections with the BBC.

  Lennon’s relationship with Martin would be entirely professional, or as professional as trusting someone to transcribe your personal abstractions onto tape can be. As studious and disciplined a technician as Martin was, he was more an arranger and facilitator than a collaborator—to Martin’s ear, after a time Lennon didn’t need any help writing, just translating his songs into recordings. And so a creative triangle formed outside the band: between Lennon and Epstein, where the sexual currents ran hot and forbidden; and Lennon and Martin, a meeting of prodigy and sympathetic mentor.

  Between Epstein and Martin, a completely civil business relationship was born—Martin’s squabbles would be with EMI, not Epstein. And it seems unlikely that Martin knew the nature of Epstein’s lopsided Beatle contracts and NEMS foibles: although he gladly took on other of Epstein’s Mersey artists (within eighteen months he recorded Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer, and Cilla Black), his terms with the Beatles were on a completely different business track. Epstein had a preexisting arrangement with the Beatles; Martin saw no need for comment. That Epstein delivered Lennon to Martin must have earned him major stripes in Lennon’s mind.

  Martin’s initial offer to Epstein was a huge boon for Epstein, Lennon, and the others, but posed little risk to Parlophone. As contracts go, it had all its era’s boilerplate clauses, putting all the risk on the band and leaving EMI plenty of wiggle room if their music didn’t chart. On May 9, Epstein dashed off two telegrams, the first to the band at the Star-Club:

  CONGRATULATIONS BOYS. EMI REQUEST RECORDING SESSION. PLEASE REHEARSE NEW MATERIAL.

  and the second to Bill Harry at Mersey Beat:

  HAVE SECURED CONTRACT FOR BEATLES TO RECORD FOR EMI ON PARLAPHONE [SIC] LABEL 1ST RECORDING DATE SET FOR JUNE 6TH

  —BRIAN EPSTEIN3

  It was the telegram the band had been dreaming about, and it arrived just weeks after Stuart’s death.

  When he returned to Liverpool, Epstein had fires to put out. In another of the serendipitous ways in which he was perfectly suited to handle this band, the shameful underworld of homosexuality made his boys’ indiscretions seem tame. Alistair Taylor reported in his memoirs that a young girl named Jennifer, no more than seventeen, came into the NEMS offices one day with both her parents. “Our Jennifer is five months pregnant,” the mother said emphatically, “and the father is one of your Beatles—John.”

  It wasn’t right, she insisted; their girl was “taken advantage of.” She would miss her exams and the family was already strapped for money. Now they had a child to plan for. Epstein’s “resolution” was a £200 payoff and a signed agreement to stay quiet. Over the years several sources close to the Beatles have testified to many such complaints—more than just a handful—few of which ever made the papers or seemed to cause anybody overt stabs of conscience.4 In Epstein’s mind it became part of the cost of running the show: his “boys” belonged to their fans, nobody else. In those days, boys would simply be boys, the birth control pill was not yet widespread, and the entertainment business had relaxed customs on such matters. They were simply looked after the way quiz shows coached their contestants or politicians wheeled out their wives in wool coats: the show was upheld at all costs, a delicate fantasy that required constant maintenance. Backstage might be depravity, but the public persona was zealously guarded. After all, it was what people wanted to believe in that was being sold, not anything that resembled reality. Few acts have been as knowing about this as the Beatles, and few agents were as well suited to pitching such a fantasy as Epstein.

  Shopping a band for less than two years is now a relative honeymoon. But what looks clean and swift in retrospect seemed unending for Epstein, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Best. And while the Hamburg gig replenished the coffers and gave them perspective on how far they’d come, the cost was beyond measure: for Lennon, Sutcliffe’s death put a pall on everything. The cost of “holding it together” would be high. His character hardened, his booze bingeing became epic, his fatalism cemented. For Lennon, success became something like the opposite of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “capacity for wonder”—it was tinged with the embittered personal resolutions he made to himself in the darkest of nights, to take his revenge, to climb on top of all these deaths and conquer everything and anybody that might hold him back.

  That first week in June 1962, the international news wires were jumping. At the end of May, astronaut Scott Carpenter had orbited the earth three times. Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Israel on May 31. An Air France charter flight, the Château de Sully, crashed when it overran its runway at Orly Airport in Paris; only two flight attendants survived amid 130 fatalities, most of them cultural and civic leaders from Atlanta, Georgia. President John F. Kennedy prepared to deliver the commencement address at West Point, and the Students for a Democratic Society would soon meet in Michigan to write the Port Huron Statement.

  The morning of June 6 saw Neil Aspinall drive the Beatles in his van down to London, where they met with George Martin’s assistant Ron Richards, his engineer Norman Smith, and “button pusher” (tape operator) Chris Neal around 5 P.M. in preparation for a two-hour session in Studio 2 starting at seven. They were tired from their Star-Club dates, which ended on June 2, and had spent their two days off running down songs in afternoon Cavern rehearsals. Six months had passed since their Decca audition, and the debate about material was piqued. Lennon argued that Epstein had made them sound “soft” for Decca, and he was determined to play a tougher hand this time around. After all, he argued, Decca had passed—that proved Epstein had blundered their set list, right? (This argument followed them into the studio and their career before evolving into a larger, ongoing debate about the nature of the band’s legacy.)

  “I remember Martin taking a quick look at them and leaving for tea,” remembered technical assistant Ken Townsend.5 (Others report Martin was simply out to dinner with his secretary, Judy Lockhart-Smith.) Ron Richards filled in as producer, as he did for many of Martin’s pop artists. Norman Smith, however, says he summoned Martin back to the control room when the band started “Love Me Do.” He stayed for the rest of the session.

  For the hayseeds from Liverpool, problems emerged almost immediately. For starters, the Beatles’ equipment gave off a ghastly buzz, especially McCartney’s bass amp. The technicians didn’t think much of Lennon and Harrison’s guitar getups, but that bass amp was simply hopeless. While the band had tea, Townsend and Smith improvised an amp and speaker from the basement to get rid of the droning.

  They taped four songs, beginning with “Besame Mucho,” with which Jet Harris was just then enjoying a hit. (According to standard EMI policy at the time, their first session tape was wiped for reuse, and only a private reel of “Besame Mucho,” discovered in 1980, has survived.)6 Harris, a former member of Cliff Richard’s Shadows, was gunning for success by covering a marginal Coasters hit from 1960 (when it peaked in the UK at number seventy). The Coasters, of course, were songwriting powerhouse Leiber and Stoller’s New York outfit, whom the Beatles adored (they also did “Searchin’,” “Youngblood,” and “Three Cool Cats”). The Coasters had sped up the p
ace of Jimmy Dorsey’s hit from 1944 with a touch of Nat King Cole’s version.

  The Beatles, however, had a hard time taking this stuff seriously: they spanked the Coasters’ version up to a sweaty gallop. Not only were they covering a current hit, proving to Martin they could master a top-ten sound, they drilled straight into the song’s insipidness, puncturing its bathos for self-mockery. Theirs was a knowing, self-conscious arrangement that said, “We can do this stuff . . . but only by exposing its complete fraudulence!” The tempo alone snubbed convention, and it worked chiefly as comic fizz. It had the same sardonic ring as Lennon singing “Ain’t She Sweet” as a “rock” song—a hilarious surface upended by its dismissive subtext.

  The other three numbers were all original, meaning Lennon and McCartney won the argument with Epstein about material. (Or did they agree on a song list with Epstein, and then veer from it out of cheek?) For this new producer, they were intent on proving themselves not just as a band but as writers, which meant they not only had confidence in their chops but belief in their muse. “Love Me Do” sprouted a soaring harmonica from Lennon, an early signature. It gave Smith a start, and this is where George Martin entered the booth (either summoned by Smith or back from dinner). Although sketchy, it caught enough of what Lennon had in mind when he wrote it. Then came “P.S. I Love You,” another original, a sticky McCartney valentine, and “Ask Me Why,” with a querulous Lennon lead. All three of these songs made giant strides beyond “Love of the Loved” and “Like Dreamers Do,” the originals they had played five months previously for Decca. Both “P.S. I Love You” and “Ask Me Why” boasted a new songwriting confidence, the latter in particular, which seesawed between playful “woo-woo-woo”s and tense silences. The distance between their Decca audition (January) and this first Parlophone session (June) could be measured by how far they had traveled as songwriters.

  Martin stepped out from the control room to talk with the band before inviting them in to hear their performances. He gave them rookie coaching about their microphones and other technical matters (then as now, certain recording mics were “bidirectional,” or two-sided, in that they responded better to a sidelong angle than to a direct frontal attack). The mood was suspicious as he gave his instructions, and the haggard Beatles seemed to listen without much response. They felt patronized. Only when Martin asked if they had any comments was there a mood change. “Look, I’ve laid into you for quite a time, you haven’t responded,” Smith recalled Martin saying. “Is there anything you don’t like?” “They all looked at each other for a long while, shuffling their feet,” Smith remembered, “then George Harrison said, ‘Yeah, I don’t like your tie.’ ”7

  At some point during this session, or on the telephone with Epstein shortly thereafter, Martin aired his doubts about drummer Pete Best. McCartney remembers it opening up an ensemble rift that had been interrupted by the death of Sutcliffe: “If he wasn’t up to the mark (slightly in our eyes, and definitely in the producer’s eyes) then there was no choice. But it was still very difficult. One of the most difficult things we ever had to do.”8

  No further sessions were booked yet, but the contract got passed around for signatures. “What have I got to lose?” Martin remembers thinking after the session. He signed the contract and predated it June 4. The agreement called for four sides, or two double-sided 45-rpm singles, at a penny per single (not side). This included three one-year options with an increase of a quarter of a penny at the end of the first year and another halfpenny after the second (half that amount for overseas sales). If that weren’t exploitative enough, a twelve-track album would count as only six tracks. With nothing up front, it was a risk-free arrangement for Martin; and Epstein, counting himself grateful after so much disappointment, didn’t push back for better terms. If it fell within the ballpark of going industry contracts, it was still corporate theft.9

  The Beatles returned to Liverpool for a week straight at the Cavern, where their “Welcome Home” gig on June 9 broke attendance records: nine hundred kids did the sardine routine in the sweltering basement to greet the band after two months away. Meanwhile, Martin had some thinking to do: which of these new songs would make the strongest debut? There were no uptempo numbers, and you can’t break a pop act with a ballad. Here was a dilemma for Lennon: he ached to feature the band as a hard-rock act but had written only softer numbers for the original material they were determined to bank. (“One After 909” had been shelved due to weak lyrics.) The Beatles were clearly a beat group, steeped in R&B, but this early decision about how to position them vexed even Martin. Something had to change. Epstein’s idea was obvious: suit them up and give teenage girls some matinee idols. Martin’s thought process was more complicated: should he lead with McCartney, who had both the golden voice and the baby face, or Lennon, who had the “big personality”? “In the end it became obvious,” he allowed. With “My Bonnie,” Epstein had urged Martin to listen beyond Tony Sheridan’s vocal to the Beatles in the background; now Martin realized he was dealing with a totality, not just a typical singer with backup group. His genius as a producer at this point boasted simplicity and taste: why choose between Lennon and McCartney when he could have both? This might have emerged eventually, but Martin’s decision here shows keen sensitivity to what his ears were telling him: the Beatles had two front men.

  That first EMI session took place in the midst of hectic travel as word of mouth spread and the band’s BBC appearances gained popularity. Recording with a professional London producer, signing a major-label contract, put more than a gust in their sails. They began to taste success through a heavy daily grind, building up a national profile by slogging from town to town, wearing down the tires on Aspinall’s van: 175 miles down to Swindon and Stroud; 28 miles across to Northwich in Cheshire; 42 miles down to Rhyl; 92 miles across the Pennines to Doncaster; 164 miles south to Lydney, in Gloucestershire; and 64 miles up to Morecambe, in the north of Lancashire. The June–July schedule alone was packed with sixty-two live dates, launched with the Parlophone recording session and their second appearance on the BBC.

  Two days after the band got back to Liverpool, fans hired a coach to accompany them to Manchester, where they played “Ask Me Why,” “Besame Mucho,” and “A Picture of You” for the Teenager’s Turn—Here We Go! show, broadcast on June 15. In the crowd scene that erupted in the streets outside the Playhouse Theatre, Pete Best got lost and the coach returned to Liverpool without him. It was portentous on any number of levels: an overwhelming spectacle of screams and affection that would snowball around the world over the next two years had the early and accidental side effect of leaving Best in the dust. In Liverpool, the Beatles had created a scene by digging in at the Cavern and working their fingers sore. Now, suddenly, they were far bigger in Manchester than simply a neighboring town’s favorites. Beatlemania starts here.

  That summer of 1962 swept past in a blur of swift changes and half-baked decisions on a grand scale. Aunt Mimi had met Cynthia Powell, of course, but chose to remain oblivious to the extent of her relationship with John. That changed when John used some of his gigging cash to buy his girl a black fur coat she’d been eyeing at C&A Modes department store. When they brought it home with a cooked chicken for dinner at Mendips to celebrate, Mimi threw a fit about it—the same competitiveness that flared up whenever another woman captured John’s affection. Cynthia recalled:

  She screamed at John that he’d spent his money on a “gangster’s moll” (even with Mimi yelling at us it was funny) and hurled first the chicken, which she grabbed from me, then a hand mirror at John. “Do you think you can butter me up with a chicken when you’ve spent all your money on this?” she screamed. “Get out.” The color drained from John’s face. “What the fuck’s the matter with you? Are you totally crazy?” he shouted. I was rooted to the spot.10

  John apologized to Cynthia, saying, “All she cares about is fucking money and cats!” He rode Cyn home on the bus. This was not the first time Mimi had attacked him, Powell la
ter wrote, but it was the “first time she’d done it in front of someone else,” and the incident left Lennon “ashamed as well as angry.” There’s a small bomb of a revelation: “It wasn’t the first time Mimi had attacked him violently.”11 John had confided in his future wife some alarming secrets about his auntie, secrets that would not emerge until long after her death: her stern will was matched by Victorian corporeal discipline. Since Mimi’s death, we’ve learned she put down John’s dog to punish him, and threw things at him in front of his fiancée, which would naturally create oceans of anger in the gentlest of souls. No wonder Judy had a tough time with her sister. The young Lennon’s tough façade was not just a social persona created for other toughs; it was a condition of his self-respect within Mimi’s four walls. Mimi’s outburst revealed yet more to Cynthia about John’s layered insecurities.

  In July, Cynthia told John she was pregnant. They had never used birth control, Cynthia wrote later.

  Of course we knew how babies were made and that pregnancy could be prevented, but the level of our ignorance was such that we honestly thought it would never happen to us. Until it did.

  When I realized my period was late I didn’t know who to turn to. Eventually I told [her close friend] Phyl, who agreed to go with me to the doctor. The female GP I saw was frosty and patronizing. She examined me, confirmed my fears, then delivered a stern lecture on morals. I left the surgery [sic] feeling utterly bleak. What on earth had I done? I didn’t want a baby, not yet. I wanted a career, marriage and a life before children. Now I’d messed everything up.12

  Crying alone at her bedsit (studio apartment), after the era’s stereotypical elderly gynecology lecture, Cynthia dreaded her mother’s forthcoming visit from Canada almost as much as she dreaded telling Lennon the news. When she finally did “pluck up all [her] courage,” she had no idea exactly how he would react—and she feared the worst. Lennon surprised her, saying, “There’s only one thing for it, Cyn. We’ll have to get married.” She pressed him to make sure it was what he wanted, and he reassured her, telling her, “I love you. I’m not going to leave you now.”13 Here is a side of Lennon’s provincial good manners and rectitude that underlay his rock ’n’ roll bluster. He could no more walk away from a pregnant girlfriend than he could confront the auntie to whom he felt so beholden. And echoes of Lennon’s own birth ring in this decision: he would be different; he would show everybody how a father should act; he wouldn’t pull an Alf and disappear.