When They Were Boys

by Larry Kane

  The damp winter weather had arrived in Liverpool. The boys were a mess. Shame. Depression. Hopelessness. By Christmas there were more whispers of ending the experiment. Yes, it is true. The Beatles came this close to disbanding forever in the winter of 1960. And if they had, who could have questioned the decision? By any standard, their conduct in Hamburg was dubious, considering they got involved in contract-jumping, out-of-control drug use, a lack of organization, and Allan Williams’s humorous yet constant issue: visits to the doctor—a payment, you might say, for unprotected adventures in Hamburg. In truth, this was not a band of sophisticated troubadours, but rather five young people, ranging in age from seventeen to twenty, who still had some maturing to do. What could you expect, really?

  That absence of direction, mixed with youthful ignorance of real-life challenges, would open the door for a daring young manager to enter the scene in late 1961. The question in December 1960: Could they hold on? In life, ignorance of the unknown is an absolute killer of dreams. For that moment, in the days after Hamburg, the doors were shut. Shut tight.

  For teenagers there are always consequences, and the earlier episode of immaturity might have cost them. Their lack of maturity had surfaced nine months before when John snubbed London agent Larry Parnes, in the famous conversation when Parnes insisted on dropping either Stu or their part-time drummer, months before Pete Best joined the group. John’s angry attitude toward Londoner Parnes had not exactly endeared the group to the London agents.

  So, over six months later, Johnny’s boys were given the most famous second chance in music history. And they didn’t even know it.

  Christmas Day 1960 was challenging for Brian Kelly, a young Liverpool promoter. He was one group short in his lineup for a dance at the Litherland Town Hall, north of Liverpool. The town hall, today a health center, was huge, with a capacity of 450. Kelly was eager to fill the bill when he got a surprise call from Allan Williams’s associate, Bob Wooler, who offered the Beatles for the slot. Wooler—who saw something early on in the four lads—plays a key role in the Beatles’ rise, and was even victimized by it, as you will learn later. The promoter, Kelly, had no knowledge of the Beatles at the time. He remembered a group called the Silver Beatles, though not fondly, and was hesitant to book them. But Wooler intervened, and along with Kelly, made the deal.

  In an interview with Gillian Gaar of Goldmine magazine in 1996, Wooler explained how it came about. Wooler had met up with the boys again after they returned from Hamburg,

  RATHER IN DISGRACE, BECAUSE THEY WERE BOOTED OUT. I WAS THEN WORKING FOR A NORTH END LIVERPOOL PROMOTER WHO HAD A STRING OF DANCES, AND THEY HAD NO WORK, AND I FIXED THEM UP WITH WHAT TURNS OUT TO BE A MEMORABLE DATE. AND IT’S NOT JUST ME SAYING THAT. IN WHO’S WHO, THE BRITISH EDITION, IN MCCARTNEY’S ENTRY, OF ALL THE BOOKINGS AND APPEARANCES THEY MADE AROUND THE WORLD, LIKE SHEA STADIUM OR THE CAVERN DATES, IT SINGLES OUT AS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT DATE THAT THE BEATLES PERFORMED THE ONE I GOT THEM ON TUESDAY, THE 27TH OF DECEMBER, 1960.

  FOR SIX POUNDS, BY THE WAY, THAT’S ALL THE PROMOTER WOULD PAY THEM. NOT SIX POUNDS PER PERSON, BUT FOR THE WHOLE GROUP. I’D SAID, “LOOK, I’M DOING THE SHOW, I’LL PUT YOU ON JUST FOR HALF-AN-HOUR, AT A VERY GOOD SPOT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. PLEASE DO IT.” AND THEY HAD NO OTHER WORK, SO THEY DID IT. AND THAT’S THE DATE LISTED IN WHO’S WHO AS BEING THE MOST SIGNIFICANT DATE. A TURNING-POINT DATE. A LANDMARK DATE.

  THEY JUST WOWED EVERYBODY. AND IT WAS SO BEWILDERING WHAT THEY WERE DOING. BECAUSE THEY WERE DOING NOTHING SPECIAL, EXCEPT THERE WAS A CERTAIN ENERGY THAT NO OTHER GROUP RADIATED.

  Money was not an issue. Wooler had asked for eight pounds. He got six, but also got something bigger. Kelly, like most local promoters, had heard about the Silver Beatles’ decision to break a deal with Parnes, the London promoter, for a gig the previous May and go off on that raggedy tour with Johnny Gentle in Scotland. There is one thing to know about promoters: they have long memories. But Kelly had an open mind, along with a hard press by Bob Wooler, who proved persuasive. Kelly also needed a band, quickly. It was the first time Wooler took up the cause of indecisive teenagers who showed some talent but, although hard-driving, also showed naïveté when it came to personal relationships. Still, Wooler took up their cause. He liked what he saw and was convinced that the boys’ performance would more than make up for their no-show back in the spring. Wooler was mad, other promoters thought, to entrust his young career to the boys from the Jacaranda, the former cleaners and toilet painters.

  Did he know that it would became the “stuff that screams are made of,” his later description of Beatlemania? It was unknowingly the turning point, that special moment that can only play out unrehearsed, when the senses are unaware of what’s happening around you.

  The show happened December 26, 1960, Boxing Day, a secular holiday that occurs the day after Christmas (or the first or second weekday after Christmas). It was, and remains, a bank holiday, another day of freedom for workers and students.

  Tony Bramwell read an advertisement about the show and decided to go. Bramwell grew up near George Harrison and Paul McCartney. He boarded the number 81 bus, the bus that Harry Harrison drove on most days. Tony had not seen George in some time, and was always wondering what was happening in George’s life. And suddenly there was George, sitting on the number 81 bus, guitar case in hand, looking directly at Tony. (For those who, like John, exalt the numerological power of the number 9, it should be noted that both the 8 and 1 from the number 81 bus, and the numbers of the date, 2 and 7, add up to 9. Numerology enthusiasts aside, the various coincidences of the number 9 in the boys’ lives are amazing.)

  Wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, George explained to Bramwell that he was also headed to Litherland Town Hall. Tony, impressed by the shiny jacket, smiled. But he was a little nervous and his voice was a bit shaky.

  “So you are headed to the dance?” Bramwell asked.

  “We’re playing there tonight,” George said.

  Bramwell was stunned. Shocked. He replied, “You’re the German group?”

  George nodded and said, “Yes, direct from Liverpool!”

  So George, Bramwell thought, was now part of the Beatles, who were in fact advertised for the show as: “The Beatles—Direct from Hamburg.”

  And then Bramwell, who would eventually do business with the boys for five decades, made his very first deal. He arranged to carry George’s guitar into the Litherland Town Hall in return for free admission. It was, in the long run, a bargain. George also found his first “personal assistant.” Bramwell got a free backstage pass and the youngest Beatle would find a lifetime friend.

  “It was my first job, Larry,” Bramwell exclaimed to me with pride fifty-one years later.

  Litherland was a popular dance hall for teenagers. Alcohol was banned, and there was a strict dress code forbidding jeans, which in those days were viewed as working clothes. It turns out no one needed alcohol to get a buzz on that night.

  When George stepped off the number 81 bus at Litherland with his valet, Mr. Bramwell, promoter Brian Kelly did a double take. George and the others had longer hair, tight-fitting jeans, and black leather jackets. At that moment, the veteran promoter had no choice but to go with the flow. The flow was unpredictable, jeans and all.

  With Stu still in Hamburg, the Beatles needed a bass guitar player. But Paul, until then a guitarist, would not play bass guitar that night. A friend, Chas Newby, filled in.

  Their first song, a song that would find its way into their repertoire a year later, was Little Richard’s famously electrifying “Long Tall Sally.” The kids of Litherland were dancing, but after a while, the dancing stopped. There was a surge, followed by a continuing onrush of the fans, toward the riser. In a preview of things to come, some of the girls screamed for the drummer, Pete Best, who was impressing the dancers with his so-called atomic beat—his very loud use of the kick drum. The boys and girls became frenetic. It was, Bramwell would tell me fifty years later, as if “someone had
found a new source of energy, pulled the switch, and turned it on.”

  Even Bramwell couldn’t control the beat of his heart, the adrenaline flowing through his body.

  THEY WERE FUCKING BRILLIANT, LARRY. . . . THEY WERE SO LOUD AND ENERGETIC. THEY WERE ROUGH, CRUDE, AND THEY WEREN’T DOING THE RUN-OF-THE-MILL STUFF. THEY WERE DOING B SIDES, MOST OF WHICH I NEVER HEARD BEFORE BUT STUFF WHICH I REALLY LIKED. THEY WEREN’T DOING THE CLIFF RICHARD AND THE SHADOWS KIND OF STUFF LIKE EVERYONE ELSE WAS DOING. THEY WERE JUST BRILLIANT. A TOTALLY NEW SOUND . . . A NEW THING. IT WAS MAGIC. I HAD NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT. . . . [IT] WAS A NEAR FUCKING RIOT. I MEAN, THESE GUYS WHO WERE MY FRIENDS, SEARCHING FOR SPENT BOMBS AT THE MILITARY AIR BASE NEAR OUR HOMES, WERE THAT BAND FROM HAMBURG. IT WAS THRILLING AND EXCITING AND I COULDN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.

  “What made it so special?” I ask.

  Bramwell smiles broadly.

  “Picture this. Usually a band gets people dancing. But they were loud, a bit raucous, and in perfect, well almost perfect, harmony. They made the kids, including me, all hyped up. They were together, really together, and I’ll never forget Paulie screaming into that microphone on ‘Long Tall Sally.’ It was music perfection. The Beatles were sweating, the kids were sweating; it was like a riot that shattered the senses. . . . I couldn’t sleep that night . . . thinking about it, and I was part of the riot.”

  The “riot,” he explains, forced promoter Kelly to send some bouncers around the back of the stage. Bramwell thought they were placed there to keep the fans out. In truth, Kelly was protecting not the Beatles, but rather himself.

  With great nostalgia, Kelly later told Mersey Beat, “I stationed the bouncers on the floor of their dressing room to stop other promoters who were in the hall from entering.”

  But he missed one.

  A protégé, Dave Forshaw, was at Litherland that night at Kelly’s invitation. Forshaw was just seventeen, but he was already a promoter of dances. The minute the show was over, he raced backstage and signed the Beatles to five Thursday and Saturday concerts at St. John’s Hall in the Bootle. The offer was for seven pounds and ten shillings per concert.

  A half century has passed, but Forshaw describes it as if still in the thrill of the actual moment.

  “I knew I had to get them, Larry. They were so different. Instead of people just dancing, people were in a passionate, eye-popping, mind-blowing trance. The Beatles set the trap. In the first appearance at St. John’s, their boots on, their black jackets shining, their rocking even harder, an extra 192 fans showed up. I remember. My ‘gate,’” he says with backward-glancing humor, “was the biggest I ever had. And since I worked on such a narrow margin, I took home a few extra pounds. In the meantime, I was having a ball. I booked them constantly, but then the Cavern took over. And I had to watch them from afar.”

  The man who put them in the Cavern, deejay and visionary Bob Wooler, colorfully describes the Litherland performance.

  “I have a word for the occasion,” Wooler recalls, “if you’ll pardon me: I was flabbergasted!”

  One of the people who watched them at the pulse-pounding Litherland concert was John’s passion, Cynthia Powell. In her memoirs, she recalls the special moment that was Litherland.

  “The boys did [in Litherland] what they did in Hamburg, throwing themselves around the stage, playing numbers that went on and on. . . . The . . . energy, humor, and wild pounding music packed such a punch . . . it left Liverpool’s teenagers crazy with excitement.”

  There was a boy in the crowd who was fascinated, almost breathless, by the performance. At the time, he was just seventeen, training to be an apprentice for British Railways. His name was William Howard Ashton. Is the name familiar? He lived in Bootle, a blue-collar neighborhood of Liverpool, one that he describes as “tough but respectful.” He had gone to the concert on the number 61 bus. When he got inside Litherland, he became inspired, shocked, and very shook up.

  LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THIS, LARRY. THERE WERE ABOUT 150 PEOPLE. THEY DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT. I WAS ALL HEATED UP. I HAD NEVER SEEN A BAND LIKE THIS. THEY DIDN’T PLAY THE USUAL COVER SONGS. I THOUGHT PEOPLE WERE GOING TO EXPLODE WHEN THEY SAW THE JEANS AND THE BLACK LEATHER. SOME OF THE GIRLS IN THE CROWD STARTED SCREAMING WHEN THEY STARTED SINGING REALLY HARD ROCK AND MOVING AROUND. . . . THERE WERE TWO SONGS I REMEMBER—“MONEY” AND ESPECIALLY PAUL SINGING “LONG TALL SALLY.” I HAD NEVER HEARD A WHITE GUY SINGING ‘LONG TALL SALLY.’ I HAD NEVER HEARD ANYBODY SING IN THAT WAY—RAW AND SCREAMING. I HAD NEVER SEEN ANYTHING CLOSE TO THEM IN PUTTING AN ACT TOGETHER.

  It was a night that would change young Ashton’s life. He walked home, unable to sort out what he had just seen.

  “I thought they would be bigger than Elvis. I had never seen anything so good. It was so memorable.”

  William Howard Ashton would someday look in a phone book and randomly pick a stage name, Kramer, as in “Billy J. Kramer.” The boy in the crowd at Litherland would soon receive a gift from the boys—a song, a musical legacy. But on that night, a chilly December night, he walked home just a dreamer, a kid possessed by the band and the music. Like the boys, he too had a date with fate.

  For the Beatles, still down-and-out, needy, and insecure, there was at least a shred of hope that night. Walking quietly out of Litherland, the roar of the crowds now a distant thunder in their ears, there was a renewed air of optimism. Tony remembers boarding the bus with John, Cynthia, Paul, Pete, and George. Pete remembers that they had a van that was dirtied up by the crowd, forcing them all to take the bus instead. One thing was certain: whatever the mode of transportation, there was a gleam in their eyes.

  “They were so up, it was amazing,” Bramwell recalls. “I didn’t know they were even upset after Hamburg. I asked John if he was happy to be back in Liverpool. In what would be remembered as typical John Lennon fashion, he said, ‘Fucking fabulous.’”

  Bramwell will never forget that ride home. Pete got off first, then John, Cynthia, and Paul.

  “Later, I rode quietly back to Speke with my employer for the night, George Harrison. We stared into space, wondering if all around us was about to change. George smiled that crooked smile of his, and in the middle of a cold winter night, we walked to our homes.”

  The best was yet to come. News accounts would describe the Litherland appearance as an “explosion” of emotion. Dave Forshaw, maybe the youngest promoter in Liverpool history, calls it a moment of change.

  “It was raw, animalistic, even somewhat unreal that five people could make so many others so charged, so delighted, so on fire.”

  The Beatles would play thirty-five more concerts at Litherland, but as they say in Hamburg’s St. Pauli sex district, “You always remember the first.”

  The timing of the “first” was impeccable.

  “The music of that period was dominated by Cliff Richard and the Shadows, the first really successful rock enterprise in Britain,” remembers rock music historian Ron Ellis.

  “Richard was the UK version of Presley; he was magnetic and exciting. But the boys’ style showed a new aggressiveness, a wilder stage presence, more of a reckless abandon. Eventually, their music dominated. But like they did to Lonnie Donegan, they eclipsed Richard, who was one of their standards.”

  Although eclipsed by the Beatles, Richard, born five days later than John Lennon, has had an enduring career. He was the first rock star to be knighted, in 1995, two years before Bramwell’s friend “Paulie” became Sir Paul.

  “Richard was really good, but by the time the boys came back from Hamburg, a crescendo was building for something new,” Ron Ellis remembers. “The old jazz groups were dying out. Hundreds of bands were doing rock all over Merseyside. When they showed up at Litherland, it was simple—they were just better than anyone else around. They were so much more professional. Combine that with John’s acerbic wit coming out more and more, and it was an amazing unfolding of a new sound, a new look. The legend of Litherland spread.”

  But how quickly, and i
s the focus appropriate? I fully accept Litherland as an important moment, mainly for the spirit of the boys. But there is a question: When do legends become legends? Rarely do legends become legends in real time; it usually evolves years later.

  Freda Kelly, who would work with Epstein and the boys for many years, and the woman I call “Freda the Believer,” did not see the boys in their first appearance at Litherland, but she attended later gigs at the town hall.

  “Interestingly, word spread about that first event, but it wasn’t like a tidal wave, just whispers among some of the kids. Was I excited? There is no way to explain just how excited I was.”

  Liverpool Hope University’s respected Beatles and pop scholar Dr. Michael Brocken sees Litherland as a mythological moment—not really seminal, but rather just a step.

  I SUPPOSE ONE MIGHT SAY THAT IT WAS IMPORTANT FOR THOSE WHO ATTENDED, AND ALSO FOR THE GROUPS [THE SEARCHERS, THE DEL RENAS, AND THE DELTONES] WHO HAD TO PLAY ALONGSIDE THE BEATLES. . . . SO, WHILE WE MUST NOT CALL PEOPLE LIARS WE SHOULD ACCEPT THAT THIS WAS VERY SMALL BEER AT THE TIME [AND] HAS BEEN MYTHOLOGIZED, BUT STILL HOLD HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE, OF COURSE. EVEN IF WE ACCEPT THAT A WHISPER WENT OUT AFTER THE GIG . . . ONE WOULD HAVE TO SAY THAT EARLY 1960S LIVERPOOL WAS FULL OF PREGNANT SILENCES ABOUT POPULAR MUSIC AT THE BEST OF TIMES BECAUSE OF ITS PAROCHIAL NATURE.

  Brocken refers to the jazz and skiffle ideals of the city, and the general antipathy toward the ascent of rock.

  Always on target in his historical analysis, Brocken seems to put things in perspective. The Litherland appearance became well known, in the beginning, to a small group of Merseyside people. But it was, to the smallest group, the direct-from-Hamburg Beatles, much more than just a show that created “buzz.”