When They Were Boys

by Larry Kane

  Buddy Tony Bramwell remembers the total exasperation and sense of frustration on the part of the boys, anxiety mixed with excitement. He recalls, when he joined them in their wild finish to 1963, that they were haggard, drunked-out, flush with cigarette smoke, and at the same time sleepless, “yawning with joy, wondering if the ride would continue as it was, getting bigger and bigger.”

  Compared to today’s helter-skelter tours, the boys’ schedule was breathless. The best band in the world was the busiest, and at times, the most tired. But while they were playing, things were stirring, not only across the English Channel in Europe, but to the west, across the ocean.

  Press reports began emerging in America. They were spotty, but pen pals Bill Harry, Tony Barrow, and the ever-smooth Derek Taylor made sure the best pictures of the boys and screaming fans made their way into the newspapers. After all, especially late in the year, Americans themselves were in a state of high anxiety, still in shock after the November 22 murder of President Kennedy. A little diversion from national mourning was well received by the press and the people.

  There was little film available, although the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite aired a short clip of the Beatles and their surrounding fanatics on the December 10, 1963, broadcast, leading Cronkite to claim later that he had the Beatles first. He did, in America at least.

  The man who had so much impact on the Vietnam War, the man who conquered the space race on TV, claimed the Beatles as his own.

  In late 1989, I hosted Cronkite at a community luncheon in Philadelphia.

  The news legend said, “Larry, heard you traveled with the Beatles.”

  I responded, “Well, yes.”

  “You know,” he said, “I had the first film of them.”

  “Really,” I replied.

  What Walter didn’t know was that Tony Barrow and Derek Taylor were unleashing that campaign of specified distribution of Beatles information that may have been one of the most coordinated media campaigns in history, with bits and pieces of film, information, and pictures of hysteria combining to create an imagery of combustible emotion. Crowds in small theaters and ballrooms looked like thousands, when really they were mostly in the hundreds. News reports of a coming “British Invasion” were rampant, with most of the attention paid to the boys’ hair, which at that time in history had an effect of shock on adults in America. The buildup was working. And then Christmas came, with a day-after surprise.

  The day after Christmas was important. Although a few stations had claimed earlier broadcast, most American Top 40 radio stations began playing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on December 26. Its flip side, “I Saw Her Standing There,” was also instantly popular. The 45-rpm record sold over 250,000 copies in the first few days.

  In Liverpool, Freda Kelly did her usual due diligence, treating the boys’ families like her own, keeping lines of communication open to the growing fan-club base. Barrow and Taylor, on tour and in the offices in London and Liverpool, plotted. The American invasion was not far away. Kelly was still trying to convince Elsie Starkey that while her piggy bank was smart thinking, it was time to stop worrying about filling it, that Richie would be fine.

  The tired Fab Four, a term coined by the talented Tony Barrow, was trying to cope with their December schedule, while thinking about what January would bring.

  First, there would be a long stint in Paris. It was in Paris that Epstein and the jubilant boys, still in the discovery phase of huge celebrity, would learn that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had reached number one in America. John would later say to me, “We celebrated with milk.” And he said it with a straight face.

  As 1963 drew to a close, Pete Best chatted, when he could find him, with his friend Neil Aspinall. Pete, depressed but unselfish, congratulated Aspinall on the good fortune of the group that had left him behind. The Prince of Mathew Street, Sam Leach, watched with curiosity as the local boys began screaming into Earth’s orbit. Allan Williams, the man who let them get away, and who told Brian Epstein, “Don’t touch them with a fucking bargepole; they will let you down,” was fascinated by their ascent. Deejay and writer Bob Wooler was bittersweet—proud but sad that his boys, even errant John Lennon, who had beaten him up, were headed for America. Tony Bramwell, their helper for so many horrible road trips on so many rugged roads, was humbled, and ready for new worldwide adventures with the boys and many who came after them.

  As the clock struck midnight ringing in 1964, Mona Best remembered the warmth and charm of a Beatles performance at the Casbah on New Year’s Eve 1960. She was melancholy about those days and worried about Pete, who took an immense interest in his much younger brother Vincent Roag, who was about to turn eighteen months old. Roag, as he was called, the product of Mona’s affair with Neil Aspinall, brought brightness and joy to the Best household. Aspinall, who had emerged early as one of the most savvy “protection” people in the business, was mentally preparing himself for France and, of course, America. In another life, Aspinall surely would have been an advance security chief for the White House or 10 Downing Street. He was that good.

  Cynthia Lennon was in love and caring for her and John’s almost nine-month-old son, Julian. The coming year of 1964 would see a changing relationship with Johnny Boy, although in late 1963 Cynthia was described by friends as “blissful.”

  In December 1963, Yoko Ono’s first child, Kyoko, was four and a half months old, the child of her relationship and marriage to entertainer and producer Anthony Cox. It would be a little less than three years later when she met John at an art gallery in London.

  The Quarrymen were scattered around Europe: Colin Hanton, the last of the Quarry boys to leave the band, was developing his skills as an upholsterer. Rod Davis continued his brilliant march through higher education, graduating in 1963 from Cambridge and looking for a teaching job at home in Liverpool. Len Garry, somewhat of a teen idol, in his mind rivaling Paul McCartney in the very early days, was aiming to become an architect.

  Horst Fascher could only watch with wonder. Just a year earlier, he claimed to me, he had “slipped thirty dollars under the table in 1962 to persuade Brian Epstein to allow the Beatles to perform one last time in Hamburg.”

  Members of Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes could only watch in disgust as the Beatles were about to extend their stardom across the sea. Teddy Taylor, the leader of the group, was especially bitter. He is still a popular performer in Hamburg, where he lives. Many friends, family, and survivors of that era believe that Kingsize could have been as big. Others remain friends with him but say his songwriting abilities were lacking. Like that of Pete Best, the name Teddy Taylor still, to this day, evokes words of respect in Liverpool.

  The sweetest man in the Beatles’ inner circle, Malcolm Evans, received the okay in late December to bring his wife and son on the Beatles’ January invasion of Paris. Malcolm, who loved the boys almost as much his own family, became legendary for fighting with a journalist in Paris, an incident, he told me later, that “I would be proud of for the rest of my life.” From my perspective, Malcolm would have gone to any extreme to protect the Beatles, but especially John and George.

  And then, of course, there was the continuing “campaign.”

  In mid-December an internal memo from Paul Russell, national album merchandising manager for Capitol Records, outlined a series of actions under way in advance of the arrival of Beatles music in America. Russell wrote: “A film clip of the Beatles in writhing action will be shown on the Jack Paar show January 3 [Paar was the host of The Tonight Show]. . . . The Beatles are scheduled to make two live appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show.” A third would actually be taped for broadcast.

  “United Artists, which will be distributing the Beatles’ first film [A Hard Day’s Night] this summer . . . is already . . . ‘booming’ the Beatles.”

  Russell’s memo, to all key Capitol executives, had a lot more, but the final paragraph said it all:

  “The message is certainly clear. There are a lot of peop
le who are putting up big money to ensure that the Beatles are the biggest thing yet in America. We should be fully prepared to take every possible advantage of the ‘Beatles Snowball.’”

  The “snowball” was rolling on and on. On December 27, 1963, I was driving south from St. Louis to take a job as news director of WFUN radio in Miami, when I entered the city limits of Paducah, Kentucky, a community based at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers. I remember the city for two reasons. First was the dramatic site of the two rivers churning into each other; I had never seen the beauty of nature that way, actual whitecaps on a river. As I passed through Paducah, after traveling through southern Illinois and then into Kentucky, the second memorable moment hit me—the realization that the “boys” were everywhere. Every time I switched the dial to a new radio station, it was the same song, “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” It was catchy and it was catching on. Once in a while, something else would play—“It’s My Party” by Lesley Gore, “Walk Like a Man” by the Four Seasons, “Surfin’ USA” by the Beach Boys, who were themselves growing in popularity, and some others. The station in Paducah also had a surprise for me—the playing of “She Loves You,” already number two on the charts in England and a close second to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in America. “She Loves You” was actually sneak-released by some stations in the summer of 1963, but no one paid attention. Now it was dug out of the files, and there it was. “Another catchy song,” I thought.

  At the time, the Beatles were just a curiosity for me, as they were for most. I was used to fads and one-hit wonders. Having heard a few reports about these shaggy-haired kids from northern England, I had serious doubts until I heard their songs for the first time. By the time I reached Miami, I had heard two other new Beatles songs, “Love Me Do” and “I Saw Her Standing There.”

  Now that, as I consider Paul Russell’s memo, was really a snowball.

  But, being a reporter, I was fascinated but hardly convinced. It was that skepticism, and more challenging questions than they were used to, that I truly believe brought me closer to the boys when fate and a little bit of luck took me into their world eight months later.

  In a way, my story of the Beatles was told in reverse. I first met them in Miami on their first trip to America in February 1964, was the only reporter to travel with them on their complete 1964 and 1965 North American tours (plus most of the 1966 tour), and thirty-nine years later, wrote about the adventures in my book Ticket to Ride (Running Press, September 2003). Two years after that, I chronicled the adult life of Johnny Boy himself in Lennon Revealed (Running Press, September 2005). But even then, I never knew the story of how it really was in the beginning, before I knew them.

  That story is, to me, as fascinating as their success, which endures. The other story, of the people who helped make them enduring, was elusive at the time.

  The truth is that in the waning days of 1963, people like Bob Wooler, Sam Leach, Freda Kelly, Allan Williams, and many, many others knew that their part of the drama was beginning to end, although Tony Barrow, Derek Taylor, Tony Bramwell, and their friends would stay on for decades. For Mal Evans and the multitalented Neil Aspinall, there would be plenty of drama in the years ahead. Other entertainers knew already that the Beatles were moving to a new level.

  But did they know just how big the band would become?

  Billy Kinsley: “Did I know in ’63 that they would be the greatest of all time? No one did, but we did know that Liverpool would soon be but a memory.”

  Billy J. Kramer: “There was no sense of competing. I felt that I was good, and I knew they were climbing. I appreciated everything they gave me, and taught me. I knew they were now beyond Merseyside, but I never knew they would go that far.”

  Joe Ankrah: “Could I have imagined a future like that? Who could? But looking back, I knew they had something special, and a level of compassion that was truly unusual for a band on the move.”

  As best buddy Bob Wooler closed out the year of 1963, he told friends that there was a feeling, bittersweet, of happiness and regret. “They [will] soon leave us,” he said to some fans at the Cavern.

  The truth, and a sobering truth it is, is that talent does not necessarily succeed. I wonder how many great songs are mothballed in someone’s attic, never to be recorded, and how many truly great novels sit unpublished, never to be read. And with thoughts like that, life invariably brings you to consider all the “ifs” and all the “what-ifs.”

  What if all the “players” had not been in place? What if the “pen pals” had not been so smart, talented, and loyal? What if the families had not been so driving and supportive? What if the media manipulation had not been so beautifully orchestrated? What if so many different people had not been as dedicated as they were? What if . . .

  So the story is really more than just the “boys,” but also about all the “ifs” that materialized and the talent that emerged with a lot of help from their friends. There was the strong belief and dedication from a young and forceful businessman, shining through the fog of indifference. There were setbacks and internal struggles juxtaposed against extraordinary luck and good timing.

  When they were boys, it was John, Paul, George, Pete and Ringo, and Stu. But whether it was the Casbah, the Cavern, the hundreds of church and community halls, and whether it was fifty or five thousand people, the boys’ early moments of success and their eventual musical immortality was a mutual affair—small or large, the crowds feasted on the Beatles and the boys were driven by them. Perhaps the greatest tribute to each of them is the amazing discovery of this group by millions of people over the past fifty years, after they became men.

  So, the story of the early days, “when they were boys,” is in fact the story of four lives, and the people who molded them, for better and for worse. It remains the ultimate rags-to-riches story, the kind that we revel in. But it is also a story of amazing good luck, discovered and nurtured talent, and a band of buddies, confidantes, and savvy operators who helped them “snowball” their way to success. It is also the story of those left behind who made invaluable contributions, but who were not, in some cases, acknowledged by the stars they helped make. It’s a story about millions of people around the globe who savored their music. Once they got there, the elements of human emotion took over, and like the early days, division and rancor ruled at times, along with drug use and a search for happiness.

  The history is filled with many crevasses, deep moral failures. They made their way to the top with great skill, but in the beginning, when they were just boys, when their music was rejected, they leaned on the embrace and support of many people who, in turn, were never beneficiaries of the gigantic largesse, whether with fame or fortune. Many of them have the real knowledge that they were blessed to lend a helping hand. Some of them were rarely acknowledged, and yet others were completely forgotten. When Hunter Davies wrote the Beatles’ authorized biography in the late 1960s, it was really their version of events, much like The Beatles Anthology, released in 2000, which was again produced and distributed by the Beatles empire. Davies’s book The Quarrymen was an outstanding look at the first band. But yet, over time, the lives of Freda Kelly, Sam Leach, Billy Kinsley, Bob Wooler, Pete Best, Mal Evans, and so many others have been mere footnotes in the boys’ own history. You could probably say the same about many successful people, but in this case, the people left behind made a major contribution.

  On October 9, 2010, a John Lennon tribute in Liverpool marked what would have been his seventieth birthday. Bill and Virginia Harry were invited, but Virginia was ill, so Bill trekked solo to the north to check it out. When he got to the event, he was surprised that he had just a ticket, like anyone else, to get in—no special pass or any recognition of his role.

  When I last interviewed Yoko Ono at the Dakota, and shared some of the accounts of my research for this book, she seemed fascinated by some of the background stories and actually took some notes. She was sorry that Bill Harry, the man who did so much to create
the early legend, was omitted from the VIP list at that Merseyside celebration of John Lennon’s birthday in 2010. She said she was truly sorry, and I believe her.

  When I saw Paul briefly at the White House celebration in 2010, I mentioned that I was trying to get some time with him to chat about the people who helped put him and his buddies on top. Although he was warm and gracious to me at the White House event, he never responded. Both he and Ringo clearly are not interested in the past. To counter some of the controversy in this book, I asked for their cooperation on many occasions. It was declined, politely, of course.

  About one aspect of the boys’ lives there is no dispute. They wrote the songs, or most of them, but their style was accrued from watching the likes of Rory Storm, Billy J. Kramer, Kingsize (Teddy) Taylor and the Dominoes, Billy Kinsley, the Big Three, Gerry Marsden (and the Pacemakers), Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, and the a cappella sounds of Joe Ankrah and the Chants. Don’t we all gather our knowledge and ability from the people we meet, and the experiences we have?

  When you download the songs of Kingsize Taylor and his group, you hear the carefully manicured harmony of the young Beatles. There are other similarities, not the least of which is Rory Storm’s stage drama, the gyrations, the vivacity of it all. Much was learned, and then, the boys turned around and changed the world of music with their own unique touches.

  Where the boys separated themselves from their Liverpool and Hamburg contemporaries was in their own original writing, the extraordinary range of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and the hidden (until much later) songwriting ability of George Harrison. Even Ringo held his own, recording several number-one hits in the seventies.

  So, here in the century that Brian Epstein forecast young people would still be listening to the Beatles with the same awe of the delirious fans of the sixties, we continue to feast on what happened in just eight years of music-making, before they went their separate ways. But those eight years turned out to be enough to make them relevant forever.