Magical Mystery Tours

by Tony Bramwell

  The Beatles were a bit sheepish when the Max Factor Panstick and eye-shadow was produced, but they got over that by joking about it, strictly among themselves. I can’t remember who started using it first. Probably George, because he had the worst skin problems. I can remember John and Paul goofing about, acting feminine and camp as they applied the makeup. They would pretend to apply lipstick, pursing out their lips and blowing kisses, but it was just camp playing about.

  That spring and summer of 1961 girls quite literally seemed to fall at the Beatles’ feet. Perhaps it was a kind of mass hysteria that was catching. Although the real shrieking didn’t start until later, at the Cavern and other venues girls would gaze adoringly at them, then collapse onto their knees right at the front of the stage, clutching their heads and moaning. They were like this for no other band and it took everyone by surprise. The girls split up into factions of camp followers with very unfeminine names like the Cement Mixers and the Bulldogs, and like the Teddy Boy gangs they’d fight ferociously behind the scenes. They could be terrifying. The Beatles thought it was amusing.

  Pete Best’s girlfriend was one of the girls who used to get up and dance the twist in the Cavern. The lads would do Joey Dee and the Starlighter’s song, “Peppermint Twist,” and there would be Pete’s girlfriend right up front, twisting away in a frenzy with Priscilla White, whose flaming red hair was lit up like a beacon under the lights. The two girls would even get up on the stage and twist like egg whisks. It has always been said that Priscilla was discovered by Brian, twisting and singing away at the Cavern, but this happened far more modestly at the Blue when she asked Bill Harry, a friend of John Lennon’s, to introduce her. Bill got her name wrong and introduced her as Cilla Black, which stuck, and she became one of the first of the big girl singers to emerge in the sixties. She was wonderful, but she only had eyes for her Bobby, whom she married and remained true to for forty years until his death.

  The Cavern was down in the cellars of some of Liverpool’s oldest warehouses, built in the seventeenth century around an impressive inland pool, or natural harbor, in a bend of the Mersey. Over the centuries, the pool had been filled in and the warehouses ended up in the heart of the booming city. Somehow the Cavern cellars survived right through the war when they had been used as air-raid shelters, and in the 1950s they were used as a jazz club, until skiffle took over. The surrounding streets were still cobbled, the pavements steep and narrow. Often, when the Beatles arrived, they would have a swift black and tan (bitter and light ale) in the Grapes—an ancient inn that had stood there for some three hundred years—then they’d swing down the street to the club, while a swathe of teens parted to let them through. (When they became popular a buzz would rise—“It’s them! It’s them!” all along the sidewalk, where kids were lined up waiting to go in.)

  I was too young for the Grapes, but I’d go ahead to help set up their gear. You’d go down eighteen dangerous stone steps, worn away from centuries of porters carrying foodstuffs up and down to be stored in the cellars. Music would already be blasting out from the turntable operated by Bob Wooler, the resident deejay, who was more grandly called the compere, or the master of ceremonies. The bouncer, Paddy Delaney, would look at your membership card, then you’d sign in and pay a shilling to Ray McFall at the little desk. After the first time, they recognized me as being with the Beatles and I didn’t have to pay again. Once you passed through the door, off to the left was a little counter where you could buy hot dogs and the ubiquitous cheese rolls with a slice of raw Spanish onion washed down by Coke. Or you’d be served some variety of hot Heinz soup. With a nod to the majority of Irish Catholics in Liverpool, it was always tomato, pea or asparagus on Fridays.

  The cellars consisted of three parallel barrel vaults, or tunnels, about a hundred feet long and ten feet wide. At intervals, connecting the vaults, were low archways, maybe about six feet wide. Off to the right was the first dark tunnel, with benches around the walls. The middle tunnel had about ten rows of bench seats (like joined-up dining chairs) facing a small stage that was about eight feet deep by ten feet across. A cramped little dressing room, known by the musicians as a “drezzy,” was just off the stage on the left-hand side, which you got to by going through an arch into the third tunnel. The turntable and PA controls were back there, as well as a cloakroom and the dreadful toilets, with a primitive trough set into the floor and just a single-seated cubicle.

  The floor was concrete, painted a bright cardinal red with heavy-duty floor paint, until it got worn away by hundreds of dancing feet that raised a low carcinogenic cloud as they shuffled through cigarette stubs and ash. It was swept out daily, but it was all back again the next night. The walls, which were curved, were lime-washed a vile hospital green and the ceiling was bright orange. I don’t know if it was deliberately made to resemble the Irish flag, or if they just used leftover distemper. At any rate, whatever it was, it was poor quality and rubbed off and flaked if you leaned against it.

  The lighting was almost nonexistent, and what there was had to compete with the thick fug of cigarette smoke. Two small spotlights with bare lightbulbs were halfway down the middle arch, focused on the stage; the rest was in darkness. Apart from those who wanted to sit and watch the band, everyone else would pack into the first and third arches and do the Cavern stomp, a sort of loose jive, holding hands, because there was no room to move. There was no spinning or twirling, no tossing your partner in the air. It was almost zomboid. In time, this shuffle became known as the Shake. When the band was hopping you’d see heads poking through the first and third arches, jostling for space to see what was going on in the middle.

  When the Beatles ran down the steps and arrived in the cellars, they would hang onto each other’s waists, heads down, and snake their way through the crowd in the famous “Cavern Conga”—the humorous nickname it was given by Cavern regulars, who would egg them through with cheers and a typically rowdy Scouser welcome—until they reached the stage and could disappear into the drezzy to hang up their coats. I’d have helped set up the drums and the guitars and the show would start, usually with the lads chatting to the audience as they picked up their instruments and did a bit of tuning. Bob Wooler would get a few words in, trying to introduce the numbers—though often he was humorously shouted down—and then it was off and running.

  Everyone loved it when the Beatles did the “Pinwheel Twist,” which Paul had written. Pete Best used to leave his drums and dance right up front, while Paul—who seemed able to play every instrument—would play the drums. The girls would go wild over Pete, who looked like a dark-haired version of James Dean. They’d crowd the stage and sigh in unison, grab their hair and pretend to swoon. Maybe some of them did swoon: there was precious little air down there.

  Cynthia used to come in and stand at the back with a couple of friends from art school. Only a handful of us knew that she was John’s girlfriend and she gave nothing away. She looked quite stunning with her long blond hair, Bardot-style sloppy joes and pedal pushers. (Boys used to call them pram pushers.) When I went back to get a cheese roll, I’d stop and chat with her and nod to her girlfriends. It was all very casual. (It was round about then that I acquired the nickname of Measles. I think John originated it, because I was everywhere, seen at all the gigs. He told me once that I’d probably been to more clubs than anyone else he knew.)

  Cynthia would say, “Hi, Measles. How’s it going?”

  “Fine,” I’d say. “How are you, Cyn?”

  It was all very proper and formal, like our dress. Liverpool was a very Catholic area and boys weren’t allowed to wear jeans down in the Cavern. Jeans were considered workingmen’s gear. Instead, most of us wore Bohemian student gear consisting of polo sweaters and cords. I always wore snappy little suits, nice shirts and ties, a habit I got into down the years. I found that dressed like that I could blend in and get into most places.

  Paul’s dad, Jim, was a regular visitor to the Cavern. He knew it well. He had often played down there wh
en it was a jazz club. After Mary died, Jim used to do all the shopping and cooking, but he never got home before Paul so often he’d go out during his lunch break to the greengrocer’s and the butcher’s to buy the makings for the McCartney evening meal at Forthlin Road, then he’d pop down to the Cavern, where the Beatles would be thrashing away onstage. Paddy Delaney, the doorman, would be standing outside in his evening dress in the daytime and he’d say, “Hello, Mr. Mac. How you doin’ then? Good crowd in today.” And Jim would stand and have the craic—the Irish word for “gossip”—before going on down the steps, to push his way through the crowd and plunk a load of pork chops wrapped in white paper on the edge of the stage. Paul would smile but keep playing “I Saw Her Standing There,” or whatever. If he were on a break, Jim would say to him, “When you get home, son, put these on regulo five about half-four and they’ll be lovely by the time I get in.” It was a strange arrangement, but it worked—when Paul remembered.

  The Cavern was baking when full and cold when empty. Overall, with the paint peeling and hanging off the damp walls, the whole place had a dank, musty smell of mold, cigarette smoke, pee and the raw bleach that they used to swab it all down. When you came out, you smelled of it.

  The Beatles still weren’t what we called pop stars. They were just scallywags who played the Cavern who the girls were wild over, though they didn’t scream until Beatlemania. They cheered and clapped and shook their heads. Mostly they sat on the edge of the stage and worshipped. There was no special back entrance, no escape route for a band to leave by after a gig. At the end of a show we would break down the gear and then it was a matter of heads down as the Beatles ploughed their way through the crush and up the stairs.

  I particularly remember a gig at Litherland Town Hall on October 19, 1961, when it suddenly dawned on me that the Beatles were big. You could see it from the reaction of the fans, from the crowds that mobbed in, by the excited chatter. The show was combined into a supergig with Gerry and the Pacemakers and other groups. The others played what was on the charts, but the Beatles concentrated on rock ’n’ roll and rhythm and blues, which gave them a real edge. They closed with “What’d I Say,” which they played for a long time. Everyone joined in, shouting their heads off. It was fantastic. We jived and twisted the night away in a frenzy. For me, it marked the moment when they really arrived.

  There was a definite buzz even before the Beatles were discovered by a local Liverpool would-be impresario named Brian Epstein and hit the headlines. Bill Harry was a student at Liverpool Art School and a friend of John’s. Bill’s girlfriend at the time was an attractive girl named Virginia, with big bouffant hair, a great jiver. Bill latched onto the fact that something was happening and after a couple of years of making notes on everything and everyone he launched his tatty little roneo’d magazine, Mersey Beat, and he sold it for about fourpence through Brian Epstein’s family-owned record store, or at the doors of ballrooms. It carried ads for NEMS, which was the grooviest record store; reviews by Brian Epstein; stories about Rory Sullivan and Johnny Conscience, or Cass and the Casanovas, musicians you never heard of again; some freebie small ads, like the Merseybeats are looking for a new bass player; and, most important, a gig guide of who was playing where and when. It became obligatory to have your own copy. Later, after Brian bought Music Echo (to be incorporated into Disc, the first magazine to award discs for best-selling records) Bill Harry claimed the title Mersey Beat as his own invention and registered it as a trademark.

  Brian’s personal taste in music was fairly universal. He liked all types of pop and classical, though he could be eclectic. I remember that he was keen on Pierre Boulez, a classical piano player who also composed some very avant-garde pieces. Boulez became conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. Despite being heavily into the latest trends, Brian still had no idea of what was happening within a stone’s throw of his record store until the day a lad came in and asked for a copy of a folk song by the Beat Brothers, “My Bonnie (Lies Over the Ocean).”

  When the salesman who served him confessed himself baffled, Brian was called over. He had always stressed that if a customer requested a record they didn’t have, then he would order a copy. A search through his catalogues didn’t uncover the Beat Brothers, but he did find a version recorded in Hamburg on Polydor by a minor British pop star named Tony Sheridan. The flip side was “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

  The youth who had made the inquiry—Raymond Jones—informed Brian that Bob Wooler, a local disc jockey and promoter, was playing the record to death on the club circuit. (Despite rumors to the contrary, Raymond Jones existed: not only had I seen him around, but a photograph of him was published in Bob’s 1962 biography.) Brian discovered that the “Beat Brothers” were the backing band for Tony Sheridan on the record. Stuart Sutcliffe, who was still in Hamburg, had sent over some copies to George, who had handed one to Bob Wooler on the top of a bus on their way to a gig. Then a steady trickle of fans—mostly girls—started to come in asking for “My Bonnie,” which made Brian curious. He was always interested in what people wanted, no matter how obscure. He would often stop and chat to his regulars—including me—to find out what we were listening to.

  When I walked in the next Saturday, Brian asked me if I had heard of that record. “Yeah,” I said casually. “I’ve got a copy at home.” Now Brian sat up and took notice. He knew me because I was always hanging out, going through the racks in one of the record shops which he had set up within his parents’ big furniture stores. Despite my youth, I seemed to know a lot about records. Brian really cared about the customer and about music, and he always had a great selection of new records as well as some interesting older ones. Unlike other owners, he would buy at least one or two of every record issued that week, not just the ones played on the radio or heavily promoted. The archives he built up in this way of rare, little-known records, was remarkable.

  “So who exactly are these Beat Brothers?” Brian asked me, puzzled.

  “They’re my old mates, the Beatles,” I said. I didn’t tell him that the boys had laughed about how in Germany the label had refused to credit them as the “Beatles” because it sounded too much like a slang word from north German ports, “peedles”: a penis—an accidental joke they all, particularly John, appreciated.

  When I told Brian that the Beatles were regulars down in the Cavern, which was a few hundred yards from his record store in some old wine cellars beneath a warehouse on Mathew Street, he picked up the telephone in his businesslike way to ask for VIP admission—as if they gave a toss about VIPs. The day he went, November 9, 1961, was to prove very important in the history of pop music.

  The story of how Brian dropped in at the Cavern and, spoiled for choice, fell in love at first sight with each of the Beatles in turn, is too well documented to repeat here in great detail.

  At the start of the session, Bob Wooler had announced, “Mr. Showbiz himself will be coming by shortly!” There were a few raucous catcalls and whistles and then the Beatles launched into another number.

  I was there as usual, standing at the back. None of us knew what Brian wanted, or what he expected. I don’t think he himself had a clue either, at least not before he walked down the steps and in through the door. He’d told me that he just wanted to check it out for himself, to meet and talk to the boys.

  However modestly he later described it on radio and in press interviews, for Brian it was an earth-moving, life-changing moment. The hot, squalid and smelly interconnecting cellars were heaving with shop and office workers and students, mostly girls. As soon as he saw the Beatles through a haze of smoke and sweat, Brian had eyes for nothing else. He was fascinated by their outfits of skintight black leather jeans and zip-fronted black leather bomber jackets, and instantly smitten by the sound they made.

  Bob Wooler introduced him: “We are honored to have Mr. Epstein of NEMS, Liverpool’s largest record store here this afternoon.”

  Sticking out like a sore thumb
in his pin-striped suit and immaculate white shirt, Brian, who was only twenty-seven but appeared much older because of the formal way he dressed, smiled and blushed to a chorus of catcalls and cheers. At the end of the session he pushed his way through the crush to introduce himself to the Beatles in the drezzy.

  George looked him up and down and asked sarcastically, “What brings Mr. Epstein here?”

  Brian stammered that he wanted to import two hundred copies of “My Bonnie.”

  The Beatles grinned sardonically, nodded their heads and, embarrassed, Brian asked if they could go and have a drink. As they trooped out to go across the road to the Grapes, John winked at me. I was dying to go, but I was too young. Instead, I cleared off home. I heard from George, who was pretty casual about it, that they didn’t discuss anything important. It was just chat about music and their aspirations. The question of management didn’t even come up, though Brian must have started mulling it over almost immediately.

  More than anything else, he had fallen in love, not only with the Beatles, but also with the sexual immediacy of live performances. From the moment of that “Road to Damascus” experience, he wanted to be part of that exciting, throbbing, underground world. He returned time and time again, standing quietly in the background and then, after the show, coming forward to brave jibes and sarcasm from George and John. He met Neil Aspinall, Pete Best’s quiet friend, who humped their gear and guarded the van. He made inquiries from Bob Wooler, he quizzed record reps, he took advice from his family solicitor, he drank coffee in the Jacaranda and stupidly asked their dumped manager, Allan Williams, how to go about managing them. “Don’t touch ’em with a fucking bargepole,” Allan is reported to have replied. “They’re poison. Anyway, you can’t get them a record deal, because they’re already signed up to Bert Kaempfert at Polydor in Germany.”