Magical Mystery Tours

by Tony Bramwell

  However, after the Beatles had appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium in 1963 we were besieged by requests from manufacturers who wanted to sell everything from Beatle balloons and belts to mugs and dolls and even some dreadful black nylon wigs that would scare the horses. Brian was concerned that poor-quality items, dolls that split and trays that rusted, would be very bad for his boys’ image, but he caved in under an avalanche of offers. Tentatively, he decided that he would accept a few of the better-quality items, and some deals were struck. The T-shirts were just the beginning. Brian didn’t know how much to charge for royalties on posters, Beatles dolls, mugs—for the whole range of commercial merchandise.

  Ultimately, it became too time-consuming for us to sort through all the samples and do the paperwork. John used to pop in from time to time and take a few prototypes home with him for Julian, or even for his own attic playrooms, but he was the only one who took any interest in the mass of stuff and eventually, Brian asked our lawyer, David Jacobs, to find someone to take it all off his hands. David came up with Nicky Byrne, a young man in the Chelsea set, on the basis that he gave fabulous parties and his wife ran a fashionable boutique, so he knew a little about sales. Nicky thought it might be fun to be involved with the Beatles. He agreed at once and asked five friends, also in their twenties, who also had no experience, to come in as partners. Two companies were set up: an off-the-shelf one named Stramsact in the U.K. and Seltaeb—Beatles spelled backward—in the U.S. For some unearthly reason when Nicky suggested a split of 90 percent for his company and 10 percent to the Beatles, David Jacobs agreed without quibble. If he had known that Elvis Presley’s merchandising was earning an estimated $20 million a year he would surely have kicked himself. But he didn’t know because he didn’t bother to research. He agreed to the unequal terms and Brian signed the astonishing contract.

  Nicky Byrne didn’t even have to do very much to earn the vast sums that were soon to come his way. He didn’t have to chase deals, he didn’t have to beg. In fact, he had to fend off the manufacturers waving open checkbooks. All he had to do was what Brian had tired of doing: look at a vast mountain of Beatles’ prototype merchandising, select some and negotiate terms. Things went so well that Nicky moved to New York to run Seltaeb, leaving his partners to handle Europe. When Brian arrived in New York with the Beatles to do the Ed Sullivan Show, Nicky gave him a check for $9,700. To give an idea of what this represented, the Beatles’ fee for one Ed Sullivan appearance was $2,400. Brian was pleased with what appeared a substantial sum until Nicky casually informed him that $9,700 was just 10 percent of what he had earned in a few weeks after expenses.

  Weakly, Brian said, “You mean Seltaeb has earned one hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Yes, isn’t it great?” Nicky enthused. He said that in three days alone they had sold a million T-shirts and had orders for half a million Beatle dolls—the list of the deals was long and there was the rest of the world to consider. When he added that Columbia Pictures Corporation had offered half a million dollars for his share of the company, plus Ferraris for all the partners, Brian nearly swooned. From that point on he determined to get it all back. He initiated legal proceedings in the U.S. through Nat Weiss and in the U.K. through David Jacobs, the lawyer who had been foolish enough to agree to the deal in the first place. The case was to drag on for years and was ultimately concluded with a small settlement to Nicky Byrne and the Beatles’ merchandising rights back.

  But the thing that really twisted Brian’s heart and gave him no peace was that his contract with the Beatles was coming up for renewal. There had been several disagreements over finances and the contracts—some quite heated because John could be very spiteful. I think that John, egged on by Paul, who had rapidly become very aware of the business side of things, was beginning to realize that Brian had everything, that it was all in his name or locked into his companies. In real terms, the Beatles had very little in their own names except numerous headaches in the shape of ill-thought-out enterprises that were a huge drain.

  When John learned that Brian was even considering selling them—the Beatles!—to Robert Stigwood, he was outraged. He and Brian had stand-up screaming matches over this. John would storm off, or Eppy would run away. He’d flee in his Roller, driving off in a hurry, looking white and ill.

  I don’t know if it was the drugs or the rows he’d had with John that upset him the most. I do know he was deeply depressed each time he checked himself into the Priory and underwent treatment by a psychiatrist. Perhaps the psychotherapy, however scrappy, helped because when Ernest Hecht at Sovereign Press—quirkily, the English publisher of Venus in Furs—asked him to write his memoirs, Brian was thrilled. He was very artistic and had gone to acting school briefly, so writing his autobiography—as well as being therapeutic—was a way for him to shine center stage and at the same time, take his mind off his pressing problems.

  “I told Ernest Hecht that no one would be interested in what I had to say about my life, but he convinced me that they would be. What do you think?” he asked me when he outlined his plans.

  “I’d read it, Brian,” I said, wondering what on earth he would find to write about. The truth would be too shocking. Casually, out of politeness, I asked what it was to be entitled.

  Brian smiled, almost wistfully. “A Cellar Full of Noise,” he said. “After the Cavern. What do you think, Tony?”

  I thought it was an odd title, but nodded and kept my counsel. Brian was depressed enough without me adding to it. “You’ll sell a million copies, Brian,” I said. In fact, I really did think it. An insight into the private way the Beatles lived, thought and worked, by their Svengali? Not to mention insights into his own modus operandi? That was dynamite, or so it seemed. But around the office Brian’s book was soon referred to as A Cellar Full of Boys.

  “I’ve decided to work on it down in Devon,” Brian said. “Yes, I need to get right away from London, but not so far away that I’m out of touch, you understand.” He had come over all artistic. He paused. “And I might discover a few new bands down there.” Then he paused again and I knew he had something more to add. I waited. “You don’t think John will think I’m raining on his parade, do you?” he asked hesitantly.

  I knew at once what he meant. John’s first book, In His Own Write, had been published a couple of weeks earlier, by Cape. It was due to be published in America the following month, then the rest of the world. We had all gone to a party in Cape’s Georgian offices in Bedford Square, the heart of bookish Bloomsbury, to celebrate the book’s launch. Their walls were lined with books, books were piled high everywhere. It was like an incense-laden temple, reeking of books and beeswax. We soaked up the literary atmosphere. It was different from anything else we had experienced, different from records and clubs and studios. John, of course, was the star. He’d experienced the adulation of thousands everywhere he went, but I could see this was different.

  Now I said, “Oh, I don’t know, Brian. John wouldn’t give a toss. He’d be the first to tell you to put pen to paper.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Brian said, visibly relieved. He grasped his book contract with relief and delight and put plans into motion immediately by hiring an old friend, a journalist from Liverpool. Derek Taylor had been one of the first to review the Beatles after Brian had signed them up. Derek also ghosted a national newspaper column for George Harrison and could do shorthand, so he was Brian’s obvious choice for the task. Appointing Derek as his personal assistant (later, he became the Beatles’ press officer), they left London together, seated in the back of Brian’s carmine-red Roller. I waved them off, not believing for a moment that Brian would be able to switch off for long.

  Arriving at Torquay, they checked into the Imperial Hotel, taking a magnificent suite on the first floor, which overlooked the promenade and provided wonderful views of the sea. Here, Brian began to dictate his life story. This went on for about two weeks, while Brian told Derek Taylor everything. That is to say, Brian told D
erek a sanitized version of everything.

  After a couple of weeks of intensive dictation, broken by lavish meals, the odd massage and manicure and afternoon promenades along the sea front, Brian grew bored writing his memoirs. I was surprised he had lasted as long as two weeks and I was expecting his call.

  “Come on down, Tony,” he said. “I thought we might swan around a bit, looking for the odd band.”

  “Good idea, Brian,” I said. Privately I thought, he means looking for the odd boy, but again, didn’t say anything. We did have a couple of groups playing in that part of the country, so that was the start. We would drop in on them. One group was called the Rustics; the other was the Silkie, who were quite good, but they didn’t set the world on fire.*

  I took the train from Paddington and on the way down to Devon, recalled that the Beatles had actually produced the Silkie doing “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” and had played on it too. The Rustics disappeared. As a matter of fact, way back in the early days when the Beatles had played Torquay, they had also stayed at the Imperial. I remember because John got drunk and threw up in the cocktail bar. We had been in Llandudno the day before, then driven down to Torquay, via Birmingham where we stopped to do Thank Your Lucky Stars at the ATV studios. In Torquay we did two shows. That was four hundred miles and three shows in a single day, before there were any motorways, apart from the one hundred-mile stretch between Birmingham and London. The next day it got worse. We went from Torquay to London for another TV show, then straight back the same winding roads to Bournemouth, for a week’s residency at the Palace Theater. Bad food, too much to drink, bumpy roads and exhaustion led to many vomiting episodes, some more public than others.

  When I arrived in the suite, Brian looked subdued and Derek looked fed up. Derek got up, nodded at me and went out for a long walk. I asked Brian how the book was going. “Very well, thank you Tony,” he said. But his expression said, “Not as well as I had hoped.” He asked me how John’s literary luncheon had gone. I knew he meant the prestigious publishing lunch at Foyles, the famous bookshop in the Charing Cross Road, where John had been the guest of honor a few days ago.

  “I think it went very well,” I said. “John stood up, sat down and everyone clapped.”

  “Really? What did he say?”

  “Not a lot. I think he said, ‘Thanks for asking me.’ ” Somehow the press had translated John’s mumbling into the obscure acknowledgment, “Thank you. You’ve got a lucky face.” I didn’t tell Brian that John was tripping at the time and that Foyle’s could have been Santa’s grotto, or the moon.

  I think Brian wanted someone different to talk to, a change of pace. Perhaps he intended to confide in me since we had been close for many years. But he was very subdued and didn’t say much. He was a very private man. I don’t think anybody could ever really fathom what he was thinking. It came as something of a surprise when he told me why he was tense.

  Drumming his fingers on a table, he said, “What do you think, Tony? Do you think this beat-group bubble is about to burst? It’s driving me to distraction, you know. Everybody is thinking that this can’t go on forever, that it’s suddenly going to stop.”

  He was right. That’s just what everybody was thinking, including all those at the office who weren’t too drunk or stoned to think at all. For instance, Ringo was already making plans to open up a hairdresser’s shop or two.

  “Ladies’ salons, like Mr. Teezie Weezie Raymond,” Ringo said. “I’ve got a bit of a name, so I should do okay out of this, don’t you think, Tone?” he asked, his gold rings flashing as he snipped away with imaginary scissors in the air.

  “Oh, I think they might remember you, Ringo,” I said.

  John and Paul also had a Plan B to fall back on, one that involved music. They always thought they could be commissioned songwriters, backroom boys down in Tin Pan Alley. Before Lennon-McCartney, and before Rodgers and Hammerstein, most of the British public didn’t concern themselves with where songs came from. They could have been plucked off trees, for all they knew or cared. John and Paul changed all that. Songs became almost as important as the singer. Songs became hot currency, and song catalogues became worth hundreds of millions.

  I remember a conversation I once had with John, who, some time after he and Paul had signed the lion’s share of their copyrights away for no apparent reason or obvious benefit, had suddenly realized that songs, as in music publishing and copyright of same, were worth a great deal of money. Neither John nor Paul had understood the concept of “owning” a song. You could own a guitar or a house, but how could you own something you sang into thin air? But somewhere along the line, the word “royalties” and the idea of a song catalogue had attracted John’s attention. (This was years before Michael Jackson spent $47.5 million on buying the ATV song catalogue. Included in this 1985 sale was the Beatles’ Northern Songs catalogue, sold by Dick James. Ten years later, in 1995, Michael Jackson was paid $95 million to merge the rights he owned with Sony Music Publishing.)

  John was quite surprised when the whole “song” thing dawned on him. I mentioned that many performers didn’t write their own material, they got them from song pluggers. There were two kinds of song pluggers: ones who plugged songs to the deejays on the radio to get airplay; and pluggers who worked for music publishers and pitched the songs which professional songwriters wrote.

  “You mean some groups buy songs?” John said, in some amazement.

  “No, well, um, yes, sort of,” I answered, having done some research into the matter. “It’s a little bit more complicated than that, but not much. For instance, every time a record is played on the radio anywhere in the world, the songwriter gets a fee, which is collected by such organizations as the Performing Rights Society. The performers get their royalties mainly from the sales of the records. If they sing their own songs, then they get the lot—or would, if they haven’t signed their copyrights away.” The fact that John and Paul had signed theirs away hovered in the air, unspoken. John considered for a moment or two.

  “And the songwriter gets royalties from the records sold as well?”

  “Yeah, something like that,” I replied, not sure of the exact figures, the “split” so to speak, nor how it all worked. This was new to all of us. John gazed into space and I expected some deep revelation.

  “So if all this ends, Tone, I could make a living writing songs. What do you reckon?” he asked, in John-type naïveté. In other words, if this Beatle bubble should burst, can I still survive? Good God, I thought, he still doesn’t get it!

  “I don’t see why not, John,” was all I said.

  Despite their obvious ability to put a song together with the greatest of ease and have a hit with it, it still rankled the Beatles and Brian that Decca Records had turned them down, proving that failure was always a specter looming over their shoulders. So they were especially delighted when the Stones covered “I Wanna Be Your Man” and had a hit—on Decca Records.

  Sometimes John and Paul’s throwaway songs became unexpected hits. “Bad to Me,” “Do You Want to Know a Secret” and “Little Children,” for example, songs they had knocked off quickly and didn’t think were much good, were given by Brian to Billy J. Kramer to record and were monster hits. Paul liked the idea of being a Sammy Cahn and writing songs specifically for artists. He wrote “Step Inside Love” especially for Cilla, and “World Without Love” for Peter and Gordon. But John became a pest where songs were concerned. Once he realized he could make money as a songwriter, he thought anything he’d written should be recorded.

  “Brian,” he would shout. “Get Billy to record this song . . . Brian, get the Fourmost to record ‘Hello Little Girl’…”

  The thing is, of course he was right. Even their cast-off songs stood out like gold from what was being written for other artists by other songwriters, but John’s attitude irritated Paul. He used to say to John, “You want everyone to bloody record anything you’ve bloody well written.”

  John shrugged.
“And what’s wrong with that?” He came across as the leader of the group, and the wildest, but he wasn’t very wild. He was quite conservative in many respects. He was the first to start worrying about money. The more they had, the more he worried it would suddenly vanish. Mick Jagger was worse. When we went to see him and Keith, Mick would always be on about money. But then, he had studied at the London School of Economics and could count. I came across this dichotomy all the time. Pink Floyd would discuss Frank Lloyd Wright, rococo and Albert Speer on a plane, while the bass player in T. Rex did the Telegraph crossword in twelve minutes.

  Meanwhile, down in Torquay, Brian explained his fears carefully to me, then he sighed, fighting against the confessional mode psychotherapy at the Priory and writing his memoirs had invoked. His biggest problem, perhaps his only real problem, was that he was homosexual in a still very unenlightened era. It kept getting in the way. Whenever he sat down for a meeting with heavyweights like Sir Joseph Lockwood at EMI, or whoever, he felt they all knew.

  “They’re talking behind my back, Tony,” Brian said. “They don’t respect me.” He felt this lack of respect would rebound on his position in deal-making. Also, if he did see someone he fancied, someone he met on a business footing, he was never quite sure how to approach him to show his personal interest. “I mean, suppose they are offended and turn me down? How can I look them in the face again? It makes for bad business.”

  I knew he meant that if he asked a man out and his overtures were rejected, how could he continue on a business level with him? It was a difficult one. I was embarrassed by this unusual confidence, and tried to make light of it. “It’s the same when you ask a girl out,” I said encouragingly. “It’s not really a big deal if she turns you down.” But inside I knew that homosexuality was a very big deal and Brian was right to be so concerned. He might be arrested and sent to jail, or he might be sectioned, locked away in a mental institution. The angst Brian must have gone through was terrible, and looking back I can remember him looking off sometimes, deep in thought. Troubled, frowning. I felt a great deal of pity and sympathy for him.