Magical Mystery Tours

by Tony Bramwell

  Three years earlier, the Beatles had been second on the bill to Little Richard at the New Brighton Tower Ballroom, just outside Liverpool. It was Brian’s biggest venture, a five-and-a-half-hour, twelve-act presentation and very important for the Beatles, because it was the first time they had appeared on the same bill as a big American star. They loved Little Richard, despite the fact that he could be a bit weird and a bit of a prima donna. I was there that night when I saw “a look” pass between him and Brian, a kind of recognition. Nothing was said, everything was cool. Don frowned, but he didn’t work it out because he didn’t understand the subtleties of gayness. He thought something secret was going on, that Brian was trying to lure Little Richard away to sign with him. Don didn’t understand someone like Brian at all. Brian would never dream of luring anyone away from their agency, unless sorely tried. But that’s the way Don always thought. He once broke Robert Stigwood’s desk with a single blow with a giant ashtray, and then hung him out of the third floor window of his office when he thought Stiggy was trying to steal the Small Faces. Describing the scene with the relish of a Capone, Don chuckled, “I went along to nail him to his chair, but I thought he was gonna have a heart attack, so I got him some fresh air.”

  In New Brighton that night, Don started an argument with Brian over Little Richard. In fact he went crazy. Brian didn’t respond. He just stood, quietly gazing into space and when Don had run out of steam, Brian said quite mildly, “I will be calling your employers on Monday and demand that they terminate your employment.” This was Brian’s sophisticated version of today’s, “Your ass is grass.”

  Still, it stopped Don dead in his tracks. He said he’d been all over the world and nobody had ever talked to him like that. Politely. He was even more incensed, when Brian actually did book Little Richard a couple of weeks later at the Liverpool Empire. Craig Douglas, Jet Harris and the Beatles were also on the bill. I remember that it was a Sunday, the day when by law performers couldn’t wear any kind of a costume—and the original design of their trendy jackets was considered “costume.” So everyone took off their jackets and went onstage in their shirtsleeves. The Beatles wore new shirts bought especially by Brian. They were pink.

  Don eventually became very powerful. Along the early way he managed acts like Dave Berry and the Cruisers, and repped Chuck Berry. He was also very go ahead. He went to the States when nobody else did, tracked down the artists that he knew would fill concert halls and theaters and said to them, “Trust me. I’ll look after you,” and remarkably, it all worked well. He had some interesting people working for him, people who would sometimes be described as “having no thought before the deed, and no remorse ipso facto.” They would walk up to someone and smack them. No warning. Just whack! He employed ex-bouncers from the old Star Club in Hamburg, men like Horst Fascher (a fan and friend of the Beatles) who, when he wasn’t sleeping over as a guest of the Bundespolizei would fly over and smack people on Don’s behalf.

  To bring the story full circle, or at least back to the Savoy, Don also looked after Jayne Mansfield. I was at the Savoy having a drink with Don and some of his lads when I glanced up and there she was in one of those famous crocheted dresses and big wigs. Even in that sophisticated establishment, full of international stars, people were turning and staring and she smiled and glowed, doing a Monroe number. I think she was over to do the Batley Variety Club and Caesar’s Palace. I couldn’t imagine what she did onstage, but I presumed it was some kind of Marilyn Monroe, sex bomb “I wanna be loved by you”–type performance.

  Jayne and Micky Hargitay had already split up, so when she took a shine to me and came on over, I smiled back at her, all kinds of fantasies happening, when she suddenly produced a baby from almost thin air. She handed it to me and said sweetly, “You look a kind young man. Would you mind holding Mariska for me while I do a photo shoot?”

  There I was, suave old me, sitting at the bar in the Savoy Hotel, a foggy day in London Town, raincoat over my shoulder, drinking a martini—and bouncing Jayne’s cute eighteen-month-old baby girl up and down and making goo-goo noises at her. Afterward, we all went off by taxi to Carnaby Street for a bit of shopping and some more drinks. A few months later Jayne was killed in a car crash. Her children, asleep in the back, survived. Mariska Hargitay grew up to become the beautiful detective from Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

  I’m not sure where Brian got the idea—perhaps it was simply his usual flair for the obvious—but he had the notion of using the dead Sunday, when the Saville, like all theaters, was normally closed, to put on special events. To my astonishment, he called me into his office and said, “Tony, you’re in charge of these new Sunday shows.”

  “I’ve never done theater,” I said cautiously.

  Brian waved it away. “They’ll just be pop concerts and so forth,” he said. “You can handle it.”

  Brian’s faith in my ability was remarkable, and I don’t think I ever let him down. If he said I could do something, I found that I could. In reality, it was just like when we brought over all our favorite American singers for the exchange deal. I learned to direct shows with artists like the Four Tops, Pink Floyd, Little Richard and Cream and many more. Many people said they envied me working with so many sensational and iconic stars, but oddly enough, I didn’t feel any different. Lucky, yes, but essentially, it was my job; I was paid to do it, so I got on with it. I have never been awe-inspired by fame—except when I met people I personally idolized, usually Americans like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. There were perks of course, like lunches, dinners and staying in nice hotels. The biggest perk was getting to Know these living legends, often as friends, and talking music.

  Of the British stars, I thought the Shadows were pretty cool, but I was never in awe of the other Liverpool groups. It was their job to be pop stars. I had grown up with them and we were fast mates. At the end of the day, they were just normal people.

  One of Brian’s favorite songs at the time was “Baby I Need Your Loving,” by the Four Tops. He thought it would be wonderful to bring them over to open the new Sunday shows at the Saville. We paid them twelve thousand dollars, as well as airfares and hotels. Rehearsals were expensive, three days with a big orchestra at the Saville to get the whole Motown sound as near as possible. We ordered a special backdrop, with an American flag painted slightly out of focus. The whole thing at first appeared ridiculous because our total expenses were about thirty grand, against a maximum door of twelve hundred pounds, at one pound a ticket, but Brian liked to make lavish statements, and it was the grand opening. Once again he struck lucky. Their song “Reach Out I’ll Be There” went to number one in the U.K. and Europe that weekend and we sold out. There was dancing in the aisles, a wonderful atmosphere, which didn’t please the Lord Chamberlain’s department. They tried to close us down for having dancing in a West End theater on a Sunday night. We would have lost our license before we had even started. Our lawyers put up a good fight, and we got reprimanded, but our license wasn’t revoked.

  It was almost uneconomically possible to make money at the Saville, even though Brian managed to extend his license to two shows on a Sunday. But I don’t think he cared about anything other than having his own theater, where he could sit in the Royal Box and survey his domain. The Royal Box was decorated very tastefully and instead of chairs, contained sofas covered in zebra skin. Behind was a little anteroom for discreet suppers, stocked with drink. It had its own private entrance from the street and was a fun place to entertain his chums. The Beatles liked it because they could slip in and out, unnoticed.

  Brian had an almost uncanny sense of timing. In addition to their appearances at the Saville, he had already cleverly negotiated with Motown to get the Four Tops for a full European tour for two months at a sensible fee. To compare, he paid Jimi Hendrix seventy-five pounds a night, Cream one hundred pounds and the Who got fifty pounds between them.

  I wouldn’t exactly call it moonlighting, but I got involved in many other projects whil
e working for Brian. Often, these projects were sparked off during the long and winding pub crawling sessions with the likes of Peter Noone and Radio Caroline deejays. We’d start off in the Coal Hole in the Strand, then head for the Red Lion in Charles Street and, if it were a Friday afternoon, carry on cruising the pubs and clubs for full daytime drinking right through to Monday. Our endurance was amazing. On one lost weekend, Peter got me involved in working on a musical version of The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, produced by ABC television in America. It was a concept that sounded like a disaster about to happen, but everyone pressed on with it. Burt Shevelove, who wrote A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for Frankie Howerd, was brought in to write the script and direct. The story was about an American family who buys an old castle and a ghost who doesn’t like being interrupted and gives them all a hard time. Michael Redgrave played the ghost. Frankie Howerd, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and my old chum, Peter Noone, were also in the cast.

  We filmed it all in Allington Castle, near Maidstone in Kent, where Henry VIII used to have secret trysts with Anne Boleyn before they married. Eventually the home to an order of Carmelite monks, it was a perfect location that rattled with its own ghosts and clanking irons—not to mention monks, who lurked about beneath their cowls, keeping a watchful eye on us, but managing to look very creepy. Peter Noone didn’t take it at all seriously. He spent most of his time fooling around, trying to scare the girls, trying to get a rise out of the monks and trying to find where they’d hidden their supplies of vintage claret and brandy, which he was convinced that all monks kept stocked in liberal quantities.

  We stayed at a mini motel on the old Dover Road that probably had more than a few ghosts of its own. We partied till dawn and none of us slept. The combination of Michael Redgrave, a classical actor, piratical Douglas Fairbanks—both of them suave men of the world—and Frankie Howerd, a bawdy, earthy and wildly funny, though lugubrious comic, would never be repeated again on this planet. They fed off of each other and kept themselves and us entertained for hours. I wish I could say that I can remember some of their lines, but I’d drunk too much. We were so worn out that during the day in the monastery, members of the cast and crew kept disappearing into the cells to snatch some sleep and search parties had to hunt them down when they were needed for a scene. It was all great fun, but not surprisingly, when eventually the film was aired, the critics were brutal.

  We had been making our videos for America for some time, when we decided to make straight promos, or promotional clips as they were called in those days. It started because it was impossible for the Beatles to go out to TV studios without a mob looking for them and, more to the point, without a strong-arm mob hired to protect them. A network of fans, almost all girls, kept a tight watch on Beatles’ activities. They’d beat some kind of jungle drum at the slightest movement. “A Beatle’s about! Quick, be there!” and fans would flood in from every direction, by bus, tube and on foot.

  Paul was the only London Beatle, so the GHQ of this network first started in Wimpole Street, outside the Asher’s home and continued outside the gates of his big Georgian house at Cavendish Road, where he and Jane moved in the summer of 1966. And that’s where the girls who watched Paul lived, and I mean lived. They took up residence on the pavement, with sleeping bags and primus stoves. Lord only knows where they performed their ablutions. They were so faithful, so permanently there, they became known as the “Apple Scruffs.”

  Paul’s house was also handy for Abbey Road, which was conveniently within sight across the famous zebra crossing. The scruffs once spent every night for five months sleeping on the pavement outside the studios when the Fabs were making an album. The fans-in-chief were named Big Sue, Little Sue, Gayleen, Margo, Willie and Knickers, and they had their sources. One of these sources was probably, and for the most part unwittingly, Rosie, Paul’s housekeeper. When Rosie went out or went shopping these girls used to go into Paul’s house. They found out how to kick the security gate just right so it opened, like the Fonz would kick a jukebox to get it to play a song. They had watched and knew which flowerpot Paul hid the door key under and in they’d go. Then they’d help out by answering the phone. They’d tidy up by throwing out some of Paul’s clothes, which they kept and took turns wearing.

  When Paul came home he would get annoyed but they would weep and tell him that “rotten” Mal Evans had thrown them down the steps of Abbey Road. Or they’d console him by giving him a monkey, which bit him immediately. Or by taking him to the back of his house and improving his security clampdown by showing him where they clung from the wall that completely surrounded the property so they could see him sitting on the loo.

  “The wall’s eight-foot high,” Paul said in a mixture of exasperation and admiration. “They hang from it by their fingertips until their arms come out of their sockets, then another girl takes over.”

  I shook my head. “Why don’t you hire them as security?”

  Paul grew quite fond of the girls. Even when he stood talking to them while they were wearing his jacket, or his trousers, he found it amusing. He called them “The Eyes and Ears of the World,” and laughed affectionately; but George swore at them. The girls complained that he would push them out of the way or try to tread on their toes on purpose, which was his sense of humor, but they said they still loved him. George was also bad with photographers, journalists and TV people. He used to put on a schoolboy grin and try to trip people up by sticking his leg out. No wonder he loved Monty Python and was to finance their movies.

  Wherever the Beatles were going to be, the network knew beforehand and arrived en masse. The police were fed up with being stretched to the limit and complained. It became so unsafe for them to go anywhere officially as a group, that we decided to do our own promo clips and just send them out. A good idea said everybody.

  John said, “It’s great isn’t it, Tone? Just think, we won’t be hanging around at the BBC for hours on end when we could be sitting at home quietly taking our drugs.”

  So we went in secret to Twickenham Studios on a single day in November 1965 and made promos for “Help!” “I Feel Fine,” “We Can Work It Out,” “Day Tripper,” and “Ticket to Ride” . . . bang bang bang. It seemed so easy. I sort of produced and directed them. I say “sort of” because there was never a script or format. It was all put together on the spot. “Right boys, what shall we do? Try standing there, Paul, okay?”

  This was the real origin of the pop video format—and where would MTV be today without it? I don’t want to make a big thing of it because it was very loose back then and production and directorial “credits” for videos didn’t seem that important. I got paid my wages anyway. Paul and I edited the stuff together. He really loved film and everything to do with film and so took to video and television very fast, and we would work on many more videos down the years to come.

  At Twickenham we shot up to three versions of each promo and simply sent copies of the best, free of charge, to every TV station the Beatles had ever been on. But it was too “expensive.” so we were told. When EMI called and complained that we had spent a total of seven hundred and fifty pounds, we fell about the office laughing. Their accounts’ office said it was far too much. I said, “Hold on, I’ll just go and I’ll check the figures,” and left the accountant holding the phone while we all went to the pub. When we came back an hour later he was still holding on.

  I picked up the phone and said, “The paperwork needs more analysis. We’ve decided to call in the Beatles to discuss it with Sir Joe. Yes, that’s right, as soon as I put down the phone I’m going to call their drivers to pick them up and when they get here they’ll . . .”

  “No!” he yelped, “Don’t do that!”

  My next foray into editing was on something very hush-hush and far more expensive. It came about after the Beatles’ third American tour in August 1965. The first “tour” had been when they went to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, when they had fitted in a concert at the Washington Coliseum
and two concerts at the hallowed Carnegie Hall. It had hardly been a tour in the wider sense and they were more awestruck that they had been the first pop group ever to be allowed into Carnegie Hall. So in awe that for the first time their courage almost failed. George told me once, “Carnegie Hall is where real musicians play, philharmonics and symphonies, not people like us. We somehow thought we’d get struck dead by lightning when we walked onto that stage.”

  The tour in August 1964 was far more extensive and lasted a month. It was like a whistle-stop coast-to-coast jamboree during a presidential election. Brian hired a Lear jet and they flew around the United States with a large entourage of journalists and snappers. The third tour, in August of the following year, lasted two weeks, with an equally crowded schedule. I didn’t go on either one, because with Brian away for so long, he wanted me there to “take care of business” for him, which was the phrase he loved, from the moment he’d heard Colonel Parker use it when they met.

  Probably the most important concert of the 1965 tour was at Shea Stadium on Sunday, August 15. Shea Stadium in Queens is home to the New York Mets baseball team, an arena more suited to sports than to a live concert. Fifty-five thousand, six hundred fans poured in through the turnstiles, a world record for a pop concert. The Beatles flew by helicopter to the roof of the nearby World’s Fair building, then traveled in a Wells Fargo armored truck to the stadium, sprinting down the player’s tunnel to the stage.

  The noise from the fans was deafening. It remained at fever pitch throughout the concert, which was unfortunate, given that it was to be turned into a film due to be broadcast later around the world. The Ed Sullivan production team filmed the entire thing, using twelve cameras. However, less attention was paid to the sound. My part in the experience came about some five months later, in London, when the finished film arrived at NEMS offices in London on a cold January morning in 1966.