The Beatles

by Bob Spitz

  One band in particular.

  The Beatles had more than an inkling that they were only one man away from being great. As musicians, they had developed immeasurably over the years together, and it was impossible not to hear exactly how far they had come. They had gotten progressively better—and not just better, but accomplished, versatile. There was a cleverness about their playing, an ingenuity that took routine lines of music and gave them a sharp, inventive twist. A lot of it happened without a great deal of forethought. They’d hit a chord, either experimentally or by accident, and bells would go off. Some of it was innate. Paul picked up instruments the way some people pick up new languages; he had the ear for it, with all the proper accents in place. And George, especially, seemed consumed with fundamentals and technique. Both handled guitars with stunning self-assuredness and possessed the power to make their instruments hum like Maseratis. John had everything else: the right sensibility and taste. And it all fit together in a stylized groove.

  And then there was the matter of ambition. “There was a feeling we all had, built into us all, that something was going to happen,” George recalled in his memoirs. Who else would have presumed to write their own songs? Or team up so audaciously with a manager? Ambition. It was never more apparent than in their long-range outlook: none of them had anything to fall back on. Their peers all had day jobs; the Beatles had never even thought seriously about punching a clock. It was only ever music, only the band, only the Beatles. There were no other options. This was their life’s work.

  If perfectionism was one objective, continuity was another. Neither John nor Paul wanted to rock the boat, so it was George who ultimately was “responsible for stirring things up.” As a perfectionist, it bugged him that the drum patterns remained so static. Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk! Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk! They provided no contrast to the music, no matter what was being played.

  Paul’s own deep passion for drumming had never been concealed. He’d long had a trap set at home, which he mastered as he did all the other instruments in the band. And during jam sessions at the Blue Angel, with Gerry Marsden and Wally Shepherd, he “always made for the drums.” Earl Preston’s drummer, Ritchie Galvin, recalled encountering Paul and Pete huddled at the Mandolin Club one afternoon in 1962 after a lunchtime session at the Cavern. “Paul was showing Pete the drum pattern that he wanted on a particular song,” Galvin remembered. “Pete tried to do it, but he didn’t get it.”

  And by now it was no secret that the other Beatles resented Mona Best. The band had used her house as its unofficial headquarters since 1960, camping in the Bests’ upstairs Oriental living room between gigs and using her phone to confirm dates; as a result, they suffered her persistent interruptions—and opinions. “Mona was an attractive, strong, very forceful woman, in the tradition of John’s aunt Mimi,” says Bill Harry, who admired her. “She ran the Casbah with an iron fist, and she tried to run the Beatles with the same vigor.” Radio personality Spencer Leigh shared Harry’s regard for Mona but wrote that “she could also be a harridan.” “If she said it was Sunday when it was Tuesday,” one musician relented, “you’d say it was Sunday too.” Her high-handedness seemed particularly accentuated when the Beatles were there holding court. She came to view herself as their adviser, their patron, and the Beatles, who were fiercely independent, to say nothing of chauvinistic, “didn’t want her interference.” Only one person dreaded her more, and that was Brian Epstein. She was the bane of his existence, always on his back, always haranguing him, demeaning his position, challenging his authority, belittling him. In self-defense, he referred to her impersonally, as that woman, never by name.

  Aside from a two-month stint with Tony Sheridan, Ringo had been with the Hurricanes for four years, but rumors abounded that he was again up for grabs. Kingsize Taylor’s band, on tour in Hamburg, was losing its drummer, Dave Lovelady, who was due back at school in September to finish his degree in architecture. “Teddy wrote to Ringo to ask him if he’d take my place,” Lovelady recalled. A decent raise was proposed: £5 a week more than the £15 Rory was paying him. A 35 percent hike was nothing to sneeze at. “[Ringo] wrote back to say that he would [do it,] and he gave Rory Storm his notice.”

  But Ringo and Johnny Byrne were tight. They had shared a camp chalet at Pwllheli for two years running, and this summer at Skegness, on the east coast of England, arrangements remained the same. Truthfully, their chalet was an awful hole—a shabby little room so primitive that it had no electricity aside from a solitary bulb hanging by a frayed cord. But otherwise, “the lifestyle,” as Byrne says, “was ideal.” There was a snazzy new performing center, the Rock ’n Calypso Ballroom, with energetic crowds and “an electric-type atmosphere” that recharged itself every night. The boys would get up late and go for a swim or a horseback ride. Johnny and Ringo, in particular, enjoyed some lazy roller-skating in the afternoons, then came back for “a lie-in.” If they behaved, Rory’s sister, Iris, who worked in the camp dance troupe, brought some of her friends around. Recalled Johnny, “We had food, money in our pockets. We weren’t getting our hands dirty. And the girls! We did quite well with them at Butlins. There were different campers every week, so nothing ever got messy. After all, they were the main reason we’d gotten into rock ’n roll—the money and the girls. What else was there? Well, maybe the music.”

  Ringo remembered the scene was “fabulous… the best place we could have been.” And his years with the Hurricanes were loaded with similar memories. “But Ringo was like all of us,” according to Byrne, “ruthless. You had to be to stay on top. Rory was that way; I was, too. And the Beatles were the most ruthless of all. No one was going to stand in the way of success.”

  On the morning of August 15, 1962, Johnny and Ringo had slept late after having been up “until nearly dawn” the night before following a raucous show and its vital cool-down. Two weeks earlier Johnny and Ringo had been unceremoniously “put off” the Butlins grounds for “security purposes.” At two in the morning, after yet another uproarious show, the boys had been caught “committing the cardinal sin” of playing music in their chalet. The two young girls lounging there, however innocently, didn’t help matters.

  So as not to jeopardize the gig, the two boys had rented a trailer, laying out a precious £2 per week, and parked it rather presumptuously opposite the Butlins front gates. “Ringo had one end, I had the other,” Byrne recalled. They decorated it with posters of American rock ’n roll artists and brought the record player out of hiding. Johnny brewed coffee; Ringo heated “tins of beans,” which before would have tipped them to “the camp Gestapo.” And it was there, on that Wednesday morning in August, just after ten o’clock, they were so rudely awakened by a knock.

  Drowsily, Byrne answered the door. “It was John and Paul,” Johnny recalls vividly. “As soon as I saw them, I knew what they wanted. They wanted Ringo.” Apparently they’d been driving since dawn, roaring along the narrow highways toward Wales, around the sprawl of Manchester and Sheffield, then winding, with slow progress that continued mile after mile, through Wragby, Horncastle, and Spilsby, traveling even narrower roads that took a good five hours to negotiate. Byrne invited the two Beatles inside, but he grew increasingly distraught at the sight of them. He loved Rory Storm and the music they’d made together, and this development had disaster written all over it. As Johnny rubbed his eyes, sinking into the dull reality of the situation, John Lennon confirmed his worst suspicions. “Pete Best is leaving [the band],” John stated, “and we want Ringo to join.” Everyone stood there awkwardly, embarrassed, as Johnny and Ringo got dressed. “Let’s find Rory,” they suggested, and set off for their leader’s chalet.

  It took more than two hours to locate Storm. He’d been in the coffee shop having breakfast and had sunk into a tranquil reverie. He was thinking, planning new routines, sending out discouraging vibes to any friendly camper who might otherwise intrude, so much so that he missed hearing the repeated announcements blaring over the camp’s P.A. system: �
��Would Rory Storm report to Reception. Rory Storm—please report to Reception.”

  When he finally arrived, Johnny, Ringo, John, and Paul were already deep into discussions about an exit strategy and timing. The Beatles were pressuring Ringo to leave immediately with them. They had a gig that night at the Cavern and planned to introduce him as their new mate. The whole situation caught Rory totally off guard. “He was angry,” Byrne recalls. “We’d had no warning. Ringo had been with us for four years. We were in the middle of a season-long gig, doing two shows a day—and suddenly your drummer’s going on you.” Pinched by longtime pals. Still, even the ambitious Rory recognized a golden opportunity when he heard one. The Beatles were offering Ringo a king’s ransom: £25 a week! As Byrne says, “They were also waving a recording contract around, which was a big thing in 1962. Nobody was queuing up to sign us. If they had come to me and said, ‘George is leaving and we want you to replace him,’ I wouldn’t have thought about it for very long.” The same went for Rory; a pragmatist at heart, he refused to stand in Ringo’s way. Yes, he was annoyed, but he also knew the score. “You should go,” Rory told him with a shrug of inevitability.

  But not so fast. Rory insisted that Ringo finish out the week: two more nights. If Ringo left them cold, they’d likely lose a week’s wages, which would sour everything. Ringo, who “was embarrassed” by the state of affairs, agreed. And reluctantly, so did John and Paul before they headed back to Liverpool—empty-handed but content. They got what they had come for, a drummer and, ultimately, a legacy.

  Forevermore, the Beatles would be John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

  [II]

  The Beatles played a routine show that evening at the Cavern. While they were thrashing away onstage, Brian sauntered into the bandroom, where Bob Wooler was enjoying a sly nip, and asked: “Is it possible for us to talk later?” The men agreed to meet at the Old Dive, one of the furtive late-night pubs on Williamson Square, where anyone demanding entrance was required to knock three times at the window, Prohibition-style, and ask for “Joe.”

  Sometime after eleven o’clock, Bob found Brian in the back room, hunched over a bottle of gin. “He was terribly upset,” Wooler recalls. And he wasted no time in delivering the news: Pete was being sacked. Moreover, the other Beatles had insisted that it was Brian’s duty, as their manager, to “do the dirty work.” Desperate to get it over with, he’d already made an appointment to meet Pete at NEMS the next morning for the showdown.

  Wooler was stunned. “Why?” he wondered aloud.

  Brian ignored the question. “How do you think the fans will react?” he asked.

  Wooler was frank. “They’re not going to like this at all. Pete’s very popular.”

  Following Wednesday night’s gig at the Cavern, Pete made arrangements to have Neil Aspinall drive the Beatles to Thursday’s gig at the tony Riverpark Ballroom, the first of four weekly performances there that would run through the end of September. As was usual, Pete scheduled convenient pickup times with each of the guys so that he could coordinate it with Neil. When he got to John, however, there was some hesitation. Pete thought that “his face looked scared” and was confused when John told him not to worry about it, “he would go on his own.” That didn’t make sense. The Beatles always traveled together to gigs, especially when they went someplace so distant. Moreover, John didn’t drive. But to each his own, Pete decided. He certainly wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.

  On the morning of August 16, a typical summer day in the muggiest part of England, Neil Aspinall drove Pete to NEMS and dropped him off at the curb in Whitechapel, outside the busy shop. Pete went upstairs alone. There, he “found Brian in a very uneasy mood,” straining for meaningless pleasantries and chitchat. This wasn’t the usual rule. Brian normally got right down to business, but this time he “hedged a little,” and although the manager’s smile never wavered, there was not only nervousness behind it but fear. He was delaying the inevitable, trying to build up some nerve. Finally, he just blurted it out: “Pete, I have some bad news for you. The boys want you out, and it’s already been arranged that Ringo will join the band on Saturday.”

  Pete stared dazedly at Brian. The news knocked him sideways. He was “in a state of shock.” After a short but numb swoon, he managed only one word, mumbling, “Why?”

  Rather than tap-dance, Brian told him the truth: the other Beatles didn’t think he was a good enough drummer. And neither did George Martin, who had decided to sign the band to Parlophone. The Beatles had known this for two weeks and had kept it from Pete. Brian could be shrill and irrational at times, a bully with a knack for delivering a vicious tongue-lashing, for picking apart his victim for sport, but he was also a master of tact, appealing to people’s most unresolved feelings, expressing sympathetic concern, and deploying great reserves of compassion when the situation demanded it—and this was one of those situations. There was no ruthlessness to it, he assured Pete in as soothing a voice as was possible. It was a business decision. “The lads don’t want you in the group anymore.”

  It’s unlikely that any of Brian’s finesse had a consoling effect on Pete. It hit him so suddenly, caught him so seriously off guard, Pete recalled, that “my mind was in a turmoil.” All that time he’d put in with the Beatles, their would-be friendship, the dreams. Now, for this to happen—on the eve of a record deal. He considered it a “stab in the back.” Partly to defuse Pete’s rage and partly to remain in the boy’s good graces, Brian offered to form another group around Pete.

  Somehow, as Pete stalked out of the office, Brian found the nerve to ask him to play the three remaining gigs before Ringo joined the Beatles on Saturday. And somehow Pete, insanely, agreed. If Brian believed him, it was because there was never any doubt in his mind, or anyone else’s, that Pete was an honorable guy. But like his drumming, the agony became too overpowering. The promise rang hollow; it was nothing more than an exit line.

  Pete’s face, pale, downcast, alerted Neil Aspinall to the fact that something had gone wrong. “What’s happened?” he asked.

  Pete barked back: “They’ve kicked me out!”

  Neil, skimming the spaces between what he heard and guessed, suggested they go someplace to talk. The Grapes, opposite the Cavern, was nearby, and the two boys dug in there to drink and sulk.

  Pete was stunned and demoralized, not just by the dismissal but by the cutthroat way in which it had been handled. Where were the Beatles? he wanted to know. Why hadn’t they been men enough to tell him themselves? A confrontation would have made it easier to accept. This way just “disgusted” him. Neil agreed, vowing to quit his job as road manager in protest over Pete’s treatment. Neil’s loyalty to Pete was complicated. The dark, handsome Aspinall, just turned twenty-one, was a different type of “guest” or “lodger” in the Bests’ house than history has recorded. Throughout his residency there, he’d been having an affair with Mona Best, well into her forties. By the end of 1961, she was pregnant, and the birth of a son, born on July 21, 1962, less than a month before Pete’s dismissal, was registered as Vincent Roag Best despite—or maybe to blur—the fact that Neil Aspinall was his father.* Neil and Pete were like brothers—now perhaps more. It was all Pete could do to talk him out of quitting that night.

  Pete promised Brian that he would finish out the week, but by the time he got home the absurdity of that idea loomed large. “I’m not going to the gig,” he told Neil. “I couldn’t play with them, knowing that this has happened and I’m out.” Later he would admit: “Once I was home at Hayman’s Green, I broke down and wept.”

  [III]

  Pete’s fate mattered naught to Ringo Starr. “I never felt sorry, for [him],” Ringo admitted much later, dismissing the entire matter by saying: “I was not involved. Besides, I felt I was a much better drummer than he was.” Unlike Pete, he would be considered by many to be the Luckiest Man Alive. But Ringo Starr began life battling more adversity than Job.

  The saga of Ringo’s personal history—more like a Di
ckensian chronicle of misfortune—is one of the erratic tragic chapters in the glittering Beatles legacy. In contrast to the others, who were middle- (John) or working-class (Paul and George), Ringo was “ordinary, poor,” a hardship case. “He was not a barefoot, ragged child,” recalls Marie Maguire Crawford, a neighbor who doubled as his surrogate sister, “but like all of the families who lived in the Dingle, he was part of an ongoing struggle to survive.”

  The Dingle, which was christened by immigrant settlers after the arcadian glade in Ireland, bore little resemblance to its romantic namesake. One of the oldest inner-city districts in Liverpool, it was grim and “really rough,” the very edge of civilization, and housed the “artisan working class”—a miscellany of carpenters, plumbers, joiners, and “others with a trade,” who became as tightly intertwined as the terrace houses. Sixty families, a mixed bag of Irish and Welsh, were often jammed shoulder to shoulder on a short, sooty Dingle street, each clinging to its tiny stake, impervious to the vagaries of fate. There was nothing grandiose about their provisions: generally, a poorly ventilated, postage-stamp-size house patched together by crumbling plaster walls, with a rear door that opened onto an outhouse. Parents shooed their children to the embrace of nearby Prince’s Park, on which it is said New York’s Central Park planners had based their design. “Most of us were brought up there,” recalls Marie Maguire Crawford. “People lit coal fires, and so the green parks became our lungs.”

  When Richard Starkey, Ringo’s father, married Elsie Gleave in 1936, he followed the Dingle tradition and set up house a scant hundred yards from where he was raised. The Starkeys moved into an unusually roomy—Ringo recalled it as being “palatial”—three-bedroom terrace house at 9 Madryn Street, a narrow artery lined with humble plane trees (a species known to every local schoolchild who recited: “The plane trees / kind to the poor, dull city”) and grids of discolored, cracked pavement. Richard’s parents, John and Annie, lived nearby at number 59, just as later his sister, Nancy, would move into number 21, following her marriage to Tony Christian. The Starkey houses might well have been interchangeable in the way the occupants shuffled back and forth between them all day long.