The Beatles

by Bob Spitz

  The Beatles didn’t stick around for any last-minute backslaps. Instead, they were whisked a few miles east to the British embassy, where a “champagne party and masked charity ball” was held ostensibly in their honor. This was precisely the kind of function they routinely avoided, full of stuffed shirts and other genteel functionaries who regarded the Beatles as a novelty. The embassy was packed with well-dressed British diplomats and their families for whom the Beatles provided a much-needed glimmer of home pride. Lavish trays of food stretched from one side of the ballroom to the other. And as the boys made their entrance down a grand swan-shaped staircase to the rotunda, it seemed as though the entire floor of dancers swirled around them in greeting. It was a lovely gesture. The British ambassador, Sir David Ormsby-Gore, proved gracious and hospitable, even chuckling when Ringo, who looked him up and down, asked: “So, what do you do?”

  That night it was Ringo who, in a mock Etonian accent, managed to talk John out of making a scene while announcing the winners of the embassy raffle, daring the recipients to exchange their signed copies of Meet the Beatles “for a Frank Sinatra.” But as the raffle presentation wound down, a debutante snuck up behind Ringo and lopped off a hank of his hair with nail scissors. That did it. Ringo swung around and said, “What the hell do you think you are doing?” He was furious, totally out of character. “This lot here are terrifying—much worse than the kids,” he fumed. John started for the door, swearing under his breath, with Ringo right behind him, calling for a cab. It was all they could do not to make a scene. “They were very sad,” recalled photographer Harry Benson, who was part of the Beatles’ entourage. “They looked as if they wanted to cry. John, in particular. They weren’t pugnacious. They were humiliated.”

  All of the Beatles felt the same way. They knew how the social set regarded them—four yobbos from Liverpool who’d gotten lucky—how people like that were slumming in their presence. People like that. The boys had played along, acquiescing for Brian Epstein even when they dreaded attending such functions. It was part of the game, they decided, though not fully understanding the rules. But that night had finished it. Yobbos they might be, but that didn’t render them insensitive. It didn’t matter what Brian thought it might do for their career. They wouldn’t play that part of the game again, not with people like that, not ever.

  The next day most of the entourage flew back to New York, while the Beatles and a handful of selected journalists returned on the train. What should have been a relaxed trip up the East Coast turned out to be another long ordeal. The nuisance and scrutiny of clicking cameras acted like a magnifying lens, focusing the anxiety and resentment of the previous night to an incendiary point. George Martin described the experience as “some giant three-ring circus from which there was no let-up.” John, still seething, attempted to bury his nose in a book but was hounded relentlessly by photographers to “be a good sport.” It was as shabby as he’d ever been treated. “The only place we ever got any peace,” George recalled, “was when we got in the suite and locked ourselves in the bathroom. The bathroom was about the only place you could have any peace.”

  There was the usual mob scene at Pennsylvania Station when the train arrived in New York. In an effort to clear crowds from in front of the Plaza, the police on detail outside the hotel had announced that the Beatles were going straight from the train to Carnegie Hall. As a result, thousands of fans jammed the upper waiting area, with the overflow milling through the lower concourse and scattered along the platforms. In no time it became a perilous scene. The transit police force was unprepared to handle such an enormous crowd and panicked when a mad rush of kids broke through a line of barricades to greet the arriving train.

  Unbeknownst to the fans, however, the Beatles’ car had been detached from the train and diverted to an isolated platform at the opposite end of the station, where security guards planned to evacuate them by private elevator. Yet, resourceful kids had already anticipated that, too, and in the end the boys merely charged up the stairs and jumped into a taxi idling on Seventh Avenue.

  The Beatles appeared twice that evening at Carnegie Hall, lounging between shows in an elegantly appointed green room that had provided sanctuary to such icons as Tchaikovsky, Ravel, and Judy Garland. If the Beatles felt awed by the august surroundings, it didn’t show. To them, it wasn’t a shrine but “simply another theater, like the Albert Hall or the Finsbury Park Astoria.” They were totally relaxed, chain-smoking American cigarettes, not at all intimidated about performing at the most prestigious and legendary concert hall in America, if not the world. Nor were they fazed by the extraordinary circumstances that marked the occasion. Until that night, no rock ’n roll act had ever set foot on the Carnegie Hall stage, which was governed like a prize duchy by a bluenosed board of directors. Even a bid by Elvis Presley had been rejected. Sid Bernstein claimed that he convinced the board that an appearance by the Beatles would go toward promoting international relations, but it seems more likely that he misrepresented them as a folk group.

  Considering the historic importance of the concert, however, Capitol had every intention of recording it for a future release. By February 3, a deal had been struck, with George Martin on hand to guide the production in tandem with Capitol’s East Coast A&R man, Voyle Gilmore. Carnegie Hall granted permission in exchange for a trivial $600 fee. There remained only one hurdle: the American Federation of Musicians registered an objection over the proposed use of nonunion personnel on the session; in essence, they refused to allow George Martin to work in the States. Capitol promptly offered to pay his membership dues or do whatever was required to solve the problem, but the union held firm, claiming it would set an irreversible precedent. Without Martin, the Beatles wouldn’t participate, ultimately killing any possibility for a live album.

  In the long run, it was just as well. There was no way for them to connect through the impenetrable wall of screaming that went up the moment they took to the stage. “Yells and shouts rose to an absolutely ear-shattering volume,” wrote Jack Hutton, the editor for Melody Maker, who reduced the crowd’s reaction to a single word: “bedlam.” No one could hear a word they sang, not that it seemed to matter to the young fans. Kids tore up and down the aisles, threw stuffed animals and handfuls of jelly beans. It was a free-for-all; there was no shape or purpose to the adulation. “A move by any Beatle in any direction induced renewed and more piercing cries.” In Washington the Beatles had worked the crowd like politicians, but here in New York they remained aloof, frustrated by the audience’s apparent refusal to listen. Although they remained earnest, if workmanlike, through the opening numbers, John’s impatience finally broke through after the seventh song, when he stepped forward, “looked the audience sternly in the mouth and yelled, ‘Shut up!’ ” The indifference to the music became, apparently, too much to bear. After a meteoric appearance, lasting only thirty-four minutes, the Beatles dropped their instruments and headed for the wings.

  The critics treated the show less as a concert than a skirmish. None of the dailies devoted so much as a paragraph to the quality of the performance. The coverage focused entirely on audience reaction, which had mystified the forum of middle-aged reviewers whose experience with delirious behavior was limited to bravos at the opera. The New York Times paid only backhanded respect to the Beatles’ “thumping, twanging rhythms” and referred obliquely to a number as “a ballad of tender intent”; otherwise, its verdict on the music, including the hits, was nonexistent. Only the weekly New Yorker weighed in with an opinion that gave no more than the slenderest support to their talent: “They are worth listening to,” its intrepid reporter conceded, “even if they aren’t as good as the Everly Brothers, which they really aren’t.”

  The reviews, though condescending, were generally overlooked by the Beatles, who came to view the New York entertainment establishment as largely ignorant of what they were all about. More conspicuous, perhaps, was the absence of their peers, the local cadre of pop-music stars, none of whom made
an effort to meet them during their stay. Where was Gene Pitney or Dion and the Belmonts or Lesley Gore or Frankie Valli? Where was Chubby Checker or the Singing Nun, for that matter? At a ceremony for ASCAP’s fiftieth anniversary, held at City Hall the day after the Carnegie shows, the geriatric songwriters seemed to go out of their way to distance themselves from these budding British upstarts. “I hear they write their own music,” one elderly songwriter insinuated, to which Dorothy Fields (the author of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love”) replied: “If you can call it writing.”

  The best was yet to come. The next day the Beatles left for Miami, to appear on another Ed Sullivan Show, broadcast live from Florida. “Miami was like paradise,” Paul recalled, dazzled by the difference between a tropical sun-drenched beachfront vista and New York. “The place itself is a bit like Blackpool, only with sunshine,” they wrote to friends not long after the trip. Gazing like “real tourists” at the palm trees and local “bathing beauties,” the Beatles landed at the Deauville Hotel—nicknamed “Beatle Central” by the press—where they immediately hit the beaches running. Unlike at the Plaza, where they’d basically been shut-ins, there was plenty of opportunity to soak in the sights. Several times a day the boys would slip into their “cozzies,” as Scousers called bathing suits, and head outside, wandering along the shore and chatting with people their own age. “It was a big time for us,” Paul recalled, “and there were all these lovely, gorgeous, tanned girls. We did a photo session by the beach and immediately asked them out.” The freedom they experienced there was a slender relief. Each time, the Beatles ventured farther and farther, gamboling in the bracing Atlantic surf, waterskiing, and tooling around on powerboats that skipped the waves at unbelievable speeds. As for nighttime entertainment, it was a movable feast, with the boys flitting from one club to another. Comedian Don Rickles was hurling insults in the Deauville’s buttoned-down lounge, the Supremes were appearing around the corner at another beachfront hotel, and the Coasters, their longtime “heroes” (Ringo considered them “rock ’n roll gods”), were the featured attraction at a local joint called the Mau Mau Lounge. “[Miami] was just about the most brilliant place I’d ever been to,” declared Ringo, who favored nightspots farther inland, at the open-air drive-in theaters that drew young crowds.

  But the relaxed, unfettered lifestyle didn’t last long. Within days the fans became a nuisance, and the Beatles left the Deauville—stashed in the back of a refrigerated butcher’s truck—relocating to a private estate on Star Island, borrowed from one of the local Capitol Records affiliates. The owners had left the place well provisioned. There was a pool in the backyard, an armed guard on the premises, and a yacht at their disposal, a gorgeous sixty-footer called The Southern Trail, courtesy of manufacturing tycoon Bernard Castro. On the rare days when nothing was scheduled, the boys lounged in picture-perfect, sunny, eighty-five-degree weather, but it was a busman’s holiday. Brian, who prized publicity, kept the Beatles tirelessly in the public eye. Even while they sunbathed, LIFE and the Saturday Evening Post conducted interviews poolside, interspersed with phone interviews to important disc jockeys, such as one with Bandstand’s Dick Clark, during which they gratefully acknowledged their reception in the States.

  The Beatles had reason to be grateful. By February 15, just two and a half weeks after its release and three weeks since their Ed Sullivan debut, Meet the Beatles claimed the top spot on Billboard’s album chart, establishing them across the country as an unqualified pop sensation. As for their singles, the Beatles practically owned the Hot 100: “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was number one, “She Loves You” number two, “Please Please Me” number twenty-nine, “I Saw Her Standing There” number thirty-five, and “My Bonnie” number fifty-four. Columnist Nat Hentoff reported that a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department had made the Beatles “an economic issue,” due to what he called “a gold drain” resulting from their record sales and personal appearances. When a skeptical reporter speculated in a column as to whether the Beatles’ longevity would last through the month, a colleague pointed out that their ratings for the second Ed Sullivan Show had doubled, and at that rate, there weren’t enough people left in the United States to cover the third appearance.

  Now everybody wanted to see the Beatles, as if they gave off some special juju, as if they would make everything all right, which, in a sense, they actually did. The Sullivan audience was filled with celebrities eager to lay eyes on the Beatles, among them boxing legends Joe Louis and Sonny Liston, who was scheduled to fight Cassius Clay the next week for the heavyweight title. Lest their presence be perceived as a show of favoritism, Paul felt compelled to predict that Clay would win the bout, which prompted an invitation from publicist Harry Conrad to meet the young boxer during a workout at his Fifth Street Gym.

  The Beatles had never been fight fans. They’d showed no interest in it while in Liverpool, even though Pete Best’s father, Johnny, promoted major boxing events at the stadium. But now they carved out precious time to stage a meeting with Cassius Clay. Why, suddenly, had that become a priority? According to George: “It was a big publicity thing. It was all part of being a Beatle, really, just getting lugged around and thrust into rooms full of press men taking pictures and asking questions.” It was no secret that Clay had upended the boxing world with his flamboyant personality. An incorrigible motormouth “who could talk at the rate of three hundred new words a minute,” he constantly played to the cameras, boasting comically and spouting silly strings of verse. No one as of yet had a real grip on his potential in the ring, but he’d impressed most critics as a first-rate entertainer. In that respect it seemed fitting that the greatest entertainers of the moment should veer into each other’s orbit.

  Yet suffice it to say, the dingy, smoke-filled gym he inhabited was thrown by the invasion of four shaggy-haired boys wearing skintight pants and white terry-cloth jackets. “Get a load of them Beatles. They look like girls,” grunted a ringside tough smoking a “fat cigar.” The Beatles, for their part, were feeling no more well disposed, bummed by the imposition and resentful of being kept waiting fifteen minutes for Clay to appear. “Where the fuck’s Clay?” Ringo asked no one in particular, clearly annoyed by the delay. Next it was John’s turn to grumble with a diva’s indulgence. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he told the others. But two Florida state troopers blocked the door until their host arrived.

  If the boys entertained thoughts about bolting, they evaporated the second Cassius Clay—the Louisville Lip—strode through the door. “Hello there, Beatles!” he roared, walloping them with his charm. (Clay, according to Harry Conrad, “didn’t know who they were.”) “We ought to do some road show together. We’ll get rich.” He was a fireball, a spirit, beautiful indeed, stamped for greatness and unspoiled by celebrity. The Beatles took an immediate liking to him, rolling right into the campy floor show that he staged with flair. He “insisted on having fun while he trained.” Luring them into the ring, he shouted, “Get down, you little worms,” to which the boys dropped on their backs. Then John instructed him to stand over them “with his gloved hand in a victory pose,” instructions Clay obediently followed. No one needed much coaxing. They were all, Beatles and boxer alike, consummate showmen; they knew their roles, hit all their cues. For an encore, Clay grabbed Ringo, hoisted him above his head, and swirled him around like a pinwheel—whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh—the way Popeye dispensed with his foes.

  The spectators and court jesters hollered and pounded their fists in approval; the cornerman, Drew “Bundini” Brown, mock-pleaded for the skinny drummer’s life; and forward stepped Clay to deliver a few lines with great profundity:

  “When Sonny Liston picks up

  the papers and sees,

  That the Beatles came to see me,

  He will get angry and I’ll knock him out in three.”

  It wasn’t exactly Byronic, though it delighted the authors of “Love, love me do / you know I love you.” For the Beatles, who were fast
on the way to becoming cultural icons, the twenty-two-year-old Clay was something of a soul mate. “He had the whole crazy scene under his thumb,” they were said to have told Brian. Glib and graceful, he was larger than life on his own terms, without all the bullshit. They left the gym a short time later “with great reluctance.” “Clay mesmerized them,” recalled photographer Harry Benson. But what captivated and moved them was not Clay’s charisma; it was his power. Clay looked beautiful, but he also punched like a sledgehammer. The Beatles knew that if Brian had his way, pretty and cute would be all that mattered. Still, the image they had cultivated, although it annoyed them, remained useful and, at the moment, afforded them something of a franchise.

  Perhaps no one appreciated this more than John Lennon. Later that day, when photographer Dezo Hoffman snapped a few candid shots of the boys waterskiing, John went ballistic. Image-conscious to the nines, he suspected that the pictures, in which his hair had been swept back off his forehead, would make him—a Beatle—appear bald. Instead of reasoning with Hoffman, John laced into him, berating the genial Czech in front of a flock of lackeys. One witness recalled how Hoffman stood clutching the camera to his chest as if somehow it might help shield an indiscreet blow. “Vied you do that?” he asked in his accented English. “You’ll look good.”

  “I’ll look like shit,” John replied. “Everyone will recognize that it’s me.”

  Chapter 25 Tomorrow Never Knows

  [I]

  The Beatles were dressed exactly as they had been two weeks earlier, although now the same dark suits were rumpled slightly from an eight-hour flight. As they came through the airliner’s forward door, they stood on the same platform, offering the same wandlike wave to the same monster crowd, except that in place of the 4,000 screaming, well-behaved teenagers, there were now “8,000 to 12,000” who, at the sight of their heroes, went on a rampage through Heathrow Airport, bending steel crash barriers and demolishing car roofs as if they were made of tinfoil. Forty girls fainted, bouquets of flowers were trampled, bins overturned, and the banners—WELCOME HOME BEATLES—shredded in the mad scramble to reach the boys.