With the Beatles

by Alistair Taylor

  In many ways, despite his sexual preferences, Brian was rather strait-laced. In early 1962, I was approached in the shop by a couple and their very young-looking daughter who nervously asked to see Mr Epstein. Brian was in London for the whole week so I ushered them through to Brian’s office. The girl was called Jennifer and she was a pretty little thing of about 16 or 17. The father spoke first.

  ‘Well, it’s like this. We don’t want to bother anyone.’

  The mother cut in, ‘Our Jennifer is five months pregnant and the father is one of your Beatles – John,’ she said emphatically.

  The girl winced and I began to feel desperately sorry for her.

  The mother continued, ‘It’s not right. She was only young when she went with him and I know it takes two but we reckon she were taken advantage of. She’s going to miss out on her exams and we’ve no money to take care of someone else’s baby. We want to see this John pays up in full for this baby’s upkeep. Our Jennifer says she is determined to keep the baby and we will give it a home of course.’

  I took down some notes of the conversation and promised I would report the whole thing to Brian and get back to them. Their home address was in Northenden in Manchester. I remember they did not have a phone and the mother said if she had not had a letter sorting everything out she would have to take this further. Jennifer never spoke. But as the troubled family got up to go, she handed me a small purple envelope with ‘John’ written on it. I took it from her and the mother glared at me as if I had personally deflowered her little daughter myself.

  Brian rang in every day, and when he called that afternoon I broke the sorry story to him. He sounded very upset for the girl but he asked me, ‘Do you believe them?’

  I said that I did. There was an awful, lonely sadness in the girl’s eyes that said more than any of the mother’s angry accusations.

  Two days later, he was back and we discussed the matter in detail. The Beatles were at a crucial stage in their development and Brian was clearly concerned about the threat of a scandal and the effect it might have on their budding careers. The early ’60s were very different days from the liberated times that so quickly followed.

  Brian arranged for the family to come back in and see him personally. He sent a car for them and we met them together. This time the mother was more subdued. Brian was very charming and he expressed enormous concern for the girl’s wellbeing. He apologised on John’s behalf and tried to let Jennifer down gently about the chances of renewing their relationship. Then he said, ‘As the Beatles’ manager, I am responsible and I have no intention of shirking my responsibilities. I think it is in everyone’s interests for us to strike an agreement that takes care of the situation.’

  Brian agreed to pay £250 and so much a week maintenance for the baby until it was 16. I remember that figure was to be based upon rates of payment that applied at the time. He wrote out a cheque there and then. And it was conditional upon the family keeping the baby’s existence out of the newspapers. Any publicity and the whole deal was off, said Brian firmly.

  Afterwards, Brian was quite upset. ‘That poor young girl,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it sad that sex always seems to have such an ugly side to it? That family could have been smashed apart by this. Do you think we have put them back together again?’

  ‘You’re sure they were telling the truth, then, Brian?’ I asked. He looked shocked. He had taken every word they had said at face value and believed them completely.

  ‘Alistair,’ he said imperiously, ‘I can’t believe you can even think a family would put themselves through that sort of ordeal unless they were being completely honest. And not a word about all of this to John. He has enough to concentrate on. This whole affair is between you and I. The subject is now closed.’

  But Brian said afterwards that what had perturbed him the most was the young girl, Jennifer. She looked a real little waif in her school uniform. Brian wondered what on earth she would have done if her parents and he had not taken charge of the situation. I said, ‘Brian, some parents would have kicked her straight out of the door.’

  He put his hand to his head in surprise. ‘How awful!’ he said, and I could see that he meant it.

  My eventful association with Brian was interrupted for a few months because Lesley’s asthma became so bad that the doctor advised her to live in a drier area than the misty north-west. At the same time, I was offered a good job with Pye Records and I had to move quickly. Brian was away on business in Germany so I actually explained why I had to leave to his brother Clive. When he got back to Liverpool, Brian was absolutely furious. How could I leave him in the lurch like this at such an important time? Had I no loyalty? I was shocked by his reaction. We almost had a physical fight, although I can’t quite imagine Brian actually using his fists. But he was livid when he found out. He went white with anger and grabbed me and shoved me. He shouted, ‘Get out. Go now. Get out of the office.’ I tried to explain that I had to decide very quickly and it was for Lesley’s health but he didn’t want to know. He almost swore, but I don’t think he did in the end. I never, ever heard him swear. He just shook me bodily.

  The staff all came to find out what was going on. The shop manageress, Josie Barber, came to see what all the shouting was about. She looked stunned to see him in such a state. Brian wouldn’t listen to reason and he certainly didn’t want to listen to me, so I sadly picked up my coat and left. He slammed the door behind me and I was shaking with emotion by the end.

  But Brian’s volcanic emotions soon subsided and not long afterwards I bumped into my old boss by chance in the corridors of Pye Records. The company had signed a new Brian Epstein artist called Tommy Quigley, whose name Brian had wisely changed to Quickly. All acrimony had disappeared and Brian greeted me like an old friend. He swept me off to lunch at Bentley’s and we spent the meal apologising to each other for our last encounter. Before you could say ‘Top of the Pops’ he had offered me a job, as General Manager of NEMS Enterprises in charge of their new London headquarters. Brian had finally outgrown Liverpool. I needed about a milli-second to consider. Brian and the Beatles were still the best act in town and Lesley and I were now happily settled in London. I started on £1,500 a year which was a good salary then.

  To illustrate the sort of hard task-master that Brian Epstein was, before the meal had ended I had agreed to accompany him to his brand new flat in Whaddon House. There I was given the job of helping him to choose carpets and making sure they were ordered with underlay. My new official contract arrived at home the next day and at the bottom there was a PS, which was typical Brian. It said, ‘Don’t forget the underlay.’

  Brian said the boys demanded that I come with him to their very next concert for a reunion. That was at the East Ham Granada. And it turned out to be a very explosive evening for me. Beatlemania was now in full flight and it was a frightening experience. The cinema was besieged by thousands of screaming, chanting youngsters. The noise was exhilarating but the pushing and shoving tested the resources of the Metropolitan Police Force to the limit.

  In the dressing room, it was the usual casual chaos with Neil Aspinall struggling to control the inevitable hangers on and to protect the boys from their own astonishing popularity. Scriptwriter Alun Owen was there that night to discuss a film to be made the following summer and George Martin arrived with great news. He held up his hand for silence and announced, ‘Listen, everybody. I’ve got something important to tell you all. I have just heard the news from EMI that the advance sales of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” have topped the million mark.’

  That was the first time it had ever happened. Cheers and champagne ran round the dressing room but, as they died down, there was a mocking remark from John: ‘Yeah, great. But that means it’ll only be at number one for about a week.’ I don’t think he was joking.

  The Beatles’ actual performance that night was drowned out as usual by the hysteria from the audience. The boys gave it their impressive all and the crowd went collectively insane.
It was a breath-taking experience from the wings. At one point, I was convinced my ears were going to burst.

  The boys always closed their set with ‘Twist and Shout’ and I had only just heard the familiar final chords when George shouted, ‘Come on, Al’, and I joined in the dash to beat the fans. They grabbed me and almost bodily propelled me along corridors and down passages to the stage door which was opened for us as we sprinted. Outside, the gleaming Austin Princess limousine was there with the engine running and the doors open. In front was a police car with blue light already flashing and behind was a motorcycle escort.

  I took all this in in the flash that it took us to cross the pavement and leap into the car. Then Ringo got his foot stuck in the closing door and everyone started yelling at him. When I looked straight ahead, I realised why as hordes of fans looked on the point of breaking through the thin blue line of straining policemen. Even I started yelling at Ringo to get his foot in so we could shut the door and escape. It was only a few seconds but it seemed like ages before he freed his foot, and we sped off to the Beatles’ flat in Green Street. We shot past the marauding fans just in time and hurtled through London, helped through inconvenient red traffic lights by our police escort.

  We had a marvellous night when we arrived. There were just the four Beatles, Neil and myself. The Beatles rolled a joint or three and I clung to my scotch and Coke and they laughed about the early days. They took the mickey out of me for being straight, but that’s me. I’m always happier in my suit than in the latest fashion item and always happier with alcohol than drugs. The boys took the piss, certainly, but in that friendly English way that let me enjoy the process. It was great to be back in the fold. It was like being a member of the best gang in the world being on the fringe of the Beatles. Apparently, you could do anything, go anywhere, and be anybody.

  I realised early on in my return, however, how terribly trapped Beatlemania had made them. They couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed. There were fans camped outside their homes night and day and everything they said or did was monitored. I’d have taken drugs or any damn thing if I had to live with that pressure. Often they would almost retreat into just the four of them. They were lucky they had each other with whom to share that bizarre experience of genuine superstardom. I think being a solo version of the Beatles would send anyone round the twist, which Elvis sadly proved.

  The boys used to say that their whole life was now confined to boxes. John explained it to me first in the back of a limo.

  ‘This is one of our smaller boxes,’ he joked, talking like a tour guide. ‘We will live in this just for an hour or two until we are pushed into our next box which is the dressing room. We drink and prepare in there before entering a larger box, the concert hall. And next month we are touring in America which will entail squeezing into a small box called an aeroplane. Outside of all these boxes are people screaming at us. So we don’t go outside the boxes.’

  John was joking when he first described their lives, but they did become increasingly trapped and embattled by their spiralling fame. It always scared me and I was always delighted to be able to switch off the screams of adulation simply by leaving their company. ‘Our trouble is that we can never walk away from the Beatles, so we’ll have to smash them up to get away from all this nonsense,’ said John darkly one night.

  By the autumn of 1963, the country was firmly in the grip of Beatlemania. The Beatle Queue became a permanent feature of British life as youngsters showed they were prepared to wait for hours on end just for a chance of getting tickets to see their heroes. They arrived with transistor radios, blankets and hot water bottles and with or without their parents’ blessing. The newspapers gravely recorded events across the country, as the craving to see the Beatles became a national affliction.

  In Newcastle, a policewoman was kicked as fans pushed forward and ambulances dealt with more than 100 cases of fainting or exhaustion among young girls. In Hull, there were 3,000 disappointed teenagers left after 5,000 tickets had been sold and the demand usually outstripped supply by much more than that. Brian described it as the biggest thing to hit Britain since the panic to see Frank Sinatra just after the war, but I’m not quite sure how he remembered that.

  The Beatles flew back in to Heathrow after a trip to Sweden and fans ran riot at the airport. There were questions in Parliament about the Beatles’ fans’ behaviour and one MP suggested the withdrawal of the police to see what happened. If that idiotic suggestion had been followed, the boys would have been literally torn limb from limb.

  We had received an official request not to travel in the school holidays. As if Beatles’ fans were not going to skive school if it meant getting a chance to see their heroes landing or taking off.

  I was in charge of all the travel and found myself mainly using Pan-Am, largely because BOAC (as it then was) were so unbelievably pompous. We had to smuggle the boys in whichever way necessary to minimise the chaos but BOAC were so sniffy they didn’t even like the boys going straight out to the plane. ‘We only do that for MPs and bishops, not pop stars,’ said one official to me, thus losing his company millions of pounds’ worth of business at a stroke.

  It sounds corny, but the greatest thing about my job is that the Beatles were just such fun to be with. There was never a dull moment. They had been trying to become famous and rich and successful since they were at school. When it happened, they were sure as hell going to enjoy it. John was the leader then, in spite of what everyone said about there not being a leader. He was the quickest, the strongest and the funniest. He knew exactly what he was doing when he spoke to the audience at the Royal Variety Show: ‘The ones in the cheap seats clap your hands.’ He then nodded towards the Royal Box and added, ‘The rest of you, just rattle your jewellery.’

  The remark brought the house down but it was never as spontaneous as it sounded. John considered several different versions of the joke beforehand but he rejected references to throwing tiaras in the air or waving your crown. As usual, his carefully chosen words were absolutely spot on. Mind you, Paul never really got the comic credit for setting the irreverent tone when they followed Sophie Tucker and he announced how delighted they were to be following their favourite American group.

  The following day, the reviews were ecstatic. BEATLES ROCK THE ROYALS said the Daily Express. NIGHT OF TRIUMPH FOR FOUR YOUNG MEN said the Daily Mail, which added underneath YES, THE ROYAL BOX WAS STOMPING. In fact, the Queen Mother had particularly enjoyed ‘Twist and Shout’, it was reported. And when the Queen asked where they would be appearing next, Paul told her ‘Slough’, only to receive the immortal deadpan reply from Her Majesty, ‘Oh, that’s near us.’

  Marlene Dietrich was on the show and she was completely knocked out by the Beatles. She told Brian afterwards, ‘It was a joy to be with them. I adore these Beatles.’ Marlene was fascinated by the boys. She kept saying, ‘They are so sexy. They have the girls so frantic for them they must have quite a time.’

  Marlene was not wrong. The Beatles were healthy young men who liked sex as much as the next man and had rather more opportunity for multiple partners than he did. After every concert, the best-looking female fans would be given instructions as to how to get back to the hotel. It was one of the perks of the job and the boys liked their perks.

  They were only in their early 20s, remember, and generally they were rampant. They had this amazing power to point and say, ‘You, you, you and you,’ and lovely young women would arrive at the hotel simply begging for sex. Brian’s eyebrows raised in astonishment sometimes, but I think he knew he’d have been dead if he’d tried to control this particular facet of Beatle behaviour. He wasn’t Machiavellian. The four guys’ lives were pretty much their own.

  The year of 1963 was the year the Beatles really arrived on the scene in a big way. The newspapers were way behind the public, but to be fair there had been some other huge, long-running stories, ranging from the Profumo sex scandal to the Great Train Robbery. As autumn drew on, the papers
required some light relief from political upheavals and they decided to follow their readers and discover the Beatles.

  Of the popular papers, who are now anxious to scream from the rooftops about every new minor pop talent, it was the Daily Mirror in the pompous shape of Donald Zec who weighed in first with a two-page profile headlined FOUR FRENZIED LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROYS WHO ARE EARNING £5,000 A WEEK. He had been to a concert in Luton and then entertained the Beatles for tea in his flat.

  The money was something of an exaggeration but Brian hardly minded as the coverage was long overdue. And having ignored the Beatles for so long, the papers were anxious to make up for lost stories. The Express had them on the front page for five consecutive days after the Royal Variety Show. But newspapers are difficult beasts to control and not all of the stories were what Brian wanted. It soon came out that John was not only married to Cynthia but that they had a baby son called Julian.

  The second LP, With the Beatles, was rushed out to astonishing sales figures. Advance orders topped a quarter of a million, more than for any previously released LP. The Beatles were already making history.

  Brian and the Beatles were always fun to be with in those heady early days, but I tried not to travel in a car with Brian driving too often. He was a truly terrible driver, although I never knew him to have an accident. He caused plenty, mind you. In the winter of 1964, the Beatles were playing at a huge cinema in Manchester and Brian decided he would drive the two of us over in his little maroon MGB. My heart sank. Brian announced we were going for something to eat and eventually we spotted a restaurant. Fortunately, there was a parking space just outside which would have happily accommodated an ocean-going liner. But this still represented a considerable challenge to Brian. He reversed at speed until we heard a sickening crunch from the rear. Brian grimaced and turned the radio up a notch. We lurched forward and gave the bread van in front a friendly nudge. By then, the kerb was just about within walking distance so I took the opportunity to abandon ship before Brian’s manoeuvring did anyone any lasting damage. As I got out, I saw the figure of a very large policeman looming over me. At first, I thought from the tears in his eyes that he was upset about something. Then I noted from the heaving of the shoulders and the spluttering sounds that he was laughing. When Brian got out with as much dignity as he could muster, the policeman was in such a state of hysteria he couldn’t find the breath to tick him off.