* * *
* Mutti and Mama mean Mummy, Tante Rosa is Auntie Rosa, Röschen an affectionate diminutive of Rosa.
† Stuart was the only one to reply, sending Williams some money. How much he sent isn’t known, but Paul would recall “he paid something because he already owed Williams money for other things.”
‡ I LIKE IKE was a well-marketed slogan coined for Dwight D. Eisenhower’s successful Republican campaign for the 1952 US presidential election.
§ In a letter sent to an inquiring fan in May 1962, George wrote, “When Tony sings then it is me playing lead, but the break in the middle is Tony playing. The shouting in the background is Paul.”
‖ The running total from their two Hamburg visits: 918 hours’ playing—the equivalent of 612 ninety-minute shows or 1,836 half-hours—in just twenty-seven weeks.
British pop before the Beatles changed everything. George Martin at 30, the youngest A&R man in London, with the “teenage” acts he’s just recorded for a Parlophone 45. To his left, Jim Dale and four of the Vipers Skiffle Group; to his right, the King Brothers. EMI party, Abbey Road, Christmas 1957.
Scoffing scallops and talking rock. Paul, George and John loafing onstage in the art-school canteen. John’s friend and fellow student Ann Mason inked this 1958 lunchtime moment as it happened—the participants unaware—and recently found it in a sketchbook.
The debut of Japage 3 (pronounced “Jaypage”), rocking at brother Harry Harrison’s wedding reception in the saloon bar of Childwall Abbey Hotel, December 20, 1958. The rhythm was in the guitars, just two of them. Later, John poured his pint of ale over an elderly lady pianist, announcing, “I anoint thee David.” Typical John, typical Liverpool.
Liverpool, May 10, 1960—a composite of two photos to make the Beatles’ first group shot. Stuart Sutcliffe has joined John, Paul and George, with fill-in drummer Tommy Moore. They’re auditioning to back Billy Fury in a summer season on Great Yarmouth pier. Stuart is a beginner on bass, so Paul tells him to stand with his back to Fury and his manager Larry Parnes.
Summer 1960 at Butlin’s holiday camp in Pwllheli, North Wales. Richy has been Ringo since the end of ’59, as drummer with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes … Liverpool’s top group, though not for much longer. Larks here with Ty Brian (left), Johnny Guitar (right) and the irrepressible Rory.
Their Name Liveth For Evermore. The Beatles on the road to Hamburg, August 16, 1960. Their manager, Allan Williams—bearded, and briefly without his top hat—stops in Oosterbeek, to pay respects at the Allied war cemetery. Fellow travelers include his wife, Beryl, friend Harold Phillips (aka Lord Woodbine), Stuart, Paul, George and the Beatles’ new drummer, Pete Best, grabbed at the last minute to secure the Hamburg booking. (John kept out of the picture.)
Deep among trees in a wood by the Elbe, hair up and defenses down—Stuart photographed by Astrid Kirchherr, November 1960. She’s already the love of his life, he’s the love of hers, and wearing her scarf.
The youngest Beatle often led their fashion moves. George at 17, the first to go leather. Photographed by Astrid at the Hamburger Dom funfair, November 1960.
John, also now in leather, with Stuart at the Dom, by Astrid.
Paul (who generally bought things after the others) with Stuart at the Dom, by Astrid.
5-4-3-2-1. Five Liverpool youths, four guitars on the drip, three amps, two drumsticks, one new band. The Beatles at the Indra, first night, August 17, 1960—fresh in Hamburg and primed to learn, fast. They play just along the street from Derry and the Seniors at the Kaiserkeller: Liverpool rock has arrived in Germany.
The Englishman abroad. John, the Daily Express and a pair of Y-fronts on Grosse Freiheit, November 1960. He’s standing outside “the pit,” two grim back-of-the-screen rooms in the old Bambi Kino they called home for three months.
The Hamburg Beatles defined, Dom ’60. John has just bought a new guitar—incredibly, American—and Paul is using his old one. This was the only time Astrid photographed Pete. He always looked the part, but an almost complete detachment from the other Beatles was quickly established.
Hamburg again (now spring 1961) and the new look is complete: pink twat ’ats atop greased quiffs, black leather jackets, black leather trousers tucked into gold and silver Texan boots. “Three Gene Vincents” on the Top Ten roof.
Lennon und McCartney mach Schau, couples neck, and then a hard-nut swaggers along. Meet Wilfrid Schultz, right, Der Pate von St. Pauli (the Godfather of St. Pauli), a murderer the police couldn’t nail. Top Ten Club, April–June, 1961.
TWENTY
JULY–SEPTEMBER 1961
SOUP AND SWEAT AND ROCK ’N’ ROLL
The 21st birthday party in Liverpool on July 8, 1961, didn’t only mark a coming-of-age, the vital step-up from juvenile to adult—for Richy Starkey it was a celebration of being alive, a shindig to show the doctors wrong, for Lazarus to prove he’d beaten the odds and made it to manhood. He and his loved ones had anticipated the moment for years: the infant Richy had spent his seventh birthday in the hospital, in a coma, certain to die; the weakling adolescent Richy had pleurisy and tuberculosis on his 14th birthday; so where would he be for his 21st … or would he not be? They’d often talked about it, keeping their fingers crossed and raising a glass to his health.
The young man was fit, strong in his own way, happy and awash with gifts. Elsie gave him a gold identity bracelet; he got yet another ring for his fingers, a fourth, to further embellish his professional name; and an auntie gave him a gold St. Christopher, sacred protection from the patron saint of traveling. He treasured these presents. Just as he’d never removed Grandad Starkey’s wedding ring, so now he slipped the St. Christopher over his head and there it would remain until ripped from his neck.*
He’d traveled just to be here. The 8th of July (twenty-four hours after his actual birthday) was a Saturday, campers’ changeover at Butlin’s and the Hurricanes’ weekly day off, and during the morning he’d sped home from Pwllheli in his Ford Zodiac. Rory and his band were a month into their second summer season and flashier than ever. Four days before leaving, they’d swanned along to Duncan (Classic Tailors) on London Road and been fitted with perhaps the gaudiest suits ever seen in rock and roll, which was really saying something: the Hurricanes were in flaming red and Rory in shocking turquoise, with white shirts, slim black bow ties, and eye-opening cream and black winkle-pickers. There was no mistaking this lot for undertakers, and the occasion justified the presence of a photographer with color film.
For Richy, this Butlin’s season was preceded by none of the angst experienced in 1960. It might yet all turn to dust, but none of his old factory mates lived like this: birds in the chalet, booze in the bar, three hours’ drumming every night and an hour every afternoon. All the same, he was beginning to question his future with the Hurricanes. In his head, he was still shooting for the London Palladium, but was Rory the guy to get him there? Though working hard enough—a note in Johnny Guitar’s 1961 diary records “140 appearances, Jan/May 22,” in other words, 140 in 142 days—they weren’t going forward. With his chiseled features, stacked blond hair, incredible energy and gold lamé shirt, Rory appeared to have all the makings of a star, but Larry Parnes had seen him and been unmoved, and—here at Pwllheli—Rory was again being overlooked by the kind of showmen who never went to Liverpool but regularly dropped into Butlin’s. Stars were routinely “discovered” here, but Rory wasn’t. Maybe his offstage stammer put them off; more likely, these talent-spotters saw that he lacked “that certain something.”
Richy knew it. Johnny, Lu and Ty were content to enjoy the ride, but he was considering options. He’d become good mates with the Marsden brothers, Fred and Gerry, half of the four-piece Gerry and the Pacemakers, and expressed an interest in joining them. Fred was on the drums but they had no bass player and it was decided Richy could be the man. It was a pub idea, a crazy plan seeded in Scotch and planted in pale ale, but it lingered. Richy had never played any kind of guitar but thought he cou
ld learn; he fancied standing in a group’s front line for a change, and wanted to get back to Hamburg. Rory had no prospect of making a return, but Gerry & Co. were heading back to the Top Ten Club on July 29, to play with Tony Sheridan for a month. In the end, he decided to stay put, letting the Pacemakers head off without him, but still he had the wanderlust, and talk of this kind flowed through his coming-of-age celebration as freely as the liquor. They partied long and hard in Admiral Grove, and the tiny terraced house heaved with family and friends, pressed up to the backyard privy and spilling out on the front “play street.”
Plenty of musicians were there, among them the Hurricanes, Dominoes, Pacemakers, Big Three and Priscilla White, a girl from Scotland Road whose occasional cameos as Swinging Cilla were being noticed—she’d sung with the Beatles (once, at the LJS in March), Hurricanes (several times) and was now working with the Big Three. She liked singing “Boys,” the Shirelles song, and here at the party did it as a duet with Richy. The two had become good pals. Cilla and her friend Pat Davies were keen to practice hairdressing and Elsie volunteered to be their model; the girls went to 10 Admiral Grove every Wednesday evening to bleach, style, curl, cut and set, and in return she cooked them fried Spam and chips. Richy became friends with Cilla through these visits and had a fling with Pat (who worked at the Jacaranda and later at the Cavern) that lasted several months.1
The Beatles weren’t at the party. John, Paul and George’s absence is more puzzling than Pete’s, and there’s no known explanation for it. Perhaps they were in Hamburg when the invitations went out, or were engaged elsewhere. This was their holiday week and John and Paul may have gone away for a few days;2 George, meanwhile, was busy on the domestic front. His mother was home from Canada and they were reunited after eleven months, and he was also trying to hang on to his girlfriend. Gerry Marsden had moved in on Pauline Behan while the Beatles were in Hamburg; George accused Gerry of being “a flirt,” then he and Pauline had one or two more dates before he said she had to choose between them, and she chose Gerry.3
This same week also marked the first appearance of Mersey Beat—Britain’s first regional pop paper—the inside front page of which included “Being A Short Diversion On The Dubious Origins Of Beatles,” that larf-a-line history by John (with a little help from George) written before they left for Hamburg. Except for a poem and drawing in his school magazine, this was John’s first time in print; Bill Harry recalls him being so delighted that he loped along to Mersey Beat’s office and handed over a scrappy bundle of 250 stories and poems, saying, “Use whatever you want.”
If Mersey Beat was to survive, it needed all the local support Harry could muster. One of its keenest advocates, from even before the start, was Brian Epstein. His 1961 diary notes a June 20 meeting with Bill Harry in the office at Nems Whitechapel. Harry wanted Nems to take a stake in Mersey Beat, to put the paper (published fortnightly) on a sounder financial footing, but Brian declined—a decision he came to regret; Ray McFall became its primary investor instead, the paper’s unobtrusive owner, with Harry as editor. But Brian did take a dozen copies of the first issue: he displayed them prominently on the serving counter in both of Nems’ city-center stores, and when these sold out he requested more, after which he placed an order for twelve dozen copies of issue two. Promoting local activities was good for everyone’s business.4
Whitechapel had been open more than a year by this point and its success was greater than anyone might have expected, save Brian himself. His comanagement with younger brother Clive was running like clockwork. Brian had also appointed a junior member to his executive team, a 25-year-old married man named Alistair Taylor, who combined general sales duties with the new position of “Personal Assistant to Brian Epstein.” No other record shop manager had a PA. Taylor quickly became accustomed to his master’s cultured voice and imperiously flamboyant manner, and, like most Nems staff, he was drawn into serving Mr. Brian with scarcely resistible devotion—even when spitting nails over his autocracy. One day Brian would be refusing with illogical obstinacy the necessary purchase of a £14 filing cabinet, the next he was inviting Taylor to join him on a paid-for trip to the south of France, with personally arranged flights and his own first-class hotel suite.5
Brian was scooting around Europe often now, not just going on the record retailers’ junket to Hamburg but making private trips all over the place. While his thoughts in relation to Alistair Taylor were strictly those of an abnormally philanthropic employer, his solo experiences in the south of France, Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona and elsewhere turned always on sexual adventure. He was living as dangerously as ever, and on October 5, 1960, was robbed in Barcelona after behaving (in his own words) “foolishly and irresponsibly.” Nems was running so smoothly that he’d slip away for odd weeks or weekends. He was already bored at work and in need of fresh risk … that familiar Brian Epstein pattern. His father Harry could only watch from the sidelines, powerless, knowing his eldest child was again yearning for a diversion beyond the family firm that so thrived on his talents.6
Trade was booming for everyone involved in records. The spectacular sales increases of the 1950s showed no sign of abating: teenagers were wielding their spending power. Record Retailer reported a “bumper 1961” with sales 13 percent up on 1960. George Martin’s career certainly remained in the ascendant, his recent successes matched and bettered. Matt Monro’s “My Kind of Girl” made the British top five and the US top twenty—it was George’s first American hit and the first time a British singer had done so well there in three years†
—and these events followed on the heels of a landmark moment at home, when finally, after ten years at Parlophone, George produced a British number 1.
It came, inevitably, from left field, with the Temperance Seven’s “You’re Driving Me Crazy”—1920s jazz played with sincerity and solemnity by nine eccentric Englishmen in spats, wing collars, velvet smoking-jackets and Edwardian frock coats. The record entered the NME chart on April Fool’s Day and four weeks later had sped to the top, while the follow-up, “Pasadena,” peaked at 3 the week the Beatles arrived home from Hamburg. “They’re probably the most phenomenal group to happen this year,” wrote June Harris in Disc. “The Temps” (as people called them) also laid down an important if unconsidered marker, being the first successful Sixties musicians to emerge from art school.7
News of his number 1 was delivered personally to George Martin in Cambridge, where he was recording the opening night of a comedy revue called Beyond the Fringe, on a short provincial tour prior to its opening in London. It had been the hit of the 1960 Edinburgh Festival, and because George already had a happy working relationship with one of the four performers—Dudley Moore, the jazz pianist and humorist—he’d a head start over any rivals for its recording.
For the next two years, until 1963, the best-known young men in Britain were a four-man group of Soho-suited, sharp-minded Parlophone artists whose original ideas, wit, irreverence and attractive outspokenness detonated a revolution. Oxbridge graduates Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore brought into everyday use a word that would permeate the rest of the Sixties—satire. Their show reformed first the London stage and then Broadway, and they discarded centuries of subservience by sending up every sacred cow: prime ministers, presidents, politics, the police, nationalism, the Empire, royalty and religion. Nothing could ever be the same again, and in their wake, over the next three or four years, Oxford and Cambridge universities produced a line of other intelligent writer-performers to further push back the boundaries. Several would go on to work with George Martin, whose Parlophone recordings of Beyond the Fringe remain an invaluable document of a very funny show and a giant step toward the unbuttoning of a stiff-shirted society, essential to this particular history.8
The first time the Beatles went to Hamburg, nobody in Liverpool noticed they’d gone. Not so the second time. They were missed, and now they were back, and kicking-on—slimmed down, speeded up, professional, intent on
making a go of it.
Thanks to Pete and Mona Best, the immediate future was bright. Instead of being prevented from playing by the still-angry Allan Williams, or pricing themselves out of employment, the Beatles’ diary was as full as they wanted it to be. The Cavern booked them as its star attraction every Wednesday night for seven weeks and then extended it to the rest of the year, in addition to two or three lunchtime sessions a week (usually Tuesday and Thursday one week and Monday, Wednesday, Friday the next). They had a weekly Thursday-night date with Mrs. Best, the Wally Hill bookings every weekend, and Brian Kelly presented them twice a week.
The Bests’ maxim—“Let’s get the cash in!”—was pursued successfully. Most of these were £15 bookings, a level of fee the promoters had determined not to meet. Bob Wooler would remember how these rival men discussed the Beatles’ demands and formed a secret cartel to resist them, which then collapsed in acrimony when Ray McFall agreed to pay £15 in the Cavern. From the fact that these bookings continued into August and beyond, it’s clear they brought in the public. And once the people were in, the Beatles knocked them flat.
Their hair, still slicked up into quiffs, was longer than ever, the longest of any of the Liverpool groups—and in conjunction with their outfits, the Beatles projected the strongest possible statement of individuality. They were copying no one, and the groups who’d imitated them earlier in the year were a long way behind again. The black leather trousers, jackets and boots caused a sensation: leather was inextricably linked in the public mind with troublemakers, and the Beatles not only knew it, they had the courage and attitude to go on stage and perform in it. As George would recall, “With black T-shirts, black leather gear and sweaty, we did look like hooligans.” John likened it to homage: “We dressed in leather suits [and] looked like four Gene Vincents!”9 Beyond this, they occasionally wore their pink twat ’ats and also, sometimes, pink neckerchiefs.‡ Having lost both Stu and the piano they’d had in the Top Ten Club, they were now an unfussy foursome—lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, drums. They also had the visual appeal of Paul’s violin-shaped bass, and his natural talent with it made their sound better and tighter than ever.
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