Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  Neil was given maps and printed route instructions that enabled him to drive the van into uncharted areas, places where the Liverpool rock scene had barely infiltrated, if at all. The week the management contract came into force, when January slid into February, the Beatles played Monday night in a beach-side club in Southport, reaching a mostly untapped market in this northwest coastal resort; they played Thursday in a small dance hall in the Wirral town of West Kirby; and on the Friday they left the area altogether. It wasn’t the Liverpool Echo that showed where the Beatles were playing this night, it was the Manchester Evening News. They were at the Oasis, the club’s ad announcing FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MANCHESTER, POLYDOR’S GREAT RECORDING STARS.25

  Brian was also booking them well into the future. They were fixed with Liverpool University to play all three Panto Week dances, a prestigious gig; and he arranged two nights where they could gain invaluable big-stage experience, at Floral Hall in Southport and at Liverpool’s Pavilion Theatre, the renowned “Pivvy.”

  That particular opportunity was to happen on April 2, and the Beatles were free then because the plan for them to play a season at Hamburg’s Top Ten Club from the start of March fell through.

  Peter Eckhorn was a young man in a hurry when, in mid-January, he phoned Brian to finalize terms for the Beatles’ Top Ten return. Word had reached him of a coming rival, Manfred Weissleder—a tough man, with fortunes made from sex clubs—who was going to open a new rock venue slap on Grosse Freiheit. As usual, the instigator was Horst Fascher, the disqualified little boxer who just loved these crazy English rock and roll musicians and liked to shield them from St. Pauli’s violence by whatever force necessary. The new club would open in mid-April in a converted cinema, a big place with ideas and budgets to match. When Eckhorn found out Fascher was leaving for Liverpool, to sign up some groups and, particularly, to get the Beatles for the opening season, he phoned Brian and found the accord they’d been unable to reach at the end of December: the two men settled on a compromise DM450 a week … but nothing was yet in writing.

  Fascher arrived in Liverpool with his interpreter Roy Young, the singing pianist who was taking a few days off from Eckhorn’s club—he was in the Top Ten house band with Tony Sheridan and Ringo Starr—so he could do business for his rival. It was, as usual, dog eat dog in St. Pauli. Fascher and Young enjoyed a happy reunion with the Beatles, though were dismayed to hear that any discussion about Hamburg would have to be had with their manager. Brian Epstein and Peter Eckhorn had got along, but Horst Fascher was different meat. When Brian told him he’d verbally agreed to a deal with Eckhorn, Fascher hinted that if this happened there wouldn’t be a Top Ten Club.

  The Beatles’ Hamburg return was quickly agreed to: they’d play for seven weeks, from April 13 to May 31, keeping long hours in the club but working on stage a lot less because other acts would also be on the bill. They’d receive 2,000 marks a week between the four of them—500 for each Beatle before the subtraction at source of Brian’s commission left them with 425. While the Top Ten made tax deductions, the new club wouldn’t.‡

  To seal the deal, and do things the St. Pauli way, Fascher pressed a new 1,000-mark note into Brian’s hand. There’s no proof of what he did with it. Perhaps he shared it out among the group, or perhaps he used it to partoffset the out-of-pocket expenses he’d incurred since late November—he took no cut of the Beatles’ money before February, saying their bookings were “contracts from contracts,” not of his making, even though this wasn’t entirely true. Fascher has written that Brian “put it in his pocket without a word—the Beatles never saw a penny of it. That’s what Epstein was like,” but he doesn’t say how he knows this or why he’s so sure.26

  John, Paul, George and Pete knew “Eppy” wasn’t managing them to make money. They hoped to become rich, and therefore he would too because he was part of the team, but they knew it wasn’t his motivation. Being them, though, they still put him through the wringer and let him feel their personalities.

  Brian was, for example, the first Jewish person central to their lives. None of the Beatles was anti-Semitic but they sometimes made anti-Semitic comments because, given the opportunity, people would. In Britain (as elsewhere), anti-Semitism was perennially there or thereabouts, rising or falling depending on external events but never not present—especially in strongly Catholic Liverpool.

  Like so much else, Brian’s views of religion were shaped by being with the Beatles. As he said in 1964, “I am Orthodox by general Jewish standards. I went home for festivals and still do. Only when I met the Beatles did I realize where I stood. Like them I am a non-believer. The Beatles have crystallized each other’s thoughts and mine. We seem to bring out the best in each other.”27

  There’s not much evidence, but it seems George had an uninformed ambivalence about Jews, one that went back to his primary school days, or earlier. It was not untypical. The standard slur that everyone knew (and most said) concerned “Jews and money.”

  A couple of episodes would be remembered within the group. One evening, while Brian drove George to a hall where the Beatles were playing, George inquired how much they’d be getting. When Brian told him, George replied that he should have held out for more. Sensitive to what George might have been thinking, and with his own shoulder-load of insecurities, Brian looked over at him and said, “You mean Jew, you.” Paul also recalls having an anti-Semitic thought one night when they were out with Brian and one of his friends, Terry Doran, the car dealer with a wicked sense of humor. (As the Beatles got to know Brian so they also got to know friends like Doran and Peter Brown.) They were in a Liverpool pub called the Old Dive when an argument bubbled up over whose packet of cigarettes was on the table. They were Brian’s, but Paul found something “very Jewish” in the way he claimed them; he worried about whether he wanted this man as his manager … and, as John would later point out, Paul actually didn’t. He was still to be convinced that Eppy was the right man for the job.28

  Fan club secretary Bobby Brown witnessed the Beatles’ relationship with Brian throughout the year and heard only lighthearted jesting about his religion.

  They used to say “Do you fancy a bacon buttie, Brian?” and Brian would blush and laugh. I thought they had a smashing relationship. They were always respectful of Brian. I wasn’t in on their meetings but I never saw any evidence of friction. John would tease him, but John teased everybody; he’d always find something about you to tease. With Brian being Jewish, he’d say, “What are you doing here, Brian? It’s Saturday. You’re not supposed to be doing anything.”29

  There was always the other side of the coin, when John’s humor turned and he would lash out. According to Pete (though no one else), there was an ugly incident during the Decca session, when Brian made a remark about something John was singing or playing, and he shouted back, “You’ve got nothing to do with the music. You go back and count your money, you Jewish git.” Brian apparently seethed and blushed and left the room for twenty minutes. It would have been another of those heavy, awkward Beatle moments, when everyone looked at their feet and then carried on like nothing had happened.30

  But it was also typical of John Lennon that he would lacerate with one breath and forget it the next, and still have a close rapport with that person. And in the Epstein-Beatles axis, the core, essential relationship was always that of Brian and John.

  I liked Brian and I had a very close relationship with him for years, because I’m not going to have some stranger running the scene. I also like to work with friends. I was the closest to Brian—as close as you can get to somebody who lives a sort of fag life and you don’t know what they’re doing on the side. But in the group I was closest to him, and I did like him—he had great qualities and he was good fun. He had a flair. He was a theatrical man rather than a businessman, so in that way I liked him.31

  Brian realized that when a decision was needed, he had to get John on his side, because the others always looked to see which way he jumped. In the words of L
es Chadwick, a Liverpool photographer who worked with the Beatles and Brian later in the year, “If you wanted to go from A to B you had to tell John why, and that’s what Brian did, very skillfully. The first person he spoke to was John, always, and once he had John on board the rest would follow.”32

  Inevitably, John did to Brian what he’d sort of done with Bob Wooler and doubtless others—he used pills to “get him talking,” to have Prelly Conversations that went deeper. As he later revealed, “I introduced him to pills … to make him talk, to find out what he was like. I was pretty close to Brian because if somebody’s going to manage me I want to know them inside out. And there was a period when he told me he was a fag and all that. I remember him saying, ‘Don’t ever throw it back in me face, that I’m a fag.’ Which I didn’t.”33

  Paul had to accept John’s closeness to Brian and that, once again, he was further down the pecking order than he wanted to be—not that he and John weren’t themselves incredibly close. Paul believes John “was wise to the possibility” of being the man to whom Brian turned first, and made sure to secure that position. “Also,” he adds, “I’m sure Brian was in love with John. We were all in love with John, but Brian was gay so that added an edge.”34

  It was through John that Brian floated most of the changes he thought essential if the Beatles were to make it. Some battles he won, others he didn’t; some the Beatles accepted easily, others not.

  Brian failed to curb John’s cripple act on stage. He pointed out that while plenty in the audience responded well to it, his actions also caused offense, even if just to one person.35 John may have toned it down a degree but he didn’t cut it out—crips were part of his personality and his personality was on the stage, always. Brian also failed to stop John’s rampant chewing through every performance, though he did cut down.

  He had more success in other avenues. He got the Beatles to quit onstage smoking and swearing (off stage, both remained rife) and to stop addressing comments to only the first few rows of an audience: Brian said this alienated everyone else, making people feel disappointed at missing out on something. He also asked them to stop gulping down food during Cavern lunchtime sessions. As John would remember, “Epstein said, ‘Look, if you really want to get into bigger places you have to stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking.’ It was a choice of making it or still eating chicken on stage …”36

  They stopped.

  Clause 2(b) in the contract allowed Brian the right to advise the Beatles on their music. He didn’t, at least not in relation to songs and how they were played: John apparently made it clear at Decca, and perhaps on other occasions, that his opinion wasn’t welcome. In general terms, however, two alterations to the constitution of the Beatles’ music were made in these opening weeks of his management, and this may not have been coincidental. Not only did they first brave playing Lennon-McCartney numbers as soon as Brian came along, but, in January, George was promoted to equal singing status, handling as many songs as John and Paul. This can only have happened if they all agreed to it, but Brian was constantly reaffirming their push for a group image—something else that marked them out as different. Surviving 1962 set-lists confirm a structure unknown in 1961: John, Paul and George worked in strict rotation as lead vocalist.

  Brian didn’t try to change everything. In fact, in his mind, this wasn’t even the right word for it. “I didn’t change them,” he would maintain, “I just projected what was there.”37 He recognized the appeal of John, Paul and George’s continental-style hair and worked only to improve it, getting them to have it cut in a way that emphasized it. Fastidious about his own hair, Brian had a man he went to maybe three times a week, to have it tidied, and now his stylist became the Beatles’. Jim Cannon, born in 1920, was one of six white-coated hairdressers employed in the basement salon within the tailoring shop Horne Bros., on Lord Street in the center of Liverpool. The Beatles didn’t like having haircuts—George especially hated it—but, for two heady years until the start of 1964, Cannon kept them all in trim. Because their hair fell into a fringe, and almost everyone else (like Pete) swept it up off the forehead, people said they had long hair when really they didn’t.38

  It was at this time that Bill Harry had a visit from John, asking for the return of some photos he’d previously handed over—like the ones of him standing on Grosse Freiheit in his underpants. John had thought Bill might want to publish them in Mersey Beat but Bill evidently steered clear: they’d have been out of place on his pages and out of step with the times—such photos simply weren’t published in this period. Brian had no doubt impressed on John that it would be better if they were removed from the hands of a newspaper editor, and, though he could have said fuck off—as he frequently did to Brian, the other Beatles and everyone except Mimi—John saw the sense of it and retrieved them. As he said five years later, “We’ve always been in control of what we’re doing … [but] Brian was a natural guide.”39

  Another battle won—but not unanimously, it seems—was getting the Beatles to bow on stage. This was phased in over several weeks in early 1962. In a later age, bowing would seem deeply anachronistic, but it was established procedure for all performers, and looked good. Cliff Richard and the Shadows played a chaotic show at Liverpool Empire on Sunday, January 21, and Brian got the Beatles first-house tickets. Cliff and his group bowed after every number to a mass of screaming girls, while the Beatles were no doubt cracking untold numbers of sarcastic remarks … though noticing its effect. Brian took them to the stage door afterward and asked if they could talk to the Shadows, and at least one of them (drummer Brian Bennett) came out to say hello.

  George, who seems to have been the most entrenched in his dislike of Cliff and his group, was unhappy at the prospect of bowing on stage—he saw it as “a showbiz thing”—but he was persuaded.40 They all did it, inevitably imbuing their Beatle bows with a dose of Beatle personality. Paul certainly saw its merit: “I was a great believer in that. Brian’s RADA experience came into play a little bit there and I would tend to agree with some of his stagey ideas. I don’t think any of us had a problem with that, or else one of us wouldn’t have done it. We actually used to count the bow … we’d do this big uniform bow all at once.”41

  Brian’s mission in this crucial first stage of Beatles management was to ensure that the people they needed to impress didn’t recoil from their appearance or habits. They might be able to do anything once they were accepted, but to begin with they had to get through the door. It was no more complicated than that. And of all the suggestions Brian made, those rejected and those accepted, none had a greater impact than his views about their stage outfits. He told the Beatles a truth, which was that while he saw a fantastic future for them—bigger than Elvis, no less—they wouldn’t get off the starting blocks unless they smartened up. He had no more wish than they to look square, but they did need to look sharper.

  Brian certainly had nothing against the leather—he fell in love with them dressed that way and was still keenly promoting them with that image—but it was obvious they’d never get on radio dressed like that, let alone TV; and that theaters wouldn’t book them dressed like that, so they’d get no tours; and that they could even be denied the chance to make a record. The Beatles wanted all these things, so to hold out against change was self-defeating.

  They had anyway begun to work it out for themselves. As John would recall, wearing leathers “was all right in Liverpool and around there but as soon as we went anywhere else they didn’t want to know.” They were in leather for that first out-of-town date in Manchester, which seems to have stupefied the audience; and when, on February 24, they played for the first and only time in Hoylake (Cynthia’s hometown), the audience laughed and jeered them for looking so slovenly.42 This was, then, a look they were ready to drop, as Paul would recall eighteen months later in a BBC-tv documentary that centered on them: “It was a bit old-hat anyway, all wearing leather gear. And we decided we didn’t want to look ridiculous because, more o
ften than not, too many people would laugh. It was just stupid, and we didn’t wanna appear as a gang of idiots. We just got rid of the leather gear.”43

  The change was gradual and, Brian said, not entirely of his making. “I would say it was due to the five of us rather than to me. I encouraged them at first to get out of leather jackets, and I wouldn’t allow them to appear in jeans after a short time, and then after that step I got them to wear sweaters on stage—and then, very reluctantly, eventually, suits.”44

  Suits. Should the Beatles have sold out and worn suits, or should they have stayed in their leather and been true to themselves? John most pointedly raised the issue. “Brian put us in suits and all that, and we made it very, very big—but we sold out,” he exclaimed in the midst of a wider rant in 1970. His words appear irrefutable, though his concluding remark was formed from an accumulation of emotive factors, not just the suits.45

  But sold out? Hindsight’s perfect vision is seldom clouded by context, and the question is largely meaningless anyway, on the basis that if they’d stayed in leather they wouldn’t have become anyone’s topic of conversation. After this, the Beatles should be the judges of their situation … and, despite John’s comments in 1970–1, it seems they not only went into suits, they went eagerly into suits. Brian used the term “very reluctantly,” but it’s unclear where this reluctance lived.

  JOHN: Epstein said, “Look, if you wear a suit you’ll get this much money.” All right I’ll wear a suit—I’ll wear a fucking balloon if somebody’s going to pay me! I’m not in love with the leather that much.