When he first became involved with the Beatles, Brian suspended the activities of their fan club; now he was preparing to relaunch it to his own specifications. Retained as its volunteer secretary, Bobby Brown began a memorable period of close cooperation with the Beatles and Brian. “He was determined the club should be run well,” she says, “so I was able to get proper stationery and membership cards printed, and when I told him about some unpaid bills I’d received from before my time, he gave me the money to settle them.”26 Grand relaunch plans were in place by mid-February: Brian booked the Cavern as a “private let” for the night of Thursday, April 5, and announced a show called The Beatles For Their Fans. At a cost of 6s 6d they would see a special performance, be given a glossy photograph for autographing, and could register for a year’s free club membership. Members would be sent newsletters that kept them in touch with Beatles events and detailed the ways in which they could support and encourage the group. Everyone would be happy: the Beatles, the fans and Brian himself, who would gain an invaluable mailing list for marketing use as well as sufficient start-up capital for the club. He hoped it would break even financially—it wasn’t designed for profit because the membership fee had to be kept affordable for all; and if the club made a loss, he would cover it.
Overriding every plan, though, was Brian’s imperative: to get the Beatles a recording contract. They weren’t going to be bigger than Elvis without one. His April 1961 visit to Hamburg and Hanover as a guest of Deutsche Grammophon had already proved fruitful in getting “My Bonnie” released in Britain, and now it paid dividends a second time. Another delegate among the thirty-strong deputation was Robert Boast, manager of His Master’s Voice (HMV), the self-proclaimed world’s largest record store, situated on Oxford Street in the heart of London. After Decca’s rejection, Brian took the opportunity to renew Boast’s acquaintance; he had no obvious plan in mind, but Boast was an address-book contact and he was exploring every possibility. Brian had with him the Beatles’ Decca tape and sat in Boast’s office saying his boys would become very big stars if only someone would take a chance with them. “He said he’d had a very wearing two days visiting record companies. It seems they just weren’t prepared to listen. I was, though it was beyond my powers to help him. But at that time we had a small recording studio on the first floor, where budding artists could make 78rpm demonstration discs. I took Brian there and introduced him to our disc cutter, Jim Foy.”27
It made sense for Brian to pitch the Beatles from discs rather than a reel of tape. Every recording manager had an office gramophone (as they were still called), not everyone had a tape deck. As Jim Foy remembers, he and Brian Epstein chatted while a lathe cut the Beatles’ sound into 78rpm acetate discs of heavy black lacquer.
I remarked that the tape sounded very good, to which he replied, rather proudly, that some of the songs were actually written by the group, which was uncommon. I asked whether they had been published, and when he said they hadn’t I told him that the office of Ardmore and Beechwood, one of EMI’s music publishing companies, was on the top floor of the shop. Should I fetch the general manager, Sid Colman? He said yes, Sid came down, listened to the tape and he too expressed interest. When I’d done the cutting, he and Brian went back up to the office.28
It was here that the Beatles’ Decca recording of three Lennon-McCartney Originals turned up trumps. If they hadn’t sung those songs, Brian would not have been sitting in an oak-paneled, fourth-floor office over the hum and thrum of Oxford Street, having his first discussion about an element of the business still little known to him. He knew record companies and enjoyed memorizing their catalog numbers and titles, but music publishers were just names on record labels or sheet music, familiar in themselves while their workings, the business strategies behind them, were not.
At 56, Sid Colman was a wise old bird of the song trade, in the business since 1937 and now installed by EMI as general manager of its publishing operation. As Decca had Burlington Music and Philips had Flamingo Music so EMI had Ardmore and Beechwood, formed in 1958 as an extension of Capitol Records’ publishing businesses. Whatever the country, the idea was the same: owning music copyrights reaped a tidy income, and so much the better if it was from the company’s own record product and every revenue stream flowed into the same pool.
Colman was interested in Ardmore and Beechwood publishing these Lennon-McCartney songs, which was good news … except that Brian wanted a Beatles recording contract. A publisher would give the songs to someone else to record and he wanted the Beatles to have first use of them. Colman understood and told Brian he’d see what he could do to help; in return, Brian gave his word that if Colman could assist in obtaining the Beatles a recording contract, Ardmore and Beechwood would get the publishing.
Precisely what propelled Brian from here to the office of George Martin may never be known. George would always say, naturally, that Colman picked up the phone, told him about Brian and suggested they meet, but Colman’s indispensable right-hand man throughout this period, a music plugger who called himself Kim Bennett, insists this was not the case, and that George was the very last person Colman would have called because he strongly disliked him. Whatever the reason, George Martin’s desk diary for February 13, 1962, includes Judy Lockhart Smith’s lightly penciled untimed entry for “Bernard Epstein.”
Brian was chancing his arm at EMI, trying to wrest a Yes where there’d been a No. The recording managers had already turned down the Beatles on the basis of their appearance on the Tony Sheridan disc; Brian must have been hoping this wouldn’t be remembered, and that he might score a better result with a personal approach and different product. It could also be that he was after any appointment at EMI House and George Martin was the only man available—two of his three A&R colleagues, Norman Newell and Norrie Paramor, were on holiday this week.
George wasn’t there when Brian arrived, so the first person he met was Judy. She would always remember appreciating how well dressed, well mannered and well spoken he was, not at all like the other managers who came into the office, while Brian would later write, genuinely, of how he and Judy developed “an instant friendship.”29
George’s day was filled with appointments, and when he arrived he wouldn’t have been able to give his visitor much time. The two sat across a desk—one man aged 36, the other 27, both in smart suits and ties, and with polite, cultured voices that had benefited from self-improvement. Brian was desperate but trying not to seem so, George was tolerant, pleasant and in a position of power. Brian told him about the Beatles, saying how big they were in Liverpool and affecting surprise when George said he hadn’t heard of them. This somewhat riled his host: as George would reflect, “I almost asked him in reply where Liverpool was—the thought of anything coming out of the provinces was extraordinary.”30
Interpreting the way Brian remembered the meeting, there was probably time to hear only one of his new-cut records—a ten-inch 78 acetate with “Hello Little Girl” on one side and “Till There Was You” on the other. He’d written the essential details on the labels in blue fountain-pen. With limited space, and constantly keen to demonstrate the Beatles had more than one singer, he wrote that “Hullo Little Girl” (sic) was John Lennon & The Beatles—adding too the songwriting credit Lennon, McCartney—and that “Til There Was You” (sic) was Paul McCartney & The Beatles. Brian’s recollection two years later was that “George liked Hello Little Girl, Till There Was You. Liked George on guitar. Thought Paul was the one for discs.”31
It would be a long time before anyone else got to hear the Decca recording of “Till There Was You,” and express wonderment first that Brian had selected it—this was the number where John said Paul “sounded like a woman” and Pete’s timing was all over the place—and second that George Martin, from this, thought Paul best for recording and liked George’s guitar playing. This was perhaps George’s worst guitar work of the day. (“Hello Little Girl” was reasonable, though.)
If this isn’t perplex
ing enough, George Martin would remember the meeting quite differently. In his first lengthy quote on the subject—a Melody Maker interview nine years later—he specifically mentioned “Your Feet’s Too Big” being on the tape (sic) Brian played him, and added, “I wasn’t knocked out at all—it was a pretty lousy tape, recorded in a back room, very badly balanced, not very good songs and a rather raw group.”32 This strongly suggests he wasn’t listening to the Beatles’ Decca test but a recording of which nothing else is known.
So, the meeting came to an end with George not “knocked out at all.” He kept the acetate and might have said he would get in touch if he was interested in hearing more, but he wasn’t and he didn’t. It was just another disappointing encounter for Brian, one of way too many for his liking. He was having a far harder job selling the Beatles than expected.
The line may well have ended here but for the involvement of Kim Bennett. He’d been out when Brian sat in Sid Colman’s office—busy plugging Ardmore and Beechwood’s latest songs, lunching with a radio producer here or hustling around a bandleader’s office there, trying to get a broadcast or a ballroom performance. Bennett was a twenty-four-hour worker and known for a dogged persistency greater than anyone else’s in the business.
Thomas (Tom) Whippey was his real name, but he was still using the professional identity given him when he’d hoped to become a singing star. Until 1958, Kim Bennett had been a crooner of average looks and ability; he toured with the great but fading bandleader Ambrose, appeared a few times on radio and TV and was signed to Decca. He had four 78s/45s released in 1955–6 but they didn’t sell and Decca didn’t renew his contract, saying the market had changed. He worked as a Butlin’s Redcoat for a season and then slipped into a new career in music publishing. While Sid Colman ran Ardmore and Beechwood (and was also its accountant), Bennett—at 31 much more contemporary than his boss—advised on all matters concerning the acquisition and exploitation of songs. He was the person whose job it was to harry them into the hit parade so Colman consulted him on all creative matters, and that included the Beatles.33
Soon after Brian Epstein had left the building, Bennett returned to find his boss keen to play him one of those new 78s from the Personal Recording Department. It was “Like Dreamers Do,” written by Paul McCartney when he was 17. “I said, ‘I like that. What do they call themselves?’ and Sid said the Beatles. ‘Oh bloody hell, what a name to use!’ He told me the song was available if we could get them a record release and I replied, ‘I like it very much, Sid. I like that sound. If we can get them a record, and then if we can get it played, I think it could go into the charts. It’s different.’ ”34
As Bennett would remember it, at some time over the following days Colman took “Like Dreamers Do” across Oxford Street to EMI House in the hope the song and its sound would appeal to one of the A&R men—Paramor, Ridley, Martin and Newell—only to return with the news that no one was interested. “His actual words were ‘Nobody over there wants to know’ and, as he didn’t qualify that remark, I took ‘nobody’ to mean that he’d seen everybody.”
Kim Bennett, being persistent, was both disappointed that a promising lead had so quickly amounted to nothing and reluctant to let the matter drop. He remained free to kindle the interest of other record company A&R men, but such a path was doomed to failure. It was obvious to everyone that if Ardmore and Beechwood was touting something around the business then it had already been rejected by EMI, to whom they were bound to turn first. It was just like the situation in America, where companies knew that if EMI was trying to place a record with them, it had already been spurned by Capitol.
I mused about it for a while and then had a thought. “Why can’t we make the record?” I knew we weren’t allowed to, but I couldn’t see why not. So I went back into Sid’s office and said, “Look, you’ve given me permission to spend x amount on plugging a song, so could I make a suggestion? Why don’t you go across to [EMI Records managing director] Len Wood and say that if EMI give us a record, we will pay for its cost. Because it’s a group it’ll be a straightforward studio production, no orchestra; we’ll have got two copyrights for the next fifty years plus maybe a royalty on the record.”
Sid agreed, and it was only some time later that I heard the result, which was that Len Wood, while sympathetic to our situation, said we should stick to publishing and leave EMI to make the records.
Sid was fed up with the bloody-mindedness of it all, and so was I. And, at this point, that seemed to be the end of it …
Managing the Beatles entailed attention to a thousand tiny details and some not-so-tiny personalities. Problems could flare up for Brian without notice, as happened on Friday, February 16, when they were set to perform the last of their three dances for Liverpool University and there was an issue with Paul.
More and more now, Brian was picking up John, Paul and George in his Zodiac and taking them to the night’s venue. As well as being of benefit to them, it was his hands-on way of ensuring they arrived on time. Like him, they all lived in the south end of Liverpool, while Pete, in the north, would make his own way to the hall with Neil and the vanload of gear. The Beatles had a double-shuffle this night: the final university date, at the Technical College Hall in Birkenhead, and then a late headline booking for Sam Leach at New Brighton Tower. Brian stopped in Woolton to collect John (he was about the only visitor Mimi welcomed through the front door—he didn’t have to go around the side), he dropped down to Speke for George, and then he turned back to Allerton for Paul. But when George knocked on the door at 20 Forthlin Road, Paul shouted, “Tell Brian I’m not ready and I’ll be a while.”
Brian’s response was the one Paul could have anticipated: “Well he should be ready. I said I’d be here at eight and it’s past eight.” George gave Paul another knock and told him to hurry. After a further wait, Brian said George should tell Paul they were going into town for a quick drink before taking the tunnel to Birkenhead: Paul would have to get himself there by other means. Brian, John and George went to the Beehive and John used a public box to call Paul, returning with the message “He says he’s not coming.” Brian must have been apoplectic: they’d be unable to play the booking, letting down the university and their paying audience, embarrassing him, ruining their chance of a rebooking, and undoing his repair work to the Beatles’ old bad reputation. He went back to his office to phone Paul, but Paul refused to speak. Jim informed Brian that Paul said he wouldn’t be turning up, and that was that.35
Recalling the night five years later, Paul told of how, having discovered Brian and the others hadn’t waited outside his house for him, he decided “Fuck them—if they can’t be arsed waiting for me, I can’t be arsed going after them. So I sat down and watched telly.”36 Jim was unable to persuade Paul to change his mind. Paul said he felt he’d always been “the keen one,” so now he’d go sharp the other way and make no effort at all.
John saw a bigger picture, and it would be surprising if it wasn’t equally obvious, or made obvious, to Brian and George. He likened Paul’s enduring snag with Brian to his other long-standing difficulty: “[Brian] and Paul didn’t get along—it was a bit like [Stuart and Paul] between the two of them.”37
Inevitably, this wouldn’t be the only dispute to arise between Brian and a Beatle in their years together, but it is one of the few to be known, and its timing is telling. Brian devoted more than a page to it in his autobiography, saying how “worried, angry and upset” he was. The university triple booking was giving the Beatles prestige, earning them good money and presenting them to new audiences in good venues, and Paul had chosen this moment to make a stand.
John took a benign view. He might deal with it his own way—probably a knowing word to Paul at some point—but he also wanted to see how Brian reacted, unaided, to being tested. John’s cruelty was bruising and obvious, Paul’s dissent cutting and concealed, which made him trickier to manage. The testy way his and Brian’s relationship had started in late 1961 was the way it set. B
rian crystallized it in 1964 as “our clash of personalities—Paul can be temperamental and moody and difficult to deal with: he is a great one for not wishing to hear about things.” (Not that Brian was always an angel himself.)
The Beatles’ non-appearance was reported in the students’ paper Guild Gazette. Instead of becoming only the second newspaper to review a Beatles show—and probably the first to give them more than two lines—it noted how “the organizers were besieged by bedecked totties demanding the Beatles or their money. They got their money.” (The dance was open to all and had been advertised in the Echo two nights back.) Brian hastened to offer a make-good Beatles appearance, squeezed in the following Friday and played for nothing. Paul did allow himself to be persuaded out to the Tower late this first evening so they didn’t also let down Sam Leach’s customers.
Harsh words were had, and it’s clear that Paul’s test of Brian’s resolve did, however briefly, endanger the Beatles’ future. Brian’s commitment to the cause of creating their fame and fortune could not have been more emphatically established before Paul threw his spanner in the works, so he felt steeled to talk sternly. While he later wrote of how he “toyed” with the idea of saying he’d quit if this was the way they were going to behave, Paul’s brother Mike said he actually did tell them: “The Beatles were still turning up late and missing their spot every now and again, mostly because of Paul. Brian Epstein stood this for a while then he issued an ultimatum—they must improve their attitude or he was abandoning their management.”38
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