Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  Publicity Ink would be a rare deviation from Brian’s customary upright path … and then the next morning’s black coffee sobered him. That way was fake sensations, phoney rumors, lies, scams and “rubbish like that.” That way was the old way, the way of Larry Parnes and his ilk; that way would have debased the Beatles.

  Brian’s way was truth and integrity, and he would never regret it. As his ghostwriter Derek Taylor put it in 1964, artfully capturing his master’s voice, “I’m glad now, for it enables me to say that I never pulled one stunt to publicize any of my artistes.”72 Of course, Brian knew too he was completely in tune with his boys: the Beatles didn’t want any of that pretense or artificial nonsense either.

  The overnight death of Publicity Ink meant the Beatles would be going out to the nation like no one else: with their own sound, their own songs, their own style and look, their own personalities—challenging the way things were done by doing things their way, honestly, as themselves.

  * * *

  * Color TV in Britain started in 1967 but the two main channels didn’t change until the end of 1969. Color sets first outnumbered black-and-white in 1976.

  † Mary Cox, no middle name, was born August 4, 1946, at Walton Hospital. Her parents were Liverpudlians: Joseph, known as Joe (born 1912, a barman on merchant ships, like Alf Lennon and Harry Harrison, at sea for long stretches), and Florence, known as Flo (née Barrett, also born 1912, who worked as a packer in Liverpool’s huge sugar refinery). Though devoutly Catholic, the bride was expecting at the time of Flo and Joe’s marriage in February 1946. When Mary was born they lived with Joe’s widowed mother, just off the dock road, and by the time Mitch met Richy they were living in a flat around the corner, 56a Boundary Street.

  ‡ Ten-pin bowling, and George’s interest in motor-racing, somehow didn’t count—the Beatles themselves said they were completely non-sporty. Most of the lads in the other groups were into football—Rory Storm was a regular at Liverpool (as was promoter Sam Leach) and Gerry Marsden supported Everton. Alone in the Beatles’ camp, Neil Aspinall loved football and was a lifelong Liverpool FC fan.

  § Cavernite Sue Houghton remembers, “A girl called Kathy brought in a big sombrero hat and gave it to John, and he wore it when they did “Tip of My Tongue”—he had his guitar loose and played the maracas shoulder high. When the song goes ‘to think of things I want to say to you, oooh-ooooohh’ they sometimes sang ‘Yabadoo!’ instead.”

  ‖ The five completed recordings from the September 4 and 11, 1962, sessions are all available. The September 4 “Love Me Do” became the single (and is now on the compilation Past Masters), and an edited version of “How Do You Do It” is on The Beatles Anthology 1. From the 11th, “PS I Love You” became the single’s B-side, and both this and “Love Me Do” are on the Please Please Me album. The song “Please Please Me” itself, this early take with Andy White on drums, is on The Beatles Anthology 1.

  The surest way to differentiate between the two September recordings of “Love Me Do” is to listen for tambourine. The version with Ringo on drums doesn’t have it, the Andy White version does, and Ringo shook it so hard it’s difficult to miss.

  a With some possible bearing on the legal situation, Pete was also wondering whether the recordings of “Love Me Do” and “PS I Love You” shortly to be issued by Parlophone were from the June 6 session, with him on drums. He wouldn’t establish the facts of this until a few days into October.

  Casual for the camera, the Beatles in the Cavern, summer 1961, when the grungy Liverpool cellar became their second home.

  Summer 1961: Paul and John with Bob Wooler, their favorite local DJ, drinking buddy, pills sharer and important early champion. Wooler was the dean of the scene, a perpetual encourager of Merseyside’s young music talent.

  Ringo and Johnny Guitar in the Hurricanes’ second Butlin’s summer, Pwllheli, 1961. Their chalet nights—birds in adjacent beds—got them kicked off the camp.

  The complete “crip” mode. Les Nerk Twins à Paris, October 1961.

  Friendly from the start: Ringo and George at the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton, November 24, 1961, during one of Sam Leach’s epic rock promotions.

  John, George, Paul and Pete at their initial photo-studio session, December 17, 1961. It was arranged by their new manager, whose nick-of-time arrival prevented the Beatles’ breakup. The leather look was central to Brian Epstein’s strategy at first … but had to go, and they all agreed.

  A change of suits, leather to mod: the Beatles display the new threads they’ve helped to design. March 1962.

  John and Lindy Ness outside the Cavern, April 7, 1962. “He’d brag to other lads that I was his ‘jail bait,’ but actually he was protective. I was in safe hands.” Photo by Lindy’s schoolfriend and big Paul fan, Lou Steen.

  Rory and the Hurricanes in France, playing rock for American servicemen, May 1962—with Vicky Woods, a temporary addition because the soldiers demanded eye-candy. By this time, Ringo has played with the Beatles, loved it, and George has invited him to join them permanently. Pete’s time in the group is ending.

  The Saturday-night hop in Hulme Hall, Port Sunlight. It’s July 7, 1962, and everything is coming together fast. When they next play here, on August 18, they’re John, Paul, George and Ringo.

  If every picture tells a story, this one’s an exhibition. The boys, snapped by Brian Epstein on the tarmac at Liverpool Airport, September 4, 1962, en route to making their first record in London.

  A few hours later, in Abbey Road, to record “How Do You Do It” and “Love Me Do”—an afternoon rehearsal in Number 3 studio before a torturous evening recording in Number 2. George is trying to hide his black left eye.

  Great early color, capturing probably George’s first appearance with John and Paul. Taken on March 8, 1958, by 14-year-old Mike McCartney, at the wedding party of cousin Ian in Huyton. George has just turned 15 and is eight (“nine”) months younger than Paul; John is 17 and, says Paul, those flushed cheeks indicate a bevvied state.

  John and Cynthia on Hope Street, spring 1960, her mousy hair bleached into the requisite Bardot-like blonde. Fellow art student Jon Hague’s Ford Model Y takes the weight of four. He kneels behind Cyn; behind John is Tony Carricker, the record collector and music enthusiast who introduced John to some joyfully authentic American R&B.

  The Hurricanes in flaming red, Rory in shocking turquoise. Heading off to play their second Butlin’s season, they stop at Duncan’s, Liverpool’s “Classic Tailors” on London Road, May 29, 1961.

  Hamburg, late May 1962—the only known photo explicitly tying the Beatles to drugs. Paul, George and particularly John broadcast an intimate knowledge of the speedy slimming pill Preludin—“Prellies” to the Hamburg and Liverpool cognoscenti.

  September 28, 1962, a week from the release of “Love Me Do”—with history beneath their feet. The Beatles on a strip of land between Saltney Street and Dublin Street, up the dock road. John has no idea he’s standing right where the Lennons settled in Liverpool three generations back, another stricken family fleeing Ireland’s desperate famine.

  THIRTY-TWO

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1962–THE SIXTIES START HERE

  1. POP MUSIC IS NOT DESPICABLE, IT IS SIMPLY IMMATURE

  The 56-year-old no-nonsense aunt who told John Lennon he could never earn a living from the guitar heard in “Love Me Do” had no reason to change her mind. John took the record to Woolton and played it for his ex-guardian, asking, “What do you think, Mimi?” As she’d enjoy remembering, “I told him, ‘If you think you are going to make your name with that, you’ve made a big mistake!’ ” Mimi liked “My Bonnie,” and how many had that sold?1

  In other houses across Liverpool’s south end there was celebration for Paul, George and Richy, and family pride—the boys were really on their way now. Misgivings were maintained at the Epsteins’, however, where two parents and two sons gathered in Queenie’s cut-glass lounge so Brian could put “Love Me Do” on the gramophone. After it finishe
d, his heart engaged his tongue for a new spin on the year-old message: his boys “were going to be bigger than Elvis” and “Love Me Do” was the first giant leap toward it. Even Clive, his biggest supporter, had to accept it all seemed highly improbable.2

  For John, Paul, George and Ringo, it was a satisfyingly single moment. Here, from Friday the 5th of October, was a disc seven inches in diameter that said and played Beatles: black plastic, red labels, silver lettering and Parlophone’s seemingly patriotic £ trademark. They stared at it so long they memorized the catalog number, R4949. It was also, of course, an extra-special experience for the fans. Elsa Breden had just shelled out for her precious purchase when she ran into George. “I said to him, ‘I can’t believe you’re on a record!’ and he said, ‘Neither can I!’ ”3

  For Ringo it was “The most momentous moment—that we had a record out, that we had a bit of plastic with us on it. Just the idea of being on a bit of plastic was really incredible after all those years of playing. My God, a record that you hadn’t made in some booth somewhere … you don’t believe how great that was.”4

  Back in May, when somehow they’d got hitched to Parlophone, the Beatles had hoped to be the first group to put R&B-like harmonica on record. And despite the interim hits by Frank Ifield and Brian Hyland—and the long, long while from May to October—they’d succeeded. Ringo was also relieved to have proof he was the drummer. It still hurt that he was merely shaking maracas on “PS I Love You,” but “Love Me Do” was easily the more important side. The Parlophone labels did carry an error, though, a big one, one that completely screwed up the just-taken decision about composer identities. Contrary to Brian’s instructions on the publishing agreement, “Love Me Do” and “PS I Love You” had been credited not to McCartney-Lennon but to Lennon-McCartney.

  It is (and is likely to remain) intriguingly unclear whose error this was. The Parlophone office’s? EMI’s label-printing department at the Hayes factory? Brian’s, for not returning the contract in time? Ardmore and Beechwood’s, for not notifying Parlophone in time? Whichever, Paul had to accept being named second when both the songs were substantially his. He was at least spared one further and much worse blunder: on the 250 advance/promotional copies of the record he’d been McArtney. (Paul James really would have been so much easier.)

  The release of their first record bump-landed the Beatles in the business—two businesses to be exact, music (publishing) and records. Both were set and shaped long before the rise of the electric guitar, and what would become “the rock industry” hadn’t yet been catapulted into existence; this was still very much old-showbiz, a bizarre body of limbs of which pop was the leprous leg. In the words of Norman Jopling, 18-year-old office boy and fledgling writer on New Record Mirror, “Pop was seen as a branch of show business you were expected to ‘grow out of,’ whether you were a fan or a performer. It wasn’t felt to have any artistry or creativity.” The Daily Express pop/entertainment writer Judith Simons reflects how “Everyone looked down on pop, no doubt about it. They thought it was yobbos singing for yobbos.”5

  This was also George Melly’s conclusion, printed in New Society. Perfectly timed to analyze a seismic decade, the weekly sociological journal was launched on October 4, 1962, and in its third issue the Liverpool-born jazz singer wrote an astute paper on the workings of pop. According to him, the artists and consumers were despised by the record business that made its money from them—a fact denied in public, naturally, but which he’d heard spoken in private. Melly announced they were wrong to think this way, shrewdly observing, “Pop music is not despicable, it is simply immature.”6

  EMI’s records division was but one part of its global business, pop one part of its records division, and “Love Me Do” one of its ten new releases on October 5. Success was defined as two or three of the ten becoming hits, and while every record was pushed, some were pushed more—and the Beatles weren’t favored with any priority.

  “Love Me Do” lacked support inside EMI House. George Martin says that when he mentioned the name “Beatles” to colleagues—to his fellow A&R men, sales managers and promotion staff—there were gales of laughter. “It was,” he would concede, “a silly name. They all thought it was another of my Goon jokes, a comedy record, and that I was spoofing them. Nobody believed in it [“Love Me Do”] at all.”7 This apathy extended to George himself, who broke down no walls to push the record he didn’t like and which Ardmore and Beechwood had forced him to issue.

  Success required exposure, and this meant getting “Love Me Do” played on radio and television. The BBC, one of Britain’s two TV channels, gave pop music thirty minutes a week: Juke Box Jury early on Saturday evenings. The job of getting Parlophone records played on here belonged to Alma Warren, the only female “exploitation man” in the business, and she had no success at all, just as she also failed to get “Love Me Do” into any BBC radio show. The Light Programme played a shade under thirteen hours of “popular records” a week—the lion’s share of the BBC’s “Needletime” allowance as set down by record companies and the Musicians’ Union.* Almost every one of these records was what would eventually be known as MOR—middle of the road music. Warren went to see the various program producers and got the same reaction everywhere. As she would recall, “The Beatles’ very name was anathema to the BBC. ‘Beatles? What’s that supposed to be?’ ”8 It wasn’t only the BBC that thought this way—Warren was also unable to persuade any commercial TV program to play the record, failing with the one and only networked pop show, Thank Your Lucky Stars.

  The sole remaining way of getting “Love Me Do” to a mass audience was commercial radio—and this meant Radio Luxembourg. The policy of the station’s British service was (as it had been for some years) to relinquish much of its airtime to “sponsored programs,” wherein record companies hired big-name DJs to showcase new releases. EMI put on twenty-three such shows a week, recorded in Mayfair and flown out to Luxembourg for transmission back. Records were faded early to discourage home-taping and encourage actual sales.

  EMI’s promotions department decided the number of Luxembourg plugs to apportion each record per week, the maximum being seven; “Love Me Do” was granted two each for three weeks, six in all—after which, if it hadn’t started to swim, it was considered sunk. EMI would pump “Love Me Do” ’s heart no more from the end of October. There was one interesting decision, though: in the second week, one of the two Luxembourg spots was to be in a program where the Beatles made a personal appearance.

  No one noted the precise moment a Beatles record was first played on radio, but there was a colorful Harrison household anecdote about it. It happened in the week ending Friday, October 5; George told his mum and dad it might be on and asked if they’d listen because he had to go and play a gig. They waited for hours, inevitably experiencing the ordeal of every Luxembourg listener, when the 208 medium-wave frequency went a-wandering off to 207 or 209 or paused for a cigarette at 212. Harry had an early shift on the buses and went to bed, and Louise followed when George returned home. He burst into their room a short time later, clutching the radio and shouting, “We’re on! We’re on!” “Who’s brought that noisy gramophone in here?” Harry grouched. For George, it was one of life’s biggest moments. As he’d say more than thirty years later, “First hearing Love Me Do on the radio sent me shivery all over. It was the best buzz of all time.”9

  Then there was the press. The trade magazine for the British music and record-shop businesses was Record Retailer, and suddenly, out of nowhere, EMI splashed a full-page ad to announce the Beatles’ arrival. This was hardly ever done … and Brian had paid for it, not from Nems Enterprises funds but Nems itself, the retail company that had a prosperous two-way account with EMI. But when Brian wasn’t injecting Nems’ money, EMI barely bothered. “Love Me Do” wasn’t in the company’s pan-label ad that ran in prime position next to the NME Top Thirty, and it wasn’t even reviewed in EMI’s own monthly Record Mail—a particularly odd omission. EMI advertised
the record in only one other place, The World’s Fair, to be seen by jukebox operators. There were eleven thousand jukeboxes in cafés and coffee bars around Britain and “Love Me Do” would pick up steady action; the paper reviewed records to help box-stockists make their choices, and the best appreciations of “Love Me Do,” two of them, ran here.

  A most promising first disc from a Liverpool combination. I have already been asked for this in Liverpool and it is a pleasure to be able to buy it solely on merit. Good luck boys.

  Commercial folksy sound, not unlike the very successful Springfields. Quite a catchy little tune, which strongly features the now almost inevitable harmonica. Sounds very much like a big hit to me.10

  The week the Beatles’ first record was released, the charts featured nothing remotely like them, and nothing sounding like “Love Me Do.” The NME Top Thirty had the Tornados’ zippy instrumental Telstar at number 1, and after that it was solo artists all the way down to 23, which was another instrumental, by the Shadows. Buddy Holly was at 18 with “Reminiscing,” Karl Denver yodeled some country music at 30, and that was about it. Seen in this light, “Love Me Do”—with melodic harmonies, acoustic guitar, bass, drums and harmonica, an appealingly bluesy little love song that wasn’t happy and also wasn’t sad—stood out far from the crowd.