Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  While dealt the roughest of hands, Liverpudlians preserved their fierce passion for life, and during 1962 this vitality and humor flowered into further forms of artistic expression. There was the rock scene and also now the painting, poetry and performance-art scenes, which emerged more or less together in the last months of the year and had a fair connection to the Beatles. The hub was Hope Street, Liverpool’s bohemia, with the vast Anglican Cathedral at one end and the building blocks of a strange, launchpad-shaped Roman Catholic cathedral just being laid at the other. Starting in Liverpool 1 and morphing into Liverpool 8, Hope Street was John, Paul and George’s past playground, by the Institute and art school, Gambier Terrace, the Phil and the Cracke … and now something else was stirring here.

  A second Jazz to Poetry event was held at the Crane Theatre in Liverpool on March 5, 1962, with performances by Adrian Mitchell and sax player Graham Bond (both up from London) and local poet Roger McGough, whose verses were rich in wit, color and pace. McGough connected with several like-minded denizens of Hope Street, including the boldly original poet-painter Adrian Henri, painter Sam Walsh, poet Brian Patten, and John Gorman, a Post Office engineer by day and crazy diamond by night. He was the main organizer of the Merseyside Arts Festival, which ran in the last quarter of 1962 at several venues though mostly in the basement of a cinema on Hope Street. The place was called the Everyman but locals knew it by its former name, Hope Hall—inevitably “the Hopey.”

  Filtered through a strong English-Irish-Welsh-Jewish-Liverpool sensibility, the Mersey poets took their cue from Allen Ginsberg and the original San Francisco beat scene: plain recitation was rejected in favor of direct action and audience involvement. Henri called their programs “Events” and they were similar to the Happenings gathering pace in metropolitan intellectual America—mixed-media performance art with poetry, playlets, music, paintings and dance, loose in structure, often impromptu and, here, rich in Liverpoolese.

  The Merseyside Arts Festival was under way when Mike Weinblatt—artist, saxophonist and Gorman’s friend—said to his colleague at the André Bernard hair salon, Mike McCartney, “You’re interested in these arty-farty things, aren’t you? Do you want to come to this Event at the Everyman?” Mike went, and soon got talking to McGough and Gorman, who invited him to do a comedy sketch. “I thought one show-off in the family was enough and said, ‘No, I don’t do that kind of thing.’ They said, ‘Neither do we, let’s do it for a laugh.’ I took the sketch home and went back and read the part of an old man. Not only did I enjoy it but so did the audience—it immediately got a laugh and at the end they all applauded. I was hooked, so now there were two show-offs in the family.”30

  Mike felt right at home with the poets and painters. His passion for surrealism, sparked by Dalí and Buñuel, was propelled by the wittily evocative words of new friend Roger McGough and the challenging imagination of new friend John Gorman. The younger McCartney was entering a whole new scene, full of clever minds and merry English nutters … but, sensitive to the increasing reputation of “our kid” (big brother Paul), he decided not to use his surname. When Gorman began planning a second arts festival for 1963, Mike was named on the letterhead as Michael Blank, kicking off an extended period of semi-anonymity as a talented stage performer in his own right.

  John Gorman says Mike made a suggestion one day that his brother’s group might play for an Event. They had, after all, backed the beat poet Royston Ellis. When Gorman asked what sort of group they were and Mike replied “rock and roll,” Gorman said, “Come off it, Mike, we’re artists—we don’t want to be messing around with musicians like that.” The Liverpool poets’ preferred accompaniment wasn’t rock or jazz but Mississippi-Mersey R&B, and the band who claimed pole position were the Roadrunners—musicians, singers, artists, poets and all-around bright cool guys from Birkenhead. They’d started out as the poppy Tenabeats, but as their inspirational leader Mike Hart later wrote, a pair of bookings as support to the Beatles had a profound impact. The Beatles, he said, “resulted in a complete change of approach, a mad rush for Chuck Berry records and a resolution to try a bit of humor.”31

  The Roadrunners turned pro in October 1962, their first paid gig was the art school’s Saturday-night dance, and they became Sunday regulars in the Hopey basement, playing Muddy Waters between (and sometimes during) sketches by the poets and artists. “The speed of change was really something,” their drummer David Boyce says. He’d been, and still was, a great Beatles fan in the Cavern, and now the Beatles—or some of them—were coming to see him. “George and Paul used to come to Hope Hall on Sunday nights. George always got on well with Mike Hart, and Paul often came along to see what his brother was doing.”32

  Liverpool 8’s other resident poet had no involvement in the scene shaping about him—and he was just about to leave the area. John Lennon was still making up his witty verses while going to or from the nightly bookings, and was also now scribbling on scraps of hotel-room stationery. He wrote several pieces in this period, including “No Flies on Frank,” an extended (six-hundred-word) tale of a man upon whom no flies had landed, although plenty gathered on his wife after he “had clubbed her mercifully to the ground dead.”33

  John’s merry lines always made Cyn laugh, and she knew from long experience not to take things too personally. They were actually one of the few bright spots in her increasingly hemmed-in life. Cynthia Lennon, married two months and pregnant for four, was no longer studying or teaching or going out to see the Beatles or doing anything but lying low in Falkner Street and watching her stomach grow; or washing, ironing and repairing John’s shirts; or endeavoring to cook meals for whatever late hour he returned. Her specialty was reconstituted Vesta beef curry and rice, garnished with fresh sliced banana, but she served some to Ringo one night unaware of his delicate stomach and was crushed by his indelicate rejection. John still hadn’t told Ringo he was married or that Cyn was pregnant. She hid it, and says Ringo forgot her and viewed her with suspicion for some time to come.34

  John was away more than before, and while the Beatles were being sneered at in London on October 8 and 9, Cyn was in Liverpool losing blood. She took a bus to the doctor’s office, was told she might be miscarrying, returned to the flat by bus and lay there alone and scared out of her wits, using a bedside bucket because the toilet was too far away. She didn’t miscarry, but rest never came easy on the ground floor at 36 Falkner Street. In this rough neighborhood she was often scared, a feeling only partly alleviated by the surprise, temporary residence in the basement flat of Paul’s former girlfriend Dot Rhone, seemingly making one last, unsuccessful play to get back into Paul’s life. Even when John was home, they were terrorized—a couple of thugs all but broke down their front door late one night, certain they were harboring someone.35

  Falkner Street was always troubled but the worst of it came in waves, and one rolled up during October 1962. FALKNER STREET UNITES IN PROTEST announced the Liverpool Weekly News front-page headline, reporting that two young lads had glassed a milkman with a broken bottle, that windows were being kicked in every night, that a boy was robbed at razor point, and that criminality was aided by almost total night darkness because the streetlights were smashed. “Violence and vandalism is holding the area in a grip of fear,” the paper reported … so this was clearly no place for a pregnant Cynthia Lennon to be alone when, through the first half of November, John would be in Hamburg.36

  In the last days of October, John asked Mimi if he and Cyn could move into Mendips. Mimi said yes, despite the fiery conclusion to the last time this was tried, twelve months back. They were married now and could have the downstairs while Mimi switched most of her life upstairs. This could only be done ad hoc until Christmas, because until then she also had three lodging students; after that, they’d have more space to do it properly, especially if John made a decent contribution to the household purse. So John thanked Eppy for the use of his flat and they moved to Menlove Avenue … where Cyn no longer feared being alone b
ut did have to contend with Mimi’s mercurial temperament. She also worried that the lodgers would see her bump and work out she’d been pregnant longer than married—so even here, “at home,” she thought it best to carry on hiding it.37

  John’s return to Woolton took him back to the house outside which Julia had been killed four years ago, back to Mimi’s cats, back to proper meals and laundry, and back to local habits and friends. Lindy Ness was able to enjoy a closer connection to John than she’d had for some time, and even found herself privy to his short-lived first set of driving lessons. Paul, George and Ringo had cars, and John—as cack-handed and technically uncoordinated as he was—didn’t want to miss out. He practiced in the Beatles’ van, tutored by Neil, as Lindy remembers: “He used to pick me up and then drive along Menlove Avenue on the way to collect Paul. He wore his glasses, but wasn’t a good driver, wasn’t a good pupil and certainly didn’t inspire me with any confidence. In fact he was absolutely horrendous. Neil would be trying to show him what to do and what not to do and John would be shouting ‘Fuck off!’ all the time, and ‘Stop telling me what to do Nell ’cause I’M FUCKIN’ DOING IT!’ ”38

  The other Beatles were all keeping busy private lives. Ringo and Maureen—Richy and Mitch—had been going together a couple of months now. George had broken up with Marie Guirron but they stayed friends and she still sometimes went with them in the van to northwest bookings.39 He’d no shortage of female admirers and had started dating another Cavernite, Bernadette Farrell, a blonde 17-year-old hairstylist who worked in a salon above Nems’ Great Charlotte Street shop. She had one date with Paul, then George made a more decisive move and she went with him, getting to stand in the Cavern’s first arch.

  Paul and Thelma Monaghan had also cooled: he’d so much choice now, women were in and out of his life all the time. He had two main girlfriends in the last weeks of 1962 and neither knew of the other. One was Celia Mortimer, 17, the strikingly attractive redhead from art school who designed her own clothes and was a big Beatles fan in the Cavern.

  Paul was attractive, intelligent, arty, all the things that appealed to me, plus he was good to be with: a gentle, genuine person who wanted to please. He was the complete opposite of John, who was snarly and grumpy and incredibly, incisively funny; Paul was the nice one. We started to go out, but things were still quite innocent. Because I lived some way out of Liverpool there weren’t many places we could go, except to sit in his dad’s front room or my friend’s front room, or the cinema—we saw the first James Bond film.40

  Paul’s other girlfriend was Iris Caldwell—Rory Storm’s witty, pretty, blonde sister; George’s first love; the 18-year-old daughter of Ma Storm, whose house, Hurricaneville at 54 Broad Green Road, was central to the Beatles’ late-night social scene. “He had a beautiful voice and puppy-dog eyes,” Iris says, “and he was much more interested in me than I was in him. I wanted more than a tuppence-ha’penny guitarist of a Liverpool group.” Iris’ professional dancing career had taken off and she was as busy as Paul, working summer seasons and London shows and touring around the country: they could only see each other when their diaries dovetailed, and just as Paul was with Celia when Iris was out of town, she was secretly going out with Frank Ifield.

  Paul was very funny—he used to call me Harris, though I never found out why, and he called himself Pool McCooby or “our kid.” He said I wasn’t to go to any Beatles gigs because Brian Epstein wouldn’t like us going around together—it was important that stars had to be “available”—but wherever we went Paul liked to be the center of attention. He was always doing impressions of people, and because he liked being seen at the pictures we’d always sit in the front row of the circle. One night he took me to the Empire to see the pianist Joe Henderson. The show was called Sing Along with Joe but the only person in the theater who was singing along was Paul—very loudly, at the top of his voice.41

  Iris always knew that a big part of the attraction for anyone going out with her or Rory was the chance of extended time at Hurricaneville, to hang longer around her dad Ernie and especially her mum, Vi. Ma Storm was a great Liverpool character, and visitors collapsed over the mad things she said and did. She didn’t try to be funny and didn’t tell jokes, but her off-the-cuff remarks had people doubled up. She was particularly close to George and Paul, and they didn’t always call her Ma Storm—Paul nicknamed her Val-and-Vi and George called her Violent Vi, and both loved her dearly. Vi’s was the ultimate 3AM open-house for chat, char, ciggies, cheese barm-cakes and chip butties. “Mum never chucked anyone out,” Iris says. “We were all late-night people apart from me dad, who the Beatles called ‘the Crusher’ because he had exotic nightmares and ate household objects. He used to go to bed early, and when they came round he’d be calling downstairs, ‘They’re all down there burning my electricity.’ ”

  It was six years since Paul’s mother had died, and Vi Caldwell was one of the women who tried to fill the breach. She made him food and drink, took his stage-soaked shirts and washed and ironed them, and shared easy intimacies. “Paul used to like her combing his legs,” Iris says. “He had really hairy legs and he’d come in from the Cavern all tired, roll up his trousers and she used to comb his legs. How ridiculous can you get? But he adored my mum and my mum adored him.”

  Vi was a chain-smoking, apron-wearing Scouse housewife who spoke to Paul straight, giving him the kind of genuine, affectionate grounding he otherwise accepted only from one or two aunts and cousins. She challenged the certain views he held on many subjects; he was an adamant atheist and she agnostic, and they debated religion. She rebuked him countless times for never having any cigarettes and always scrounging hers—it was amusing to begin with, but then irritating (“He would never give you any cigarettes, he was terribly mean over them”)—and she saw how, every once in a while, Paul arrived at Hurricaneville in an altered mood, leaving everyone uncertain about where they stood.42

  The secret the Caldwells kept from Paul—that Iris was also seeing Frank Ifield—came out in unusual circumstances after Paul turned up with a pair of tickets for his Empire show. It was the same one Brian attended to glean managerial information. Iris couldn’t very well tell Paul she was seeing Ifield on the side, or that Paul was himself the sideshow to an internationally famous star, 24 years old, tanned, quiffed and big in America. Hit Parade said Frank had a new Ford Capri, the coupé version of Paul’s Ford Classic. The cars didn’t compare, and neither did they.43

  Unusually, instead of sitting front circle, Paul’s tickets took them to the second row of the stalls, so Iris hitched her hopes on a change of appearance. “Frank liked me very feminine when we went out, all curly hair and sticky-out frocks, but Paul liked me in a straight skirt with the hair in a bun, so that’s what I wore, hoping Frank wouldn’t recognize me.” All was good until Ifield went off for his “false tabs” (suggesting the show’s end but hurrying back for an encore) and returned to sing the Jim Reeves hit “He’ll Have to Go.” He stood beyond the footlights and sang it straight at the hand-holding young couple squirming in the second row, a song that ended with “And you can tell your friend there with you, he’ll have to go.” As Iris remembers, “Paul was going ‘The cheeky bugger! The cheeky bugger!,’ but I said to him, ‘There’s no point being jealous, Paul, you don’t understand—it’s show business, it’s about being professional.’ ” Little did either suitor know that, thanks to Brian’s backstage visit here, they’d soon be appearing on the same bill.

  It was to Hurricaneville that the Beatles scooted the evening of Wednesday, October 17, to wolf down chip butties and tea and get Vi’s instant reaction to their first TV appearance. This was a great occasion: they were seen coast-to-coast across the north of England on Granada’s People and Places, hosted by genial Dubliner Gay Byrne—or, as John wrote it, Granarthur’s Peckle and Braces hosted by Gray Burk.44 For the Beatles in 1962, “making it” meant a car, a record in the charts, and radio and TV broadcasts, and they’d bagged the lot. And because the Britis
h had square eyes, being “on the telly” branded them stars—405 black-and-white lines of fame, flickering but forever.

  They had about five minutes’ airtime, engaging in brief lighthearted banter with Byrne and playing “Some Other Guy” and “Love Me Do.” Everything was done live, and as it wasn’t filmed or videotaped in the studio, the Beatles’ first TV appearance vanished into the ether on transmission, never to be seen again, not so much lost as never had. It was preserved on amateur audiotape, and as a written description in a Beatles scrapbook kept by Jenny of Birkenhead: “They looked fab and were their own selves (acting the fool) but sound effects were not as good as they could be.”45

  The fool-acting came at the end of “Some Other Guy,” when, by mad arrangement, John and Paul threw their hands above their heads and started whooping. They played and sang the number with impressive strength, choosing it because the Cavern film hadn’t been shown and this was still the song they wanted to put across. “Love Me Do” was confident and good and included a boisterous bridge where Ringo kept the guitars strongly on the beat and brought them back into the next verse; there’s every possibility this somewhat more rousing arrangement was the one they were performing regularly on stage.