Certain things were familiar. When Paul hesitantly announced to the audience “In the next song you can clap your hands,” John went into his cripple act, bigger now for the bigger stage, thrusting his hands together spasmodically, madly casting his eyes, pushing his tongue into his cheek and bawling clappppyerandz; and when Paul added “or you can stamp your feet,” John thrust out his back leg and stabbed it several times convulsively into the stage, cripping stammpyerfeet. It didn’t matter that this was the biggest show of their lives—John just did it more, naturally expressing himself, keeping things grounded, pricking the tension, prompting taut laughter. And what he found, here in the mighty Empire in 1962 as everywhere else, was that no one said you can’t.
It was all over in twelve minutes and ran smoother in the second house. They also backed Craig Douglas. The Beatles weren’t particular fans, but they’d sung two of his hits, “Time” and “When My Little Girl Is Smiling,” and knew the material well enough. There was no way Douglas could have appreciated that, here in Liverpool, a form of patriotism existed unlike anywhere else, so that even a generous closing remark could be held against him. As Beatles fan Joan McCaldon explains, “He said to the audience, ‘Please give a round of applause to my backing group, the Beatles,’ and we thought, ‘Your backing group?’ ”61
Outside the back of the Empire, there seemed no doubt who the stars were, Bernie Boyle witnessing a breathless incident on Pudsey Street. “The Beatles left through the stage door and had to walk to their van, and then suddenly people were running after them and I was running with them and they’d become pop stars. The groundswell in our community was that great now: things had really started happening.”62
It was the Beatles’ final show before leaving for their two reluctant weeks at the Star-Club. On the eve of their last trip they’d played the most incredible hothouse date for the fan club, one of the great, great Cavern nights. Worried about being forgotten, they’d asked from the stage for people to write to them. That was April and this was October, when (with the letters coming ever faster) their final pre-Hamburg bookings were the Empire Theatre and a second shot on TV.63 So much had advanced in these six months: Parlophone, John and Paul’s rebirth as songwriters, Pete out, Ringo in, two strong new contracts, a record issued and on the charts … every development pursued with barely a day off, feet down on the gas.
So now, by way of a rest, they were going off to play the Hamburg red-light district.
* * *
* Khazi—English slang for toilet.
† In America, Billboard (Billboard Music Week at this time) and Cash Box, the two main trade journals, claimed circulation figures of 20,265 and 10,258 respectively. There was still no music consumer press—the only artist coverage was in Hollywoodish teen ‘zines, pulp print with pin-up photos and scarcely believable PR spin about the likes of (in October 1962) Bobby Vee, Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon, Fabian, Rick Nelson, Richard Chamberlain, George Maharis, George Chakiris, Troy Donahue, Paul Anka, Paul Petersen, Patty Duke, Annette Funicello, Ann-Margret, Brenda Lee, Connie Francis, and one British artist—the child actress and singer Hayley Mills.
‡ The Beatles didn’t buy Elvis Monthly but Mal Evans usually had the latest issue in his pocket and they looked at his.
§ The Blue Boar was Britain’s first motorway service station. Situated in the Midlands, it marked the start (at this time) of the M1 road to London.
‖ Ivan lived in Flat 6, Seaford Court, 220–222 Great Portland Street. It was, as always, a fantastically connected world. Paul could have spent the night at any one of several million London addresses, but was in the building where George Martin had received oboe lessons from Margaret Asher fifteen years earlier. She and Dr. Richard Asher were living in Flat 2 at Seaford Court throughout the time they had their children. Peter, Jane and Clare grew up here, before the family moved to 57 Wimpole Street in 1957.
THIRTY-FOUR
NOVEMBER 1–15, 1962
“SHOW ME I’M WRONG”
The Beatles’ two original Hamburg trips squeezed 918 stage hours from them in only twenty-seven weeks, so this fourth time, playing a couple of hours a night for two weeks, was a pushover … and had their complete contempt. They were doing it under duress, and the same was true of the forthcoming fifth visit, at Christmas. Their collective attitude was summed up by John: “We’d outlived the Hamburg stage and wanted to pack it up. We hated going back those last two times … but Brian made us go to fulfill the contract.”1
Certain aspects were welcome. This was their first Hamburg season with Ringo in the group. He’d been a Hurricane here in 1960 when the four became mates; now John, Paul and George finally had a drummer who went around with them and didn’t keep sloping off to do his own thing. It was also great to see old friends again. Jürgen was settled in Paris but Astrid and Klaus were here to welcome the Beatles back with open arms. Stuart had been dead six months and emotions were still raw, but time was beginning to dull the worst of them. They were back too with friendly faces Icke Braun and Kathia Berger; back at Gretel und Alfons, the British Sailors’ Society and the Sunday morning Fischmarkt; back with the Fascher brothers, foaming glasses and Prellies; back among the brutality and bare breasts, sadism and sex trade.
Nothing had changed except where it counted. The Beatles were on their best-yet Hamburg pay, pocketing DM510 a week each (just under £46)—on a par with their money at home, and with many expenses paid.* They also had better digs: a pair of twin-bed rooms in the Hotel Germania, a small pension on Detlev-Bremer-Strasse, five minutes’ quiet walk from Grosse Freiheit. George’s idea that John or Paul should room with Ringo was maintained: it had been Paul, here it was John. The hotel was nothing to write home about, but Weissleder paid the bill and acknowledged Brian’s insistence on accommodation appropriate for respected artistes, no more of that four-to-a-room nonsense.
Several acts were billed below the Beatles these two weeks: Tony Sheridan, Roy Young, Davy Jones (an American singer; the Beatles had backed him in Liverpool in December 1961) and, from home, Gerry and the Pacemakers and King-Size Taylor and the Dominoes. The starring attraction was Little Richard. Once again, the Beatles were keeping company with the queenly king and his traveling retinue of Billy Preston and Sounds Incorporated.
Here was the trip’s one real highspot: John, Paul, George and Ringo had the finest view of the great man’s twice-nightly ritual, from stage-side or anywhere else they fancied. “He’d show off a bit in front of us—he’d want to know we were in the wings,” says Ringo, but it’s hard to know how Richard could possibly have shown off any more than usual, because his Star-Club act was Grade A outrageous.2
Just three weeks earlier, this Seventh Day Adventist from Alabama had vowed to stick with gospel music and never rock again. He said it here in Hamburg too. But twice a night on Grosse Freiheit the minister was rocking over limits. His high energy act included, every time, a fantastic striptease down to bulging bathing trunks, done while standing on the lid of the grand piano. He started in his tuxedo, white shirt and bow tie and gradually peeled off almost everything, flinging each article into the audience.
The Beatles hung out with him. They sat in on his backstage Bible-study classes, that particular Penniman edition of the scriptures, his wild southern-States revivalist oratory sprinkled with their Lancashire spice, tears of laughter folded into the mix. Richard would tell his biographer he liked the Beatles but didn’t care for the way John farted, wafted the smell around the room and celebrated when he scored a double,3 but Billy Preston had no such complaints.
Right from the start, I fell in love with the Beatles. I was probably their first American fan and friend. John was great—he was funny, he was so smart and clever. I admired him instantly for his wit and manner. You just knew he was special; genius, I suppose, stood out even then, and even to me, a very naïve kid.
He took the time to teach me how to play the harmonica. I learned “Love Me Do” and reciprocated by making sure that he, George,
Paul and Ringo ate. They didn’t get any meals from the promoter, but Richard—being the big American headliner—got steaks and chops and a fabulous spread nightly, so I made sure they [the Beatles] were well fed and watered.4
For Preston to play, Manfred Weissleder must have been at his most persuasive with the St. Pauli authorities. The Ausweiskontrolle hadn’t changed, so anyone under 18 had to leave the club at 10PM. George had fallen foul of this law in 1960, when he was 17; Billy was 16 (and “looked about ten,” John said) but here he was, playing Hammond organ on stage with a crazy rocking strip artist on Europe’s wickedest street at three o’clock in the morning. He was vulnerable, though, and the Beatles took him under their wing. They made sure he was all right, they dedicated “Love Me Do” and “A Taste of Honey” to him (his favorite songs), and George invited him to join them on stage, to add organ to the Beatles’ sound. Preston wanted to but didn’t dare: word might get back to Little Richard and “he’d have got mad.”5
Brian Epstein flew in for a few days at the end of the Beatles’ first week. He came to see them and also Gerry and the Pacemakers, to handle any difficulties or complaints … and there were plenty. The rule of life for the Beatles’ manager was, and would always be, that when any of the boys had a gripe he certainly heard about it, and when they were all unhappy he got a complete and utter belly-aching. Brian also checked out the Star-Club’s other stage talent—he particularly liked the always-impressive Sounds Incorporated—and he conducted business with Weissleder; but when the German wanted to talk about booking the Beatles in 1963, he found Brian evasive, committing to nothing.
Brian enjoyed too some private time among the red lights—like the Beatles, he’d had no holiday this year—but it was a short break. He left Hamburg about November 9 and flew to London, where the job of management was rising through the gears.
To quote his own words, Brian Epstein was keeping the Beatles “fairly free” from January 1963.6 He wanted to place them on national tours early in the new year, and any dates still vacant after that would be ballroom bookings—again countrywide. He could achieve this only by limiting Liverpool dates to a few per month. When Bob Wooler and Ray McFall approached him to put the Beatles into the Cavern’s 1963 calendar, they found a man keeping his options open. They understood and supported it: they too were dedicated to the cause of making the Beatles national stars … but the Cavern would be the prime casualty.
The Beatles’ Cavern pattern of ’62 was cast out: Brian wouldn’t discuss residencies—not Sunday, Wednesday or any other night—and he ditched the established premise of at least two lunchtimes a week. He had to, because they wouldn’t be in Liverpool. He agreed to four Cavern bookings in January (two lunchtimes, two nights) and just two nights in February. These six dates for the first two months of 1963 contrast to thirty-nine in 1962.†
“Love Me Do” didn’t progress in the NME Top Thirty—its placing at 27 was a one-week affair—but it was still rising up the other charts and this overall action was enough to make everything possible. Before flying to Hamburg, Brian fixed the Beatles’ first tour, of a sort—five ballroom dates in Scotland in the first week of 1963: one hour’s stage time a night, played in two thirty-minute bites. He reduced the just-increased £50 nightly fee to £42 in recognition of the block booking, £210 total.
Contracts in 1962 were not complicated. The boilerplate one-page, nine-clause document that booked the Beatles on their first tour had only two typed additions: that Brian would send the promoter publicity materials in advance, and that said promoter—Elgin-based Albert Bonici—was given “the first option to present this attraction in Scotland following this booking.” Brian had introduced an entice-and-reward policy, and much the same was available for their national tours—but it was an offer spurned, for one reason or another, by three of the country’s top promoters, Don Arden, Larry Parnes and the bandleader turned impresario Tito Burns.
Parnes came closest. He and Brian negotiated a place for the Beatles on a February/March 1963 tour headlined by Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, but they couldn’t quite agree on terms. If Brian had buckled, or Parnes agreed to an extra £60 a week (just over £4 a show), he could have toured the Beatles again for six weeks up to May 1964 and might have secured further options. The Fifties king could have ruled the Sixties … but it wasn’t to be. So unarguably synonymous was Parnes with everything dodgy in the old English rock and roll business—all puberty, no probity—it was for the best. The Beatles were new school and the Expresso Bongo era was passing into history.
His rivals’ loss was Arthur Howes’ gain. The 38-year-old was a mogul of the touring scene, no small thanks to the benevolence of the Grade Organisation, which put acts and opportunities his way. Howes was also agent to several artists of his own, including the young singer Helen Shapiro, and was arranging a tour for her in February/March 1963. It was an unusually complicated affair, broken into three sections because she was also flying to Nashville to record an album. Brian had already spoken to Howes on the phone and secured the Beatles a one-night booking, and in mid-November they lunched in London to talk other business. Here and now, because the Beatles were in the charts, Howes agreed to add them to at least two of the three Shapiro tour-legs. They were the first supporting act he signed and announced.7
He still hadn’t seen them. The Beatles were booked into his Frank Ifield promotion at Peterborough on December 2 when he would evaluate them for further work—specifically, another tour he was promoting, in March, starring the American singers Chris Montez (“Let’s Dance”) and Tommy Roe (“Sheila”). If he thought the Beatles were up to it, they’d go on that tour; if he didn’t, they would stick with Shapiro’s for its final leg. Whichever, it was now clear the Beatles would be playing nationwide tours through February and March 1963, working theaters from Sunderland in the northeast to Taunton in the southwest, traveling show-to-show in the artists’ coach, paid £30 a night with diary space for more lucrative ballroom dates in between. And with Brian enticing Howes’ interest by offering him an exclusive three-year option on further tours after this, his plan to present the Beatles before the whole of Britain was already well on the way to being achieved.
The month between this Hamburg season and the next—November 16 to December 17—was shaping up different to any before. London was calling the Beatles four times: to audition for BBC-tv (their friend “Letters” Smith brought this about), to broadcast on BBC radio, to appear on national ITV (Beatles fan Pat Brady helped make this happen), to record their second single at Abbey Road, to go merrily again around the music press, and—suddenly now, and most intriguingly—to have a meeting with George Martin at EMI House.
Ardmore and Beechwood had obliged George to sign the Beatles and release “Love Me Do.” He didn’t like or believe in it, so was surprised to see it on the chart after the first weekend and jolted by its subsequent rises. He’d liked the Beatles as people, and appreciated right away how different and appealing they were. They had personality, originality, talent and a strong core following, and now they also had tours and bigger and better radio and TV spots coming up … so perhaps it was time to start planning. The Beatles already knew their November 15 return from Germany would be to London and not Liverpool, but Brian’s evolving itinerary now incorporated this interesting next-day addition: a 3PM meeting with George Martin in the Parlophone office. Ten days ahead of their recording session, George wanted to talk through some ideas.
None of this was known to the man who’d set the ball rolling, Ardmore and Beechwood plugger Kim Bennett. He was too busy beavering away on “Love Me Do,” going untold extra miles to justify his belief—and his labors were finally bearing fruit. At last now Bennett got the Beatles’ record into vast numbers of ears. The first BBC radio play of “Love Me Do” was in the midday show Twelve O’Clock Spin on October 31, a couple of hours after the Beatles flew off to Hamburg. The audience was a shade under five million, mostly housewives and industrial workers of all ages, and of the show�
�s ten records, three were on Parlophone, produced by George Martin. The Beatles’ breakthrough followed twenty-four hours after the same show gave Bob Dylan his first British airplay, with the wailing old hillbilly number “Freight Train Blues.” The Sixties was rapping on the door of the BBC Light Programme.
Eleven days later, “Love Me Do” got into Two-Way Family Favourites—heard by the week’s biggest radio audience, in excess of seventeen million. Appropriately enough for Remembrance Sunday, it was Kim Bennett’s Finest Hour and he’d flown to Germany (two weeks earlier) to earn his stripes. He went over to wine and dine the British Forces Network presenter Bill Crozier, a civil servant who was the military end of the BBC’s Two-Way Family Favourites every Sunday morning, reading requests from serving personnel for their families back home. This was an extraordinary ordeal just to get a record played on the BBC, but worthwhile if it created a hit: Ardmore and Beechwood, like the other big publishers, had an expenses budget for just such a purpose and Bennett typically worked it a couple of times a year. This time, however, unlike any before, he flew there to beg.
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