Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  Among many elements, they connected as Jews. Neither was especially “observant,” but they shared a common heritage, a proud history despite brutal repression. Dick extended Brian an invitation to join him, his wife and son at their house for Friday-night Sabbath dinner anytime he liked. Mostly, though, they confined themselves to the issue of how to get the Beatles to number 1.†

  Brian knew that as a newcomer in London show business he was vulnerable to rogues; it was critical he involve the Beatles only with those he judged “the most honest of established experts.” George Martin was one, and through George he’d now found a second. Dick James’ secretary, Rosalind (Linda) Duque, says, “Dick was known to be a man of his word. He was honest, and what you saw was what you got. He was an astute businessman, as he proved, and he was straight down the line.”33

  Interviewed sixteen months later for his autobiography, Brian said of his new business ally, “I regard him as a most trustworthy and honest person, and he has tremendous enthusiasm. Although Dick is older than the majority of people around the Beatles I found that he gave me good advice in the beginning and it was useful to have an older person around who knew a lot of people, and I also liked him.”34

  Brian had found more than a music publisher—he was establishing, loosely speaking, a London representative for his management and artists. The pair formulated a policy over their French lunch. The first important point to understand was that, just as producing the Beatles meant a whole new working routine for George Martin, publishing the Beatles would do away with the stolid practices of Tin Pan Alley. Standard procedure was to plug the song and not the performer—this was why the charts could be clogged with multiple versions of the same number—but Brian made it clear that no one was to record competing versions of John and Paul’s songs unless they all agreed to it. Publishing the Beatles would require Dick James to control the copyrights, ensuring the Beatles’ recording was sacrosanct.

  Dick’s usual remit, plugging the copyrights, now meant pushing the Beatles, exposing the songs by getting them seen and heard in all the right places. Brian gave him permission to fix certain radio and TV dates for them, subject to consultation and the contracts being sent straight to him in Liverpool. Thank Your Lucky Stars was just the start—Dick had strong connections throughout the business and would begin immediately by trying to get them a session on Saturday Club. He’d take no commission for any of this: his reward would come through the publishing—from sheet music sales, PRS and mechanical royalties. The more airplay they had, the more he earned; the more records they sold, the greater his income. Here was every incentive for a hardworking man to help make the Beatles as big as possible.

  It was the third great advance for the Beatles in eleven days. First the meeting with George Martin, then the “Please Please Me” recording, now Brian hooking up with Dick James … and none of this happened in Liverpool. From the end of November, Dick James Music became the Beatles’ first London office, sort of, a place they’d be able to use the phone and the bathroom, hang around, keep warm, eat, sup tea, be interviewed and chat up the secretaries.

  The first agreements were signed after lunch, template documents with the specific details for “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why” typed in by Linda Duque, who then witnessed the James and Epstein signatures. The contract terms were the standard “10:50:50,” and the composer names went down as Lennon and McCartney in that order—correctly so, given that these were almost entirely John’s songs. Confusion then resurfaced when Parlophone’s record “label copy” (printing instructions) credited both numbers to McCartney-Lennon. This was either through simple error, repeating what should have appeared on the first record, or was intentional, an attempt to even out the previous mistake, so both writers got their name printed first … just on the wrong record. A written directive from Brian would have clarified the situation, but no such edict is on the Epstein, James or EMI files.

  As he set out to plug his new copyrights, Dick James had the advantage of the leg-up given the Beatles by Kim Bennett. He could push them further and faster partly because “Please Please Me” was a stronger record, but also because the Beatles were off the blocks, given momentum by “Love Me Do” ’s chart action and airplay; and it was Bennett who got the Beatles their work this very afternoon and evening. While Brian was signing the “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why” contracts at Dick James Music, John, Paul, George and Ringo were making their way to the BBC’s Paris Studio, on Regent Street, to rehearse and record an appearance in the Light Programme audience show The Talent Spot.35

  Keeping “Please Please Me” tucked up their sleeve, they did “Love Me Do,” “PS I Love You” and “Twist and Shout”—their first recording of the Isley Brothers song. Though unavailable for review (this is one of the few still-lost Beatles broadcasts), an eyewitness vouches for their storming performance. Alan Smith was in the audience, keeping the Beatles company for the second night in a row, and again being enthralled. He didn’t recognize the song—he thought it was Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba”—but he felt it. They played their brilliant rearrangement, so much more dynamic now with Ringo.

  Smith was at the Paris with hot news for his Merseyside comrades. In the NME just rolling off the presses, the Beatles had got into the annual readers’ poll—they were voted fifth most popular British Vocal Group and eighth most popular British Small Group.36 On the strength of one record, it really was impressive. Eleven months after winning the Mersey Beat poll, they’d gone national.

  The results were reported in the same November 30 NME in which their LP was announced. The Beatles’ star was rising fast … a point happily underscored when they received their first EMI royalty statement. It accounted for 36,868 copies of “Love Me Do” sold to wholesalers and retailers in the first eight weeks of the record’s life. At the royalty of a penny a record on 85 percent of sales, Brian was sent a check for £130 11s 6d. After deduction of his 15 percent commission, the four Beatles were left with £111, or £27 15s each. A retirement fund it wasn’t, but it was celebrated like one.‡

  So relentless was their upward progress, blips would be magnified into setbacks in the telling of the story. One of the Beatles’ biggest face-slaps was apparently handed them by three thousand Peterborough citizens on Sunday, December 2; this was the time they played in support of headlining star Frank Ifield, when fans of the suave, smiling Aussie directed antipathy at the Beatles across the footlights.

  The night was a sign of the times. Ray McFall and Bob Wooler let the Beatles off their Sunday Cavern residency without Brian being able to offer an alternative; the Beatles simply dropped out of Liverpool and turned up in the east Midlands for a theater show that also doubled as a test, so promoter Arthur Howes could see if he’d be adding them to his March 1963 tour with Tommy Roe and Chris Montez. The Beatles played second-top in Peterborough, closing the first half in each of the two houses. They also claimed a page in the souvenir program. Here is Ifield, the 25-year-old matinee idol handsome in stock studio poses, and there are the Beatles, four keen young long-hairs under a slate-gray Liverpool sky, leaning over the rail of a salvage boat.

  “We used to think twenty-five was the end of the line,” Paul remembers. “Frank Ifield was twenty-five and he was our gauge: we thought, ‘You can’t do this beyond twenty-five.’ ”37 Age, and at what point it became ridiculous to still be playing this kind of music, was a topic the Beatles bantered in the van while Neil was putting another 160 miles on the clock, and it was an exchange with edge because golden oldie Ifield was taking out Paul’s girl Iris Caldwell, and they all knew it. Bernie Boyle, along for the ride, remembers a flavor of the chat:

  The whole way there, John was saying to Paul, “You’re banging Frank’s girlfriend. What’s going to happen when we get in the dressing-room—there’s not going to be a punch-up is there? ’E’s a big fucker, that Frank.”

  After we arrived, we were all in the dressing-room plotting what would happen if Frank came in. We dec
ided we’d all jump on him and beat the crap out of him, before the show even started. But of course, it was all fine.

  I remember saying to them, “Fuck Frank Ifield—you’re going to be bigger than Elvis!” and Paul shushing me and saying, “Eat humble pie, Bernie, eat humble pie.”38

  Frank was above it. He was toppermost and the Beatles but a minor irritant, like amateurs in the presence of a pro, scruffs in the shadow of that fine quiff. This was their first theater gig outside Liverpool and only their second ever. In Eppy’s Empire show, their inevitably awkward adjustment to the big stage was excused by an audience of friends, and not even Brian had noticed that without stage makeup they were the biggest palefaces this side of the prairie. It was an error they repeated here first-house, until fellow musician Ted Taylor had a quiet word with them about pancake. He demonstrated how to apply Leichner 27 with a wet sponge, and trace a thin black pencil line around the eyes and lips for definition under lights. But divining the correct quantities was tricky: Ringo would remember how, in the second house, they “pranced on like Red Indians, covered in the stuff.”39

  When the curtain rose, fingers went to ears. The mixing desk was an invention yet to come: the Beatles had their own gigging amps plus house PA mikes and that was it. The sound balance was bad, everything was way too loud and no one turned it down. “The drummer apparently thought his job was to lead, not to provide rhythm,” wrote Lyndon Whittaker in the Peterborough Standard. “He made far too much noise and in their final number Twist And Shout it sounded as though everyone was trying to make more noise than the others.” Whittaker ended his assessment with a line that pleased him at the time but friends would forever quote back at him: “Frank (I Remember You) Ifield is the only one I shall remember.”40

  Clearly this was a long way from being one of the Beatles’ better shows, but the degree to which it was disastrous is buried under conflicting recollections—some say the audience booed, others that they screamed adulation. The Beatles had a drink with Arthur Howes afterward—it was their first meeting with the man who had an exclusive option to promote their tours until the end of 1965, and they found they could talk to him perfectly well. Howes was as impressed with them as he was with Brian Epstein; he told them they’d have plenty of opportunities to put wrong things right, and one would be the Tommy Roe and Chris Montez tour. The Peterborough night that would go down as a failure was really just a bump on the learning curve: they’d passed the test, and their addition to the tour lineup was reported in Melody Maker and Disc four days later.

  A day after meeting their promoter, they met John and Paul’s new publisher. The Beatles were getting to know London in little unjoined pockets, and this area of WC2 was the most familiar, 132 Charing Cross Road, up by the instrument shops and the NME, just along from Anello & Davide. Dick James was twice their age, just about Ringo’s height, but heavier, wore black horn-rim glasses and had a broad bald channel where, in performing days, he’d flashed a luxuriant toupee. He wasn’t a toff like Brian or Big George Martin, he spoke in a thickish East End voice—not the stereotype Yiddisher tones widely mocked in daily British life but recognizably Jewish all the same. If they hadn’t realized it already, the Beatles now knew they had a second Jew driving their careers—and while there’s nothing to indicate this was a problem, it would have registered as a conscious thought. The Beatles were much more open-minded than most, but it’s also true that racist remarks were expressed casually and fearlessly in these times, and as much as they liked and respected Brian, he still had to suffer the occasional barb.

  Dick’s office also had talent. His secretary and receptionist were much taken with the four Liverpool lads suddenly making their quietish place appealingly unruly. As Linda Duque remembers:

  Suddenly the Beatles arrived—these scruffy boys with the hair and old suede jackets, flopping down in the office and hungry. I went down to the Italian café and got four enormous fry-ups to bring upstairs. They were nice boys, friendly, never abrasive. I thought John and Paul were the clever ones and I immediately had a tremendous crush on John. In time, I found out he was married, but I was “a nice Jewish girl” so nothing could have happened anyway. Lee had the biggest thing about George ever.41

  “George was my favorite, right from the beginning,” Lee Perry confirms. “I found John a little distant so I only spoke to Paul, George and Ringo.” George gave Lee a photo (his solo shot, printed from Astrid’s recent session) and signed it to her with several kisses; she framed it and kept it on her desk, by the typewriter and telephone switchboard. George was the first Beatle on display in London.42

  The Beatles didn’t drop by only to say hello. J. W. Lennon and J. P. McCartney signed PRS agreements for “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why”—all part of the administrative process, legal and aboveboard. There was no alternative to being published, and if the songs were successful the writers would prosper … albeit not as much as the publisher. It was a business, and businesses exist to make money, in this instance by taking the copyright and marketing it, just as record companies owned the recordings and marketed those. But the plain fact for John and Paul was that, while they’d always be credited as the authors of “Love Me Do,” “PS I Love You,” “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why,” and activity in these songs would always reward them, copyright ownership passed out of their hands.

  Years later, Paul’s hindsight view would be that advantage was taken of their naivete: “We actually used to think, when we first came down to London, that songs belonged to everyone, that they were in the air and you couldn’t actually own one. So you can imagine: the publishers saw us coming! ‘Welcome boys, sit down. That’s what you think, is it?’ ”43

  Though Paul came to mourn losing ownership of his song copyrights, it would be surprising if he and John were quite as ignorant as he’d retrospectively suggest—this belies their years of devouring the music papers, LP sleeves, sheet music, and the names and details on record labels, as well as backstage conversations with published musicians. But even if they did believe songs were “in the air,” Dick James still didn’t “see them coming.” Being published meant signing contracts, and their contracts were the same as those signed by even the most clued-up and successful of songwriters. There was no subterfuge: the wording made it plain that the publisher took the copyright. Brian—on John and Paul’s behalf—was in no position to rewrite the rules of a business run this way globally since 1900, and the lawyer-heavy music industry of the late twentieth century was not the music business of 1962. Here, in real time, no one was taking undue advantage, no party considered it, and everything was smiles. As Paul has also said, “We loved Dick James … he was a publisher like in the movies, a publisher who was really interested in us and wanted to publish us, so we were in love with the idea.”44

  Their publisher had already exhibited one movie-like moment in recent days, when he got the Beatles booked on Thank Your Lucky Stars, and now he also got them a session on Saturday Club, effecting a powerful doublebarrel launch for “Please Please Me.” It would be one of three BBC dates on January 22, because they’d also be chatting live on Pop Inn and taping another Talent Spot; and Dick further managed to get them on Scottish TV at the start of the year, when they’d be up there on tour. Brian was filling the diary as well, with a Manchester radio recording in mid-January and another live spot on Granada TV the day before leaving for their Hamburg Christmas.

  They were off to do a radio show now. The office of Dick James Music closed every day at 5:30 sharp: Dick put on his hat and coat and took the bus home to Cricklewood, to be Frances’ husband and Stephen’s father. The Beatles left the building and headed along Oxford Street to EMI House, to make a second appearance on The Friday Spectacular for Radio Luxembourg.

  After lip-synching “Love Me Do” and signing autographs, they got away to a pub just off Manchester Square where Brian had arranged for them to meet Tony Barrow. Tony had written the “Love Me Do” press release and shaped its promotion, no
w he was writing the “Please Please Me” press release, and soon he’d be joining Nems Enterprises as press officer. He didn’t know this—it was Brian’s idea and so far he’d only told the Beatles—but Barrow’s support for what they were trying to achieve was growing all the time. Brian wanted him as part of a select team of first-rate, dedicated professionals giving the Beatles all the support necessary to make them the greatest: Lennon-McCartney-Harrison-Starkey pushed by Epstein-Martin-James-Barrow. Conversations about this would continue in 1963, but Tony was at least notionally on board so it was important he connect with the Beatles. He was another handy Liverpudlian in London—a hungry and hardworking 26-year-old from their own backyard, bright (private school and university educated) and keen to do all he could to push his home-town group. George Martin and Dick James were Londoners and there was nothing Brian or the Beatles could do about that, but wherever possible they wanted to work with their own, with Liverpudlians, guys who understood the mentality, lingo and way of life.

  These were Tony Barrow’s first impressions of the people he’d come to know very well:

  Paul was the first to socialize, coming over to ask what everyone was drinking. He took all the orders, including the other Beatles’, then went to the bar, and when the barmaid said, “That’ll be £2 14s,” he turned round and said, “Bri! £2 14s for the drinks.” This was Paul, the generous host.

  George then made a great impression by being very interested in what I had to say. He had a habit of coming up close, standing a couple of inches from your face, almost nose to nose, and speaking in a quiet and confidential manner. To anybody watching, he might have been sharing some great confidence. He was also interested in the other people with me, genuinely interested on a personal level, whereas Paul was more interested in me because Brian had told them he was hiring me for their PR—though he hadn’t told me this.