Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  13 John, Paul and George all used European guitars for the time being, but that would change in the early 1960s, after Britain’s dollar-conserving prohibition on the import of American instruments and records was lifted in June 1959.

  14 This was how John remembered it during an interview by Brian Matthew for Pop Profile, BBC Transcription Service, November 30, 1965. It has also been said in other ways, such as “The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never earn a living from it,” and “This is all very well but you’ll never earn a living at it,” and “The guitar is all right as a hobby, John, but you’ll never make a living at it.”

  15 Author interview, December 8, 2004.

  16 Indian baptismal (birth), death and marriage records before 1948, when the nation gained independence from the British Empire, are held in the Asian & African Studies collection at the British Library in London. The Shaw-Best marriage was mixed by religion as well as color: she was Anglican, he Catholic.

  17 The Beatles—The True Beginnings, p161.

  18 Author interview, November 10, 2005.

  19 Interview by Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld, September 1971.

  20 The Real John Lennon, Channel 4, September 30, 2000.

  21 John, by Cynthia Lennon (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2005), pp38–9.

  22 A Twist of Lennon, p25.

  23 A Twist of Lennon, p35.

  24 Interview by David Sheff, September 24, 1980, for Playboy.

  25 Author interview, November 10, 2005. Reference made to the exhibition of modern American art by “17 contemporary American painters,” at the United States Embassy, Grosvenor Square, from October 31, 1958.

  26 John, p45.

  27 Many Years From Now, p42. “Most of my reading” from interview by Melvyn Bragg, The South Bank Show, LWT, January 14, 1978; “good image” from interview by Janice Long for Listen to What the Man Says, BBC Radio 1, December 22, 1985; “at university” from interview by Richard Williams for The Times, December 16, 1981. “I always used to like being on my own. I used to get on the bus and go somewhere, as a change from being with people”—interview on Boston radio WBZ, London, May 30, 1964.

  28 Davies, p77.

  29 The Beatles Anthology, p31.

  30 Davies, p60. George’s sister was in Canada. Louise emigrated to Ontario in 1956 with her husband, Gordon Caldwell, sailing from Liverpool. All the Harrisons, George included, waved them off. He became Uncle George to a boy (Gordon) born April 1957 and a girl (Leslie) in September 1959, to remain unseen for several years yet.

  31 Interview by David Sheff, September 24, 1980, for Playboy.

  32 The Beatles Anthology, p38.

  33 December 5, 1959.

  34 I Me Mine, p29; “darts” from Davies, p60.

  35 The Beatles Anthology, p81.

  36 First part of quote from The Beatles—The True Beginnings, p29; second from interview by Roger Scott, Capital Radio (London), November 17, 1983.

  37 Author interview, December 14, 2004.

  38 Author interview, October 4, 2004.

  39 Author interview, December 17, 2004.

  40 Author interview, November 11, 2004.

  41 A Twist of Lennon, p28.

  42 Author interview, August 10, 2004.

  43 Shout!, by Philip Norman (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1981), p53.

  44 Author interview, December 11, 2004.

  45 Author interview, April 25, 2005.

  46 The Beatles Anthology, p53.

  47 Quoted on the website It’s Only Love (http://​sentstarr.​tripod.​com./​beatgirls/​girl/​html). Dorothy Rhone lived at 39 Beauclair Drive, Liverpool 15, close to John Lennon’s first school, Mosspits Lane Primary.

  48 The Beatles Anthology, p39. Ringo’s first personalized bass drum head just had the initials R. S., which handily doubled for both Ringo Starr and Rory Storm.

  49 £50 is the most frequently quoted figure but he said £75 in an interview by Roderick Mann, Sunday Express, March 9, 1969, and in a 1994 conversation filmed for The Beatles Anthology.

  50 The Beatles Anthology, p38.

  51 The Real John Lennon, Channel 4, September 30, 2000.

  52 Davies, pp56–7.

  53 John, p51.

  54 Interview by Peter Lewis, June 6, 1968, for the BBC2 program Release. “Henry and Harry” was published in 1964, In His Own Write, pp66–7; “astoundagasted” was a Lennon invention used in speech and in his early poem “The Land Of The Lunapots.”

  55 The Beatles Anthology, p31.

  TWELVE: The Swish of the Curtain

  1 Information in these paragraphs has been drawn from a variety of sources, including naturalization records (in the National Archives), birth, marriage and death certificates, early twentieth-century Liverpool local newspapers, business documents and discussions with the Epstein family.

  2 Leslie Epstein died in 1946. Isaac and Dinah had six children in all. As the only other son, Harry ran the businesses.

  3 Davies, p116.

  4 Ibid.

  5 George recorded “The Spider’s Dance” for inclusion on a CD packaged with his autobiography Playback (Genesis Publications, Guildford, 2002).

  6 Unless otherwise attributed, all George Martin quotes in this chapter are from author interview, August 31, 2000. Shearing was the blind London-born jazz pianist; Lewis, the Chicago-born boogie-woogie player.

  7 All You Need Is Ears, by George Martin with Jeremy Hornsby (Macmillan, London, 1979), p27.

  8 Brian Epstein diaries and personal papers sold at Christie’s, London, April 27, 2000; notes taken by the author prior to the sale. Homosexual activity at Wrekin remembered in Brian Epstein, by Ray Coleman (Viking Penguin, London, 1989), p28.

  9 November 10, 1950. Accordion Times and Musical Express had become plain Musical Express on February 6, 1948. It became New Musical Express on March 7, 1952.

  10 Interview by Bill Grundy, March 7, 1964, for Frankly Speaking (BBC North of England Home Service, March 23, 1964).

  11 Quotes and information in these Brian Epstein paragraphs from the raw transcripts of interviews for his autobiography A Cellarful of Noise, noted and typed by Derek Taylor in April 1964 and printed facsimile in his Fifty Years Adrift, pp128–41.

  12 A Cellarful of Noise, by Brian Epstein (Souvenir Press, London, 1964), p32.

  13 Davies, p119.

  14 The Brian Epstein Story, compiled by Deborah Geller (Faber and Faber, London, 2000), p8.

  15 Author interview, June 15, 1992.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Melody Maker, Billboard, January 22, 1955; NME, January 21, 1955.

  18 April 22, 1955. The Hoylake & West Kirby Advertiser was where Derek Taylor began his journalism career in 1949. He grew up in West Kirby. He left the paper in 1955 after completing his National Service, and took a better job with the Liverpool Echo.

  19 The document was published (typeset, not facsimile) in The Brian Epstein Story, pp9–10.

  20 Author interview, June 15, 1992. Wheels within wheels: the George Martin production that Dick James sang into the charts was the theme of a serial that marked the TV debuts of Peter Asher and his sister Jane, 11 and 10. They even appeared together in one episode, “Children of the Greenwood” (London ITV on April 29, 1956). William Walton famously scored Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film of Shakespeare’s Henry V, whose set-piece battle sequence featured a breathtaking whoosh of thousands of arrows.

  21 Author interview, January 11, 1985.

  22 A Cellarful of Noise, p40.

  23 Brian Epstein (Coleman), pp41–2.

  24 Notes from Brian Epstein’s handwritten statement made by the author prior to its sale at Christie’s, London, April 27, 2000. It was transcribed (partly) in that auction catalog, and in The Brian Epstein Story, pp18–21.

  25 Quoted verbatim in the NME, February 15, 1957.

  26 A Cellarful of Noise, p40.

  27 Ibid., p41.

  28 Author interview, December 12, 2005.

  29 From the raw transcripts of inte
rviews for his autobiography A Cellarful of Noise.

  30 Playback, by Dave Dexter, Jr (Billboard Publications, New York, 1976), p157.

  31 Author interview, April 8, 2005.

  32 All You Need Is Ears, p144.

  33 This account of Brian Epstein’s movements after the attack was stated as evidence in court on May 21, 1958. An alternative version is given by his friend Joe Flannery (e.g., in The Brian Epstein Story, p26): he says Brian left his house before the attack and returned there afterward, although not in his car, and that he (Flannery) nursed the wounds.

  34 According to biographer Ray Coleman, Brian Epstein revealed his sexuality to his family after a Friday-night Sabbath dinner. His father and brother were shocked and unaccepting to begin with, but Queenie understood, having sensed the possibility for some time. She became his confidante, the one family member he could be open with (Brian Epstein, pp34–5). This may not be right—though, even if it is, it’s unclear when it happened.

  35 Liverpool Evening Express, May 21 and 29, 1958.

  36 Brian Epstein (Coleman), pp50–5.

  37 News of the World, September 10, 1967. This article is not as salacious as the source would suggest: it’s a fair piece of journalism, quoting soberly from letters and providing some dates and background.

  38 Author interview, December 12, 2005.

  39 Davies, p123.

  40 Author interview, April 10, 2005.

  41 January 2, 1959.

  42 May 15, 1959.

  THIRTEEN: “Hi-yo, hi-yo, Silver—Away!” (January–May 1960)

  1 Interview by Spencer Leigh.

  2 £90 was stated by Sutcliffe himself in a résumé of his art career, handwritten a year later. This is the only accurate record of the sum paid him by Moores.

  3 Davies, p65.

  4 The Beatles—The True Beginnings, p54.

  5 Author interview, August 25, 2005.

  6 Beatles Gear, pp29–31. Andy Babiuk’s book is the standard work on the Beatles’ musical equipment.

  7 The Beatles Anthology, p23.

  8 Author interview, August 10, 2004.

  9 A Twist of Lennon, p38.

  10 Cyn from A Twist of Lennon, p29; George from The Beatles Anthology, p41. The other homemade bass guitar, started in late 1959 by Rod Murray so he might join the Quarrymen, was never completed. It progressed only to a pleasingly artistic shape, nicely planed but far from finished. He still has it.

  11 The Beatles Anthology TV series.

  12 An actual situation, not merely metaphorical; said by Paul in The Beatles Anthology director’s cut (an unofficial release).

  13 Interview by Michael Parkinson, Parkinson’s Sunday Supplement, BBC Radio 2, October 12, 1997.

  14 From the website It’s Only Love, which handily collates in one place published quotes and knowledge about the girlfriends in the Beatles’ lives.

  15 West Derby Reporter (and others), January 22, 1960.

  16 From Johnny “Guitar” Byrne interview by Bob Hardy, May 1999.

  17 Author interview, March 4, 2008.

  18 Liverpool Echo ad, January 22, 1960.

  19 Author interview, August 11, 2004.

  20 Many Years From Now, p40. Paul’s memory is challenged by classmates, who remember him making at least a preliminary application to Liverpool University for a teacher-training place. His studies would have entailed a long daily trip into Cheshire, attending the affiliated Chester Training College for Schoolmasters.

  21 Daily Mirror, May 24, 1985. If John, Stuart and George went to see Paul in the play, they never mentioned it. Only seven months after leaving the Institute, George wouldn’t have relished a return, and John would have only caused a scene.

  22 Austin Davies’s wife was Beryl Bainbridge (1932–2010), part-time actress and, from 1967, prizewinning and bestselling novelist. Fritz Spiegl (1926–2003) was a flautist, broadcaster, humorist and author. Other sources: The Beatles Anthology, pp31/198; and author interview with Tony Carricker, December 17, 2004.

  23 Paul’s French tune included the special chord Jim Gretty had shown him and George at Hessy’s. “Trambone” was another tune they’d practiced as a two-hander, like Atkins’s interpretation of Bach’s Bourrée. “It was me … my ploys” from Many Years From Now, p273, where party host Austin Davies is erroneously given as Austin Mitchell; “We were trying to hang in there …” from The Beatles Anthology, p198. Paul sometimes says “we” in interviews when he means “I.”

  24 First part from author interview, September 30, 1987; second part from interview by Alan Rowett and Geoff Barker for Paul McCartney’s Routes of Rock, BBC World Service, Oct–Nov 1999.

  25 January 2, 1960.

  26 Remembered by Stu’s then girlfriend Veronica Johnson in Stuart: The Life and Art of Stuart Sutcliffe, by Kay Williams and Pauline Sutcliffe (Genesis Publications, Guildford, 1996), p99.

  27 Interview by Alan Rowett and Geoff Barker for Paul McCartney’s Routes of Rock, BBC World Service, Oct–Nov 1999.

  28 The Beatles Anthology, p28. In 1963, Paul told Michael Braun (Love Me Do! The Beatles’ Progress, pp34–5), “I remember thinking before the [Eddie Cochran] show that I was actually there.” (He then went on to relate the antics of a black act on the bill, although there wasn’t one.) Twenty-five years later BBC Radio Merseyside presenter Spencer Leigh, who has a specialist knowledge about the Vincent-Cochran tour, asked Paul about seeing the Liverpool Empire show and Paul said he hadn’t gone, and could no longer remember why not.

  29 First part of quote from interview by B. P. Fallon for RTE2 (Ireland), circa October 20, 1987; middle part from interview by Joe Brown, Let It Rock, BBC Radio 2, July 5, 1999; final line from The Beatles Anthology, p28. Cochran replaced his standard heavy-gauge 3rd guitar string (steel wire around which was wound a nickel-steel wire) with a lighter 2nd string, just plain steel (hence “unwound”), which made it easier to bend the strings as he played his trademark solos. George didn’t notice this at the Empire, he was told it years later by Joe Brown, who’d been able to observe Cochran at close quarters during the tour.

  30 Author interview, July 20, 2006; Echo review, March 15, 1960.

  31 Author interview, May 10, 2010. In 1970, when Kelly heard “One After 909” on the Beatles’ album Let It Be, he instantly recognized it as the song they’d recorded ten years earlier.

  32 An edit of “Cayenne” was released on The Beatles Anthology 1; nothing else from the tape is legally available but the tracks circulate unofficially. Another song might be called “I Don’t Know” and could be a Lennon-McCartney piece. The place of recording isn’t known: it may have been the Life Drawing room at the art college or the Gambier Terrace flat. Rod Murray bought a tape deck on hire-purchase in January 1960 and remembers recording them in the flat, but believes the tapes were lost or erased almost immediately. (This could still be it, however.)

  33 “We would lie our faces off …” from The Beatles Anthology, p23. “Mr. Low” was possibly the agent and promoter Harry Lowe, based in London but born in Liverpool and still visibly active there. He was really Harry Swerdlow, and his nephew, Alan Swerdlow, was both a friend of Brian Epstein and a student at Liverpool College of Art with John, which may have been the connection that prompted the letter. It is reproduced facsimile in Davies, p68. Again underlining the few degrees of separation in Liverpool, the handwriting of which Paul was so proud was taught him at the Institute by “Cissy” Smith, brother of John’s late uncle George.

  34 Much, p70. “Competence, confidence & continuity” sounds like a Jim Mac phrase.

  35 Letter sold in auction at Sotheby’s, London, on September 1, 1983, reproduced in that catalog and also in my book The Complete Beatles Chronicle (Pyramid Books, London, 1992), p18.

  36 Los Paranoias mentioned by John in an interview by Tony MacArthur, Radio Luxembourg, mid-September 1969. A year previously, a Beatles studio jam (released on Anthology 3) evolved knowingly into an impromptu song called “Los Paranoias.” “We had about ten a week” fr
om interview by Dibbs Mather for Dateline London, BBC Transcription Service, December 10, 1963.

  37 Interview by Jim Steck, August 26, 1964.

  38 Author interview, February 13, 1997.

  39 Interview by Fred Robbins for Assignment: Hollywood, Radio Luxembourg, February 10, 1964.

  In the mid-1970s it was brought to George Harrison’s attention that a scene in the Marlon Brando movie The Wild One (1953) has co-star Lee Marvin shouting, “Johnny, we’ve been looking for you. The Beetles have missed you. All the Beetles have missed you.” Remembering that Stuart Sutcliffe was a Brando fan, George suggested this could have been the source of the group’s name, and he speculated too that the character Johnny could have influenced John Lennon. As a result, the possibility gained strong currency, especially after George discussed it in The Beatles Anthology TV series (1995).

  George was seemingly unaware The Wild One was banned by the British Board of Film Censors over fears it could incite delinquency, and that it wasn’t shown in public cinemas until 1968. There is just one chance Sutcliffe saw it before 1960: on November 24, 1956, the Merseyside Film Institute Society (a private club whose aim was to raise the standard and appreciation of films) held a one-off, members-only screening in the Philharmonic Hall. For George to be right, Stuart would have had to retain for more than three years a piece of dialog inconsequential when he heard it (and yet not suggest it when they were looking for a name earlier), he would have had to gain access to the screening though at 16 he was too young, and he would have needed to be a MFIS member, and wasn’t.

  The Wild One is likely to have played no more part in the name Beatles (or Beatals) than, for example, the line “Do the beetle-bop right, side by side” in Bill Haley’s “Rock This Joint,” in the NME chart in February 1957 when Paul McCartney saw them in concert.

  40 Author interview, October 4, 2004.

  41 Interview by Brian Matthew for My Top 12, BBC Radio 1, February 6, 1974.

  42 Author interview, July 20, 2006.

  43 Disc, April 27, 1963.

  44 In issue 27 of Beatles Book magazine (October 1965), Jim McCartney said of Paul and Mike as children, “Amongst their friends they were known as the Nurk Twins, but I never did find out why.” Fred Nurke was a minor Goon Show character, voiced by Peter Sellers and popping up in only three episodes. It was always written as Nurke in the scripts but, being radio, no one could have known this. The spelling Nerk prevails because it was used by Paul in a postcard sent from Caversham to his brother, so this is probably how it was written on their handmade posters. Background information about John and Paul’s visit to Caversham comes from a 1983 author interview with Mike Robbins (a good man, 1928–2009).