Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

16 Pete has always said the Beatles’ management contract was signed in the living room at his house. Alistair Taylor always insisted it was signed in a small office Brian kept in the basement record department at Nems, Whitechapel.

  17 A Cellarful of Noise, p59. The contract’s final page, with the Beatles’ signatures but not Brian’s, is illustrated on p52 of the same book.

  18 Interview by Geoff Brown, Melody Maker, November 30, 1974.

  19 TV news interview, August 27, 1967.

  20 The Beatles Anthology, p267.

  21 Author interview, May 4, 2005.

  22 Author interview, July 4, 2005. The Rembrandt was at 14 Slater Street, across from the Jacaranda. Brian also brought club-aficionado Allan Williams here.

  23 The Beatles Anthology, p206.

  24 Davies, p103; George from author interview, October 23, 1987.

  25 Exaggerated “bill matter” was typical of the entertainment business. Situated in a sizeable cellar at 45–47 Lloyd Street, off Albert Square, the Oasis had opened as a jazz venue but become by 1962 Manchester’s main beat club. Like the Cavern in Liverpool, it was “dry”; indeed it doubled as a coffee bar.

  26 Let the Good Times Roll! Der Star-Club-Gründer erzählt (The Star-Club founder tells), by Horst Fascher with Oliver Flesch (Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main, 2006), p27. The book has appeared only in German.

  27 From the raw transcripts of interviews for his autobiography A Cellarful of Noise.

  28 Anecdotes told by Paul McCartney to the author, October 12, 1987. The Old Dive was at 12 Brythen Street, just off Williamson Square.

  29 Author interview, July 5, 2007.

  30 Beatle!, p145. John would have said the Liverpool “get,” not “git.” Pete’s account is the only extant testimony about this outburst.

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

  32 Author interview, June 10, 2005.

  33 Interview by Jann S. Wenner, December 8, 1970, for Rolling Stone.

  34 The Beatles Anthology, p266.

  35 This is known from Bob Wooler’s interview by Johnny Beerling.

  36 Interview by Jean-François Vallée for French TV, April 4, 1975.

  37 Davies, p133.

  38 After the Beatles had been going to Jim Cannon for a while they found out he was related to Paul. (The link was a few branches away on Paul’s father’s side.)

  39 Disc and Music Echo, September 2, 1967.

  40 The Beatles Anthology, p105.

  41 Many Years From Now, p96.

  42 Explained in 1984 letter to author from Charles Tranter, who booked the Beatles for the Hoylake dance. Manchester recalled by Oasis Club co-owner Ric Dixon in author interview, November 28, 2005. John from Sydney press conference, June 11, 1964.

  43 Interview, August 28, 1963, for The Mersey Sound (BBC-tv, October 9, 1963).

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

  45 Interview by Jann S. Wenner, December 8, 1970, for Rolling Stone.

  46 Interview by Lisa Robinson, Hit Parader, December 1975.

  47 First paragraph from The Beatles Anthology, p73; second from interview by Richard Williams, for The Times, December 16, 1981. Paul’s “Gateshead group philosophy” refers to his epiphany in 1954—see chapter 3.

  48 Evidence given at the Royal Courts of Justice, London, May 6, 1998.

  49 Author interview, November 11, 2004. The shop was at 17–19 Grange Road West, Birkenhead, an unprepossessing two-story building in which Beno Luciano Dorn ran a business that won him multiple London awards.

  TWENTY-FIVE: “A Tendency to Play Music”

  (February 6–March 8, 1962)

  1 A Cellarful of Noise, p55. The raw interview transcript for that book is worded a little differently and includes a shorthand—“Mr. Epstein. We don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups are out. Four groups particularly and guitars are finished.” The interview was by Derek Taylor, who then ghosted the material for publication.

  In a 1981 interview by American writer David Klein, Dick Rowe claimed no knowledge of any discussion with Brian Epstein subsequent to his receiving Decca’s standard rejection letter, or of any trip to London by Brian to ask Decca to reconsider, or of saying “Groups of guitarists are on their way out,” or of hearing Brian claim the Beatles would be bigger than Elvis. Rowe said it was all “lies.”

  The full and true circumstances of the Beatles’ rejection by Decca will surely never be known. I have done my best to make sense of much conflicting and confusing information, but it’s an imperfect blink in history.

  2 A Cellarful of Noise, p56. On that book’s publication, in October 1964, S. A. Beecher-Stevens complained to Brian Epstein, “The paragraphs which refer to our meeting are so far from the truth that I feel I must write you this letter in protest. Far from rejecting the Beatles, I personally recommended that they be accepted and recorded. As a marketing man, I was proud of the fact that I did not turn them down.” Brian recognized that Beecher-Stevens was objecting to the paragraph beginning “The boys won’t go, Mr. Epstein …,” and in his reply stated, “I recall that this was implied quite definitely by Dick Rowe and admit that whilst you were present at all these conferences you did not in fact comment as such.” Accordingly, Beecher-Stevens’s name was omitted from certain later printings, an action that annoyed him just as much. (Source: Epstein files.)

  3 Author interview, September 29, 2004. It’s commonly said that Poole and the Tremilos auditioned at Decca the same day as the Beatles. This was first put into print by Beat Monthly in August 1963 and has been everywhere since—but Poole is certain it was a different day.

  4 Brian Poole and the Tremilos became Brian Poole and the Tremeloes to match Decca’s misspelling of the name on the label of their first record.

  5 Melody Maker, December 9, 1961.

  6 Author interview, September 6, 1995.

  7 Letter to Dick Rowe, February 10, 1962; A Cellarful of Noise, pp57–8.

  8 Author interview, May 19, 1987.

  9 Author interview with Tony Meehan, September 6, 1995. (“I met George again in 1968 and for some reason he was harboring a grudge against me. He was very, very uptight about it—’You blocked us getting a recording contract …’ ”) First part of George quote from interview by Terry David Mulligan, The Great Canadian Gold Rush, CBC radio, May 30 and June 6, 1977; concluding five words from interview for The Beatles Anthology.

  10 Interview by Paul Drew, US radio, April 1975. I once asked Tony Meehan whether he produced what is known as the Beatles “Decca session” and he answered with a well-supported no, but one of his then-colleagues says he did and just wouldn’t admit to it. Tony Calder, 17 in 1962 and just starting a life in the music business, insists Meehan confessed it to him years later (author interview with Calder, October 1, 2004). If Meehan did make the tape, though, where is the recording made by Mike Smith and engineer Mike Savage? They surely did something, but the Beatles only went to Decca once. Taking all factors into consideration, it must be considered unlikely that Meehan worked with the Beatles.

  11 Author interviews, November 5, 1984, and September 6, 1995.

  12 Interview by Howard Smith, WPLJ-FM, New York, January 23, 1972; Paul from interview by Mike Read, October 13, 1987, for BBC Radio 1.

  13 Interview for Rockworld, syndicated US radio show, September 1974.

  14 Author interview, May 4, 2005.

  15 The film’s existence was unknown until 1996; it was put up for auction by Sotheby’s that September and segments were shown on TV news. Ringo Starr recorded “Dream” for his 1970 album Sentimental Journey—it was among the important songs of his childhood.

  16 Beatle!, p174.

  17 Author interview, June 21, 2007; Paul from interview by Mark Radcliffe, BBC Radio 2, September 17, 2005.

  18 John—first part from interview by Jean-François Vallée for French TV, April 4, 1975, second from interview by Andy Peebles, BBC Radio 1, Decembe
r 6, 1980; Paul from The Beatles Anthology, p22.

  19 Interview by Spencer Leigh.

  20 Author interview, September 30, 1987. It was probably this song’s waltz tempo that inspired Paul to put the waltz middle-eight in Pinwheel Twist.

  21 Ibid.

  22 Stuart played nine Hamburg shows with the Bats over eight consecutive days, February 2–9, 1962, concluding, it seems, with three nights in the Kaiserkeller (research by Thorsten Knublauch and Axel Korinth in their book Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand, privately published, 2008). Astrid was rightly concerned for his health while he did this; indeed Stuart wrote in a letter home on February 14, “I have played a couple of times [sic] in another band and managed to earn a bit … the day I fell sick I was practically on the stage to begin—that was horrible, I thought I was dying.”

  23 George’s recollection from The Beatles Anthology, p69; John’s from reliable private source; Mike from Liverpool Echo, April 16, 1962; Pete from author interview, March 7, 1985.

  24 Author interview, July 20, 2006.

  25 Author interview, November 28, 2005.

  26 Author interview, July 5, 2007.

  27 Author interview, January 14, 1987. Like all Roberts, Boast (1918–94) was usually called Bob, but he was also known informally as Kenneth, which explains Brian Epstein’s mention of “Kenneth Boast” in A Cellarful of Noise, p60.

  28 Author interview, January 21, 1987.

  29 Davies, p167, and A Cellarful of Noise, p62.

  30 All You Need Is Ears, p122.

  31 From the raw transcripts of interviews for his autobiography A Cellarful of Noise. I’ve seen what may be the sole surviving Beatles 78rpm acetate cut for Brian Epstein at His Master’s Voice, which is in private hands. Its uniqueness is enhanced by his handwriting on the labels, and the recognition of what it led to, making this one of the rarest and most collectible of all Beatles records.

  32 Interview by Richard Williams, August 21, 1971.

  33 Colman’s names have been frequently misspelled. For the record, he was Sidney Herbert Colman (1905–65) and Bennett was Thomas “Tom” George Whippey (1931–2004). He was given the name Kim Bennett by his producer at Decca, Hugh Mendl.

  34 Author interview, July 28, 2003. All Kim Bennett quotes in this chapter are from this interview.

  35 This account is largely drawn from A Cellarful of Noise, pp94–7. The Beehive is a pub on Paradise Street in the middle of Liverpool.

  36 Davies, p158.

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

  38 “Portrait of Paul,” by Mike McCartney, Woman magazine, August 28, 1965.

  39 The Beatles Anthology, p158.

  40 Interview by Raoul Pantin, Trinidad Express, May 5, 1971.

  41 A Cellarful of Noise, p63.

  42 The Beatles Anthology, p58.

  43 Interview by Horst Königstein, Hamburg, September 29, 1976, for Ringo und die Stadt am Ende des Regenbogen (Ringo and the City at the End of the Rainbow), West German NDR-TV, June 9 and 16, 1977.

  44 The Beatles Anthology, pp58–9.

  45 Author interview, March 18, 2006.

  46 From e-mail to Thorsten Knublauch, February 6, 2007.

  47 Davies, p262. Richard Starkey died in a Crewe hospital on December 5, 1981, aged 68. He was proud of his son’s success and isn’t known to have bothered him or asked for money.

  48 Interview by Alan Smith, NME, August 23, 1963. “I’d get the car and just drive around by myself, anywhere really. I used to get a lot of kicks out of it.”

  49 The Best Years of the Beatles, p161; Beatle!, p145; Davies, p137.

  50 Wooler from The Best of Fellas, p167; Harry from interview by Spencer Leigh; Aspinall from author interview, June 21, 2007.

  51 A Cellarful of Noise, p68. The suggestion here is that this talk was had in summer 1962, but other information indicates it must have been earlier.

  52 “There’s another Beatle” from Spencer Leigh interview with Southport promoter Ron Appleby; Beatles laughing at Brian Epstein from recording of legal interview with Pete Best, New York, 1965. Mike McCartney has a photo in which Brian can just be seen wearing a leather jacket over a shirt and tie. It was taken on March 17, 1962, at Sam Leach’s engagement party, which followed straight after a Leach dance promotion—a St. Patrick’s Night Rock Gala at Knotty Ash Village Hall starring the Beatles and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. (The Hurricanes were still without Ringo. It was the Beatles’ first appearance at this violent place for four months, and their last; Brian made an exception only because of the special occasion.)

  53 Author interview, May 4, 2005.

  54 The 2.7m figure comes from the BBC’s daily “Audience Barometer” research, which sampled the listening habits of nearly four thousand people and expressed this as a percentage of the possible total audience of 49m—the entire British population bar under-fives. As the figure was computed only for internal use, and the BBC wasn’t a commercial organization, there was no need for dressing. The March 8, 1962, Here We Go was heard by an estimated 5.6 percent of the 49m audience—2,744,000.

  55 Remember, p99; the photo is blurred because Mike didn’t use flash, not wanting to distract the moment. A sharper image, from the afternoon rehearsal, is on p98.

  56 The Beatles—The True Beginnings, p145. The broadcast master tape was retained by the BBC for a few months and then junked; it wasn’t feasible to keep everything. The surviving recording was made by a Beatles fan at home with a domestic tape recorder, receiving the broadcast at 247 meters on the medium-wave, an historic moment captured in listenable lo-fi.

  TWENTY-SIX: “Us Against Them” (March 9–April 10, 1962)

  1 Author interview, June 12, 2005.

  2 Author interview, July 5, 2007.

  3 Interview by Spencer Leigh.

  4 Author interview, July 5, 2007.

  5 Author interview, April 24, 2012.

  6 Mersey Beat, April 5 and 19, 1962. The other side of the Miracles’ “What’s So Good About Good-bye” was “I’ve Been Good to You.”

  7 Paul would describe “Ask Me Why” as “mostly John’s: John’s original idea, and we both sat down and wrote it together” (Many Years From Now, p92), but John himself—on probably the only occasion he was asked about it—said, “I wrote all of that … I wrote it.” (From unpublished section of interview by Mike Hennessey for Record Mirror, October 2, 1971.)

  8 Paul says this in Many Years From Now, pp81–2.

  9 Author interview, September 30, 1987.

  10 The Marquee was still in its first location, 165 Oxford Street.

  11 P. P. Pond was Paul Pond, who took the name Paul Jones a few months later. Elmore James was really Elmore Brooks (1918–63), songwriter, singer, and electrifyingly good blues guitarist, specializing in slide.

  12 Jazz News, a Soho-based weekly, was the main magazine to cover the rise of rhythm and blues in southeast England in 1962–3. R&B wasn’t jazz but sort of emerged from it, as did a number of its movers and shakers (Chris Barber, Giorgio Gomelsky, etc.).

  13 John from interview by Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld, September 1971; Brown from author interview, July 5, 2007; Brian from interview for WKYC, Cleveland, Ohio, September 15, 1964.

  14 The Best of Fellas, p159, with additional text from uncut interview by Spencer Leigh.

  15 From foreword to the 1984 edition of A Cellarful of Noise; Brian from interview by Gordon Williams, Scene, February 9, 1963.

  16 Interview by Johnny Beerling, January 13, 1972, for BBC Radio 1. Wooler made the same point in Disc and Music Echo, July 2, 1966. The Epstein quote, via Wooler, “they’ll have to change it,” suggests this was said by promoters insisting they’d change the name Beatles before agreeing to book them. They would change it, robbing Brian and the Beatles of any control. He declined, of course.

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

  18 Davies, p137; Wooler from The Best Of Fellas, p159.

  19 Author interview
, May 19, 1987. “Right. Try Embassy” from A Cellarful of Noise, p58.

  20 Interview, October 28, 1964, by Jean Shepherd for Playboy, February 1965.

  21 From the raw transcripts of interviews for his autobiography A Cellarful of Noise.

  22 Author interview, May 3, 1994.

  23 The Beatles Anthology, p72.

  24 Interview by Robyn Flans, Sh-Boom, May 1990.

  25 George from The Beatles Anthology, p72; Paul from Many Years From Now, p172. Ringo told Dave Stewart (Off the Record, HBO, May 2, 2008) that after he went to the toms in “Rock and Roll Music,” “John turned around and looked at me with great surprise [and pleasure].”

  26 The Beatles Anthology, p49.

  27 From part three of Ringo’s Yellow Submarine, American radio series, 1983, interview by Dave Herman.

  28 “I got £9. I thought it was fantastic—£9 for just one night,” Ringo told Alan Smith (NME, August 23, 1963). The Beatles weren’t yet on £36 for a single night’s work, though it would soon come and be surpassed. A set of autographs survives from the Kingsway Club night on March 26, 1962—the first single page to embody the signatures of John, Paul, George and Ringo—and has been sold several times at auction.

  29 George from interview by Roger Scott, US radio syndication, October 15, 1987. (Pete has said “twice” in all his interviews and books.)

  30 Ibid.

  31 Ringo and George related this memory in a 1994 conversation filmed for The Beatles Anthology TV series (not used, but included on the bonus DVD).

  32 The Beatles Anthology, p39. Bass player Lu Walters had left the Hurricanes to go on tour with the Seniors; Bobby Thompson left the Dominoes to replace him. Such movement was commonplace among the groups.

  33 Fee and box office information from the accounts of Jaybee Clubs, which promoted at this venue. The company was jointly owned by Jack Fallon and Bill Fraser-Reid; the latter kindly provided details to me in 1984.

  34 Author interview, February 7, 2005.

  35 “The leather suits” from song-by-song notes typed by John Lennon for his LP Rock ’n’ Roll, spring 1975.

  36 Author interviews—Farrell, May 26, 2004; Houghton, September 10, 2007.