Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  37 April 19, 1962.

  38 Letter to Kathy Burns, April 26, 1977.

  39 The Beatles—The True Beginnings, p159.

  TWENTY-SEVEN: “He Could Easily Have Been the Beatle”

  (April 10–13, 1962)

  1 Liverpool Echo, April 14, 1962; Prescot & Huyton Reporter, April 20, 1962. There were further Echo pieces on the 16th and 18th and a death notice on the 13th.

  2 Author interview, August 11, 2004.

  3 Interview by Mike Ledgerwood, Disc and Music Echo, November 7, 1970.

  4 Hamburg Days, p140.

  5 The Beatles Anthology, p69.

  6 Interview by Mike Read, October 13, 1987, for BBC Radio 1. By “his sister” Paul meant Pauline; Joyce Sutcliffe has remained private.

  7 Disc and Music Echo, November 7, 1970.

  8 Hamburg Days, p138.

  9 Shout!, p141. Among those who doubted Philip Norman’s conclusion was Pauline Sutcliffe, Stuart’s younger sister. In April 1990, when Kevin Howlett and I interviewed her for a BBC radio documentary series, she said, “The connection of Stuart’s brain hemorrhage with being beaten up at a Beatles gig is a weak theory. The interval between the two would suggest there was no significance.” She also dismissed outright the very theory she herself would advance eleven years later, in her third book about her brother (The Beatles’ Shadow: Stuart Sutcliffe & His Lonely Hearts Club, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 2001, p134), that John had so viciously kicked Stuart in a fight that it led to his death.

  10 Liverpool Echo, April 13, 1962; Prescot & Huyton Reporter, April 20, 1962.

  11 Interview by Nik Cohn, Observer, September 8, 1968.

  12 Author interview, March 11, 2006.

  13 Davies, p114.

  14 Author interview, March 29, 2006.

  15 Interview by Mike Ledgerwood, Disc and Music Echo, November 7, 1970.

  TWENTY-EIGHT: You Better Move On (April 13–June 2, 1962)

  1 Author interview, March 29, 2006.

  2 Pete Best letter sold at Sotheby’s, September 14, 1995. Letter from John to Cynthia first illustrated in John Winston Lennon, by Ray Coleman (Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1984), pp165–8.

  3 Roy Young says Brian Epstein came to him one day and said the Beatles wondered if he’d help them get a recording deal in England. Young replied that he couldn’t because he’d just signed a year-long contract with Manfred Weissleder and was unable to leave Hamburg. It’s unclear what this help would have been, since Young’s own agreement with Philips had expired and (apart from one 45 on Ember) he himself was out of contract, which was why he was happy to take the work in Hamburg. The conversation has been interpreted by some as an invitation for Young to join the Beatles; mostly, he has been careful not to claim this. The idea isn’t credible—they liked him, but didn’t want to become a five-piece group with a “name” pianist/singer, someone not from Liverpool and so much older (born London, 1934).

  4 “Mach Schau!,” p88.

  5 Let the Good Times Roll!, pp100–1.

  6 Fifty Years Adrift, p96.

  7 The 1961 recordings were still dribbling out in different parts of the world. The Beatles’ first record in America, and also Canada, “My Bonnie” c/w “The Saints,” was issued the same day they heard about Stuart’s death, April 11. They were unaware of it and would have been bemused to see themselves on Decca, the label that had so recently turned them down in England. Actually, the two Decca companies had separated years earlier, and because “American Decca” (as it was known in Britain) had a tie-up with both Bert Kaempfert and Deutsche Grammophon, it landed the master tape as a matter of routine. The repeat of the original German credit, to Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, indicates the absence of consultation with Brian Epstein in this North American release. The single was listed in Billboard and reviewed relatively positively in Cash Box (issues dated April 28), although kind words were found for most records. The placing was more relevant—such mentions were way down among the small print. There was little prospect of either side getting airplay and even less chance of the record selling, which is precisely what happened: it came out and it sank.

  At this same time in Germany, Deutsche Grammophon issued Tony Sheridan’s debut album, My Bonnie. The cover photo—Sheridan on a bicycle, a guitar slung across his back—was taken by Astrid in November 1961. (Stuart was there and can be seen in outtakes.) The album was credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, and the Beatles play on just two of the twelve tracks (the title number and “The Saints”), their proper name specified on the back cover. The May 3 issue of Mersey Beat mentioned the LP and said “copies will soon be available in Liverpool”—this information was provided by Brian Epstein, who imported copies to sell at Nems.

  8 The document is reproduced on p28 of the book that accompanies the definitive CD boxed set The Beatles With Tony Sheridan: Beatles Bop—Hamburg Days, and on p135 of an earlier work by the same author (Hans Olof Gottfridsson), The Beatles: From Cavern to Star-Club (Premium Publishing, Stockholm, 1997). It also appears in The Beatles: Fact and Fiction 1960–1962, p157, with the most plausible interpretation on p149.

  9 Recorded in Number 2 studio at EMI on December 22, 1961, “The Hole In The Ground” was composed by Ted Dicks (music) and Myles Rudge (lyric), not Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths but writers of stage revue numbers—they said in interviews how George Martin kept sending them away to come up with “the right song.” An LP (A Combination of Cribbins) finally flowered in November 1962.

  10 NME headline, April 6, 1962; Disc quote, April 14, 1962. By “we” George Martin was including the song’s musical arranger, the pianist Tommy Watt. The Radiophonic Workshop was a division of the BBC, based at Maida Vale Studios, a mile from EMI Studios in St. John’s Wood. Inventive sounds made by brilliant minds, all for the £4 annual license fee the press encouraged everyone to grumble about.

  11 As George didn’t write lyrics, he cocomposed the Take Me Over title song with Paul McDowell of the Temperance Seven. The lyric of the Crooks Anonymous title song—called “I Must Resist Temptation”—was written by the same band’s Brian Innes while the music was cowritten by George Martin and Muir Mathieson. It was sung by actor Leslie Phillips and issued as a Parlophone single in May 1962.

  12 “I had always been very envious of Norrie Paramor,” George Martin volunteered in All You Need Is Ears, p120; “I was frankly jealous of the seemingly easy success other people were having with such acts, in particular Norrie Paramor,” he added in Summer of Love: The Making of Sgt. Pepper (with William Pearson, Macmillan, London, 1994), p130. “I did envy Norrie Paramor enormously,” George told his son Giles Martin in the April 25, 2011, BBC2 Arena documentary Produced by George Martin. “Did you want to beat [better] Norrie Paramor?” Giles asked. “Yes. He drove an E-Type Jag,” George replied, laughing at the memory.

  13 David Frost—An Autobiography: Part One—From Congregations to Audiences (HarperCollins, London, 1993), pp40/49.

  14 Author interview, August 31, 2000.

  15 All You Need Is Ears, p179.

  16 Author interview, August 31, 2000.

  17 George earned well from Dr. Kildare’s chart success: he composed its B-side, “The Midnight Theme,” under his usual pseudonym, Graham Fisher.

  18 Author interview, August 24, 2011. The speaker didn’t wish to be identified out of respect.

  19 Wood (1910–2001) died without being asked about this.

  20 Author interview, July 28, 2003.

  21 Author interview, May 16, 2005; Richards from author interview, August 2, 2007.

  22 This technique of light and shade management in a monochrome picture was taught to Astrid by her employer, Reinhart Wolf. It has the technical name chiaroscuro, from the Italian for “clear” and “dark,” and is also written as clair-obscur, from the French.

  23 John wrote this when appending a Beatles publicity booklet, 1971. Astrid from author interview, March 11, 2006. In a letter to his brother Mike, started on May 9, Paul broke the news that he�
�d bought him a new camera, as a gift. “I’ve ordered a Rollei. Exactly the same as Astrid’s! It’s dear but it’s a fab one. You’ll give me a go of it, won’t you?”

  24 Author interview, May 3, 1994.

  25 Author interview, October 11, 2010.

  26 Letter quoted in Stuart: The Life and Art of Stuart Sutcliffe, p215, and another held in a private collection.

  27 Author interview, August 27, 2005.

  28 Letter sold at auction by Sotheby’s, London, on September 12, 1988; “good turkin’ ground” from Beatle!, p156.

  29 “Mach Schau!,” pp77–8.

  30 Author interview, November 26, 2005.

  31 Author interview, March 18, 2006; Pete from Beatle!, p157; Bettina from Monographien: Damals in Hamburg, ARD (West German television), January 6, 1967.

  32 Alistair Taylor’s wife had asthma and she was advised to leave damp northwest England—they moved to London and he got a job with Pye Records. He handed in his notice to Clive Epstein while Brian was with the Beatles in Hamburg; on his return, Brian was so distraught at losing his PA, at this of all times, that he physically shoved Taylor out of his office.

  33 Neil Aspinall didn’t go to Hamburg when the Beatles played the clubs; he always remained at home.

  34 False claims have been made for so many aspects of the Beatles’ story and there are at least three fabrications of how they came to get the EMI contract. For the record, Brian Epstein didn’t bribe George Martin; he didn’t threaten EMI with not stocking its product at Nems if the Beatles weren’t signed; and Paul Murphy, a solo singer from Liverpool, signed (as Paul Rogers) to HMV by Wally Ridley in 1960, didn’t put in a word on the Beatles’ behalf—or, if he did, it didn’t make George Martin sign them. (Murphy would surface in Hamburg in 1963–4 and produce Tony Sheridan’s records; he also went on to have legal tussles with the Beatles.)

  35 A Cellarful of Noise, p12.

  36 Told by Best to Hunter Davies in 1967 (see Davies’s Beatles biography, p140). Letters written by George to fans a few days later indicate the Beatles knew much more—specifically that they had a contract with Parlophone, and their first recording session was on June 6. They’d also been informed (presumably in a letter from Brian) of their second BBC broadcast, to be taped days after getting home.

  37 A Cellarful of Noise, pp64–5. Beatles Book magazine (issue 6, January 1964) quotes two telegrams—WATCH OUT ELVIS and (from John) HOW SOON SHALL WE BE MILLIONAIRES—from information given by the Beatles in August 1963, though the journalist wasn’t necessarily seeking verbatim recollections.

  38 “I think I had something to do with the middle,” John said of “Love Me Do” in his interview by Mike Hennessey, Record Mirror, October 2, 1971.

  39 Interview by Chris Roberts, December 21, 1963.

  40 First part from 1979 interview by Spencer Leigh; second from video interview by Jim Ladd, 1982.

  41 First sentence from interview by Mike Hennessey, Record Mirror, October 2, 1971; second from interview by David Sheff, September 24, 1980, for Playboy. Paul wasn’t the only listener mistakenly to think “Soldier Boy” was written in the form of a letter. Actually, the girl sings to her boy in person, before his leaving.

  42 Letter written to IT, issue 155 (May 31–June 14, 1973).

  43 Interview by Tony Fletcher, Jamming, issue 14, 1983. A floor plan of the apartment shows a toilet next to the Beatles’ room, and Paul’s assertion “the papers picked it up, and it went from being a joke to being a fact” isn’t wrong but is time leaping—the incident went unreported, only becoming “a story” much later.

  44 The Beatles Anthology, p78.

  45 Beatle!, p158. Great purple prose from Patrick Doncaster.

  46 Author interview, November 6, 2007.

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

  48 Best from Beatle!, p158; Fascher from interview by Johnny Beerling, January 1972, for BBC Radio 1.

  49 Interview by Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld, September 1971. A month later, John told it the same way to interviewer Takahiko Iimura: “A group was playing in Hamburg and they invited me to go and play with them. And rather than just get up and sing one of my songs I went on in underpants, in a toilet seat, and played a drum solo.”

  Paul told Chris Welch of Melody Maker (February 11, 1973), “In Hamburg one week Tony Sheridan’s drummer got sick and I drummed for him, and for the extra cash, for a week.” Accurate placement of this is difficult, but (even though the Star-Club pay sheets show no such addition) it was probably late in this spring 1962 season.

  50 Interviews by Spencer Leigh.

  51 First and third sentences from interview by Spencer Leigh (Now Dig This, March 2001); second from Beatles Gear, p64. Quote re. Pete Best from interview by Tony Copple of the Ottawa Beatles Site, http://​beatles.​ncf.​ca/​roy.​html

  52 A Cellarful of Noise, p64.

  53 Ringo recollections from Davies, p157, The Beatles Anthology, p39, and miscellaneous sources.

  54 Mersey Beat, April 19, 1962.

  55 Liverpool Echo, May 16, 1962.

  56 Vicky Woods’s account of six weeks with Ringo, Rory and the other Hurricanes would be interesting to hear, but attempts to trace her have been unsuccessful so far.

  57 Mike’s photo is in Remember, p111. Jerry Lee’s wife, Myra, now 17, accompanied her husband to Liverpool. They’d lost their three-year-old son in a drowning accident less than a month before. Wooler’s “nearly four thousand” from Mersey Beat, May 31, 1962.

  58 Interview by Scott Muni, WNEW-FM, February 13, 1975; Disc, July 7, 1962.

  59 Don Arden had been with John Lennon once before—when Arden introduced the Quarry Men on stage in a Liverpool amateur talent show in 1957. It’s unlikely either remembered the other from this.

  60 From interview by Spencer Leigh. Vincent had served in the US Navy, 1952–5, before the motorbike accident that shattered his left leg and left him disabled.

  61 Fifty Years Adrift, p96. It’s also told well by George in The Beatles Anthology, p69. The incident was at the Grandhotel Monopol, Reeperbahn 48–52, still there today. Paul has related essentially the same anecdote in interviews, saying he was present too.

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

  63 Davies, p140.

  TWENTY-NINE: Under Marching Orders (June 2–6, 1962)

  1 Davies, p132.

  2 As told by Paul McCartney to author, May 19, 1987.

  3 The three medley songs are similar in tempo and can be stitched together relatively easily with a touch of vari-speed software, using recordings by the Beatles, Shirelles and Buddy Knox. One method takes the opening forty-seven seconds of “Besame Mucho,” the opening fifty-seven seconds of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and the last fifty-nine seconds of “Open,” the whole piece running 2.43.

  4 Paul from interview October 28, 1964, by Jean Shepherd for Playboy, February 1965; John from interview March 11, 1975, by Bob Harris for Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC2, April 18, 1975.

  5 Many Years From Now, p100.

  6 May 19, 1962.

  7 Article by acclaimed jazz journalist Max Jones, August 25, 1962.

  8 Author interview, August 31, 2000.

  9 Author interview, September 23, 2003.

  10 Author interview, January 23, 1987.

  11 Author interview, May 19, 1987. The “big white studio sight-screens” were “swing-out screens,” allowing flexible control over the acoustics. Another distinctive feature in Number 2 studio was the long padded quilts (ceiling to floor, almost) full of eelgrass—like seaweed—designed to absorb sound.

  12 Author interviews—Smith, January 26, 1987; Townsend, January 22, 1987. Unless otherwise stated, all other Smith and Townsend quotes in this chapter are from these interviews. The ages of the day’s key EMI personnel were George Martin, 36; Ron Richards, 33; Norman Smith, 39; Ken Townsend, 29.

  13 It would always be claimed that the Beatles were contracted to EMI as
a result of “passing the audition” on June 6. Not so, but this easy obfuscation would slip successfully into every telling of the Beatles’ story and convince even its participants.

  14 Author interview, January 18, 1987.

  15 Author interview, June 9, 1995. George Martin picked “Hootin’ Blues” for Parlophone in 1953—it was by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee though actually credited to the Sonny Terry Trio. George also made harmonica records of his own, notably with Tommy Reilly and Max Geldray. In February 1963, John Lennon named Sonny Terry as his “favorite instrumentalist” in an NME questionnaire. This was probably a recent infatuation because there’s no indication of such appreciation before this. Chris Neal quote from author interview, January 29, 1987; George Martin’s disinterest in the Beatles’ “Besame Mucho” told to the author by Paul McCartney, May 19, 1987.

  16 Author interview, May 19, 1987.

  17 Pete Best from author interview, January 14, 1987.

  18 George Martin from Davies, p168; George Harrison from The Beatles Anthology, p70; Paul from interview by Mike Read, October 13, 1987, for BBC Radio 1; Smith from author interview, January 26, 1987.

  19 Author interview, August 31, 2000.

  20 Interview by Mike Read, October 13, 1987, for BBC Radio 1.

  21 The Beatles Anthology, p70.

  22 The Beatles: The Days in Their Life, 1981 Canadian radio series, part 1.

  23 Best from Beatle!, p163; Smith from author interview, May 16, 2005.

  24 Paul (in author interview, May 19, 1987) said George Martin told everyone his opinion of Pete’s drumming, but not Pete himself. Pete as “almost surly” from George Martin interview by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, August 21, 1971.

  25 Mersey Beat, May 31; Melody Maker, December 21, 1963.

  26 Author interview, August 31, 2000.

  27 Author interview, June 9, 1995.

  THIRTY: The Undesirable Member (June 7–August 18, 1962)

  1 Author interview, September 10, 2007.

  2 Interview by David Sheff, September 24, 1980, for Playboy—for which a transcription error turned “eiderdown” into “eyelet.”