I’ve written books about comedy, but no script or comic ever makes me laugh more than the Beatles. Richard Buskin (New York Times bestselling author) is the only person I know to tune into the same tiny, arcane, utterly inconsequential details of the greater story and find them so gaspingly funny. Our years of friendship and laughter are the stuff of life, and they’ve helped shape my approach to this project.
I’m happy to have many friends with niche knowledge of the Beatles, deeper in places than I’ve the time or need to go. Many are authors in their own right, like Andy Neill. Andy has an impressive array of specialist areas, and he’s also a first-class professional researcher and writer. In the early days of this project, I paid Andy to spend days in the British Library for me when I couldn’t be in two places at once. He’s the only person I trust to turn the pages of obscure old local UK newspapers and find what I would have found. Beyond that, his deep/wide knowledge of rock music over several decades could well be without parallel and he can back his opinions with research no one else has done. Thanks for all the great finds, Andy!
And all that goes for Jay Donnelly too, my research fellow in the States. We enjoyed a memorable week together at the Library of Congress, and Jay continued the work there and elsewhere after I returned to England. Them thar nuggets of gold delight us both and will be dropped into all three volumes. Great work, sir.
In fact, there are many top-class Beatles scholars in America and I’m delighted to call them friends. They’ve generously sourced new material for me and responded to my every question swiftly and (that most cherished but elusive of attributes) reliably. All these chaps are Beatles authors in their own right—seek out their books or websites with confidence: Andy Babiuk, Belmo, Brian Kehew, Allan Kozinn, Jason Kruppa, Chip Madinger, John McEwen, Wally Podrazik, Scott Raile, Kevin Ryan, Bruce Spizer and John C. Winn. Separately, because Canada ain’t America, my thanks to Piers Hemmingsen. You’ve all been brilliant, and the beer (ale, of course) is on me in London.
Back home, Dave Ravenscroft has been a monumental help, every day for years. A never-say-die resourceful researcher and collector with a fine analytical mind, his enthusiastic and deeply knowledgeable interest in the important minutiae, the musical minutiae especially, has contributed much to this book and been a constant reassurance to me.
Spencer Leigh has been his typical helpful self. A prolific writer and close observer of all popular culture, with his own idiosyncratic weekly show on BBC Radio Merseyside, Spencer’s e-mails and phone calls are an endless source of amusement and revelation. I’m also hugely indebted to Spencer for allowing me use of his interviews. I’ve met quite a few Liverpool rock and rollers, of course, but there were hundreds, many now dead. A prodigious northwest-based interviewer for more than thirty years, Spencer has sat down with scores of them, asking questions of the young lads who’d become middle-aged butchers and bakers and candlestick makers—and he gave me unfettered access to the full transcripts. These people were close-up witnesses to anywhere between one and fifty hectic nights with the Beatles in the Liverpool halls and clubs of 1961–2, forming impressions that stuck fast because the Beatles’ rise to fame happened so soon after. Not every anecdote is reliable (some people do talk balls) but those that stand up to scrutiny have slotted perfectly into the puzzle. It’s given me much pleasure to use these quotes in context, but don’t let that put you off reading them (and plenty more) in Spencer’s own books—www.spencerleigh.demon.co.uk is the place to go.
I’ve had every conceivable kind of useful and enjoyable idea, lead and guidance from several other great friends, all of them researcher-writers: Simon Wells, Mark Cousins, Andy Davis and (coauthors with me of The Beatles’ London) Piet Schreuders and Adam Smith. Peter Nash allowed me the privilege of a wander around his abundant Beatles collection, and I’m fortunate to have the friendship of Paul Wane. His company Tracks leads the field in buying and selling Beatles memorabilia, everything right up to top-end material; thanks also to Tracks’ accomplished staff, including Gema, Lynsey and Chad, and most especially Jason Cornthwaite—they’re the best because, like Paul, they have genuine enthusiasm, the second thing money can’t buy. I’m also very grateful to the experts at the London auction houses, who’ve forwarded my inquiries to sellers and allowed me access to plenty of interesting incoming items. They include, at Christie’s (at various times), Helen Hall, Sarah Hodgson, Neil Roberts and Carey Wallace; Stephen Maycock at Sotheby’s and now Bonhams; and lone ranger Ted Owen. My thanks also to Stephen Bailey at The Beatles Shop in Mathew Street, Liverpool. He’s been brilliant, generously volunteering to show me many fascinating documents and artifacts brought into his shop by local people who’ve had them stuffed down the backs of wardrobes for fifty years.
This is the first book I’ve written that needed research and interviews in a language I don’t speak—German. I’m grateful to a pair of Irishmen who are also professional translators at work in Germany. My cousin Ian Winick (based in Cologne, www.insight-translations.de) translated an entire book for me, and Stephen Roche (based in Hamburg, www.networktranslators.de) was a first-class companion on my trips to his adopted city. We had nothing but productive and happy times working together, with long hours and good laughs—Stephen set up interviews, was on hand for instant translation, helped with library work (with and without me) and prepared several research reports. I’m also grateful to Thorsten Knublauch for being such a resourceful researcher into all aspects of the Beatles’ Hamburg years and so generously sharing his findings because he wanted me to tell the story right; and to Jutta Burgi-Pill (secretary of the West German branch of the Official Beatles Fan Club in the 1960s), who spent a whirlwind afternoon with me in the Bavarian State Library in Munich, whispering English translations whenever I pointed to interesting-looking text or ads in one of Germany’s two early-1960s music industry magazines. It was her words I typed frenetically into my Macbook.
I’m very pleased to be able to thank Hunter Davies for supporting this project. Hunter wrote the Beatles’ authorized biography, the only one there can ever be because it was done when the four were still together to approve it, in 1967–8. (As such, he becomes part of the story in my subsequent volumes.) Hunter’s The Beatles, first published in 1968, is a seminal work, especially as he had access to people and places now long gone. You cannot write a biography of the Beatles without quoting it, so all credit where it’s due. I’m grateful to Hunter for understanding why I felt my project necessary, and for letting me browse his collection of Beatles artifacts while I, in a quid pro quo, tidied it up and cataloged it for him. I enjoyed our days together.
I do my own typing, but in the project’s early days had the help of four people to transcribe some of the interviews. Beth Bellin was the first, my eldest son Oliver (hi Oliver, and hi Tom!) did one, my cousin Ruth Wallington did several, and I also had a delightful approach from Mandy Rees, in Los Angeles, who slogged away on my behalf simply because she can’t wait to read the book. Thank you all.
For an array of reasons, I send heaps of alphabetical thanks to friends Arthur Atkinson, Tony Bacon, John Beecher, Roy Carr, Dick Fiddy, Michael Fishberg, Pete Frame, Eric Greenberg, Georgie Grindlay, Paolo Hewitt, Keith Howell, David Hughes, Patrick Humphries, Nigel Hunter, Sean Jackson, David Klein, Fred Lindgren, Barry McCann, Gordon Ottershaw, Andy and Denise Paraskos, Stephen Peeples, Phil Smee, Simon Smith, Brian Southall, David Stark, Derek Taylor (perpetual wisdom from beyond), Joan Taylor, David Tossell, John Walker and Ian Woodward.
I’d also like to thank, mostly posthumously, the proprietors and journalists responsible for Britain’s music papers—in this period Disc, New Record Mirror, Melody Maker and the New Musical Express (NME). Their news reporting was strong enough to reliably underpin any history of the period. In addition to those national weeklies, written in and focused on London, Liverpool had its own fortnightly Mersey Beat, for a long time the only such paper outside the capital. Benignly owned and financed by Ray McFall (who als
o owned the Cavern), the paper was founded and edited by Bill Harry, and he was thinking years ahead of his time. The riches I’ve derived from poring over every issue have given me welcome background knowledge and fine entertainment. Thank you, Bill; you made quite a contribution.
I’ve been going to Liverpool since the 1970s but hadn’t lived there until spending six hectic months in the city for this project—and, in many ways, multiplying that length of time by researching Merseyside newspapers archived in London. In just these few years, philistines on the council have obliterated more Grade One important places in Beatles history, including the Nems shop and Beatles office (demolished), Litherland Town Hall (completely altered) and Aintree Institute (demolished). I was driving past the Institute one day—glancing up to see it, as I always did—and it was gone, a hole in a terrace to match the shape of my mouth, and this on the eve of Liverpool’s Capital of Culture year. The Beatles played this atmospheric dance hall thirty-one times, including a string of Saturday nights where things really kicked off … and now the place is gone, for no justifiable reason. Council madness exists everywhere, and they do it particularly well in Liverpool—the Cavern to which tourists flock from around the world is a re-creation because the real one was demolished and filled in to make way for precisely nothing. Through these pages, here and now, I urge all Merseyside councillors to commit publicly to a moratorium, so that demolition of their historic landmarks, this mad slashing of the city’s own heritage, can at least be discussed first.
In Liverpool, I look not at today’s shopping malls and trendy empty apartments, but for the place of this extraordinary history. It’s there—you just have to squeeze your eyes tight and peer through. I stood outside Central Station one August Bank Holiday night, bag of chips in hand, forced myself to ignore the loud drunken lads pissing in the street and the loud drunken lasses with virtually nothing on, everyone shouting focchin this and focchin that … and when I looked through there was Jim Mac coming round the corner in his hat, puffing on his pipe, Echo tucked under his arm, and Aunt Mimi walking along with young John, berating him but having a laugh at the same time. I looked for the green double-decker bus driven by Harry Harrison, while his youngest son, George—wearing something outrageous—nipped out of Blackler’s and headed for Frank Hessy’s to ogle the guitars. I looked for Paul & Ian and Richy & Roy staring at the records in the window of Nems on Great Charlotte Street, from which Brian Epstein stepped out immaculately on his way to the Basnett Bar—where Derek Taylor had stopped by from the Echo for a swift half, passing Mal Evans with his GPO engineer’s bag and Harry Graves with his decorating ladder, everyone photographed by Mike McCartney from the hair-salon window above. I looked for Neil Aspinall leaving the Pru building, for Julia en route to the Troc with men wolf-whistling her, and for Alf Lennon tripping by Johnny Best’s boxing stadium and Jim Mac’s Cotton Exchange on his way down to the docks.
I’ve done everything I can do to steep myself in that Liverpool, a Liverpool I never experienced, so as to put it faithfully on the page … and it is still there, in the streets and buildings I frame in the lens of my camera. I’ve had many great photographic walks all over the city and suburbs, sometimes alone and other times with Mike Badger—musician, songwriter, artist, friend. Mike knows what I’m looking for, likes finding it too, and can convey bits of the history; he shares my love of this very particular Liverpool of redbrick Victorian villas and terraced streets, of any old iron signs, tinned-up houses, crumbling light industry, pubs, parks, cemeteries, cinemas and the myriad other delights tucked away in Everton, Wavertree, Toxteth, Dingle, Old Swan, Childwall, Woolton, Kensington, West Derby and Aigburth—in fact every original suburb. I’ve walked many and want to walk them all. This is authentic Liverpool; it isn’t always pretty but I find it beautiful.
Mike, Netty, Amber, Ray, Cliff and Ruth Badger are among many Liverpudlians who’ve become friends on these visits, along with Dawn and Mike Birch (the best B&B in Blundellsands); Roy, Helen, Elena and Grace Boulter; Jamie and Becky Bowman; Mike and Bernie Byrne; Steve and Pat Calrow; Jean Catharell; Debbie and Nigel Greenberg; Colin and Sylvia Hall (custodians for the National Trust of John Lennon’s and Paul McCartney’s childhood homes—the very best, dedicated people); Billy Hatton; Pat Molyneux; John O’Connor; Hilary Oxlade; Sol Papadopoulos; Steve Phillips; and Cheniston and Jacqueline Roland. Particular thanks to Henry Epstein, the one and only, a good friend and funster and gateway to roomfuls of Liverpool musicians, poets, artists and wits whose company is always a treat.
This book isn’t authorized by the Beatles and all the mistakes are mine, but I’m grateful to Jeff Jones, Cathy Hawkes, Jonathan Clyde and Aaron Bremner of the Beatles’ company Apple Corps, for keeping positive interest, and I’m especially thankful to Neil Aspinall. The first non-family I shared my “three-volume book idea” with was Neil, the Beatles’ best and closest mate for more than forty years and their manager for thirty; we’d worked together on a number of projects and I wanted him to know what I was planning. His initial response was the one I’ve heard ten thousand times and will inevitably hear thousands more: “Does the world really need another book on the Beatles?” I told him why I thought it did, using more or less the same words I’ve written in this volume’s introduction, and Neil got it. A man of solid judgment, he said Apple wouldn’t be able to help, at least not yet, and I said I certainly wasn’t expecting it—but then he proceeded to give me every personal encouragement. He made assenting phone calls to people who said they’d only speak to me “if it’s OK with Neil.” He was always keen to hear who I’d seen and what I could tell him I’d learned.
In 2007, after Neil retired from Apple, my phone rang and I took another of the great Beatle-calls of my life: “Hi Mark, it’s Neil. I’m now free of the burdens of restraint—you’ve always wanted to interview me; if you need any insights or whatever, just ask.” We’d lunched sporadically for years and I’d enjoyed a few extended meetings in Neil’s Apple office when he stopped talking about the “pro-ject” in hand and just started talking about the Beatles, but those weren’t exactly interviews. Neil didn’t do interviews … except now he was saying he would, repeatedly, at length. We had our first session shortly after, a riverside lunch and a long afternoon of yakking. Neil was mostly relaxed and I thought it went really well, as you can read in this book … and then he fell ill and died, just like that, very fast, aged 66.
That great gruff sweary no-bullshit Anfield voice will sound in the second and third volumes of this series, but nowhere near as much as we both wanted. Though I’ve wonderful material for all three volumes, I often find myself thinking how much more complete this Beatles history could have been if Neil hadn’t—as he’d have put it—“fucked off, right?” But so long, Neil, and thanks.
INTERVIEWEES
The following nice people graciously allowed me some—often much—of their time, to talk about the Beatles, and I thank them all immensely. (With just a couple of exceptions, women interviewed for this book appear with the name they had at the time all these events took place, not by any subsequent married name.)
Keith Altham, Helen Anderson, Bernie Andrews, Dee Armitage, Neil Aspinall, Julia Baird, Bill Barlow, Rikki Barnes, Tony Barrow, Jeni Beattie, Kathia Berger, Georgia Bergman, Mike Berry, Pete Best, Rory Best, Marga Bierfreund, Pauline Bingham, Harry Birch, Sheila Birch, Pat Blease, Otto Blunck, Peter Bolt, Jimmy Bowien, David Boyce, Bernie Boyle, Pattie Brady, Tony Bramwell, Hans-Walther Braun, Elsa Breden, Jenny Brewer, John Brierley, Ken Brown, Peter Brown, Roberta Brown, Leslie Bryce, John Burgess, Alaster Burman, Shirley Burns, Muriel Burton, Tony Calder, Iris Caldwell, Steve Calrow, David Cardwell, Tony Carricker, Les Chadwick, Margaret Chillingworth, Maureen Cleave, Mary Cockram, Les Cocks, Margaret Cooney, Hazel Cooper, Roy Corlett, Peter Cottenden, Tom Cross, Nicky Cuff, Geoff Davies, Rod Davis, Jennifer Dawes, Bob Dean, Jeff Dexter, Ric Dixon, Margaret Douglas, Frank Duckworth, Tim Dugdill, Linda Duque, Roy Dyke, Geoffrey Ellis, Royston Ellis, Elvi Erichsen, Evere
tt Estridge, Alun Evans … Jack Fallon, Bernadette Farrell, Michael Fishwick, Dick Fontaine, Derek France, John Fruin, Snuff Garrett, Margaret Gauld, Syd Gillingham, Jim Gilvey, Giorgio Gomelsky, Jack Good, Ruth Gore, Bobby Graham, Jimmy Grant, Roger Greenaway, Marie Guirron, John Gustafson, Jon Hague, Bill Hall, Tony Hall, Kevin Harrington, David Harris, June Harris, Mona Harris, Joan Harrison, Louise Harrison, June Harry, Brian Harvey, Billy Hatton, Ivan Hayward, Rosi Heitmann, Michael Hill, Wally Hill, Derek Hodkin, Tim Holmes, Chris Hornby, Barbara Houghton, Sue Houghton, David Hughes, Tommy Hughes, Mike Hurst, Chris Huston, Margaret Jack, David Jacobs, Brian John James, Dawn James, Ian James, Stephen James, Dave Jamieson, Derek Jeffery, Beryl Johnson, Derek Johnson, Ron Jones, Vivien Jones, Norman Jopling, Pat Jourdan, Peter Kaschel, Arthur Kelly, Clive Kelly, Freda Kelly, Margaret Kelly, Gibbo and Tina Kemp, Jim Kennedy, Ian King, Astrid Kirchherr … Sam Leach, Brigitte Leidigkeit, Fran Leiper, Joyce Lennon, Bob Lusty, Winnie Mac, Peter Mackey, Donald MacLean, Les Maguire, Shelagh Maguire, John Mair, E. Rex Makin, Paul Marshall, Bryan Martin, Ann Mason, Brian Matthew, Dick Matthews, Mike Maxfield, Joan McCaldon, Angie McCartney, Ray McFall, Leonard Milne, Adrian Mitchell, Pat Moran, Celia Mortimer, Brian Mulligan, Brenda Murphy, Mitch Murray, Rod Murray, Linda Ness, Chas Newby, Mary Newton, Maureen Nickson, Geoff Nugent, Maureen O’Grady, Sean O’Mahony, Maureen O’Shea, David Paramor, Tom Parkinson, Graham Pauncefort, Lee Perry, David Picker, Thelma Pickles, Ellen Piel, Peter Pilbeam, Tom and Beryl Plummer (Tommy Wallis and Beryl), Richie Prescott, Peter Prichard, Sheila Prytherch, Roland Rennie, Ron Richards, Wolfgang Riecke, Carol Rigg, Cliff Roberts, George “Dale” Roberts, Eileen Robinson, Alan Roe, Cheniston and Jacqueline Roland, Bettina Rose, Keith Rowley, Lita Roza … Mike Sarne, Mike Savage, Frank Sellman, Ann Sheridan, Tony Sheridan, Judith Simons, Nevil Skrimshire, Alan Smith, Bill Smith, David John Smith, Keith Smith, Mike Smith, Norman Smith, Walter Smith, Dave Spain, Toni Spencer, Ray Standing, Lou Steen, Les Stewart, Alan Swerdlow, Ted Taylor, Michael C. Thompson, Pam Thompson, Liz Tibbott-Roberts, Roy Trafford, Jan Vaughan, Jürgen Vollmer, Klaus Voormann, Noel Walker, Chris Walley, Clive Walley, Alan Walsh, Harry Watmough, Rosi Weber, Bert Weedon, Bruce Welch, Peter Wharton, Tom Whippey (Kim Bennett), Lyndon Whittaker, Alec Whyte, Thelma Wilkinson, Brian Willey, Allan Williams, Ronald Woan, Leslie Woodhead, Neville Wortman, Walter Woyda, Derek Yoxall.
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