by Peter Brown
Brian, in the meanwhile, traveled to London on the train in a first-class coach and spent a warm New Year’s Eve at his Aunt Freda’s. He met up with the boys the next day at the Hampstead studios. The band was exhilarated and frightened. They felt alien in the still, clinical environment of the studio. They sang fourteen songs in sixty minutes for several anonymous men in the control booth on the other side of a glass window. Their voices cracked from nerves, and they sang most of their numbers slightly off tune. All their playing was frightened and stiff, with Pete Best the worst, mechanical and plodding at the drums. The stark, foreign quality of the studio took away all the energy and personal excitement of their performances. To make matters their very worst, only three of the fourteen songs they sang were original McCartney-Lennon compositions. Brian insisted on this. He said he knew the record market best and that Decca wanted to hear cover versions of established hit songs. The Beatles sang songs like “The Sheik of Araby,” “Red Sails in the Sunset,” “Till There Was You,” and ended with a raveup on “Besame Mucho.”
Brian returned to Liverpool later that day confident that it was just a matter of time before they were offered a recording contract. He was outraged to learn that Decca had turned them down cold. When he sheepishly told the Beatles the news they were furious with him, convinced that Brian had blown their one big chance by insisting they play standards. Brian, desperate to recover face, set out the next day for London to see Dick Rowe, Decca’s head of A&R. Rowe wouldn’t see him, however, and he ended up with Beecher Stevens, the general manager of wholesale sales. Brian demanded that Decca reconsider their decision, threatening Stevens by withholding all orders from NEMS for Decca products. Then, changing tack, he even personally offered to purchase 3,000 copies of any single Decca recorded with the Beatles, but no was no.
This first defeat brought home a stunning reality to Brian: managing a rock group would not be an easy task; he’d better get used to not getting his way; the Decca rejection was likely to be the first of many. In the next few short months he made hundreds of phone calls, wrote volumes of correspondence, and paid dozens of personal visits, only to wind up at the same dead end. Each week brought another polite rejection from another important record company. Decca, Pye, Phillips, Columbia, and HMV all said no. John half joked that they’d wind up recording on the Woolworth label, but Brian didn’t think that was funny. Each rejection was like another pin in another balloon. All the while there was a Greek chorus waiting behind him, led by Rex Makin, intoning his failure at this, his latest caprice. At times he felt so disgusted he considered giving up the Beatles and going back to RADA.
Yet each time he began to falter, each time he was willing to concede defeat, his resolve was renewed by John Lennon. He was dazzled by John, by his looks, by his wit, even by his cruelty. In John’s presence Brian was giddy and lightheaded. When John spoke, Brian looked away, not daring to gaze directly into his eyes lest his lovesick look expose what he thought was his secret. John was sardonically amused at the power he had over Brian and didn’t hesitate to use it to be manipulative or mean. This, in turn, fueled Brian’s masochism and made him desire John even more. Late at night, drunk and high on amphetamines, Brian would break down into tears about something John had said to him. Cynthia remembers Brian stamping his feet and scowling when John disagreed with him, which was frequently. Another passion might have burned itself out, but the eternal hope that one day Brian might consummate the relationship kept this one smoldering.
Brian thought his biggest impediment to seducing John was where to do it. Brian still lived at home with his parents. That spring, without letting anyone know, he rented a “secret” flat on Faulkner Street and furnished it modestly. This was to be the lair into which he would lure John, but whenever John stopped by he was always encumbered by another member of the band. Brian began to think that it was being in Liverpool that made John seem inhibited and indisposed to the possibility. He decided that if he could just get John out of town alone he would succumb to his advances. Brian made a standing offer to John to take him to Copenhagen for the weekend. This Copenhagen offer became common knowledge around the Cavern, and eventually people started teasing John about it. Yet, somehow it was still Brian’s fantasy that no one knew he was homosexual, let alone that he was in love with John. After the first few months everybody had some little piece of gossip about him. Neil Aspinall’s sister had heard something about him through a friend, and she soon told Neil and Neil told John. The very next night, high on pills, John blurted out that Neil accused Brian of being “queer.” Brian indignantly stormed outside to where Neil was unloading equipment. “Why did you tell them I’m queer?” Brian demanded. “It’s a lie!”
Neil, who was known for cutting through the bullshit, northern style, was not cowed. “You are queer,” he told Brian, continuing to unload.
Brian almost swallowed his tongue with anger. “I am not!” he raged.
“Are too!”
The issue was never settled to Brian’s liking, but he managed to convince himself there was at least some doubt. There wasn’t. Years later Paul admitted, “We were more confused by it than turned off. We really didn’t know what it meant to be ‘gay’ at the time.”
Naturally, it did not please Brian to discover that he had a rival for John’s attention. From the moment he heard about Cynthia Powell, Brian was prepared and eager to dislike her, but upon meeting her backstage at a show his antagonistic feelings disappeared. She turned out to be magnanimous and sweet and very unthreatening. He could even see why John liked her so much. And as far as competition went, Brian realized that Cynthia’s hold on John was even more tenuous than his own.
6
On April 13 the Beatles were scheduled to return to Hamburg for an appearance at the Star Club, the Reeperbahn’s latest and largest nightclub. Brian, to impress Liverpool fans, grandly billed the seven-week German stint as a “European tour” and in a show of style paid for the boys to go by plane. Queenie and Harry, continually exasperated at his largesse, were positive he would never see the plane fare back from the promised profits. Now they were even less happy to learn that Brian was to accompany the Beatles to Hamburg.
On April 10, the day of their departure, two telegrams arrived from Astrid Kirchner in Hamburg. Stu had been ill; Stu had died. Stu had died in her arms in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. For many of his friends in Liverpool the news was of small surprise. On his occasional trips back home to visit his family, it was obvious something was terribly wrong with him, but nobody could figure out what it was. The previous Christmas he was so pale and thin he was virtually transparent, like a holograph. His headaches had become paralytic, his behavior was erratic, and he was seeing double. He had all the symptoms of a brain tumor, yet specialists in both Hamburg and Liverpool could find nothing wrong with him.
It wasn’t until two years after his death that a probable cause was discovered. Stu’s mother, Millie, donated his body to scientific research. In examining the exposed skull and brain, pathologists discovered a small tumor previously invisible on the X rays. It was caused by a small traumatic depression in the skull, probably the result of a good, hard kick to the head by a Teddy Boy’s steel-tipped shoe.
An emotional scene ensued at the Hamburg airport. Paul, John, and Pete flew out first and were waiting at the airport with Astrid the next day when Brian, George, and Millie Sutcliffe’s plane landed. Brian, who had not known Stu Sutcliffe, tried to lend his support and comfort. He noticed, as did Mrs. Sutcliffe, that John Lennon was the only dry-eyed member of their group, dispassionate as only he could be. Astrid believed that John only pretended to be heartless, and she found strength in his clinical attitude. “You can’t behave as a widow,” he told her. “Make up your mind, you either live or you die. You can’t be in the middle.” Later, when they got back to Liverpool, he asked Mrs. Sutcliffe for the long scarf Stu had worn in art class.
The grief and shock of Stu’s death sent them full tilt into t
he neon netherworld of the Reeperbahn. The Star Club was an excellent setting for an emotional purge. Built on the site of an old cinema, it was by far the biggest place they had ever played. The club alternated music with sex shows and lady mud wrestlers; often as many as 18,000 patrons would pass through its doors on a single evening and from the stage the place looked like a writhing snakepit. The Beatles, who were now booked as headliners, were joined on the bill by two other Liverpool groups, The Big Three and Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes.
On this trip John managed to surpass his previous craziness. One night he walked on stage naked with a toilet seat around his neck to the cheers of the audience. His sleeping quarters were across the street from the club next to a hapless Catholic church, which became the target for countless assaults. On Sunday mornings, still awake from Prellys taken the night before, he would hang a water-filled condom outside the window of his room to taunt the Catholics on their way to mass, or he would construct an effigy of Jesus with an inflated condom for a penis. One morning he urinated off the rooftop onto the heads of three passing nuns.
Brian did not find the city of Hamburg with its whores and thugs as enchanting as the Beatles obviously did. He couldn’t fathom the boys’ constant preoccupation with prostitutes, considering the rate they contracted venereal diseases. One of the first things he planned to do when he got back was to ask Rex Makin to recommend a urologist so the Beatles could get proper treatment when they returned home. Brian made it clear that he was to see to every aspect of their welfare.
After just a week he fled back to Liverpool and concerned himself with their recording career. In the six weeks more they were gone he was determined to explore every remaining possible avenue to secure the boys a contract. Despite a large backlog of work waiting for him in Whitechapel, his commutation to London from Liverpool was almost weekly now. Much to Harry’s distress he was spending only half his time in the store. It was on one of those frequent London trips he decided to have the Beatles’ demonstration tape transferred to a disc so it could be heard more easily. The EMI-owned record shop on Oxford Street provided such a service, and the engineer there recommended that Brian take the newly made disc to someone at EMI’s publishing company. Founded in 1931, EMI was a large British corporation famous for the manufacture of televisions and electronic equipment. In 1954 the company had been revitalized by Sir Joseph Lockwood, who had acquired several record companies and their presses under EMI ownership. EMI’s premier labels were Columbia and HMV, both of which had already rejected the Beatles; but EMI had also acquired a small German company in the prewar years called Parlophone. Parlophone became EMI’s stepchild, known mostly for its comedy records and novelty albums. The man at EMI’s publishing company liked the disc, however, and recommended it to an associate, the head of A&R at Parlophone records, George Martin. Brian set up an appointment for the next day.
The gentleman who greeted Brian at his office the following afternoon was unlike any of the record company executives Brian had previously met. He was tall, handsome, and elegant, with a quiet authoritative way about him that Brian admired. His air of breeding gave no hint of his poor North London background, where he grew up the son of a carpenter. He studied piano and oboe at the London School of Music, and his first job was at the BBC where he was a news reader and where he cultivated his clipped, upper-class accent. He had joined EMI in 1950 as an assistant and became head of the Parlophone label when Sir Joseph Lockwood took over in 1954, making him, at the age of twenty-nine, the youngest head of a label, young, but not as young as the twenty-seven-year-old manager who walked through the door of his office. What Brian didn’t know that day was there was gossip in the record industry that Parlophone was about to be closed by EMI and Martin was in danger of losing his eleven hundred pounds a year job. Brian liked Martin immediately, and Martin was equally impressed with Brian, who was a far cry from the type of managers he was accustomed to in the record business.
In Hamburg, the Beatles received a telegram that would become a talisman to Brian, who subsequently carried it with him in his briefcase as they traveled around the world: CONGRATULATIONS BOYS, EMI REQUESTS RECORDING SESSION. PLEASE REHEARSE NEW MATERIAL. Unfortunately, Brian’s enthusiasm caused them to believe this was a preliminary step to recording an album. In fact, this was only another audition. Brian made arrangements for the session as soon as they arrived home from Germany, and in early June the boys set out again for London in a friend’s van.
The EMI studios were in a prepossessing mansion house on Abbey Road, a residential tree-lined street in St. John’s Wood. The Beatles instantly developed a rapport with George Martin, whom they found to be part schoolmaster, part collaborator. The various electronic magic tricks that Martin could perform in the control room, although relatively simple in retrospect, made him seem like the Wizard of Oz behind his control panel. John was impressed in particular that Martin had recorded with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan in the “Goon Show” series. Martin put them through a thorough, professional audition. He listened to each musician play separately, then had them run through each of their songs together. As usual, Brian had prepared a list of songs for them to play, still convinced that standard tunes would be the most appealing. Martin disagreed. He thought “Besame Mucho” and “Red Sails in the Sunset” were banal, but he was even less impressed with their original compositions. The Beatles cheerfully informed him they had already decided to record one of their own songs for their first single, one called “Love Me Do,” which they had written in the back of a van on the way to a job. Martin hated the lyrics, “Love, love me do, you know I love you,” as dumb as a nickel greeting card. He was particularly critical of Pete Best’s heavy, uninventive drumming. The loud drum beat around which many of the songs were built might have worked in the noisy Star Club but not in a recording studio. When the audition was over the most George Martin would say was “maybe”—and then only if they got rid of Pete Best. Perhaps they could keep Pete Best for live performances, but if they wanted a recording contract, they’d have to use a session drummer in the studio.
In John, Paul, and George’s minds, Pete Best was already doomed as he sat next to them in the van on the way back to Liverpool.
7
That summer George Martin finally offered the Beatles a formal recording contract to record on the Parlophone label under his direction. For the first of many times, Brian would demonstrate that for all his panache and urban affectations, he was still only a twenty-seven-year-old furniture salesman from a provincial city. Brian negotiated—or rather gracefully accepted—a substandard contract, even for an unknown group. Under the terms, Parlophone was indebted to record only four sides, or two double-sided singles, in a one-year period. The royalty rate was a laughable one penny for each single sold, both sides, and the increments would only be a farthing each side—an amount that came to about one-half of a penny. It was just about the lowest possible offer a record company could make them, without being accused of usury. Considering how many times they had been turned down, Brian felt lucky at that.
But if Brian was weak at making deals, he was, however, strong at administration, and on August 16 he took on the task of firing Pete Best as the Beatles’ drummer. Pete had intentionally not been told about George Martin’s offer of a contract, because Brian and the boys didn’t want him involved, yet all along Brian was reluctant to fire him. He felt that Pete was an important member of the group as far as the loyal Liverpool audience was concerned and a visual, if not musical asset. Also, in many ways the Best family was inextricably involved with the group. Mona Best had done a great amount of booking and management chores for several months between Allan Williams’ demise and Brian’s arrival. She continued, blindly, to call the Beatles “Pete’s group,” and she was not an easy woman to scorn. Even worse, Neil Aspinall, who lived with the Best family as a boarder, had become an indispensable aid to the band. If losing Pete Best meant losing Neil Aspinall, they were all in a lot of trouble.
But it had to be done. That day in August Neil drove Pete to the Whitechapel NEMS. Pete, dressed in a tee shirt and jeans, made his way through the aisles of television sets and refrigerators to the lift. Upstairs in his office, Brian was waiting for him behind his desk, his face an icy mask. Brian said, “The boys want you out of the group. They don’t think you’re a good enough drummer.”
Pete was astonished. “It’s taken them two years to find out I’m not a good enough drummer?” he exploded. Numb with shock, he went downstairs to where Neil was waiting for him in the van. Neil pledged allegiance to Pete, and the two of them went directly to the nearest pub and got good and drunk. Neil insisted that if the Beatles didn’t want Pete, he wouldn’t have anything to do with them either. But that night at their engagement at the River Park Ballroom in Chester, Neil showed up to do his job as usual. A few days later Brian tried to diplomatically console Pete Best by offering to build another group around him, but it was of no use; Pete was disgusted with them. His place in history was already reserved as the most luckless of all might-have-beens. In the next twenty-four months, the Beatles would gross $40 million. Pete Best became a baker, earning £8 a week, and married a girl named Kathy who worked at the biscuit counter in Woolworth’s.
8
Along With the Beatles’ popularity came the girls Cynthia Powell called “the submissive dollie birds.” When the word was later coined, these girls would be called groupies, and their specialty was to sexually ensnare rock musicians. At the time these girls were a totally new phenomenon to Cynthia, and she watched with great apprehension as these dollie birds became fixtures in the Beatles’ daily lives. They seemed to follow the band everywhere, whether it was lurking outside the changing room at the Cavern Club or “just happening” to be passing by one of the boy’s houses. They flirted and cooed and brought the boys presents and in every way posed a threat to Cynthia’s survival.
