by Peter Brown
Professionally, he seemed infallible. Cilla Black, his one female act, had scored big for a second time with a Burt Bacharach tune called “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas had three big smash songs in a row, “Secret,” “Bad to Me,” and their newest hit, “Little Children.” In April Brian was asked to write his autobiography to tell the world how he did it all, a suggestion the twenty-nine-year-old greeted with relish.
He proudly mentioned his book project to the Beatles and Neil Aspinall as they were all riding in a crowded elevator together. “Perhaps,” Brian said, “one of you could suggest a title.”
“Why don’t you call it Queer Jew?” John suggested.
Brian was so stung by this he was in tears by the time the elevator doors opened, but John was unmoved. Later, when Brian announced that he had chosen A Cellarful of Noise as the title, in reference to the Cavern Club, John took to calling the book A Cellarful of Boys.
Brian had neither the time nor the disposition to sit down and write a book, so he hired a young journalist to ghost it for him. For this job he chose a young Manchester newspaper reporter named Derek Taylor. Derek was a handsome, clean-shaven fellow who had come to Brian’s and the Beatles’ attention in the autumn of 1963 in Southport, when, as the theater critic of the Manchester Daily Express, he had blithely kicked down their dressing room door to ask them a question. The Beatles were so astonished at his temerity, and his easygoing charm thereafter, they let him in. A few months later when the Daily Express asked each of the Beatles to write a guest column, Derek was hired to ghostwrite George Harrison’s column for him. When that worked out to everyone’s liking, he became Brian’s first choice to write his autobiography. Derek was hired for £1,000 plus 2 percent of royalties, a handsome fee for a journalist who made only £35 a week at his newspaper job and had a wife and three children.
The book’s entire interview and research period took place over a long weekend at the Imperial Hotel in Torquay in the south of England. On the first day Brian got through his childhood period without much trouble, but on the second day he started having difficulty telling Derek the story of his teens and early twenties. “[He] was at pains to elaborate upon his unhappy, unproductive school days, anxious to dwell on his failure to complete army service, insistent on narrating his inability to succeed at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,” Derek wrote later. “[He was] determined to discuss his difficulties in relating to the opportunities of his family’s prosperous retail furniture business, eager to lay bare his enduring feeling of being ‘out of sorts with his environment’ and, as if this were not enough, he made it clear that he had problems in making friends.”
Brian was in the midst of telling Derek a labored story of an allegedly heterosexual romance when he said, “Switch off the tape recorder and let’s have lunch. There’s something I must tell you.”
Derek says that he listened patiently and compassionately throughout lunch while Brian confessed to what everyone already knew—and wasn’t concerned about. Still, Brian was obviously very upset about it himself and Derek indulged him. Derek wanted to comfort him in some way and even thought of taking his hand as an understanding gesture, but he didn’t have the courage. “It wasn’t until the Beatles taught me that I learned it was permissible to hug another man.”
A Cellarful of Noise was a frothy, upbeat volume written in Taylor’s poetically brisk style, yet it somehow still captured that curious grandiloquence that Brian emanated. It pointedly avoided any embarrassing revelations, and the most surprising admission in the book was that Brian’s relationship with Paul was described as sometimes being strained. Not too surprisingly, the volume became a best-seller in Great Britain shortly after it was published by Souvenir Press.
5
By now, it was no secret that Paul McCartney was squiring the young daughter of prominent psychiatrist Richard Asher, although the press blithely ignored the fact that Paul was ensconced in the Ashers’ guest bedroom. The press also was ignoring the rumors that Paul’s amorous adventures had already caused him a great deal of trouble. The rumors were all true. One of the club owners on the Grosse Freiheit in Hamburg was claiming that Paul had made his daughter pregnant and that he was the father of a young child. The mother, a pretty girl with long, straight hair named Erika Hubers, was a waitress in one of the clubs. Paul allegedly had dated Erika during one of his Hamburg stints. Erika claimed that Paul had known she was pregnant and had encouraged her to have an abortion. Erika refused, and a daughter named Bettina was born on the day Paul left Hamburg. Legal documents to the effect were drawn up in Hamburg and delivered to Liverpool, where the matter was quickly turned over to David Jacobs in London. Jacobs instructed Paul to deny any responsibility and sent the documents back to Hamburg unanswered. Jacobs contended that the German tribunal had the right to deal with the matter if they wished, and if the mother continued to press charges the matter could proceed there. Jacobs preferred the slow bureaucracy of the German courts. In England the matter was likely to be given prompt attention and tremendous publicity. The lawsuit, however, would not go away, and the girl’s family threatened to file papers in Great Britain. In 1966 Paul allegedly paid a settlement of approximately $27,000 to keep little Bettina’s existence a secret. However, in 1981 Bettina Hubers started to pursue the case again, reportedly suing Paul for $6 million.
But that was hardly the end to the complications of Paul’s love life. In the spring of 1964, during the shooting of A Hard Day’s Night, an even more delicate situation of the same nature arose, revealed here for the first time. A young girl in Liverpool named Alice Doyle12 had given birth to a baby boy she claimed was Paul McCartney’s son. Under David Jacobs’ counsel Paul denied being the father, and the young girl was referred to an associate of David Jacobs in Liverpool, a man named D. H. Green. Alice Doyle and her mother visited Green’s office in late March of 1964. In a memo Green sent Jacobs he said he found them quite decent and reasonable. He felt that the girl had no intention of trying to hurt Paul and that “her only concern seemed to be getting enough money to buy a pram” for the infant.
Jacobs was in the midst of negotiating a small settlement for this purpose when Miss Doyle’s mother confessed her plight to her brother, Joseph McGlynn.13 McGlynn went to see D. H. Green, who found him less than savory. McGlynn knew how much the child was worth and intended to see his niece get proper compensation. He was referred to David Jacobs in London, who was waiting for him to call. Jacobs taped the telephone conversation and sent a transcript to Brian.
“I am telling you here and now that all the newspapers that matter have already got this story,” Joseph McGlynn threatened Jacobs over the phone.
“Are you pressing me for money or what?” Jacobs demanded imperiously.
The man said the price for the family’s silence was £5,000.
When Jacobs told D. H. Green of this demand, Green commented, “There’s a nasty word for all this.”
Jacobs told Brian and Paul that his greatest concern was that even if they gave the girl a large settlement, it would in no way ensure that the uncle would not go to the newspapers, or that he wouldn’t be back in a year demanding more. Jacobs’ advice was that the less money they paid, the less culpable they would appear if the story did come out. Brian agreed that there was nothing worse than falling prey to a blackmail demand and that the best they could do was pay the girl a small sum and hope the family kept quiet.
Jacobs drew up three deeds of agreement. The uncle, Joseph McGlynn, was to receive only £5 for himself in return for signing a vow of silence. The girl’s mother was to receive the same amount with the same understanding. For Alice Doyle, with the stipulation that Paul continue to deny being the father of the child, and that this sum did not in any way represent an admission, there was £3,000. The deed stated that in the eventuality of a lawsuit and trial that proved to the satisfaction of the court that the child was indeed Paul McCartney’s, the maximum payment the court could order for the main
tenance and education of the child was £2.10 a week until he was twenty-five. In consideration for the £3,000 paid to her, Alice Doyle was never to make any claim against Paul in the future or allege that he was the father or disclose the terms of the agreement; otherwise she would be liable to return the £3,000.
It wasn’t long before it became obvious that the £5 paid to the uncle was not going to shut him up. During the Beatles’ triumphant return to Liverpool later that summer for the northern premiere of A Hard Day’s Night, handbills were distributed through the crowd of 500,000, alleging Paul’s paternity, even as the Beatles waved to an adoring crowd from the balcony of City Hall. Jacobs promised to bring the uncle to court on blackmail charges, but for as long as three years later the uncle was still circulating poems about the child to newspapers. One lengthy ode, parodizing the lyrics of several of the Beatles’ hit songs, reads in part:My name is Mark Paul Doyle,
I’m just a little boy...
In spite of all her lovin’
we got no thanks from him,
It seems he loved my mother,
just long enough to sin;
Besides his lust, she took his money,
to compensate a lie,
But Mr. Paul McCartney, Dad,
you make mother cry.
By this time, however, the newspapers had heard hundreds of all sorts of crank rumors and accusations about all four of the Beatles, and this one wasn’t taken any more seriously than the rest. Coupled with Fleet Street’s healthy dependence on the Beatles, the matter was kept from national knowledge. Cynthia Lennon later summed it up: “It appeared from the evidence on the solicitor’s desk at this time that Paul had been a bit of a town bull in Liverpool. Claims for paternity suits rolled in. He found himself in great demand in more ways than one. Whether the claims were true is anybody’s guess.”
chapter Eight
Of course there were orgies!
There was an orgy in every town.
It’s only a miracle the press
didn’t get ahold of it.
—Neil Aspinall, 1981
1
On August 11, 1964, I (Peter Brown) went to London to be Brian’s houseguest for a gala celebration he was giving the following evening in anticipation of the Beatles’ first major tour of the United States. Brian had been telling me about the party details for weeks, and he was almost as excited about it as he was about their world tour. At that point they had finished three engagements on a global jaunt in which the Beatles were to play fifty cities on four continents. It had begun in early June in Scandinavia and had continued in Hong Kong and Australia. In America the Beatles were scheduled to give thirty performances in twenty-four cities, all in the space of thirty-two days. They were to blanket the country, covering 22,441 miles in the process. Perhaps a world tour of this magnitude had never been attempted before because no entertainment act, save for Elvis, warranted it, or perhaps it was because there had never been a Brian Epstein before to envision it.
So far the tour had been a triumph, although Ringo had come down with 102-degree fever on the eve of the Scandinavian tour, due to a bad case of tonsilitis, and had missed the opening dates in Denmark and Holland, where 100,000 people lined the streets just to get a glimpse of their car. He was replaced by a shy session drummer Jimmy Nichol who was never heard from again. Ringo was well enough to join the touring party, which now included Derek Taylor, as Brian’s assistant and publicist, and John’s Aunt Mimi, for the trip to Adelaide, Australia, where 300,000 citizens—the largest group so far—lined the route from the airport to their hotel. In July they stopped traffic back at home at the royal premiere of A Hard Day’s Night, which was attended by Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowden. Thousands of fans overran the block of the Pavilion Theater, spilling out into Piccadilly Circus, quite literally bringing the center of London to a halt.
Brian’s send-off party for the American leg of the tour couldn’t compete with all that, but he was certainly going to try. In that beautiful summer of elaborate entertaining by the Swinging London set, Brian wanted this party for the boys to be the most memorable. For this he hired interior designer Kenneth Partridge to arrange an appropriately elaborate setting. Partridge was a small, wryly funny man who had been recommended by David Jacobs. He understood the scope in which Brian liked to do things, and they got along famously thereafter.
Instead of a restaurant or nightclub, Partridge suggested Brian use his own Belgravia penthouse and set about transforming the apartment and rooftop into a lush party setting. It took five days to build. Partridge started by erecting a mammoth white marquee to cover the roof. The white canvas tent, the size of a small circus tent, was fitted with wooden sides with French windows around the perimeter so the guests could view the city while they dined. A raised floor was constructed over the tar roof and covered with cherry red sisal carpeting. On top of this was built a bandstand and a hardwood dance floor. Several thousand white carnations were ordered to build tall, overflowing centerpieces around the candelabra on the large round tables that dotted the roof. The center pole of the marquee was covered in Spanish moss and intertwined with 700 carnations in the shape of a palm tree. A small society orchestra was hired, as was a caterer to prepare, in addition to filet of beef, cold duck, and lobster, a selection of kosher foods to please Brian’s family.
The day of the party was glorious, warm, and sunny, with nary a cloud in sight. Late in the afternoon Partridge was in Brian’s flat overseeing the final details with the workmen when Brian arrived with Queenie. “My mother is just coming from the hairdresser,” he announced, “and she’d like to see the marquee before anyone arrives.”
Partridge led them up to the roof where the florist and his assistants were just about to leave. Queenie’s eyes widened at the sight of the marquee. “Oh no!” she cried. “Red and white! Red and white is very bad luck!” Partridge said he never heard of this particular superstition before, and Brian explained that Queenie was superstitious about a whole, odd assortment of personal taboos, including birds on curtains.
“What can we do? What can we do?” Brian asked Partridge. “It must be changed! We can’t have any bad luck just before the boys leave on tour!” Partridge said that he didn’t think there was anything that could be done at that point. The guests would arrive in only a few hours. “Then the whole thing will have to be called off,” Brian insisted.
Partridge raced out of the flat and down into the street, where he breathlessly caught up to the florist’s truck just as it reached the corner. The florist’s assistants were sent out to the local stationery shops to fetch as much red ink as they could buy. In the interim, Partridge and the florist went upstairs to the roof and took out every single last white carnation from the arrangements and brought them down to the street. They spent the next several hours dipping the white carnations in buckets of red ink. The last, dripping wet pink carnation was replaced in the display just as the first guests started to arrive. Never was Queenie more like the mad Queen of Hearts in Through the Looking Glass than when she had her knaves paint the flowers for her.
The party became the most talked about social event of the summer. The engraved invitations went out to all the reigning stars of Swinging London. By eight o’clock that night the mews in front of Wadham House was filled with hundreds of people who turned out to watch the guests arrive. Two uniformed guards stood at the door of the building, demanding to see invitations. Later in the evening, with dinner already being served, one of the security guards came up to the roof looking for Ken Partridge. There was a lady downstairs, he explained, in a mink coat in the middle of the summer, insisting that Brian Epstein had invited her to the party the night before.
Partridge rode down in the lift to find Judy Garland and her then-boyfriend, Mark Herron, standing in the mews. Garland nervously explained that she had been seated at a table next to Brian’s at the Caprice Restaurant the previous evening, and Brian had invited her. Partridge turned to the guards and said, “T
his lady can come in anywhere,” and escorted her upstairs. When they arrived in the living room Garland was bewildered to find an empty flat littered with cocktail glasses and dirty ashtrays. Partridge assured her that all the guests were still there, upstairs on the roof having dinner. Having to make a late entrance in front of so many people seemed to terrify her, and she promptly went into the bathroom and threw up. Ironically, Garland needn’t have been so apprehensive; except for Brian’s personal friends, such as Lionel Bart and David Jacobs, who was her English attorney, Garland was roundly ignored by the Beatles and other pop celebrities, who were totally uninterested in movie stars.
At some point during the party John Lennon was introduced to Ken Partridge. “Did you do all this?” Lennon asked. He was so impressed that he asked Partridge to come out to Weybridge the next day and talk about decorating the new house. Brian accompanied Partridge to Kenwood to supervise the event. They toured the house together, along with Cynthia and John. Cynthia was immediately defensive about some strange man redecorating her home but characteristically kept silent about it. Partridge quickly had a decorator’s vision for the house that went way beyond Cynthia’s sweet, simple plans. He suggested they tear down walls on every floor and convert the twenty-seven-room house into a cozier eighteen. John said that he wanted the house to be equipped with ultramodern, space-age stereo and kitchen equipment. Partridge suggested they build the kitchen on many levels, with floating appliance platforms. Within minutes it was settled. John insisted that Partridge have the drawings ready in thirty-six hours, before he left on the American tour, and Partridge stayed up through the night with an assistant at the drafting table. The following day a series of drawings, along with fabric swatches and colors, were presented to Cynthia and John at Kenwood. Cynthia was devastated at the sight of it; all her plans were ruined. But the only thing she could bring herself to say about the plans was that she could draw better.
