by Peter Brown
On a hot and sticky August 13, the Beatles and their entourage arrived in New York to kick off their third concert tour of the United States. This tour the schedule was more leisurely, only thirteen concerts in nine cities, leaving them over a week for relaxation in Los Angeles.
On August 15 the Beatles took perhaps the most breathtaking of their many journeys. A helicopter lifted them from a pad on the East River and flew them over to Shea Stadium, where 56,000 people waited for them in the gathering dusk. The helicopter took them to the World’s Fair heliport, from which they were transported in a Wells Fargo armored car to the stadium itself. The truck discharged them on the infield, and they raced across the baseball diamond to a stage constructed at first base. Fifty-six thousand was the largest outdoor concert in history to date, and the humid weather helped induce fainting among the audience, and within ten minutes the emergency nursing facilities were filled to overflowing.
The Beatles performed in Toronto on the seventeenth, Atlanta on the eighteenth, Houston, Chicago, and Minneapolis.
On Monday, August 16, before leaving for Toronto, they were visited at the Warwick Hotel by the Supremes, the Exciters, the Ronettes, and, again, Bob Dylan. The following days, in rapid succession, they hit Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, and Minneapolis. It wasn’t until they hit California, where they were scheduled for two nights at the Hollywood Bowl, plus a concert in San Diego, that they took a six-day respite. Brian had arranged for them to rent a large house in Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills. Before long the address was general knowledge, and the house was a mecca for hundreds of Beatle fans, all of whom came in cars, causing a traffic backup all the way down to Sunset Boulevard. The huge, Spanish-style house was tucked into the side of a mountain. Its smoking green swimming pool seemed to edge its way out over the city below. The steep drop to a certain death did not stop hearty fans from trying to climb the face of the cliff, however, and a special tactical force of the Beverly Hills police was assigned to protect the house and its occupants. The more extravagant Beverly Hills brats simply rented helicopters to fly over the house, so they could take pictures of the Beatles sunbathing in the backyard.
Instead of going out a lot—an impossibility because of the fans—they received guests most of the time. Eleanor Bron, the actress who played the female villain in Help!, stopped by to spend a few hours with John. Later in the afternoon a few members of the folk-rock group the Byrds arrived, and later in the day actor Peter Fonda turned up. Fonda, who had driven into the Canyon in his Jaguar, was mobbed by fans, who swarmed all over the car and pounded dents into it.
Fonda picks up the narrative in a reminiscence he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine: I finally made my way past the kids and the guards. Paul and George were on the back patio, and the helicopters were patrolling overhead. They were sitting at a table under an umbrella in a rather comical attempt at privacy. Soon afterwards, we dropped acid and began tripping for what would prove to be all night and most of the next day; all of us, including the original Byrds, eventually ended up inside a huge, empty sunken tub in the bathroom, babbling our minds away.
I had the privilege of listening to the four of them sing, play around and scheme about what they would compose and achieve. They were so enthusiastic, so full of fun. John was the wittiest and most astute. I enjoyed just hearing him speak and there were no pretensions in his manner. He just sat around, laying out lines of poetry and thinking—an amazing mind. He talked a lot, yet he still seemed so private.
It was a thoroughly tripped-out atmosphere, because they kept finding girls hiding under tables and so forth; one snuck into the pool-room through a window while an acid-fired Ringo was shooting pool with the wrong end of the cue. “Wrong end?” he’d say. “So what fuckin’ difference does it make?”
Later in the day the group huddled in the security of a large sunken bathtub in the master bedroom. Fonda got hung up on an anecdote about an operation he had during which he almost died. He kept going on about what it was like to be dead, until John couldn’t take it anymore and barked, “Listen mate, shut up about that stuff.”17 When one of the group remembered they hadn’t eaten all day, they tried to rustle up a makeshift meal in the kitchen, but John couldn’t figure out how to use his knife and fork, and to stop his food from moving around on his plate he wound up spilling it onto the floor.
This LSD experiment marked the unheralded beginning of a new era for the Beatles. The impact of this LSD trip was not apparent for the first few months, but before long the LSD experience would have a prominent effect in their music and thinking.
Since the band’s arrival in Los Angeles, members of Hollywood’s film community had made many requests to meet them. The list of inquiries and invitations from the famous was impressive, but not to the Beatles who had no interest at all in meeting “boring” movie actors. Like most rock stars, they were only interested in meeting other rock stars. Brian, however, knew the value of the publicity of Hollywood’s royalty turning out to meet the boys and suggested that Capitol Records throw one gala party for them and get it over in one fell swoop. The party was held in the garden of a Capitol Records executive’s home in Beverly Hills. The boys were placed on four stools in a row, amused but not especially thrilled as scores of Hollywood royalty and their children lined up to shake hands and chat. Included among the luminaries were Groucho Marx, Tony Bennett, Richard Chamberlain, Gene Barry, Rock Hudson, Dean Martin, James Stewart, Gregory Peck, and Kirk Douglas. Some celebrities were so charmed by the Beatles they got back on line a second time.
The only celebrity the Beatles cared about meeting was Elvis. Brian had been trying to arrange a meeting with Elvis for a long time, but the now-waning King had been unavailable—secretly threatened by the Beatles’ enormous popularity. In lieu of a meeting, Colonel Parker had sent Brian and each of the boys impressive suits of cowboy clothing, complete with holsters and real six-shooters. That August Elvis was also living in Los Angeles, shooting Paradise, Hamaiian Style, and Colonel Parker prevailed upon him to meet with the Beatles while they were in town. Elvis agreed under the condition that the Beatles come to him.
The Beatles’ meeting with Elvis at his house on Perugia Way has been amusingly recreated in Albert Goldman’s book, Elvis. The Bel Air police force, alerted to the stellar event, encircled Elvis’ house. The Beatles arrived along with Brian and Neil and British journalist Frederick James. Elvis himself answered the door, dressed in a red shirt and tight gray trousers. He was surrounded by his Memphis Mafia of playmates and bodyguards. A jukebox alternated Beatles and Elvis hits. It had been some years since Elvis’ mere presence had instigated riots, and almost as long since he had had a song in the top ten, but the Beatles were still in awe of him. Five minutes had passed with the four of them sitting around and staring at Elvis when Elvis finally exploded, “Look, if you damn guys are gonna sit here and stare at me all night, I’m gonna go to bed!”
Colonel Parker, much to Brian’s delight, uncovered a roulette wheel hidden inside a coffee table. The Colonel found a very eager gambler in Brian, who felt right in his element; kingmakers pitted against Lady Luck for high stakes. Later, the Beatles and Elvis jammed. When Elvis played Paul’s bass part on “I Feel Fine,” Paul remarked glibly, “Coming along quite promising on the bass, Elvis.” When the ice had broken a little, the Beatles and Elvis started to compare stories about the trials and tribulations of megastardom. When the Beatles left, they invited Elvis to visit them at their house the next evening, and the Colonel gave them all little covered wagons that lit up as souvenirs.
The following night a few members of the Memphis Mafia showed up, but no Elvis. Paul played the gracious host and showed them around the rented house. He opened one of the bedroom doors to reveal Joan Baez stretched out on the bed, talking to George. Elvis’ guys later reported, incorrectly, that she was there to see George, when in fact it was John’s bedroom. Baez had developed a wild crush on John and was reportedly following him wherever he went.
It was w
ith great reluctance that they left the house in Benedict Canyon and headed for San Francisco, where they were to perform the last concert of this American tour at the Cow Palace on August 31.
3
As the final date of the tour approached, Brian’s spirits fell like a barometer in a desert. It had been a long and arduous August, and Nat Weiss, who had spent almost the entire month with Brian, was beginning to worry about him. Brian had reserved suite 35E in the Waldorf Towers on a regular basis, and Nat was always fascinated to observe him in action there. Brian was the cynosure of attention twenty-four hours a day. His phone would ring constantly, quite literally at any time, with calls from exotic points all over the world. It would be a fan club or a concert promoter or a photographer or a radio station that wanted to give the Beatles a Cadillac car in exchange for some promotion. Brian would laugh at these offers and say, “Only if it’s gold,” before gently hanging up the phone. Sometimes the phone rang so much that Brian would sneak out of the Waldorf Towers and move into Nat’s small, two-bedroom apartment on East Sixty-third Street and Third Avenue for a little peace and quiet. As soon as Brian arrived-ever the Walton Road furniture salesman—he would rearrange every stick of furniture in the apartment until he was satisfied with the way it looked.
It never failed to amaze Nat that Brian could stay up all night talking and playing Beatles records and yet still be so fresh in the morning. One day at lunch, Nat was so tired and hungover from the previous night’s revels he couldn’t eat. Brian reached inside his jacket pocket to get a pen, and Nat noticed a whole row of little pockets had been tailored into his suit. Brian blithely explained that these were “pill pockets” and that each one was stocked with a different strength biamphetamine or tranquilizer.
Nat only then fully realized that Brian was completely artificially fueled. Pills put him to sleep, woke him up, kept him going. That explained, at least in part, some of Brian’s recent erratic behavior and tendency to lose control. One night recently he had made a terrible scene after Cilla Black’s opening in the Persian Room of the Plaza Hotel. Cilla had never had a hit record in America, and her career at home was not important enough to warrant her a booking at the Persian Room. But Brian had used his clout with the New York booking agency and had seen to it that she would play the Persian Room the same week the Beatles played Shea Stadium. The day of Cilla’s opening, Brian called Nat at his office in a terrible stew. He was angry and peeved that he was being “forced” into taking his secretary to the opening with him, while Nat had the luxury of taking a boy. Brian said being with his secretary would ruin his evening, but he didn’t see any choice.
“Take whomever you want, Brian,” Nat encouraged him over and over again. “Be true to yourself.”
“I can’t. I’m the Beatles’ manager. If I take a boy with me everyone will talk.”
“Then just make sure the boy is beautiful,” Nat said.
After Cilla’s performance, which was warmly received but obviously was not going to cause a sensation in New York, Brian threw a party for her in a hotel suite upstairs. The party was crowded with press and New York show business personalities when some woman within Brian’s earshot remarked that the lobby of the Plaza Hotel looked “Jewish.”
Brian flew into a wild rage. The party came to a halt around him as he screamed, “Madame, I happen to be Jewish!” The woman apologized and left, but Brian shook with anger for hours and made himself miserable. It was a small miracle the incident did not find its way into the press.
Yet Brian seemed just as able to prove himself totally in control in tight situations. The very next day after Cilla’s opening, Brian took Cilla and her husband Bobby to lunch at “21,” one of Manhattan’s more intimidating, status-conscious restaurants. After a long and elaborate meal, Brian discovered that he had left his wallet in his suite at the Waldorf Towers and was unable to pay the bill. The furious waiter stormed off to get the captain, who returned with the manager.
Brian met them with an imperious gaze. “I am Brian Epstein,” he intoned in his iciest West End accent, “and you shall send this bill to me at the Waldorf Towers.”
The three men nodded and left.
It seemed to Nat that Brian’s biggest problem was still his personal life. Nat believed that if Brian could only find some personal satisfaction he’d be more at peace with himself and learn to enjoy his professional success more. Yet Brian’s romances only seemed to be getting more sordid. He had arrived in New York two days ahead of the Beatles with a terrible dilemma: Dizz Gillespie had reappeared and was in New York at the moment. Brian had lunch with Nat at the Waldorf Towers and recounted for him the entire episode with Dizz, from their first meeting that spring to their last parting over the blade of a knife. Now Dizz had contacted Brian again and wanted to see him. Brian knew he shouldn’t, but he had no self-control. With the Beatles coming to town, Brian was afraid that Dizz would do something to embarrass them all, and he needed Nat’s help in keeping Dizz away.
Nat agreed to help. It didn’t take long for him to track Dizz down and invite him to his office for a talk. Nat sized up the young man the second he walked in the door. “I had met thousands of him,” Nat says. “He was the garden-variety type hustler. If you wanted to keep your beer cold you’d put it next to his heart.”
Dizz had another version of the story. “I love Brian,” he told Nat. “I don’t want anything from him, I just want to see him.”
“Good,” Nat said, “because you’re not going to get anything from him, and you’re not going to see him. I want you to stay away from him.”
“Well, then,” Dizz said. “Brian’s got lots of money. If he wants me to stay away... well, if I had a car I could go away.”
Nat Weiss relayed the conversation to Brian, who insisted that Nat give Dizz $3,000 to buy a car. Nat was strongly against this idea; to give Dizz any money at all would keep him coming back for more. But Brian insisted he wanted Dizz to have a car, and Nat struck a deal with the boy. In return for the $3,000, Dizz agreed to be kept locked in a hotel room at the Warwick Hotel on Sixth Avenue—with a private guard hired by Nat—until the Beatles and Brian left town. After that, it seemed, Dizz disappeared. But no one knew for how long.
4
The story of the prisoners of fame is an old one, but it had never been more electrifyingly played out than by the Beatles. There were moments when, despite their fame and riches and success, I felt sorry for the Beatles. While normal people marked the turning points in their lives with births and graduations and new jobs, the days in the lives of the Beatles melted into one another in a never-ending grind of tours and concerts, separated only by short periods in London when they would record another album. It wasn’t until the winter of 1965-66 that the Beatles were able for the first time to spend some months at home and indulge themselves in the spoils of their success.
There were some spoils to be indulged in, too. Northern Songs, the Beatles’ song publishing company that had been established in 1963, was turned into a public company and floated on the London stock exchange. It had become clear that while no simple tax savings could be found, John and Paul could at least save a great deal of money by turning highly taxed income into capital gains. Northern Songs was the obvious asset to use, but no one had ever sold what was basically a songwriting partnership as stock before. Although the copyrights to songs had long been making publishers into millionaires, the value to the rights of the fifty-nine pieces of music then in Northern Songs was at first an ethereal entity to the London financial community.
The man who deserved most of the credit for convincing the City that Northern Songs was a valuable commodity was Dick James, the Beatles’ music publisher. Dick James knew the value of Northern Songs best of all, because the Beatles’ music had made him into a multimillionaire. Brian had met James at the start of the Beatles’ success, when “Love Me Do” was first high on the charts. “Love Me Do” had been published by EMI’s house-owned publisher, which had also put out the shee
t music, and Brian was unhappy with the sales. George Martin recommended Dick James who ran a small but aggressive publishing company that would have a real stake in the Beatles’ future.
Dick James became for the Beatles a symbol of the music business. He was a balding, Jewish uncle to the boys, a man with a big cigar and a sly smile, who taught John and Paul one of the biggest lessons in their lives. Dick James had been born Richard Leon Vapnick, the son of a kosher butcher. At the age of fourteen, after seeing a Bing Crosby movie, he dropped out of an East End London high school and became a singer. Richard Vapnick became Lee Sheridan, who became Dick James as he worked his way from one dreary dance band to another. In the late fifties, as a session singer, he sang the lead on the theme music for the English TV series “Robin Hood.” The song became an international hit, but James was paid a total of only £17 for the session. By the time he was thirty-two years old, Dick James had a pretty good idea of how some people in the music business got rich while others didn’t. That’s when he went into the publishing business. In 1962, when Brian first met him, he had a small, shabby, two-room office on Charing Cross Road.
James instantly recognized Lennon and McCartney’s potential as songwriters and offered Brian a clever deal. John and Paul would form a songwriting partnership called Northern Songs. They would each own 20 percent of this company, and Brian, in lieu of a 25 percent management fee, would own 10 percent. Dick James, in return for his responsibilities as a music publisher, would get 50 percent of the earnings. In literal terms Brian signed over to Dick James 50 percent of Lennon-McCartney’s publishing fees for nothing. It made him wealthy beyond imagination in eighteen months.
