With the arrival of Ringo the Beatles were complete: four cheerful lookalike mop-tops who acted as one - the ‘four-headed monster’, as Mick Jagger described them - though they were not equals. John, Paul and George had been together for four years and had a history that Ringo had not been a part of. Joining the band was, he said, ‘like joining a new class at school where everybody knew everybody but me’. Ringo would serve the others, without the talent to challenge John and Paul creatively. He was always the least important Beatle. Next up in seniority was George, never able to overcome the basic fact that he was nine months and one school-year junior to Paul, who treated him ‘as though George worked for him’ in the words of Tony Barrow, the Decca sleeve-note writer who would shortly come to work for the boys as their PR man. John was the boss, because the Quarry Men had been his band. Comments Barrow:And along came this guy McCartney who could play a few chords, so he was in, but he was only in as a band member, and it meant that, from the beginning, if Paul wanted to achieve equal status or, better still, leadership of the Beatles, he had to work hard at it, and he did. Internally, he did, from the very beginning, and most of the time I don’t think John noticed - in the early days at any rate - how pushy Paul was being within the group.
Paul almost leapfrogged John at the start of their recording career. In the early 1960s most pop groups were made up of a front man and his backing band: Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, and on a much lowlier level Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. As he prepared to record his new signing, George Martin considered releasing a record by ‘Paul McCartney and the Beatles’. There was also an argument for ‘John Lennon and the Beatles’. It was hard to decide. ‘George and I were walking up Oxford Street one day trying to work out whether it should be Paul - the good-looking one - or John, who had the big personality,’ Martin’s assistant Ron Richards told author Mark Lewisohn. When Martin couldn’t choose, the issue drifted away. Unusually, the Beatles would have two equal front men.
George Martin was reunited with the boys at Abbey Road on 4 September 1962, when the Beatles set to work recording their first single. Smartly dressed in suits and ties - a press photographer was present - they rehearsed during the day, broke for supper, then recorded in the evening. Anxious for a hit, and not yet trusting the Beatles’ own material, Martin gave the band a madly catchy tune titled ‘How Do You Do It?’, written by professional songwriter Mitch Murray. The boys recorded it without enthusiasm, John and Paul making it clear they would prefer to cut their own songs rather than the work of hack writers. The best they had to offer was ‘Love Me Do’, the slow, bluesy number written when John and Paul were boys and already demonstrated at their first meeting with Martin. They ran through it again with less than satisfactory results, Martin still detecting a weakness in the rhythm section.
When the band returned to the studio six days later to have another go at ‘Love Me Do’, Ritchie was dismayed to discover that Martin had hired a professional session drummer, Scotsman Andy White, to take his place. White describes the awkward moment Ringo saw him in the studio: ‘When he came in I was setting up my drums. He obviously thought, Don’t tell me! It’s happening to me now!’ Suspecting he was to suffer the same fate as Pete Best, Ringo went up the stairs to the control room and sat, stone-faced, with George Martin while John and Paul taught Andy their material. ‘They didn’t have any written music. So everything was word of mouth and trial and error,’ says the Scots drummer, who found it a refreshing change to play on original songs with the writers. They then recorded ‘Love Me Do’. Ringo’s mood was ameliorated slightly when Martin permitted him to bang a tambourine in accompaniment on what was the Beatles’ début single. Ritchie wasn’t fired from the band, but he never entirely forgave George Martin for replacing him with Andy White on that first session.
Not as much of a dirge as it had been, ‘Love Me Do’ was still a rather ponderous number, the lyric childishly simple, though John and Paul’s use of personal pronouns - ‘love me do/you know I love you …’ - was effective, making it seem as if they were singing directly to the listener. They used the same device on the slower ‘PS I Love You’, the lyric of which took the form of a love letter of the type Paul had written home to Dot from Hamburg. Indeed, Dot says Paul wrote the song for her before their break-up. Martin thought well enough of ‘PS I Love You’ to use it as the B-side of the first single.
When ‘Love Me Do’ was released on 5 October 1962, it meandered around the charts before reaching number 17 shortly before Christmas. While this wasn’t at all bad for a début single, it fell short of being a smash hit, possibly because EMI gave the record little promotion. There was resentment in the company that Brian Epstein had got his band in through the back door after being told the Beatles weren’t wanted on HMV or Columbia. Says Tony Barrow:I think this was part of the reason why EMI downgraded that first single so much in terms of promotion. It was given the least rating for promotion purposes, i.e. it was going to get the least number of plays on Radio Luxembourg and so on. It wasn’t an important release from EMI’s point of view.
Barrow had started work as a public relations man for Epstein’s new management company, NEMS Enterprises, so named to indicate that it was a branch of the larger family firm. Clive Epstein, Brian’s brother, was a director. One of Barrow’s first jobs was to produce a profile of Paul and the other Beatles for the press. To do so he spoke to fan club secretary Frieda Kelly, who was dealing with an increasing amount of mail for the boys. Girls tended to ask about the same things in their letters: ‘what colour hair they’ve got, what size shoes they take,’ recalls Frieda, not forgetting: ‘what type of girls they liked’. To save time she typed up Lifelines of each Beatle, giving the essential information. Under ‘Instruments played’, Paul listed ‘Bass, guitar, drums, piano, banjo’; putting ‘girls, song writing [and] sleeping’ as his hobbies, in that order.
Paul didn’t specify in his Lifeline what sort of girls he liked, though he admitted to a soft spot for the French actresses Brigitte Bardot and Juliette Gréco. In real life he was dating Rory Storm’s sister, Iris Caldwell, who caught his eye dancing at Operation Big Beat, a package show at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton. Iris’s mother was another Liverpool matriarch who supported and indulged her children, opening her door to their friends. Everybody was welcome at 54 Broad Green Road, which Vi Caldwell renamed Stormsville in honour of her rock ’n’ rolling son Rory. ‘We were the ones in the street that were in show business, we were like this strange family,’ says Iris. The Beatles were frequent visitors at Stormsville, George Harrison the first to date Iris. ‘I think George was my first kiss, when I was about 14.’ This innocent affair ended around 1959, though George still carried a torch for Iris as she began work as a professional dancer, kicking up her long legs as a can-can girl in variety. She was 17 when Paul saw her jiving at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton. ‘That’s when he wrote, “she was just seventeen/You know what I mean”.’7
The affair was tempestuous. ‘I was madly in love with [Paul] while I was going out with him, and then you’re in love with the next person.’ Paul could be an annoying, controlling boyfriend, as young men of his class and background typically were. He expected Iris to behave and dress to please him - ‘in straight skirts below the knee, and your hair up in a bun’ - and could be jealous and immature, especially when egged on by Lennon. One night when Paul and Iris and John and Cynthia went on a double date, the boys staged a mock fight in the restaurant so they would get thrown out and not have to pay; then they pulled the same trick at a second restaurant. ‘[Paul] was always messing about pretending he was the Hunchback of Notre Dame and doing crazy things,’ sighs Iris. Another time, shortly after Paul got his first car, a green Ford Classic, they drove through the Mersey Tunnel to the Cube Coffee Bar in Birkenhead, where they had a tiff. ‘I picked up this great big bowl of sugar, a big square bowl - because it was called the Cube Coffee Bar, everything was square in there - and I emptied it over his hea
d.’ Iris then ran towards the Mersey Tunnel, ‘with him driving along after me in the car trying to catch me …’
Deciding she was finished with McCartney, Iris phoned George Harrison. ‘I’m not going out with Paul any more,’ she told him.
‘Oh great!’ exclaimed George, seeing a chance to get the advantage over Paul for once. ‘Can I take you out tomorrow night?’
‘Of course you can.’
As Iris was getting ready for her date, Paul turned up with tickets for the King Brothers. ‘He said, “Well, I’ve paid for the tickets. It’s a stupid waste of money, so we may as well go.” I’m thinking, what am I going to do? George is going to be here in a minute.’ Good as gold, Mrs Caldwell picked up the telephone and dialled George. ‘Hello, is that you, Margaret?’ she said, when George Harrison answered the phone, pretending she was speaking to a girlfriend of her daughter’s. ‘Oh listen, Margaret, Iris’s boyfriend’s come round and she’s going out with him tonight.’ George asked Mrs Caldwell what she was talking about, telling her he was George, not Margaret. (‘He was a bit slow, you know,’ notes Iris. ‘God love him.’) So Paul took Iris out. The evening ended awkwardly again when Iris attracted the attention of one of the King Brothers, who came back to Stormsville with her and Paul, the rival boys staring daggers at each other until Iris went to bed, leaving her mother to deal with the Romeos. Paul got on well with Mrs Caldwell, as he tended to with his friends’ mothers. ‘He used to come in from the Cavern absolutely shattered [and] he used to sit on the chair, put his feet up on the pouffe, roll his trouser legs up, and my mother used to comb the hairs on his legs for him, because he used to like that.’
Another friend was Cavern cloakroom girl Priscilla White, who signed with NEMS as singer Cilla Black, an artist second only to the Beatles in Brian’s affection. Young Cilla hung out with Paul and the other Beatles, and socialised with the Caldwells at Stormsville, where one night they had a séance, Iris, Paul, Cilla and George Harrison all putting their hands on a glass on a Ouija board in the darkened living room. ‘Is there anybody there?’ Iris asked tremulously. The glass began to move in Paul’s direction. By a system of questions and tapped answers it was established that Paul’s late mother had risen from the spirit world to speak to her son. Paul became agitated. ‘He was asking her all these questions, “Is that you, Mum. Where are you?”’ Then George started laughing, for he had been pushing the glass and tapping the table. Paul almost strangled his friend.
Vivacious girl that she was, Iris was also dating another young man - the Australian singer Frank Ifield, whom she’d met when they were both appearing in Dick Whittington in Stockton-on-Tees. Frank hit the big time in the summer of 1962 when he scored a number one with ‘I Remember You’, which also went top ten in the USA and was a song Paul covered in the Beatles’ stage show. Anxious to win the Beatles wider exposure, and wanting to capitalise on the release of ‘Love Me Do’, Brian arranged for the boys to support Frank in concert in Peterborough on 2 December 1962. Frank put on what Iris called ‘a proper show’ in the variety tradition. Indeed she and Frank considered themselves in real show business, as opposed to Paul and George who were merely in a beat group. ‘I remember them looking at me when I put my make-up on. I don’t think they’d ever seen anybody putting make-up on before,’ recalls Ifield of his backstage meeting with the Beatles in Peterborough. John, Paul, George and Ringo followed Frank’s example, but overdid the grease paint. ‘They were a bit red - like red cochineal Beatles.’ They were also too loud on stage. There were boos and complaints to the management, who told the Beatles to ‘Turn it down!’
Iris continued to date Frank when their schedules coincided, also seeing Paul when he was in Liverpool. Her beaus had different styles. When Frank took her out, Iris wore her hair long and put on a nice frock. They went to restaurants. Frank held the chair for her, and ordered Mateus Rosé, ‘which I thought was so sophisticated’. With Paul it was a drink in the pub, then down the chippie. Each boy had his attractions, and she strung them both along. One night Paul surprised Iris by saying he had tickets for Frank’s show at the Liverpool Empire. Iris went to the concert with Paul, trepidatious in case Frank saw them, but expecting that they would be sitting back in the cheap seats, for Paul was careful with his money. He surprised her with seats at the front of the stalls. Still, Iris figured Frank wouldn’t recognise her. His eyesight wasn’t brilliant, and she had her hair in a bun. As Iris tells the story, Frank did eventually recognise her and Paul during the course of the evening. ‘I was sitting there holding hands with Paul, quite low down in me seat, and Frank did his whole piece. It was all wonderful and he never even glanced our way and I thought, Brilliant! ’ At the end of the show Frank said he’d like to sing one more song. As Iris remembers the moment, the singer rested his right foot on the footlights and pointed down at Paul. ‘It’s called “He’ll Have to Go”.’ As he sang, Paul squirmed in his seat cursing the cheeky Australian bugger.
THE BREAKTHROUGH
While Paul’s romantic comedy with Iris played out, the Beatles were increasingly busy playing sometimes two, even three shows a day, often starting at lunchtime at the Cavern, a venue they had nearly outgrown, then performing at theatres in the evening, big places like the Tower Ballroom and Liverpool Empire. In November the Beatles and Little Richard went to Hamburg for two weeks at the Star-Club, and then it was back to London to record with George Martin, working this time in a place that would become integral to Paul’s musical life: Studio Two at EMI - a large, lofty hall with a parquet floor, cream walls and a steep staircase leading to the control room, with a banister Paul would slide down when he was in a celebratory mood. George Martin peered down at his artists from the glazed control room like God.
After the modest success of ‘Love Me Do’, and the Beatles’ high-handed rejection of ‘How Do You Do It?’, Martin was anxious to see if the band had what it took to score a hit. He was sure ‘How Do You Do It?’ would have made number one, as indeed it later did for fellow Merseysiders Gerry and the Pacemakers, whom Brian signed to NEMS Enterprises as the second of what became a stable of local acts. The Beatles were unrepentant. ‘John just said it was crap,’ says singer Gerry Marsden. ‘We proved [that it wasn’t and] I say thank you to John every night on stage for giving me my first number one, because if they would have done it and released it we wouldn’t have had that song to do.’ Accepting that the Beatles really didn’t want to sing this hack song, Martin asked them sternly what they had that was better, to which they suggested ‘Please Please Me’, a song John and Paul had had knocking around for a while. Recalls Iris Caldwell:[Paul] sung that song in the house, ‘What do you think of it?’ I said, ‘I’ve never heard of such rubbish.’ Last night I said these words to my girl, why don’t you ever even try girl, come on, come on, come on, come on, please please … ‘I think it’s terrible!’
As recorded, ‘Please Please Me’ was brighter than ‘Love Me Do’, the opening guitar chords creating a big, optimistic sound, while the lyric was frankly sexual in a way adolescents could identify with: trying to get your girl to do what you both wanted, but were scared of in the age before the contraceptive pill became commonplace, in case you fell pregnant like Dot, and now like Cynthia, too. Unlike Paul, John had gone ahead and married his pregnant girlfriend, though secretly. The Lennons were expecting their first child in April.
At the end of 18 takes of ‘Please Please Me’, George Martin pronounced from his lofty control room that the boys had cut their first number one. Before they could find out whether George’s confidence was well placed, the Beatles returned to Hamburg to play a final stint at the Star-Club, a venue that had been the apex of their career only recently, but which, like the Cavern, they had now outgrown. It was December. The boys shared Christmas dinner with club friends and members of Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes. Paul bought a pair of leather gloves to take home to Iris, and on their last night in town persuaded his long-term German girlfriend Ruth Lallemann to come to the airport an
d wave him off. ‘He said, “Please take me to the airport, because I think it’s the last time I come here, because we’re going to get big.”’ The next time Ruth saw Paul would be in London when he was a superstar. All of a sudden, after a time when the Beatles seemed to be moving in slow motion, everything was happening very fast.
Back home, the Beatles found they had virtually no free time, as they rushed from club to theatre to recording studio, often travelling long distances to fulfil relatively minor engagements. For example, after a hectic day of promotion for ‘Please Please Me’ in London on Thursday 22 January 1963, recording for three different BBC radio shows, the band was driven back to Liverpool to appear at the Cavern. A new boy was behind the wheel of their van, a burly former post office worker named Mal Evans who’d joined the Beatles as a roadie, junior to Neil Aspinall who was increasingly filling the role of road manager. Schlep-ping up country to Liverpool on a freezing cold, foggy day, a stone shattered the van’s widescreen. Mal punched out the glass, and battled on, the bitter wind blowing full in his face, as the Beatles huddled together in the back as ‘a Beatle sandwich’, as Paul described it.
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