Fab
Page 70
Paul’s 1959 art prize: Liverpool Record Office; and PM’s comments in Paul McCartney: Paintings.
Trip to Caversham: author’s interview with Mike Robbins (quotes).
Allan Williams: author’s interview (quotes). Also interview with Howie Casey. Background reading: The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away (Williams).
Band name: author’s interviews including Royston Ellis and Bill Harry (both quoted). Thanks also to Ellis for his unpublished memoirs (used with permission), and to Spencer Leigh. PM attributes the final spelling of Beatles to JL in the Anthology (book) and elsewhere.
JL on the origins of the Beatles name: Being a Short Diversion of the Dubious Origins of Beatles (Lennon), published in Mersey Beat (6 -20 July 1961).
Johnny Gentle tour: author’s interview with Gentle (quoted).
Tommy Moore’s girlfriend - ‘You can piss off!’ - The Complete Beatles Chronicle (Lewisohn).
PM on Janice the Stripper: Mersey Beat (6 Sept. 1962).
Bruno Koschmider meeting: author’s interview with Williams, who says Koschmider was crippled in a fall. Klaus Voormann writes in his book Hamburg Days that Koschmider’s leg was shot off. Thanks also to Howie Casey and Horst Fascher.
PM’s exams: Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now (Miles) and Shout! (Norman).
Leaving Liverpool: author’s interviews. Also John (Lennon); McCartney (Flippo) and Shout! (Norman).
3: HAMBURG
Hamburg: author’s visit and local interviews.
Details of 1943 RAF bombing are from Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert (London: Pimlico, 2000).
PM - ‘but with strip clubs’ - Mersey Beat (20 Sept. 1962).
Horst Fascher meets the Beatles: author’s interviews (quoted).
The Indra: author’s local enquiries and interviews with Howie Casey, Horst Fascher, Ruth Lallemann (later Reeves) and Rosi Haitmann (later Sheridan), both of whom are quoted. Background reading includes The Complete Beatles Chronicle (Lewisohn).
Details of Bambi Kino accommodation: Hamburg Days (Kirchherr).
Meeting the Exis: author’s interviews with Astrid Kirchherr and Jürgen Vollmer (both quoted from the author’s interviews, except where indicated). Background reading: The Beatles in Hamburg (Vollmer) and Hamburg Days (Kirchherr and Voormann).
Kirchherr - ‘I thought it was like …’ - her book Hamburg Days.
Dialogue about Paul’s hair: The Beatles in Hamburg (Vollmer).
Ruth Lallemann and Rosi Sheridan quoted from author’s interviews.
PM - ‘We were kids let off the leash …’ - the Anthology (documentary).
GH is quoted on losing his virginity from the Anthology (book), and Pete Best from his memoir, Beatle!
Erika Wohlers quoted from author’s correspondence.
Tony Sheridan quoted from author’s interview.
The fire: Paul’s interviews (various) and his contemporaneous letter reproduced in the Anthology (book).
Returning home: Thank U Very Much (McCartney) in which is reproduced a letter from Massey & Coggins showing PM was paid to 8 March 1961. Other little jobs: author’s interviews; Miles refers to the post office job in his book In the Sixties.
Allan Williams quoted from author’s interview.
The Cavern: author’s interviews with Tony Bramwell, Frieda Kelly and Ray O’Brien (all quoted). Also Willy Russell. Background reading: The Cavern (Leigh).
Williams’s regrets: The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away (Williams).
PM breaks guitar: a 1964 interview with Beat Instrumental, reprinted in The Beatles Book (Feb. 2001).
PM’s altercation with Stu: dialogue from The Beatles’ Shadow (Sutcliffe). Ruth Reeves and Tony Sheridan quoted from author’s interviews.
GH on fighting Stu: Fifty Years Adrift (Taylor).
‘My Bonnie’ makes number 32 in Germany: Hit Bilanz (Hamburg: Taurus Press, 1990).
Gerry Marsden quoted from author’s interview.
The trip to Paris: author’s interview with Jürgen Vollmer.
Brian Epstein (BE): background: author’s interviews with E. Rex Makin (quoted) and others. Background: Brian Epstein (Coleman), including Queenie Epstein quote.
BE - ‘I was one of those …’ - A Cellarful of Noise (Epstein), and BE’s exchanges with GH and PM.
Allan Williams and E. Rex Makin quoted from author’s interviews.
PM’s comment - ‘I hope …’ - Brian Epstein (Coleman).
4: LONDON
The contract: the agreement, eventually signed by BE and dated 1 Oct. 1962, was reproduced in the press prior to auction in 2008.
‘Greatest recording organisation …’: EMI publicity material reproduced in The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (Lewisohn).
EMI history: www.emi.com; also The Incredible Music Machine (Lowe); and the Royal Warrant Holders’ Association.
Tony Barrow link and all Barrow quotes: author’s interview.
Aldershot gig: Sam Leach to author; also his book The Rocking City.
Decca audition: Barrow interview; The Complete Beatles Chronicle (Lewisohn) and the Anthology (CD Vol. 1 liner notes).
BE quoted from his memoir A Cellarful of Noise and The Beatles Book (May 1992). Mother sighed: I Should Have Known Better (Ellis).
George Martin (GM) personality and background: author’s meeting with; his memoir All You Need is Ears and interview with Melody Maker (21 Aug. 1962). GM quoted from last two.
Stuart Sutcliffe’s demise: author’s interviews with Astrid Kirchherr (quoted) and Pauline Sutcliffe, who is quoted from The Beatles’ Shadow; also the Stuart Sutcliffe Retrospective (University of Liverpool, 2009) and Hamburg Days (Kirchherr).
PM - ‘My mother died when I was 14 …’ - Shout! (Norman).
Astrid Kirchherr quoted from author’s interview.
At the Star-Club: author’s background reading and interviews with, among others, Horst Fascher and Kingsize Taylor (quoted).
GM offers a contract: The Complete Beatles Chronicle (Lewisohn).
Meeting GM: All You Need is Ears (Martin [quoted]).
The slow version of ‘Love Me Do’ can be heard on the Anthology (CD Vol. 1).
GM’s comment on Pete Best - ‘almost sullen’ - in interview for the DVD release of A Hard Day’s Night (Special Features).
PM’s comment on GM taking them aside: the Anthology (book).
Bob Wooler on Best: Mersey Beat (31 Aug. 1961).
Fan club: author’s interview with Frieda Kelly.
Trip to Manchester: Bobbie Brown’s letter reproduced in The Complete Beatles Chronicle (Lewisohn).
Bill Harry quoted from author’s interview.
Dot Rhone is quoted from the Daily Mail (11 Oct. 1997) and The Beatles (Spitz).
Paul had VD: author’s interviews with Peter Brown, Horst Fascher and E. Rex Makin (quoted).
Dialogue between BE and Pete Best: Beatle! (Best).
PM’s call and comment about saving money: Shout! (Norman).
Neil Aspinall’s affair with Mona Best/birth of Roag: thanks to Roag Best (quoted). Suicide attempt: Beatle! (Best).
Ringo Starr (RS) background: author’s interviews; the Anthology (book); The Encyclopaedia of Beatles People (Harry) and Ringo Starr: Straight Man or Joke? (Clayton [‘it was like joining …’]).
RS - ‘I can read, but …’ - the Anthology (book).
Mick Jagger quote: induction speech at the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame 1988.
Tony Barrow quoted from author’s interview.
GM and Richards quote: The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (Lewisohn).
Recording ‘Love Me Do’: author’s interview with Andy White (quoted).
Rhone on ‘PS I Love You’: Daily Mail (11 Oct. 1997).
PM’s Lifeline: thanks to Frieda Kelly (quoted).
Iris Caldwell on PM and recalled dialogue: quoted from author’s interview.
First car: PM to the Daily Mail (24 Nov. 1984).
All Frank Ifield quotes to author. Background: I Remember
Me (Ifield). NB: Ifield doesn’t remember the Liverpool Empire story the same way as Iris, but notes, laughing, that ‘they might have had a guilty conscience’.
Gerry Marsden quote to author.
GM - ‘You’ve Just made …’ - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (Lewisohn).
Ruth Lallemann quoted from author’s interview.
Mal Evans background: the Anthology (documentary).
Broken windscreen: The Complete Beatles Chronicle (Lewisohn).
Beatle sandwich: the Anthology (book).
Break-up with Iris: quoted from author’s interview.
5: THE MANIA
Recording the first album: All You Need is Ears (Martin) and The Complete Beatles Chronicle (Lewisohn).
Dick James deal: sources include Ray Coleman’s books Brian Epstein and McCartney Yesterday & Today; also Shout! (Norman) and the Guardian (13 Feb. 1965).
PM on the James deal: Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now (Miles).
PM on the moment he knew he’d made it: interviewed by David Frost (26 May 1986), reported in Club Sandwich # 41.1
PM meets Jane Asher: Radio Times (2 May 1963) and her 9 Oct. 1965 TV Times interview.
JL quote from Mr Confidential (Hutchins). PM told Hunter Davies for The Beatles that he had thought Jane a ‘rave London bird’. Thanks also to Alvin Stardust.
The Ashers at Wimpole Street: author’s interviews with Tony Barrow (quoted), Barry Miles and Lord St Germans. Background reading: articles about Asher in the TV Times (9 and 30 Oct. 1965); Who’s Who and Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now.
Background on Dr Asher: author’s interview with Miles and the Sunday Express (19 April 1964), reporting his disappearance.
Dr Asher’s suicide: death certificate (in which the cause of death is given as ‘Killed himself’)
Wimpole street literary associations: Flush (Woolf); A Reader’s Guide to Writer’s London (Cunningham) and Lord St Germans.
Speeding conviction: Liverpool Echo, 26 Aug, 1963, with thanks to Peter Hodgson and Kevin Roach at Liverpool Record Office.
21st party at the Epsteins’: author’s interviews with Billy Hatton and E. Rex Makin (both quoted); Brian Epstein (Coleman) and John Lennon: The Life (Norman). Also Barrow to author (quoted).
Mike McCartney goes into show business: his memoir, Thank U Very Much and author’s interview with a family member. Tony Bramwell quoted from author’s interview.
Tenerife holiday: Klaus Voormann in the Special Features DVD interviews of A Hard Day’s Night.
Pete Shotton on Lennon’s holiday with BE: The Quarrymen (Davies).
PM on John’s sexuality: Brian Epstein (Coleman).
Gordon Millings quoted from the Special Features DVD interviews of A Hard Day’s Night.
PM meets Denny Laine: author’s interview with Laine.
Final shows at the Cavern: author’s interviews with Frieda Kelly and Willy Russell (both quoted).
PM on writing ‘She Loves You’: Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now (Miles). GM reaction to song from the Special Features section of the DVD of A Hard Day’s Night.
Trip to Greece and RS quote: the Anthology (book).
Green Street Flat: The Beatles’ London (Lewisohn).
Lennon-McCartney songs covered by others: Club Sandwich # 74. PM quoted from The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (Lewisohn).
Meeting Andrew Loog Oldham (and background): author’s interview with Loog Oldham and his book Stoned. NB: Various versions of this story have appeared in print, including PM saying he and JL bumped into Jagger and Richards when they passed by in a cab in Charing Cross Road. Loog Oldham’s account is the most complete. Charlie Watts quoted from According to the Rolling Stones; Bill Wyman quoted from his book Stone Alone; Glyn Johns quoted from author’s interview.
Derek Taylor’s early interest in the Beatles: Fifty Years Adrift (Taylor).
The Beatles on Sunday Night at the London Palladium: author’s interview with Bruce Forsyth (quoted); Godfrey Winn quoted from the Sketch (14 Oct. 1963); also Daily Mirror of the same date.
William Mann’s article: The Times (27 Dec. 1963).Beatlemania: the first use of the term in the British press appears to be as a headline to Vincent Mulchrone’s Daily Mail feature on 21 Oct. 1963, after which it was widely used by all newspapers.
Regarding Ed Sullivan seeing the Beatles at Heathrow, New York promoter Sid Bernstein told the author: ‘Sullivan said, “Who are these Beatles? ” He thought it was an animal act.’ Sullivan is quoted from The Beatles Off the Record (Badman).
The Royal Variety Show: author’s interview with Don Short (quoted); Daily Mirror (5 and 6 Nov. 1963); and Daily Express (5 Nov. 1963).
PM moves into Wimpole Street and his life there: author’s interview with Miles, and his book Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now; also The Beatles’ London (Lewisohn). Bramwell quoted from author’s interview.
JL on writing in the basement: to Playboy, collected in The Beatles Off the Record (Badman).
Ken Dodd quoted from discussion with author.
Lunch with Sir Joseph Lockwood: The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (Lewisohn).
£ 2,000 a week: as reported contemporaneously in the Daily Sketch (14 Oct. 1963).
Oxfam: author’s interview with Lord Archer (quoted).
Wimbledon fan convention: author’s interview with Frieda Kelly. Neil Aspinall quoted from the Anthology (book).
6: AMERICA
The 1963 Beatles Christmas Record: the recording.
Christmas show: The Complete Beatles Chronicle (Lewisohn). Thanks to Liverpool broadcaster Spencer Leigh, who pointed out that girls were screaming for Gerry and the Pacemakers when he saw them on the same bill as the Beatles.
Paris shows: author’s interview with Mickey Jones (quoted). Thanks also to Jürgen Vollmer.
Jim and Mike McCartney visit: Thank U Very Much (McCartney).
GM quoted from his book All You Need is Ears.
PM on ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ going to number one in the US quoted from the Anthology (book).
RS’s comment on the plane to New York: The Beatles: A Diary (Miles).
Alan Livingston quoted from All You Need is Ears (Martin).
Blackpool rock litigation: Daily Telegraph (14 Dec. 1963).
Licensing deal: author’s interviews with John Fenton and Lord St Germans (both quoted).
DJ announcement: America’s Century (Daniel, ed.) and The Beatles (Davies).
Capitol Records spent money: the figure most often given is $ 50,000. In the Anthology (documentary) GH mentions $70,000.
Capitol PR campaign: The Capitol Albums Vol. 1 liner notes.
Arrival in New York: documentary footage; press reports and author’s interview with Sid Bernstein (quoted).
The ‘turning point’: BE in A Cellarful of Noise.
BE at the Plaza Hotel: I Should Have Known Better (Ellis). The story of BE being photographed is described by Ross Benson in Paul McCartney: Behind the Myth. Thanks also to John Fenton (quoted).
PM - ‘We came out of nowhere …’ - the Anthology (book).
Train to Washington: Maylses brothers’ film The Beatles: The First Visit (Apple Corps, 1990); article by Al Aronowitz: Saturday Evening Post (21 March 1964).
PM asked by David English on train about illegitimate child, and PM’s quoted reply: Paul McCartney: Behind the Myth (Benson).
Erika Hübers (née Wohlers) is quoted from correspondence with the author. Also correspondence and interviews with her daughter.
A Hard Day’s Night chapter subheading taken from the marquee of the London Pavilion. Also the DVD of the film, with its Special Features interviews, featuring GM interview (quoted).
Ringoism: The Complete Beatles Chronicle (Lewisohn).
First use of grotty and fab: Oxford English Dictionary. NB: PM uses ‘fab’ in a letter dated 9 May 1962 (Thank U Very Much); and in Mersey Beat (20 Sept. 1962). Thanks also to Tony Barrow.
Richard Lester quoted from the DVD release
of A Hard Day’s Night (Special Features).
Europe, Hong Kong and Australia: press including the Saturday Evening Post (15 Aug. 1964 [blood vessel]); Fifty Years Adrift (Taylor); the Anthology (documentary) and The Complete Beatles Chronicle (Lewisohn).
At the Dorchester and dialogue and quotation: Thank U Very Much (McCartney); also At the Apple’s Core (O’Dell). John Lennon reunited with his father: John Lennon: The Life (Norman).
Mike McCartney on the ‘covenant’: his book Thank U Very Much.
McCartney Pension: author’s interviews.
Liverpool première: author’s interviews including Frank Foy (quoted); TV footage of the homecoming and press reports including Mersey Beat (16 July 1964); Daily Mirror (11 July 1964), and the Saturday Evening Post (15 Aug. 1964).
Anita Cochrane’s story: author’s interviews with Tony Barrow, Peter Brown and Anita’s half-brother Ian Pillans (all quoted); Anita’s interviews with the Daily Mail (31 May-2 June 1997) and family records, including her birth certificate which reveals the inconsistency of dates. I also referred to Anita’s interview with the Daily Star (1 Feb. 1983).
No father’s name on Philip Cochrane’s birth certificate: birth certificate.
The poem is reproduced from the Daily Mail (10 May 1997).
Derek Taylor wrote about the paternity claim in his book Fifty Years Adrift (quoted).
1964 North American tour hysteria: the Anthology (book) including GM quote; The Beatles Book and press reports including the Daily Sketch (20 Aug. 1964).
Peggy Lipton quoted from her book, Breathing Out.
Meeting Dylan: I drew on conversations conducted with Al Aronowitz and Victor Maymudes (both deceased) for my book Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan; also Aronowitz’s article Let’s ‘ave a Larf (The Blacklisted Journalist, 1995). The BE quote is from Fifty Years Adrift (Taylor). PM’s ‘There are seven Levels’: Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now (Miles).
7 : YESTERDAY
Home moves: author’s enquiries and The Beatles’ London (Lewisohn).