Beatles (38 page)

‘At the beginning I loved Paul most of all. He was so beautiful. I couldn’t pinpoint it. He just seemed very beautiful.

‘I didn’t like George for some reason. I drew in a werewolf’s fangs on his face because I didn’t like him. I suppose the Beatles
were outlets for love and hate. I eventually did like George a bit more.

‘Then I went more on John instead of Paul. He seemed so intelligent and witty. His body was very sexy. He became the one I loved passionately.

‘I became obsessed about John. I dreamt about him all the time. We’d compare dreams at school. Tell each other what we did with our own favourite Beatle. I knew when I was depressed I could start a dream about John, just by lying there thinking about him, then falling asleep. Those dreams were absolutely beautiful. We did a lot of things together, John and I. He made love to me and I’d tell my friends next day. They weren’t all sexual, but a lot were. They were so real.

‘I talked and thought about them non-stop. My father was always telling me I’d get over them. I’d shout, “Never, Never, Never!”

‘It was funny, though. Even though I loved John so much, it didn’t stop me chasing other boys at school. That was sort of different. But John was the most important person in my life.

‘I read all the fan mags and listened to Murray the K all the time. He was the disc jockey who was the sort of Beatles expert.

‘I got so desperate about John that I wrote a letter to Cynthia. I was very nice in the letter. I just told her I was very sorry, but I loved her husband. I never got a reply.

‘I got all their records and had their photographs over my bedroom. When I saw a photograph of them in half shadows, my friends and I all went into town and got our photographs taken the same way.

‘When absolutely nothing else in life was good, I’d go to my room and have the Beatles, especially my darling John. They all furnished something I desperately needed. The sort of rich community I lived in in New Hampshire gave me nothing. I didn’t like school and didn’t like home. They gave me something to live for when everything was black and depressing.

‘When I heard they were coming to the Carnegie Hall in New York, I planned with two of my school friends to go and see
them. We pleaded and pleaded, as we weren’t allowed to go to New York on our own. No teenage girl is, from our sort of homes. We said it could be our special birthday treat, or we’d run away …’

The Carnegie Hall concert was to be promoted by Sid Bernstein, a short, tubby, ex-Columbia University student, ex-ballroom manager, ex-promoter who had become an agent with General Artists Corporation, one of the biggest agencies in America. Throughout his attempts to break into show business big time, he’d kept up his academic interests.

For ten years he’d gone to evening classes, specializing in English Government. ‘I remember going to hear your Harold Laski give a lecture. He was one of the finest speakers I ever heard. After Churchill, of course.’

His interest in English Government led him to read the British newspapers. In mid-1963, something caught his attention. ‘I kept on reading about these Beatles. I was supposed to be specializing in teenage music at GAC, yet I’d never heard of them. Nobody in the business bothered about the English scene.’

He took out subscriptions to all the English pop newspapers and decided to ring Brian Epstein. After a lot of difficulty, he got his home number in Liverpool. He said who he was, and Brian said he had never heard of him. He asked if he’d like his Beatles to appear at the Carnegie Hall, though he hadn’t actually got the Carnegie Hall. ‘Brian said when, and I said what about 12 February. I chose this day because it was Lincoln’s birthday and I knew I’d be able to get it. I offered him 6,500 dollars for two shows.’

Brian didn’t say yes immediately. It took some time to finalize, although the proposed date sounded fine, as he’d already fixed up two Ed Sullivan shows, for 9 and 16 February.

Sid Bernstein was made, just by getting in first as the New York promoter. He soon left agency work and branched out on his own with a partner. He went on to promote all their New York shows, except one. His story, of getting in first, could be duplicated all over the States, and all over the world.

But it wasn’t all Sid Bernstein’s doing, as far as New York was concerned. Brian had been working on launching the Beatles in America from the summer of 1963, though he wasn’t sure if things were ready. At first the Beatles had been a failure in the States. In the first half of 1963 they’d had four records out in America, by two different record companies, and they’d got nowhere.

Once their success in Britain was assured, Brian went over to New York with Billy J. Kramer, in November 1963, the month that President Kennedy was assassinated.

‘I wanted to find out why the biggest thing in British pop that anyone had ever known hadn’t happened in America. It was like the early days in London. I started going the rounds of recording firms and television people.’

During this trip he met Geoffrey Ellis again, the friend who’d lived beside him in Liverpool, but had gone to Oxford and then into insurance in New York.

‘I’d vaguely heard Brian was involved with some sort of beat group, but I didn’t believe it. It sounded a lot of rubbish, not something shy little Brian would get mixed up in.

‘I was walking down Broadway with Brian and Billy J. Kramer. We got to Times Square and Billy wanted to buy an awful shirt they have in those awful shops round there. Brian said no, he couldn’t. He said “It’s not your image, Billy.” That was the first time I realized that Brian was seriously in all this. I realized then that he had changed.’

During this visit Brian arranged for Capitol records to issue the Beatles’ records this time. Capitol, although a subsidiary of EMI, hadn’t been very keen on the Beatles at first, which was why the two other American companies had issued them, though with little success.

Brian also got an appointment with Ed Sullivan, whose TV show is the biggest of its kind in the United States. His talent scouts had passed on the word about the Beatles’ success in Britain. After a lot of discussion, Ed Sullivan agreed to book the Beatles for two of his shows.

Brian insisted that they should get top billing on both shows. ‘This was contested vaguely by Ed Sullivan. He saw the coming importance of the Beatles, but he rejected my view that they were going to be the biggest thing in the world. He agreed in the end, but his producer later told me that Sullivan had said it was ridiculous to give a British group top billing when a British group had never made it big in the States before.’

The Beatles themselves were very nervous at the idea of America. George had been there for a short holiday earlier in 1963. He said the natives were quite human and he thought they might be all right. He’d been to see his sister Louise, who had married an American and emigrated from Liverpool to St Louis. Like her mother, Mrs Harrison, she is a devoted Beatle fan and rang up her local radio stations, requesting Beatle numbers.

But John was worried, because no British groups or singers had ever got through in America before. ‘Cliff went there and died. He was 14th on the bill with Frankie Avalon.’ George said he’d seen Cliff’s film,
Summer Holiday
, reduced to the second feature in a drive-in in St Louis.

In January 1964, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ entered the US charts at 83. In Britain it was at last knocked from the top, after two months, by what many people thought was going to be the new sensation – Dave Clark Five and ‘Glad All Over’.

The London papers went to town on the story, glad of a local pop story for a change, after all the Liverpool successes. The
Daily Express
had a front-page headline that said: ‘Tottenham Sound Has Crushed The Beatles.’

The cartoonists, after almost six months of having to think up Liverpool jokes, jumped at the idea of the Beatles being finished. Vicky in the London
Evening Standard
had the cabinet in Beatle haircuts with the prime minister saying to them: ‘How can I say you’re with it, with old-fashioned haircuts like that?’

For a while the Beatles themselves were worried. ‘We couldn’t help it,’ says John. ‘Everyone was telling us, Dave Clark is coming, you’ve had it now. It worried us, but just for a minute,
the way we’d worried in Liverpool that Gerry would beat us in the Mersey Beat poll.’

Before their American visit, Brian had arranged their second European trip. This was three weeks in France, playing at the Olympia in Paris, starting on 15 January.

Several thousand fans saw the three Beatles off from London Airport. Ringo had been delayed by fog in Liverpool and followed later. At London Airport he held up a sign saying TLES after the initials BEA on the side of the aeroplane. Osbert Lancaster in his
Daily Express
cartoon had Napoleon with a Beatles haircut.

The first concert at the Olympia was not a success, the first poor reception, in Beatle terms, they’d had in almost a year of touring. There was a fist fight involving photographers, French policemen and Brian Sommerville, the Beatles’ new publicity man, who was now responsible for handling the press on tour. They did get a bit of clapping and John replied ‘Mersey beaucoup’.

BBC Interviewer in Paris: How important is it for you to succeed here?

PAUL: It is important to succeed anywhere
.

BBC: The French have not made up their minds about the Beatles. What do you think of them?

JOHN: Oh, we like the Beatles. They’re gear
.

In America, in its second week, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ got to 42. Norman Weiss from GAC in New York came to see Brian, finalized the Carnegie Hall deal and became the Beatles’ agent in America from then on.

In London, the
Daily Mail
, in its report from Vincent Mulchrone, who was with the Beatles, said: ‘If Paris and the Beatles are going to have an affair, it’s getting off to a slow start. Either the Champs-Elysées was not in mobbing mood today, or Beatlemania is still, like Britain’s entry into the Common Market, a problem the French prefer to put off for a while.’

They were in their suite at the George V hotel in Paris when the news came through that ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ had got to number one in America. They had started writing this song, in the basement of Jane Asher’s London house, with the aim of doing a mock-American gospel song, so it was apt that it became their first American success. They all had had a big dinner to celebrate. Brian was photographed eating his dinner with a chamber pot on his head.

American reporters and TV interviewers immediately started arriving in hordes. American Beatle fans, like Sandi Stewart, besieged the Carnegie Hall and Ed Sullivan for tickets. ‘She Loves You’, having lingered nowhere in the American hit parade, suddenly started climbing after ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. In the LP charts,
Please Please Me
was just about to get to the top.

The American press, like the English press the previous year, were arriving late but in deadly earnest.

‘Tell me about your hairdos,’ asked an American reporter.

‘You mean hair-don’ts,’ said John.

‘We were coming out of a swimming baths in Liverpool,’ said George. ‘And liked the way it looked.’

Sheilah Graham, the syndicated columnist, arrived and asked them which one was which.
Life
magazine came out with a six-page story on the Beatles.

To capitalize on all the free press publicity and the success of their records, Brian persuaded Capitol records to spend 50,000 dollars on what they called a ‘crash publicity programme’. Five million ‘The Beatles Are Coming’ posters were plastered throughout the States, every disc jockey got a copy of every Beatles record brought out in Britain, they gave out a million copies of a four-page newspaper on the Beatles and they photographed their top executives wearing Beatle wigs.

‘There was a lot of hype,’ said Voyle Gilmore, Vice-President of Capitol records. ‘But all the hype in the world isn’t going to sell a bad product.’

The Ed Sullivan Show couldn’t cope with the demand for tickets – 50,000 applied for 728 seats. Sid Bernstein could have
sold tickets for Carnegie Hall at twice the price. ‘Even Mrs Nelson Rockefeller couldn’t buy a ticket. I had to give her mine.’

Brian was offered another New York date, this time at Madison Square Garden, at double the fee for Carnegie Hall, but it was too late to fit it in.

As the Beatles left London Airport, on Pan Am flight 101, on 7 February 1964, station WMCA in New York made the first of a series of announcements. ‘It is now 6.30 a.m. Beatle time. They left London 30 minutes ago. They’re out over the Atlantic Ocean heading for New York. The temperature is 32 Beatle degrees.’

On the plane the Beatles were nervous. They hadn’t heard details of all the promotion that was being done, but they had read reports of people criticizing them and saying they were ugly.

Cyn was on the plane with John, the first and only time she went on tour with them. The un-famous George Harrison was there from the
Liverpool Echo
. He thought he’d retired from national news for good, when, at the age of 45, in 1954, he’d left Fleet Street and London for Liverpool. Now he was setting off on his first of four coast-to-coast trips with a group he’d once refused to write about. He says they were all very dubious about what sort of reception they would get. ‘They all said to me, “America’s got everything, George, so why should they want us?”’ People always call George by his Christian name in his stories.

George Harrison, the famous one, said he was feeling ill. ‘I was worrying about my hair as well. I’d washed it, but when it dried it had gone up a bit.’

‘We did all feel a bit sick that first time,’ says Ringo. ‘We always did, though we never showed it, before anything big. We’d felt a bit sick before the Palladium Show. Going to the States was a big step. People said just because we were popular in Britain, why should we be there?’

Neil and Mal were busy on the plane, forging Beatle signatures on photographs to give to any fans. Brian was also busy. Several British businessmen, having failed to get a second with
him in London, had decided that 30,000 feet above the Atlantic was the best place to get him. They sent little notes to him, asking if he would endorse their products. They were all politely refused.