Beatles (5 page)

Yoko tried to persuade me to strip off. I made an excuse and left, as all the best journalists have done since time immemorial. I could not really write objectively about her film, so I said, if I was in it.

I did a piece in the paper on 12 February 1967. I hoped I hadn’t poked too much fun at her, though I worried that the title of the article, ‘Oh no, Ono’, might offend her, but she had got what she wanted, some prime publicity. She rang me afterwards to thank me.

I never met her again, in the flesh, until I walked into Abbey Road studios one evening in 1968 and there she was, sitting in a transcendental state with John transfixed by her, looking at her adoringly, and the other three Beatles completely bewildered, not knowing what had happened.

Meanwhile, I had a first, quick meeting with Ringo, and then in turn with the other three, but not to interview them, just to say hello, introduce myself, explain the project and get from them the names of school friends, schoolmasters, neighbours and, most of all, an introduction to their parents. I knew I would need that to pave the way.

I had decided I would spend the first six months of my work on the Beatles book by not talking to the Beatles themselves. I sensed, without knowing it, that they must be fed up with the same old questions from people who only knew what they knew by having read it in the newspapers. I wanted to go back in time, and then move slowly, stage by stage, through their careers, so that each time I arrived to see them again, I would bring news and chat and observations about what had happened to all the people and places they had long left behind. That way, I estimated, I might be a welcome visitor. Unless, of course, they were now so fame-drunk and success-sodden that they had ceased to have any interest in
where
they had come from.

So those first chats were brief, hurried conversations, mainly at Abbey Road, before recording sessions. In those early days, I made sure not to outstay my welcome, knowing that they had always refused to have any strangers or outsiders present when they were actually working.

John must have taken in my few words of introduction, saying who I was, where I’d come from and what I was doing. Some time later I received a letter from him, addressed to ‘White
Hunter Davies, c/o William Heinemann Ltd, 15 Queen Street, London, W1’. Not a bad joke. Inside was a cutting, with no date, which appeared to be from a local Liverpool newspaper, saying a rhythm group called the Beatles had made their debut at Neston Institute.

It is only recently that I have at long last been able to date the cutting, after searches in Liverpool and at the British Museum’s newspaper library. It appeared on 11 June 1960 (the day of my wedding) in the Heswall and Neston edition of the
Birkenhead News
. This was apparently the first time that the word ‘Beatles’ appeared in print. (
Mersey Beat
, the local pop-music newspaper, which wrote about them constantly, did not appear till the following year, in June 1961.)

It’s interesting that the newspaper should call them ‘The Beatles’ as only two weeks earlier, on 27 May in the
Hoylake News and Advertiser
, they were still known as the Silver Beetles. They did not permanently call themselves The Beatles till later that year.

The cutting shows that John had stuck to his own name. Paul had become Paul Ramon, giving himself a Hollywood-1920s persona. George was Carl Harrison, after his hero, Carl Perkins. Stu Sutcliffe had become Stuart de Stijl, after the art movement. Thomas Moore, the drummer, an equally false-sounding name, was in fact called Thomas Moore.

Although John always appeared to have no interest in the history of the Beatles, the fact that he had kept this cutting, which obviously must have been a big thrill for him at the time, made me realize that he did have some interest in his past. On the back of the envelope that contained this cutting, John had written the words ‘JAKE MY ARSE’.

I must have given him some personal information during our hurried chat, and told him I had recently had a baby son, though I thought from his short-sighted look, staring blankly through his National Health spectacles, that he hadn’t been listening.

I presume he thought that a working-class lad from the North should not be giving his children such poncy names. I didn’t know at that time about Julian (as his wife and family were
still kept pretty private). Later on, I always made a point of saying what a middle-class name, Julian, really affected, very poncy.

Going to see the parents was one of the strangest parts about researching the book. I wanted to put a good deal about them in the final book, and how they had reacted, and wrote up a hundred pages of notes. In the end, there just wasn’t enough space for more than a few paragraphs about what had happened to them (see
Chapter 28
).

The fact of their sons’ fame had taken them completely by surprise, and the recent and sudden transformation, from their working-class homes and environment into luxury homes in the suburbs, was an even bigger shock. In the case of Mimi, John’s aunt who had brought him up, she maintained she had always been middle class. Unlike the other three sets of parents, who all lived in council or rented houses, she and her husband owned their home. It was only a modest semi, on a busy road, not at all affluent and certainly not a professional area, though Mimi always had certain aspirations and hated John for getting mixed up with the common crowd. Even for Mimi, there had been some cultural, emotional and social shocks. It wasn’t just the fact of the four boys becoming celebrities and millionaires. The parents had also been turned into celebrities, suddenly living and being treated like millionaires. All of them reacted to this process slightly differently.

Ringo’s mother, Elsie, and his stepfather Harry were the most stunned by it, almost frightened, caught like rabbits in the searchlight of fame. They had just moved into a new posh bungalow, and felt completely isolated, knowing nobody, not knowing what to do with themselves all day. I tried, in the book, not to paint it as bleakly as that, but I did feel sorry for them. They had been forced in the end to move from their old terrace house in the Dingle because life there had become unbearable.

I explained to them on the phone what I was doing, and that I had permission. Sitting there, in their new lounge, which still smelled of plastic coverings and paint, I could feel their
nervousness, scared of saying the wrong thing, so I rang Ringo, on their phone, and got him to talk to them, before finally they relaxed.

‘We began to get really fed up,’ said Elsie, ‘when they started taking away the letter box, chipping bits off the door, taking stones away from the outside. We came home one night and they’d painted “We Love You Ringo” all over the front door and on every window.

‘Most of them were nice kids. They did buy the records, so they deserved something. They’d ask for his old socks, or shirts, or shoes. I’d give them some, till there was none left.

‘If Ritchie was at home, he had to sneak in and out in the dark. He’d be crouching inside sometimes, and I’d have to say he wasn’t in. So, we just had to move here in the end.’

On the other hand, Louise Harrison, George’s mother, was sitting proudly in her new gleaming home, loving it all. She welcomed the fans and the interruptions from the very beginning, enjoying talking to them, opening fêtes, signing autographs, making little speeches. She turned being a Beatle mum into a full-time occupation.

When I first went to see her, in early 1967, there were rumours, yet again, about the Beatles splitting up. (It was either that, or one of them, usually Paul, was dead.) To cope with all the mail she was personally getting about this momentous topic, Mrs Harrison had prepared typewritten replies ready to send to fans.

Through the fact of being George’s mother, she had opened a new shop in Liverpool and met some Liverpool TV stars, such as Ken Dodd and Jimmy Tarbuck. She and her husband had recently been invited to the funeral of a local pop singer, even though they never knew him. She thought it their duty to turn up, to represent George.

Mrs Harrison was the only one of the parents who actively encouraged their early music, and became something of a groupie herself, going to many of their early concerts. She still loved talking about it. After all, in 1967, it was fresh in her mind.

‘I remember when they did “Love Me Do”, their first record, and George told us it
might
be going to be on Radio Luxembourg. We all stayed up till two o’clock, glued to the set, and nothing happened. Harold [her husband] went to bed, as he had to be up at five for the early shift on the buses. In the end, I went up to bed as well. I was just in the bedroom, when George came rushing up the stairs with the radio, shouting “We’re on, we’re on.” Harold woke up and said, “Who’s brought that noisy gramophone in here?”’

Mrs Harrison had a better memory of their early concerts than the Beatles themselves, which was a great help in getting the sequence of events in order. They were useless, when it came to dates, and even the years.

‘I went to 48 of their shows when they became the Beatles. Manchester, Preston, Southport, all over the North. I used to sit in the front rows. In Manchester one night they were doing a show that a TV company was going to record. I got tickets as usual, for the first and for the second house. George said I was daft – I’d never survive because they were going to be really loud for the film people. I managed the first show, but by the beginning of the second, the screams were so loud I almost collapsed. I had to get a policeman to help me out. He didn’t believe me when I said I’d been to the first show as well …

‘One of the first big things George did for us was in 1963. He said he’d got me a birthday present, but I couldn’t see it or hold it. All I had to do was get ready to go to Jamaica on Wednesday. I said I’ll need new clothes. He said, all you need is your cossy. That holiday in Montego Bay was the best ever.

‘On the beach one day, this bloke sat down and said, hello Mrs Harrison. How do you know I’m Mrs Harrison? He’d got a description of what I was wearing when I left the hotel that morning. He was a reporter. I woke Harold up. I said, there’s a reporter taking all your snores down. I was too thirsty to talk to him. I’d need a drink. He sent off this Japanese photographer he had and he came back with eight bottles of beer. He then took us round the clubs at night. We had a great time.

‘I think our proudest moment of all was the Civic Reception in Liverpool. Seeing our own townspeople turning out. From Speke airport onwards they were eight deep all the way into town. You should have seen all the poor old people, waving their clean white hankies as we passed. They’d come out specially from their old people’s homes, just for once. Oh, Lord, what a day.’

George, at that time, had just started his interest in Indian music, which Mrs Harrison, in a rather convoluted way, thought she might have something to do with.

‘I always used to fiddle with our wireless to get Indian music. I’d tuned into Indian stuff once by accident and I thought it was lovely, so after that I was always trying to get it on the wireless. I’m not saying this has affected George. This was all before he was born …’

Jim McCartney, Paul’s father, had also taken very easily to the new life, though in a different way, as he tried to keep out of the limelight. Unlike the others, he bought an old Edwardian villa, rather smart and grand, as opposed to a new bungalow, and turned himself into something of a gent, in his smart sports jacket and check trousers, owning a racehorse, tending his grapes in his own conservatory. He had of course been a salesman, so he always did look very neat and presentable.

Jim first realized they were doing well when the phone started ringing non-stop. They always had a phone, despite living in a council house, because of his wife being a midwife. ‘It seemed to go every second. I answered it in case it was important. Girls would ring up from California and say is Paul there. What a waste of money. If they came to the house from a long distance, I’d say, do you want a cup of tea? Then I’d say, well there’s the kitchen. They’d go in and shout and scream because they’d recognize the kitchen from photographs. They knew more about me than I did myself. Fans would make very good detectives.

‘I used to think, how far can it go? Every newspaper was full every day of the police having to keep the kids back. All that free publicity. Brian never had to pay for any of it.

‘I think their secret was they were attractive to the kids because they represented their frame of mind, they represented
freedom and rebellion. And they liked doing it so much, that’s why they did it so well.’

I stayed with Jim, and his new wife Angie, several times in their home, and always had a very enjoyable evening. When he came to London, he used to ring me and come round for tea. One night, when I was staying with him in Cheshire, Paul had sent up an advance copy of ‘When I’m Sixty-four’, which he said he had written with his dad in mind. That evening, they must have played it about 20 times, dancing round and round the drawing room. I was convinced Jim was going to have a heart attack. Angie, a much younger lady, was encouraging him to jump about.

Michael, Paul’s younger brother, was also living at home at that stage, and he told a story about Paul’s innate sense of diplomacy, which he had always noticed, ever since his young days.

‘I was in Paris with them, and George Martin had arranged for them to sing “She Loves You” in German. He waited in this studio for them for two hours, and they didn’t turn up. George arrives at the hotel where we all were, the George V, and when they see him come in, they all dive under the tables. “Are you coming to do it or not?” asked George. John said no. Then George and Ringo also said no. Paul said nothing.

‘They all went back to their meal. Then a bit later, Paul suddenly turned to John and said, heh, you know that so and so line, what if we did it this way? John listened to what Paul said, thought a bit, and said yeh, that’s it.

‘That had been the real reason why they hadn’t turned up. But without arguing, Paul had cleverly brought the subject round again, sorted it out. Before long, they all got up and went off to the studio.’