Best of the Beatles (6 page)

How it happens in fiction:

Mike is the Stray Cats’ manager in
Stardust
(Fontana Books, 1974) by the Liverpool author, Ray Connolly: “Mike looked at him and hated him more than ever. The grovelling little bastard, he thought. But he smiled, ‘Johnny! Fancy a drink?’ he said, and with an arm round Johnny’s shoulders, he led him away to a sudden and merciless slaughter. He just couldn’t afford to let some little two-faced twat like Johnny interfere with his plans now. No way.”

That isn’t far from real life. Mike Middles tells how the lead singer of the fledgling Durutti Column was sacked in
From Joy Division to New Order – The Factory Story
(Virgin, 1996): “That night, Tony Wilson visited the flat of singer Phil Rainford. To make matters worse, Rainford seemed unusually enthusiastic, painfully exclaiming in an increasingly excited tone about his plans for the band and how marvellous the recent rehearsals had been. As every excitable comment passed by, Wilson found himself sinking deeper and deeper into despair. He sat, quietly panicking, preparing to administer the chop while a Bruce
Springsteen album filled the room. ‘At the end of side one,’ thought Wilson, ‘I’ll tell him then.’ Inevitably, side one cluttered to a halt and side two began to spin threateningly. Wilson decided to tell him at the end of side two, and so he did. Feeling profoundly wretched, with Rainford’s tone of disbelief ringing in his ears, he strode wretchedly away from the startled singer’s flat. Tony Wilson had tasted the darker side of band management.”

And so to the Beatles…

When he awoke on the morning of Thursday 16 August, Pete Best put on his T-shirt and jeans and asked the Beatles’ roadie, Neil Aspinall, if he wanted to come into town with him.

They drove to Whitechapel and Pete went into NEMS while Neil waited outside. Pete went into Brian Epstein’s office, sat down and, as he says, “It took just 10 minutes to change my life forever.”

Less than that actually, because Epstein simply said, “The lads don’t want you in the group anymore.” Not ‘the lads and I,’ not ‘we,’ not ‘I’ but ‘the lads.’ Brian Epstein was distancing himself from the decision.

That may be right. Brian Epstein recognised Pete’s popularity and liked him a lot. He would offer him another drumming job a few days later – the fact that he didn’t do at this meeting implies that this was a hurried decision, that he hadn’t sorted everything out. He also expected Pete Best to work with the Beatles for the rest of the week.

Pete Best told Bill Harry in
The Best Years of The Beatles
(1996): “There was a phone call while I was there and when he answered it. Eppy said, ‘I’m still with him at the moment.’ I don’t know who phoned, it could have been anyone. I wasn’t paying too much attention to who was phoning as I was still trying to fathom the situation.”

The sensible money is on McCartney. Well, it must be –
some years earlier Pete Best had spoken to Philip Norman for
Shout! The True Story of The Beatles
(1981): “While I was standing there, the phone rang on Brian’s desk. It was Paul, asking if I’d been told yet. Brian said, ‘I can’t talk now. Peter’s here with me in the office.’” So, why the reservation this time round? Surely, though, if Pete was sure it was Paul, he would have grabbed the phone and told him where to go.

A young Liverpool band, the Merseybeats, were waiting outside to see Brian Epstein. He was about to sign them. They saw Pete Best emerge looking as though he had seen a ghost and Epstein in tears. Eppy told them to make another appointment.

Back on the street, Pete met up with Neil and went for a drink. Pete says that by chance, they bumped into Lou Walters from Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, but I wonder if it was coincidental. Bobby Thomson had temporarily replaced Wally in the Hurricanes for the Butlin’s season and we’ll come to Wally’s possible role in a minute.

Ringo Starr – Richard Starkey – the oldest of the Beatles had been born in the Dingle in 1940. He had had a traumatic childhood with one illness after another and, not surprisingly, he left school with no qualifications. In 1957 he joined the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group and then, in 1959, and owning a full drum-kit, he became part of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He worked for an engineering works, Henry Hunt and Sons, and he was encouraged to pack it in for a season at Butlin’s holiday camp in Pwllheli. Rory was an excellent showman but only a moderate vocalist. In order to add some glamour to the band, Rory insisted that everyone in the band should play a leading role and he introduced a solo spot, ‘Ringo Starr-time’. Ringo would sing undemanding pop and R&B songs of the day including the Shirelles’ ‘Boys’ and Johnny Burnette’s
‘You’re Sixteen’. He was a pleasant, rather than a good, vocalist but he was highly rated as a drummer.

Harry Prytherch, drummer with the Remo Four, has strong views. “Ringo was a lot more technical than Pete Best. There were five or six of us who liked discussing the technicalities – Ringo, Kingsize Taylor’s drummer, Sonny Webb’s drummer, myself and Billy Buck out of the Jaywalkers – and Pete Best was different from us, there’s no doubt about that. You noticed the difference when Ringo took over because Pete was a real pounding rock ’n’ roll drummer.”

Fred Marsden, drummer with Gerry and the Pacemakers: “I knew Ringo years before he joined the Beatles. He was always listening to records and getting to grips with the technical side of drumming. That’s why the Beatles wanted him. Ringo only lived a quarter of a mile from me in the Dingle, and after an afternoon session at the Cavern he would watch us, or the Beatles, even if he wasn’t playing himself. We would then go back and listen to records.”

Dave Lovelady, drummer with the Fourmost: “I think Ringo would admit that he has never been a brilliant drummer technically, but he had a very unique drive and he was very good to watch. He used to throw his head all over the place and the beat that he produced was really pounding. He had a very unusual style but technically he isn’t brilliant.”

Bobby Thomson, guitarist for Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes and later the Rockin’ Berries: “Ringo used to set the kit for a right-handed drummer even though he was
left-handed
. He could play so evenly with either hand, he was such a rock-steady drummer that once he started a tempo he never moved. A similar drummer is Bev Bevan from ELO, a real bricklayer and I mean that in the nicest sense.
On the other hand, Trevor Morais of Faron’s Flamingos and the Peddlers was a very flowery, flashy drummer and I don’t think I could play with him in the same band, there would be too much going on. Roy Dyke, who became part of Ashton, Gardner and Dyke was also very good but he was very jazz-influenced which is fine if you’re playing that type of music.”

Johnny Guitar of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes: “We had a great band in Skegness in 1962. There was Bobby Thomson, Ty O’Brien, Ringo and me. To be honest, we couldn’t wait for Rory to take his break so that we could get into some hard instrumental rock ’n’ roll.”

Ritchie Galvin, drummer with Earl Preston and the TTs: “Ringo was wasted with Rory Storm because although Rory was a great showman, he was a dire singer. No wonder Ringo said yes.”

Billy Butlin opened his first holiday camp in Skegness in 1936. The concept was to provide mass, on-site entertainment and catering for the British working man and his family. The rows of chalets looked like army barracks and the Redcoats organised the camp with military precision. The holidaymakers were even told when to get up with a voice over the tannoy saying, ‘Wakey-wakey, campers.’ The holidaymakers enjoyed themselves in the swimming pool, playing billiards, darts or tennis, old-time dancing, watching variety shows, at the funfair or simply making new friends. The Skegness camp incorporated a zoo which attracted national publicity in 1962 when an elephant fell into the swimming pool, upturned and drowned.

By the early 1960s, Billy Butlin realised that the camps were losing their appeal. The British public was becoming more free-spirited – they wanted to holiday abroad, good heavens – and older teenagers no longer wanted to holiday with their parents. He introduced rock ’n’ roll nights to
attract adolescents and their advertisements implied that sexual freedom was the order of the day. ‘Wakey-wakey’ was the call to move back to your own chalet.

Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and the Beatles were good friends, but Storm’s group was far more show-biz. They enjoyed playing holiday camps, something John Lennon could never have tolerated. Holiday camps apart, they often worked the same venues and had spent several weeks together in Hamburg. They got on well with each other and Ringo had sat in with the Beatles on occasion.

Mind you, Ringo had sat in with many bands – he had worked with the Seniors and had left the Hurricanes in January 1962 to be part of Tony Sheridan’s backing group at the Top Ten Club. Although he was back with the Hurricanes, he was unsure about his career and was considering emigrating to America.

Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes were in Hamburg with their drummer, Dave Lovelady. Dave recalls, “After we’d been in Hamburg for two months, the time came when I had to come home and return to my studies. Teddy Taylor and the rest of the boys wanted to stay professional, so it was decided that I would leave and they would fly out a replacement. Teddy wrote to Ringo to ask him if he’d like to take my place. He wrote back to say that he would and he gave Rory Storm his notice.”

So, in August 1962, Ringo Starr had no intention of joining the Beatles or even returning to Liverpool and his girlfriend, Maureen Cox, in the near future. He was going to finish at Skegness and then join Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes. Their promised £20 a week was good money, but the Beatles would offer £25.

There are conflicting stories as to how and when Ringo Starr was invited to join the Beatles.

Version 1. According to Mark Lewisohn’s
The
Complete
Beatles Chronicle
, John Lennon telephoned Ringo at Skegness on Tuesday 14 August, 2 days before the dismissal. This sounds reasonable, but is fraught with difficulty. The chalets did not have telephones and getting through to anyone at a holiday camp in 1962 was a
time-consuming
and usually fruitless task. Also, Ringo was with Johnny Guitar in a caravan just outside the campsite.

Version 2. In the
Anthology 1
video, Ringo Starr recalls, “It was a Wednesday and Brian Epstein called; I don’t remember John coming over, which is in somebody’s book. ‘Would you join the band, really join the band?’ I said, ‘Sure, when?’ and he said, ‘Now,’ I said, ‘I can’t do that, I’ll join you on Saturday.’ We had Saturdays off as that was when they changed their campers. So I gave Rory Thursday, Friday and Saturday to bring someone in.” This is more plausible than Version 1 because Ringo was invited to join the Beatles as an employee (£25 a week rather than a split of the takings) and also because a
well-spoken
businessman would have more success in getting the holiday camp to locate Ringo.

Version 3. The one Ringo doesn’t remember, has John Lennon visiting ‘Belsen’ as John used to describe Butlin’s, the one venue the Beatles never played. Johnny Guitar remembers, “John and Paul knocked on the door to our caravan about ten o’clock one morning, and I was very surprised because John hated Butlin’s. Paul said, ‘We’ve come to ask Ringo to join us.’ We went into the camp and Rory said, ‘What are we going to do because this is mid-season and we can’t work without a drummer?’ Paul said, ‘Mr Epstein would like Pete Best to play with you.’ We couldn’t stand in Ringo’s way ’cause we knew the Beatles were going to be big. We went back to Liverpool and saw Pete, but he was so upset that he didn’t want to play with anybody.”

I asked Johnny Guitar if he was sure he was correct, that John and Paul did visit Ringo at Skegness. “Yes, Rory got a big shock when Ringo said he was going to leave, and so did I. It is possible that Ringo had been tipped the wink on his last visit to Liverpool, but we had no inkling of what was going on.”

Travelling the 170 miles from Liverpool to Skegness in 1962 was no joke. A train journey would involve changes and take several hours. John Lennon couldn’t drive, and Paul would probably want a relief driver. Quite possibly, that would be Neil Aspinall. There were no motorways and a likely route would be leaving Liverpool on the A580 to Manchester. From there, it is on to the A628 to Marple, A57 to Sheffield and keeping on that road to Worksop and Lincoln. Then it is leaving by the A158 to Wragby, Horncastle, Spilsby and, finally, Skegness. Even maintaining a speed of 30 miles an hour, it is unlikely that the journey could be done in less than 5 hours. No matter how early they set off on the morning of Thursday 16 August, there could be no guarantee that the Beatles would return in time for a show at Riverpark Ballroom that evening. And with Ringo in tow.

But what if it happened on Tuesday 14 August as the Beatles weren’t working that day and they could take Neil Aspinall as well? With a full datebook, isn’t it more likely that the Beatles would line up their replacement before they sacked Pete Best? Mightn’t Ringo Starr think it was grossly unfair to Pete Best and turn them down? In any event, they weren’t to know that Ringo was about to join the Dominoes.

I think that John, Paul and possibly Neil went to Skegness on the Tuesday 14 August and saw Ringo, in spite of his comments. That paved the way for the sacking of Pete Best. Possibly Rory contacted Lou Walters, the Hurricane
who was still in Liverpool, and asked him to sound out Pete about joining the Hurricanes. However, Wally found Pete so depressed that he realised that it was neither the time nor the place to invite him to join the Hurricanes. Hence, the Hurricanes returned on Saturday and Pete turned them down.

This would also explain why Brian Epstein wanted Pete Best to play a few more dates with the Beatles. He knew that Ringo couldn’t join until Saturday. Once Pete had gone, he rearranged the meeting with the Merseybeats and set about finding a temporary replacement drummer. Fortunately for him, Johnny Hutchinson of the Big Three agreed. (He had already played with the Beatles at a Larry Parnes audition in May 1960.) This time, he was to stand in on Thursday 16 August 1962 at the Riverpark Ballroom and on Friday 17 August at the Majestic Ballroom in Birkenhead and the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton. Pete Best was said to be ‘indisposed’.