Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion (13 page)

And lest we forget, Midpointers float. That may not sound like a big deal, but try spending a few hours chatting with a blood-covered, ghost-skinned, bummed-out, deadish man who’s constantly hovering several inches off the ground. No matter how tough you think you are, your brain isn’t wired to be at ease in the presence of an odoriferous, gored-out floater.

It takes a whole lot of physical trauma for a Liverpool zombie to become a Midpointer, and the vast majority of them are the by-products of horrible accidents, oftentimes involving high levels of heat; e.g., a bomb, a fiery car wreck, or a fall from a great height. Purposefully turning a zombie into a Midpointer is a difficult proposition, and for the transformation to occur, you have to hurt them badly. Very few humans have the strength or wherewithal to produce a Midpointer; thus most Midpointers are created by other zombies.

All of which brings us to Dick Rowe.

A legendary A&R man for Decca Records, Rowe was cited as being responsible for discovering and/or signing such acts as the Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, and Van Morrison’s first band, Them. After seeing the Beatles tear up Cavern both musically and physically, Rowe had Decca invite them into the studio for a New Year’s Eve session that would serve as their audition for the label. John, Paul, George, and Pete laid down a whopping fifteen tunes in an hour, and most Beatles fans justifiably think the quartet sounded damn good. Believing guitar bands were on their way out, and zombie bands would never find their way in, Rowe disagreed, and a couple of weeks after the session, Brian Epstein received the unfortunate verdict.

BRIAN EPSTEIN:
The boys felt terrific about their studio performance for Decca, and I knew they’d be heartbroken not to get offered a deal. I decided to deliver the news to John face-to-face, as it’s easier to console somebody in person than over the phone. It was the right thing to do … or, at least, that’s what I thought until I found myself lying on my arse in the middle of the street outside his flat.

JOHN LENNON:
Never meant to hurt Eppy. Couldn’t be helped. Strictly reflexes.

BRIAN EPSTEIN:
John wanted to speak to Rowe personally, and I thought that was simply an atrocious idea. The English record industry was tiny and insular—everybody knew everybody—and if John went after Rowe, word would get around, and it would make landing a deal even more difficult. I pointed out that we’d already been rejected by almost every label in town, and if he went after Rowe, nobody else would give them an audition, let alone a contract.

He ignored me. He’s a bullheaded one. But that’s what makes John John.

JOHN LENNON:
I called Paulie and told him to put on his best gear, because we were gonna have a little palaver with Mr. Rowe.

He said, “Do you think that’s a good idea? I’ve been on the receiving end of your
palavers,
and I barely survived, and I’m a bloody zombie, y’know.”

I said, “We’re just gonna talk to the man. That’s why I want you to wear your nicest outfit. I dunno about you, but I wouldn’t want to get my finest finery all fooked-up with blood and brains. If we look nice, we’ll be more apt to act nice.”

He said, “What time did you make the appointment for?”

“I didn’t,” I said. “The appointment is when I say it is.”

A
nother piece of the Beatles puzzle who I had to sweet-talk into speaking with me on the record, Dick Rowe, is a classic Midpointer: clear skin covered with seeming buckets of fresh-looking blood, incessant floating, eyes overflowing with blue tears. He’s made the best of his undead/dead situation, creating a comfortable, if not solitary, life for himself, a life lived in a small, nondescript London flat, surrounded by tens of thousands of albums, cassette tapes, eight-tracks, and compact discs. The blue tears that dot Dick Rowe’s cheeks mask the fact that he’s a quietly content individual—for a Midpointer, that is.

Rowe rarely enters John Lennon’s or Paul McCartney’s thoughts, but conversely—and perhaps unsurprisingly—Lennon and McCartney are almost always on the former Decca maven’s brain, as he told me in August 2005.

DICK ROWE:
Was it a cock-up not to sign them? Yes. Would I do it differently if I had it to do over again? Musically speaking, no, I wouldn’t. The band wasn’t ready. The potential was there, but I wasn’t about potential. I didn’t have time to hold a band’s hand until they got their sound together. I needed hits, and I needed them fast. Sure, I was upper-level management, but I still had to answer to the moneymen, and for the boys on the eighteenth floor, failure was not an option.

In terms of how it all affected me personally, well, let’s just say I might’ve made some different choices.

The day after we let Brian Epstein know we were passing on the band, Lennon and McCartney burst into my office, without an appointment, wearing tuxedos. I’d met them briefly after one of their performances at the Cavern Club, but I didn’t know how simultaneously gruesome and charismatic they were until I saw them in the light of day. They were gorgeous and appalling, all at once.

I stood up, offered my hand, and said, “Gentlemen. This is unexpected.”

Lennon slapped my hand away. Fortunately he held back; if he had hit me with full strength, my entire arm would’ve flown through the closed window, across the city, and into the Thames. He said, “You’re right, mate. It
is
unexpected. Matter of fact, this whole
situation
is unexpected. I mean, what the fook d’you want from us?” After I asked him what he meant, he said, “Our tape. What was wrong with our tape?”

I said, “Nothing was
wrong
with it, Mr. Lennon. You gents have a ton of potential. It was … nice. That’s all. Just nice.”

In an eyeblink, Lennon was standing behind me. He whispered into my ear, “One thing the Beatles are not, Mr. Rowe, is nice.”

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
Right then, right when Johnny zoomed behind Rowe, I was certain that one of two things was gonna happen: John
was going to hypnotize Rowe into giving us a recording contract, or he was gonna chuck him across the room.

The answer: number two.

JOHN LENNON:
No chance I’d hypnotize him. Remember, I made that promise to the cosmos: no hypnotizing my way into a gig.

Dick Rowe: I never saw it coming. For that matter, I still don’t even know what
it
was. A punch? A kick? Something telekinetic? Who knows? One second I was standing in front of my desk, and the next, I was on the other side of the room, on the floor, curled against the wall, with a framed photo of me and Jimmy Young on my lap.

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
I grabbed John’s shoulder and asked him, “What the fook are you doing, mate? I thought we were gonna lay low, y’know. I thought we were gonna keep our monkey suits clean.”

He said, “Yeah, well, I got caught up in the moment.”

I said, “What
moment
? He offered to shake your hand. That’s not a
moment.
That’s a bloody pleasantry.”

He said, “So
you
say.
I
say that we need to send a message to the music industry. We’ve gotta make an example of this Rowe bloke. Let everybody know they can’t mess with Lennon and McCartney.”

I said, “What kind of example are you thinking of?”

DICK ROWE:
I’ve since been told by experts that Liverpool zombies have the ability to make their attacks painless for their victims, both mentally and physically. For me, Lennon was merciful, which I’ve heard wasn’t always the case. I’m sure my transformation was horrific, but I don’t remember a single thing.

JOHN LENNON:
The only reason I didn’t torture Dick Rowe was because Paul asked me not to. And when Paulie gives you those sad puppy-dog eyes, well, it’s hard to refuse him … and it has nothing to do with hypnosis. There’s a reason people call him the Cute fookin’ Beatle.

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
Johnny’s attacks were always intense, y’know, but this one was an Olympic-level performance. After he threw Rowe against the wall, he picked him up by his hair and zombified him in twelve seconds flat … and yes, I counted. But he did a sloppy job, because he knew he was going to kill him only moments later.

John then unceremoniously dropped Rowe on the floor, ran to the other side of the office, and opened the window. Before Rowe even knew he was a zombie, John grabbed him by the waist, wound up like a cricket player, and underhanded him out the window onto the sidewalk thirty meters below.

JOHN LENNON:
In my defense, I took the time to look down at the street and make sure I wasn’t throwing Dickie onto any pedestrians, because I knew I was gonna throw him so hard that if he’d have landed on somebody, they would’ve been dead instantly. Killing somebody without eating them was pointless. At least I thought so then.

I’d never purposely Midpointed anybody, and I wasn’t sure if it would work. But this was a ten-story drop, and I was comfortable thinking that that would end it, especially if he was falling at fifty kilometers per hour. If it didn’t work, I was prepared to go downstairs and set his body on fire.

DICK ROWE:
When I came to, I was in my own bed. Wait, check that: I was hovering over my own bed. I wasn’t in pain, but I wasn’t
not
in
pain, and I think the only way you’d understand what I mean by that is if you get Midpointed, and I hope to God that never happens to you.

JOHN LENNON:
I’ll never let Dick Rowe become a zombie. No diamond bullets in the noggin for him. He’s a Midpointer for life and death. And whenever one of those blue tears drips onto his slacks, I want him to remember the names John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

DICK ROWE:
None of the Midpoint characteristics kept me from being able to do my job—frankly, all the Midpoint symptoms are more of a nuisance than anything else—so I kept right on working.

Sometimes being the way I am has worked in my favor: Like Tom Jones said he signed with us instead of Vee-Jay, because he thought my floating was, as he put it, “far out, baby.”

On the other hand, it almost hurt me with the Rolling Stones, as Mick had issues with zombies of any sort. But that’s another story.

W
e now interrupt our narrative for a digression about zombie sex slaves. Everybody asks.

John, Paul, and George had similar reactions when I raised the topic of sex slaves: brief silence and a frightening glare, followed by the threat of a painful death without reanimation. No confirmations. No denials. Just really, really scary warnings. Thus, nobody can say for sure if the three undead Beatles used their zombie powers to create minions of women who would fulfill their every sexual desire.

There is, nonetheless, some compelling evidence that points toward … something.

LYMAN COSGROVE:
I’ve been told that the most controversial chapter of
Under the Canal
is chapter nine, the section about the sex life of beings who have undergone the Liverpool Process. And saying that’s the most controversial is quite a statement, because both zombologists and casual undead watchers alike have made it clear that they believe the entire book to be
exceedingly
controversial. I’ve never shied away from controversy, however, and I never will.

L
yman told me that he hasn’t made any new zombie sex discoveries since the original publication of Under the Canal, so rather than discuss something he’s discussed time and again, he prefers I pull the information verbatim from his book, so as to avoid any possible inconsistencies.

FROM CHAPTER NINE OF LYMAN COSGROVE AND ELLINGTON WORTHSON’S
UNDER THE CANAL: THE UNDEAD OF ABYSSINIA CLOSE AND THE BIRTH OF THE LIVERPOOL PROCESS:

There are precious few studies on the sex life of the Homo Coprophagus Somnambulus, as many zombies are unable or unwilling to engage in the act at all. Female zombies find it difficult, if not impossible, to naturally lubricate, and male zombies suffer from a plethora of obstacles, running the gamut from an inability to produce and/or maintain an erection to penile detachment.