The Beatles (49 page)

Afterward, the Beatles disappeared into “a broom cupboard” at the side of the stage. Brian looked reassuringly at Alistair. “Well, that’s it,” he said. “We’ll go have some lunch now. But… let’s just go and say hello to them.”

As Epstein and Taylor made their way to the front, Bob Wooler announced their presence and asked the kids to give them a hand. Wooler didn’t know Brian, other than having seen him “
hovering around the counter
at NEMS,” but he sensed this Cavern appearance was something significant. Only a few days before, while negotiating a fee for the Beatles with promoter Brian Kelly, Wooler got a taste of the band’s surging popularity. Discussing a contract, Kelly had grumbled bitterly about paying their £10 7s. fee. “
Then, I’m sorry to have to tell you
this, Brian, but they want double that from now on. I’ve been told they’re going for fifteen pounds.” Kelly was irate. “I’m not going to pay those fuckers fifteen pounds!” he screamed. “They’re not worth it.” Wooler disagreed: “You’ve
got
to book them, Brian, and you’ll have to pay them what they want.” And Kelly did.

No one so much as got up to greet Epstein when he edged inside the bandroom.
They knew who he was
, however, having drawn his ire on several occasions for loitering in NEMS’ listening booths. George decided to give him a friendly tweak. “
And what brings Mr. Epstein
here?” he asked, smirking and thickening his Scouse accent.

Brian didn’t notice—or wouldn’t give George the satisfaction. Flashing his tightest, most professional smile, he replied: “
We just popped in
to say
hello. I enjoyed your performance.” He introduced Alistair, who nodded stiffly. “Well done, then. Good-bye.” And they left.

Neither Brian nor Alistair said a word to each other all the way to Peacock’s, in Hackins Hey. Both men were puzzling over the bizarre experience, and besides, their ears were pounding: neither of them could hear. The restaurant was crowded. It was a businessman’s hangout and a welcome sight; it went without saying, they felt more comfortable around people who looked and acted their age. After being seated and ordering drinks, Brian asked Alistair for his opinion. Taylor, a notorious yes-man, was honest. He thought the Beatles were “
absolutely awful
,” but admitted there was something “
remarkable
” about them, something he couldn’t quite put into words.

Brian’s reaction made Alistair uncomfortable. “He stared at me for the longest time, with a tight little smile on his lips,” Taylor remembers. “It seemed like he was going to burst. Finally, he blurted out: ‘I think they’re tremendous!’ ”

Taylor found this admission “very odd.” Brian wasn’t at all the kind of person who showed emotion in front of the help, especially over something as superficial as a rock ’n roll band. It wouldn’t be the proper thing to do. But as they talked more about the Beatles—and that was the only thing they discussed throughout lunch—a consensus arose that the band, and even pop music in general, had something extraordinary to offer, something they’d overlooked before and that now demanded their involvement. “We laughed at how both of us had been converted—like
that
—to the pop world,” Taylor recalls. It felt refreshing, they admitted, to have been among kids who were intoxicated by music. And all that power and excitement—while neither man professed to understand it, they’d been nonetheless moved.

They were still laughing and a bit flushed from drink when Brian called for the check. Then, out of nowhere, he grabbed Alistair by the arm and said, “
Do you think I should manage them
?”

Chapter 15
A Gigantic Leap of Faith

A
s word spread about the Beatles, Liverpool’s music-minded teenagers reached for their own piece of the rock, with new bands forming at the rate of three or four a week. The Cavern, always besieged by hopefuls, was suddenly awash with young, mop-topped rockers angling for a showcase in the dark, dingy, sweaty-hot cellar. On any given day, Ray McFall was inundated by bands with the most “
delicious-sounding” names
: Wump and His Werbles, the Kruzads, Gerry Bach and the Beathovens, Liam and the Invaders, Abraham and His Lot, Ray Satan and the Devils, San Quentin and the Rock Pounders, Rip Van Winkle and the Rip-It-Ups, Dean Stacey and the Dominators, the Big Three, the L’il Three, the Four Just Men, Eddy Falcon and the Vampires, Danny and the Hi-Cats, Dino and the Wild Fires…

Rummaging through the pages of
Mersey Beat
revealed a similar euphonious constituency: Ian and the Zodiacs, Karl Terry and the Cruisers, Pete Picasso and the Rock Sculptors
(really!),
Steve and the Syndicate, Dee Fenton and the Silhouettes, Ken Dallas and the Silhouettes, the Spidermen, the Cyclones, the Undertakers, Nero and the Gladiators, Alby and the Sorrals, the Press Gang, the Pressmen, Earl Preston and the TTs, the Morockans, Eddie Dean and the Onlookers, the Landslides…

Slightly over three hundred rock ’n roll bands
combed the city for gigs, more than three times the number of the previous winter, before the Beatles’ phenomenal debut at Litherland Town Hall. Every lunchtime was a picnic, every night another party. It didn’t matter how professional you sounded or how nimbly you handled a riff as long as the audience was happy. (And that didn’t take much.)
Bands played what they wanted
; shared material, equipment, and personnel; referred one another to gigs; passed lazy afternoons talking shop. Neither jealousies nor egos interfered
with the spirit of friendly competition. A few star attractions seemed to have cornered the market on paying gigs, but anyone who showed talent was welcomed into the fold. The sense of community was that strong.

But all that was about to change.

For Brian Epstein, putting the Beatles out of his mind should have been easy. He already had enough on his plate at NEMS. Harry had ceded almost all responsibility to his capable sons. The three record departments were booming. Conceivably, there was incentive enough to open more NEMS stores, perhaps a string of them across the North of England and beyond. Brian was sitting on a potential retail empire. All he had to do was concentrate on the work.

But that had become next to impossible. According to Alistair Taylor,
Brian was “besotted
” the minute he saw the Beatles. He couldn’t stay away from them. At lunchtime, instead of joining his father and brother at a restaurant, as had been their daily custom, Brian pulled off his tie and headed straight for the Cavern. He’d stand by himself at the back of the cellar, underneath the middle archway, starry-eyed, clearly entranced by the performance. The whole atmosphere captivated him. It wasn’t just opportunity knocking, the chance to cash in on a phenomenon. To a young man who had been struggling his entire life to fit in, tormented by insecurity and shame, this was Shangri-la. Here, you could be whatever you wished, you could act on your impulses, be as reckless as your heart desired. Brian may not have looked or dressed like these kids, but he responded to the turbulence, the sexual tension, and uninhibitedness of their scene. He wasn’t an outcast here. Here, he was the great Oz.

And, of course, from the outset he had been attracted to rough trade—tough, rugged young men of a lower class than his who were a threat to degrade and inflict harm on him. He’d seen guys like this all his life around the docks, fancied them from afar. Clad in cheap skintight leather suits, ruggedly built, marginally educated, foul-mouthed, completely disrespectful, and bashing away at their instruments—the Beatles revved his engine like nothing he’d experienced. “
John, especially
,” says Peter Brown, who was acquainted with Brian’s tastes and was also gay. “John wasn’t a pretty boy, he had a good look, and a general fuck-you attitude, which was a turn-on. Once Brian saw John, there was no turning away.” Bob Wooler would never forget the manner in which Brian presented himself to the band, “
with all the pride of a peacock
but the nervousness of a sparrow.” Eventually, Brian invited the Beatles to his office at the Whitechapel
branch of NEMS “
for a chat
,” as he put it. For the record, he would “
never know what made [him] say
to this eccentric group of boys that [he] thought a further meeting might be helpful to them.” But whatever he might—or might not—have intended, the Beatles took him seriously.

On December 3, 1961
, Brian paced anxiously around the ground floor of NEMS. The store, closed every Wednesday afternoon for inventory, was dark and shuttered; unpacked cartons of records littered the aisles, and as Brian waded among them, poking the contents here and there, he made cursory marks on an order form clamped in a plastic clipboard.

As the prearranged time drew near, then passed, he grew increasingly irritated. His face tightened into a scowl. A deep flush rose in his cheeks, and his lips pressed so tightly together that they almost disappeared inside his mouth. It began to look as if the Beatles were standing him up.

As he would come to learn, the Beatles were always late—always. They rarely paid any attention to time, even in the case of a performance. Even on this day, they’d stopped off for a few pints of brown mix—mild and brown ales—at the Grapes, a pub on Mathew Street across from the Cavern.

Bob Wooler picked up on Brian’s irritation immediately as he “
rattled on the glass
” to announce their arrival. The Beatles had asked Wooler to attend in order to “offer [them] a view of Epstein,” but why and for what purpose he could not even begin to guess. A moment later Wooler was to feel greater discomfort. John handled the introductions, and when he got to Wooler, he said, “
This is me dad
.” The usually loquacious Wooler was struck speechless as Brian extended a hand. “I thought, ‘Christ, I’m only ten years older than him!’ ” Wooler felt an urge to correct John’s bluff, but no explanation was necessary as Brian and the Beatles burst out laughing. And Wooler, baring his teeth at John, laughed loudest of all.

Another awkward moment ensued when Brian realized that Paul wasn’t among them. He flashed anger at George’s explanation that Paul was in the midst of taking a bath, but it evaporated when John stepped in fast to express the band’s appreciation for the way NEMS was selling their record. “My Bonnie” proved to be the icebreaker, especially when Brian reported strong sales, along with his intention to order another hundred copies. “
Apparently quite a number of people want it
,” he said, flattering them.

Normally, Brian was a persuasive salesman and took exactly the right approach in marketing appliances and records. Much of that he owed to his acting experience: the ability to deliver lines effectively and convince an audience of his credibility. Customers always gave him their full attention; he enjoyed a certain comfort level with them. But with the Beatles, he wasn’t so sure, and it showed. He was nervous in presenting his credentials, his timing was off. As Pete Best put it, “
he was picking his words very carefully
as to how he could sell himself to us,” dancing around the subject with no apparent purpose.

Finally, he cut to the chase. “So, tell me,” Brian asked casually, “do you have a manager?” The question hung in the air for a moment before someone replied that, at this time, they did not. Brian nodded appreciably. “It seems to me that with everything going on, someone ought to be looking after you.” And that was all he said about it. He let it sink in, without proposing any arrangement or admitting his interest in the role. “He was noncommittal,” Wooler recalls, “but he gave every impression—and we rightfully concluded—that he was intrigued.” Nothing more was discussed, but Brian promised that he’d be in touch with them again soon and took Pete Best’s phone number as a contact.

The prospect of a well-connected manager fascinated the Beatles, who were impressed by the come-on of money and power. “
Certainly there were several things
in his favor,” Pete Best recalled, citing the irresistible booty: suit, shiny shoes, watch, briefcase, big office, car. This guy had what they wanted for themselves—along with the voice to keep them in line. That voice, simple as it may seem, was his biggest asset. Brian spoke with what Scousers called “a BBC accent,” the grand, mannered command of language that lads from the Beatles’ end of the social spectrum mistook for high education and breeding. John described it in wide-eyed detail to Cynthia, who recalled how “
they were delighted that a proper businessman
was actually interested in taking them on.” John told his girlfriend that he felt “the man from NEMS,” as he called Brian, had limitless influence. Above everything else, as Cynthia noted, John thought “[Brian] had class.”