The Beatles (92 page)

The next morning on the set, the assistant producer paged Shenson and told him: “John Lennon wants to see you in his dressing room.” The producer went through every imaginable scenario, wondering how he’d respond to the young man’s irritation. “He and Paul were standing there, with their guitars slung over their shoulders,” Shenson recalls. “John fiddled with a matchbook cover on which were scrawled the lyrics to a song—‘A Hard Day’s Night’—which they played and sang to perfection.
This was ten hours after I’d asked for a song.” When they’d finished, John glanced at the producer and said, “Okay, that’s it, right?” It was all Shenson could do to feebly mutter, “Right.” “Good,” John said, “now don’t bother us about songs anymore.”

“A Hard Day’s Night” was recorded the next day, on April 16, and from the extraordinary opening chord, it was evident that once again the Beatles had raised the bar for all of pop songwriting.
The “strident” chord
is a powerful attention-grabber—a G7, with an added ninth and a suspended fourth, so unique that it is considered neither major nor minor—that hangs in the air with disturbing inevitability. How George came up with it remains a mystery to this day; he never discussed it, even though the chord has become as identifiable as the song that follows. As it uncoils, there is nothing left to chance. The energy it delivers is explosive, full of fireworks—“It’s been a
haaaard daaaays
night…”—and musically as daring, with a vocal track that gathers so much steam that the middle eight (sung by Paul, John explained, “
because I couldn’t reach the notes
”) comes as almost a relief.

While the Beatles wrapped up work on
A Hard Day’s Night,
as the movie was now readily being called, Brian left for the Devon coast, where he planned to begin work on an autobiography that had been commissioned by a small London publisher. Derek Taylor, the trusted
Daily Express
reporter who’d been handpicked to ghostwrite the book, joined him in a sumptuous suite at the Imperial Hotel, in Torquay, for a weekend of protracted interviews that would hopefully serve as the foundation for the work. Like Brian, Taylor was from an affluent Liverpool suburb, the eldest son of a gregarious Welsh ex-officer and a sickly housewife who, at some point, relinquished all hope that Derek would pursue a respectable career “
in the world of commerce
.” Taylor was everything a banker wasn’t: effusive, generous, entertaining, impractical, and wonderfully glib. “
There are only a few journalists
like Derek, who are a joy to listen to in the pub,” recalls Tony Barrow, who, though often at loggerheads with his “inscrutable” colleague, found him equally mesmerizing. “He had such an amazing way with words. He wrote and spoke beautiful prose. And he made rapport an art form I’ve never seen duplicated.” Taylor could also be, like Brian, cynical and obstinate. Having recently moved from covering comedians to pop music, he concluded that the Beatles “
painted a new rainbow
right across the world, with crocks of gold at each end, and then some,” which ultimately beckoned him to their doorstep. His several meetings with the
boys cultivated a remarkable rapport. Of all the journalists they encountered, and perhaps ever would encounter, Taylor’s dervish intellect brought him closest to being a trusted confidant. “
He’s one of those people
that clicks as soon as you meet him,” John remarked that same month. There was no doubt: he was on their wavelength.

Trust. Brian needed to confide in his cowriter. Two days into their amiable “
fact-gathering expedition
,” Brian poured large gin and tonics to facilitate a tricky exchange. He wondered aloud (although not too loud) if Taylor had heard rumors that he, Brian, “was queer.” Derek may not have known about this dark secret in early 1964, but he no doubt sensed the underlying torment and vulnerability. The always eloquent Taylor became tongue-tied, stammering as Brian admitted: “
I
am
homosexual
and have known it all my adult life and there’s nothing I can do about it.” This was a startling confession, not so much for the context in which it was conveyed as for the information it carried. In Britain, laws still regarded homosexuality as a punishable offense, thereby casting its current pop icons in a web of deceit. Its disclosure was fraught with danger. Brian was mortified that it would bring harm to the Beatles, but he found it just as offensive to fabricate a personal—and absurd—romantic past.

Fortunately, Taylor was a sympathetic figure, completely at ease in a world from which most straight men felt alienated. The secret, he assured Brian, was safe with him. Besides, Taylor knew how to handle it with discretion so there would be no awkward references to women in the book. Not only was Brian relieved, he felt unthreatened, even secure in Derek’s degree of understanding. Several soul-searching conversations with Taylor were Brian’s first opportunity to explore territory that had previously been forbidden with a straight colleague. At breakfast the next day, he felt comfortable enough to share the details of a drunken late-night date that had culminated in rough sex. This was all so fantastic to Taylor, who managed to maintain a straight face throughout. Brian’s entire life, it seemed, was suffused with the contingencies of indulgence and risk. Soon after he and Taylor went out together for some serious drinking and gambling, Brian arrived at a decision. “I would like you to become
my personal assistant
,” he proposed, “and come to work at NEMS in London, in the office next to mine.”

It was an inspired idea. Taylor had great antennae, which made him sensitive to Brian’s volatile moods. No one was more compatible or eager to please; he mixed as easily with the Beatles as he did with the press, and he made friends easily. “
The entire office took to him
thirty seconds after
he walked in,” says Tony Bramwell. Everyone at NEMS already knew him as a northerner, their own kind. There was never any question he’d function as Brian’s eyes and ears.

A rough draft of the autobiography was finished in slightly under two weeks, a thin, abstracted affair that Taylor facetiously referred to as “
a potboiler
.” He considered it “ridiculous” to write the autobiography of someone who was not yet thirty years old, and felt constrained by the material, much of which was an acknowledged whitewash. When it came time to title the book, Derek drew a blank. Instead, Brian sounded out his friends, hoping to come up with something catchy. “Why don’t you call it
Queer Jew
?” John suggested, within earshot of the other Beatles and some guests. To appease John, Brian made a show of chuckling at the needling abuse. Some part of him probably even
liked
being humiliated by John—after all, it was part of his dark nature. But after the book was submitted as
A Cellarful of Noise,
he was visibly wounded each time John referred to it as
A Cellarful of Boys.

“
My early days at NEMS
resembled nothing so much as a crazy bazaar,” Taylor recalled. “There were dozens, hundreds of visitors, all with pressing needs…. Epstein demanded all my time and all my energy.” Brian put him through one wringer after the next, threatening to sack Derek at the first sign of a slip. “
The heat was immediately on
.” But as it happened, it was only an appetizer.

Chapter 26
In the Eye of a Hurricane

T
he usual shock wave shuddered through Copenhagen Airport as the Beatles’ plane approached from the north. More than two thousand kids had been waiting since dawn for the boys to arrive, and as the plane broke through the clouds there was the kind of chain reaction that had at one time put a smile on Dr. Teller’s face. There was a deafening roar; bodies collided. Then all hell broke loose on the ground as the cabin door popped open and out bounded the Beatles: John, Paul, George, and Jimmy.

Say what?

There had been no time to warn the crowd that Ringo wasn’t aboard. Only a day earlier, on the morning of June 3, he’d collapsed during a particularly stressful photo session for the
Saturday Evening Post.
Despite a blissful three-week vacation with Paul in the Virgin Islands, he’d been experiencing spells of fatigue, which were blamed on the drastic change in climates.
His throat was especially sore
, owing, Ringo was certain, to his excessive smoking habit. Although stricken by waves of dizziness, he’d soldiered through a June 1 and 2 recording session, as well as several telephone interviews with British teen magazines. But during the photo session he suddenly sank to his knees, and Neil, who “
didn’t like it one bit
,” rushed him to University College Hospital, where it was diagnosed he’d scored a double whammy of laryngitis and pharyngitis.

Back at Abbey Road studios, Brian, Derek, George Martin, and the rest of the Beatles debated how to handle the situation. It seemed pointless to continue without their drummer, the boys argued. “
Imagine, the Beatles
without Ringo!” George scoffed. The tour, as he saw it, should be
postponed immediately
. “
Brian argued with us
for more than an hour to change our minds about abandoning the tour,” Paul recalled, “pleading that thousands
of Dutch and Australian fans had already bought tickets, and that it would be cruel to disappoint them.”

According to George, they were “
bullied by Brian Epstein
and George Martin into accepting the situation that [they] had to go.” But how? Who would supply the right beat? Pete Best? Not a chance, according to John, who explained to a reporter: “
It might have looked
as if we were taking him back. Not good for him.” Martin ran through his Rolodex of drummers, pulling the names of those he deemed adequate, with emphasis on a chap named Jimmy Nicol. In Martin’s estimation, not only did Nicol have great hands, but it so happened that he looked the part as well. Nicol was twenty-four, from the East End of London, with the kind of round, cherubic face that would have suited any Scouser. He’d put in time drumming with Georgie Fame and, aside from a decent amount of session work, fronted a band called Jimmy Nicol and the Shub Dubs that had a minor hit single with “
Humpity-Dumpity
.”

There are various versions
as to what happened next, and over the years Nicol has related them in any number of ways, but his assertion that “
I nearly shit
in me pants” seems utterly reliable.

After three months paired off with the girlfriends and wife, the Beatles hit the road like prisoners on furlough. The moment they touched down in Denmark the scene was swarming with girls: young and older girls, blondes and raven-haired beauties, full-breasted and elfin girls, hookers and virgins. The most beautiful creatures in the world paraded through the Beatles’ set of suites seemingly without end and without restriction. The rate of turnover was breathtaking, as was the boys’ endurance. It was party time, day and night, and as the newcomer, Jimmy Nicol viewed it with incredulity. He had never witnessed such an extravagance of “
mischief and carrying-on
. I thought I could drink and lay women with the best of them until I met up with these guys,” he admitted.

“
Wherever we went
, there was always a whole scene,” John recollected, calling it “
Satyricon
” as a frame of reference, “with four musicians going through it…. When we hit a town, we hit it—we were not pissing about…. We were the Caesars.”

In Copenhagen, where they broke the ice, John especially uncoiled, drinking so much, according to an observer, that “
his head was a balloon
”; he was nearly unrecognizable onstage, sweating and bloated. Then in Amsterdam the next day, he struck out for the city’s notorious red-light district,
trolling through brothels at an impressive breakneck clip, enlisting the services of a police escort to avert possible scandal. There seemed to be no limit to John’s binges of alcohol and sex—nor reason that adequately explained them. His marriage to Cynthia, after all, provided a source of security as well as comfort. They’d enjoyed “
the most relaxing and happy
holiday” in Tahiti with George and Pattie, mulling over plans to find the house of their dreams upon his return. It seemed almost irrational that he threw himself into these scenes with such self-destructive determination. Friends close to the Lennons at the time insist that their relationship was mutually gratifying and harmonious. Cynthia herself refers to that period as “
happy families time
for all concerned.” Perhaps the debauchery was just general therapy for John’s troubled soul, a form of emotional decompression. Maybe it was a way of asserting his independence—or merely blowing off steam. God knows, Beatlemania was a pressure cooker—“like being in
the eye of a hurricane
,” as John put it. Whatever the reason, he and the other Beatles plunged ahead on an excursion of drinking and screwing that rivaled the frenzy at their concerts.