Beatles (34 page)

Dick James has always been around in the business. He’s from the sort of London Jewish background where you grow up with all the agents and band leaders of the future, the boys who will always help you. Dick James has a lot of schmalz, but
it’s all genuine. He’s a sort of cuddly, Boy’s Own Tin Pan Alley man. They all love Dick James. They tease him about loving ballads. They know that a good corny, ‘When I’m Sixty-four’ song is going to make Dick James very happy. Dick James is very happy anyway. He’s probably the luckiest man in their whole circle. From being a one-man music publisher, when he met them, he now runs a large music-publishing corporation. He’s a millionaire, not just thanks to them, but to his own hard work.

He was born Richard Leon Vapnick in 1920 in London’s East End. His father, a butcher, came from Poland in 1910, around the time that the Epstein family also came from Poland.

At 17 he was a professional singer, appearing with Al Berlin (now an agent) and his band at the Cricklewood Palais. During the war he was in the Medical Corps, not doing anything medical, but playing in the Medical Corps Band. This was when he learned to read music. After the war he joined Geraldo, who immediately changed Dick Vapnick’s name to Dick James. For many years, he appeared with most of the big bands of the time, and then went on to become a solo singer.

‘I never got to the pinnacle. Nobody ever got hysterical when I came on, the way they did with Donald Peers and David Whitfield.’

But he made a good living. He did a lot of records, though nothing startling. His first was in 1942, during an army leave, when he did a singalong with Primo Scala’s Accordion Band. He was with Decca for a while, but didn’t make much money for them. In 1952 he ended up with Parlophone. They had a bright-looking young A and R man called George Martin, who was willing to work hard on any popular singer. In 1955, under George Martin, Dick James did his best-ever record and the only one he is now remembered by. This was ‘Robin Hood’, the theme song for the TV series. It got to number nine in the charts, the highest either had ever done. It led to Dick James’s own 15-minute spot on Radio Luxembourg, produced by another bright young man called Philip Jones.

But despite the success of ‘Robin Hood’, Dick James knew there wasn’t much future for him as a singer, not the way the business was going, with rock and skiffle and all these young lads coming on. ‘I felt there was going to be a revolution and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ He was still in his early 30s, but he’d been wearing a toupee for some years. ‘Just for stage work of course. Not in my private life. That would have been cheating.’

He continued singing until 1959, but by then only part-time, and only in the London area, as he wanted to be near his wife and son. As a sideline, he’d taken up music publishing. He became an unpaid assistant to Sid Bron, father of the actress, Eleanor Bron. (She appeared in the Beatles’ second film,
Help
.)

In September 1961 he opened his own music-publishing firm in two rooms in the Charing Cross Road. He’d got the company going by the summer of 1962, but hadn’t discovered any hits.

Through contacts, the son of a friend came to see him one day, with a song he hadn’t managed to sell to any other music publisher. This song was called ‘How Do You Do It.’ He rushed round to George Martin, his old friend at Parlophone. The reason why George Martin was so keen to get the Beatles to record this song now becomes clearer.

‘I told George it was brilliant. He said it might do for this new group he’d got, from Liverpool. “Liverpool?” I said. “You’re joking. So what’s from Liverpool?”’

George Martin knew it was a good commercial song, and persuaded Dick James to let him keep it for a while. Dick was very excited, convinced at last he’d got the hit he was waiting for. But in November 1962, George rang Dick to tell him that the Beatles had written their own follow-up song, ‘Please Please Me’, which he said was excellent.

That seemed to be it, as far as Dick James was concerned. But George Martin said he had Brian Epstein in his office. He didn’t know anyone in London, perhaps Dick could help him. On the phone Dick James said he would. He also asked if he
could publish ‘Please Please Me’, as George had said it was so excellent.

Brian had already arranged to see another music publisher first thing in the morning, but he told Dick James he would come to him afterwards and see what he thought. ‘I was in my office at 10.30 next morning, when Brian walked in, half an hour earlier than arranged. He said he’d been to this other music publisher. He’d waited 25 minutes but only an office boy turned up. He said I could have first option instead.

‘He played it to me and I said it was the most exciting song I’d heard for years. Could I have it?’

Brian Epstein was fresh out of Liverpool, but he wasn’t all that green. He said that if Dick James could get them some promotion, he could have the song. Dick James picked up the phone and rang one of his old contacts. This was Philip Jones, who’d produced his old Radio Luxembourg singsongs. He had just taken over a new TV pop programme,
Thank Your Lucky Stars
.

‘Over the phone, there and then, I fixed it up. I played “Please Please Me” to Philip and he said he liked it. He’d fit them into a show.’

In five minutes, Dick James had arranged the Beatles’ first London TV appearance – the Granada one in Manchester had been only in the North. Brian Epstein was naturally very impressed. Over lunch, Dick James became the Beatles’ music publisher. A music publisher can do pretty well, if he has the right composers writing for him. All copyright fees are shared 50–50 between publisher and composer.

Dick James in many ways had made a wrong choice, way back in the 1950s, when he’d decided to try to be a music publisher rather than a singer. He might have been safer as an agent, which was something else he thought of at the time. Music publishers had for decades existed on the sales of sheet music. Once the record boom started and people stopped playing the piano at home, sheet music had had its day. But by meeting the Beatles, Dick James’s day was just about to begin.

The Beatles began the year 1963 with one record out and another one about to be released. They’d found George Martin and Dick James. They were lined up to appear on their first London TV programme. But they were still completely unknown. Brian Epstein was finding it very hard to get them any publicity, nationally or locally.

He was still trying the
Liverpool Echo’s
George Harrison, but with no success. So he wrote to Disker, the
Liverpool Echo’s
record critic. He’d first written to Disker back in 1962 and been surprised to get a letter from Decca in London signed by someone called Tony Barrow.

Tony Barrow had become Disker in 1953, when he was 17 and still at school in Crosby near Liverpool. He kept it up while he was at Durham University and later when he joined Decca, writing sleeve notes for them. He still is Disker today, though he’s also the Beatles’ senior press officer.

When Brian wrote to him the first time, it had looked as if Decca had liked the audition and was going to record them. Tony Barrow wrote a little paragraph to this effect, the first time the Beatles were mentioned in print. When it all fell through, Tony Barrow wasn’t so keen to write about them again. But when ‘Love Me Do’, their first record, was out, he wrote about the Beatles again in his Disker column.

Brian came to London more often, once his group had a record out. He met Tony Barrow and asked him for advice on getting publicity.

‘Brian didn’t know how you promoted a record, so I put him in touch with the trade press. Then he said he hadn’t got a press officer. He’d just been sending round duplicated handouts on his own. He asked if I could help. So sitting in my office at Decca, I wrote out the very first official press release from the Beatles.’

He hadn’t actually met them and he couldn’t use his own name or phone number, as he was with Decca. He also hadn’t got a mailing list. ‘I took out a publicity man I’d met. It was a one-and-ninepenny lunch at the BBC canteen. He agreed to share his mailing list and addresses.’ This publicist was Andrew Oldham, who later worked for a spell with Brian Epstein and later became the manager of the Rolling Stones.

At the same time, October 1962, EMI also did a hand out to go with their first record, but this was in the main a rewrite of Brian’s duplicated letter, which in turn had been based on fan-club literature. It said that John’s favourite colour was black, he liked curry and Carl Perkins, hated thickheads and traditional jazz. Under the heading marked ‘Type of car’ he put ‘bus’. All of them, according to this hand out, had the same ambition – to make a lot of money and retire. This wasn’t the correct ambition, judging by the usual hand outs of the time. Their ambition should have been to be all-round entertainers.

Tony Barrow left Decca and began working for NEMS Enterprises full-time on 1 May 1963, from a one-room office in Monmouth Street, Brian Epstein’s first London office. For six months he sent out innumerable press releases, most of which were ignored.

The music papers did write about their records when they came out, especially ‘Please Please Me’, which was eventually released on 12 January. It got to number one on 16 February
and they wrote about it well, but the national papers still ignored them as an item of news.

The first, and for six months, the only, general feature in any sort of national paper was in the London
Evening Standard
in February 1963 by Maureen Cleave. ‘Please Please Me’ still hadn’t got to number one and they were still largely unknown, even to the record business. But Miss Cleave had heard about their following in Liverpool. She said in her article how their Liverpool fans had forced Granada TV to film them but were now worried that the Beatles might leave Liverpool. She described how funny and natural they were.

She also drew attention, for the first time in any paper, to their hair. She described it as a ‘French hairstyle’ with the fringe brushed forwards. This was the correct general term for it at the time, as it had originated on the Continent.

‘Although the pop papers did a bit, I could never get any national feature writers or news reporters interested in the Beatles,’ says Tony Barrow. ‘It wasn’t till October 1963 that it all happened.

‘I would love to say that it was my brilliant handouts that built the Beatles, but they didn’t. The national press was very very late catching on. Kids everywhere were starting to go wild about them, not just in Liverpool, yet nobody seemed to notice. They’d got to the top of the hit parade with their second record, but the nationals still couldn’t see them as a news or feature story.’

The simple explanation is that, as it had never happened before in Britain, the British press had no way of recognizing it. They had to wait until it jumped out and hit them over the head.

Though they were being ignored nationally, the Beatles were at last getting good coverage in Liverpool. On 5 January 1963, Disker gave a long review of their forthcoming second record, ‘Please Please Me’ – without mentioning that he also worked part-time as the Beatles’ PR man.

The famous George Harrison was also lumbering on to the bandwagon. In his ‘Over the Mersey Wall’ column on 21 February, he gave a plug for the TV appearance they were about to make on
Thank Your Lucky Stars
. He said this had been recorded before ‘Please Please Me’ had got to number one. He also wondered, in his column, if they were going to be a one-hit group or not.

But a couple of months later there was no holding him. It was his turn to boast that his name was the same as the really famous George Harrison. He said he’d been getting masses of birthday cards addressed to ‘George Harrison, Liverpool’. He was even getting requests for locks of his hair, the earliest sign of the fans’ craze for getting bits of the Beatles. He only wished he had some hair for himself, never mind to give it away.

People in Liverpool called Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starkey were also beginning to be pestered, with strange girls ringing them up all night long.

But the big result of getting into the Top Twenty was not the
Liverpool Echo
writing about them, but getting a national tour. This didn’t mean big success, because all packaged tours that go round on one-night stands have big and small stars. But getting on to this circuit was vital to them at this stage. They needed to break out of Merseyside and become exposed nationally, to see if they could have the same sort of effects on strangers as on the Liverpool fans they’d grown up with. Doing a big tour was also the steadiest way of plugging a record, by playing it live all over the country.

The first tour the Beatles went on, in February of 1963, was Helen Shapiro’s. She was the star of the show. She’d caused a sensation a couple of years previously by becoming the first of the very young teenage girl singing stars.

Arthur Howes, the promoter, was already a success in his field. He’d promoted all the Cliff Richard tours. But by spotting the Beatles very early on, before they’d got to number one, he became the promoter of all their British tours, except one.

Brian had been trying to contact Arthur Howes for a long time, once he’d been given his name as the promoter of the Cliff Richard tours. He was surprised, when he eventually got his home number, to find he lived in Peterborough. This was back in 1962, while he was still trailing round the record companies.

‘One Saturday afternoon I got a telephone call at home in Peterborough. Someone saying he was called Brian Epstein was ringing from Liverpool. He said he had a great group, was there anything I could fit them into? He told me their name, Beatles, and I laughed. Oh, God, here we go again, I thought. Another group with a funny name.

‘But I’ve never turned down a group without first hearing them. I said there was a show in Peterborough they could join. Just a two-shot at the Embassy Theatre in Frank Ifield’s show.’ He didn’t give them a fee, just their expenses from Liverpool.

Their night at the Embassy, Peterborough, was their first night in a theatre outside Merseyside. It was a complete failure. This was the night the audience ‘sat on their hands’, as Arthur Howes was quoted as saying earlier. ‘It was a Frank Ifield show, so I suppose it wasn’t so surprising. They loved him so much that the show was good enough to take ten minutes of a bad group.’