John Lennon: The Life (31 page)

When John’s birthday money was all spent, the transformed truants returned home to find hairstyles the last thing on anyone’s mind. The promoters they had let down were all incandescent with fury, and George and Pete Best were both on the point of quitting in disgust. Even John could not demur at the stern lecture they received from Bob Wooler, Ray McFall, and their other unofficial handlers about honoring engagements and behaving professionally.

Fortunately, just at that moment, the irrepressible Sam Leach came up with a scheme that both reunified the Beatles as a band and reasserted their superiority over all local competition. Tired of promoting gigs in small halls and cellars, Leach began scouting for a venue where thousands rather than just dozens of beat fans could gather. He found it at New Brighton, a Wirral seaside resort that had once boasted a 544-foot steel facsimile of Paris’s Eiffel Tower. Though the tower had been demolished after the Great War, its immense ballroom continued to function, vaulted in baroque white and gold, with a sprung floor that could accommodate a thousand couples.

On November 10, Leach hired New Brighton Tower Ballroom for what he named Operation Big Beat, a five-and-a-half-hour marathon attended by four thousand people, with the Beatles headlining over Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Remo Four, and Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes. The Beatles played one spot in the early evening, hurried back across the water for a show at Knotty Ash village hall, then returned to New Brighton for a second set at 11:30. The night ended with a wild car race with Rory Storm through the Mersey Tunnel, during which Rory’s car barely escaped a head-on collision.

In later life, John would nostalgically recall those carefree months of going nowhere in particular, the camaraderie between the groups, and the freedom and spontaneity of their music. “We repeated the shows many, many times, but never the same. Sometimes we’d go on with 15 or 20 musicians and play together, and we’d create something that had never been done onstage by a group before.” He could only have meant a night at Litherland Town Hall when the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers amalgamated as “the Beatmakers.” Gerry Marsden sang and alternated on lead guitar with George Harrison, Pete Best shared the drumming with Gerry’s brother Freddy, and John and Paul were just sidemen on piano and rhythm guitar alongside Pacemakers Les Maguire and Les Chadwick.

There spoke the monk rather than the performing flea—half-wishing they had left him alone to pound his piano anonymously in the background. “I’m talking about before we were famous,
about the natural things that happened before we were turned into robots that played on stage. We would naturally express ourselves in any way that we deemed suitable. And then a manager came and said ‘Do this, do that, do this, do that’ and that way we became famous by compromise.”

A
recurring theme of Richmal Crompton’s William stories is the power that eleven-year-old William’s inventiveness and zest for life can exert over the most unlikely seeming adults. Time and again it happens that some high-powered celebrity arrives in the district to attend a formal grown-up function but instead finds his way to the Old Barn, where William and the Outlaws are putting on one of their shows. The truant VIP will pay a few pennies’ entrance fee and sit in his posh clothes on an upturned orange-box, more captivated by the performance than any of the village urchins around him. So did John’s life parallel William’s yet again when Brian Epstein happened on the Cavern.

Brian was then aged twenty-seven and, to outward appearance, the last person likely to be found in old barns or caverns. The elder son of a well-to-do Liverpool Jewish family, he seemed blessed with
all a young man of that era could ask—good looks, charm, and sophistication, allied to a seemingly fulfilling niche in life. He ran his father’s large electrical store, NEMS, in Whitechapel, the heart of the city’s shopping district. In the basement was a record department, which Brian had developed with such flair that it could justifiably advertise “The Finest Record Selection in the North.”

But behind the suave exterior was a complex, troubled character who, prior to November 1961, considered his life to have been one of almost unmitigated failure. He had been expelled from school, ended his army National Service prematurely and under a cloud, and given up on an acting course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. Only after reluctantly entering the family retail business (which encompassed furniture and housewares as well as electrical goods and records) had he shown any positive abilities: clever salesmanship, meticulous administrative efficiency, and a knack for eye-catching presentation and design.

Most troubling of all—overshadowing his whole unhappy adolescence, undermining his latter success and self-vindication—Brian Epstein was homosexual. In prejudice-bound Britain of 1961, especially in a city as ferociously macho as Liverpool, there was no worse burden for a young man to carry. Legislation originally passed in 1886 perpetuated the Victorian view of homosexuality as a “perversion,” an offense against every religious doctrine, and a creepingly infectious social disease. Sexual acts between males, however private and consensual, were crimes punishable by imprisonment. Fear and loathing of the condition permeated every level of society, apart from the sheltered worlds of the theatre and haute couture. Anyone showing the slightest hint of effeminacy in manner or eccentricity in dress—suede shoes, for instance, or a waistcoat with brass buttons—could expect instant denunciation and persecution as a “queer,” a “homo,” a “nancy-boy,” or a “poof.”

Brian’s upright and devout Jewish parentage meant a still more pressing need for secrecy and a redoubled burden of guilt and self-loathing. However, his problems did not end even there. Despite the endemic homophobia, many gay men were able to find happy and stable relationships with others like themselves. But it was Brian’s
misfortune to be attracted to heterosexual males at the furthest possible remove from his own gentle and refined nature. To find gratification, he had to go curb-crawling in the city’s toughest dockside areas or cottaging (cruising) in public lavatories, putting himself in constant danger of police entrapment, blackmail by his pickups, or attack by the “queer-bashing” gangs that haunted such locales.

Brian had known about the Beatles in a subliminal way for several months before officially discovering them. The NEMS shop in Whitechapel lay only about a minute’s walk from Mathew Street, and daily thronged with overspill from the Cavern’s lunchtime sessions, chattering excitedly about what they were about to see or had just seen. John, Paul, George, and Pete themselves were regular customers, usually seeking out-of-the-way import disks to bolster their repertoire. When
Mersey Beat
began publication in July, Brian had ordered large quantities to sell at NEMS. He even began to contribute a column about new record releases, which often appeared in proximity to some further Beatles update or zany jeu d’esprit by John. At his shop, Brian was no aloof executive figure, but prided himself on serving customers himself and taking a personal interest in their musical taste. From scores of habituées—tiny, blonde Patricia Inder among them—he would have heard plenty about the Cavern and its favorite sons.

But in 1961, a twenty-seven-year-old, especially one of Brian’s social standing and sophistication, had no affinity with pop music or teenage culture. His involvement was purely that of a conscientious retailer, ending as soon as NEMS put up its
CLOSED
sign; in private, he listened almost exclusively to classical music and was an ardent devotee of opera, ballet, and the theatre.

By his own later account, it was not until October 28 that a customer order for the Beatles’ pseudonymous Polydor recording with Tony Sheridan (which the deejay Bob Wooler had been dutifully plugging all over town) finally woke him up to their existence. His version was that, having been unable to trace the record through NEMS’s usual supply channels, he discovered with surprise that they were a Liverpool group, playing daily and nightly—and now sometimes all night—just a stone’s throw away. He paid a visit to their Cavern lunchtime show and, overwhelmed by the blazing talent that
met his ears and eyes (something William’s Old Barn productions could never be accused of), realized that his destiny was to become their manager.

In fact, Brian had never seen a pop group play live before, so could not have known how different this one was, or could be, from any other. But he happened to be feeling bored with the retail trade and sensed a use for his creative talents beyond just window-dressing his shop. Most compellingly, in four sweating, skylarking black-leather-clad boy musicians he saw his secret vice made available in an utterly blameless and harmless form: rough trade without the bruises.

For someone of his class and background even to contemplate going into pop management was highly unusual. Managers of this era were by definition proletarian gamblers, the natural heirs to door-to-door con men and street-corner three-card monte tricksters. But Brian was already wealthy, sporting the tailor-made suits and driving the luxury cars of which every down-at-heel Mersey hustler dreamed. Thanks to public school education and his RADA training, he spoke in smooth, modulated tones without a trace of Liverpudlian. Though only six years John’s senior, he seemed much older; part of the generation sworn to fight against pop, not nurture it. His first exploratory overtures sent a wave of excitement through the Beatles’ circle, even cool-headed Paul McCartney talking in hushed whispers of the “millionaire” who was interested in them.

Despite the trouble that Brian took to hide his sexual orientation, most people on the Liverpool music scene were fully aware of it. Not long previously, his cover had almost been blown when a more than usually vicious blackmail attempt by one of his dockland pickups left him no choice but to go to the police. A trap had been laid—of necessity in the NEMS shop itself, after hours—and the blackmailer brought to trial, with Brian giving evidence under the pseudonym Mr. X. Many more people around the city than he ever dreamed knew about this horrible episode. Many who did not still guessed his secret instantly, for all the impeccable straightness of his appearance and manner. As several friends whispered to John or Paul in typically vivid Scouse argot: “You’d have to be galloping past on a wild horse with soap in your eyes not to know he’s queer.”

On December 3, Brian invited the Beatles to a meeting in his office
above the NEMS shop to discuss the terms on which he might take over their management. Unfortunately, they refused to treat the encounter with due reverence, turning up very late accompanied by Bob Wooler (whom John facetiously introduced as “me Dad”) and sidestepping all their nervous and increasingly flustered host’s attempts at serious business talk. Things were different, however, at a second meeting between just the four of them and Brian on December 10, fortuitously the day after a disastrous foray with Sam Leach down south to Aldershot, where they had ended up playing to just eighteen people. The burning question, put by Paul, was whether being adopted by Brian would mean changing the kind of music they played. On being assured that it would not, John spoke for the others without bothering to take a vote: “Right then, Brian…manage us.”

Three of the four were under twenty-one, so could not sign any legal papers without their guardians’ consent. Before going any further, therefore, Brian had to visit the McCartney, Harrison, and Best homes in turn, setting out his intentions—and allaying some instinctive prejudice against him as a Jew. Only John was of age and able to sign on his own account. But Brian still had to call at Mendips and square things with Aunt Mimi; indeed, he recognized Mimi as by far the most important target in his charm offensive. “There was a knock at the door,” she remembered, “and standing there was this smart young man…he had a clean white shirt on and a tie, and he said, ‘Hello, I am Brian Epstein,’ and my first impression was ‘You’ll do.’ He was very direct…‘I want to manage John and the group’…and I made him a cup of tea and he said he wanted to reassure me that everything would be fine and that he’d look after John.

“I was flabbergasted because [Brian] told me he thought John was really talented and that [the Beatles] were going places…and I thought the only place John would be going was the employment exchange. He was very educated, very polite, knew his p’s and q’s, came from a good family, so I knew he meant well. He said that whatever happened, he’d always take care of John. I think I must have said I would agree or something…it turned out they’d already agreed to him being their manager, but John had wanted my ap
proval, I suppose…. He always wanted to know what I thought.”

Brian’s immediate objective was to get the Beatles a recording contract, a task in which he foresaw no great difficulty. As a leading record retailer, he enjoyed cordial relations with all the major London labels; via their sales departments he could get straight through to talent scouts and producers, with NEMS’s importance as a client adding weight to his petition. By Christmas he had contacted Polydor and—on the promise of a substantial order from NEMS—persuaded them to release Tony Sheridan’s “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” in the United Kingdom in January, its backing now correctly credited to the Beatles, not the Beat Brothers. He also quickly found sympathetic ears at one of NEMS’s foremost suppliers, the mighty Decca organization. Decca valued his custom enough not merely to listen when he said he had a group potentially “bigger than Elvis” but to send a producer named Mike Smith all the way to Liverpool to see them at the Cavern. Against all expectations, Smith liked what he heard, and reported positively back to his superiors.

A formal audition took place on New Year’s Day 1962—back then not a public holiday—at Decca’s studios in Swiss Cottage, North London. It was an occasion destined to top the list of Great Music Industry Blunders forever afterward, but in fairness the Beatles that day could hardly have looked less commercial. The playlist—chosen by Brian to show off their versatility—was a mixture of R&B stompers like “Money” and “Memphis, Tennessee,” soft pop like “Take Good Care of My Baby” and “To Know Her Is to Love Her,” cocktail-time ballads like “Till There Was You” and “September in the Rain,” and crusty old standards like “Besame Mucho” and “The Sheik of Araby.” Rather than impressing Decca, this created confusion: were they R&B, pop, country, middle-of-the-road, or old-fashioned music hall? Three Lennon-McCartney compositions, “Like Dreamers Do” and “Love of the Loved” by Paul and “Hello Little Girl” by John, passed almost unnoticed amid the motley. As a final perverse twist out of focus, they did Leiber and Stoller’s “Three Cool Cats,” a comic variation on “Three Blind Mice” sung by George with ad-libs by John as Speedy Gonzales (“Hey, man, save-a one chick forr
me
…”). Fifteen tracks were recorded in a single take each, on two-track mono,
without editing or overdubbing, the whole session wrapping in little more than an hour.

Despite some initial positive signs, Decca notified a formal rejection just over three weeks afterward. The official reason—comparable with Hollywood predictions in 1927 that talkies had no future—was: “Four-man guitar groups are on the way out.” John, rightly, blamed Brian’s choice of material and vowed it would be the last time anyone told the Beatles what to play. “We were good,” he insisted later. “At least, we were good for then.”

Pending further initiatives in London, Brian set about organizing the Beatles with the same meticulous efficiency that he applied to his NEMS record stock. Where “the Boys” (as he instantly took to calling them) were concerned, expense seemed to be no object. His first act was to pay off the backlog of installment debts on their equipment, including John’s long-discarded Hofner Club 40 guitar. Press announcements for Beatles gigs ceased to be wordy small-type “Woolertins” and became display ads with elegant black rules, calling them Polydor Recording Artists and trumpeting their official ascendancy to Liverpool’s number one group, as confirmed on January 4 by a readers’ poll in
Mersey Beat
.

Before a gig, their driver, Neil Aspinall, would receive lengthy typewritten instructions from Brian about where, for whom, and for how long they were to play, stressing the need to be punctual and professional and give the same unstinted value onstage that he gave over the counter of NEMS. Every Friday, each Beatle received a detailed summary of the past week’s earnings and disbursements as if the sums involved were thousands of pounds rather than just tens. The public, don’t-give-a-damn John pretended to find all this bureaucracy ridiculous, but the secret, organized side of him was impressed, as he would eventually admit. “We were in a daydream before [Brian] came along. We’d no idea what we were doing. Seeing our marching orders on paper made it all official.”