Shout! (44 page)

“Capitol wouldn’t take no for an answer. They tried
everything
to get me to sell. They’d checked out my background and found out about my interest in motor racing. At our next meeting, when I said I still wouldn’t sell, the Capitol man said, ‘Just take a look out of the window, Nicky.’ Down in the street there was one of the most exclusive Ferraris ever made—the 29. Only one had come into America, to be driven by the North American Racing Team. This was it—it had mechanics standing beside it. ‘That’s yours, Nicky,’ I was told, ‘if we can do this deal.’”

“I said, ‘But it’s not as easy as that. I’ve got five partners.’ The Capitol man turned round and said, ‘Joe! Get five more of those.’”

At Capitol Records, $50,000 was hastily allocated for a crash publicity program leading up to the Beatles’ arrival on February 7. Five million posters and car windshield stickers were printed with the cryptic message “The Beatles Are Coming.” A four-page life story was circulated, with promotional records, to disk jockeys across the continent. Certain stations also received tapes of open-end interviews, prerecorded by the Beatles, with spaces left for the disk jockey’s questions. Capitol executives, like so many repentant Scrooges, were photographed in Beatles wigs.

The
Ed Sullivan Show
, meanwhile, had received fifty thousand applications for the seven-hundred-odd seats at its broadcast on February 9. CBS had a greater number even than for Elvis Presley’s first appearance in 1957. There was similar massive demand for the Beatles’ second appearance for Sullivan, a week later, in a special show broadcast from the Hotel Deauville, Miami. Not a seat remained for their first American concert, at the Washington Coliseum, nor for Sid Bernstein’s two concerts at Carnegie Hall. Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller was one of numerous celebrities whom Bernstein hoped to accommodate by putting extra seats on the stage.

And yet for all this brisk commercial activity, nothing had been done to connect the manifest excitement of American teenagers with the Beatles’ physical presence on American soil. A film clip of them, shown on NBC’s
Jack Paar Show
, brought confident predictions, notably from the
New York Times
, that although the Beatles might be coming, Beatlemania definitely was not. “For all Capitol and CBS cared,” Nicky Byrne says, “they were just going to walk off the plane and go to their hotel. Nobody would even have known they were in America.”

Byrne, as a merchandiser of Beatles goods, had his own reasons for desiring something more. “I kept ringing London to say, ‘Look here, Capitol are hopeless, nobody’s doing
anything
in the way of publicity.’ I couldn’t get hold of Brian Epstein at all. He’d completely disappeared. So had David Jacobs.”

As February 7 drew near Nicky Byrne decided to take the initiative. He enlisted the help of a T-shirt manufacturer and of two New York radio stations, WMCA and WINS. “Every fifteen minutes, the same announcement was made over the air. A free T-shirt for every kid who went out to the airport to meet the Beatles.”

The objects of all this ferocious maneuvering were seen off from Heathrow Airport by one thousand banner-waving fans whose screams Cynthia Lennon mistook, in her innocence, for the noise of their waiting Pan Am jet. Cynthia was to accompany the party and, such was the momentousness of the occasion, even received permission to be photographed by the press corps that packed the VIP lounge. No departure from Britain had so mingled national acclamation and hope since Neville Chamberlain’s flight to Munich in 1938.

The greater part of Pan Am flight 101 was occupied by the Beatles
and their entourage. They themselves sat in the first class cabin with Brian, Cynthia, and a new friend, the American record producer Phil Spector. Certain favored press friends also traveled first class, such as Maureen Cleave from the
Evening Standard
and a
Liverpool Echo
journalist, coincidentally blessed with the name George Harrison. Harrison, when he retired from Fleet Street in the 1950s, had thought himself out of the rat race. Now he found himself bound on the world’s biggest assignment, with expenses, which, for the thrifty
Echo
, was equally phenomenal.

In the economy cabin sat Dezo Hoffman and the two road managers, Neil and Mal, already deep in their task of forging Beatle signatures on thousands of giveaway photographs. Scattered among the other press, and eyeing each other just as balefully, was a contingent of British manufacturers with ideas for new lines in Beatles merchandise. Unable to contact Brian Epstein on the ground, they hoped he would prove more accessible at thirty thousand feet. Notes were passed to Brian throughout the flight, and endorsed with a polite refusal.

The Beatles, though resolutely laughing and larking, all showed signs of terror at what lay ahead. None could be convinced they were any different from previous British entertainers who had taken on America, and lost. The example of Cliff Richard was frequently mentioned. George, on a visit to his elder sister in St. Louis, had seen Cliff’s film
Summer Holiday
relegated to a drive-in second feature. Nor did the work permits Brian had obtained make them feel very special. The H2 classification allowed them to play, within a strict two-week period, “so long as unemployed American citizens capable of performing this work cannot be found.”

Paul McCartney strapped himself tightly into his safety belt, not unbuckling it throughout the whole flight. To Maureen Cleave and Phil Spector he confessed the same unease that George did to his namesake from the
Liverpool Echo
. “He mentioned all the big American stars who’d come across to Britain,” Harrison said. “He’d been across, unlike the others; he knew what the place was like. ‘They’ve got everything over there,’ he said. ‘What do they want
us
for?’”

America, at first, presented only the normal aerial view of coast and long piers and the snow-flecked scrubland up to the runway edge. Even after the wheels struck tarmac, no particular welcome was visible save in the earmuffed men who walked backward, signaling with their small
round bats. Then, as the terminal buildings came into view, the prospect dramatically changed. Five thousand people waited like a mural beyond the thick window glass. “The Beatles had no idea it was for them,” Dezo Hoffman says. “They thought the president must be going to land in a minute.”

The opening of the door let in a sound that made Heathrow and its cataclysms seem merely decorous. Not only were there more fans than the Beatles had ever seen before: They also made twice the noise. Screaming, they hung over balconies and retaining walls; screaming, they buckled against a one-hundred-man police cordon, oblivious to peril or pain. Blended with the shriek was the shout of photographers, equally possessed, who approached the aircraft clinging to a hydraulic crane. As the Beatles began to descend the steps, a girl on the terminal’s third outside level flung herself into space and hung there on the arms of two companions, crying: “Here I am!” Near the bottom step stood the first intelligible New Yorker, a policeman. “Boy,” he was heard to remark, “can they use a haircut.”

Brian Sommerville, their press officer—who had arrived two days earlier—advanced through the uproar accompanied by Pan Am officials, not the least of whose concerns was to cover up the Beatles’ BEAtle inflight bags. As the remaining passengers descended each received from Capitol Records a packet consisting of a photograph, an “I Like the Beatles” badge, and a Beatles wig. The Beatles had by now reached customs, where every item of their luggage was examined. In one direction, several hundred howling girls were chased back by police and security men; the other way, about one thousand more flung and flattened themselves like insects against the plate-glass wall.

On the first floor of the main terminal, where two hundred journalists waited, Brian Sommerville began to show his quarterdeck irascibility. The photographers, massed in front of reporters and TV crews, were making too much noise for any formal question to be heard. Sommerville, after several more or less polite injunctions, grabbed a microphone and snapped: “Shut up—just shut up.” The Beatles concurred, “Yeah, shurrup.” This produced spontaneous applause.

The New York press, with a few exceptions, succumbed as quickly as the fans. Within minutes, one svelte and sarcastic woman journalist was babbling into a telephone: “They are absolutely too cute for words. America is going to just
love
them.” On another line, an agency reporter
began his dispatch: “Not since McArthur returned from Korea…” Meanwhile, in the conference room, their 198 colleagues continued the interrogation that was supposed to have been ironic and discomfiting but that had produced anything but discomfiture. The Beatles were at their flash-quick, knockabout, impudent best.

“Are you going to have a haircut while you’re in America?”

“We had one yesterday,” John replied.

“Will you sing something for us?”

“We need money first,” John said.

“What’s your secret?”

“If we knew that,” George said, “we’d each form a group and be managers.”

“Was your family in show business?” John was asked.

“Well, me dad used to say me mother was a great performer.”

“Are you part of a teenage rebellion against the older generation?”

“It’s a dirty lie.”

“What do you think of the campaign in Detroit to stamp out the Beatles?”

“We’ve got a campaign of our own,” Paul said, “to stamp out Detroit.”

Outside the terminal, four chauffeur-driven Cadillacs waited. The Beatles, ejected rather than emerging from the rear entrance, were each lifted bodily by two policemen and thrust into a Cadillac. Long after they had returned to England their arms would still bear the marks of this helpful assistance. Paul, in addition, had a handful of his hair wrenched by a photographer, to see if it was a wig. “Get out of here, buddy,” a policeman told the leading chauffeur, “if you want to get out alive.”

Outside the Plaza hotel on Fifth Avenue stretched a sea of screaming teenage humanity on which a squad of mounted policemen bobbed as ineffectually as corks. Reservations had been made a month earlier in the individual names of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr, four “London businessmen.” At the time, the hotel checked only as far as to ascertain their good financial status. Directly the true nature of their business became known, a Plaza representative went on radio, offering them to any other New York hotel that would take them.

As the four Cadillacs sped in from Kennedy Airport among their weaving and shouting and grimacing motorcade, the Plaza strove
valiantly not to capitulate. The Palm Court served tea, as usual, with violin music, though the orchestra leader was vexed to receive requests for Beatles songs. Waiters moved among the pillars and heaped pastries, discreetly requesting the odd errant guest to remove his Beatles wig.

The Beatles and their party had been allocated the hotel’s entire twelfth floor. A special force from the Burns Detective Agency was on duty around the clock to screen all arrivals and conduct periodic searches in the floors above, where some female fans had climbed several hundred fire stairs to lie in wait. A bevy of undermanagers ran around, fearful, as well they might be, for the hotel’s cherished fabric. When a photographer asked John to lie down on a bed and show his boots, a Plaza man interrupted, “Oh no—
that’s
not the image we want to project.” “Don’t worry,” John reassured him. “We’ll buy the bed.”

Interconnecting suites, ten rooms in all, had been provided for the Beatles, their solitary wife, their two autograph-manufacturing road managers, and their overworked publicist. Only Brian had separate accommodations, on the Central Park side, far away from everyone else.

One of the first to get through the security was Geoffrey Ellis, Brian’s old Liverpool friend, the Royal Insurance man. “The whole scene was extremely surrealistic,” Ellis says. “The Beatles were all sitting round with transistor radios in their ears, listening to their records playing and watching themselves on television at the same time.”

All the evening TV news bulletins carried the airport scenes as top story, though not all expressed unqualified delight. On NBC, Chet Huntley, the celebrated anchorman, quivered with bilious distaste. “Like a good little news organization, we sent three cameramen out this afternoon to cover the arrival of a group from England, known as the Beatles. However, after surveying the film our men returned with, and the subject of that film, I feel there is absolutely no need to show any of that film.” A dissident radio station, WNEW, repeatedly observed that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” made some people want to hold their noses.

On every other pop frequency Beatles’ voices could be heard, conversing in prerecorded form or as they had spoken a few minutes earlier, live from their hotel suite. Fast-talking disk jockeys found them an easy target, instantly friendly and funny and willing to endorse anything or anyone. The great success in this field was scored by Murray the K Kaufman of station WINS; having first interviewed the Beatles by telephone,
he arrived in their suite, accompanied by an entire girl singing group, and was seldom, if ever, got rid of thereafter.

The strain was beginning to tell already on Brian. First, there was a furious dispute with Brian Sommerville over the room arrangements, which ended with Sommerville threatening to resign. Then Brian came into the Beatles’ suite, crimson with anger. Among the products they had obligingly endorsed by telephone were several bootleg recordings of their own music, smuggled out of England and now on sale in the New York shops. “Brian screamed at them for what they had done,” Dezo Hoffman says. “They listened to him like naughty children. He still had some authority with them then.”

Shortly after their arrival George went to bed, complaining of a sore throat. He had been unwell in Paris, too, dictating his
Daily Express
column—as he was to continue to do—without mention of the disconcerting French habit of administering medicines in suppository form. His elder sister, Louise, who had just arrived from St. Louis, moved into the Plaza to nurse him.