The Beatles (72 page)

The prospect of fatherhood made John increasingly resentful and merely turned up the heat in an already smoldering domestic cauldron. Falling into black moods, he’d storm out of the flat, claiming to need cigarettes, and just disappear. Instead of blowing off steam and returning, he’d spend late evenings at the Jacaranda or drinking at the Blue Angel. Paddy Delaney, the Cavern’s bouncer, remembered encountering him there sometime in late February, grafted to the bar, where they “
drank whiskey after whiskey
” until well after four in the morning.

That spring friends often saw John wandering from club to club in the company of Ida “Stevie” Holly,
a tall, “spunky” seventeen-year-old
with jet-black hair to the middle of her back. According to reports,
they’d been hanging out together
, on and off, for a period of several months. “We presumed he’d broken up with Cynthia and had got a new girlfriend,” says Bill Harry, who, like most of the old crowd, was unaware that Cynthia was pregnant, let alone that she and John were married. Harry and his girlfriend, Virginia, who would eventually become his wife, remembers barging into the Blue Angel one night in March and finding John and Stevie at the bar “all over each other, like a couple of wildcats.” Tactfully, the Harrys avoided them, scooting downstairs before they were seen. Virginia was already in enough trouble with John, who had lent her a pile of notebooks filled with the poems he’d written. During
Mersey Beat
’s move from their tiny attic office to larger space on a lower floor, she’d absentmindedly “thrown them in the bin.” A few weeks earlier they’d run into John—again at the Blue Angel—and Bill insisted that Virginia confess. “I crept over and admitted what I’d done with his poems,” she recalls, “and he just started
sobbing.
”

Stevie Holly had been with him that night, too. And there were other nights at the Cavern. And afternoons, strolling lazily through the Walker Art Gallery.
Even
with the Beatles
. “
He had no shame
,” Bill Harry says in a voice flattened by scorn. “He acted as if he were still a bachelor—even after the baby came.”

In the first hours of April 8, Cynthia, who had been staying at Aunt Mimi’s house with her friend Phyllis McKenzie, was rushed by ambulance to Sefton General Hospital, where just after 6
A.M.
^*
she gave birth to a six-pound, eight-ounce boy.
Had it been a girl
, she was to be called Julia, after John’s mother. For the birth certificate, however, Cynthia confidently recorded his name as John Charles Julian Lennon.

John, out of town with the Beatles, phoned the next day, “
triumphant at the news
that it was a boy,” but, ironically it was Mimi who saw Julian first. No one had expected Mimi to rush to the hospital. Relations between the women had always been frosty, and a month of living together had left them straining for ways to remain courteous, then civil. Why Mimi urged Cynthia to move into Mendips was anyone’s guess. Far from comforting Cynthia, whose condition had admittedly made her “
over-sensitive
,” Mimi was her old supercilious self, “
moody
and sharp-tongued” toward her rabbity niece-in-law. Even though they attempted to steer clear of each other, there was always some explosive, petty incident that set Mimi off, with her
carping about Cynthia’s “willfulness
” or the way she left the kitchen a mess. Some people felt as though Mimi got “
a perverse pleasure
” from the situation, as though it were retribution for the shotgun marriage and the “terrible scenes” that preceded it. Their relationship had deteriorated to the point where, according to a published report, Mimi “
didn’t even emerge from upstairs
” when Cynthia, doubled over with labor pains, was loaded into the ambulance.

John turned up two days
later, on April 10, fresh from taping an appearance on one of the popular new BBC rave-ups,
The 625 Show,
followed by a party in a London suburb at the home of the Shadows’ guitarist, Bruce Welch, where the Beatles first met Cliff Richard. Conveniently, the Beatles were slated to play three dates in and around Liverpool that week.
Julian and Cynthia were still in the hospital
so that the doctors could keep an eye
on the baby, who was born weak and jaundiced as a result of the umbilical cord being wrapped around his neck.

According to various accounts Cynthia gave over the years, John behaved like any other new father. No one was more elated—or proud—than the demonstrative Beatle. He bounced Julian around like a football, gloating at his son’s wan, wrinkled face. “
Who’s going to be a famous little rocker
like his Dad then?” she quoted him as crowing. The baby was either “
bloody marvelous
” or “
a miracle
” in his eyes. In every retelling, Cynthia polished the story to portray John as a devoted dad. But no matter what kind of shine she put on it, Cynthia must have known—or, at least, had a sinking sense of—the truth.

Like Cynthia, the baby tightened the chains around John. Especially now, with the long struggle to stardom finally within reach. The tiny margin separating the Beatles from their ultimate goal required his undivided attention; the Big Party lay just over the next rise—John was sure of it. There was nothing left in the tank to give a wife and child.

It had been hard enough keeping Cynthia hidden in the shadows.
Brian had insisted that John keep the marriage a secret
to avoid diminishing his popularity with the fans. “It was a calculated judgment on [Brian’s] part that pop stars oughtn’t to have partners,” remembers Tony Barrow.
^*
That was the rationale, at least, and apparently John was content to abide by it. And the exuberant success was all about freedom—freedom to pick and choose among the flock of available birds and his choice of crazy scenes, the freedom to experiment, to live it up. With no wife to his credit—at least, not in any published account—John could behave as most rock ’n roll stars did on the road.

Cynthia may have suppressed
this latest slight in order to give herself hope, but she had turned a blind eye toward John’s indiscretions too many times not to know what was going on. The stories that drifted back from Hamburg had upset her until she learned to block them out. And those times at the Cavern, when John disappeared for a few hours—she’d seen the way those girls had looked at him onstage and knew the score. Even in the hospital, she recognized the familiar signs:
John “was beginning to feel trapped
.”

Bill Harry, like Cynthia, had been awakened to John’s freewheeling behavior. He spent several late nights at the Blue Angel, drinking with the Beatles, while they were back in Liverpool. It was especially gratifying for
Harry to reconnect with his old art school mate and to hear the latest fabulous adventures involving the Beatles and John’s life. “
But he never talked about Julian
or being a proud father,” says Harry. “Julian was never mentioned. As far as John was concerned, it was as if Cynthia or Julian didn’t exist.”

What did exist for John was the new world taking shape around him—a world that increasingly involved success. “
Once the Beatles hit the pop charts
, we all envied what they had—and wanted it for ourselves,” says Johnny Byrne. “Guys like Gerry [Marsden] and Billy J. [Kramer] rode the Beatles’ coattails for a while. But for the rest of us, who never made it out of the clubs, a kind of resentment took hold.” The Big Three, who were more exciting, couldn’t write their own material; Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes stayed too long in Hamburg, playing bars and getting shitfaced; Rory Storm and the Hurricanes lacked the ambition—and the talent. But after the Beatles, returning from the Tommy Roe–Chris Montez tour, caught the national ear in a big way, the resentment directed toward them at home diminished as a result of the enormous groundswell that was created and the power it conferred.

If there was one spark responsible, it was the release of “From Me to You,” on April 11. Initially, the record got mixed reviews from the music papers. The
NME
critic noted that it had “
plenty of sparkle
” but got in his licks, concluding: “I don’t rate the tune as being anything like as good as on the last two discs from the group.” And Ray Coleman, writing in
Melody Maker,
expressed his disappointment in the “
so-so melody
” and questioned whether “if this average song was done by a less prominent group,” it would have the same impact.

Nevertheless, the impact was stunning. Instead of building steady, solid momentum, as was usual with a potential hit record, “From Me to You” “
came crashing
” into the charts at the number six position—a first for a British pop group. “From Me to You” flew out of the stores. In the first week alone,
sales hit 200,000 copies
, outselling the entire issue of “Please Please Me.” A keen witness on the scene observed: “
By now, the Beatle legend
was beginning to grow…. It was becoming clear that they
were something rather special.” Actually, that was putting it mildly. All of London, it seemed, had their name on its lips.
The Beatles!
What was it with this funny-sounding—funny-
looking
—group? And where was this great music coming from?

With few exceptions, the critics caught the drift. “
The Beatles could take it to the Americans
,” argued a writer from
Melody Maker
after watching them snatch the stage out from under Chris Montez and Tommy Roe in East Ham. That, in itself, was a remarkable observation, if very un-British. And it was picked up in
NME,
which led its story with a note on the trend. “
Latest visitors from America
… were given scream-filled receptions,” wrote columnist Andy Gray. “But the Beatles stole top honours for entertainment and audience reaction.”

The Beatles could take it to the Americans.

Amazing! Even though Beatlemania was still a good year off, the tremors were already being felt. There was something quintessentially British about these uncompromising musicians, these charismatic, cheeky, shaggy-haired Scousers from the uncultured North, taking the larger cities by storm but still living in Liverpool, mostly with their parents, where they worked overtime to hone the emerging “Liverpool sound.” Suddenly their beleaguered northern city had become exotic, chic. Suddenly the real Brits weren’t sophisticated Londoners but those with caustic accents who worked in the trenches. Suddenly teenagers across the kingdom made a pilgrimage to the Cavern. Suddenly the North was known as “home of the Beatles.” Suddenly Liverpool was on the map. It was “Music City,” “the Nashville of the North,” even “
Nashpool.
” And if anyone needed further evidence, they had only to glance at the charts, where suddenly Gerry and the Pacemakers had themselves trudged their way to
number one
with “How Do You Do It.” A single group from Liverpool was uncommon enough, but two groups—it was revolutionary! And to make sense of it all, you only had to point to the Beatles.

Unfazed by the outbreak of attention, they plowed through critical appearances on national television, promoting “From Me to You” without pause, including, of all things, the BBC Jazz ’n’ Pop Festival in the venerable Royal Albert Hall. (The show was broadcast simultaneously as part of the BBC’s
Light Programme.
) They acted so loose and behaved so playfully during rehearsal, impervious to tradition or other stars on the bill, that the show’s producer, Terry Henebery, bristled. “
A couple of records in the charts
,” he fumed, “and they think they can do exactly what they like.”

He wasn’t the only one discomfited by the Beatles’ outsize personalities.
Right off the bat, the show’s promoters were forced to deal with the feverish wave of anticipation the Beatles inspired. The dense crowd that had packed the stalls arrived in a bubble of highly charged expectation. A diaphanous buzz punctuated by whistles filled the upper reaches of the cavernous space. This wasn’t the usual contingent that bought tickets to the frequent package shows and sat politely through each performance. These were pumped-up teenagers—most of them girls—in every manner of emotional thrall, behaving rather curiously, as if they all knew one another. “
They acted that way
because they had one thing in common,” says Tony Barrow, who wasn’t in the theater that night. “They were Beatles fans.”

Writer and scenemaker George Melly later admitted that even he wasn’t prepared for the reception that crowd gave the Beatles. “
It was my chore
to announce them,” he recalled, “and the moment I went on I was met by a solid wall of screams. In the end I just gestured into the stairwell, mouthed ‘the Beatles’ and walked off. The screams lasted right through their act.” And through Del Shannon’s as well. Cries of
“We want the Beatles! We want the Beatles!”
repeatedly interrupted his set, forcing an awkward, abruptly shortened performance.
^*

Success at the Albert Hall was no mean feat for any new band on the scene, but the sensation the Beatles caused, marked by the screams and rampant hysteria, heightened its subsequent impact. Their new single rather rudely
evicted Gerry Marsden from his perch
atop the charts, and their just-released album,
Please Please Me,
shot to the number two position, breathing down the neck of current top dog, Cliff Richard. After years of working on the entertainment fringe, and only months after being rejected by all major labels, the band was besieged with offers pouring into the NEMS office. The Beatles were wanted on the
NME
poll winners’ concert at Wembley’s Empire Pool, the self-styled “
highlight of the pop music year
.” There was an invitation for them to appear on an all-Liverpool version of
Thank Your Lucky Stars,
which was accepted. A top-of-the-bill appearance on
Saturday Club
caught their fancy. And from Paris came an offer for them to headline an eleven-day run at the Olympia Theater. Within a relatively short time, the Beatles had moved from the fringes to ground zero of the increasingly fertile British rock ’n roll community.