The Beatles (77 page)

When the second Vee-Jay single, “From Me to You,” was released, American disc jockeys ignored it completely—a silence even more devastating than scorn. “
No one played it
; they thought it was a dud,” says Paul Marshall, who brokered the deal. Now, with a third record due out, Marshall went back to Capitol Records. Capitol usually offered a song and dance to soften the rejection of an English act, but this time the pass was brutally direct. Dave Dexter proclaimed the Beatles “
stone-cold dead
in the U.S. marketplace.” Capitol wasn’t interested in the slightest—not now, not in the foreseeable future.

Without even Vee-Jay as a backup (the label was reorganizing in the wake of its economic bungle), the Beatles were without hope of an American release. In the meantime, Roland Rennie approached an acquaintance named Bernie Binnick, who owned a small Philadelphia label, Swan Records. Swan, which had cobbled together a few hits with teen star Freddy Cannon, didn’t even register on
Billboard
’s national radar screen. But Rennie was desperate, and the price was right—“
They didn’t pay anything
to license it,” he recalls. “They just guaranteed to put the bloody thing out, as a favor to us”—which, though less than idyllic, at least assured the Beatles that “She Loves You” would get a fighting chance.

Days before “She Loves You” was due to be released, NME calculated that three Liverpool groups—the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas—were responsible for sales amounting to more than 2.5 million records. Numbers like that left the Beatles dazed, in a state of euphoria. Only nine months before, they were still hustling for £10 gigs in Liverpool, hoping against all odds just to
make
a record. “
Sometimes, you know, I feel
as if there’s nothing I’d like better than to get back to the kind of thing we were doing a year ago,” Paul mused in the midst of the hot summer tour. “Just playing the Cavern and some of the other places around Liverpool. I suppose the rest of the lads feel that way at times, too. You feel as if you’d like to turn back the clock.” If that was even remotely feasible before, all bets were off the moment “She Loves You” hit the airwaves.

Unlike any of the band’s previous records, “She Loves You” touched
off a nationwide reaction the press immediately dubbed “
Beatles fever
.” Before the record was even released, Parlophone had advance orders for “
a staggering 235,000” copies
—figures “so enormous” that even EMI was impressed. No act in corporate memory had ever spurred such demand. And suddenly everything the Beatles did resonated with meaning. Both music papers—
Melody Maker
and
NME
—interviewed them ceaselessly, hanging on every word, as did a dozen or more radio personalities on Britain’s top-rated shows. The Beatles, eager to please, did their part. They responded perceptively and with unguarded enthusiasm, supplying insights on everything from the details of their early career to their most personal habits. But mostly their conversations were filled with the chatter of young men awestruck by the general good luck that had befallen them. Beyond the burdens of touring and songwriting, Paul mooned about go-karting, Ringo discussed his special knack for dancing and dreams of one day opening a string of ladies’ hairdressing salons, John fantasized about writing books before tackling a West End musical, and George confessed to sloth, admitting that his idea of “the life” wasn’t so much about fame as it was “
sitting round a big fire
with [his] slippers on and watching the telly.” Intuitive, inventive, and taken with the sound of their own voices, the Beatles developed a penchant for delivering folksy generalities that helped create accessible images of familiarity. “
I’m not really interested in sport
… except for swimming,” Paul told a reporter. “But that’s the thing these hot days, isn’t it? It really cools you off.”

The first two weeks of September were as much a whirlwind as anything the Beatles had ever experienced. From London, where they prerecorded sessions for an upcoming BBC radio special called
Pop Go the Beatles,
the path zigzagged aimlessly between mid-size cities, from Worcester to Taunton and then Luton, hitting converted cinemas along the Gaumont and Odeon chains. Then they played the ABC Theatre in Blackpool for the second time in little more than a month before turning around and heading right back to London.

Brian had managed to slip in a few midday sessions at Abbey Road studios so the Beatles could make headway on their second album. Previously, they’d recorded a slew of standout covers—“You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” “Money,” “Devil in Her Heart,” “Till There Was You,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” and “Please Mr. Postman,” songs they’d
been playing for years—along with two exciting Lennon-McCartney originals, “It Won’t Be Long” and “All My Loving,” the latter of which Paul had written on a piano immediately before a gig at a Moss Empire theater. Now they were set to round things off a bit, with the first song ever written by George, “Don’t Bother Me,” and two numbers originally earmarked for Ringo—“Little Child” and “I Wanna Be Your Man.”

Things were kept “fairly simple” for Ringo. By design, he had to sing from behind the drums, so the overall arrangement couldn’t be too demanding. Besides,
Ringo “didn’t have a large vocal range
,” Paul recalled, to say nothing of his concentration. “
If he couldn’t mentally picture
[the song], you were in trouble.” But neither Paul nor John was deterred by Ringo’s shortcomings. He was too likable, too amusing, not at all self-indulgent, and he appreciated their efforts on his behalf. These latest songs were a further indication of their affection for Ringo—their commitment to giving him more of the spotlight—though at the last minute John claimed the vocal on “Little Child” for himself and they fairly gave away “I Wanna Be Your Man” to the Rolling Stones.

On September 10, John and Paul encountered publicist Andrew Oldham in London’s West End.
The boys had been on the way
to Dick James’s office, window-shopping on Jermyn Street in an area overrun with music stores that Paul referred to as their “
Mecca
,” when a taxi drew up carrying the Rolling Stones’ snarky manager.
^*
Oldham was on his way to Studio 51 in Soho, where the Stones were rehearsing, and he invited the two Beatles to attend. During the cab ride over, he casually let drop that the Stones were looking for a follow-up to their first single—a half-assed cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On”—and wondered if they had any suggestions. Left unsaid, but certainly understood, was the preference for a Lennon-McCartney number.

Not more than a few minutes later, Paul recalled telling Mick, “
Well, Ringo’s got this track
on our album, but it won’t be a single and it might suit you guys.” John didn’t flinch. He regarded “I Wanna Be Your Man” as “
a throwaway
,” but even at that point it was still basically a work in progress. Paul had come up with a lick—“I want to be your lover, baby, I want to be your man”—and little more.
They played what they had
for the Stones—John used Keith’s guitar and Paul turned Bill Wyman’s bass upside down—
who were immediately intrigued. The song had their name written all over it, a stylish, bluesy vamp they could “Diddley up” when it came time to put their stamp on it. John recalled: “
So Paul and I just went off
in the corner of the room and finished the song while we were all still there, talking.”

The donation was both friendly and strategic. For John and Paul, songs were like currency. Every solid cover boosted their fame and fortune and allowed them to reap the benefits and lay back a little when their own singles began the slow slide down the polls. On almost any given week, one could flip through the pages of
Melody Maker
or
New Musical Express
and discover ads for records by, say, Tommy Quickly that carried the tagline: “Another Smash Hit from the Sensational Song Writing Team John Lennon and Paul McCartney.” Or an item that announced
NEWLEY WAXES BEATLES’ TUNE.
After a stunning string of Beatles hits, Beatles songs became a sort of status symbol.

Of course, the more famous the Beatles became, the more other bands greedily sought out Lennon-McCartney songs. Whereas John, Paul, and George once raked record stacks for undiscovered gems by Barrett Strong, James Ray, or Arthur Alexander, now mavericks combed the Beatles’ singles for B-sides they could hijack. Friends, eager to ride their coattails, routinely asked for spare songs, to the point where John and Paul grew guarded about their former generosity. Billy Kramer recalls an occasion in Bournemouth when he overheard John working on an early version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” “
Can I have that song
?” Kramer asked, having instantly recognized its potential, to which John shook his head emphatically and replied, “No, we’re going to do that ourselves.”

On September 15, 1963, the Stones opened for the Beatles at the Great Pop Prom at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The show was a milestone of sorts for both bands. An upscale benefit for the Printers’ Pension Corporation, the theater hosted a formally dressed crowd of donors drawn from the upper crust of British society. Everyone was on his best behavior: the Beatles, gentlemen to the core, wore their fancy mohair suits, and the ever-scruffy Stones showed up in dark trousers, pale blue shirts with ties, and dark blue leather waistcoats that made them look like waiters from Le Caprice.

But when it came to music, no one held anything back. The Stones did what the Stones do best—they blew out the walls in a torrent of blues-inspired mayhem. As one reviewer recalled, “
their act [was] fast
, wound-up, explosive.” And the Beatles brought down the house. “The Royal Albert Hall fairly shook on its foundations,” reported a cultural magazine that
covered the gig. Nothing remained intact once the bands took the stage, least of all the dignity of the fancy-dress crowd, which lost control of themselves, whistling and screaming like giddy teenagers.

It was the first of many such extraordinary events that would be repeated during the coming years. “
We were like kings
of the jungle then,” John remembered, seeing tony London at his feet. The scene dwarfed any dream they’d had in their heads all these years. Paul was especially impressed by the magnificence—and the glory. Before the show, the two bands were herded up a wide set of marble stairs at the back of the hall, facing Prince Consort Road, for a photo op. In the late afternoon, with sunlight sifting in through the mullioned windows, Paul remembers looking over at the others, beaming in their smart, stylish clothes, and thinking, “
This is it! London!
The Albert Hall!” Years later he would admit to the thrill it gave him, standing there with the other boys, the world seemingly at their fingertips. “We felt like gods!” he said. “We felt like fucking gods!”

Little did he realize that this was just the beginning.

Chapter 23
So This Is Beatlemania

N
o television show in Great Britain was more popular—or selective—than
Val Parnell’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium.
It was an institution: practically every set in the country was tuned to it each Sunday night as the top English stars and visiting American performers took part in the prestigious but corny variety show that aired live from the Argyll Street theater. Every major celebrity eventually put in an appearance: Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Laurence Olivier, Elizabeth Taylor, Nat King Cole—
Cliff Richard.
If, to Americans, the pinnacle of success was playing Carnegie Hall, its British equivalent was the Palladium, “home of the stars.” In Ringo’s estimation, “
there was nothing bigger
in the world than making it to the Palladium.” He’d always dreamed about it as a boy. It was the yardstick for success. “
My mum, Annie
, always used to tease Ritchie—‘See you on the
Palladium
’—when he was a boy, just practicing,” recalls Marie Crawford. “You’d always hear a parent say that as a joke, knowing their child had about as good a chance of getting there as winning the football pools.”