The Love You Make (20 page)

Cynthia froze where she was, certain that Brian and John did not want her to come forward. She peered nearsightedly in John’s direction at the front of the room.

“Hey John, is it okay if we take a couple of shots of the missus?” another photographer asked. “How about you and Cynthia together?”

The goading from the reporters and photographers kept up until John shrugged uncomfortably and motioned Cynthia over. They sat next to each other on chairs, awkwardly balanced, as the photographers descended, strobe lights flaring. As far as she remembered, this was the first official time they were photographed as husband and wife. She had finally stepped out of the shadows and into the limelight with him, yet somehow the moment felt less wonderful than she expected. In time, she would learn to hate it.

The entourage was met on the plane by several English journalists assigned to cover their trip, including the
Evening Standard’s
Maureen Cleave, who had written the original, quintessential newspaper piece describing them; Phil Spector, the American record producer who had met them on the London scene; the singing group the Ronettes, one of whom George had been dating; and some doting Capitol Records executives. The plane also contained several desperate businessmen who had booked themselves on the flight in order to have Brian Epstein captive. They had been unsuccessfully pursuing Brian for weeks with business propositions. All the same, they never got to him. All their notes sent via the stewardesses were politely denied, and most of them caught the next flight back to England.

Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall kept busy on the nine-hour flight counterfeiting Beatles’ signatures on the thousands of photographs they intended to pass out to the fans at the New York airport. Mal and Neil were becoming quite adept at forging the Beatles’ handwriting, but it would have taken ten men working a month to sign enough photographs for the crowd waiting at Kennedy Airport. New York had been whipped into a Beatle frenzy by Capitol Records. When “I Want to Hold Your Hand” blew off the top of the charts, Capitol splurged an unheard-of $50,000 on an advertising blitz the likes of which had never before been attempted.
The Beatles are coming! was
the cry, and they smothered the city with it in radio promos, on posters and bumper stickers and buttons. The print journalists were eating it up, with sarcastic articles about their hair and music. Capitol also came up with the clever gimmick of prerecording just the answer portions of carefully scripted interviews with the Beatles and sending thousands of these answer tapes to radio stations all around the country, each with a list of questions. This gave every community in the U.S.A. a personalized effect, as if the Beatles were coming
to your hometown.
The New York radio stations were having a field day cashing in on live, moment-to-moment coverage. WMCA, the nation’s biggest and most influential local rock station, gave breathless bulletins on their progress across the Atlantic: “It is now eight-seventeen, Beatle-time, and the four Mop Tops are now eleven-hundred miles off-shore …”

By the time the Beatles’ plane touched down in New York and taxied to the arrivals building, the spectacle that was waiting for them was slightly incomprehensible. Never had there been an airport reception like this, save for Lindbergh. The International Arrivals Building was literally swarming with fans, like bees on a hive, fans screaming, waving banners, hanging from railings on the observation deck, pressed flat against the tinted windows of the terminal by a pack five-deep behind them. When the plane door was opened, the screaming of the fans was louder than the sound of the jet engines. For the first time the size of the crowd was slightly more disquieting than complimentary.

A cordon of New York policemen hustled the Beatles inside the terminal to the customs area. Although they did not have to wait in line, the unimpressed New York customs agents thoroughly searched each and every suitcase. In the large outer lounge a noisy crowd of over 200 American journalists waited for them, including a documentary film crew making a movie of their trip for English TV that dogged their every move. Unlike the Fleet Street press, which had been nothing but adoring once they took notice of them, the American press was out to nail the Beatles. The sudden hype from Capitol Records, coupled with the dubiousness of the lasting quality of such songs as “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” reeked of a gimmick. At best, the New York press thought the Beatles would be a passing fad, and if they could make fools of them at the press conference, they would.

The conference started with the Beatles assuming positions at a table in front of individual microphones. Brian hung back, nervously stroking his chin. When the room did not at once quiet down for the press conference to begin, John Lennon himself started the proceedings with a big, scouse,
“Shaaaaarup!”

“How do you like this welcome?” a reporter asked.

“So this is America,” Ringo said, looking around. “They all seem out of their minds.”

“Are you going to get a haircut?” they were asked, which brought much laughter from the crowd.

“We had one yesterday,” John said cheerfully.

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

“It’s a dirty lie.”

“What about the campaign in Detroit to stamp out the Beatles?”

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

“What do you do when you’re cooped up in your rooms between shows?”

George: “We ice skate.”

“Do you guys hope to take anything home with you?”

“Rockefeller Center.”

By now the press were having a good time with them. “What do you think of Beethoven?” they were asked.

“I love him,” Ringo said, “especially his poems.”

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

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

At this point the Beatles recognized Murray the K, the fast-talking, slightly abrasive American disc jockey, who was dressed in a loud sports jacket and porkpie hat. Murray had worked his way up to the front of the room and was trying to get the Beatles’ attention. George snidely told Murray, “I love your hat.”

Murray whipped the hat off his head and handed it to George. “Here, you can have it.”

A technician from CBS hollered, “Tell Murray the K to stop the crap.” Ringo looked at Murray and said, “Cut the crap out, the guy says.”

When it was clear that the boys had charmed the most cynical reporter, Brian brought the press conference to a halt, and the Beatles were ushered from the terminal into a waiting fleet of limousines. They were escorted by four New York City police cars plus two motorcycle cops, all with sirens wailing, to the Plaza Hotel. The Plaza, which had innocently booked the rooms not knowing who or what the Beatles were, was now an armed camp. Police barricades crisscrossed the Fifth Avenue entrance of the hotel, holding back a throng of fans ten feet deep on the Grand Army Plaza, some of whom had been waiting since dawn in the freezing February weather. As the day wore on the crowd grew larger still, until traffic on Fifth Avenue had to be diverted. All the business in the hotel was disrupted, including the switchboard, which was swamped with calls for the Beatles. The hotel security had to be doubled for the length of their stay, and guests who were dining in the gracious Palm Court restaurant had to be asked to remove their Beatle wigs.

The Beatles, unable to leave the hotel because of the overwhelming crowds, were ensconced on the twelfth floor in ten interconnecting rooms. Although they were too high up to hear the screaming of the crowd below, just venturing near enough to the windows to be seen caused a visible wave of frenzied emotion on Fifth Avenue. They spent the day watching American television, which offered extensive news footage of their arrival and press conference. They also chatted amiably and freely with scores of disc jockeys who had managed to fast-talk their way through the bewildered operators at the Plaza switchboard. The phone calls were taped or broadcast live on stations around the country, and the Beatles blithely and ignorantly gave away thousands of dollars’ worth of free promotion. When Brian found out about it, he stormed into their suite and ordered them off the phone. They spent the rest of the afternoon amusing themselves by taunting the crowds in the street below until a police sergeant appeared at the door demanding they keep away from the windows. When Neil Aspinall told them this, the windows became a major plaything, much to the frustration of the New York police below.

While most visitors were kept out of the Beatles’ rooms, Murray the K had managed to be escorted upstairs by one of the Ronettes. The Beatles had met the Ronettes on the London social circuit the previous fall, and George Harrison had had a brief affair with Mary. After the Ronettes brought Murray the K upstairs, he was impossible to remove. He was soon overriding Brian’s instructions and started broadcasting live over the phone from the Beatles’ rooms. Yet he was so powerful on New York radio that no one dared ask him to leave, and he was allowed to fasten himself onto the entourage like a barnacle. Much to Brian’s great annoyance, Murray the K soon pronounced himself the “Fifth Beatle,” and the name stuck for all time.
⁸

The first night in town, George Harrison came down with the flu, accompanied by a high fever and inflamed throat. The hotel doctor confined him to his room. George’s sister Louise, who had married an American and emigrated to St. Louis several years before, flew to New York to nurse her twenty-year-old brother.

On Sunday, the day of the actual broadcast, the entire nation was kept abreast of George Harrison’s progress with the flu. As the day wore on news bulletins emanating from the Beatles’ twelfth-floor encampment said that George was indeed improving and that he would be well enough to join the group on the program that evening. In truth, George Harrison was seriously ill and running a high fever. However, it was generally agreed between Brian and the rest of the boys that short of death it would be folly for George to miss their premier performance in America. Even Ed Sullivan said that if George was too sick to appear on his show, he’d put on a Beatle wig and join them himself. A doctor was summoned to the suite to shoot George full of medicines and, according to Neil, a whopping dose of amphetamines, which the other boys were already gulping down orally. George was loaded into a limousine and driven to the Sullivan studio, where a guitar was stuck in his hands. It is much to his credit that he managed to give a lively performance that evening.

Ed Sullivan was having one of the most difficult weeks in the history of his program. For a man who had presented entire marching contingents from the Soviet Union in full costume, followed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on the same stage moments later, hosting the four-man group was a nightmare. Sullivan was a great exploiter but an even greater cynic. He thought he had seen just about everything the week he introduced Elvis on his show, but it was nothing compared to the Beatles. The press hadn’t let them alone all week; his rehearsals were disrupted and the schedules wrecked. Like the Plaza Hotel, the theater had been turned into an armed camp. Sullivan had received 50,000 requests for tickets for a theater that seated a little over 700. Several thousand of the requests were from VIPs in the entertainment business or government, and turning them down was a giant diplomatic headache. Just before the show, Brian searched out Sullivan backstage and in his finest West End accent informed him, “I would like to know the exact wording of your introduction.”

Sullivan gave Brian a sidelong glance. “I would like you to get lost,” he told him.

Considering the auspiciousness of the event, the actual introduction was superb. In his inimitable, deadpan delivery of a mortician, interrupted by the periodic screams of the audience at just the mention of the Beatles’ name, Sullivan first read a congratulatory telegram sent to them from Elvis Presley wishing them luck.
⁹
The Beatles, who were in their places behind the curtain at the time, were thrilled. Then, shouting over the screams from the audience—screams that did not abate for the entire five minutes the Beatles were on the air—Sullivan intoned, “America, judge for yourself.”

Seventy-three million Americans watched the Ed Sullivan show that snowy, cold February night. Families throughout the country, kept in by the inclement weather, gathered around their sets curious to see for the first time this thing called the Beatles. In New York, it is said, not one hub-cap was stolen from an automobile, not one major crime was committed by a teenager. Even Billy Graham broke with tradition by watching TV on the Sabbath.

The Beatles were overnight
the most talked about phenomenon in America. By the following morning the demand for information about the Beatles was so great that Brian had to hold another press conference in the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel. More than 250 newspapers, TV and radio stations, and wire services were represented, including the BBC, the three major American networks,
Time
magazine, and Dr. Joyce Brothers, the syndicated psychologist who was there to determine the psychological ramifications of the Beatles. For those who enjoyed the Beatles’ performance at the airport when they landed, this second conference topped it by lasting so long that the Beatles were served a roast chicken lunch while it went on.

The following day a blizzard grounded all planes, and Brian had to arrange to transport his precious cargo by rail to Washington, D.C., where they were to perform that evening at the Washington Coliseum. Three thousand youngsters were waiting for them in the snow at the station, while another 7,000 turned up outside of the coliseum. At the Shoreham Hotel, where they stayed, the management tried to clear the entire seventh floor for them, but one family refused to vacate their room. Shortly before the Beatles’ arrival, the management pretended there was a power failure and shut off the lights, water, and heat on that floor until the guests moved out.