chapter sixteen
Sound check: The Beatles’ last gig at the Cavern.
(Photo by Michael Ward/Getty Images)
The Liverpool the Beatles returned to, even though it had only been a couple of months, was subtly different from the city they’d left. They barely had time to investigate it, though, because they had to figure some way to keep alive until they could get back to Hamburg. Paul McCartney took a job winding coils for an electrical firm right away, at his father’s insistence, but the others tried to delay finding work as long as they could. There was a problem: Allan Williams had opened a Liverpool outpost of the Top Ten Club, and soon after it had opened it burned to the ground, and part of the aftermath was Williams checking into the hospital with ulcers. The band didn’t have a management contract with him, and he’d definitely screwed things up with Koschmider, so they were hustling their own gigs. Bob Wooler, the DJ at the Cavern, was sort of looking after them in the meanwhile, and when Stu arrived from Hamburg in mid-January, they were back to a five-piece. Stu was going back to art school in Liverpool and had applied for a teaching position, but Astrid was coming for a visit soon; otherwise his plans were vague. John was hanging around Nems, the furniture store–turned–record shop owned by the local Epstein family, whose son Brian had, after failing to make an acting career in London, taken the store and modernized it, emphasizing televisions, radios, record players, and records. He aimed to make Nems the best record store in Liverpool, and claimed he could get anything in print. One thing he got was the latest London American 45s, and Lennon was often in the listening booth, finding material for the band, and he unsurprisingly zeroed in on the Aldon writers, and on records produced by Scepter’s A&R man, Luther Dixon.
It was important to come up with new songs, because now they had competition: Rory and the Hurricanes had returned from Hamburg, King-Size Taylor and the Dominoes had gotten a lot better, as had the Big 3 (Cass and the Cassanovas minus Cass), and, of course, there were Gerry and the Pacemakers, who also returned from Hamburg in February. All of them were stunned by the Beatles, who’d been whipped into shape by the Hamburg experience and were actually working seven days a week. A lot of the gigs were in tough clubs in the north end of town, and one night some yobbos had cornered Stu in the venue’s toilet and beat the crap out of him. The rest of the band came to his rescue, and in the melee, John broke a finger.
Meanwhile, though, they really wanted to get back to Germany, so Paul drafted a letter in which he apologized for the incident at the Bambi, expressed his opinion that deportation was out of proportion to the offense, and turned it over to Allan Williams’s secretary, who wrote out two copies, one for Paul and one for Pete, had them sign it, and mailed it off to the head of the Ausländerpolizei. Bob Wooler lobbied the Cavern’s new owner, Ray McFall, to let them play the club, but the only slot open was the lunchtime show, kind of hard to make for anyone with a day job like Paul. Hot dogs and soup were available, but no alcohol, and their smell now competed with all the Cavern’s other smells, as the band tried hard to win over a new crowd of office workers, secretaries, and other working types. This left evenings open, and Mrs. Best was hustling gigs for those nights. By March, the Cavern offered them an evening, and things were starting to move in Germany, too. Williams had a tentative agreement with Eckhorn for a Top Ten residency once the legal issues were worked out. Sometime around April, Stu and Astrid moved back to Hamburg. Stu and his mother had been fighting incessantly about the couple cohabiting (although they were living with Williams), and Stu hadn’t gotten the position at the art college he’d applied for. Fine; he’d go back and paint, and Beatle, too, if they ever returned. Which, around the end of March, they did. The German police had put Paul and Pete on a sort of probation, good for a year, and charges would be dropped if they didn’t get in more trouble. George was now legal, and the Top Ten was a nicer place—marginally—than the Kaiserkeller. Some of the time was spent backing up Tony Sheridan, and in order to keep up the long hours, he introduced them to Preludin, a diet drug (but not an amphetamine) that kept you going. The Top Ten’s toilet attendant had a little jar and sold them to the musicians; John in particular loved them.
There were still problems for the band, though. For one thing, Williams was taking a managerial cut of their salary, and Eckhorn was also deducting income tax and Germany’s church tax (government-required tithing) from their pay, which was illegal since they weren’t German citizens. This had them upset; they had been the ones who secured the invitation from Eckhorn to play the Top Ten, yet they were paying Williams as if he’d done it. They also resented the German tax thing, although Eckhorn quickly folded on that. But there was a deeper problem that they were going to have to deal with. As Tony Sheridan saw it, “Pete was a crap drummer … He was just not competent, and there were discrepancies between his feet and his hands.” In Liverpool, they kind of needed him, and they definitely needed his house to store equipment in, and Mrs. Best to hustle for them, but he wasn’t cutting it in Hamburg. Whatever, they were stuck with him for a while, because they soon extended their contract until the beginning of July.
One Beatle who wouldn’t be long for the group, though, was Stu, who began excusing himself from gigs, forcing Paul to get up off the piano and play bass, which he really didn’t want to do. But Stu had applied to a Hamburg art school, his plans to marry Astrid were moving forward, and in the end, he felt more like a painter than a Beatle.
In the middle of this, on June 22, they had a recording session. Polydor Records, a major German firm, had decided to take a chance on Tony Sheridan, and Bert Kaempfert, a staff producer, had them show up at 8:00 A.M. (which, after all, was just after work) to cut a few numbers. Tony was hot on “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” which they sometimes played, and the band was allowed a couple of numbers without him, “Ain’t She Sweet,” a number that dated to the ’20s, and an instrumental called “Beatle Bop.” These tunes, they were told, would be released in America as singles. But the session’s clear focus was on Tony Sheridan. The sound isn’t all that good, because Pete had had his bass drum and tom taken away by an engineer who thought he was better off the fewer drums he had to manipulate, and not all the Beatles played on all the tunes (Stu was there, but only as an observer), and, in fact, when the record came out, Polydor—invoking a clause in the contract they signed—identified the band as the Beat Brothers.
On July 1, the Beatles played their last show at the Top Ten on this visit. Stu officially left the group, and Klaus Voormann asked if he could join on bass—he’d been given Stu’s—but John told him that Paul already had the job. They told Peter Eckhorn they’d be back, while hoping all the way back to Liverpool they wouldn’t.
The Beatles returned home on July 3, and not long afterward, Liverpool had its own music magazine. Mersey Beat was the brainchild of Bill Harry, one of their friends, which started to chronicle the sudden eruption of musical talent in the city. The first issue had a piece of writing by John Lennon about “The Dubious Origin of Beatles,” and if that went over, he’d left a bunch of stories and poems with Harry to plug holes in future issues. Harry needed investment, and he approached Brian Epstein, who turned him down, and the Cavern’s owner, Ray McFall, became the primary investor. Epstein did, however, make sure copies were delivered to Nems for the teenagers who came in to buy records, including the Beatles.
Mona Best was getting them work at a far higher price than ever—£15 was where negotiations started—and, even better, she’d found them a van. Somewhere around the time they’d left for Hamburg the second time, Pete’s best friend, a guy named Neil Aspinall who spent a lot of time on the scene, entered into a relationship with Mona, who was twice his age, and after quitting his accounting course, which he hated, he’d bought a van. He’d previously driven the band to gigs, and now he was their roadie. And they were getting gigs. Suddenly the lunchtime session at the Cavern was packed, and they shocked the local music scene with that £15 fee the Cavern paid them for their first evening show. But they were also attracting crowds like never before, and the walls of the Cavern ran with condensation from the bodies packed inside. The second issue of Mersey Beat came out with the headline BEATLE’S SIGN RECORDING CONTRACT! above Astrid’s picture of them (Paul unfortunately identified as Paul MacArthy), and news about the Polydor session and Stu staying behind. Nems took seven dozen copies, and Brian asked Harry if he’d be interested in having him write a record review column, a suggestion Harry was happy to agree to.
Allan Williams came back into the picture at the end of July, hiring lawyers to try to get £104 from the band, and so Paul went to a lawyer’s office and counter-filed with a document that began “I am a member of the Jazz Group known as the Beatles.” Williams’s claims had very little legal weight—he still didn’t have a contract with the group, nor would they have given him one—and he folded a few weeks later. But the incident pointed out something essential: they did need a manager now that Neil had given them the means to traverse the country. Bob Wooler, Bill Harry, Ray McFall, and others considered it, but all discarded the idea. Mona Best was doing what she could—they were now making £25 a week, far more than most of their peers—but she didn’t want to do it, either. At the beginning of August, some local girls organized the Beatles Fan Club, and at the end of the month, Bob Wooler wrote the first straight article about the band for Mersey Beat (John’s “Dubious Origin” had contained such possibly inaccurate details as a man on a flaming pie appearing in the sky and giving them their name). Things were in suspended animation, and at the end of September, John and Paul announced they were going on holiday and decamped for Paris. Their intent was to visit with Jürgen Vollmer and to soak up some of the local music scene, but the most momentous thing that happened was that, after looking at the locals, they induced Vollmer to cut their hair into a kind of bowl-like, comb-down style similar to what young Frenchmen were wearing. The Beatle haircut was born.
In late October, Stu mailed them copies of their record. Well, actually, Tony Sheridan’s record: “My Bonnie” b/w “The Saints,” by Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers. Not exactly what they were expecting, but it was a record, and it was them. This led to a story every Beatles fan knows, although the details are usually wrong. On October 28, a kid named Raymond Jones walked into Nems and asked its manager, Brian Epstein, if he had the record, adding that the backing group was the Beatles, a local band. Reports that Brian had never heard of them are unlikely, what with those seven dozen Mersey Beats trumpeting THE BEATLE’S and their recording contract, even if there had been a couple of issues of the paper since then. Still, he was having trouble finding the record, and he called Bill Harry, who arranged for him to attend a lunchtime show at the Cavern on November 9. It wasn’t the kind of place Epstein usually went, and he stuck out with his fine clothing (he was planning to head to his tailor’s after the show), but he was very, very impressed. He thought the band looked great, and although they needed to work on their stagecraft some, there was an energy there that couldn’t be denied. Of his first impression, he later said, “I knew they would be bigger than Elvis. I knew they would be the biggest in the world.” He was so knocked out that he almost forgot why he was there, and after the show, backstage, he asked George about the record (he now had three special orders for it), and George asked Bob Wooler to play it. He copied down the details, excused himself, and went on to his fitting.
He knew right off that he wanted to manage them, but he also knew that he’d have to be very careful how he approached them about it. He attended a number of evening shows, and as many Cavern lunchtimes as he could squeeze in, and he set up a meeting to talk about management on November 29, after telling his family that he was thinking of doing it. He’d ordered a couple of boxes of “My Bonnie” and put a BEATLES RECORD AVAILABLE HERE sign in the window, watched them evaporate, and ordered more. The Beatles finally showed up for the meeting hours late, accompanied by Bob Wooler, and Brian asked them about their history, how the record had come about, and so on. He agreed, in the end, to act as manager for a while to see if it would work and said he’d be headed down to London with a few copies of the record to see if he could get some action from the record companies whose product he sold in enough quantity that they all knew his name. He also checked with Allan Williams, who cautioned him to get something in writing or they’d screw Brian like they had him.
In London, his best connections were with EMI, where Ron White, the general marketing manager, remembered him from when he’d been a salesman and called at Nems. He promised to show it to the company’s A&R men, and also took a copy of the band’s contract with Kaempfert and Polydor to show to a German-speaking colleague. Next stop was Decca, where they were polite—how could they not be, when he was moving so much of their product?—and took a copy. Then he went to another department, where he met with Tony Barrow, a Liverpool lad who’d moved to London to take a job with Decca writing liner notes, and who, under the pseudonym Disker, wrote a record review column for the Liverpool Echo. He didn’t much like the record but promised he’d mention it to his superiors. Having done what he could, Epstein got on the sleeper train for Liverpool. On Sunday, December 3, the Beatles, as they’d been told to do, knocked on the door at Nems, which was closed for business, but Brian was there working on Christmas sales. Well, three of them did: Paul was missing, and when they called his parents, it turned out he’d just gotten out of bed and was taking a bath, which didn’t impress Epstein at all. “Well, he may be late,” said George, “but he’s very clean.” He finally showed up, and Brian filled them in on the London trip, adding that nothing could happen until it became clear what the German contract said. Brian also set up a meeting with Pete, who’d been handling the bookings at this point, to learn what he knew. He was shocked that they were only getting £15 a night, too; he knew enough about show business to know they were worth more. The pubs were now open, so they moved the discussion to the Grapes, the pub next door to the Cavern, where the band unwound after gigs, and in the ensuing conversation, John and Paul mentioned that they’d written a bunch of songs, although they weren’t currently performing any of them onstage. Brian knew that this could be as lucrative a source of revenue as live performance and records, and he filed the info away for further contemplation. At the end of the session in the pub, the band had heard enough, and John said, “Right, then, Brian. Manage us.”
He got right to work. The fan club hadn’t really done anything, and Paul had Roberta “Bobby” Brown, a friend of his current girlfriend’s, take it over. Brian, however, told her to stop, which led to a meeting between them, out of which Brian realized she was really on the ball, and he acquiesced. Then he had a visit from Graham Pauncefort, who worked for Deutsche Grammophon (Great Britain), and wanted to talk Christmas sales, as well as the plans the parent company, Polydor, had for expanding into pop music in Britain. As a result, DG announced that they’d release “My Bonnie” on January 5, 1962. He also took the time to meet the Beatles’ parents (or, in John’s case, Aunt Mimi), all of whom were very impressed—Mona Best in particular: she was pregnant with Neil’s baby and was going to have to cut back on Beatle activity.
Brian sent a letter to EMI following up on his visit, and got a translation of the Kaempfert contract back, which said that if the band’s management served notice they wouldn’t renew it, it would expire at the end of June 1962. Meanwhile, the sneaky Beatles had an obligation to fulfill: a local music-biz figure named Sam Leach had gotten them a gig in Aldershot, a suburb southwest of London proper, over two hundred miles from Liverpool. Leach had advertised three bands and put an ad in the local paper, which failed to run it. The other two groups were figments of Leach’s imagination, and in the end, the Beatles played to about a dozen and a half people, and the gig was immortalized by Liverpool photographer and Beatle buddy Dick Matthews, the last Beatles show that virtually nobody attended. Leach had promised them £20 but could only come up with £12 from his own pockets, so the group refused to talk with him for the entire journey home, and Leach’s dreams of wealth through undercutting Brian Epstein and managing the Beatles evaporated.
So, shortly, did the Beatles’ chances with EMI, or so it seemed. They sent a stiffly worded letter stating that they had “sufficient groups of this type at the present time under contract and … it would not be advisable for us to sign any further contracts of this nature at present.” But Brian wasn’t too concerned yet; Decca had just hired a new man, Mike Smith, and he was eager to sign his first blockbuster, so he came up to Liverpool to see the band at the Cavern on December 13. This caused an enormous hubbub: a London A&R man had come to Liverpool! Brian hustled to get a proper, legal set of management papers together. The band closed the year out with a big blowout at the Cavern, a Christmas party with Gerry and the Pacemakers and King-Size Taylor and the Dominoes. But the show was almost a disaster—Pete called in sick. At the last minute, they found a replacement, Billy Fury and the Hurricanes’ drummer, Ringo Starr. Everyone remembered the show as a lot of fun; Ringo fit right in. Too bad that he was going to emigrate to America, or so he said. In the end, he found the emigration papers too much and left the country, anyway: to Hamburg to play with Tony Sheridan. This followed a post-Christmas visit by Peter Eckhorn to Liverpool with Sheridan. There was the matter of assembling a band for Sheridan, but he also wanted to find out what was going on with the Beatles, who’d realized that much as they hated Hamburg when they were there, they missed it when they weren’t. Eckhorn found out, all right; the new manager was plenty tough with him, and in the end, Brian had gotten a better price for the boys, who’d start at the Top Ten on March 1 if all else panned out.
Next on the band’s agenda was a “recording test,” a session that would be recorded, for Decca in London, on January 1. It wasn’t an audition; Mike Smith had seen them in the Cavern and noted their competence, but now it was necessary to see if they could hold up in the studio. They knocked off fifteen songs, from Chuck Berry (“Memphis”) to show tunes (“Til There Was You”) to corny old favorites (“Besame Mucho”) and even three Lennon-McCartney tunes (including “Love of the Love”). John Lennon later characterized the resulting tape as “terrible.” Smith thanked them and noted that because of various goings-on at Decca, it would be at least three weeks until there was any decision at all. They all trekked back to Liverpool and saw the latest issue of Mersey Beat, with its headline BEATLES TOP POLL! They’d beaten all the competition, and the paper had spelled their name right! (Not Paul’s, though; he was now McArtrey.) The next day, Polygram released “My Bonnie” in Britain, and despite good reviews in both the trade and fan press, it sank without a trace. Brian ordered a bunch of copies for the shop, but pretty much everyone in Liverpool who’d wanted one had bought a German pressing when they’d first come in, and they sat in the back, unsold. Well, that was the retail business for you. Brian still had the management contract his lawyers had prepared, and on January 24, they signed it (or some of them did: Brian never affixed his signature to it for some reason), appointing him manager until February 1967. He would take 15 percent. The next order of business was to apply to the BBC for an audition for a performance on the radio, which was sent off to the regional office in Manchester and accepted practically by return mail: they were on for February 8. Things were chugging right along when Brian received a summons to London for lunch with Decca.
It wasn’t what he thought or hoped for, though; according to his autobiography, Dick Rowe, the head of A&R, told him, “Not to mince words, Mr. Epstein, we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups of guitarists are on their way out.” Another executive told him, “The boys won’t go, Mr. Epstein. We know these things. You have a good record business in Liverpool. Stick to that.” Rowe later disputed the quote attributed to him, not least because the only “guitar group” in England was the Shadows, who were doing quite well, thanks. What actually seems to have been the case was that Decca was trying to decide between the Beatles and another group, Brian Poole and the Tremilos, and Rowe was pressuring Mike Smith toward the latter, because the idea was not only to record the group’s own records, but to keep them on hand as a house band for when a singer needed rock backup. Brian was mortified and slunk back home. At least the BBC was interested, and they headed off to Manchester, where they went through their paces and were accepted for a broadcast (the auditioner noting that they at least had “a tendency to play music” despite being “rocky”), and they were given a date of March 7 to record a program to be broadcast nationally the next day.
Brian wasn’t going to give up on the recording contract, though, so he took a copy of the Decca audition with him and returned to London. He took the occasion to visit an acquaintance, Robert Boast, manager of the HMV record store on Oxford Street, and, sitting in his office, he complained that he knew the band would be big if only someone would listen to them. Boast couldn’t—his job was selling the records, not making them—but HMV had a small studio in the basement where they cut discs, and Boast suggested that he could make demo discs out of the tape because not everyone had a tape deck in their office. So they went into the basement, and as Jim Foy, the disc cutter, ran off some discs, he told Brian he liked what he was hearing, and Brian told him that three of the tunes were by the band. That was something few groups could claim, and Foy asked Brian if he’d published them, and Brian said no. Foy offered to call the general manager of EMI’s publishing wing, Sid Colman. In no time, Brian and Colman were talking. Colman wanted to publish the Lennon-McCartney numbers. Brian wanted a recording contract and told him EMI could publish them if they had a contract. Exactly what happened next is unknown, but on February 13, Brian had an appointment with an A&R man, George Martin, at EMI. (It’s unlikely that Colman set this up, because he didn’t like Martin at all.) Martin didn’t much like what he heard but took a disc from Brian and thanked him. Meanwhile, across the street, Sid Colman had been listening to some of the discs and asked one of his song pluggers, Kim Bennett, what he thought about this Lennon-McCartney song, “Like Dreamers Do.” Bennett liked it, but not the group’s name, and agreed to go to EMI and tell them that the publishers were willing to finance a recording session so they’d have publishing on the song. EMI told them to stick to publishing and let them make the records.
The beginning of March saw two more milestones for the band: the BBC broadcast and a present from Brian, who took them to his tailor to be fitted for matching suits to wear onstage and for the broadcast, even though it was radio. It was about image; all four had adopted Jürgen Vollmer’s shaggy haircut, they’d found some Cuban-heeled boots that they all liked, and these suits—pale blue mohair, with narrow lapels and tight pants—were certainly not like anything any other provincial beat group was wearing. Still, Brian wouldn’t let them wear the suits at the Cavern, and certainly not on their upcoming trip to Hamburg. There’d been some changes there, and Brian had had a visit from Horst Fasching, a criminal who’d been caught but never convicted, as hard a man as Hamburg had produced, who informed him that the Top Ten gigs weren’t going to happen, but, instead, the Beatles would play a new club that was still being renovated, owned by his confederate Manfred Weissleder. To seal the deal, he pressed a DM 1000 note into Brian’s hands. And since the probationary period for John, Paul, and Pete was about to expire, Brian would have to go through more German bureaucracy to get them visas. Waiting for the new club to be finished—it now had a name, the Star-Club—they still didn’t have a date, although they heard that Tony Sheridan would be opening it. He’d be doing it without Ringo, though; Ringo’s grandmother had taken ill and died, and he was in Liverpool sorting that out. Plus, the Hurricanes had had a good offer that would carry them until Butlin’s opened in June, playing American Army bases in France. Before he went off to join them, he played a couple of more gigs substituting when Pete Best was sick or couldn’t make the show for some reason. He loved the whole experience—these lads were on a much higher level than anyone else he’d ever played with—and just before he got ready to leave for France, they asked him to join. Ringo appreciated the invitation, but he had obligations to fulfill.
So did the Beatles. April 10 saw all but George (who’d been sidelined by a case of German measles) fly to Hamburg, where Manfred Weissleder treated them to steaks and showed them the club. It was pretty impressive: an old cinema, with a huge stage, excellent sound system, a balcony, and, most importantly, guest quarters for the bands, and a brand-new bathroom with tub and shower. Boy, Stu should see this! Of course, he had it better staying with Astrid and her mother. Or rather, he had had; on the very day the Beatles arrived in Hamburg, one of the many headaches he’d been having got much worse around noon, and he went into convulsions. Astrid’s mother called an ambulance and then Astrid, and at 4:30, in the ambulance with Astrid holding him, Stu Sutcliffe died. The band found out the next day, when Weissleder loaned them his car to pick up Brian and George at the airport. They got there and found Klaus and Astrid, who broke the news. Millie Sutcliffe, Stu’s mother, was on the plane with Brian and George, coming to pick up her son’s body. The funeral was set for Liverpool on April 19, and Klaus and Astrid flew over for it. It was a small affair; the Beatles were working, although they were represented by Cynthia, John’s girlfriend, and George’s mother. Astrid stayed with Millie until Millie accused her of murdering Stuart, whereupon she went to stay at Allan and Beryl Williams’s place. John plunged into a deep depression, but there was work to do, so they got down to it. Brian typed up an account of opening night to mail to the fan club, and it was also reprinted in Mersey Beat, and in it he didn’t mention Stuart, but did mention that the boys would play again at the Cavern on June 9.
In London, there’d been a scandal at EMI. Not the kind of thing that would interest the general public, but one that called out for action within the company. George Martin had left his wife and moved in with his longtime secretary, Judy Lockhart Smith, with whom he’d been having an affair for several years. It was also time to see if EMI would renew his contract as A&R man and producer for Parlophone, which was likely because he’d been doing remarkable things, particularly with comedy records, but also film soundtracks and miscellaneous pop records. Martin had requested royalties on the records he’d been producing, but EMI turned him down flat. Angry about the scandal, they renewed his contract but added a stipulation: that band Sid Colman and Kim Bennett had been on about? The one Martin hadn’t liked? He was going to produce their record. In fact, the company was preparing a contract. On May 9, Brian went down to London to talk to George Martin. They sat down and went over the offer, which was the same boilerplate EMI gave all their new acts: six sides over the first year, EMI paying for studio time, no advance, contract was for four years with an option to renew coming up annually, worldwide rights. First recording session would be on June 6, and they shook hands. Excited, Brian went to the nearest post office and sent telegrams, one to Bill Harry to break the news in Mersey Beat, and one to the Beatles: CONGRATULATIONS BOYS EMI REQUEST RECORDING SESSION PLEASE REHEARSE NEW MATERIAL. To which the boys cabled back: WHEN ARE WE GOING TO BE MILLIONAIRES (John), PLEASE WIRE TEN THOUSAND POUND ADVANCE ROYALTIES (Paul), and PLEASE ORDER FOUR NEW GUITARS (George). Such comedians! Maybe Cliff Richard had seen £10,000 in royalties, but a beat group from the north of England? In their giddiness over the news, Paul and John may have read it wrong, because they took “rehearse new material” to mean “write new material,” so that’s what they sat down and did.
The rest of their stay in Hamburg went by in a blur of Preludin and beer, but on May 24, they went back into the studio under Bert Kaempfert’s direction to cut some backing tracks for Tony Sheridan, two traditional American songs (which shows how little Kaempfert understood what they were doing), “Swanee River” and “Sweet Georgia Brown.” That was it for Polydor and Germany; the next day, Brian signed the contract with EMI. Brian signed on behalf of his clients, the Beatles (Parlophone had spelled it “Beattles”), and it was countersigned and witnessed by Bob Wooler. Wooler negotiated the Beatles’ return to the Cavern, where they would appear exclusively for the two weeks following their return, and also have use of it for two afternoons to rehearse for the recording date. Then he did the Beatles another favor: he let Rory and the Hurricanes know that Allan Williams had just booked Jerry Lee Lewis for a night in Liverpool, and they cut short their French adventures—which were due to end soon, anyway, as the summer season at Butlin’s loomed—to come back and catch the show, which was a triumph. It was a season for American rock & rollers, apparently, thanks to promoter Don Arden; he sent Gene Vincent to Hamburg, where he overlapped at the Star-Club with the Beatles for several hair-raising days. Vincent was out of control, drinking scotch from the bottle and waving around a gun he’d somehow acquired, at one point kidnapping George on a mission to his hotel to shoot his wife, and handing George the gun. Fortunately, the situation dissolved before it could get serious.
On June 2, they landed back in Britain at Manchester Airport to be greeted by Neil with manila envelopes from Brian containing copies of Mersey Beat with the article about their signing and several typed pages showing their schedule for the next weeks. They unpacked, they rehearsed, and Pete went home immediately to check on his mother, who was now seven months pregnant and had just lost her mother, Pete’s beloved grandmother. And then, a few days later, they piled into the van (Brian took the train) and headed off to London. They had a day off once they arrived and wandered around a city they knew mostly from hearsay: “It was like fellows down from the north for a coach trip,” as Paul put it. And then on June 6, they went into the studio and cut “Besame Mucho,” “Love Me Do,” “PS I Love You,” and “Ask Me Why,” of which two were understood to be for the single, one of which had to be a Lennon-McCartney song that Sid Colman would publish. What was odd about the session, and telling of what was to come, was that the band insisted that they had new material that was better than “Like Dreamers Do,” the song that had gotten them signed, and Martin had let them record it, not a thing any other producer would have allowed. The session took twenty minutes, and afterward they all crowded into the control room to hear the playback. Martin sternly ran down some technical details about the microphones and filled them in about their future with Parlophone. They listened silently, taking it in. Finally, Martin said, “Look, I’ve laid into you for quite a time, you haven’t responded. Is there anything you don’t like?”
There was more silence, and finally George Harrison gave Martin a hard stare and said, “Yeah. I don’t like your tie.” There was a bit of tension, and suddenly everyone started laughing, and the laughter continued for some minutes. Finally, the band left, and Martin reflected that they had charisma, and it was contagious. Too bad about the drummer, though; he was absolute crap and would have to go. In the end, Martin decided the session hadn’t produced anything they could issue. Time to try again.
It’s odd to consider now, but on their night off in London, the Beatles didn’t go see a band in a club because there weren’t any. London was the center of England’s government, cultural industry, record and music publishing business, and media, and there was no pop music scene to speak of. Promising lads would be swept up and recorded, but there were no long nights of bands sweating it out in front of crowds the way there was in Liverpool, no chance for a young band to figure out what they were doing and get better. But although the Beatles didn’t see it on this first trip down, something was stirring; despite roadblocks thrown up by the Musicians’ Union, some American music was filtering into the clubs. Chris Barber was behind some of it; in late 1957, he’d sponsored Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a hot-guitar-playing evangelist who didn’t mind performing with jazz bands or in nightclubs, and then Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, a harmonica-and-guitar duo who’d been discovered by New York’s folk scene some years back, came in the spring of 1958. The crowds loved them. Later that year, Barber managed a coup: his old idol Muddy Waters, along with Otis Spann on piano. Knowing he could sell out the Roundhouse club for this kind of music anytime he wanted to, he organized a secret gig there, which drew a full house—ninety people—who sat in stunned, respectful silence. Then there was a short British tour, with the last gig in London. Although some jazz fans disliked Muddy’s singing, the younger ones, like a gangly teenager named John Baldry, were astonished by having the good luck to actually see something like this. Muddy went home and talked up the Roundhouse, and Memphis Slim’s ears perked up. He’d just moved to Chicago, but when Barber asked him to come over, he agreed immediately. Before the end of the next year, he’d made plans to move to Europe; these people actually listened, and they really didn’t care if you were black. Of course, Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies couldn’t believe their good fortune as they continued to play with Barber and watch these Americans perform. Later they and Long John Baldry would join together in something called Blues Incorporated, an all-electric blues band that debuted on March 17, 1962, in a basement club in Ealing, where one tiny ad in Jazz News drew over one hundred people to the gig. People were said to have come from as far away as Cheltenham, which seemed ridiculous but wasn’t; a serious young man from there with a thick head of blond hair asked to sit in and play guitar on the second night the club was open (Saturdays only), and introduced himself as Elmo Jones. Korner knew him from when the Barber band had had Sonny Boy Williamson over and done a short tour: Jones had waylaid him after the gig in Cheltenham and wanted to talk blues, which surprised Korner. The drummer, a trainee advertising guy with a fondness for jazz named Charlie Watts, was a bit boggled; he’d never heard a harmonica played like Cyril Davies did. Within a month, people were hitchhiking from Scotland to be at the Ealing Club on a Saturday night.
Or they came from closer in: at the railroad station in suburban Dartford, Keith Richards was headed in for a day at the art school in Sidcup and spotted a kid his age with a bunch of albums, including Chuck Berry’s One Dozen Berrys, under his arm. He approached the kid, Mike Jagger, who was headed into the city to attend the London School of Economics, and for the next twenty minutes they talked about music until Keith had to get off the train. By that time, the two had agreed to meet at Jagger’s house to explore his record collection, which, since Jagger was pretty well off, he’d gotten through mail order from the United States. It turned out they had a friend in common, Dick Taylor, who, like Keith, tried to play the music on those records on his guitar. By the fall of 1961, they’d put together a band of sorts, called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. At some point, they even cut a tape in someone’s living room, featuring a lot of Chuck Berry songs, an Elvis song, and “La Bamba.” Nor were they the only blues group in the suburbs: Paul Pond, who lived in Oxford, fronted a band called Thunder Odin’s Big Secret.
Cheltenham blues fan Elmo Jones (real name Brian, by the way) sought Pond out, and soon they were playing together. They, too, made a tape, and they thought it sounded great. Brian invited Paul to join the (nonexistent) band he led. Pond replied that he had a band, and he was its leader, but they remained friends. Still, Brian wanted a band of his own, so early in 1962, he moved to London and got serious. The May 2 issue of Jazz News had a classified from him: “Rhythm and Blues: Guitarist and Vocalist forming R&B band, require Harmonica and/or Tenor Sax, Piano, Bass, and Drums. Must be keen to rehearse. Plenty of interesting work available.” He immediately heard from Ian Stewart, a pianist with a good command of blues piano. Rehearsals started at the White Bear pub in Leicester Square, from which they were tossed because Brian kept stealing cigarettes. Alexis Korner sent a guitarist, Geoff Bradford, to rehearse, but he was a stiff-necked blues purist, and then in June, Jagger appeared, and the next week he brought along Dick Taylor and Keith Richards. At this point, Bradford stopped coming to rehearsals when he was asked to play Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. This was getting interesting.
Up north, the Beatles played their big welcome-home show at the Cavern on June 9 and on June 11 went back to Manchester to tape another BBC appearance, which was broadcast on the fifteenth. At about the same time, George Martin wrote Brian a letter saying that Pete had to go. He knew the other Beatles agreed, but he had his signed agreement and didn’t know how to terminate one of its signatories. While they mulled this over, Mona Best announced she was closing her club, the Casbah; the Beatles played one last time, and it shut. Brian went to Manchester to talk to Granada Television, a private network that now existed alongside the BBC and was proud of its regional operation, to see about getting them on TV, which resulted in a producer coming over to see the boys at the Cavern. Brian also bought a decent van for the band to use, although they were already worried about whether or not Neil would stay on when they canned Pete. Epstein was a busy man; Manfred Weissleder had been in touch about having the band come back for two weeks in November, sharing the billing with none other than Little Richard, who was still nominally preaching the gospel back in the United States but picking up some money to live on with gigs like this overseas. He also wanted them for the last two weeks of the year, including New Year’s Eve. And Brian signed his second act to a management contract: the Big Three, supposedly on the recommendation of John Lennon. He sent them to Hamburg to relieve Gerry and the Pacemakers, and then signed them to a management deal. He was becoming a mogul. And he was also trying to find the Beatles a drummer, offering the gig to Bobby Graham of Joe Brown and the Bruvvers (he declined) and Johnny “Hutch” Hutchinson of the Big Three (likewise). The Beatles themselves wanted Ringo, but he was off at the Butlin’s camp in Skegness, which had made the news that summer when its pet elephant had drowned in the swimming pool. John and Paul actually drove all the way there to talk to Ringo, apparently, but nothing changed. King-Size Taylor and the Dominoes approached him about swapping drummers with Rory Storm when they got back from Hamburg at the beginning of September, and he said yes. Next, Granada came calling: they’d be at the Cavern on August 22 to film the Beatles. Now they had to get Ringo.
It seemed that the media was waking up to electric music. In London, Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated was playing the Ealing Club and the Marquee, a prestigious jazz club on Oxford Street, each week, and BBC Radio contacted him about appearing on their Jazz Club show on July 12. That was a Marquee night, so Alexis worked it out that Brian Jones and his band should take the gig for that night, with Long John Baldry’s Kansas City Blue Boys opening for them. They needed a name, quick, and got one from Muddy Waters’s “Mannish Boy,” where he yells out, “Ooh, I’m a rollin’ stone!” Both Disc magazine, which reported the substitution, and the Marquee’s ad spelled the name Rolling Stones, and although Brian would attempt to keep the Rollin’ part of it, he lost the battle. He couldn’t have been happy with the Marquee ad, which called them Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones (but he was going up against the same British tradition that had George Martin trying to decide whether he was going to rename this new band he was producing John Lennon and the Beatles or Paul McCartney and the Beatles). The band on this night was Jagger, Richards, Jones, Dick Taylor, Ian Stewart, and, on drums, Mick Avory. Nobody seems to have written the night up (and why would they have?), but it did leave the band feeling charged up. Before long, Mick, Brian, and Keith were sharing a flat at 102 Edith Road in Chelsea, then a rather down-market part of the city, with one James Phelge, whom they called “Nanker” for no discernible reason. They’d rehearse at the Weatherby Arms, the corner pub. Good thing they had a place to live, because they weren’t getting gigs; the Mann-Hugg Blues band (with Paul Pond, who performed as Paul Jones) and an organization called Blues By Six were. They implored Charlie Watts to join them—most of the time they rehearsed without a drummer—but he was wary; the band had a bad reputation, largely because of Brian’s unpredictable behavior, and the jazz community was in an uproar over the way they looked—dirty, disheveled.
Things in Liverpool were chaotic. Mona Best gave birth to Vincent Rogue Best on July 21, and John Lennon’s girlfriend, Cynthia Powell, discovered that she was pregnant. Dreading it, she sat down with John and gave him the news, and, after a long silence, he said, “There’s only one thing for it, Cyn, we’ll have to get married.” A date was set. Cynthia’s mother, who hated John about as much as anyone could hate someone, was due to sail to Canada on August 22, the day of the Granada filming at the Cavern. Brian made an appointment at the registrar’s office for the twenty-third—but he didn’t have a drummer. John Lennon was about to have a child—although everyone, including Cynthia, knew that it would be forbidden to mention that or their marriage in connection with the group. What had to happen was to legally release Pete from the partnership agreement he’d signed and for Brian to find him gainful employment as per the agreement. But Brian had an idea: one of the many groups that had erupted in Liverpool was the Mersey Beats, a bunch of teenagers who weren’t bad and whose drummer was leaving. When he met with Pete to give him the news, he could offer him immediate employment as their drummer and leader. He picked up the phone and called Butlin’s on Tuesday, August 14, and asked that Ringo be paged. When he got on the line, Brian asked him if he’d join the Beatles, and he said yes. Would he come back to Liverpool tonight to start rehearsing? No, he had to give notice, but he’d be there on Saturday. The meeting with Pete was now set for Thursday, and it wasn’t an easy one. Brian laid the Beatles’ case out: the band didn’t think he was good enough, and EMI didn’t want him on the next session. Pete didn’t get it, and on his way out he passed the Mersey Beats in the hallway. They hadn’t even come up in the conversation. Brian went into his office and told them he couldn’t see them just now. Finally, he wrote up a memo to his lawyer asking for a revision in the contract with the Beatles in which Richard Starkey’s name was substituted for Pete Best’s. Pete couldn’t stand the idea of seeing the Beatles again and wanted to go on a bender with Neil, but Neil pointed out that Pete was the one who was fired, not him, and the band had a gig that evening, so he couldn’t get too wrecked. The Beatles’ relief at seeing Neil was palpable, as was their relief on Saturday when Ringo showed up at the Cavern for an afternoon rehearsal. The gig that night was at Hulme Hall in Port Sunlight during the annual horticultural society show. After a bit of a set-to with Neil about setting up the drums (Pete had always set up his own and Neil didn’t know how to), the band took the stage with Ringo for the first time, and suddenly they sounded much, much better—other musicians on the bill and Bobby Brown, the fan club secretary, all noticed it. And on Wednesday, Granada filmed it for TV.
The next day, John and Cynthia got married, and as a wedding present—the only one they got—Brian gave them use of his private apartment, where they could settle into married life (and good thing, too; they hadn’t thought this far ahead). It was a tiny ceremony. Paul and George attended, along with Cynthia’s brother and his wife. John’s aunt Mimi refused to come because she thought John was too young to get married. There were a lot of adjustments over the next few weeks: the Lennons to married life, and the Beatles to their new drummer. Cynthia stopped coming to gigs immediately; the secrecy of their marriage mustn’t get out, although there were a couple of close calls. A fan, one of the original fan club girls, had spent the summer in Norway and brought John a wooden statue of a troll sitting on the toilet with his pants down—she certainly knew his sense of humor well—and the other Beatles said things like, “Will you put it with all the toasters?” and, more nakedly, “Is this another wedding present?” but John just grinned and asked her, “What’s this, Norwegian wood?” EMI wanted them again in September and had sent a song for them to learn, “How Do You Do It,” which the band detested as a piece of lightweight pop crap, the kind of thing they felt the songs they were now writing should replace in their repertoire. But there were record company politics at work, and they’d already blown their first session with a bad drummer, so down they went to London, and at an evening session on September 4, they laid down “How Do You Do It” and “Love Me Do.” They also played some other stuff for George Martin, including “Please Please Me,” which he felt might sound like something if they sped it up considerably. Then John confronted him, saying, “We can do better than this,” and Paul backed him up, saying he’d rather have no contract at all than to put out “How Do You Do It” under the Beatles’ name. Then they went back to Liverpool. In London, various people listened to the two new songs, and for a number of reasons—not least because Ardmore & Beechwood, the publishers Kim Bennett worked for, didn’t own “How Do You Do It”—the hated song was dropped. Thus, the Beatles were recalled to London on September 11 and walked into the studio to find the drums set up and a session musician, Andy White, at the kit. That afternoon, they put down “PS I Love You,” “Please Please Me,” and “Love Me Do.” Ringo wasn’t mollified much when he was asked to play maracas on “PS I Love You,” but at least he was now on the session. This afternoon, though, was a landmark in the band’s career: their contract with EMI had been fulfilled, and they signed papers assigning publishing of “Love Me Do” and “PS I Love You” to Ardmore & Beechwood, the firm that had seen to it they’d record in the first place. Now what? Now it was time to attend to the record release in early October.
First, they needed a press kit, and although EMI was preparing one, Brian felt the Beatles should have their own, so he got Tony Caldwell, a.k.a. “Disker,” to write one. Brian added a questionnaire for each Beatle about his aims and ambitions (which came down to “money”) and compiled a few of John’s writings, including the story about the flaming pie. After all, they needed to stand out from the mob. Then there was a bit of a problem: Granada announced they were shelving the Cavern footage. It wasn’t the Beatles’ fault (although the film, in black and white, is pretty awful, and the sound distorted), but, rather, the fact that Granada had chosen to contrast them with the Brighouse and Rastrick Band, thirty members strong, all due a payout at Musicians’ Union scale—which would completely destroy the show’s budget if Granada went through with it. Then came a setback Brian could do something with: Pete Best had decided to sue for “unwarranted and unjustified dismissal.” But that was no problem; the Beatles of which Pete had been a member had broken up, if only for a second, and a new Beatles partnership had been formed with Ringo. In fact, that partnership was about to sign new management papers with Nems Enterprises Ltd., firming up the nature of their relationship to Brian and in particular the percentages due him. Since he was acting as their booking agent, the rather high maximum percentage of 25 percent on earnings over £800 was actually a bargain because they weren’t paying two parties, a manager and an agent. And it would appear that Pete was out of the way temporarily; he’d joined Lee Curtis and the All Stars (who, to his annoyance, put ads in the press saying, “We’ve got the Best! Yes—great ex-Beatle drummer”), which helped raise the struggling group’s profile.
And then, it all came together. On October 5, Parlophone R 4949, a 45 RPM single of “Love Me Do” b/w “PS I Love You” came out, although nobody was pleased that the writing credits read “Lennon/McCartney” instead of “McCartney/Lennon,” as Brian had, on the band’s instructions, ordered. The BBC wouldn’t touch it, but Radio Luxembourg would, and late that night—the Beatles had had a gig—George burst into his parents’ bedroom with his radio blaring “Love Me Do” and yelling, “We’re on! We’re on!” In the next few days, people throughout the north of England ran to their local record stores—Nems was swamped—and bought copies. A record distributor pulled up at the shop just as Brian was arriving and informed him that the record was selling by the boxful. “Oh, really?” Epstein said, since this was the first news of any sort he’d heard. “That’s wonderful!”
“He was so excited,” John Mair, the distributor, remembered later. “Suddenly he was not the cool, imperious, arrogant Brian I knew, he was like a schoolboy.” Of course, it was only regional, not national, and Epstein was accused of buying boxes of records to hype his own act, but they really were selling.
That same night, in the back room of a pub at the Woodstock Hotel in North Cheam, Surrey, south-southwest of central London, the Rolling Stones were slogging out a gig in front of two people (although four more were listening outside so they wouldn’t have to pay to get in). It was their first time away from Ealing, where they were beginning to draw crowds, and they still had no drummer. Dick Taylor was getting tired of these guys and decided to concentrate on his art school exams, and by the end of October, he’d left the band amicably. (He’d been bitten by the bug, though, and in the months to come would assemble another, very Stones-like band, the Pretty Things: as photos show, the name was at least slightly ironic.) A few days later, the Beatles were in London promoting themselves, knocking on the doors of the press (who were mildly amused that a bunch of hayseeds from the north thought their record was worth any notice) and getting ready to tape one of EMI’s Radio Luxembourg shows, The Friday Spectacular. This rather odd event took place at EMI House on Oxford Street before a live audience, but the performers lip-synched their songs even though it was a radio show and then met the fans and autographed records. After that, they went back to touring the press and getting shut out.
They weren’t getting shut out only in London, either; in the United States, Capitol was now owned by EMI, and Dave Dexter Jr., their international director of A&R, had first refusal on all EMI-produced records from other countries, and refuse them he did. He was famous for hating British acts, unless they were novelties, having turned down the Shadows with and without Cliff Richard, Adam Faith, Helen Shapiro, and Matt Monroe, all British chart toppers. “Love Me Do” didn’t even get to play all the way through before he rejected it. Anyway, Capitol was having enough trouble trying to break the Beach Boys. Parlophone would have to try elsewhere, so they sent the record to Transglobal Enterprises Inc., a company EMI secretly owned that licensed records Capitol turned down. Right off the bat, Liberty Records was interested … and then they weren’t. Transglobal put it on the back burner.
They’d just have to conquer Britain first, and in mid-October, Don Arden’s Little Richard tour (with Sam Cooke) came to the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton, with the Beatles the next-to-last act before the star. His first couple of nights, Richard had done a lot of gospel and a quick medley of his pop hits, but by the time he hit the north, he’d put the set list in order. And he was also paying attention to the opening acts, telling a journalist from Mersey Beat, “Man, those Beatles are fabulous! If I hadn’t seen them I’d never have dreamed they were white. They have a real authentic Negro sound.” The paper’s photographer got a shot of Richard and the Beatles together backstage. And coming up, they’d be working with him at the Star-Club at the beginning of November. Which was a bit unfortunate: it would be right around when the record would be in its most crucial phase. The Beatles tried to get out of the gig, Richard or no Richard, and failed. Of course, nobody was playing the record, either, although Kim Bennett was trying hard; he got it on a lunchtime program for housewives, Lunch Box, and got a BBC producer to give them a shot at a live radio performance after they got back from Hamburg. He almost got it on Saturday Club, an important broadcast aimed at teens, but they’d gotten so many requests for the record from Liverpool that they figured it was an organized campaign: nothing could be that popular. Finally, toward the end of the month, even though it had no airplay, “Love Me Do” crept into the New Musical Express charts at #27. This was news; NME was fairly hostile to rock & roll, seeing itself primarily as a sophisticated jazz paper, but its charts were taken seriously. So seriously, in fact, that George Martin called Brian to arrange for another session at the end of November.
But it was off to Hamburg nonetheless. Things were much better this time, from the pay to rooms in an actual hotel for the duration of their stay. Also, they got to watch Little Richard do his thing, which involved, among other things, ending his set with a striptease on top of the piano, almost certainly not a part of his gospel act back in the States. Richard had his own organist along, sixteen-year-old Billy Preston (Weissleder’s pull with the authorities must have been strong, because George had been deported for being seventeen), and was backed by the English band Sounds Incorporated, and the Beatles and Preston began a lifelong friendship there at the Star-Club. Brian flew over for the last couple of days, but when Weissleder wanted to book some dates for 1963, he told him he couldn’t do it just yet. And they had two more weeks to do, including that New Year’s show, starting on December 17. As the time in Hamburg ticked away, all they knew was that on November 16 they’d be back in Britain, flying into London to do the press—Kim Bennett had gotten them on some more BBC radio shows, and the record was still selling—and to talk to George Martin, who’d requested a sit-down with them that afternoon.
The news was good: Martin had been thinking, and he decided there was really something there with this group, and he wanted another single as soon as possible. He also—and this was unprecedented for such an untried group from the sticks—wanted an album. A live album, recorded at the Cavern, the bulk of it to be original material. George Martin was known for his unconventional ideas and success with offbeat releases—one thing John Lennon revered him for was his production of the wonderfully surrealistic Goon Show LPs—and this, apparently, was the latest one. He didn’t have a title for it, and Paul suggested Off the Beatle Track, and grabbed a pad and mocked up an album cover for it. Martin was impressed by that. Righto: first things first, and on November 26, the band went back into the studio to record “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why.” Meanwhile, “Love Me Do” continued slowly, slowly ascending the charts. All very well and good, but George Martin, after the last note of “Please Please Me” faded away, pressed the talkback button and told the band, “Gentlemen, you’ve just made your first number one record.” The band cracked up. They broke for tea and then went back in and recorded the other side. All they had to do was wait until January 11, 1963, five long weeks away, for the record to be released.
Brian now had a bit of work to do. George Martin wasn’t happy with what Ardmore & Beechwood had done with “Love Me Do,” and he told Brian that he was going to recommend his talking to Dick James, an old-time music publisher, unaffiliated with any American companies (and, thus, free to negotiate with any of them), and when Brian got an appointment with him, it turned out that James’s fifteen-year-old son was a fan, as was his receptionist, Lee Perry. When James heard the acetate of “Please Please Me,” “I just hit the ceiling.” He knew he’d just heard a #1 record, and Brian told him they had lots more original material as yet unrecorded. And as they hammered out the details of the contract between them, Brian insisted on an unusual clause: nobody could record Lennon-McCartney songs unless everyone signed off on it. Thus, James’s main job was to promote the copyrights through the records, not via amassing a lot of cover versions. The Beatles came first. And as this deal was wrapping up, the Beatles showed up at the BBC Paris Street studio and taped a show called The Talent Spot. When they came offstage, their friend Alan Smith from Liverpool showed them something he’d just bought: a copy of NME with the year-end poll. The Beatles had come in fifth for British Vocal Group and eighth for British Small Group. Not bad, a year after they’d won that Mersey Beat poll! (They’d won that one again this year, of course.) And as December wore on, all the Beatles had to do was play one gig at the Cavern and a taping for Granada TV’s People and Places show. This time, it ran.
Next up was Hamburg, playing on a bill headlined by Johnny and the Hurricanes from the States—has-beens at home, but very much in demand in Hamburg—and with the Beatles getting yet more pay, better housing, and shorter sets, but Germany in December is nobody’s idea of paradise, and the red-light district of Hamburg even more so. In London, Dick James offered Brian a great deal: he’d split publishing revenues with a company Brian would form fifty-fifty, so confident was he of what would come. Oddly, the single was still on the charts, never going north of #17, but there nonetheless. It seemed to be still selling. The Beatles knew nothing of this; they had their eyes fixed on that New Year’s show and the plane tickets for January 5, flying into Scotland.
And elsewhere in London, the Rolling Stones were coming along, albeit slowly. Bill Perks was looking for work, more work than his regular band, the Cliftons, could get him. He saw an ad Brian Jones had placed in Jazz News and went to audition for this band that was already working regularly—or so the ad said—and needed someone on bass. “Regularly” meant every week in Ealing, but a gig’s a gig, and the guys seemed to like Perks, as well as the fact that he had an amplifier and was very generous about handing out cigarettes. The band quizzed him on his knowledge of American black music and found he knew rock & roll but not rhythm and blues, but they put him through his paces, in the middle of which, an exasperated Perks said, “You can’t play fucking 12-bar blues all night!” Ah, but they thought they could. No matter, Perks was asked to return. He went through another rehearsal, which went much better, and the band made him an offer. The Cliftons were clearly not going anywhere, but the Stones might. They’d already made a demo record, which they’d sent to a couple of record companies, and Decca had returned it with the note “You won’t get anywhere with that singer.” But Perks felt that, somehow, “the Stones were a better bet.” So on December 14, he played his first gig with them, at the Ricky Tick Club at the Star and Garter Hotel in Windsor. “The crowd was a mix of students and a smattering of American servicemen who knew Chicago R&B,” he reported. “They were impressed.” Perks spent Christmas with his wife and infant son, and the Stones enjoyed a cheap lunch together. Then it was back for the last gig of the year, at Ealing. Surely next year would be better.