Beatles (37 page)

In the programme for this show, which toured till 13 December, there were several adverts for Beatle products. A firm in Peckham was offering Beatles sweaters ‘designed specially for Beatle people by a leading British manufacturer with a top-quality two-tone Beatle badge’. All for 35 shillings each.

Manufacturers all over the country were by this time competing to get a concession to use the word Beatle on their products. Beatle jackets – the collarless ones, usually in corduroy, first worn by Stu in Hamburg – were on sale everywhere as early as September 1963.

Beatle wigs started appearing. A factory in Bethnal Green was working night and day to keep up with the demand. It announced it had orders from Eton College and from Buckingham Palace. Not from the Queen herself. Just a member of the staff.

Most teenage boys were growing their own Beatle-length hair. From November on there was a continuous stream of newspaper stories about schoolboys being sent home from school because of their long hair, or of apprentices not being allowed into factories.

The
Daily Telegraph
, on 2 November, produced the first leader criticizing the Beatles hysteria. It said the mass hysteria was simply filling empty heads, just as Hitler had done. The
Daily Mirror
jumped to the Beatles’ defence. ‘You have to be a real sour square not to love the nutty, noisy, happy, handsome Beatles.’ They complimented the Beatles for not relying ‘on off-colour jokes about homos for their fun’.

They were attacked and then defended in the Church Assembly, the annual meeting of leaders of the Church of England. One bishop said they were a ‘psychopathetic group’ and that one week of their wages could build a cathedral in Africa. But another speaker said he was a fan and that it was all healthy fun.

The
Daily Mirror
appears to have been the first paper to drag out a tame psychologist to try to explain what was happening. This was a practice that kept tame psychologists, especially Americans, in easy money for the next three years. This psychologist said the Beatles were ‘relieving a sexual urge’. Doctors later came forward to say that girls had had orgasms during Beatle concerts.

On tour they arrived at Cheltenham, a very refined country town in Gloucestershire. The newspaper headlines next day announced ‘Squaresville Falls’, which was probably a headline the subeditors had got ready the day before. A local policeman was quoted as saying that it had been ‘the craziest night since Mafeking’.

In Plymouth, on 14 November, hoses had to be turned on screaming fans to control them. There was great panic at Portsmouth, because Paul had slight flu and they had to miss a concert. Every paper gave hour-by-hour bulletins on his condition.

In Birmingham, on 11 November, they managed to escape the crowds, disguised as policemen. On 18 November a Church of England vicar got a lot of space in the papers when he asked the Beatles to tape for him ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Yeh, Yeh’, for Christmas.

EMI sales were shooting up. When the story came out about Decca and all the other companies having turned them down, it was compared to 20th Century turning down
Gone With The Wind
.

At the end of November they brought out their fifth single, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, which went direct to number one. It had advance orders in Britain of one million.

Their second LP,
With the Beatles
, came out a few days before. This had the stark, but very arty, photograph on the cover, showing their four heads and shoulders, dressed in black polo-neck sweaters. Their faces were cleverly lit so that one side was in the shade, as Astrid had photographed them in Hamburg. When this LP was announced, at the beginning of November, it
had immediate advance orders of 250,000. It was noted at the time that this was the best advance for an LP record anywhere in the world. The best Elvis Presley had done was 200,000 for his
Blue Hawaii
album.

Every big bylined feature writer in Britain was competing for an interview, waiting for hours and hours outside their dressing room, hoping for a word. Donald Zec of the
Daily Mirror
was one of the first to do a large interview with them, right at the beginning of their nationally famous days, on 10 September. Describing their hairstyle, which journalists still felt they had to do, he said it was a Stone Age cut.

By December 1963, the posh Sundays had at last got in on the act, doing long and very solemn investigations on the phenomenon, dragging out their own psychologists, but using even longer words. The
Observer
had a picture of a guitar-shaped Cycladic fertility goddess from Amorgos that it said ‘dates the potency of the guitar as a sex symbol to about 4,800 years before the Beatle era’. The
Sunday Times
commented on how they had enlarged the English language, bringing Liverpool words like ‘gear’ (meaning good or great) into general usage. This rather put the Conservative politician, Edward Heath, in his place. Earlier he had criticized them by saying their language was ‘unrecognizable as the Queen’s English’. But Mr Heath redeemed himself slightly later, when he was reported as saying ‘Who could have forecast only a year ago that the Beatles would prove the salvation of the corduroy industry?’

Even the
Daily Worker
, the British Communist party newspaper, was getting its comment in. ‘The Mersey Sound is the voice of 80,000 crumbling houses and 30,000 people on the dole.’

By early December they had seven of their records, singles as well as EPs, in the Top Twenty. On 11 December they went on the TV programme
Juke Box Jury
, the four of them taking over the complete jury, and gave the show the highest rating it had ever had.

A film deal was announced. Walter Shenson and George Ornstein, in association with United Artists, said they were going to star the Beatles in their first film, with a script by the Liverpool playwright, Alun Owen. Brian Epstein was in on this deal, making sure that the Beatles were to take a large percentage. He was, by now, doing the same with their tours, once it was obvious that their name alone was enough to guarantee a full house everywhere. The Beatles Tour, which had begun in November, was ‘presented by Arthur Howes, by arrangement with Brian Epstein’.

In October Brian had moved his own office to London, joining Tony Barrow and the growing number of secretaries and assistants.

The fan club was also growing to huge proportions, and was soon completely unable to cope with the thousands of application forms. There were many stories in the newspapers about poor fans not having their letters answered for months, but the deluge was just too much. By the end of 1963, the official fan club had almost 80,000 paid-up members, compared with only a couple of thousand at the beginning of the year.

BBC TV did a half-hour show from the Northern Area Convention of the Beatles Fan Club from the Liverpool Empire.

At Christmas time the Beatles did a Christmas show, along with other Brian Epstein artists – Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer, Tommy Quickly and the Fourmost. It opened in Bradford, then Liverpool, then came to London at the Finsbury Park Empire, which was where Mal lost John’s favourite guitar, alas.

The intellectual following was now in full cry. The heavy papers were giving them as much space as the populars. They were on everyone’s lips, in every paper, jokes were created about them, cartoons were full of them. The
Daily Mail
stopped using the word Beatle in headlines, and had the same little drawing of four Beatle haircuts, four mop tops as they were called, to illustrate every story.

Brian worried at first about his own name and personality becoming famous, but eventually he couldn’t help it. He realized
that it made things easier for him to get things done. ‘I was worried about all of us becoming overexposed. At first sight, the endless discussion in the newspapers of the Beatles’ habits, clothes, and views was exciting. The boys liked it at first and so did I. It was good for business. But finally it became an anxiety. How long could they maintain public interest? By carefully watching their bookings and press contacts, we just averted saturation point. But it was very close. Other artists have been destroyed by this very thing.’

At the time, judging by the newspaper and TV reports, it looked as though there was no control at all. Every paper, every day, had something on them. In one week, five national newspapers were serializing what they called the Beatles’ life story, most of it taken from the old handouts. Almost anyone with any opinion on them, for or against, was guaranteed to be reported. They were so new in a jaded scene and so different from the usual show-business glitter, and they were British.

Several people said that Brian Epstein was the Svengali. He’d cleverly created and promoted them. Brian always denied this. ‘In all our handouts,’ says Tony Barrow, ‘and in all our press dealings, Brian only stressed what was good about them. He never created any non-existent good points. The Beatles were four local lads from down the street, the sort you might have seen at the local church hall. This was the essence of their personal communication with the public. People identified with them from the beginning. Brian realized this and never tried to hide it.’

But Brian did, of course, create a smooth machinery, organized their lives meticulously, never let people down, which they had done when they were on their own.

From 1963 onwards, millions of words were written by people trying to analyse the Beatles’ success. It could take a separate book just to cover all the theories that appeared. The first phase of the analyses was based on their sexual attraction. Then the pundits decided the Beatles were of social significance, symbolizing all the frustrations and ambitions of the new
emergent, shadow-of-the-Bomb, classless, unmaterialistic, unphoney teenagers. Then the intellectuals moved in, studying their words and music with great intensity, and coming up with some clever interpretations. All of it was true, and still is true. Any reason that anyone has for liking something is true.

To the ordinary newspaper reporter, back in 1963, the big attraction was to have a word, any word, with the Beatles. Every reporter knew that each interview would be different and funny. They didn’t come out with the same jokes and comments each time, like most supposedly famous personages. Ringo turned out to be as funny as the rest of them. He was asked why he had so many rings on his fingers. He said he couldn’t get them all through his nose.

‘We were funny at press conferences because it was all a joke,’ says John. ‘They’d ask joke questions, so you’d give joke answers. But we weren’t really funny at all. It was just fifth-form humour, the sort you laugh at at school. They were putrid. If there were any good questions, about our music, we took them seriously. We
were
nervous, though I don’t think people thought so. We were nervous at most functions.

‘Our image was only a teeny part of us. It was created by the press and by us. It had to be wrong because you can’t put over how you really are. Newspapers always get things wrong. Even when bits were true, it was always old. New images would catch on just as we were leaving them.’

In just twelve months, from the release of their first record, they had become an established part of the British way of life. Dora Bryan did a record about them at Christmas 1963, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Beatle’. Even that got into the hit parade.

There was by now nobody else on the hit parade scene, unless you counted the other Liverpool groups, all of whom Brian Epstein managed, and all of whom were being recorded by George Martin.

In 1963, out of the 52 weeks in the year, a record produced
by George Martin was at the top of the British hit parade for 37 weeks. This is an achievement no one has ever equalled, or is likely to.

The
New Musical Express
, in their end-of-the-year charts, made the Beatles the world’s top group. They polled 14,666 votes. The American group, the Everly Brothers, were runners-up with 3,232 votes.

In the British Vocal section, the section they had been near the bottom of the year before, they polled 18,623 votes. The second group, the Searchers, were miles away with only 2,169 votes.

The two biggest selling singles of the year were ‘She Loves You’, with 1,300,000, and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, with 1,250,000. Cliff Richard, with ‘Bachelor Boy’, was a long way down in third place.

The Times
musical critic, William Mann, did a long and serious review of their music, in which he talked about their pandiatonic clusters and submediant key switches. He said John Lennon and Paul McCartney were ‘the outstanding English composers of 1963’.

‘I think I’ll invite them down for the weekend, just to see what kind of fellas they are,’ said Viscount Montgomery.

On 29 December, in the
Sunday Times
, Richard Buckle, reviewing John and Paul’s music used in the ballet ‘Mods and Rockers’, said they were ‘the greatest composers since Beethoven’.

Sandi Stewart is an ordinary American Beatle fan, not silly, not half-witted, just nice and sensible. In early 1964 she was living with her parents in a wealthy middle-class small town in New Hampshire. She was 15 and in the ninth grade at high school.

‘I was going to the supermarket in the car with my mother one day, in our Rolls, that’s what we had at the time, though that’s not important. Over the car radio came “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. It was the first time I’d ever heard of the Beatles. I went, Wow! What a strange sound. I just couldn’t get over it. No tune had ever affected me as much.

‘I found a lot of the girls at school had also heard it and felt the same. I remember walking down the street with two of my friends and discussing them. We all said how ugly they looked in their photographs, especially with no collars on their jackets. The music was great, but we thought they did look ugly.

‘Then slowly we changed our minds. I became really interested in pop music, which I’d never been before. I knew about everything they did. I read everything about them. I grew my hair long, because I read they said they liked girls with long hair.