Beatles (40 page)

Pattie was working as a model, mainly in magazines, and did a TV commercial for Smiths Crisps, which was very successful. This was directed by Dick Lester, which was how she came to be auditioned for a part in the Beatles’ film.

‘I met them and they said hello. I couldn’t believe it. They were so like how I’d imagined them to be. They were just like pictures of themselves coming to life. George hardly said hello. But the others came and chatted to us.

‘When we started filming, I could feel George looking at me and I was a bit embarrassed. Ringo seemed the nicest and easiest to talk to, and so did Paul. But I was terrified of John. After that first day’s shooting, I asked them all for their autograph, except John. I was too scared.

‘When I was asking George for his, I said could he sign it for my two sisters as well. He signed his name and put two kisses each for them, but under mine he put seven kisses. I thought he must like me a little.’

He did and they started going out. ‘I took him to Mummy’s, then he took me to see this house in Esher he was interested in. I thought it was lovely. The next weekend was Easter. I went with George and John and Cynthia to Ireland for the weekend on a private plane. It was a dead secret, but it got out and there were hordes of pressmen at the hotel.

‘This was my first experience of that sort of thing. The manager tapped their phones and we could hear them sending back the most awful things to Fleet Street. When we went out, they all followed us with cameras.

‘It was impossible to get out. In the end Cyn and I had to
dress as maids. They took us out a back way, put us in a laundry basket, and we were driven to the airport in a laundry van.’

Naturally, with all the publicity and gossip interest in her, she was offered even more modelling jobs. ‘I took a lot, the ones I fancied, but George said I shouldn’t. He didn’t like it. They were just wanting me for the wrong reasons.’

She was very worried by the threatening letters and even physical attacks all the girlfriends and wives were getting from girl fans. ‘The letters upset me a lot. They were really nasty and said awful things, especially from the States. I used to worry that perhaps I was nasty. They always said they were really George’s girlfriend, I’d better leave him alone or they’d get me.’

They moved into George’s new house in Esher. ‘We lived together for about a year before we got married. My mother knew, but she never mentioned it.’

In the summer of 1964, the tours started again. They went to Europe first of all, starting with Denmark. In Amsterdam a crowd of 100,000 turned up in the streets to see them. Girls were diving into canals to get near them. Then they went to Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

The American tours had, and always will have, the most publicity associated with them, simply because they were beating the Americans at what the Americans had always been leading the world in. But, surprisingly, the biggest ever crowd to turn out to watch the Beatles was in Adelaide. This was simply to watch the Beatles arrive. Every newspaper that day put the figure at over 300,000. Numbers like this never turned out to see them in New York, or even in Liverpool.

Back in London, on 6 July,
A Hard Day’s Night
had its premiere, in front of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon. The LP of the film came out the following month.

On 19 August 1964 they left for their first major American tour. The trip in February had been a short, two-week trip, with only a couple of concerts and TV shows.

This tour, in August and September, covered in all 32 days. It was the longest, biggest and most exhausting tour they ever
did. They travelled in all 22,441 miles, spending a total of 60 hours, 25 minutes flying. They visited 24 cities in the United States and Canada. They gave a total of 30 performances, plus one charity show. ‘During that American tour,’ says Mal, the road manager, ‘each of us lost one and a half stone in sweat.’

Norman Weiss of GAC, their American agent, spent six months planning this tour. ‘It took about as much planning as the invasion of Normandy. Millions and millions of dollars must have changed hands. It would be impossible to work out what it all cost, from the Beatles’ fees down to all the hot dogs sold and films used up.

‘We could easily have charged three times the price and still sold out, but Brian said it was unfair to the fans. We had it written into all contracts, stating what the prices had to be. We dictated all the contracts, set the terms ourselves. Every promoter agreed, thankful to be putting them on.

‘The Beatles and Elvis are both in show business. After that, any comparison is just a joke. No one, before or since, has had the crowds the Beatles had.’

Records were broken everywhere, but to the Beatles themselves, it all became meaningless. It was just like it had been yesterday. Even the questions were always the same – what did they think had caused their success and when did they think the bubble would burst. They almost got to screaming point, with the endless repetition.

They fled to a remote country town for a day’s rest and the locals very kindly kept out of the way. But as they were boarding their plane to take off again, the sheriff and other town dignitaries could be seen coming across the tarmac towards them. Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ press officer, was sent out to see what the locals wanted. They said they wanted autographs and photographs standing with the Beatles, which was the least they could do, as they’d been so kind and left them alone.

‘I went back on to the plane to ask the boys,’ says Derek. ‘Paul was sitting beside the window, looking at them. He was smiling like mad at them, nodding his head wildly up and down,
but he was saying to me, “Get out there quick. Tell them
we
want to go out and meet them, but
you
won’t let us because we’re too tired. Go on.”’

Even George Harrison, the
Liverpool Echo
one, became numbed by it all. ‘But I’ll never forget this big noise from Kansas City coming to see Brian when we were in San Francisco. Kansas City wasn’t on the tour. He was a millionaire, the owner of the local football club or something. He said he’d promised Kansas City that he would get the Beatles for them.

‘Brian said no. They couldn’t fit it in. This bloke said would 100,000 dollars change their minds. Brian said he’d go and ask the boys. They were all sitting playing cards and hardly looked up. Brian told them about the offer of 100,000, which is £30,000 in anybody’s money. They said it’s up to you, Brian, and went on playing.

‘Brian went back and told the man he was terribly sorry. They couldn’t give up a day off. The man said he’d promised Kansas City and he couldn’t go back without them. He tore up the cheque for 100,000 dollars. Then he wrote out one for 150,000 dollars. This was the highest fee that had ever been offered to any artist in America. He was offering them £50,000 for 35 minutes. Brian could see the prestige value of beating all American artists would be fantastic. So he said all right. The Beatles didn’t look up when Brian told them.

‘So the bloke went home, dead happy. But he knew he couldn’t possibly make any money. The ground wasn’t big enough to get back anything like he’d had to pay, but he’d kept his promise to Kansas City.’

The pillowslips on which they slept in their Kansas City hotel were later sold to two Chicago businessmen for £375. They cut them into 160,000 one-inch squares, mounted them on certificates saying whose bed they had come from, and sold them at one dollar each. A New York syndicate offered Brian £3,715,000 for the Beatles, but he turned them down.

During all the shouting and screaming and boasting of all their record-breaking tours, in Britain and America, the Beatles
were crouching somewhere inside the giant piece of machinery that was transporting them round and round the world. They’d retreated inside it in 1963, forced by all the pressures, and remained there, hermetically sealed.

They were trapped in their dressing room before a performance. Then, afterwards, there was the mad dash, guarded by hordes of police and bodyguards, to the hotel. There they stayed, with the outside world locked out, till the time came for the next move. They never went out in the street, to a restaurant or for a walk. Neil and Mal serviced them, bringing sandwiches, ciggies and drinks. Out of jealousy, and sometimes out of fear of being left unprotected, they wouldn’t let Mal or Neil go out either. So they all sat in their hotel bedrooms, smoking, playing cards, playing their guitars, putting in the hours. Earning £1,000 or £10,000 or £100,000 for one-night stands was meaningless. Being rich and powerful and famous enough to enter any door was pointless. They were trapped.

For a long time, of course, there was great excitement. They had waited so long for this. They’d been playing for seven years together and getting nowhere, which at least meant they were physically and emotionally prepared for the terrible conditions of one-night stands. Even the one-night stands weren’t as strenuous as the Hamburg clubs, where they’d really learned to churn it out endlessly.

After the first record, so many stages came one after the other so quickly that they never got bored or complained about the slowness, at least for some time. They all remember the excitement of going from one peak to another. Getting a record in the charts, then a number one, then another, then TV shows, the Palladium, the Royal Variety Show and then, America.

Although John, Paul and George were not taken in or affected by all the publicity, they considered themselves good. They knew their music was good and were annoyed when anyone didn’t take it seriously. They didn’t for one minute consider, as so many people did, that they would just disappear. At last they were in, and they couldn’t see any reason why they
shouldn’t stay in. This probably explains part of their attitude to the press. They didn’t feel grateful or in any way humble. They didn’t care about being funny or rude because they didn’t consider they owed anything to anybody.

Only Ringo was in any way rubbing his eyes. It had all suddenly happened to him. He joined them, then immediately they were away.

‘None of us ever worried about things like the future. I’ve always just taken chances myself and been lucky. I was lucky to get an apprenticeship when I did. I’ve always had a few bob in my pocket. But I always thought it was bound to come to an end some time.

‘There were good nights and bad nights on the tours. But they were really all the same. The only fun part was the hotels in the evening, smoking pot and that.’

Throughout the next two years, 1965 and 1966, their life was dominated by touring, which really meant no life at all. They averaged three long tours a year – one British, one American and one other foreign tour taking in several countries. They produced around three singles a year and one LP. They also aimed to do one film a year, but after their second film,
Help!
, in 1965, they came to a halt. It wasn’t until the end of this two-year grind that their lives and their work began to settle down into new patterns.

The details of all their tours are in newspaper files somewhere, for anyone mad enough to want to look them up. The Beatles certainly can’t remember. As always, they can only remember the laughs, such as their MBE.

On 12 June 1965 it was announced that the Beatles were to be made Members of the Order of the British Empire. There were immediate protests, from members of the House of Lords to ancient wartime fire watchers, who felt their MBE had been cheapened. A retired colonel said he wasn’t going to give the Labour Party a £11,000 bequest after all, or his twelve military medals. MBE medals were sent back from all over the world.

Brian was very pleased about the honour. He said later he never had any doubt that the Beatles would accept, but John says
he seriously thought about saying no. Today his MBE sits on the TV in Mimi’s bungalow.

‘We thought being offered the MBE was as funny as everybody else thought it was. Why? What for? We didn’t believe it. It was a part we didn’t want.

‘We all met and agreed it was daft. What do you think, we all said. Let’s not. Then it all just seemed part of the game we’d agreed to play, like getting the Ivor Novello awards. We’d nothing to lose, except that bit of you that said you didn’t believe in it. We agreed in order to annoy even more the people who were annoyed, like John Gordon. We were just getting at the people who believe in such things.

‘All we did when we were waiting in the Palace was giggle. We collapsed, the whole thing was so funny. There was this guardsman telling us how to march, how many steps, and how to curtsey when we met the Queen. We knew in our hearts she was just some woman, yet we were going through with it. We’d agreed to it.

‘I really think the Queen believes in it all. She must. I don’t believe in John Lennon, Beatle, being any different from anyone else, because I know he’s not. I’m just a feller. But I’m sure the Queen must think she’s different.

‘I always hated all the social things. All the horrible events and presentations we had to go to. All false. You could see right through them all, and all the people there. I despised them. Perhaps it was partly from class. No, it wasn’t. It was because they really
were
all false.’

Some of the 1965–6 tours have to be mentioned, if only as a brief record, especially their two other American tours. Their third American tour began on 13 August 1965. It was decided to keep it to half the length of the previous one, as that had been too exhausting. This tour covered 17 days and they were insured for a million pounds, which was what the last tour had taken. It made even more money than the previous one, though it was half the length, because they concentrated on baseball grounds, which they had pioneered the time before.

The biggest event of this tour of America was on 15 August 1965. This was when they played at the Shea Stadium, New York. ‘Over 55,000 people saw that show,’ says Sid Bernstein. ‘We took 304,000 dollars, the greatest gross ever in the history of show business.’

This is still a world record. It wasn’t beaten during their subsequent American tour. Out of the 304,000 dollars, the Beatles got 160,000 dollars. Over 30,000 dollars went on the rent of the Stadium for the night. There were 1,300 police on duty, which cost 14,000 dollars. Insurance came to 11,000 dollars. After advertising, publicity and other expenses, Sid Bernstein’s profit on the evening came to 7,000 dollars.