Beatles vs. Stones (7 page)

By then the Beatles’ debut album,
Please Please Me
, was resting comfortably atop England’s hit parade (where it would remain for thirty weeks), and the group, now residing permanently in London, was growing accustomed to headlining national tour packages. In the nation’s weekly pop periodicals, they received gushing praise; in teenybopper magazines, they appeared on color pin-up posters. And in an extraordinary effort to satisfy eager requests from every studio executive, disc jockey, newsman, photographer, and club owner who
wanted something from them, under Epstein’s direction, the four lads from Liverpool were working almost to the point of burnout. Even if the Beatles had found time in their frenzied schedule to play another homecoming show at the Cavern, Epstein probably would not have allowed it: henceforth, he declared, the group would play only in proper theaters with elevated stages. The new policy was necessary in order to prevent the Beatles from being overrun by a scrum of frenzied fans.

Perhaps inevitably, with their staggering success, the Beatles began spawning imitators (or, in early-’60s British parlance, “copyists”). About two months after they performed at the Cavern for the last time, pop fans could find on newsstands an issue of
Melody Maker
that contained an article headlined: “Boiling Beatles Blast Copy Cats.” John Lennon, identified as “the group’s spokesman,” is quoted extensively throughout the piece, yet none of his remarks are challenged or contextualized, and in this way, the item has something of the flavor of a press release. But even if
the Beatles’ press officer, Tony Barrow, was primarily responsible for the item, he still would have needed Lennon’s permission before putting it out, and Lennon was clearly rankled by bands that were aping the Beatles’ style and sensibility.
“Certain groups are doing exactly the same thing as us . . . pinching our arrangements,” he complained. “And down to the last note, at that.”

But it wasn’t just that certain bands were trying to ride the Beatles’ coattails by mimicking their outfits and nicking their arrangements. “To crown it all,” Lennon carped, “other groups are climbing on this rhythm-and-blues bandwagon . . . by doing stuff we were playing two years ago”—that is, American R&B covers by the likes of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly, which the Beatles used to pound out in grimy bars and run-of-the-mill dancehalls. The article continued:

And in a final blast, an angry Lennon said: “It happens in hair styles, as well. I see players in some groups even have the same length hair as us.

“It’s no good them saying they’re students and they just happen to have long hair. We were students, as well, before we came to London and we didn’t have these styles then, did we?”

Lennon added: “I suppose people might say it’s an honor to be copied, and I wouldn’t have bothered to have hit back really. But when they have a dig at us, we’re going to have a go. I’ve wanted to say this for a long time . . .”

The notion that Merseyside acts like the Beatles were at odds with the groups coming out of London had been gaining traction. When a pop journalist asked Brian Jones about
“the Liverpool-London controversy,” however, Jones replied sharply: “It’s all a load of rubbish. We are on very friendly terms with the Northern beat groups and there’s a mutual admiration between us.” Many years later, in his scrapbook-cum-memoir,
Stone Alone
, Bill Wyman said it was
“a popular misconception . . . that we were at war with the Beatles.” In reality, he maintained, the two groups were always bonded by “mutual respect.” It was just “the newspapers” that always fueled the idea that the two groups were rivals. And in his celebrated memoir,
Life
, Keith Richards said
“it was always a very friendly relationship” between the Beatles and the Stones.

The Beatles frequently echoed these sentiments. In August 1964, at an American press conference, Ringo called the Stones
“very good friends of ours,” and Paul added, “We hear some ridiculous rumors over here . . . like, ‘The Beatles hate every other group on the face of the earth.’ It’s just not true.” At another press event a few days later, John said about the Stones,
“I know it sounds daft, us liking them, but we’re good friends.” And in 1968, he said flatly,
“Our rivalry was always a myth.”

Among music mavens, this has long been the conventional wisdom: While the press was busy making invidious comparisons between the Beatles and the Stones, the two groups remained above the fray, bonded by their mutual admiration, shared experiences, and
obvious enjoyment of each other’s company. The supposed “rivalry” between the Beatles and the Stones was a media creation, a faux controversy that arose from a press that was either base in its sensationalism or fanciful in its ignorance.

But if all of that is the case, who was it that Lennon was itching to “hit back” in October 1963? He never mentioned any names, but he clearly had a specific target in mind. He was thinking about a band that was now playing R&B of the type that the Beatles played in Hamburg; and he seemed particularly peeved at a newer, London-based group, made up at least partly of students, whose members refused to attribute their hairstyles to the Beatles’ influence. Instead, they disingenuously maintained that they “just happen to have long hair.”

Only one group fits the bill exactly. In the Rolling Stones’ official biography,
Record Mirror
reporter Peter Jones (writing under the alias “Peter Goodman”) describes a period in 1963 when “The Beatles were high in the charts” and “reporters were very interested to know if the Rolling Stones hairstyles had owed anything to the high-riding Liverpool group.” But whenever Jagger was asked about the provenance of their shaggy hairdos, he turned defensive. With his “hands on his hips” and his “sweater awry as his shoulders gesticulated angrily,” he replied:
“
Art students have had this sort of haircut for years—even when the Beatles were using hair cream!
”

•  •  •

A Hollywood adage holds, “It can take a lifetime to become an overnight success.” Of course, it didn’t take the Beatles nearly that long; they managed to hit it big when they were still very young. Before they became household names, however, they paid their proverbial dues. Lennon and McCartney began their musical friendship on July 6, 1957, at a garden fete in Liverpool. Five more years would pass before the Beatles started recording with EMI. In between came all of the failed auditions and talent show competitions, the late-night sets
in West German nightclubs, and the difficult personnel changes that endure so vividly in Beatles lore.

It was rather different for the Stones. In July 1962, the band’s nucleus of Brian, Mick, and Keith shared a stage for the first time; almost a year to the day later, they appeared on British national television as Decca recording artists. Their first big break came in February 1963, when they secured a residency at the Crawdaddy Club at the Station Hotel (sometimes called the “Railway Hotel”) in Richmond, Surrey, perhaps thirty minutes outside of central London by train.

The Crawdaddy’s manager was Giorgio Gomelsky, a Soviet-born, Swiss-educated London transplant who in the 1950s had been a mainstay of the local jazz club scene. Then in the early 1960s, Gomelsky started promoting raw R&B, first in central London and then on the outskirts.
“Brian Jones had been bending my ear constantly” about the possibility of landing gigs for the Stones, Gomelsky remembers. “He had that little speech impediment—kind of a lisp. It used be part of his charm. ‘Come and lithen to us, Giorgio,’ he’d plead with me. ‘Oh, Giorgio,
pleathe
get us some gigs.’ ”

After catching a Stones performance at Sutton’s Red Lion Pub, Gomelsky was suitably impressed—but he couldn’t offer them work immediately, since he’d already committed to promoting the David Hunt Band, a promising but unreliable Soho-based group. “Listen,” Gomelsky says he told the Stones, “I promised this guy a job, but the first time he goofs, you’re in.” Sure enough, the very next week, Hunt’s band failed to show up for one of their regularly scheduled gigs, and Gomelsky turned their Sunday-night slot over to the Stones.

Bill Wyman says that when the Stones played their first Crawdaddy gig, they drew a crowd of about thirty.
But Gomelsky recalls that snow fell heavily in London that night (a rare thing) and only three people showed up. He added that the diminished attendance might also have been accounted for, at least in minor part, by the transposition error in the flyers that he had illegally pasted all across town.

SUNDAY NIGHT, 7:30 PM.

RHYTHM AND BULSE

Gomelsky shrewdly understood that the Stones’ real problem, however, was that they had yet to build up an audience for grassroots R&B in London. Fortunately, he had a plan.
“He was the kind of guy where you could go round to his apartment, have some very strong coffee, smoke some Sobranies, and map out plots, because he was very plugged into the club scene,” Keith Richards recalled. He advised the Stones that instead of hustling for gigs at every opportunity, they should focus on building their reputation with their regular Sunday-night performances. Once word got around, and with the right kind of promotion, he predicted that audiences would be flocking to see them.

Gomelsky says that Brian walked up to him that first night at the Crawdaddy and said:
“ ‘Giorgio, there’s six of us, and three of them. Do you think it’s worthwhile? Should we play?’ ”

“I said, ‘Brian, how many people do you think can fit in here? A hundred? Okay, well then play as if there were a hundred people in here.’ And they did. And that was one of the reasons I rarely went to see the Stones in later times, because in some ways, that was like the best show they ever did. For three people.”

Very quickly, Gomelsky’s prediction proved accurate, and the Stones were playing to a packed house every Sunday night. To get inside, you had to queue in line, sometimes for hours. Once you got through the door, you found a smallish room that was pitch-dark, save for the tiny stage, on which the Stones performed beneath two small spotlights (one red, one blue). Drawing heavily from the nearby Kingston College of Art, early audiences consisted predominately of young men. As pop historian Alan Clayson explains, some among them
“detected a certain Neanderthal
epater la bourgeoisie
in the group, and came to understand that this rugged type of pop music was ‘uncommercial,’ and thus an antidote to the contrived splendor
of television pop idols.” Others in the crowd didn’t even necessarily identify as R&B fans. Groups of Mods started showing up, decked in tweed jackets, high-heeled boots, and choke-collar shirts, and so too came their supposed enemies, leather-clad Rockers. Before long, brawls between the two subcultures would lead to some sensational news stories in England, but not a single fight broke out while the Stones were playing at the Crawdaddy.

That may be partly attributed to the Stones’ novelty. Initially, fans were riveted by their increasingly edgy performances, but they were unsure of how to respond, and many even seemed afraid to dance. Then one night, Gomelsky’s young assistant, Hamish Grimes, leapt atop a table and started really whooping it up, waving his arms like windmills and yelling “yeah yeah!” Jagger spotted him from the stage, smiled widely, and he too said “yeah!” In an instant, Gomelsky says,
“two hundred pair of arms were undulating like crazy! Man, that was something.” For some time afterwards, the Stones made it their trademark to close their second 45-minute set with an extended, hypnotic Bo Diddley jam—either “Pretty Thing” or “Doin’ the Crawdaddy”—that always whipped their fans into a tribal-like frenzy.
“No one had seen anything like this in the sedate and reticent London of 1963,” Gomelsky mused. “It was exciting and foreboding.”

Had he been a little savvier and more business-oriented, Gomelsky might have secured a managerial contract with the Stones, but at the time he was so turned off by how vapid and crass the British pop scene had become that the idea scarcely crossed his mind. Instead, he planned to help rejuvenate
“formula-ridden commercial popular music” with more authentic, uptempo electric blues, and eventually he hoped to set up “a kind of ‘United Artists’ of the London blues bands” that would “keep the show business sharks out of the scene.”
“My motivation in all this had been cultural rather than business-oriented,” he explained. Besides, in addition to proselytizing for R&B, Gomelsky also dabbled in other bohemian-flavored pursuits, including Stanislavsky’s Method acting and experimental film. And even as
the Stones were burnishing their chops at the Crawdaddy, the energetic émigré had yet another project in mind: he wanted to direct a movie about the Beatles.

Outside of Liverpool, not many people could honestly boast that they were Beatles fans before the Beatles got famous. About two years earlier, however, while passing through Hamburg, Gomelsky had been lucky enough to catch the scruffy young Brits back when they were still playing bowdlerized R&B covers in seedy clubs. He remembered the Beatles as a
“good, fluent band,” and one night while they were on break, he’d chatted amiably with them. Now, perhaps six months before the birth of Beatlemania, Gomelsky hoped to direct an avant-garde film about the group, one that was intended
“to bring about the still unperceived wit and knockabout charm of the Beatles offstage characters.”

To that end, he met with Epstein at Teddington Studios on April 14, 1963, while the Beatles’ manager was accompanying his group during the taping of their third appearance on ABC-TV’s pop music show,
Thank Your Lucky Stars.
Epstein agreed to discuss the proposal further, but Peter Clayton, a
Jazz News
writer whom Gomelsky had enlisted to draw up a rough script, later surmised that he was probably wary of the idea from the get-go. Still relatively new to showbiz, he likely mistook Gomelsky’s
“explosive enthusiasm as just another attempt to stampede him into something.”

Nor did the Beatles themselves ever seem terribly interested in the film. Clayton recalls one meeting at Gomelsky’s flat when the group sat there eating omelets.
“I suppose I should remember some of those tart witticisms which became such a feature of Beatles press conferences, but all I can recall are the omelets, each in the center of a big plate, like a stranded yellow fish,” he said. At another meeting, Lennon picked quietly at a mandolin while everyone talked around him, and McCartney seemed quiet and guarded—“a closed book.”