Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney (15 page)

The new album went to number one, ‘She Loves You’ only relinquishing the top spot on the singles charts when the Beatles released ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’. Suddenly everybody wanted to meet the Beatles. They were invited into the EMI boardroom for lunch with the chairman, Sir Joseph Lockwood, posing with Sir Joe for a photo under the iconic painting of His Master’s Voice. The band was also being inundated with requests to invest in projects or lend their name to good causes. In Liverpool, Brian Epstein introduced the boys to two beady-eyed Oxford University students, Jeffrey Archer and Nicholas Lloyd, who persuaded the boys to back a fundraising drive for the charity Oxfam. ‘I thought Paul and John were very bright, though I found John a little cynical, whereas Paul was enthusiastic, and what clearly struck me - both in the case of John and Paul - was that if they’d wanted to go to Oxford themselves they so clearly had good enough brains to go,’ recalls Archer, later Lord Archer, novelist and disgraced Tory peer.
¹²

A week later the Beatles were presented with further evidence of their fame when they met 3,000 fan club members at a ballroom in Wimbledon, South London. First the Beatles greeted their excited admirers in person, the boys sheltering behind the theatre bar for their own safety as they signed autographs. ‘They shook hands with all the fans,’ noted Neil Aspinall, ‘about 10,000 of them, actually, because they kept going back to the end of the queue and coming round again.’ The band then performed in a cage for their protection, which was a first. ‘It was like being in a zoo, on stage! It felt dangerous. The kids were out of hand,’ commented Ringo. As if being in a cage wasn’t strange enough, as they performed the boys were pelted with jelly babies. John had mentioned in an interview that he’d recently been sent a present of the sugary sweets but George had eaten them all, a casual remark that caused girls to inundate the band with what they now presumed were the Beatles’ favourite treats. Unable to deliver the jelly babies personally, they threw them. George stalked off stage in protest, already irritated by ‘the mania’, as he pointedly described it, emphasising the real madness at the heart of what was happening to them. Paul kept on smiling, showing a greater tolerance for all aspects of their burgeoning success, as he always would.

6

AMERICA

NEW YORK, BEATLE TIME

For Christmas 1963, Beatles fan club members received the first of what became an annual yuletide gift, a giveaway record on which Paul and the boys thanked everybody for their support and sang seasonal songs in silly voices. Then came a London Christmas show in which the boys and other NEMS acts performed songs and took part in pantomime-style skits before sold-out audiences of screaming, jelly-baby-hurling young ladies. The screaming had become ridiculous. These were not screams of anguish, but girls enjoying the catharsis of yelling until their faces went red and tears streamed down their cheeks, some screaming until they wet themselves, or fainted, or both. Girls had screamed at music acts before the Beatles, and acts contemporaneous with them, Gerry and the Pacemakers for one, but it was more pronounced and on a bigger scale with the Beatles, who entertained 100,000 fans in this hysterical fashion by mid-January 1964, when their run of London Christmas shows ended.

After the briefest of breaks, the group flew to France for a three-week residency at L’Olympia, a Parisian music hall associated with the can-can and Edith Piaf. Les Beatles shared the bill with nine acts including the Texan singer Trini Lopez, who’d scored a hit with ‘If I Had a Hammer’, and local ‘yé-yé’ chanteuse Sylvie Vartan. The Beatles fared badly. Their amplifiers failed on the first night, and audience reaction was muted. The boys grumbled about the screamers back home, but at least English audiences were enthusiastic. Olympia drew an older, more laid-back crowd, who clapped politely at the end. There were some fans at the stage door, but
sur le continent
the lads attracted the attention of effeminate boys, rather than over-excited girls. On top of which, the reviews were bad. Not that the Beatles seemed to care. ‘They were not upset that the reception in Paris was a little bit cool. They were still just young kids out there having fun,’ says Trini Lopez drummer Mickey Jones, who hung out with the boys at the luxurious Georges V hotel, a sign of how much money was suddenly flowing their way. ‘They were having parties [with] girls from the Lido [club].’

The Lido girls were ushered away when Jane Asher visited from England, along with Paul’s father and brother, Mike McCartney noting that Paul was listening to Bob Dylan’s new LP,
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
, in his suite, having previously dismissed folk music as ‘rubbish’. Dylan would become an increasingly important influence. George Martin also came to Paris to record the boys singing German-language versions of ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, a chore they didn’t want to fulfil. When they failed to make their appointment at the studio in Rue de Sèvres, Martin called the Georges V to be told by Neil Aspinall that the band had decided not to do the German record - the first time they’d defied their producer so directly, and an intimation of trouble ahead. ‘You just tell them I’m coming right over to let them know exactly what I think of them!’ stormed Martin. He arrived at the Georges V shortly thereafter to find a scene akin to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in
Alice in Wonderland
.

Around a long table sat John, Paul, George, Ringo, Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans, his assistant. In the centre, pouring tea, was Jane Asher, a beautiful Alice with long golden [sic] hair. At my appearance the whole tableau exploded. Beatles ran in all directions, hiding behind sofas, cushions, the piano - anything that gave them cover.

‘You bastards,’ Martin yelled at the boys, who emerged one by one to apologise to their producer and invite him to join them for tea. They did the German-language recordings on 29 January.

These high jinks were as nothing compared to the excitement in the Georges V caused by a telegram from the USA. ‘One night we arrived back at the hotel from the Olympia when a telegram came through to Brian from Capitol Records of America,’ Paul recalled. ‘He came running into the room saying, “Hey, look. You are number one in America!” “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had gone to number one.’ Ecstatic, the boys rode the obliging Mal Evans around the suite like cowboys yelling:
Ya-hoo! America, here we come!

A few days later, on 7 February 1964, the Beatles flew to New York, with a large entourage that included Brian Epstein, Cynthia Lennon, Neil Aspinall and photographer Robert Freeman. The American record producer Phil Spector also latched onto the Beatles party, which was trailed by a contingent of Fleet Street reporters and cameramen. The mood on the long, time-cheating flight across the Atlantic was apprehensive. ‘They’ve got everything over there, will they want us, too?’ Ringo asked the pressmen rhetorically.

The drummer’s gloom reflected what a struggle it had been to generate interest in the band in the USA. Despite the fact Capitol Records was owned by EMI, the American label declined repeated suggestions from George Martin that they should release the Beatles’ early singles, Americans having little interest in foreign practitioners of what was, after all, their music. Martin recalls a curt message from Alan Livingston, President of Capitol: ‘We don’t think the Beatles will do anything in this market.’ Livingston’s comment was based on the historical fact that few British pop stars had enjoyed success in the US, a recent example being Cliff Richard who discovered that his considerable popularity in the UK counted for nought in Poughkeepsie. Desperate to get their music out in America in some form, Brian Epstein cut deals with two minor US labels, Vee Jay and Swan, who released ‘Please Please Me’, ‘From Me to You’ and ‘She Loves You’, without much initial success. Epstein also hired an American song plugger to promote the records. Radio stations proved resistant, but slowly things started to change. Curiously, the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963 may have had some bearing on America taking the Beatles to its heart. In the depressing aftermath of the murder young Americans looked beyond their country for something new and innocent to cheer them up, and heard a fresh, joyful sound coming from England. American disc jockeys began to play imported copies of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ prior to Christmas 1963, the popularity of the song spreading across the States and into Canada. Alan Livingston woke up to the fact that there was now US interest in the Beatles. Capitol released ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’/‘I Saw Her Standing There’ on 26 December, with plans for an LP in the new year. Vee Jay re-released ‘Please Please Me’ in January 1964. Suddenly American airwaves were crackling with the happy English sound.

A number of other factors fell into place. A theatrical agent in New York named Sid Bernstein, who’d kept up with news from Britain since being stationed there during the war, had been reading about the Beatles with growing interest, to the point that he struck a deal with Brian Epstein to present the Beatles at Carnegie Hall in New York on 12 February 1964. Even more significantly, Ed Sullivan, who’d witnessed fan reaction to the Beatles at Heathrow Airport, arranged to have the band appear on his syndicated television show. Brian accepted a modest fee from Sullivan’s people, but insisted shrewdly that his boys get top billing. Furthermore, it was agreed that the Beatles would appear on three consecutive editions of this important show - on 9, 16 and 23 February - the first two appearances live, the third pre-recorded. This was good work on Epstein’s part, counterbalanced by an example of his ineptitude.

In recent months, manufacturers in Britain and North America had been approaching NEMS asking permission to produce Beatles merchandise. A small range of novelty goods had been sanctioned and were already selling strongly, not least plastic Beatles wigs, which enjoyed a popularity in Britain not seen since the 1954 craze for Davy Crockett hats (sparked by a Disney TV series). Not everything was authorised, however. When Blackpool confectioners started to manufacture Beatles rock without permission, NEMS sued. It soon became too much for Brian Epstein to deal with, on top of his other responsibilities, so he delegated merchandising to his lawyer, David Jacobs, known as the ‘stars’ lawyer’ for his celebrity clientele. Jacobs sold the rights to merchandise any and all items under the Beatles imprimatur to a couple of young British hustlers named Nicky Byrne and John Fenton. There being little precedent for such a deal, Jacobs agreed that Byrne and Fenton could sub-license to manufacturers in Britain and abroad on a 90-10 split - in the entrepreneurs’ favour. ‘It was an inequitable deal. I knew that when it was done,’ comments Fenton, who expected NEMS to renegotiate once they realised their blunder, but they didn’t seem to see what a mistake they’d made, and for the next few months Fenton and Byrne were free to make a fortune.

The young men set up a US licensing operation named Seltaeb - Beatles spelt backwards - to capitalise on the new American interest in the band. To raise start-up capital, Fenton and Byrne went to friends in the Chelsea Set, fashionable, often wealthy young people living in and around London’s King’s Road. These gadabouts were the progenitors of swinging London, though many preferred jazz to pop in 1964. ‘I didn’t like the Beatles’ music,’ says Fenton, not untypically. ‘The “She loves you Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” stuff to me was like my worst nightmare. That was the only way I could justify selling Beatles toilet paper to people. I felt there was a similarity there.’ An Old Etonian friend of Byrne’s, Simon Miller Mundy, invested £1,000 ($1,530) in Seltaeb and got his friend, Lord Eliot, to invest the same. By coincidence, Eliot was Jane Asher’s cousin. ‘London in those days was very, very small,’ notes His Lordship (who became Lord St Germans on the death of his father). ‘Her mother’s father was [an earlier] Lord St Germans.’ In advance of the Beatles’ visit to the USA, Nicky Byrne booked himself into a suite at the Drake Hotel in New York and began fielding offers from US manufacturers who wanted to produce Beatles products. Within days Seltaeb had signed licences for everything from Beatles golf bags to toothpaste, bringing in a revenue of $3.5 million (£2.2 m). ‘It was absolutely
astonishing
,’ comments St Germans.

As the Beatles’ first visit to America approached, Seltaeb and their manufacturing partners became concerned that Capitol Records wasn’t doing enough to promote the band. So they took independent action. ‘We had every lift boy in New York saying, “The Beatles are coming - which floor do you want? ”’ remembers John Fenton. Disc jockeys such as B. Mitchel Reed began counting off the days, hours and minutes to the Beatles’ arrival. Rival DJs, notably the irrepressible Murray ‘the K’ Kaufman on WINS, joined in, using Beatle as an adjective. 7 February 1964 became Beatle-Day or B-Day:

It is now 6:30 a.m., Beatle time … They left London 30 minutes ago … They’re out over the Atlantic Ocean, headed for New York … The temperature is 32 Beatle degrees
…

Announcements went out over the air in the New York area that any girl who made it to the newly renamed Kennedy Airport in time to greet the boys would receive a buck and Beatles T-shirt. The T-shirt manufacturer bussed girls to the airport to make sure of a success. By the time Pan Am Flight 101 landed there were thousands of fans at Kennedy screaming for the Beatles. ‘Without Seltaeb the Beatles would have found it a lot harder to conquer America. We really whipped up hysteria there,’ says Fenton with a touch of exaggeration. After a slow start, Capitol Records
had
started to push the Beatles, spending upwards of $50,000 on promotion [£76,500], promising to make 1964 ‘the year of the Beatles’. It all helped to create the day the Beatles arrived in America; the ‘turning point’, Brian always called it.

When the door of the Pan Am jet opened, and the Beatles emerged onto the steps, clutching Beatle bags, a heaving mob surged forward to greet them, held back by gum-chewing New York cops. The ensuing airport press conference was a bear pit. Paul, George and Ringo appeared nervous. Lennon exuded more confidence, telling the squabbling press pack to ‘shut up’, which made them laugh. While some reporters were evidently intent on deflating this Beatles bubble, their tricky questions served as a foil for the Beatles’ wit. After a hesitant start, everyone got off a good line, including Paul. Told by a reporter that Detroit had a ‘Stamp Out the Beatles’ campaign, he rejoined: ‘We’re bringing out a “Stamp Out Detroit” campaign.’

A fleet of Cadillacs conveyed the band into Manhattan, where they booked into the venerable Plaza Hotel. Impresario Sid Bernstein watched the limousines pull up at the Fifth Avenue entrance amidst a scrimmage of fans. Paul paused on the threshold, turned and waved. ‘I said, “Wow! He’s a good-looking kid and he’s got the smarts.” The girls were screaming for Paul. There was a lot [more] screaming for him than the other boys.’ A little later Brian took Bernstein through to meet the lads in their suite on the twelfth floor. ‘They had the shades drawn, and they are looking out the window and waving to the kids downstairs. “Mr Bernstein, this is crazier than where we live. These kids are mad!”’

The trip could have ended in disaster right there. Brian consorted with male escorts and cruised for rough trade in Central Park during his stay at the Plaza, according to former NEMS employee Geoffrey Ellis. The Beatles’ manager may even have been photographed in a compromising situation in his suite. A story that a press photographer, lowered outside the hotel in a bosun’s chair to shoot pictures in through the windows, got a snap of Epstein with a rent boy was later reported in a book by Ross Benson. Unlikely though the story sounds, John Fenton says Seltaeb hushed up a scandal by buying an item that would have incriminated somebody involved with the Beatles on the trip. He won’t say who, other than it wasn’t a member of the band, but states: ‘If it hadn’t been for us there would have been no Beatles in America because they’d have been killed stoned dead by the federal rape law.’ It was only because of their connections with ‘Italian gentlemen’ in the New York merchandising business that they managed to take the evidence out of circulation. ‘It was a huge indiscretion which could have got them into a lot of trouble.’