The Beatles (42 page)

Through the early-morning hours, George worked frantically to teach John the lead guitar parts to their songs so that the Beatles could function as a quartet. Merely a capable rhythm guitarist, John didn’t have the chops to pull off anything that required more intricate fretwork. Then someone—no one is sure who—came up with a clever solution: they wouldn’t need a lead playing behind Tony Sheridan. It made more sense to leave the Kaiserkeller early and take their chances with Koschmider.

Seizing a competitive advantage, Eckhorn offered the Beatles immediate work along with a modest attic apartment above the Top Ten. It seemed like the perfect antidote to an otherwise deteriorating situation. Without delay, John and Stuart moved their gear in and claimed a set of bunk beds along the wall. Paul and Pete returned to the Bambi Kino to collect their things. According to accounts given by both of them, the theater was dark when they got there. There was no way to see along the hall, much less their belongings, so they stuck condoms to a nail in the concrete wall and set fire to them. “
This gave us just enough light
to throw our stuff into our suitcases,” Pete recalled.

Sometime in the early morning of December 1, only hours after the boys had gone to bed, two plainclothes German policemen burst into the Top Ten, seeking Paul and Pete for questioning. Allowed nothing more than to dress, the boys were hustled off to the local station house, where they were grilled on their whereabouts for the past twenty-four hours. It took a bit of doing, piecing together the phrases of broken English, before the boys deduced what the problem was. Their breach of contract and sneaky departure had apparently infuriated Bruno Koschmider, who, out of revenge, accused them of “
attempting to burn down
the Bambi Kino.” It was a ludicrous charge, yet nonetheless effective. Paul and Pete did their best to explain away the incident—to no avail. The police were not amused and decided to scare the British hooligans, transferring them to a dingy jail cell for several hours before finally deporting them.

Leaving behind their clothing and instruments, Paul and Pete arrived back in Liverpool the next day, exhausted, broke, and greatly disillusioned. John and Stuart had remained in Hamburg, but without work permits it was impossible for them to earn a living. Besides, there was no one left to play with. John stayed only long enough to cadge money for a train ticket home. Stuart, recovering from a head cold, borrowed airfare from Astrid and followed him several weeks later.

The incredible adventure was over. The Beatles had not only crept home penniless and in disgrace but had burned several important bridges back in Germany. Each had to do some fancy explaining to his parents, to whom he’d boasted about fame and riches before setting off for Hamburg. In almost every case, they left out key details about the gig’s bitter resolution and avoided any speculation about their future. Perhaps more notably, they couldn’t face one another. John suffered from such a hollow-eyed depression, friends remember, that after Aunt Mimi helped clean him up, he crawled into bed, locked his door, and refused most company. When he finally did appear, two weeks later, no attempt was made to reach Paul. George, too, said he “
felt ashamed
” and looked for work, as did Paul, who glumly took a menial job, at his father’s insistence. There was little, if any, feeling of optimism. Pete and his mother worked the phone in an effort to recover the band’s lost equipment—which they did—but for several weeks afterward no one touched base. It seemed pointless. They weren’t saying as much, but each of the Beatles was convinced that his career in the band was over.

Chapter 13
A Revelation to Behold

I
f the Beatles weren’t the same when they returned home, neither was Liverpool. The city had drifted into a gradual but unyielding decline, and yet, the beat scene thrived like never before. Faced with such opportunity, the Beatles could hardly remain dormant for long.
A week before Christmas
, during another idle afternoon, Pete phoned George and suggested they comb Liverpool for potential gigs. A few days later John and Pete were reunited, meeting over coffee at their regular corner table in the Jacaranda. Still “
disgruntled and very angry
” over the Hamburg fiasco, armed with theories and eager to rebuild the band’s stalled career, they wanted to touch base with Allan Williams on the off chance of snaring a few stray dates.

But Williams was struggling with his own set of woes. Petulantly, he told the boys that Bruno Koschmider had failed to pay him the 10 percent commission promised for booking the Beatles into the Kaiserkeller. Plus, only two weeks earlier, his latest venture, a flashy Liverpool version of the Top Ten, had met with unexpected catastrophe. Intrigued by the explosion of beat music and the popularity of local bands, he’d rented an old bottle-washing plant on the periphery of town, hired a personality named Bob Wooler to manage it, and set out to cash in on the new phenomenon with lightning speed. In no time, he and Wooler had booked an impressive lineup of top London talent to alternate with native stock, the objective being that the headliners would focus attention on—and help groom—Merseyside bands, who would inevitably sign up with a talent agency Williams was mulling. For five memorable nights the Top Ten hosted packed, enthusiastic houses, and on the sixth night the club mysteriously burned down. (Wooler, to this day, claims it “was torched.”)

Williams was in no mood
to throw in with the Beatles right now. As a means of shelving the subject, he introduced John and Pete to Wooler, who
happened to be seated at a nearby table, licking his own wounds. Wooler had good reason to be dejected. In a span of a few days, he’d fallen from the lap of a promising future to sudden standing unemployment. Not only had Wooler resigned his “
job for life
” with British Transport Railways to run the now ashen club, he had tied his entire well-being to a rogue like Allan Williams, whom he suspected of hanky-panky. The earnest, high-principled Wooler had begun “
drinking heavily
” as a result.

The role of a pop impresario was a new one for Bob Wooler. He had spent most of his adult life in thrall of Tin Pan Alley. He had even taken a stab at songwriting, assuming the nom de plume Dave Woolander, because he was “convinced that the great songwriters were all Jewish.” After several failed attempts at the craft, Wooler abandoned his dream—temporarily, at least—and turned to artist management, spending evenings promoting a skiffle band from Garston called the Kingstrums. One night at Wilson Hall in Garston, near the end of a set, Wooler overheard one of the jivers say, “The band’s not bad, but—who
are
they?” Wooler stepped to the mike and “hesitantly and tremblingly” announced the Kingstrums.

Seemingly older than his twenty-eight years, Wooler looked nothing like the teds and surly scrappers who populated the dance halls. To these teenagers, he was more of a paternal figure, a slight man with a courtly, engaging demeanor, always meticulously groomed in a sport coat and tie. But the kids responded to him; in no time, they actually expected to hear Bob Wooler’s rich, melodic voice whenever a local band went onstage. Even after a long day at British Rail, Wooler spent virtually every night whirling from hall to hall: the Winter Gardens Ballroom in Garston, Holly Oak at Penny Lane, Peel Hall in the Dingle, the Jive Hive and Alexandra Hall in Crosby, Lathom Hall in Seaforth, the Orrell Park Ballroom in Aintree, Blair Hall in Walton, Hambleton Hall in Huyton, the Riverpark Ballroom in Hoylake, the Plaza in St. Helen’s, the Marine Club in Southport, Knotty Ash Village Hall, Litherland Town Hall, the Aintree Institute, Mossway, the David Lewis Theatre. “Long before the Cavern, these venues provided rock ’n roll havens for Liverpool’s teenagers,” recalls Wooler, who either bummed a ride with the bands or caught the bus and train. Usually he spent his entire night out, mixing with the kids and gabbing. When he wasn’t spinning records, he solicited bookings for the groups he liked, even calling from his stodgy office at the Garston Docks. “I had a Jekyll and Hyde existence,” he says, “spending days clerking behind a desk, then at night becoming the Alan Freed of Liverpool.”

Wooler was also a legendary soft touch, and the Beatles seemed like
such decent kids. He couldn’t help himself. Working the phone in the Jacaranda kitchen, he booked them into a gig at Litherland Town Hall.

There was also the Casbah. Few people had a more unsung role in the Beatles’ young career than Pete’s enterprising mother, Mo. “
She was always there
to throw us a lifeline,” Pete has said over the years, and this time proved no different. Behind the dominating personality and owlish stare, beyond the keen sense for putting out fires with an appropriately leveled word, lurked a mom with a big, mushy heart. “
She gave them the kind of work
they couldn’t get at other venues,” says Bob Wooler. “Without her, it remains doubtful they would have held together so ably.”

The Casbah was exactly what the Beatles needed: it was familiar, intimate, and friendly, a good springboard for diving back into the ’Pool. There was a big, boisterous local crowd, which provided the kind of delirious reaction they’d been hoping for. Of late, Mo had anticipated something special.
The Seniors had played there
only a week earlier and briefed her about the Beatles’ transformation in Hamburg, but it was nothing she could have envisioned. The band took everyone by complete surprise, including Pete’s dumbstruck mother, who watched them—wordlessly, for a change—from her post behind the refreshment counter. Their look, their sound, their poise—it was “
a revelation to behold
.”

Word spread swiftly through Liverpool after the Beatles’ Casbah and Litherland Town Hall shows. All these months, bands had presented themselves as a likely alternative to Cliff Richard and the Shadows, each in neat little suits, with neat little songs. And now this band of black-leather creatures had popped up “
and had the nerve to play
hard rock ’n roll.” They made no concession to etiquette. “
We’d been pussyfooting
around… and the Beatles just came straight at you,” said a guitarist with Rikki and the Red Streaks. Look mean, play hard—it was a revolutionary concept and contradicted everything that had gone before it.

Whatever confidence the Beatles had managed to generate onstage of late was quickly dissipated in uncertainty. Stuart still hadn’t returned from Hamburg. Meanwhile, offers for the band were pouring in.

What had detained Stuart for so long? Everyone knew he was dazzled by Astrid Kirchherr. He had stolen every opportunity to be with her during the Kaiserkeller gig, courting her between sets and spending nights
in Altona. Leaving her seemed out of the question. But everyone was surprised—flabbergasted—when Stuart wrote home that they were engaged.

No one had seen it coming, least of all his parents, who “
were utterly,
utterly
devastated
” by the news. Their hopes were pinned on Stuart, the family’s golden boy, for whom they had sacrificed beyond practical wisdom. This news, as they read it, wrecked everything: his art, his education, his enormous promise.
He had written before Christmas
to ask for their blessing, but they had a difficult time imparting it. As did George: “
He didn’t seem keen
on the idea of me getting engaged,” Stuart divulged in a letter to his sister Pauline adding that he hoped everyone would “become used to the idea” in time.