The Beatles (53 page)

Another lingering sore spot remained the girlfriends. Brian considered it unprofessional that Cynthia Powell and Dot Rhone turned up at each gig, and he was aghast, not to mention annoyed, when each time, inevitably, they got up together to dance. It was too distracting for the boys. Performing was work, he argued, not a social outing. What’s more, the presence of steady girlfriends might turn off the female fans who entertained fantasies about their favorite Beatle (to say nothing of Brian’s own fantasies). A new
decree was handed down: Cyn and Dot were no longer welcome—no longer
allowed
—at Beatles shows. John and Paul were instructed to inform their respective girlfriends.

Dot, already insecure and self-contained, was crestfallen when Paul delivered the news. “It seemed cruel and unnecessary,” she says. “
We always stayed out of their way
, never interfered in anything they did.” On more than one occasion, she recalls, they arrived at a show with the boys, were deposited in a corner, and ignored until it was time to leave. That was all right by them. Even after gigs, at the Jacaranda or one of their other haunts, they sat for hours, just listening to the boys talk among themselves, absolutely silent. They never, except on rare occasions, contributed to the conversation. “We were completely subservient.” Their reward was simply going to the gigs—watching their boyfriends play and basking in the glow.

Dot had already gone against her better judgment, “stealing Preludin and Purple Hearts for the band” from her new job, working at a pharmacy. But disobeying Paul’s wishes was out of the question. Cynthia, on the other hand, learned how to blend into the crowd. At shows, John would stash her in a seat at the back of the hall, where she watched like any other punter.

The events of January 1962 had convinced the Beatles that their attention should be focused solely on their careers.

They began by finally signing an official management contract with Brian, which had been in the works for over a month.
^*
It was a modified boilerplate agreement, tying the four musicians to Epstein for a period of six years and at a rate of 20 percent of their earnings. Brian had originally asked for 25 percent, a sum refused by the Beatles, who considered it too exorbitant a chunk. He accepted the lower figure without further negotiation, perhaps owing to an unexpected savings of 2.5 percent. A month earlier, overcome with gratitude by Alistair Taylor’s noble allegiance, he offered the loyal record salesman what amounted to a finder’s fee, 2.5 percent of the Beatles, which Taylor had politely—but foolishly—declined.

At the signing,
Brian repeated his foremost goal
: to nail down a legitimate recording contract for the Beatles. Even before the Decca session, as early as December 7, 1961, he had been in touch with labels, submitting “My Bonnie” in lieu of an audition. Upbeat and sturdy, the record cut the
right groove, but it was basically a Tony Sheridan showcase; it gave even professional ears too little to go on as far as the Beatles were concerned. To Brian’s disappointment, the A&R managers didn’t take long to underscore that point. On the fourteenth, he received the band’s first rejection from no less a tone-setter than EMI, the titan of British labels. “
Whilst we appreciate the talents
of this group,” wrote Ron White, the company’s general manager, “we feel that we have sufficient groups of this type at the present time under contract and that it would not be advisable for us to sign any further contract of this nature….” While not a stinging rebuke—the kind that dismisses a band as a pack of hopeless amateurs—it certainly wasn’t the endorsement they were looking for.

Meanwhile, Decca wasn’t exactly beating down the door. The Beatles hadn’t heard from Mike Smith following their seemingly triumphant New Year’s Day audition and assumed he was deluged with work as a result of the long holiday season. In fact, Smith had made up his mind to sign the Beatles while they were still in the studio, but he had to run it by his boss.

Unfortunately, Decca’s A&R chief was in New York on business and didn’t return until the middle of the month.

The role of tastemaker was an unlikely one for Dick Rowe. Like his father and grandfather before him, he had spent most of his life as a stockbroker in service to Decca’s chairman, Sir Edward Lewis. The sole pleasure in a livelihood otherwise tedious and unfulfilling was his “
amazing record collection
,” most of whose gems had actually been obtained through the black market. Word of his unconventional musical knowledge spread through the firm, and Sir Edward staggered an unsuspecting Rowe by asking him to run Decca.

Rowe rose rapidly through the A&R department, serving as one of Decca’s early in-house producers. By the mid-1950s, he had assembled an impressive roster of pop artists, gleaned from his opportune signing of Tommy Steele. Anthony Newley, Billy Fury, and Marty Wilde all reaped glory from Rowe’s workmanlike productions, as, later, would Van Morrison (“Here Comes the Night”) and Englebert Humperdinck (“Release Me”). He worked with dozens of significant acts, including the Rolling Stones, over his career. Nevertheless, he would always be linked, albeit ignominiously, for his mishandling of the Beatles.

At the time, the thorn in Rowe’s side was Decca’s budget, the subject of his recent meetings in the States. A&R expenditures, he noted, were in danger of exploding. So when Mike Smith bounded into his office that
Monday morning, delirious with enthusiasm for two new groups he just had to sign, Rowe tightened the company belt. “
No, Mike, it’s impossible
,” he told him. “They can’t both be sensational. You choose the one that you think is right.”

Rowe’s generosity was actually self-serving. He’d listened to both auditions—the Beatles and Brian Poole and the Tremeloes—on his own and agreed with Smith’s eventual choice. The nod went to the Tremeloes, hands down. Their audition was better, they had that identifiable “Decca sound,” and perhaps most significant, they lived in Mike Smith’s neighborhood in Dagenham, which put them a neat twenty minutes from the studio, as opposed to their northern counterparts. “
Liverpool could have been in Greenland
to us then,” Rowe recalled years later.

Decca held off on giving Epstein the news. The company had never dealt in this manner with one of its retail accounts, especially one with billings as significant as NEMS’. Lest it risk injuring a profitable relationship, Decca decided to string him along for a while, in the hope that he’d either lose interest in this hobby or just go away.

Despite the delay, Brian allowed himself a cautious confidence. The Beatles had done their part, they’d delivered a respectable demo, and with NEMS’ influence firmly behind them, there was every reason to expect a deal to materialize. It was only a matter of time, he reasoned. And yet, a creeping frustration began to take hold. “
He had very substantial accounts
with these companies and yet he couldn’t seem to pull any strings,” Peter Brown recalls. It was this lack of respect that stung the most. For Brian, it meant one thing: humiliation, a reaction that resonated back to his school days and the army. “He was furious. He thought he was being treated like everybody else and felt he deserved more attention.”

With EMI out of the picture and Decca mysteriously on hold, Brian turned up the heat at the two other major English labels, Pye and Philips. He began commuting to London in earnest, dropping off copies of the Decca audition tape at whatever office he could squeeze a foot in the door. Alistair Taylor had connections at Pye and, with some gentle arm-twisting, got the Beatles’ tape to Les Cox, the label’s head of A&R. Cox and Tony Hatch, one of Pye’s in-house producers, gave it a cursory listen and “
thought it was awful
.” Still, Taylor urged them to see the band perform. But nothing doing. As far as London was concerned, Liverpool was off the musical radar screen.

After Pye’s rejection of the Beatles,
Philips also passed
, leaving few
options remaining for a deal. It would be another year before the influence of independent labels, so prevalent in the United States, surfaced in Great Britain. For the time being, there were only the four majors—EMI, Decca, Pye, and Philips—with which to do business in London, as well as EMI’s two subsidiaries, Columbia and HMV, which had also passed.

By February, Brian’s anxiety had reached a critical stage. He continued to reassure the Beatles that their recording career was inevitable, but to friends he admitted that it was beginning to look bleak. “
It appears that we are cursed
as far as record companies are concerned,” he complained bitterly to Peter Brown. “Either that, or [the labels] are just too tone-deaf to recognize a hit group—in which case we are definitely doomed.”

Decca especially perplexed him. Mike Smith had shown such optimism and seemed to enjoy the Beatles’ company. A deal there seemed like a fait accompli. Now, he sensed they were giving him the brush-off.

Exasperated, Brian tried to force Decca’s hand. After leaving a string of curt messages with the receptionist, he finally heard from Dick Rowe on February 1. Rowe apologized for the delay in returning Brian’s calls and confessed embarrassment. The Beatles, he reported, failed to stir much enthusiasm at the label. “
The people at Decca didn’t like the boys’ sound
,” he explained. More to the point: “Groups with guitars are on the way out.” To make such a claim credible, he pointed to the new crop of vocalists now popular in the States—Bobby Vee, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Darin, Dion. “Besides, they sound too much like the Shadows.”

Even to a square like Brian, this argument rang false. Desperate to salvage a deal, he begged Rowe for a few minutes of his time and arranged to meet him the following week at Decca’s offices in London.

In the meantime, Rowe decided to safeguard himself against the likelihood of an unreasonable Brian Epstein: he’d audition the Beatles himself. Without telling anyone, Rowe took the train to Liverpool on Saturday, February 3, with the intention of catching the band at the Cavern. His objective was simple: he’d get a good look at this group, without any buildup or hype. That way, no one would be able to claim that Decca hadn’t jumped through hoops for Epstein.

It was “pissing with rain” when he arrived in Liverpool, the city besieged by a typical winter storm, the kind whose blustery winds and rawness bit through every stitch of one’s clothing deep into the skin. Rowe’s mood was as foul as the weather by the time he stepped out in front of the
Cavern. One glance at the scene churned up further shudders of indignation. Mathew Street was straight out of Dickens: remote, squalid, creepy. The entrance to the Cavern was packed with kids forcing their way like animals into the tiny club. Standing alone in the dark, shivering in the downpour, Rowe smoked a cigarette and weighed his options. “
You couldn’t get in
, and what with the rain outside, I was getting drenched,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘Oh sod it,’ and I walked away.”

Thus, Rowe let the most popular band in history slip through his fingers.

To insulate himself against the Beatles’ headstrong manager, Rowe had recruited Sidney Beecher-Stevens to join them for lunch in a private dining room at Decca House, where, without beating around the bush, he delivered a polite but final rejection. Brian seethed with indignation. It was clear the end had come; the expectations fanned by the productive recording session were dashed. Brian was convinced that he and the Beatles had been slighted and strung along by Decca. At one point during lunch, voices were raised. Struggling to recover his composure, Brian announced quite pompously that they were making the mistake of their careers. Now Rowe had heard enough. He had been listening to this babble about “the Beatles’ potential” for over an hour. Through clenched teeth, he offered Brian a piece of advice: “
You have a good record business
in Liverpool, Mr. Epstein. Stick to that.”

Brian left Decca House “
completely shattered
.” He had failed to deliver what he had promised. Even more unsettling was the absence of options. He was out of places to shop the Beatles. Against the backdrop of failure, Brian reached out to a London acquaintance for some constructive advice. The previous year he had gone to a retail record management seminar in Hamburg, where he’d hit it off with a young man named Bob Boast. At first, they seemed like an improbable pair, but the more the two men talked, the more a rapport developed between them. They both liked the same kind of music, were devoted to their jobs, and possessed the same direct, earnest attitude toward record sales. Boast managed the tony HMV record store, and Brian dropped in on him as a measure of last resort.

Boast listened to the Beatles’ Decca tapes without much enthusiasm. There was no way he could help, other than to suggest that Brian convert several of the songs to discs, which, in the future, would allow A&R men to hear only the highlights, the killer songs, without having to wade through
everything else. Right away, that suggestion made excellent sense. One flight above the record store was a studio where acetates could be cut while Brian waited. This, too, proved providential, inasmuch as Jim Foy, the engineer on duty, happened to listen and liked what he heard. When Brian bragged that his favorite songs were written by the Beatles themselves, Foy introduced him to Sid Coleman, the general manager of Ardmore & Beechwood, who expressed interest in acquiring the publishing rights. The offer was significant principally because it corroborated Brian’s impression of the Beatles as viable talents. It was not, he recognized, the kind of deal dangled to many groups without a record in the marketplace. Intrigued, Brian promised to explore it, but at the moment, he explained, a recording contract was more crucial to his agenda. Coleman, eager to pursue matters, volunteered to help. No extraordinary effort was necessary, he assured Brian—everything was all in the family; HMV and Ardmore & Beechwood happened to share the same corporate parent, EMI. “
Now, who hasn’t [already] got a group
in EMI?” he speculated aloud, running his finger down a list of company telephone extensions. “Let me see, Norrie’s got the Shadows….” On and on Coleman went, puzzling over a chore in which he seemed to match the entire roster to their respective in-house producers. The label and its affiliates were inundated with pop acts whose lineups bore too close a resemblance to the Beatles. None of the producers on the list were likely to take on a project that duplicated an act already under contract, and each had his own respectable share.