The Beatles (54 page)

Except for one.

Coleman’s finger lingered over the name, a wild card, and not even that—more like a shot in the dark. He must have felt uneasy at the prospect of taking such a shot; it had “misfire” written all over it. No doubt he deliberated over how Brian Epstein would react at the end of yet another hopeless audition. It would be easy to judge Coleman’s assistance as inappropriate, a waste of time. He was savvy enough to know that if there was any value in these Beatles, such a miscue might scare off Epstein or, worse, steer him to a competitor. Still, it seemed like the only alternative. There was no one else at the label likely to give him the time of day. So, without any more debate, Coleman picked up the phone and called George Martin.

Even before he had become famous, George Martin had the aura. He was a tall man, well over six feet, with a fine head of thick, wavy, swept-back hair and dramatic features: a wide, helmet-shaped forehead; long, sloping jawline; liquid blue eyes; and an afterglow of masculine beauty that filled out and crystallized with age. He also conducted himself with such natural deference that every gesture seemed informed by a graciousness and decency beyond him. Nevertheless, for all Martin’s personal poetry, at EMI he was something of a joke.

From the moment he arrived at the record company, in 1950, George answered his EMI telephone with the punch line: Parlophone. The label, once a vital German imprint, had dwindled in stature to the extent that it existed primarily as a repository for EMI’s most insignificant acts. In a company loaded with up-and-coming stars, Parlophone was lit by baroque ensembles, light orchestras, dance bands, and obscure music hall luminaries whose commercial prospects were as dim as their material.
HMV and Columbia got the heavy hitters
licensed from their American affiliates; even when EMI bought Capitol Records in 1956, its artists landed everywhere but Parlophone, which was insular and self-contained. “
It was the bastard child
of the recording industry,” says a musician familiar with the scene, “kept locked away in the clock tower and treated with disdain.”

Martin inherited Parlophone’s reins in 1955 and, for a brief period, continued along much in the same timeworn tradition, flogging such pedestrian artists as Jimmy Shand, Jim Dale, Humphrey Lyttelton, Ron Goodwin, and “
a lot of traditional Scottish bands
that actually sold themselves.” With the upswing of pop, it became increasingly clear that if Parlophone was ever to be productive again—and not just productive, but vital—
Martin would have “to do something” bold
to forge a distinct and profitable identity using material that fell “
between the cracks
” at other labels, or risk increased alienation from within the corporate hierarchy.

Most A&R men would have studied the competition and staked a similar claim. But for whatever reason, George Martin demurred. He had spent most of his life in thrall of serious music—and serious musicians. He had studied piano and oboe in earnest at London’s Guildhall School of Music, idolized Rachmaninoff and Ravel, swooned over Cole Porter, befriended Sidney Torch and Johnny Dankworth. Clearly, pop music was out of his register.

Rather than leap the scales, Martin pitched a note no one else had struck and one loaded with gold. Comedy was enormously popular in England and relatively cheap to record; there were no musicians to pay, no arrangements to write, no copyrights to secure. Of course, comedy didn’t present the creative challenge of a Mozart serenade. Nor was it studded with finely crafted highlights like the intricate phrasing of a Dankworth Seven record or the lushly produced orchestrations of Eve Boswell. But the payoffs were handsome. Martin scored a smash with
At the Drop of a Hat,
a two-man show starring Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, which sold steadily for more than twenty-five years. That was followed by the hugely innovative, and every bit as lucrative,
Beyond the Fringe.
It’s irreverent cast—Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore—cracked the whole silly scene open, sparking a “satirical movement” among the highbrow university crowd. They also gave George Martin purchase on a genre that rang up untold sales points at EMI.

If the Fringe gang gave Martin cachet, Peter Sellers put him over the top. Sellers was a comic phenomenon—a mimic and impressionist and master of the ad-lib, the verbal grenade which had taken on a cultural but dubious significance. Young people especially, such as John Lennon, considered Sellers an icon because of his brilliant eccentricity and outrageous offbeat humor. And somehow George Martin managed to capture all of that on tape. Martin and Sellers made a series of records over the years—some alone, others with Spike Milligan, even ensemble pieces with the entire Goon squad (Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe)—that transformed Parlophone’s position at EMI. “
We had gone from being known as a sad little company
to making a mint of money,” says Ron Richards, Parlophone’s “song plugger” at the time.

But while providing the label with substantial security, comedy alone wasn’t enough to satisfy Martin. He was a musician; it was in his blood. And though there were some marginal contemporary singers on the roster, what Martin lusted after, what he determined would raise Parlophone’s jokey image, was a legitimate pop act, the same kind of hit pop act that fueled every other label in the marketplace. The closest it had come was a single called “Who Could Be Bluer,” by Jerry Lordan, who went on to write the Shadows’ biggest hits. It bulleted to the Top Ten for a week or two, whetting Parlophone’s appetite for pop. But when it came down to the nitty-gritty, Lordan wasn’t a rallying force; he was too sedate to cause much of a sensation. And Shane Fenton, whose voice
was
“so soft the engineers had enormous difficulty
getting it on tape,” eventually “ran out of steam.”

Ron Richards says, “George was desperate to get something off the ground in the pop department.” It “humiliated him” the way Parlophone got upstaged by its sister labels, so much so that when Sid Coleman phoned about a promising group he’d heard—so promising, in fact, that they’d already been turned down by EMI—Martin agreed to book a meeting on Tuesday, February 13, 1962, with their manager, Brian Epstein.

Each time Brian returned empty-handed from London, the Beatles had listened without grumbling. But with the passes piling up, the Beatles’ patience had worn thin. Only a few weeks before, Brian had assured them that the Decca deal was all but cinched. Now, over a long, tense dinner, he scrambled to account for its startling demise, stuttering over the details like a deeply rutted record. At one point in the strained encounter, John, still smarting about the audition tape repertoire, warned him “
not to be so clever
.” The silence that followed was brittle. The hostility in the exchange was impossible to ignore. Brian sat there, looking awkward and embarrassed, until finally John, having made his point, snapped: “
Right. Try Embassy
.” That had broken the ice. Embassy was Woolworth’s in-house label, devoted to novelty and children’s records. Everyone, including Brian, appreciated the absurdity of his remark and especially how deftly John had wielded it as a tension breaker.

Nevertheless, the incident brought to the surface the resentment that was brewing. The Beatles felt they had done their share; in addition to jacking up their show several notches, they had reshaped their act to suit Brian’s specifications. It was his turn to be tested. They expected some results.

Brian reminded them about an upcoming audition in Manchester for the BBC dance show
Teenager’s Turn
and several other promotions that carried his imprimatur. Most were harmless schemes designed to boost the band’s image, but one, at a club in Southport, stirred some dormant internal strife. Ron Appleby, who promoted the show, recalled an incident that would soon have far-reaching repercussions. “
Brian Epstein decided that everyone
who came into the dance before eight [o’clock] would be given a photograph of the Beatles.” It was a nice incentive, although an unusual practice for a Liverpool dance, and it went over in a big way before taking
an unforeseen turn. “The girls were ripping up the photograph and sticking the picture of Pete Best onto their jumpers.”

No one, especially Pete, had counted on that happening.
He was “embarrassed
” by the attention, but it wasn’t an isolated incident. “
Almost since he joined
the band, Pete was the most popular Beatle,” says Bill Harry, expressing a view shared by many early fans. “He was certainly the best-looking among them, and the girls used to go bananas over him.” This phenomenon was nothing new. Best had immense stage presence. Unlike the other Beatles, who mugged shamelessly for the girls, Pete, unsmiling, ignored the crowd, attacking the drums with his long muscular arms, which only heightened his mystique.

One can only imagine how much resentment and envy that stirred, especially in Paul, who was sensitive to being upstaged. He’d already gotten bent out of shape by the way Stuart Sutcliffe used to steal the limelight. Now suddenly Pete was crawling up his back. “
If one of the others got more applause
, Paul would notice and be on him like lightning,” recalls Bob Wooler, whose own behavior did nothing to tone down the jealousy. Wooler had worked out a little rap he delivered at the end of a band’s set to introduce individual musicians.
A poster for
The Outlaw
he’d seen described Jane Russell as being “mean, moody, and magnificent,” which Wooler borrowed and applied to Pete Best. “
He was the only Beatle I mentioned
by name every time, and it sparked enmity between them—especially with McCartney.”

Every day at the Cavern, whether intentionally or not, Wooler twisted the knife. “And on the drums, our very own Jeff Chandler,” he’d intone over an orgasm of shrieks. “Mean, moody, and magnificent…
Mr. Pete Best!
” Paul would seethe as he listened to the swell of female approval, although he didn’t need a cheering section to know that he was being overshadowed. To him, the implications were all too clear: if this was allowed to continue unchecked, Pete would wind up the Beatles’ heartthrob. “
That had always been Paul’s role
,” says Bill Harry. “He always promoted the girl fans. He’d stop and talk to them, take their requests, be friendly. Now, unintentionally, Pete had cut into his territory.”

Paul must have known it wouldn’t be difficult to rally the other Beatles against Pete. Privately, they all grumbled their discontent about the way he murdered the backbeat. He was too much of what drummers call “a bricklayer” to suit their interests, too hamfisted, an unimaginative musician. What’s more, he was always the odd man out. Whenever the band
went out together after a gig, Pete either clammed up or left early. In a spirit that demanded the battle cry “All for one and one for all,” it made him seem aloof and distant.

For the time being, however, Paul kept any resentment to himself. This was a fight that, for a lot of reasons, didn’t seem worth picking. The Beatles were on a roll; it would have been foolish to upset the momentum. And as they knew only too well, drummers—no matter how detached or heavy-handed—were still at a premium in Liverpool.

On February 5 Pete called in sick a few hours before a prearranged gig at the Cavern. His timing couldn’t have been worse. Not only were the Beatles due to play a lunchtime session, but they were also booked for an evening performance at the Kingsway Club, in Southport, where their fee had swollen to £18. No one wanted to give that up; they’d take too great a hit. A few phone calls later, the Beatles determined that their buddies, the Hurricanes, happened to have a rare day off and were willing to loan out their drummer—Ringo Starr.

For Pete Best, it was the beginning of the end.

On February 13, in a desperate last-ditch attempt to make good, Brian doubled back to London for his interview with George Martin. Although officially a label chief, Martin preferred a more relaxed approach in his dealings with hopeful, young managers, most of whom consulted him with great humility.

Brian was leaving nothing to chance as he strode into the Parlophone office on Manchester Square all charged up about the Beatles. He turned up the juice, describing the band as
“brilliant”
and proclaiming, in no uncertain terms, that
“they were going to conquer the world.”
That took real nerve, inasmuch as Sid Coleman had already explained to Martin how the Beatles had “been completely rejected by everybody, absolutely everybody in the country.” Brian may have suspected as much. Nevertheless, he plowed ahead in a manner Martin interpreted as “blind faith,” painting Liverpool as an untapped rock ’n roll mecca in which these Beatles reigned supreme. Martin, who thought he “
had seen it all before
,” found it gallingly outrageous when Brian fell back on an old drama-school trick. “
He… expressed surprise
that I hadn’t heard of [the Beatles],” Martin wrote in his autobiography. Brian arched an eyebrow, leaned back presumptuously, and donned a look of disbelief. It was a desperate tactic, and one that might have earned him the boot from a busier record executive, but Martin was
charmed by such “
unswerving devotion
…. I kind of inwardly laughed” and forgave Brian for what he recognized as “
a big hype
.”