The Beatles (66 page)

And more steadily. There weren’t enough hours in the day; there weren’t enough days in the week. As time wore on, Brian devoted only cursory attention to NEMS, laying off most of the administrative responsibilities onto his brother, Clive. Even when the store closed at midday on Wednesdays, he stayed rooted to his desk, his assistants working the phones and typewriters, going at a breakneck pace. No one took time off.

Because he remained so insecure, Brian often accepted offers for the band that fell way beneath their current stature—ridiculous gigs at cinemas, floral halls, and jive hives—to keep up the appearance of surplus bookings. These were interspersed with enough big shows to keep the money respectable, but eventually Brian sought a bigger share of the pie.
Ballrooms and arenas guaranteed larger paydays, which gave him another idea about upping the ante.

In preparation,
he met promoter Sam Leach
at the Kardomah Café and proposed what he thought was an intriguing deal. The objective, he explained, was to book the Beatles onto shows headlined by established stars; that way, he could command a larger fee and, at the same time, link the Beatles to popular recording artists. All he needed was the proper venue. Locally, there was only the Tower Ballroom, a massive hall that Leach had locked up under contract every weekend throughout the year. “I will book big names and we’ll do it together,” Brian said. “How does that sound?”

To most ears, it would have sounded crazy. But Leach was thinking ahead. Convinced that the Beatles were on the verge of stardom, he thought: “If I do this, we might do other things together.” Secretly, he’d always wanted to manage the Beatles; perhaps this would lead to some kind of cooperative arrangement. Besides, he’d started a little independent label, Troubadour Records, which in June 1961 had released a single by Gerry and the Pacemakers; even though the Beatles already had a Parlophone contract, their record might bomb and he could wind up holding an option on their next effort. So instead of dismissing Brian’s offer out of hand, Sam said: “All right then, Brian. I’ll do it. Fifty-fifty.”

It was more than gracious, but Brian balked. Dismissively, he explained, as if lecturing an employee: “That would be impossible. I’m in [business] with Clive, who is a part of NEMS. We’ll have to share a third each.” Leach, predictably, refused to budge, at which point Brian stood up to leave. “You’ve made a very big mistake,” he warned, his voice barely above a whisper.

Leach went directly to John, who wrenched a few leftover dates out of Brian. But, as usual, financial hijinks followed. “
Sam had a habit of not paying groups
,” says Bob Wooler. “There was always an excuse. But he’d charm them, [saying]: ‘I’ll book you next time, and you can rest assured there will be a double fee.’ ”

Brian had heard that one once too often and finally pulled the plug minutes before the Beatles were due to go onstage at the Tower. “This meant war,” Leach recalled. “The Beatles were now finished there, and without them, so was I. That forced me to book bigger attractions to compensate.” Desperate, Leach called Don Arden, a notoriously hard-assed promoter who toured fading American stars around Europe, and begged for one of his Little Richard dates. Banking on big advance ticket sales, he promised Arden £350, “to be paid in cash before [Little Richard] goes on.” Arden promised
to shoot off a contract, but before he could get it in the mail, Brian Epstein offered £500. Money, money, money—Arden couldn’t resist. Meanwhile, Leach had papered Liverpool with advertisements for the show:
SAM PRESENTS LITTLE RICHARD AT THE TOWER!
“
Even before the Beatles exploded
, Brian viewed himself as an impresario,” says Peter Brown. “There was always that infatuation with
presenting
someone, and with concerts he could do it in an area that expanded his control and influence.”

As Brian saw it, the local concert business seemed rightfully his. He understood its simple mechanics, had the financial wherewithal to promote successful shows, knew the bands, knew whose records sold, had ties to the press. And he viewed Liverpool’s existing gang of promoters with undisguised scorn.

No longer was Brian Epstein seeking cover in the shadows. Now he was vying to take over the scene. The soft-spoken record-shop owner who pleaded rock ’n roll ignorance was gone. That persona had been replaced by a vigorous, opinionated businessman who began to view himself as a power broker.

Brian printed posters and hiked ticket prices to an “unheard-of twelve and six,” according to Sam Leach, to ensure a tidy profit. In fact, the show was so successful that he took another date, this time at the classy Empire Theatre, on Sunday, October 28, for which he doubled the advertising budget. And in every case the Beatles’ name appeared in the same type size—and was given the same prominence—as Little Richard’s. Fans, watching in awe, concluded that “
the Beatles had really hit the big time
.” Sitting in the audience that evening, Frieda Kelly says she grew melancholy. “
When I saw them on the stage
of the Empire, I knew they were no longer ours.”

Immediately following the Little Richard shows, the entire entourage left for Hamburg, where the Beatles fulfilled an outstanding obligation at their old haunt, the Star-Club. When they returned, on November 14, things cranked into high gear. Without time to recharge, the band made a beeline for London, where two days later they performed for another intimate audience of teenagers on a show that went out over Radio Luxembourg. Tony Barrow, who had never seen them perform, marveled at the spell they seemed to cast over the room at EMI headquarters. Standing near the side of a makeshift stage, in an office that had been specially converted to simulate a club atmosphere, he was unprepared for the audience reaction as the Beatles were introduced.

Muriel Young, the show’s host, announced: “I’m going to bring on a new band now who’ve just got their first record into the charts, and their names are John, Paul…”

“
Immediately,” Barrow recalls, “the kids started screaming
.” This caught him by surprise. “I’d never experienced anything like it before. The Beatles, at this time, were basically unknown. But if this bunch of kids in London had gotten as far as finding out the individual band members’ names, then it was a phenomenon of some kind, which, to me, was extremely significant.”

What provoked such a reaction? It is difficult to say. “Love Me Do” had received only scant airplay so far, not enough to spark a popular groundswell. Barrow suspects the
APPLAUSE!
sign had little to do with it, either, judging from the look on the kids’ faces. “They were genuinely excited,” he says. “They knew the song; they knew about the band. It had to be spontaneous, to some extent. But if you ask me, that special Beatles mystique was already at work.” At the time, such a phenomenon was unknown, even puzzling. This was London, after all, not the provinces. Bands didn’t simply wander into the city and take it by storm. But the jungle drums were already beating through cultural channels. Word of mouth traveled from town to town, from city to city, via teenagers who had seen the Beatles on the cinema circuit.

“Everyone had said, ‘You’ll never make [it]
, coming from Liverpool,’ ” Paul remembered. When, in late 1962, Bill Harry wrote an article about the vibrant Liverpool music scene in
Mersey Beat,
beseeching record-company moguls in London to “
take a look up North
,” not a single A&R man responded.

Others knew the score.
Alistair Taylor, who left NEMS that November
to work in London for Pye Records, knew from the moment Brian signed the Beatles that they were his ticket south. Says Tony Bramwell, then a NEMS office boy, “
No one ever mentioned London
, but it was understood we’d eventually be going there. Brian had a plan; he wanted to be Larry Parnes and swim in a big pond.” Everything would be in-house: “
His own press officer
, booking agent, television liaison—we’d all be under his thumb,” says Tony Barrow. “It was unheard-of.”

Brian certainly made no secret of his intention to dismiss the publishing firm Ardmore & Beechwood, who, according to George Martin, “
did virtually nothing
about getting [“Love Me Do”] played.” It incensed Brian that their professional managers, or song pluggers, couldn’t point to five or ten outlets they’d helped persuade to play the Beatles. Not even a single ad
was placed by them in any of the music papers. Why should he add another Lennon-McCartney song to their catalogue? He could have done as well with “Love Me Do” on his own, without giving away the publisher’s share of the royalties.

George Martin provided the names of three alternatives—all of whom, he promised, “won’t rip you off.” The first one Brian went to see on the list was Dick James.

Calling Dick James a publisher was like calling Brian an impresario. A former big band singer with a gregarious, music hall personality and ever-present smile, James, who was forty-four, had been in business for himself for only a year, and with very little to show for it. There were no major hits in his portfolio and only a handful of potential standouts. But what he lacked in assets, he made up for in connections. Although James was no longer a performer, he claimed a wide network of show-business friends left over from his moderately successful run as a recording artist. In the mid-1950s, he’d enjoyed a string of popular hits—most notably “Tenderly” and the theme song to TV’s
Robin Hood,
both of which had been produced by George Martin. Dick and George had stayed in touch throughout the years. James had spent a decade toiling for various London music publishers, resolutely sending their demos to Parlophone for Martin’s consideration. “How Do You Do It” represented his biggest break to date, and he was crestfallen when he learned the Beatles had rejected it.

James, whose cubbyhole office was on Charing Cross Road in the heart of London’s music district, hadn’t been floored by the impact of “Love Me Do.”
Though it placed at forty-nine
on the
Record Mirror
Top 100 chart, he considered the tune nothing more than “
a riff
” and consequently had no expectations as far as any other songs written by the northern writers who were responsible for it. Still, he was curious to hear what appealed to an act that had the nerve to reject his own hottest prospect.

As luck would have it, Brian had brought along an acetate of “Please Please Me,” and as soon as James heard it he knew: it was
better
than “How Do You Do It.” Infinitely better—a smash. Without hesitating, he offered to publish it. Two months earlier Brian might have jumped at the chance, but with each successive professional experience, he grew more skeptical and restrained. What, he demanded bluntly, did Dick James intend to bring to the table? How would he contribute to the record’s promotion?

As the story goes, James swallowed his answer. Instead, he immediately picked up the phone and called Philip Jones, who produced a new prime-time television show called
Thank Your Lucky Stars.
Giving the performance
of his career, Dick James instructed Jones to listen to “a guaranteed future hit,” then held the receiver up to a speaker blaring “Please Please Me.” Incredibly enough, Jones heard enough to interest him and, with the publisher urging him on, agreed to present the Beatles on an upcoming show.

Brian Epstein was stunned. Next to
Juke Box Jury,
this was the most influential spot on television that a recording artist could hope for. It meant national exposure, something EMI hadn’t produced with all its supposed firepower. Nothing like this had been offered to him before.

Brian and Dick James did everything but jump into each others’ arms. The wily James had already formulated a deal. Instead of the usual song-by-song arrangement favored by many British publishers—including EMI’s deal with the Beatles—James had something novel up his sleeve. According to George Martin, “
Dick said, ‘Why don’t we sign…
their future writing to a company which the Beatles would partly own?’ ” On the surface, it seemed like a magnanimous—and radical—offer. Most publishers got 50 percent of an artist’s performance royalties in addition to a cut of the sheet-music sales. (“By today’s terms,” Martin says, “if you accepted that, you’d be considered an idiot.”) James suggested creating a separate company—Northern Songs—that would publish all Lennon-McCartney songs and be administered by Dick James Music. Of this new venture, royalties would be split evenly (instead of James taking the standard 100 percent of the publishing rights and 50 percent of the writers’ royalties), albeit with a 10 percent fee taken
off the top
by Dick James Music. “Brian thought it was wonderful,” Martin recalled. And without hesitation, he recommended it to John and Paul.

Forty years later, Paul McCartney, in nearly every reminiscence, goes out of his way to curse the Northern Songs pact as “
a slave deal
”—and worse. He believes they were bamboozled out of the rights to their songs and, ultimately, untold millions of dollars, saying: “
Dick James’s entire empire
was built on our backs.” But at the time, it must have sounded like a sweetheart of an offer. When they were asked if they wanted to read the agreement, John and Paul declined. It called for
Northern Songs to acquire Lenmac Enterprises
, a holding company set up in April by Brian that owned fifty-nine Lennon-McCartney songs. Under the terms of the agreement, John and Paul were obligated to write only six songs per year for the next four years. During that time, however, they would add an extraordinary hundred new copyrights to the catalogue, each one a classic that would never again be under their control.