When They Were Boys (15 page)

I became their manager; isn't that amazing?”

—Allan Williams, the Beatles' first manager

“
What's all that bloody racket in the basement?”

—Cheniston Roland, photographer and member of the Jacaranda Club

A
FORMER WATCH REPAIR SHOP AT 21
S
LATER STREET IN
L
IVERPOOL IS, IN THE CURRENT DAY, THE POPULAR PUB THE
J
ACARANDA
.
The club closed in 2011, but new owners have been trying to revive it. It certainly is a historic landmark by anyone's definition. The site was reconstructed by promoter Allan Williams in the fall of 1958 as a coffee bar and live-music venue. The geography was an excellent match for the boys, just blocks away from John and Stuart's studios at the Liverpool College of Art, and Paul and George's classrooms at the Liverpool Institute. They discovered the Jacaranda in the early part of October 1959 but had no real knowledge of its mythical qualities at first.

The jacaranda, for the record, is an exotic species of ornamental flowering tree native to South America but widely planted elsewhere for its beauty. Its scientific name is
Jacaranda mimosifolia
. Argentine author Alejandro Dolina immortalized the tree by describing a mythical jacaranda in Buenos Aires that could whistle songs on demand. Songwriters have even dedicated tracks to the blossoming blue jacaranda. Was this musical connection between the venue and the flowering tree a “sign”?

For Allan Williams, the Jac, as it came to be known, was also a transition. The man had a flair for enterprise, along with a Liverpudlian love for alcohol, and a cool command presence about him. Once an expert of drain cleaning and leak plugging, the former plumber morphed into a young, handsome,
clever, and creatively devious promoter and club owner. And he would soon meet the boys who would turn him into a band manager, of sorts.

Williams, unlike most of the prudish club owners of the day, made it known that he would accept rockers, and offered his facilities as a play-and-practice, live-and-learn laboratory. The result? The Jac started drawing teenagers at night. Groups would gather there. Some, like the Quarrymen, would offer menial labor in return for rehearsal space. For the crafty Williams, it was a grand bargain. And so it was that the boys, aware of the attraction, arrived at the Jac in October 1959.

Williams had a voracious appetite for working people cheap. The former craftsman of the pipes sensed the boys' determination and passion. He gave them odd jobs refurbishing and cleaning up the place. A keen observer of raw artistic talent, Williams “commissioned” Stu and John to paint a mural for the ladies' room; it was perhaps their first and only truly commercial art assignments. In retrospect, the gig was likely humiliating for a serious artist like Stu. But there was a mission at hand, and the boys were determined to do anything to convince Williams to let them perform at the Jac. If that meant cleaning up, painting, or just hanging out with Williams and the Jac crowd, so be it.

As John told me years later, “We worked at this place [the Jac]. Did everything, you know, but kiss the guy's ass, which, Larry, I might have done to get us a break.”

And that break was not necessarily forthcoming. Sam Leach, entrepreneur and the then-“Prince of Mathew Street”—the nightlife hub of Liverpool—gave me his observations years later of the early relationship between Williams and the boys.

“Allan Williams was a super promoter, but he never saw what was really in John's band in the beginning. He didn't see what it would be. He was amused by the boys, but hardly committed,” Leach said. “It took others to convince him, but in the beginning, he probably violated child labor laws.”

Williams faces me head-on in the lobby of the Hard Day's Night Hotel in Liverpool in 2011. It is 11 a.m. on a crisp winter morning and his glass is full of red wine.

“You know, Larry,” he says,

YOU KNOW
I
USED THEM TO DECORATE THE TOILETS, AND THEY DID A PRETTY GOOD JOB
. B
UT
I
HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH THEM NEXT, BECAUSE THEY WOULD SKIP CLASS AND JUST BECOME COFFEE SHOP LAYABOUTS, BUMMING CIGARETTES OFF THE GIRLS AT THE COUNTER
. H
ARD TO BELIEVE THAT
I
WOULD SOMEDAY BECOME THEIR DOCTOR, OF SORTS, WHEN WE HAD TO DEAL WITH ALL THE ERUPTIONS OF DISEASE DURING THE NIGHTS AND DAYS IN
H
AMBURG
. H
ARD TO BELIEVE
. S
O
, I
REMEMBER
J
OHN COMING TO ME ONE DAY AND SAYING
, “Y
OU KNOW WE HAVE A GROUP, AND WE'VE BEEN REHEARSING HERE WHEN WE CAN
.” A
ND THAT'S WHEN HE ASKED ME TO BE THEIR MANAGER
. I
HAD NEVER BEEN A MANAGER, AND
I
THOUGHT IT WOULD BE INTERESTING
. A
ND
I
SAID YES
. I
THINK THEY WERE RATHER ALL SURPRISED
.

While the boys—especially John, George, and Stu—kept busy (Paul abhorred the work), Williams, a devotee of the beat generation and jazz, was creating a two-headed monster. By day, businessmen came to the Jac to listen to jazz. At night, it became an early favorite of Liverpool teens into rock 'n' roll.

“It was a strange place, but in all reality, it became a social melting pot. The well-dressed businessmen eyed the teenage girls. The girls, still in that wide-eyed gaze before the sexual revolution was taking place, enjoyed the surroundings and the chance to get away for a few minutes, a few hours,” Bill Harry remembers. “The girls wanted a smoke and some coffee, and the stories they took with them would fill their minds and their fantasies for days.”

John, Paul, George, and Stuart—a band without a drummer—shadowed the artists at the Jac, cuddled intimately with female customers (some older than them), cleaned sinks, and continued relentless rehearsals in the Jac's basement.

The rehearsal sessions did not go unnoticed. One day Jac patron and photographer Cheniston Roland, stunned by the sound coming from below, queried Williams. “What's all that bloody racket in the basement?”

“I said to him, ‘You're not the first to complain. . . . They have a sense of direction. . . . I will get them some work when they improve,'” Williams tells me.

“Did you really believe that?” I ask.

“I don't remember,” he says, and laughs heartily.

But he did come through for the boys, although at times reluctantly. The wary promoter started arranging gigs for the young band, including one daring and unusual assignment. On this infamous occasion, the boys provided backup music for a local stripper named Janice at another Williams-owned club, the Blue Angel. When word reached Aunt Mimi, it is reported by neighbors that the great aunt was speechless—a rarity—if not visibly distressed.

From October 1959 to May 1960, before the arrival of Janice the stripper, the boys went to school, pored through their homework in late afternoon, arrived at the Jac in the evening, and toiled as barely paid gofers for Williams, waiting for a break. George, quiet and soulful, would drink tea and indulge in a few sweets. Bill Harry, the future journalist-promoter, would delight in the Jac, especially the eats.

Years later, Harry talked to me about the times at the Jac. “We were poor. In those days, some tasty jam spread over the toast would cost a penny. John, Paul, George, and Stu weren't making any real money, so that spread of jam was a real treat, Larry, along with the girl-watching, of course.”

The girl-watching would prove fateful to the intense, handsome, and devoutly intellectual Harry.

A classmate of John and Stu's at the Art Institute, who played an unsung but powerful role in the boys' ascent, Harry found the Jac an interesting place to be. It was a refuge for good company and a delightful place to meet people. One night he met a young woman named Virginia Sowry. Born in Yorkshire, Sowry was a comptometer operator for Woolworths. She soon abandoned the comptometer, a mechanical calculator, for the love of Bill. Soon Bill and Virginia would make more than love—creating
Mersey Beat
, a magazine that became the most significant music-news enterprise of its time. Hanging around the Jac also brought Bill Harry closer to his friends Stu and John.

“I knew John was talented. I knew Paul was amazing. With real humility, I must add that I sensed that there could be a future,” exclaims the lifelong scribe and promotion man.

If the young writer was so confident, his level of confidence was rising faster than the Quarrymen were. While the Quarrymen toiled in an extravagant sweatshop, the boss of the coffeehouse was making his own waves. Inspired by a similar show in London, Williams launched an ill-fated arts festival. The boys were not invited to play. They were, as George would say later, “pissed.”

The Quarrymen were languishing in the basement, fine-tuning their sound, yet they truly felt that they would be unseen and unheard—just another band.

Allan Williams was on a faster track. Working with gifted London agent Larry Parnes, he produced a large rock show at Liverpool Stadium. The boys, again, were not included on the bill. Instead they helped create floats and rather ordinary backdrops. They also watched the show with great interest because one of their favorite local bands was in the concert. Enter Rory Storm.

Many evenings at the Jac, the boys watched Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. They were Liverpool's hottest band, and they had something that the Quarrymen did not: a drummer. The percussionist's given name was Richard Starkey.

Rory, whose real name was Allan Caldwell, lived the ultimate irony. He had a stammer so severe that it disarmed even the most relaxed observer. But while Rory's stutter was disarming, so was the reaction of his audiences when, miraculously, he started singing and the stammer vanished.

Rory and the Hurricanes were part of the Liverpool Stadium concert. Their performance with established star Gene Vincent excited the Quarrymen. A Liverpool group they respected was on stage. On a big stage. May 3, 1960—the date of the Liverpool Stadium concert—was a day that set in motion a series of key events. For John's boys, the appearance of Rory and his group at the stadium was a shining symbol that local boys could succeed. They admired Rory, and he returned the favor in just a few months by making a temporary detour that opened a door for the boys.

Finally spring came, and with it, a crack in Williams's shoddy treatment of the boys. The band, with the help of part-time drummers, and now rebranded
as the Silver Beetles, auditioned for big-time London band manager Larry Parnes and pop star Billy Fury. After the session, John Lennon, infused with joy, asked Fury for an autograph. By the end of the day, the Silver Beetles learned that they would travel on tour in Scotland as the backup band for Johnny Gentle, a popular rocker. Parnes and Fury liked their energy. It was their first serious gig, but as in life, ecstasy is often accompanied by seeds of doubt, and golden boy Larry Parnes insisted that the group drop the bass player, referring to Stu.

Sutcliffe, always the mysterious man on the side of the stage with the movie idol face, eyes hidden by sunglasses, used a technique of seeming to turn away from the audience. Parnes, according to Williams, was insistent that Stu had to vanish. In the flash of a few seconds, John said, “We are all or none.” In reality, Stu Sutcliffe never really looked away from the audience; he just turned his body around in a rhythmic movement. John knew that. He was angry and outraged, and didn't hesitate to let the big-time Londoner know how he felt, with none of his real feelings ever left to the imagination. But the truth is, according to Bill Harry and others, that Parnes was not unhappy at all with Stuart. Parnes was more upset about the drummer, Tommy Moore, who was late for the audition.

But whatever the real reason for it, John's defiance in the face of a contemporary legend in the music world was part of his fabric, a sense of his continuing ability to speak frankly, even if it meant flirting with danger. There was a cockiness that put his energy into overdrive, regardless of the consequences. I saw that on several occasions during the first Beatles tour of North America when he confronted powerful Kansas City businessman Charles O. Finley, owner of the local pro baseball team and promoter of the band's appearance in that city. Much to the chagrin of manager Brian Epstein, John stared down the millionaire and steadfastly refused his request that the band sing a “few extra songs.” Finley quickly offered more money, and John immediately answered, “No, Chuck. Not enough [money], man. We won't do it.” Finley upped the price again, and a horrified Epstein, flushed with embarrassment, saw John look the storied baseball owner in the eye and say, “Chuck, no fucking way.” At that point, Finley left the room in
anger. Epstein, his honor shattered by John's outburst, pleaded with the group to at least sing one extra song. That song, “Kansas City,” was the only exception to their repertoire on the famous 1964 tour. On another occasion of John's directness, in 1965, I saw a young woman, a local reporter on the tarmac in Kansas City, shout out at him, “Are you cheating on your wife?” And I saw John turn and slap her in the face. A few minutes later I said, “What's wrong with you? That was stupid. Why didn't you just move on?” He answered, “Why not, Larry? She was stupid.” But he did admit later that I was right. In Seattle, it was John who led the three others in urinating on the carpets of their suite, but only after discovering that someone had planned to cut up the rugs and sell them. Even Paul, the ever-polite, do-it-right statesman of the band, joined in the soil fest.