When They Were Boys (60 page)

And here lies a story of “no guts, no glory.” It is the story of two Bernies. Bernie Lowe was the chief of Cameo. Bernie Binnick, who ran Swan Records, shared nearby office space with copartner Tony Mammarella.

Jerry Blavat, an original dancer on
American Bandstand
and a music legend in Philadelphia and across the country as a deejay, writer, and friend to all the major rock entertainers of the past sixty years, remembers how the “Bernies” reacted to the Beatles:

B
ERNIE
L
OWE AT
C
AMEO
-P
ARKWAY WAS NOT INTERESTED IN THE
B
EATLES, BUT
B
ERNIE
B
INNICK, HE WAS A FORMER SHOE SALESMAN IN
P
HILADELPHIA, WAS
VERY
INTERESTED, AND RELEASED
“S
HE
L
OVES
Y
OU” ON HIS
S
WAN
R
ECORDS LABEL
S
EPTEMBER
6, 1963. I
T WAS FAIRLY INVISIBLE ON THE RADIO, BUT BY THE TIME OF THE
D
ECEMBER
C
APITOL LAUNCH, THE COMPANY'S RELEASE FINALLY PAID OFF
. “S
HE
L
OVES
Y
OU” FLEW INTO ORBIT IN
1964. . . . D
ICK
C
LARK DIVESTED HIMSELF OF INTEREST IN
C
AMEO
-P
ARKWAY AND
S
WAN
R
ECORDS
. I
T WAS A GOOD CHOICE
.

Clark, who graciously wrote the foreword for my first Beatles book,
Ticket to Ride
, wanted to avoid any conflicts of interest as the pay-for-play investigations began in Washington.

Bruce Spizer notes that Swan had an option on the next Beatles record but didn't exercise it.

“It's kind of interesting that Bernie Binnick liked what he heard, but obviously he wasn't sure about what would come next,” Spizer says. “He did, though, cash in when the Beatles hit the airwaves in late December.”

But that mass eruption of the Beatles on American radio stations almost never happened.

The Swan gambit paid off, but it took tremendous patience. Remember, 1963 was a boom year in Great Britain and Europe for the Beatles, but it was a bust year in the States. For eleven months of 1963, the Beatles were unknown in America. All those months earlier, the boys' songs were on sale, but outside of the overly ambitious deejay Dick Biondi in Chicago, few people actually heard them.

And then Capitol Records and Dave Dexter got a second chance when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was offered to Capitol. Once again, Dexter showed his hand. He said no.

Incredibly, there would be a
third
chance for Capitol to get it right. Bruce Spizer recalls,

D
EXTER TURNED DOWN
“I W
ANT TO
H
OLD
Y
OUR
H
AND
.” B
RIAN
E
PSTEIN HAD ENOUGH
. H
E WENT OVER
D
AVID
D
EXTER'S HEAD TO
A
LAN
L
IVINGSTON, THE PRESIDENT OF
C
APITOL
R
ECORDS
. L
IVINGSTON LISTENED AND LISTENED AGAIN, AND BY LATE
D
ECEMBER AND EARLY
J
ANUARY
, “I W
ANT TO
H
OLD
Y
OUR
H
AND” WAS ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING CHAMPION OF
A
MERICAN RADIO
. D
AVE
D
EXTER HAD ALSO TURNED DOWN
“S
HE
L
OVES
Y
OU,” WHICH
S
WAN CASHED IN ON
. E
PSTEIN'S LEAP OVER THIS EXECUTIVE'S HEAD, DIRECTLY TO
L
IVINGSTON, GUARANTEED THE ERUPTION OF EMOTION THAT WOULD GO OUT OF CONTROL AMONG
A
MERICAN TEENAGERS
. W
ITHOUT
A
LAN
L
IVINGSTON, AND A LARGELY UNKNOWN DEEJAY, THERE MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN THE GREAT TIMING OF THE
D
ECEMBER 26TH LAUNCH OF
“I W
ANT TO
H
OLD
Y
OUR
H
AND,” AND ALONG WITH IT, ALSO ONE OF THE GREAT RELATIONSHIPS, TO THAT POINT, IN MUSICAL HISTORY
.

I met Alan Livingston once. During the 1964 tour, he hosted a VIP party in Brentwood, California—a charity fund-raiser featuring the four Beatles, standing under a tree, taking pictures and signing autographs. Lloyd Bridges and teenage sons Beau and Jeff were there. As the stars marched in, one by one, I was duly impressed.

But the boys were not happy.

The next day, John said to me, “It's rubbish that only the big spenders get to meet us. But then again, Larry . . . ”

“Yes?”

“Then again, the charming Mr. Livingston helped us so much, that . . . could we really say no?”

Paul McCartney, gracious and charismatic toward more than seventy of Hollywood's finest, would later sympathize with John.

“To think that police in America don't even allow us to wave at the fans. It doesn't seem fair, does it?”

But Livingston certainly deserved respect and payback. Without him, the flame for the Beatles in America may never have been lit.

It's ironic that a forty-six-year-old executive, far from the madding crowds of teenagers, got what the Beatles were all about.

For Bruce Spizer, the Capitol acquisition of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is a classic case of good business/bad business:

T
HE FAILURE BY
V
EE
-J
AY
R
ECORDS TO CASH IN ON THE
B
EATLES BECAUSE OF THE BOSS'S GAMBLING PROBLEM MAY BE ONE OF THE GREATEST MISSES IN RECORDING HISTORY, WHILE THE SHEER GUTS OF
A
LAN
L
IVINGSTON PUT THE
B
EATLES AND HIS OWN COMPANY OVER THE TOP
. T
HE FACT IS
. . . L
IVINGSTON'S ABILITY TO READ THE PUBLIC, AND THE YOUTH, WAS EXCEPTIONAL
. H
E SENT HIS COMPANY INTO OVERDRIVE BY SECOND-GUESSING A WELL-LIKED EXECUTIVE WHO HAD REJECTED THE
B
EATLES AT EVERY TURN
. I
OFTEN
W
ONDER WHETHER
D
AVE
D
EXTER HAD BEEN READING ANY NEWS REPORTS FROM
G
REAT
B
RITAIN
.

Livingston's intuition would become even more legendary. Throughout the rest of his career, he produced and wrote many TV series, sponsored artists like Don McLean (“American Pie”), and was influential in his years at NBC-TV for a number of major hits, including
Bonanza
. He was a renaissance man who constantly offered new vistas in music, TV, movies, and the arts.

The Capitol boss became a Hollywood icon, and maintained a close business relationship with Brian Epstein.

Joe Flannery offers more about Brian's decision to go directly to Livingston: “He had made a clear choice. ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand' had to be released with drama and promotion, and on the signature of a big label. He knew it might be risky to go over people's heads. But he had come too far and he decided to take the risk.”

Two years later, during the 1965 tour, in a conversation in his cottage room at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Epstein told me, “Larry, I think he must have thought I was out of my mind when I told him, ‘They will be bigger than Elvis.' But it worked, and here we are. Without his intervention, who knows what might have happened.”

The “bigger than Elvis” theme was familiar. Sam Leach had uttered those words three years before, directly to the startled Beatles.

Allan Williams thought Leach was crazy. “Bigger than Elvis?” he said to me doubtfully. “Did I believe that back in the post-Jacaranda days? No.”

Williams never looked at the boys' future that way, but Leach did, and one
year after he negotiated their first legitimate recording contract, Brian Epstein would bet the future on his forecast. It was a bold move by Epstein, forecasting a meteoric rise for the group, telling an American music mogul that they would overtake Elvis. “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the blockbuster that paved the way for the Beatles' American domination, was the biggest-selling Beatles single of all time. It sold 11 million copies decades before MP3s and the electronic revolution. Livingston got his payoff.

But there were other players.

One pioneer is almost forgotten in the rise of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Carroll James of WWDC radio in Silver Springs, Maryland, serving the Washington area, played the song for the first time in America. Deejay James received a request from a young fan, Marsha Albert, who had seen a clip of the Beatles on the December 10, 1963, broadcast of the
CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite
. James arranged for an airline flight attendant to bring the record over. He played it on December 17.

James got the first play of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” but a small-market station in New England beat him to the punch with two other eventual hits. It was WORC in Worcester, Massachusetts, that set the real early pace, and made some news.

On December 6, 1963, WORC started playing “I'll Get You,” followed by “She Loves You.” WORC made history. Based on listener requests, the station proclaimed “I'll Get You” as number one, and “She Loves You” as number nine. Word of the Beatles' success on WORC started spreading around the country.

Between Carroll James in Washington and the aggressive play of WORC radio, Capitol Records was forced to move quickly. Capitol had wanted to wait till the Beatles' arrival in February to release their music in the States. But Carroll James's sneak preview changed all of that. By December 26, the song was being played in almost every market in America. Capitol ended up contracting RCA and Columbia Records to press extra copies of the single to meet demand.

Soon the song would become number one in America, John and the boys remembering that they got the news during their marathon Paris run in January.

Once again, I vividly remember the conversation years later.

“What was the most exciting moment in those early days?” I asked John during a film interview with Paul at the St. Regis Hotel in New York.

“Larry, it was Paris when we got the word that the song was number one, and we celebrated . . . milk, you know?”

Again, John loved being vague and eclectic.

“Milk?” I asked.

“Milk, Larry,” John replied.

The news they received in Paris prompted a sense of victory for the boys, getting ready for their first trip to the States. All of them were extremely, and sometimes painfully, nervous about the kind of reception they would face on their February visit to the United States.

The nerves didn't last long. Before they arrived in America, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had become the group's first American number-one song, entering the Billboard Hot 100 chart on January 18, 1964, at number forty-five and reaching number one by February 1. It held the top spot for several weeks before being replaced by “She Loves You.” It was again Beatles versus Beatles, an avalanche of old songs and new that collided on the way to Hit Land, a reverse scenario of what had occurred in Britain. And in retrospect, the Beatles' explosion on the US scene in the first months of 1963 previewed the British Invasion of the American music industry that would soon follow.

Once again, record executives who passed on the boys were left to despair, and those who saw the light became heroes forever, which, in the life of the Beatles, is a very long time.

And as we see repeated in this story over and over again, it was persistence by Brian Epstein, and the courage of one man, in this case Alan Livingston, that changed everything.

There were other components in the Beatles' success in America, which was speedier than their rise in Britain. Two men with diverse talents carefully crafted the words and images that paved the way.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

BARROW ON THE BEAT

“With all the royalty in attendance, John had the cheeky request that the rich people in the audience should rattle their jewelry.”

—Tony Barrow

“Yes, it's true. I did use the term ‘Fab Four' in an early press release, but I never knew what I was unleashing at the time, did I?”

—Tony Barrow, talking to me on the Beatles' chartered plane in August 1965

W
ORDS
. C
AN'T LIVE WITHOUT THEM
, especially when they help create imagery, and for the Beatles, that imagery was created before they really made it. Along with the lyrics of so many songs, the fanaticism, and the pure songwriting talent, words helped put the boys in play, even though at the time they were really too busy and all-consumed to realize where the written words had placed them.

Bill Harry in print, and Bob Wooler via voice, had started it. And Derek Taylor and Tony Barrow had finished it—both extraordinary wordsmiths who could put feelings into type, not to mention having an ability to dramatically speak to groups, large and small, with elegance and clarity.