The Beatles were still very respectful and polite but there was a real friendship building here. But they were proud northern lads and there were moments when they wanted to discuss things with their sophisticated new manager man to man. I remember one night in the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton, when the six of us were having a drink. Brian had been to the bar and I had bought the second round. Suddenly, I felt a tap on the knee under the table. It was John indicating to me that he was embarrassed to find that he hadn’t the price of a round on him and yet he anxiously wanted to stand his round. I slipped him a £1 note under the table and instantly heard John grandly asking Brian if he felt like another.
My main job in the next few weeks was covering up for Brian. He would be holed up in Brown’s Hotel in London on a desperate round of calling in every record company contact he had, just to clinch the all-important first recording contract. He just pounded the pavement, determined to get someone to listen.
Brian was a big noise in Liverpool, but he wasn’t so important down in London. It took a lot of time and it took him away from the shop. Harry would come in two or three times a week in search of Brian, who naturally neglected to tell his father that he was going to be down in London trying to get a start for the Beatles.
As it turned out, signing the Beatles was the easy bit. Getting a record company interested was much more difficult. There were more than 300 rock groups in Liverpool in the early 1960s. All of them wanted a recording contract.
In those days their work-rate was absolutely amazing. They did so many gigs that when I hear today’s pop stars complaining of exhaustion I have to laugh. The very day Brian and I first saw the boys they were following their lunchtime gig at The Cavern with their last ever appearance in the shabby ballroom of Litherland Town Hall. They already worked incredibly hard and Brian was keen to keep up the pace. He loved the fact that they were hungry for success.
All sorts of characters emerged in the time that followed. Allan Williams has made a reputation from his association with the Beatles ever since the ’50s by describing himself as the man who gave the Beatles away. However, he was never their manager. They never had a manager before Brian Epstein. Williams organised sending them to Germany for their first few tours before Brian came on the scene. Brian went to see Williams before signing them, just to see if he could learn anything. Williams told Brian not to touch them with a fucking bargepole and I remember Brian winced rather when he recounted that remark to me.
They were just exciting and fun to be with, and Brian really believed in them. Brian was a volatile, inspirational character. He took everything personally and he wanted everything to be the best. If he spotted slacking or messing around among any of his staff he just lost his temper. He didn’t mean to and he knew it was wrong. But he just felt everything more strongly than anyone else I’ve ever known.
The Beatles were sure of one thing about their new manager – he knew how to sell records. NEMS had by then expanded to nine Liverpool record shops boasting a total stock of more than half a million records. The shops were humming with customers. Since he was so efficient at shifting records the Beatles assumed it was only a matter of time before he had a recording deal lined up for them.
Brian thought so, too. He believed in the Beatles right from the very start. It was so obvious to him that they had the talent and the potential to go right to the top.
Brian was never in the slightest doubt that Beatles records would sell in enormous quantities. He thought that if he came up with a group as good as the Beatles, then record companies would be queuing to sign them up to make records. But it was not as easy as that. Because he had conquered the retail side of the record business, he thought he was ready to take the reins as a top pop manager. But Brian’s early efforts to get the Beatles a recording contract were a disaster.
Brian was meticulous about everything. Once he had dictated the detailed memos about behaviour, he had calls put in to six of his best contacts in assorted record companies. Brian was not at all put out that not one of them was instantly available and had his secretary leave messages to call him back. At that stage, he thought landing a recording contract was going to be easy. He was content to ring everyone and take the best deal offered. But the next day, Brian’s elegant aura of confidence was slightly disturbed to hear that none of his contacts had returned his calls.
I recall a sharp intake of breath and Brian saying that he would have to home in on one company. ‘I’ll start at the top,’ he smiled and rang EMI Records who then described themselves, with some justification, as ‘the greatest recording organisation in the world’. As the boss of NEMS, Brian made an appointment to see Ron White who was then EMI marketing director in London. He opened the conversation by asking for additional discounts to be given for very large sales. White politely refused. Both men knew full well that EMI did not give discounts.
Then Brian revealed the real reason behind his visit. Would Ron White mind listening to a record Brian happened to have with him? This was a reversal of their usual trade but White could hardly refuse the charming Liverpool businessman. The marketing director of EMI then heard Tony Sheridan’s raucous rendition of ‘My Bonnie’ with deafeningly enthusiastic backing from the Beat Brothers, a.k.a. the Beatles. Brian explained patiently that White should ignore Sheridan and concentrate on the support group. Brian even showed the executive a picture of the Beatles, resplendent in their original leathers, to show him what they looked like.
At the time, the Beatles were contracted to Polydor. But the contract was in German and Brian and I could not understand it. White offered to get it translated and agreed to take the record to EMI’s artists and repertoire (A&R) people for their professional opinion. Brian came back to Liverpool full of optimism. But he was very naïve then. We all were. EMI listened to Brian Epstein because NEMS was a very good customer of theirs. But they were not remotely interested in Mr Epstein’s questionable ability as a talent spotter. We’ll get back to you.
Brian was so full of enthusiasm for the Beatles that he was not about to put all his eggs in one basket. He also contacted a couple of guys at Decca he knew well and arranged a meeting in London ‘to discuss discounts’ with Colin Borland, assistant to marketing chief Beecher Stevens. Brian surprised the man from Decca by quickly dismissing the subject of discounts and asking for a recording deal for the Beatles. Brian’s enthusiasm was bubbling over and he backed it with the offer that if Decca recorded the Beatles then NEMS would order 5,000 copies. This was an enormous order. Plenty of singles never sold anything like that number. Brian played Borland and his boss Stevens the ‘My Bonnie’ record and pleaded with them to listen to the support group. Brian’s belief and commitment impressed the two men from Decca enough for them to call Dick Rowe, head of A&R, who agreed, after another London meeting, to send his young assistant Mike Smith up to The Cavern to judge the Beatles for himself.
Brian was absolutely delighted. It was really something to get a London record company executive up from London. But Brian still pushed EMI as well. He wrote telling Ron White how disappointed he was not to have heard anything and warning him that Decca’s man was heading north. I remember Brian noted, ‘These four boys, who are superb instrumentalists, also produce some exciting and pulsating vocals. They play mostly their own compositions and one of the boys has written a song which I really believe to be the hottest material since “Living Doll”.’
But White had received an emphatic thumbs down from three of EMI’s four house producers and the fourth was away on holiday. So he wrote back to Brian saying, ‘We feel 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 contracts of this nature at present.’
Brian was devastated. He felt totally frustrated, but at least now he could pin his hopes on the visit of Mike Smith. It was 13 December 1961, and Brian took Smith to dinner before they went to The Cavern where the man from London was very impressed. Brian breathed an enormous sigh of relief when Smith raved about what he saw and heard and invited the Beatles down to London for an audition on New Year’s Day 1962.
He wanted his boss Dick Rowe to see the group before he took the plunge and signed them up, but Brian was in seventh heaven. Surely now they were on their way.
There were some euphoric celebrations as we shared the good news around. I remember a session in a pub with John and he kept saying over and over again, ‘We’re on our way. Now we’re on our way.’ This had all happened so fast that it instantly cemented the relationship between the Beatles and Brian. They had been working themselves hard for years, playing endless hours in Hamburg and around Liverpool and they had never been within a sniff of a London audition. Now they were on their way.
Brian travelled down by train to London for the big day while the Beatles were driven down by their friend and ‘road manager’ Neil Aspinall who hired a larger van especially for the occasion. The journey took an epic ten hours as this particular band on the run got hopelessly lost in the snow somewhere near Wolverhampton. The boys were booked into 27s-a-night rooms at the Royal Hotel in Woburn Place but they were quickly traumatised by London prices. In a restaurant in the Charing Cross Road, they were astonished to discover that even the soup cost 6s and walked out. Brian prudently stayed overnight with his Aunt Frida and Uncle Berrel in Ingram Avenue, Hampstead, but he met up with his young protégés for a scotch and Coke which he had quickly learned was the Beatles’ favourite drink.
The following morning, Brian was first there on the snowy opening day of 1962 and he waited with the nervous foursome for Mike Smith who was late. Punctuality was part of being professional for Brian and he struggled to hide his irritation. He felt he and the Beatles were being treated as if they did not matter. It was not a good beginning. At last their turn came, but when they produced their battered old amplifiers they were firmly told they weren’t required.
Brian didn’t want to ruffle too many feathers. He was keen for the Beatles to be conservative and to demonstrate their ability to deliver some standards. George sang ‘The Sheikh of Araby’ while Paul chipped in with a melodic version of ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’ and ‘Like Dreamers Do’. John wanted to do more of their usual Cavern act which was full of rasping rock numbers but he allowed himself to be advised by Brian. Paul’s version of ‘’Til There Was You’ went down well and Brian and the Beatles were through their nervous ordeal. The Beatles thought the session went well. Pete Best noted that Mike Smith was pleased and had said the tapes were terrific. Brian took the Beatles out to a restaurant in Swiss Cottage to celebrate.
Then followed a long period of waiting. This was very disappointing after such a promising flurry of activity since we had signed up the Beatles. We all knew they had something. But we were still unsure about what would happen next. I remember once remarking, ‘There’s such an awful lot of groups around nowadays,’ and John snapped, ‘There’s such a lot of awful groups around nowadays, you mean.’
The silence from Decca was deafening. Brian was like a cat on hot bricks as he desperately tried to maintain the momentum and get an answer from Decca. His dad Harry used to get extremely irritated that Brian was always down in London chasing some record company executive or other. I would always have to try to pretend that he’d just popped to one of the other shops but I never was a very good liar.
Finally in March, after weeks of pestering for the big decision, Brian got a telephone call from Beecher Stevens inviting him to London to hear Dick Rowe’s verdict. Brian was by then gloomy about the prospects. He told me, ‘If it was good news, we’d have heard it by now.’ In the expensive confines of Decca’s seventh floor Albert Embankment executive club, the record company bosses treated Brian to a long lunch before they raised the delicate subject which was occupying his every waking thought. Then, over coffee, Dick Rowe said charmlessly, ‘Not to mince words, Mr Epstein, we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups are out; four-piece groups with guitarists particularly are finished.’
Brian was in a cold fury but he was determined to disguise it. He said, ‘You must be out of your mind. These boys are going to explode once they appear on television. They will be bigger than the Shadows. I am completely confident that one day they will be bigger than Elvis Presley.’
Personally, I never blamed Dick Rowe, even though it was a decision that was to haunt him forever afterwards. At least he took the trouble to have the Beatles down to London to take a look at them. And he later showed that he wasn’t as daft as everyone thought when he signed a scruffy-looking group called the Rolling Stones.
The Beatles were not nearly so charitable. Years later, they discovered that he had signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead of them. Paul said, ‘He must be kicking himself now.’ And John added typically, ‘I hope he kicks himself to death!’
Stevens and Rowe were startled by Brian’s response that the Beatles would one day be bigger than Elvis. He wasn’t the first pop figure to promise them the stars but he was the coolest and the most well-spoken. Brian found their indifference to his new charges very hard to take. Rowe went on to add, ‘The boys won’t go, Mr Epstein. We know these things. You have a good record business in Liverpool. Stick to that.’
Brian was determined to hide his disappointment. His faith in the Beatles kept him talking up their chances. He couldn’t believe that the group that held the youth of Liverpool enraptured did not deserve to have some sort of a future in the rest of the country. He had heard the music and seen its effect. The Decca executives became a shade uneasy. Brian Epstein was a very good customer and a charming man to do business with. It would be churlish to send him back north with nothing to show for his trip. Rowe sensed it was time to soften the blow and suggested Brian should talk to Tony Meehan, the former Shadows drummer who was making a name for himself as a Decca A&R man. But the idea was that Brian would be given the benefit of Meehan’s advice and the use of a studio on payment of £100.
To Brian, this was coming close to adding insult to injury. He couldn’t understand why a mighty company like Decca could be asking for £100 from him for the privilege of listening to a group who could make them untold millions of pounds. But to the carefully calculating businessman in Brian, it was impossible to turn down the only concession he had won from Decca.
So the next day, Brian arrived at Decca’s West Hampstead studios and, after again being kept waiting for half-an-hour, Dick Rowe said, ‘Tony, take Mr Epstein out and explain the position.’ Brian was starting to feel as if he was back at one of his prep schools, in deep trouble with his housemaster again.
Tony Meehan had encountered plenty of managers with astronomic aspirations for their groups and tersely told Brian, ‘Mr Epstein, Mr Rowe and I are very busy men. We know roughly what you require so will you fix a date for tapes to be made of these Beatles. Telephone my secretary to make sure that when you want the session I am available.’
Brian was seething inwardly. He walked out of Decca full of frustration and fury. It was so blindingly obvious to him by then that the Beatles were stars of the future. He simply could not believe that anyone, let alone senior executives of a successful record company, could not grasp this simple fact. He decided not to take Meehan up on his half-hearted offer of help. And he was crestfallen that he had to break the bad news to the boys.
Brian tried to hide his feelings when he came back but I knew him pretty well by then and I could see he was deeply upset. He attempted to put on a brave front for the boys. When his train got back into Liverpool’s Lime Street Station he telephoned Paul and asked him to round the boys up for a meeting in Joe’s Café in Duke Street. There, over a tidal flow of tea, they talked for a time about everything but the crucial Decca verdict, until George asked, ‘What about Decca, Brian?’
‘I’m afraid it’s no use,’ said Brian. ‘I’ve had a flat “No”.’
They took it pretty well, but then they had been trying to break through for a long time before we arrived. Brian found rejection much harder to take. He began a round of trips to London and meetings with executives from Pye, Phillips and other smaller companies and they all turned him down flat. I often used to find him crying in his office. He could not understand why none of them could hear what he could hear in the tapes. But they were tears of anger and frustration, not sorrow. He just could not understand why no one could see what was so obvious to him.
The boys seemed able to hide their feelings with humour. With the nonchalance of youth, at times they would send up the whole idea of getting to the top. John had a jokey routine where he would shout, ‘Where are we going, fellas?’
The others would shout back, ‘To the top, Johnny.’
‘What top?’ he’d shout.
And they would yell, ‘To the Toppermost of the Poppermost, Johnny!’
On the local scene, the Beatles were going from strength to strength. They were busy most nights playing for Brian’s new minimum rate of £15 per night. And they came top of a Mersey Beat popularity poll, thanks largely to them filling in loads of entry forms under assumed names putting the Beatles first and their main rivals Gerry and the Pacemakers last. Mind you, all the groups were voting for themselves so it hardly altered the vote, but Brian was quick to use the triumph for publicity purposes. For an appearance on 24 March 1962, posters screamed in huge capital letters that they were ‘MERSEY BEAT POLL WINNERS! POLYDOR RECORDING ARTISTS! PRIOR TO EUROPEAN TOUR!’ The fact that the concert was at Barnston Women’s Institute with tickets priced at 7s 6d was surprisingly given rather less prominence.
The European Tour was, in fact, their third visit to Hamburg in April 1962. Before Brian and I met them, the boys had undertaken two wild stints of working in Hamburg. They had travelled over in an old van and worked excruciating hours, lived in squalid circumstances and generally experimented with as many aspects of the local low-life as they had time for.
This time, they flew to Hamburg which was a first for the boys, and they loved it. They were playing the Star Club, which was definitely a step up from the previous venues they used to play. ‘It even had proper curtains on stage,’ said George.
But back in Liverpool, Brian was really up against it. His father was by now seriously irritated that Brian was spending his time obsessed by this group of scruffy musicians when he should have been running the shops. Harry was very polite. He would come into the shop, find me in charge, and launch into a string of direct questions: ‘Alistair, are the record stocks sufficient?’ ‘Alistair, did you order enough copies of that record?’ ‘Alistair, are the staff being managed adequately?’ ‘Alistair, could you tell me just exactly where Brian is, please?’
But there was no diverting Brian. He was dedicated to getting the boys launched. I had come to respect his musical judgement so much by then that I shared his frustration and impatience.
The first Beatles engagement under the new Epstein contract was at the Thistle Café on the seafront at upmarket West Kirby some ten miles from Liverpool. The Beatles fee was £18 and Brian took his 36s commission which he noted, ‘just about covered petrol, oil and wear on tyres’. It wasn’t exactly the big-time.
At the Aintree Institute, Brian received the £15 fee in bags of silver coins which horrified him. He angrily told promoter Brian Kelly that the Beatles must be paid in a civilised manner. He stalked off leaving the coins behind and shouted, ‘Send me a cheque,’ over his shoulder as he went out of the room in undisguised disgust.
People like Bill Harry – who was a friend of John’s at art college – have suggested that this was the time when Brian changed the Beatles from being John’s group into being Paul’s group. Bill reckons John’s position as the early leader was gradually usurped by Paul, with Brian’s help. To me, this has never sounded convincing. One of the important qualities of the Beatles when I first met them was that they did not have a leader. Perhaps the drummer was always taking a back seat by necessity. Pete Best – and later, Ringo Starr – were both quiet, easy-going guys by nature. And they had to be at the back because that’s where the drums were and John, George and Paul were always out front. John had been the leader in the early days certainly, but by the time Brian became involved in 1961 it seemed like a genuine partnership to me.
Indeed, the thing that made the Beatles so great in those early days was their strong sense of togetherness. After years of struggling through grotty clubs and battling along through those endless Hamburg sessions, John, Paul and George were rock solid.
Brian loved the way the Beatles were so completely unconventional. They weren’t remotely like Cliff Richard and the Shadows, heaven forbid, or even Gerry and the Pacemakers. They were four different, highly-talented people who would probably have done perfectly well as individuals. But as a team they were absolutely unbeatable. It never was John’s group and it never became Paul’s group. The last thing Brian wanted the Beatles to do was have any leader other than himself.
We went together to watch an early concert over the river at the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton. It was a huge hall which could hold more than 1,000 people. The Beatles were sharing the bill with three other local groups – Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Derry and the Seniors, and Dale Roberts and the Jaywalkers. There was just no competition. The Beatles were phenomenal. Now they had taken on board Brian’s tips about smartening up their appearance and their act they simply oozed confidence on stage. Brian and I shared a table at the side while the boys performed and the improvement in the look and the sound of the boys was so extraordinary that we simply could not keep from grinning at each other. We were delighted with what we saw and heard.
Brain faced pressure from all sides and it didn’t always make him easy to work for. I was sacked several times in the ’60s. The first occasion was the most frightening, because I thought he really meant it.
The day had started like many others. Brian came rushing in first thing, announcing he was going to be out all day. I was in charge. About five minutes later, the phone in his office rang and I rushed through to answer it. It was good news, a booking for the Beatles! I glanced through Brian’s big desk diary and saw that there was nothing already booked. ‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Just send us the contracts for the booking and we’ll have them to you by return.’
My trouble started when I couldn’t find a pen. I’d left it in the shop. All I had was a pencil, so I took a note on a piece of scrap paper intending to transfer it later neatly into the diary in pen, as Brian preferred. You’ve guessed it. I forgot.
It was a very busy day and towards closing time I took another call for the Beatles and duly wrote it into the diary which seemed clear for that day. Brian returned and generously said, ‘You look shattered. Go on home and put your feet up.’
I didn’t need to be told twice. But the next morning, when I arrived Brian came over to me and hissed, ‘Alistair, I want to see you in my office at once.’ He had that tight, carefully-controlled look which comes over him when he is angry. So I left everything and followed him to the back office, wondering what was wrong. There were two contracts laid out on Brian’s desk. He stood behind the desk and pointed to them as if they were my death warrants.
‘Alistair, these are two contracts which came to me this morning from different promoters. They are both for the same night at clubs which are 15 miles apart! The Beatles cannot possibly fulfil both bookings! What explanation can you give me which might prevent me asking for your resignation?’
I was baffled. I looked at the contracts. Surely I had never done anything so stupid. Then I remembered I had written down the details of the first booking on the piece of paper and forgotten to transfer them to the desk diary. The second booking was the one I had written in. I fished in my pocket and found the crumpled piece of paper.
‘Well, Brian …’
Brian was furious. His voice was shaking with rage as he delivered the most stinging lecture I’d heard since I left school. He said, ‘Do you realise that our professional reputation as managers depends on us keeping our word and fulfilling our bookings? How can we expect anyone to take us seriously if we act like clowns? Everything has to be done properly and I will accept no excuses. What you did has cast a shadow on the reputation not only of me but also of the Beatles. It is up to you to remedy the situation at once. Your job depends upon it.’
Fortunately for me, the first promoter I rang happily accepted my snivelling apology and agreed to reschedule the Beatles for another night. He said, ‘Don’t worry, we get double bookings all the time. We’ll get another group for that night. The kids will never notice.’
I could have kissed him down the line, even if I did not think much of his musical taste. I was still trembling as I put the phone down. But Brian had made his point.
I was still feeling wretched and offered to resign if he thought I was not up to doing my job. Brian had now reverted to the charming chap I thought I knew so well. ‘Alistair, I don’t want your resignation. You are essential to the running of this whole project and I am sorry if I have been overloading you. I hope it won’t be for too long because I intend to break out of Liverpool and move to London as soon as possible. With your help, I want to put the Beatles at the very top of the music business. But remember, no more mistakes.’
I got the message. Brian was an inspirational boss and he never asked anyone to work harder than he was prepared to slave himself. He desperately strived to stay 100 per cent on top of things at the shop and still found time to go off to London to find someone in the record business who shared his high opinion of the Beatles. But the knock-backs continued.
At Pye, he was rejected by genial artists’ manager Alan A Freeman who said Brian’s tape from the Decca audition was not good enough, although he might consider listening again to a better presentation. Brian tried the independent label Oriole, but boss Morris Levy was out and Brian’s time in London was very limited. He telephoned Philips Records to ask if he could meet an executive and a secretary told him coldly to ‘write in’.
Brian spent hours on the train to London and back and he found it desperately disheartening not to return with better news. As the weeks went by, Brian became increasingly depressed and gradually the attitude of the Beatles began to change. There was a shade more edge in their questions when he returned and John and Paul particularly started to lose faith.
They didn’t blame Brian to his face, but among themselves and sometimes to me they would question what was happening. John asked me if I thought they’d ever get a deal and I tried to be upbeat and explain that Brian was doing everything possible but they seemed less and less convinced.
Every month, Brian would issue each of the boys with their financial statements, all neatly and accurately itemised, and sealed in a white manila envelope. They reacted very differently. John would instantly crumple it up and stuff it in his pocket. George might have a look. Ringo certainly couldn’t understand it and didn’t waste any time trying. Paul was the one who opened it carefully and would sit in the corner of the office for hours going meticulously though it. He would read every detail and question Brian on anything he didn’t understand.
It was May 1962 when the breakthrough came, just six months after Brian and I had walked into The Cavern and seen this explosion of raw talent. The Beatles were in Hamburg and Brian was making another visit to London. I sensed that he was getting near the end of the road. He was always very down when he had had to disappoint the boys with the news from London yet again. We would sit in his office late into the night sometimes and tears would come into his eyes as he would go through yet another unproductive encounter.
‘The main qualification to run a record company seems to be cotton wool in your ears,’ said Brian. He named one particular record company minor executive and said he was ‘a complete bastard. He actually suggested that if I put my money where my mouth is then a deal might be possible. I said I had already spent hundreds of pounds trying to get the Beatles a record deal. He just smiled and said what he really meant was that I should put my money where his bank account was. I couldn’t believe it. I never thought I was a particularly honest or upright man, but to hear this slithery, time-serving creep actually ask for a bribe made my flesh crawl. If I was the violent type, I think I might even have struck him.’
By the time the vital contact was made, Brian was pretty desperate. He knew that he was running out of time with the Beatles. He never lost faith in them but he knew that if he didn’t break them on to the national scene then someone would come along who would do just that.
On 8 May, he made what he told me was possibly his last London sales trip. ‘I don’t think I can keep doing this for ever, Alistair,’ he told me with a faltering voice the night before he went. ‘I think some of the record companies laugh at me and I’m afraid the boys are beginning to see the joke. I feel like the only man in the regiment who is in step! Could it be that I’m the one who is out of line here?’
He was so desperate by then that he was talking to anyone in London with the remotest connection to getting a record deal. He went to visit Robert Boast, who was general manager of the Oxford Street HMV shop. He’d met Robert Boast on a sales training course in Germany organised by Deutsche Grammophon a year earlier. He knew Boast couldn’t hand out recording contracts but he was there to ask if there was anyone at EMI he could put him in touch with. Brian asked Boast to transfer his well-used tape on to an acetate record which they could do in the shop. Boast said frankly that the Beatles were not to his taste but, not knowing of Brian’s endless round of rejections, he suggested someone at EMI who should listen to it.
Boast’s recording engineer, Jim Foy, enjoyed the music and telephoned Sid Coleman, who ran EMI’s publishing arm from his office up on the fourth floor.
When Brian duly played the tapes in his office, Coleman was instantly impressed. ‘Have you taken these to anyone?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Brian said with feeling. ‘Everybody! But I’m still trying.’
‘Have you taken them to George Martin?’
‘Who’s George Martin?’ asked Brian, who was beginning to feel as if he was trapped in a revolving door. But George Martin turned out to be the fourth EMI house producer who had been on holiday when the other three all turned down the Beatles. The helpful Sid Coleman rang George Martin and a meeting was fixed up with Brian for the following day.
Brian realised that he was reaching the end of the road with record companies. There are only so many doors even the most enthusiastic salesman is prepared to have slammed in his face. He rang me to explain what had happened, that he would be staying down another night, and I detected a weariness in his voice. He was fed up with failure and tired of rejection. Brian was very down and I tried to say that this George Martin might be just the man they needed. I think, in a way, he was in two minds about staying down in London. Doubt had set in and he was beginning to wonder if he really was such an infallible judge of public pop taste as he’d come to believe.
‘Maybe we should just sell records, Alistair?’ he said, weighing up the options open to him. ‘We don’t seem to be very successful at making them.’
It had to be worth one more try and that was what I told Brian with as much positive energy in my voice as I could muster.
Brian spent that night before he met George Martin with his aunt and uncle in Hampstead. There he appeared downhearted and close to accepting defeat in his long battle to become a showbusiness impresario. He admitted to his kindhearted Uncle Berrel that he was becoming despondent after all the rejections. His conviction that the Beatles were a wonderful act remained, but he was wondering whether he was really the man to manage them. He was getting nowhere fast and was considering giving up even before his meeting with George Martin. ‘What shall I do?’ he asked Uncle Berrel. ‘I’ve got one more appointment but I don’t know what to do. Shall I give it all up and go home?’
Berrel was baffled by his smart young nephew’s indecision, but wisely counselled, ‘Oh, just keep that last appointment.’
When Brian arrived at EMI’s Abbey Road studios, his mood had lifted and he spoke eloquently and passionately about the four young men called the Beatles and their amazing talents as writers and performers. George Martin was a tall, well-spoken man who was every bit as smart and sophisticated as Brian. Martin was hardly typical of the racy pop record scene. His success had come largely in comedy records at EMI as the recording manager of the zany Goon Show stars Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan and of top ballad singer Matt Monro. The two men quickly established a mutual respect and George Martin decided to take a chance on the very rare material. ‘OK,’ said Martin. ‘Bring them down to London and I’ll give them a test.’
At least that was Brian’s story. But it is not quite the whole story. What was not known at the time was that Brian Epstein blackmailed EMI into taking the Beatles. George Martin finished up with the Beatles because Brian Epstein threatened to stop dealing with EMI. Brian was so close to the end of his tether that he put as much commercial pressure as he could muster on EMI to make them give the Beatles a chance. Put plain and simply, that is blackmail. Brian threatened to withdraw his business from EMI if they didn’t give the Beatles a recording contract. It was as simple as that. He went to every record company but, in the end, to George Martin on Parlophone which was not a major pop label. It turned out to be a heaven-sent partnership between George Martin and the Beatles.
But George Martin was a classical musician who, although realising the group’s talent, most certainly was not dying to record with four scruffs from Liverpool. Pressure from high up in EMI probably also helped to make sure they did not lose Mr Epstein’s business. Brian and I had already talked about how NEMS would ditch EMI’s HMV, Parlophone and Columbia labels. There was not much on the HMV label that worried us and we could get Parlophone and Columbia when needed. As it turned out, it was a stroke of genius putting George Martin with the Beatles but it was caused by Brian saying, ‘Give me a contract.’
But the deal, when it came, was lousy. They paid a penny a record for the greatest group the world has ever seen. Brian re-negotiated it later. But we all just wanted that crucial first recording contract. That was what mattered. Not the royalties. Not the percentage. Just please, please give us a contract.
Brian hurried away from the Abbey Road studios and sent two telegrams. One went to the Beatles in Hamburg and said, ‘Congratulations, boys. EMI request recording session. Please rehearse new material.’ The second went to Mersey Beat newspaper in Liverpool: ‘Have secured contract for Beatles to record for EMI on Parlophone label. First recording date set for 6 June.’ The news quickly went round Liverpool. The Beatles were on their way.
It wasn’t really a recording contract, it was an audition. But the Beatles soon realised that. They played ‘Love Me Do’, ‘PS I Love You’, ‘Ask Me Why’, ‘Besame Mucho’, and the old Fats Waller song ‘Your Feet’s Too Big’. George Martin liked what he heard and was just as impressed by the humour and personality of the boys. Afterwards, they adjourned to the Alpino restaurant in Marylebone High Street. ‘OK, I like you. We’ll make some records.’
But even then it wasn’t easy. George Martin is a nice fella but I saw Brian reduced to tears of anger and frustration afterwards when promised telephone calls confirming they really were on the next step of the ladder did not come through. Brian was just about the coolest customer I’ve ever known, but some nights he used to be in the shop late at night waiting and waiting and waiting for that vital phone call and he would end up thumping the desk in despair.
‘He’s promised to ring,’ he would say. ‘Why doesn’t he ring? What has gone wrong now?’
It meant so much to Brian to get this group launched. It wasn’t the money he was going to have. It wasn’t the fame he wanted to enjoy. He just knew they had that special ingredient that deserved to make them into superstars before the word had even been invented. He used to get very, very emotional. Tears would run down his face and he’d say, ‘Why will they not ring me?’ Of course, the Beatles never, ever saw Brian Epstein like that.
I always knew when he was really down because he’d say, ‘Alistair, can we have dinner?’ I’d ring Lesley and warn her that she wasn’t going to see me until late. We used to go out and he would pour his heart out. He wasn’t in love with John. That wasn’t it at all. The whole sexual side of Brian’s nature has been exaggerated and invented so comprehensively and so ludicrously. It wasn’t sexual. It was that he had found something special. And he had moulded it. He had put them into suits and he had taught them how to behave and to smile. And he knew they could be bigger than Elvis. It was his dream to make them take over the world. Sure, he loved John. But he also loved Paul and George. We knew what the future would be. We used to talk with the Beatles of world tours and ticker-tape welcomes and endless parties. Brian knew it would all come true. That’s why he became so furious when anyone got in the way.
Eventually, at the end of July, confirmation of George Martin’s plans for a recording session came through. Brian told John and Paul and they told George. But no one told Pete Best. The Beatles had decided their drummer was not up to scratch.
Brian said that George Martin had criticised Pete’s drumming and that the other three Beatles had come to feel his beat was not right for their music. He tried to persuade them to leave the group as it was, but they somehow thought Pete was too conventional to be a Beatle. He was friendly with John but not with Paul and George and the three of them made a joint approach to Brian so he was forced to act.
It had to be done quickly and decisively and I know Brian had a sleepless night before the confrontation. Brian hated giving bad news to anyone, but he had no choice. Having met up with Pete at the office on 16 August, he told him, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. The boys want you out and Ringo in.’
Pete was dumbstruck, and to this day I think he is still pretty puzzled about how they could do that to someone who had been on the road with them for two years.
He tried to soften the blow by telling Pete that he would be the star of a new group he would be forming, but Pete knew as well as Brian that the Beatles were going to be something special. For the faithful Neil Aspinall, this was a very difficult time. He was a great friend of the Best family, but he did not let that stand in the way of sticking with the Beatles.
Brian always let this be seen as a musical decision taken by the Beatles themselves. And, in a way, it was, yet Brian and I had several times talked in our distinctly unmusical way about something being not quite right about Pete’s drumming. We tried to put our finger on Pete’s weaknesses but we failed to identify them.
Brian was not surprised when the boys came to him to do their dirty work. Deep down he agreed with the decision; indeed, he and I were both flattered to have come to the same conclusion as the Beatles. Brian certainly would not have sacked Pete otherwise, but he said to me that he knew the boys were absolutely right. And he was certain that Ringo was a definite improvement, not least because he was a great deal more malleable than Pete. Brian had crossed swords with Pete about not combing his hair like the other guys. But then Pete always was something of the odd man out. From the very first time we saw them, John, Paul and George had a jokey rapport both on stage and off that Pete clearly did not share. He was a terribly nice fella but he would be sulking when the other three were laughing. Technically, Pete was a better drummer than Ringo but he was not right for the Beatles.
Evidently, George Martin felt Pete’s drumming was not quite up to scratch and the other three felt that he did not quite fit in. To add insult to injury, Brian asked him to stay on until the end of the week, for two more nights, until Ringo arrived. Brian had already contacted Ringo, who was playing drums for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes on summer season at Butlin’s in Skegness. Brian, and then later John Lennon, rang the holiday camp and had a message broadcast over the public address system for Richard Starkey to come to the phone. Luckily for Brian, Ringo was already unsettled with the Hurricanes and agreed to the move for an initial salary of £25 per week. Ringo was delighted. He had already sat in with the Beatles at a couple of Cavern sessions when Pete Best had been ill. He gave a disgruntled Rory Storm just three days’ notice and on Saturday, 18 August 1962, he took his place behind the drum kit at the Hulme Hall in Port Sunlight near Birkenhead.
The fans were not happy. For a time, Beatles followers were in revolt all over Liverpool. Brian kept away from The Cavern where enthusiasts who preferred the original line-up chanted, ‘Pete for Ever, Ringo Never’, waved banners and caused some unpleasant scenes. Brian took to using the services of a burly bodyguard for a time and George Harrison, who didn’t, was given a black eye by one disenchanted fan.
But Ringo settled in well. It was John who explained to him that he would have to get rid of his trademark beard, though he could keep his ‘sidies’. It seems a traumatic event even now, but this was in a summer packed full of change.
In June, Brian had signed up possibly the second-best group in Liverpool as well as the best when he agreed to manage Gerry and the Pacemakers. Gerry was quickly followed by Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas and The Big Three. Brian and his brother Clive became directors of the new company, NEMS Enterprises Ltd, which was formed to incorporate all of his showbiz expansion.
The Beatles appeared on television for the first time when Granada TV cameras filmed them in action at The Cavern. John Lennon married his very charming and very pregnant girlfriend Cynthia Powell and Brian hosted a discreet ‘wedding lunch’ at Reece’s cafeteria. But neither Brian nor John wanted the marriage to get in the way of the business and John started his wedding night on stage with the Beatles at Chester’s Riverpark Ballroom.
Most significant of all, under the experienced care of George Martin, the Beatles recorded their historic first record, ‘Love Me Do’, in two sessions on 4 and 11 September. Ringo was upset that George Martin had installed experienced session drummer Andy White for the recording.
Martin still did not know quite what to make of the Beatles but he was anxious to put them at their ease. Before they started work, he asked, ‘Let me know if there is anything you don’t like.’ He wasn’t really expecting a reply, but George Harrison said, ‘Well, for a start, I don’t like your tie.’ This joke baffled more than amused Martin, who felt he was looking smart for work as usual. But everyone laughed and the session got under way.
It took more than 15 takes to record ‘Love Me Do’ to George Martin’s satisfaction. Then they started work on the flipside which was ‘PS I Love You’. Ringo was relegated to tambourine and maracas and was beginning to wonder if he was about to suffer the same fate as poor Pete Best. Afterwards, he was very down and told me, ‘What a fucking liberty. How can they say it’s by the Beatles if they get other musicians in. What a phoney business.’
Brian listened to the acetates the next day in George Martin’s office at EMI headquarters in Manchester Square. Brian was in seventh heaven. He felt it had gone absolutely brilliantly and raved about the harmonica work.