Their return to Liverpool after a stint of three and a half months in Hamburg was such a sorry affair that they avoided telling their families what had happened.
In brief, they had been tempted away from the Kaiserkeller by a rival club-owner. To exact revenge, the thuggish Koschmider reported George to the police for being under-age, and he was duly deported. On returning home, George felt ‘ashamed, after all the big talk’. Koschmider subsequently reported Paul and Pete on the spurious grounds of setting fire to their lodgings, and they too were deported. On 1 December 1960, they arrived back in Liverpool disillusioned and penniless. Ten days later, John followed. Stu remained with Astrid in Germany, a Beatle no more.
The Beatles’ fall from grace had been abrupt and painful. John woke Mimi in the middle of the night by throwing stones at her bedroom window. ‘He just pushed past me and said, “Pay that taxi, Mimi.” I shouted after him up the stairs, “Where’s your £100 a week, John?”’
‘Just like you, Mimi, to go on about £100 a week when you know I’m tired.’
‘And you can get rid of those boots. You’re not going out of this house in boots like that!’
Most of their equipment was stranded in Hamburg. They had nothing to show for their time away. Similar groups who had stayed in Liverpool were now several steps ahead of them. The Swinging Blue Jeans were clearly in the lead, headlining a regular ‘Swinging Blue Jeans Night’ at the Cavern in Mathew Street.
In the three months they had been away, fashions had moved on: everyone was now copying the Shadows, wearing slinky suits, playing instrumentals, performing synchronised dance routines. At first, the individual Beatles were so despondent that they didn’t even bother to get in touch with one another: George was unaware that John and Paul had returned. John retired, depressed, to his bedroom at Mendips, refusing to see anyone. While Aunt Mimi grudgingly indulged John’s self-pity, Jim McCartney refused to have Paul slouching around the house. ‘Satan makes work for idle hands,’ he said, telling him to go out and get a proper job. ‘This music thing is all right on the side, but Paul, it will never last.’ Paul worked briefly for a delivery company, then did donkeywork at Massey & Coggins, a cable-winding firm. The moment his workmates discovered he was a musician, they nicknamed him ‘Mantovani’. Being bright and personable, Paul was swiftly earmarked as management material. ‘We’ll give you an opportunity, lad,’ declared the managing director, impressed by his exam results, ‘and with your outlook on life you’ll go a long way.’
Uncharacteristically, Paul was ready to throw in the towel. After a few weeks John and George turned up at Massey & Coggins. They had been booked for a lunchtime gig at the Cavern, they said, and they wanted Paul to join them. He told them he had a steady job, and was now on £7.10s a week. ‘They are training me here. That’s pretty good. I can’t expect more.’
But they persisted, and Paul gave way, bunking off work on 9 February 1961 to play the Cavern at lunchtime. He did the same on 22 February, but it’s possible that his employers issued a warning, because when another lunchtime gig at the Cavern was mooted for the following week, he ummed and erred. ‘Either fucking turn up today or you’re not in the band any more,’ snapped John.
What to do? If he chose the Beatles, his father would be furious. If he obeyed his father, and stuck it out at Massey & Coggins, he would have to say goodbye to the Beatles, and any remaining chance of stardom. As usual, John was in no mood for compromise; his intransigence towards Paul may also have been a way of subcontracting his own Oedipal struggles: ‘I was always saying, “Face up to your dad, tell him to fuck off. He can’t hit you. He’s an old man” … But Paul would always give in. His dad told him to get a job, he dropped the group and started working on the lorries, saying, “I need a steady career.” We couldn’t believe it. I told him on the phone, “Either come or you’re out.” So he had to make a decision between me and his dad …’
What would have happened had Paul chosen to stay at Massey & Coggins?1 Looking back, he is adamant that he had been ‘hopeless’ at winding coils – ‘Everybody else used to wind fourteen a day. I’d get through one and a half, and mine were the ones that never worked’ – but it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t have mastered the technique. And he had already been fast-tracked towards management. His subsequent career suggests that he possessed the drive, initiative and skills necessary for steering even the most troublesome company through rocky times.
Instead, he bunked off to rejoin the Beatles. A week later he received his wage packet through the post, along with his National Insurance card and his P45.
1 A decade later, when pop music grew more solemn, Massey and Coggins might have been a winning name for a group, like Loggins and Messina, Gallagher and Lyle, or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.