Hit the Road: Jac Hit the Road: JacAfter Stuart joined the group, a proper name seemed more appropriate. One night in February, while sitting around the Gambier Street flat, John and Stuart brainstormed to come up with something that worked better than Johnny and the Moondogs. John later told Hunter Davies that he was “just thinking about what a good name the Crickets [Buddy Holly’s band] would be for an English group, [when] the idea of beetles came into my head.” It may have been no more complicated than that, or as other accounts contend, Stuart might have suggested beetles from the slang term given to biker chicks in The Wild One. In either event, it was John’s idea to change the spelling “to make it look like beat music, just as a joke,” although when they printed it on a card to show the other boys, it became Beatals.
Paul remembers being told of the name the next day, along with George, and immediately liking it. “John and Stuart came out of their flat and said, ‘We’ve just thought of a name!’ ” he recalls, smiling. The Beatals. It had the right sound, its reference a dazzling throwback. The name was bluff and cheeky, sturdy; it possessed an easy, buoyant, ornamental quality. The Beatals. Yes, he thought, it would do, it would do nicely.
But names do not gigs get. Even with a conversation piece like “the Beatals,” the band was still not able to compete for legitimate work. There was still the hitch with the drums, or lack thereof. And while Stuart looked swell with an electric bass slung across his body, there was the matter of actually playing it that needed to be worked out. Instead of the bass notes accenting the beat, as is the purpose, Stuart’s leaden thumb thunked the chunky strings, producing little more than a steady but tedious heartbeat. There was no flourish or glide to his phrasing, just that monotonous pulse: thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk. Even so, John never grew discouraged. In a reversal of their painting roles, John began to fine-tune Stuart’s technique, working diligently with him each evening to teach him the set of songs. The sole objective now was to get him ready to face an audience; without that, there was no point in holding everything together.
The only gig to speak of was at the end of February 1960, a short spot offered by Jim McCartney’s Labour Club, which only Paul and George attended. This was a world apart from their Quarry Men gigs and certainly any they would ever play as the Beatles. But as a favor to Paul’s dad, the boys pulled up stools and played “Peg o’ My Heart” to the delight of two dozen, middle-aged Scousers.
It wasn’t until March that the Beatals got a shove in the right direction. Early that month news rocketed through the city that Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent would headline a show at the Liverpool Empire. The concert was a milestone for local bands, which thronged to the theater like mayflies. Here, live and in person, was confirmation of their calling—and everyone heard an identical call.
The Beatals began by rewiring the sound of the band. “They knew that to get any attention, they needed amplifiers,” Bill Harry recalls. “This really hit home after the Eddie Cochran show.” Up to then, they’d relied on whatever P.A. system, if any, was provided by a hall; otherwise, their increased output was a result of just strumming or singing louder. That method, however, no longer carried any weight with an audience. They wanted it loud; they wanted some juice behind the music.
But how? Amplifiers cost money. The boys were just about getting by on fumes, and everyone was already into “Hessy” for one hire-purchase loan or another. There was no way he’d float them enough for an amplifier. Frustrated and resentful of their situation, John hatched a plan. Weren’t they considered the art college band? The Student Union had a discretionary fund to purchase equipment. Certainly, an amplifier was within its jurisdiction.
Both Bill Harry and Stuart Sutcliffe were members of the Student Union committee. “At the next meeting, in the library,” Harry recalls, “Stuart and I proposed and seconded a motion that we use our funds to buy P.A. equipment for the art college dances.” It sounded like a good idea to the other students. No one raised any opposition. Voilà! The Beatals had amps, and not just a tiny Truvoices, the staple of most Liverpool bands, but a professional getup, with cabinets and eighteen-inch speakers.
To show their appreciation, the band played an art college dance that same month, in the school’s basement auditorium. The place was packed to capacity. Fresh from a series of midterms, students welcomed the opportunity to unwind, but there was also an air of anticipation—and great spectacle—about the musical debut of Stuart Sutcliffe. Everyone showed up, including Arthur Ballard, who told colleagues he was “troubled” by his prize student’s “distraction.”
Ballard had good reason to be concerned. Stuart hadn’t touched a paintbrush in weeks. A usually disciplined worker, now days—even weeks—elapsed between sessions at the easel; visits to life classes, once as routine as breathing, had become increasingly erratic. It seemed to Ballard and others that Stuart had turned his back on that world. And his hands—those delicate instruments through which his expression flowed to the canvas—were in terrible shape. Bill Harry remembers encountering Stuart at the college dance, bent over his guitar in such a way as to conceal wrenching pain. “He told me, ‘Oh, the skin has come off all my fingers,’ ” Harry recalls, having noticed blood on Stuart’s hands. “He hadn’t built up proper calluses. He’d plunged right in, never realizing that conditioning was necessary.” Or if he had realized it, it was with the knowledge that the other boys did not want to slow their stride to wait for him.
The four boys would rehearse for hours at Gambier Terrace, really winding it up, then camp out at the Jacaranda, talking until closing time, well past one in the morning. They’d commandeer a table that would grow like dominoes as each new friend appeared, requiring additional chairs and tables. “Art students were inclined to drop in… and loll around a bit,” says Beryl Williams, whose role fell somewhat precariously between that of den mother and disenchanted bar manager. She loved having students and musicians there, provided that they buy something to eat, which meant putting the squeeze on them every so often. Bill Harry recalls that when flush, they’d order the “student specialty—toast,” which cost fourpence and a penny extra for jam. According to Allan Williams: “They’d go into a great big huddle… and decide if they could afford to have jam or whether it would be best to stick to toast and butter.” Always a premium, jam toast was usually split five ways.
The “sort of musical revolution” Williams discovered unfolding in small local basement clubs was intriguing, inasmuch as it complemented his stake in the Jacaranda. However, it wasn’t until he attended the Gene Vincent–Eddie Cochran show at the Empire that he experienced an epiphany. Sitting ringside, walled in by rows of clearly overwrought teenagers, Williams was flabbergasted. “I began to realise the implications,” he recalled, taking the temperature and doing the math. Everyone was rockin’ and rolling, “and I simply had to get in on it.”
Williams wasted no time attaching himself to the scene. He booked Liverpool Stadium for a night in May, then traveled to London, where he sought out a meeting with no less a figure than megapromoter Larry Parnes.
Before Brian Epstein and Robert Stigwood, before the dozens of future British pop moguls who dominated the music business, Larry Parnes ruled the scene. LARRY PARNES PRESENTS toplined every bill featuring a rock ’n roll act in London. Only twenty-four years old, Parnes—or “Flash Larry,” as he was known—was a modern-day Svengali. Cruising the bedrock of London coffee bars, he signed up a stable of good-looking male singers—pretty faces, actually—that he could groom into teen idols, regardless of talent, as he’d done so successfully with Tommy Steele. “In most cases, what attracted Larry was their potential to whip audiences into a frenzy,” says Hal Carter, who served as Parnes’s right-hand man. “But he was gay and loved pretty boys, which became his stock-in-trade.”
By 1960, Parnes had a cluster of glittery stars, each with an outlandish stage name he’d created in the hope of adding that undefinable pizzazz: Marty Wilde, Vince Eager, Duffy Power, Dickie Pride, Nelson Keene, and Johnny Gentle. Recalls Carter: “Larry was on tour in New York and had heard the [Elvis] Presley tune, ‘Fame and Fortune.’ He immediately sent a telegram back to the office that said: CLIVE POWELL NOW GEORGIE FAME.”
His most accomplished creation, however, was turning Ronnie Wycherly, an ex–tugboat hand with a sludgy Scouse accent, into pop sensation Billy Fury. Parnes had discovered the lad backstage at a Marty Wilde show in Birkenhead and “immediately fell in love.” Billy had little in the way of a voice and, if it were at all possible, even less stage presence, but his “high cheekbones and restless eyes” were all Parnes needed to throw the star-making machinery into gear. He swathed the youngster in gold lamé, framed his hair in a mane of wild forelocks, brought him a riot of American hits to cover, and packaged him on the high-powered Cochran-Vincent tour that was crisscrossing the U.K. In no time, Billy Fury was being mentioned in the same heated breath as Cliff Richard.
Insecure and basically uneducated, plagued by a round, pudgy face, Parnes was “a very elegant dresser,” coming, as he did, from what friends described as “a good Jewish family in the shmatte business.” He had bronzed, olive skin and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. Williams found his manner to have “much of the smooth persuasiveness of a lawyer” and was delighted that Parnes was amenable to his pitch. For a “fee of about £500,” Williams booked a show he dubbed “the Merseyside and International Beat Show.” It was a rather grandiose name for a rehash of the Cochran-Vincent tour, although Parnes attached another half a dozen artists from his stable, along with local attractions Cass and the Cassanovas and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to give it a homegrown touch. The show was scheduled for May 3, and by early April all indications were that it would sell out. Ticket sales were strong—there were six thousand seats available—and it appeared profits would exceed all projections.
Perhaps with luck running in such an unlikely surge, disaster was inevitable. On April 17, a television show Williams was half listening to was interrupted to report “the tragic death of Eddie Cochran.” Cochran and Gene Vincent had been on their way to Heathrow Airport following a concert in Bristol when their speeding car blew a tire and crashed into a lamppost. Cochran died from massive head injuries; Vincent suffered a broken collarbone and was hospitalized, along with Cochran’s girlfriend, Sharon Sheeley, who had been a passenger in the car. Williams couldn’t believe it. “Robbed of [his] two top stars,” there would be no way to recover. He flushed with guilt for even thinking that way, but he couldn’t help himself.
Despondent, Williams called Larry Parnes, who commiserated. Neither man had to say what each was privately thinking: this tragedy was going to cost them a bundle. Indirectly, Parnes suggested that if Vincent were healthy, they might still be able to pull something off, but he couldn’t make any promises. Days went by without word while Williams made arrangements to dissolve his obligations with stadium vendors. Rumors persisted that Vincent’s condition was worse than reported and that he would return to the United States as soon as he was able to travel. Then Parnes called with an update: Vincent was okay and had agreed to do the show. To fill the gaping hole left by Eddie Cochran, they added two more of Parnes’s acts to the bill—Julian X and Dean Webb—as well as local groups Derry and the Seniors, Bob Evans and the Five Shillings, Mal Perry, and Gerry and the Pacemakers. As Bill Harry recalls: “Everyone who was anyone was invited to perform.”
Not quite everyone. It never even dawned on Williams to include the Beatals on the program. Without a drummer, they wouldn’t stand a chance alongside other major bands. To spare the lads the embarrassment, he made sure they had good seats. In the audience. Punters. Fans. Like everyone else.
All the same, the concert prevailed as “a seminal event.” It was the first time, says a local musician, “that all the Liverpool bands became aware of one another.” After the stadium show, the local scene was invigorated by a sense of community. According to Adrian Barber, the Cassanovas’ guitarist: “As the groups started to communicate with one another, they shared information about places to play. Phone numbers were exchanged, schedules coordinated.” They flocked to one another’s gigs. Since everyone played basically the same set, new songs became not only community property but currency. Bands burst out of obscurity by introducing the latest unknown American hit, then passed it around to fellow acolytes, to underscore its provenance.
By virtue of Williams’s new status, the Jacaranda became headquarters to the fraternal order of Liverpool bands that emerged immediately after the Stadium show. Gathering ad hoc in the early afternoon, minutes after most had only just crawled out of bed, they would graze around tables like docile water buffalo and recharge themselves on cups of inky espresso followed by a trough of eggs, bacon, and beans on toast, animatedly rehashing the highlights of last night’s gig, discussing the current hit parade, or airing the usual complaints about insulting pay and horrible work conditions.
John, Paul, and Stuart often sat on the periphery of these discussions. Socially aloof, young, and lacking credentials, they were seldom invited into the galaxy of the coffee bar’s guiding stars. They seemed to be waiting for a signal, a nod of approval—from a body of peers, not gurus—that they were worthy of joining the party.
Ultimately, Brian Casser of Cass and the Cassanovas gave them that nod. Cass was the first to express, even vaguely, the possibility that the Beatals might contain a gleam of real talent. A week earlier, sitting in the Jac with some cronies, he heard them rehearse, belting out a version of “Tutti Frutti” in the basement, and was struck by the haunting falsetto delivery of Paul McCartney. “It was [the type of] voice we’d never heard before,” says a musician who happened to be sitting next to Casser. “None of us sang like that; we sang full-voiced, street. This was something unique to our ears, and it got Cass’s attention.”
Cass told them not to test the market without a drummer and offered to help find one from among Liverpool’s lean talent pool. He also cautioned them against going out with their “ridiculous” name. A band’s name, Cass believed, must focus attention on its leader, like Buddy Holly and the Crickets.
Encouraged by the interest, John listened. When Cass returned to his table he told friends that “he had convinced Lennon to call the band Long John and the Silver Beetles.”
Convinced—maybe for a moment. John, after all, was practical and fired by personal ambition. If Cass could deliver a drummer, then pissing him off was not in John’s best interest. But while he was willing to do almost anything to advance the cause of the band, he was not about to demean it by posing as Long John Silver. A peg-leg pirate from a children’s tale? Never. He did admit to himself that Beatals gave them no handle to grab hold of. Everyone agreed it didn’t look right on the page. So, for the time being, they struck a compromise, calling themselves the Silver Beetles. Apparently that was enough to satisfy Cass, and a few days later he delivered on his promise by finding them a drummer named Tommy Moore.
It is not entirely clear who Moore was. Like many musicians who hung around the scene, he was familiar to others by his face, but few had ever heard Tommy actually play. Part of the reason was his age. Already thirty-six, he was well outside the core rock ’n roll demographic—twice Paul’s age—and part of another world as far as performance bands went. He also had a day job, operating a forklift at the Garston bottle works, which made him unfamiliar to the Jac’s daytime crowd. Still, he had all the qualifications: he was small but stocky, with powerful, responsive wrists and impeccable timing. “Tommy Moore was a pro,” says one of the Cassanovas, “what we call a session drummer today. He had played in dance bands, at social clubs. He could put the beat in the right place, and he could play anything.”
It’s a good thing he could. John, Paul, George, and Stuart were mildly shocked when Tommy showed up to meet them at the Gambier Terrace flat. No one had quite expected such an old guy, and they were unprepared—perhaps even a bit frustrated—by his lounge-act repertoire. Tommy had only just begun to show an interest in rock ’n roll. But during an impromptu audition, he drew knowingly on fifteen years of experience and impressed the boys with his chops and ability to play almost anything they threw at him. This was especially clear when they segued into “Cathy’s Clown,” with its tricky cha-cha beat, and Tommy hung right in there with them. Stripped of frills and flash, Tommy’s straightforward drumming made no attempt to upstage the rest of the band. But he would do.
Sometime during the merriment following the Stadium concert, Larry Parnes had pulled Williams aside and praised his efforts, expressing admiration for the Liverpool bands. He’d been especially impressed by how tight they’d played, how professionally they’d handled themselves. Finally, he had suggested that there might be something they could do together on a few upcoming tours. That is, of course, if Williams represented these bands.
Represented. A light went off in Allan’s head. Why not, indeed? With all the local bands pecking aimlessly for work, he could roll them, by contract, into a company and build his own northern talent stable, much as Parnes had done in London. The beauty of it was, it required no real investment on his part. It was what he’d counted on all along: “the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
With the incentive from Parnes, Allan began to consider the options. There were a number of bands he planned on approaching, all obvious choices, all part of the small but close-knit community. But for the first time, he thought about the up-and-coming groups that used the Jac’s basement for rehearsal. He also began to reevaluate, in light of the potential market, the young bands to whom he had given the cold shoulder only weeks, even days, before. In a stroke of providence, his musings were interrupted by a visit from Stuart Sutcliffe.
Stuart had been after Williams about giving the Silver Beetles a break, and as usual, Allan’s responses were polite but noncommittal. But after the Stadium concert, Sutcliffe’s appeals grew relentless. The band had felt humiliated watching the action from the sidelines; they were desperate to get going. “But you must have a drummer,” Williams insisted. “If you haven’t got a drummer, then you’ll have to go and find one.”
Still “very dubious about the group,” Williams ran their name past Brian Casser, who gave him a quick thumbs-up. To Allan, Cass was “the prophet,” the only forthright musician in this scene on whom he could rely.
Not a moment too soon. A day after Tommy Moore showed up, Williams received a letter from London. Inside, on a page of plush, woven-linen stock used as personal stationery by the aristocracy, was an invitation that would ultimately alter the course of popular music. It was from one of Larry Parnes’s henchmen, Mark Forster, stating that both Duffy Power and Johnny Gentle had scheduled Scottish tours for June, which necessitated an urgent search for backing bands. “For these two periods, as agreed, we are willing to pay your groups £120.0d plus the fares from Liverpool,” he proposed. “Should you agree to these suggestions we will arrange for both Duffy and Johnny, who incidentally is a Liverpool boy, to travel up to Liverpool to rehearse with your groups towards the end of May.” Equally tantalizing was news that Larry Parnes would attend, too. Not only that, he was bringing Billy Fury with him, “as Billy will want one of these four groups for his own personal use.”
Williams had initially suggested they choose from among a pool of Liverpool’s best bands: Cass and the Cassanovas, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cliff Roberts and the Rockers, and Derry and the Seniors—all of whom he’d persuaded to be represented by his new management firm, Jacaranda Enterprises. Later that day, he stopped by Gambier Terrace to deliver the news to Stuart Sutcliffe, albeit with one significant change: he intended to extend the list and include the Silver Beetles.
The audition had been scheduled for the early afternoon of May 10, 1960, at the Jacaranda, but because of severe space problems and an inescapable funky heat, it was shifted to a new location a few blocks away. Flush from his new endeavors, Allan Williams had taken a lease on two other places, the Wyvern Social Club on reedy-thin Seel Street (where the audition would be held) and another building down the block he intended to call the Maggie May, after a popular local legend.
It was one of those rare Liverpool days when the weather let up and the sky brightened. Outside, the crosscurrents triggered a strong sentimental tug: a lemony scent of blossoms and pine intermingled with the briny Mersey air. A blanket of warm escorting winds had transformed the dreary landscape from sober seaport to a true urban glen, inviting gulls and terns to kite weightlessly overhead, their tiny frames held motionless against the gentle breeze.
Inside the dark, shingled Wyvern there was the tumult of renovation, accompanied by the churning and chuffing of machinery. In its former life, the place had functioned as a workingman’s drinking club, with the kind of heavy-timbered decor that made thirsty punters feel right at home; now, in need of total repair, it was undergoing an expedited face-lift so that Williams could open in time for the hearty summer crowds. He’d decided to rename it the Blue Angel and to make it an upscale cabaret. Williams envisioned opening a more sophisticated hangout, a nightclub like New York’s Copacabana or Latin Quarter, where elegance and privilege played a prominent role. Rock ’n roll was an aberration to his ears, moribund, just noise for the teenage crowd; when its novelty appeal ran out, he believed, there would always be an audience of big spenders that appreciated the standards.
Because work was ongoing in the club, the musicians set up just past the bar, on the top level, against the rear wall. The Silver Beetles arrived a few minutes after eleven o’clock, minus Tommy Moore, who was retrieving his drums from another club over on Dale Street. Howie Casey, who was already inside with the Seniors, recalls seeing them come in and noticing how dissimilar they looked from the other groups. “They blew in, rough and tumble, dressed like gangsters, in black shirts, black jeans, and two-tone shoes,” he remembers. Everyone else showed up in a suit. But if the boys felt underdressed, they didn’t show it. “John, Paul, George, and Stuart sat laughing together on a little bench seat along the side of the room. Everyone else was crowded on the other side, ready to play. Initially, there was a lot of chatter from among our ranks when they showed up. We didn’t know [the Silver Beetles], and I don’t think anybody else knew them either.”
As the audition loomed near, the bands were introduced to the guests of honor—Larry Parnes and Billy Fury—who “sat stone-faced” three-quarters of the way back on folding chairs. So strong was the aura of celebrity that even a solicitous John Lennon pressed Billy Fury for an autograph, which he graciously signed.
The good news was the announcement by Parnes that in addition to the Scottish tours, Fury sought a Liverpool band to back him in Blackpool for the summer season. Everyone’s face lit up with expectation. The promise of a trip to Blackpool was magic in the north of England. “Just up the road,” it was a magnet for Scousers on a budget, a blue-collar “holiday resort” with fairgrounds, “Kiss Me Quick” hats, and racks of naughty postcards of the kind depicting fat men riding the slogan “Haven’t seen my Little Willie in years.” A three-month gig there would be icing on the cake. “Most important of all,” says Howie Casey, “we could justify to our families that there was money in music.”
The Cassanovas were up first and were horribly off their show. The Seniors, who followed them, sounded almost hot by comparison. The band was perfectly tight and live-wire, yet vocal flaws eventually shone through and they ended up sounding shrieky and shrill, with none of the hot, honking nitro needed to kick out the jams. Gerry and the Pacemakers, on the other hand, were loaded in the vocal department but without a dynamic musical spark. And Cliff Roberts and the Rockers couldn’t match the highlights on either end.
Stuart sat quietly, sketching a charcoal portrait of Larry Parnes while his mates studied the competition. All the pressure was on the other bands. They had nothing to lose. Still, they had to reconcile a larger dilemma that threatened to foil their chance of an upset: with only minutes to spare, Tommy Moore hadn’t appeared. There had been no word from him—not even a call to give them an update.
By the time they were summoned to perform, the Silver Beetles could read their fate in Allan Williams’s stooped shoulders. They’d never make an impression without a drummer. It was useless even to try. Desperate, John asked Johnny Hutchinson of the Cassanovas to stand in for the AWOL Moore. It was a bold move, considering Hutch’s reputation. He was a spitfire: he could become an ugly customer without any provocation. As Adrian Barber notes, “Johnny did and played whatever the fuck he wanted to do and play, and that was it, brother.” Most people knew to stay out of his way. But John was left no other choice. They had no drummer, and Johnny Hutch was the best in the room.
No one knows why he agreed to John’s request. According to Howie Casey, “It was Johnny Hutch’s [drum] kit that was there, so he reluctantly got up and played.” That sounds likely enough, but no matter what the reason, it did the trick. The band launched into a relentless set that left their predecessors in the dust—four songs, all up-tempo, with John and Paul trading vocals in the seamless way that was to become their trademark. There are so many varying reports of their performance that the only thing eyewitnesses can agree upon is that they were there. Adrian Barber concedes that “they blew everyone away,” while in Howie Casey’s estimation, “They weren’t brilliant, it sounded underrehearsed.” Only a few pictures of the session exist. On viewing them, it is impossible to draw anything conclusive about their sound, but the familiar body language reveals volumes. John and Paul stand shoulder to shoulder, cocked fiercely over their guitars, feet splayed and churning, in a gritty pose that defined garage bands for years to come. They look determined, unfaltering, comfortably in the groove. George, to their left, concentrates gamely on a lick, while Stuart and Johnny Hutch filled the gaps between the rhythm.
Billy Fury heard it immediately and cued Parnes that the Silver Beetles were a natural fit. Parnes, ever cautious, remained unconvinced. “I thought the boys in front were great,” he told a writer many years later. “The lead guitar and the bass, so-so.” Stuart had played in “a most off-putting style,” wandering toward the rear of the stage, with his back to the room either to create a bit of mystique or to conceal his lack of ability. Meanwhile, Tommy Moore stalked in, looking disheveled and breathing heavily from his sprint across town, and went straight to the drums, where he took over for Johnny Hutch. Together at last, they had time for one more song, but it was anticlimactic. Afterward, Parnes noted that the magic seemed to collapse. “It was the drummer… who was wrong,” he’d concluded.
Given how chaotic their audition turned out, the Silver Beetles were received with surprising kindness by Parnes. They weren’t perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but there was something intriguing to work with, something that suited his artist’s style. “Quite suddenly,” Allan Williams recalled, “[Parnes] said he’d take the Beatles [sic] as Billy Fury’s backing group—but that he only wanted four [band members]. No bass.”
There are numerous accounts of what happened next, though most remain sketchy at best. According to Williams, John stepped forward like a knight-errant and turned him down cold. The message was bluntly clear: as far as the Silver Beetles were concerned, it was an all-or-nothing proposition. Stuart was a mate, a musketeer: one for all, and all for one. Parnes later said he had no recollection of this mythic showdown and insisted that Tommy Moore, not Stuart, had soured the band’s chances. Instead, Parnes cast his blessing on Cass and the Cassanovas.
With sentiments running in such contrary directions, some clarity was needed. Williams and Parnes stole off to the Jacaranda, where they attempted to sort out a deal: who would play with whom and where and for how much. There were myriad configurations that might work. The bands trailed the two promoters to the tiny, deserted coffee bar and sat around tables near the door, speculating about their chances and casting glances at the two men huddled like warlords in the back. In the end, there was confusion in the cards. Parnes did a swift about-face and decided that no Liverpool band was needed to back Billy Fury. Instead, he offered the Scottish tours to Cass and the Cassanovas and the Silver Beetles, who would open for Duffy Power and Johnny Gentle, respectively.
The Silver Beetles were understandably ecstatic. In their eyes, Johnny Gentle, while hardly a household name, was an up-and-coming recording star. When Williams brought them the offer, they greeted it with jubilation, all except for Stuart, who felt he’d lost them the big-time Fury gig. Stuart’s mother recalled that he apologized to John for letting the band down. “Forget it, Stu,” John reportedly told him, ending any discussion of the subject. They’d been offered a legitimate tour at the astounding sum of £90 a week. For a Liverpool band, it was an unprecedented deal. Ten days on the road, most expenses paid by Parnes, playing in front of adoring audiences, hotels, girls, invaluable experience, proper exposure. An unprecedented deal from any angle.
Crowning a burst of energy and artifice, arrangements were hastily made. George and Tommy took time off from their jobs, Paul sweet-talked his father into a holiday before the upcoming exams, while John and Stuart simply cut classes. The problem of equipment was similarly solved when they decided to “borrow” the art school P.A. All the pieces fell neatly into place. Suddenly everything seemed possible. They were actually going on the road—a road from which they would never look back.
It began with a baby step.
Sometime after daybreak on May 20, John, Paul, George, Stuart, and Tommy assembled on a platform outside Liverpool’s Lime Street Station, where the glossy black Midland “locos” sat huffing, steam rising in plumes against the sharp morning chill. The platform was a confusion of commuters, businessmen, sightseers, porters, conductors, and freight handlers in whose midst the boys stood, slightly bewildered by their role. Their gear was sprawled around them in a circle of fluent disarray. In consensus, the band had decided to travel light; few personal items infiltrated the tangle of incidental clothes jammed into old satchels. John and Stuart had brought along sketch pads, Paul a couple of books.
Before they boarded the train, the subject of names arose. Names: there was never any question that the band would be known as anything but the Silver Beetles; however, that did not limit them, as musicians, from adopting temporary personal stage names. Most likely the idea originated with Stuart Sutcliffe, who had a penchant for affectation and image. He decided to call himself Stuart de Stael, after his painting idol, the Russian abstract classicist. John had already rejected using a pseudonym, as did Tommy, but Paul and George were game. The two mates from Speke, stepping out, called themselves Paul Ramon and Carl Harrison (after Carl Perkins), respectively.
The train was insufferably hot and depressing, the stale air not only bone-dry but hard to breathe. There were none of the modern conveniences that cushioned rail travel between cities such as Liverpool and London. The boys surrendered to an inherent restlessness as the last ripples of civilization flattened into grim, barren tundra. Hundreds of lonely miles rolled by between Carlisle, Queensberry, Broughton, and Lanark. Only John was used to the long, desolate route that stretched for hours into the countryside, having made a similar trip each summer to visit his cousin Stanley in Edinburgh.
They landed in Glasgow a rude ten hours after leaving home, then transferred to a rugged little local line and transferred again in Central Fife as the train snaked slowly up the east coast of Scotland, past the villages and one-street towns that skirted the veiny river Clyde. Alloa was provincial, the sticks, a stagnant little industrial town at the crook of the Firth of Forth, the inlet from the North Sea that fed into Edinburgh. The tired, sallow streets, lined with thin, half-timbered houses, had been starved by the more colorful urban centers farther west that beckoned to young families. More than half of the fourteen thousand Alloans served the fringe of hosiery mills that huddled along the riverbanks; the rest, like good Scots everywhere, distilled whiskey or fished.
Parnes broke in all his acts on the Scottish dance-hall circuit, where there were more than six thousand such small venues for bands to play. It provided steady work and an opportunity to develop an act away from London’s unforgiving stare. You could go on the road for months, playing one-nighters in outposts like Newcastleton, Musselburgh, Sunderland, Melrose, Stirling, and Dundee, hopscotching across the whole of northeastern Scotland, and never have to repeat a stop. For Johnny Gentle, by no means yet a star, Parnes had scheduled a seven-city tour of “border dances,” social gatherings in little halls that held 200 to 300 kids who could shuttle between upstairs rooms featuring a rock ’n roll show and a downstairs auditorium where traditional bands played the Scottish reel.
Arriving in Alloa late that afternoon, weary from the trip, there was no time for the band to get acclimated to the alien surroundings. They went right to work, transferring directly to the local town hall, where they were scheduled to go on within an hour.
Gentle (born John Askew) was waiting for them in a canteen behind the stage. With his velvety black hair, eyes and cheekbones sculpted in flawless proportion, a sleepy, inviting smile, and, of course, personality on the order of Cliff Richard, he was the very model of a Larry Parnes artist.
A Liverpool dropout, he had apprenticed as a ship’s carpenter on the Rindel Pacifico, a plush passenger steamer on the Britain–South America run, and took to entertaining folks on deck in his spare time. Parnes discovered Johnny during a layover in London in 1958 and signed him to a modest record deal with the Philips label. He made two records in quick succession—“Wendy” and “Milk from the Coconut”—and though neither struck gold, they’d mined a respectable enough audience to hold Parnes’s interest.
Johnny and the Silver Beetles had half an hour to hammer out an agreeable set of songs and work out arrangements. They needed enough material for two one-hour shows, and even though the Silver Beetles had practiced Johnny’s repertoire in advance, there were copious all-important details about the performance yet to solve. Johnny relied on a sleepy mix of rock ’n roll and country standards that included Jim Reeves’s “He’ll Have to Go,” “(I Don’t Know Why I Love You) But I Do,” popularized by Clarence “Frogman” Henry, and the current Presley release, “I Need Your Love Tonight.” A die-hard Ricky Nelson fan, he proposed they do “Be-Bop Baby” and “I Got a Feeling” but couldn’t get a decent enough take of “Poor Little Fool” in time for the performance, substituting Bobby Darin’s “Dream Lover,” which had, at one time, been a trusty Quarry Men number. As the band worked furiously to get up to speed, a squad of stiff-backed women made haggis pies to serve during the interval.
The first set went remarkably well for an act that had just met. “The crowd was lovely,” remembers Askew. “They knew who I was. And the Beatles [sic] sounded as good as any group that was thrown at me by Parnes.” That said, it came as something of a surprise when, a day later, he got a phone call from a rather disgruntled Larry Parnes. “I’m thinking of sending the Beatles [sic] back to Liverpool and getting you another group up there,” Askew recalls being told. “[The promoter] is not happy with them and doesn’t think they’re an outfit, he feels they’re not together.”
“They weren’t the normal bunch of kids he was used to having up there,” says Hal Carter. “They were flippant, cheeky northern kids who could be quite rude at times, which didn’t go down [well].”
Askew practically begged Parnes to buy them more time. “They are good lads, the enthusiasm’s there,” he argued in their defense. “Leave it be and we’ll get it right.”
He was right. Soon the tour found real artistic balance. The Silver Beetles, dressed in matching black shirts, paired effortlessly with Johnny Gentle, his slick, earnest crooning and their raw, high-charged accompaniment an ideal match. The opening numbers, giving Johnny his brief star turn, were stronger than anything he’d done in the past—energetically or artistically. But once he finished and Paul rushed the mike, winding out the nearly incomprehensible opening of “Long Tall Sally,” the pretense fell away: Johnny had entertained, but now it was time to rock ’n roll.
Inside those dinky, dilapidated halls, the Silver Beetles “pulled out all the stops.” They pummeled those Scottish kids with forty minutes of kick-ass music that never let up for a beat. One after the next, the songs built to a furious, undisciplined pitch, rumbling, wailing, like a train through a tunnel. The kids at each show were undone by the music, practically throwing themselves around the floor. “Those two boys operated on a different frequency,” Askew says of Paul and John. “I used to watch them work the crowd as though they’d been doing it all their lives—and without any effort other than their amazing talent. I’d never seen anything like it. They were so tapped into what the other was doing and could sense their partner’s next move, they just read each other like a book.” It was uncanny, he thought, how well they knew each other. “It was always Lennon and McCartney, even then. Lennon and McCartney. They wouldn’t even look at George or Stu to determine where things were going. Everything was designed around the two of them—and the others had to catch up on their own.”
Incredibly enough, the rest of the Silver Beetles never flinched. George maneuvered like a master in their long shadows to keep the rhythm more interesting than the mere slap-slap-slapping of chords. He worked intently, embroidering their strums with a plait of textured riffs and intonations that, while simple in structure, served to string the songs with bits of glorious color. “[And] Tommy Moore,” says Askew, “made just enough noise to distract attention from Stuart, [who] was inept—and not needed.” Almost in spite of themselves, the Silver Beetles rose mightily to steal the whole show. And the stronger they played, the more girls they attracted; the more girls they attracted, the stronger they played. Askew remembers watching a litter of sweet young “birds homing in on the stage” each night, lying in wait for the boys, as they finished their performance. “There were plenty to choose from after the gigs,” he says. “They’d take them back to the hotels for all-night parties and have so much fun that I’d find them stretched out, asleep, on the stairways around dawn.”
With all the tomcatting, it’s a wonder they got out of some of those towns alive. The crowds that border dances attracted were notoriously tough. “All farm lads,” says Hal Carter, “who’d get pissed and have a punch-up at the drop of a hat”—or the drop of a hem. “Often, if the [local] boys suspected some kind of attraction going on, they’d start a fight onstage and stop the show. However, if they were feeling charitable, they’d just whip glass ashtrays at the band to send a message.”
A battered skull wasn’t the only danger. In no time, the Silver Beetles learned one of the profession’s dirtiest little secrets: beyond the lights and the applause, beyond the hotels and the girls, no one ever makes money on the road. Four days into the tour, in godforsaken Fraserburgh, the last scrap of land on the gusty northeast coast, their pockets were empty. John Askew had to plead with Parnes to advance them some money, which eventually arrived by courier. “But the lads were so in debt by then,” he says, “they’d just spent it.” Because of the penny-wise sleeping arrangements—musicians were doubled up in most cases—eager couples had to wait their turn in the hall or steal off to a dark corner. Usually, no one got to sleep before dawn, when they would simply pass out on a bed or, as Askew already observed, in a deserted stairwell.
The next day could be even rougher. One morning, after determining the roadie “was out of it,” Askew loaded the band into the van and took off through the maze of rutted Highland roads. John Lennon was slumped in the navigator’s seat, and not much use to Askew. “The lads were still shattered from a gig [that lasted until] one in the morning, and of course there was the bird scene afterwards that ran to five or six.” Piloting on intuition, Askew panicked at a crossroads just outside Banff and, realizing—a hair too late—that he should have gone left instead of right, caromed “straight across the junction and into a little old couple” in their modest Ford.
The van took “such a smack” that John Lennon ended up crumpled under the dashboard. Tommy Moore, who was sitting behind him, flipped over the front seat and landed on top of John. Anguished by the apparent damage he caused, Askew bounded out of the car to assist the people he’d hit. “Don’t worry about us,” the woman said adamantly. “Take care of that boy over there.”
Askew wheeled around and nearly fainted. Tommy’s face was a garish mask of blood. “[It] was everywhere,” Askew recalls, “mostly streaming from the drummer’s mouth.”
A detour to the hospital provided more encouraging news: Tommy was okay. He’d lost a tooth, with several others knocked loose, but “there was no concussion.” At the worst, he was extremely shaken up. He’d never been in an accident before, and the strain of it had unnerved him. “I don’t think I can play tonight,” he told John Lennon, who returned to the hospital later that afternoon to collect his drummer. John did not reply for a long moment while a black rage crept across his face. “You listen to me, mate,” he eventually growled. “You’re bloody playing! Understand? What do you got—a bloody loose tooth?” He bent menacingly over Tommy, his lips twisted in a snarl, and Askew, worried that John was about to haul Tommy out of the bed by his hospital gown, edged closer in case it was necessary for him to intervene. “We need a drummer, and you’re it! Now, let’s go.”
When it came to the band, you didn’t demur. There was no halfway about commitment. If there was a future to playing music together, it had to start somewhere. The only way to find out was to begin playing with some consistency. And Tommy, who was fifteen years older than John, melted obediently under his smoldering glare. Wordlessly, he peeled back the covers, slipped out of bed, and got dressed for the gig.
Courtesy of the well-oiled Scottish pipeline, Allan Williams knew that this unheralded local band had held their own—and then some—with a figure like Johnny Gentle. That struck him as fortunate inasmuch as he’d brokered their inaugural appearance, and hoping to cash in on his run of luck, he swooped in with another bid of timely offers that bound band and Williams in an informal but deliberate management situation.
The most promising proposal came via Larry Parnes, who dangled the prospect of another Scottish tour, this time with one of his top dogs, Dickie Pride. It was a giant step up the same ladder that held the houndlike Johnny Gentle. But somewhere in the early stages of discussion, negotiations foundered. In rebounding from the setback, Williams stumbled into the honeypot. He managed to book the Silver Beetles for a string of dances that ran through the summer, across the Mersey, on the Wirral. The gigs, which would help establish them locally, were steady, well attended, and paid an awesome £10 per night. But they were in the worst hellholes this side of the equator—the Grosvenor Ballroom and the Neston Institute. Punch-ups were strictly kid stuff where these crowds were concerned; for dances here, you came fully armed. This was combat duty. As the Quarry Men, they had played in similarly dangerous situations, but on the Wirral they’d graduated to the big time. Come Saturday night, the Bootle teds and the Garston teds would go at it, with “flying crates and beer bottles and glasses.” All it took was one misinterpreted look and—bam!—while the band whipped through a version of “Hully Gully.” After one show, awakened by a disturbance in the middle of the night, Pauline Sutcliffe crept nervously into the bathroom, where she found her mother, Millie, laboring over Stuart’s scrawny body, stretched out awkwardly in the tub. “He was injured,” recalled Pauline, who stood speechless in the doorframe. “He said he’d been beaten up—‘Well, you know how rough these clubs [are]. There’s a lot of jealousy’—the implication being that it was some girl’s boyfriend. He’d been kicked… and badly beaten. He had bruising on his face.” Fortunately, there were no broken bones. It was reported that at another show a boy was almost kicked to death as the band continued to play.
The violence, however, seemed the least of their immediate worries. In early June the momentum of the Silver Beetles’ progress was snapped by the defection of Tommy Moore, who left the band “in the lurch” following a raucous gig at the Neston Institute. It took them by complete surprise when he failed to show up for a ride they’d arranged to their next scheduled date. Four weeks of working with a capable drummer had lulled them into an unrealistic sense of security. Of course, no one imagined for a moment that Tommy was a Silver Beetle at heart. Indeed, by the end of the Johnny Gentle tour, he was barely on speaking terms with anyone. His ability, however, was undeniable. Desperate to keep the band intact, they tracked Tommy to the Garston bottling plant where he worked, in an effort to beg him to reconsider, but it was no use. The excuse he lamely offered was an unexpected transfer to the factory’s night shift, but the truth was he’d just had it.
The boys were devastated. Unable to play the Wirral dances without a drummer, they agreed to provide background music at a couple of unlicensed cootch joints run by Allan Williams and Lord Woodbine. John, Paul, and George had not thought it possible to sink much lower. They’d done their share of oddball engagements in the pursuit of an appreciative audience: golf clubs, bus depots, cellars, and socials. But this was another world entirely. Where other gigs had been raucous and exhilarating, the shabeens were decadent and corrupt. There was an “anything goes” quality about them, where the very fringe of society collected like sludge in a rain puddle. They were generally small and filthy rooms, just big enough for ten or twenty men to congregate for the express purpose of drinking themselves blind. Many of the patrons were drunks, nothing more; they turned up there not out of congeniality but because the pubs were closed and there was no place else to satisfy their addiction. One of the tenements, the New Cabaret Artistes, was nothing but a cover for a grungy strip club in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. Nothing in their experience had prepared them for the likes of this. Their mission was to back “an exotic dancer” while she wound up a small crowd of randy middle-aged men. Miserable, embarrassing, presumably pathetic, and depressing—an indication of how badly their dreams had stalled.
The band tried to keep up appearances. John continued to call rehearsals at the Gambier Terrace flat and work on scraps of songs with Paul. They even retained a new drummer named Norman Chapman, whose bruising backbeat seemed tailor-made for their style of music. Only twenty, he was young enough to fit in socially, enthusiastic, and reliable, with a healthy passion for rock ’n roll. But following three promising gigs together at the volatile Grosvenor Ballroom, the band’s lousy luck intervened. Chapman, to his own great surprise, was suddenly called for national service and dispatched to Africa for two years.
The sense of impotence—of being cut off from the action again—was devastating. From the weekend section of the Liverpool Echo, now about three pages strong, it was possible to see dozens of ads for local jive dances, and at each hall, the names, band after band—an elite corps of groups bundled together, who were cashing in on all the action. And always the same names—Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cass and the Cassanovas, Derry and the Seniors, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes—playing in every conceivable combination. Running one’s finger down each column, there was no mention of the Silver Beetles. Nothing. As far as anyone knew, they’d disbanded, they didn’t exist.
This time, they needed serious help.
Of all the characters influential in the Liverpool beat scene, the Silver Beetles turned to only one—again: Allan Williams. But Williams was up to his whiskers in other problems. In mid-June, when the steel band failed to show for their regular Tuesday night performance at the Jacaranda, Allan was informed they’d done “a moonlight flit.” Unbeknownst to him, the “dusky troupe,” sans Lord Woodbine, crept into the basement after hours and made off with their set of tinny oil drums. Williams depended on music to attract college students to the Jacaranda, and the intensely exotic steel band gave him untold cachet. Williams’s nightmare was that they’d gone over to the Royal Restaurant, whose owner, Ted Roberts, had tried repeatedly to woo them away and, when that failed, declared “war” on the Jacaranda. But, alas, it was worse than that. They were nowhere in Liverpool. Or even Great Britain, for that matter. Where in the world, he wondered, would a Caribbean steel band find favor and gainful employment?
Given any number of guesses, it is unlikely he ever would have come up with Hamburg, Germany.
Two summers before, Williams and his wife, Beryl, had befriended a fifteen-year-old hitchhiker they’d picked up on the road from Chester to Liverpool. The boy, whose name was Rudiger, was from Ahrensburg, a few miles north of Hamburg, and he beguiled them with tales of hedonistic excess surrounding the bustling German port. Rudiger—whose name they anglicized as Roger—returned to Liverpool several times the following year, always extending an invitation for Allan to “come to Germany and stay with him.” Now, prompted by rumors of his steel band’s new home, the opportunity presented itself.
Williams, along with the irrepressible Lord Woodbine, booked a weekend charter to Amsterdam and then connected by train to Hamburg, where he arranged to stay chez Rudiger, who was delighted to be able to reciprocate. Looking rather Mephistophelian, they set off, conspicuous in their matching top hats, with shabby suits, scruffy beards, and wild-looking hair, and chainsmoking cheap English cigarettes.
To many people, Hamburg was a terrifying place: bustling, turbulent, dirty, decadent, German—especially for Liverpudlians, whose city had been strafed by Messerschmitt bombs. But Williams basked in its seedy glow. “Hamburg fascinated me,” Williams wrote in an unpublished memoir. For someone who traded in hyperbole, that was an understatement of colossal proportions. No city could have been more aptly suited for a man on the make such as Allan. All day long, he and Woody trolled the notorious St. Pauli district, pickling themselves in the endless chain of bars and wandering through the mazy arcades that featured flagrant down-and-dirty sex shows and where prostitution was hawked in roughly the same manner as schnitzel.
There was something else, too. With all the British and American servicemen stationed in Hamburg, demand for live music far exceeded the supply. Despite all future denials, Williams knew that—and he’d brought a tape along with him, showcasing three Liverpool bands, including the Silver Beatles (they had changed the spelling in June), which he intended to play for German club owners. If he timed things right, Williams could corner the Hamburg market for British bands.
Sometime on a weekend in early July—the exact date cannot be determined, but it was a night when Lord Woodbine, exhausted, remained behind in a strip club on the Grosse Freiheit—Allan Williams wandered through the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s red-light district, taking its fidgety pulse. Stopping outside the Kaiserkeller, a three-step-down tourist club, he listened to a “dreadfully crummy” German band attempt to mug its way phonetically through a set of American rock ’n roll standards. Their delivery was awful. Seizing the opportunity, Allan pushed through the club’s big glass doors and accosted the Kaiserkeller’s manager, a florid-faced man with a preposterous wiglike mop of hair named Bruno Koschmider, and made his pitch. As “the manager of a very famous rock ’n roll group in England,” Williams proposed to stock the Kaiserkeller with authentic British bands for the sum of £100 per week, plus expenses. It was a ridiculously large amount of money and Williams knew it, but he held his ground when Koschmider expressed interest.
With a cardsharp’s sangfroid, Williams handed over the preview tape he’d made. But when the tape rolled, it contained nothing but babble; someone or something had distorted the magnetic signal rendering the performance useless.
The flush on Williams’s face grew so intense that it seemed to sizzle. Skeptical, Koschmider backed away from his previous offer. He flatly refused to book a band without hearing them. Apologizing, Williams promised to send a proper tape as soon as he returned to Liverpool, but he left the Kaiserkeller sensing that he’d blown the opportunity of a lifetime.
He was wrong: that distinction would come later. Meanwhile, upon returning to Liverpool, there were more vital concerns that served to distract Allan Williams from his temporary setback.
The Seniors were waiting for him as he stumbled home from the “dirty weekend.” Steady gigs were hard to come by in Liverpool, where standard practice was a sampling of itinerant one-nighters, so they insisted that Williams make good on his promise to introduce them around the London club scene. There was work in London—or “the Smoke,” as it was called in the provinces—where residencies were common and house bands drew interest from talent scouts. The Seniors were sure that, given the chance, they could make a similar impression.
Howie Casey remembers his skepticism at Allan Williams’s ability to come through for them. “He was always thinking on his feet, talking fast, with no real credentials, aside from his tongue.” But a week later, on July 24, Williams pulled up with two cars, packed in the entire six-piece band along with all their equipment, and took off for the Smoke. “Incredibly, he drove straight to London, stopping magically on Old Compton Street, right in front of the Two I’s,” Casey says. The Seniors stared openmouthed at the holy shrine, “the place all the important bands in London played,” which until then had existed only as a fantasy in their minds. It was the middle of the afternoon and the place was packed. Upstairs, in the café, there were rocker types hunched over a jukebox, studying the selections. A Screaming Lord Sutch record was blasting over the speakers. “We were in totally alien country,” Casey recalls thinking. “Liverpool boys in a London coffee bar—to everyone there we were thick and stupid.”
Williams seemed to know Tom Littlewood, who ran the place. Shifting the ever-present toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, Littlewood herded them downstairs, where groups showcased their stuff. “We’ll put you on after the next band,” he promised.
The next band, as it was, proved a hokey Shadows knockoff, and the Seniors impressed with their energetic R&B set. “I thought we acquitted ourselves quite well,” Casey recalls, “although we were distracted by Allan, who was standing in the audience.” From the stage, they could see a slightly contorted, older-looking man trying to make contact with him, actually elbowing the crowd aside as though it were a matter of life and death. In his memoir, Williams claims disingenuously that he couldn’t immediately identify the eccentric figure who practically leaped into his arms, but he would have had to have been blind not to recognize Bruno Koschmider.
In the standing of Beatle kismet, this episode ranks near the top. Koschmider, convinced by Williams’s pitch that British bands would add spark to his club, had flown north to scout bands for a residency at the Kaiserkeller. “What a coincidence!” the two men exclaimed, hugging each other like long-lost cousins, but the Seniors weren’t so sure. The reunion seemed almost too accidental.
Initially, Williams and Koschmider had trouble communicating; after some awkward jabbering, a Swiss waiter from the Heaven and Hell, a neighboring coffee bar, was enlisted to translate. Koschmider explained that he was seeking a replacement for Tony Sheridan, who had recently decamped to the rival Studio X. Tony Sheridan: even then the name struck a resonant chord. A guitarist of extraordinary flair, he’d backed Marty Wilde and Vince Taylor before drawing a cult following of his own. His rave 1959 appearance on Oh Boy! was one of those transcendent TV moments in which an unknown performer leaps from obscurity to stardom. But Sheridan, it turned out, was a remarkable head case. Late for nearly every appearance, he often arrived without his guitar, was duly pissed, forgot words to songs, offended promoters, and simply didn’t give a hoot. Eventually, television and the BBC refused to touch him. But in Hamburg, Sheridan became an overnight folk hero. “He was the star,” recalls a denizen of the local scene. In Hamburg it didn’t matter if he got loaded before a show or mooned the audience, it didn’t matter if “he went nuts onstage.” The Germans “loved that kind of outrageous behavior.” In Hamburg, where nothing was considered over the top, Tony Sheridan loved testing the limits. “He was unpredictable, very violent,” says an observer. “He wouldn’t stay on the stage [when he performed]. He’d tumble on[to] the dance floor, then roll around and put his body forward in an obscene gesture.” One of the musicians who worked with him recalls a recurring stunt that had made Sheridan an instant legend on the Reeperbahn: “Tony was extremely well endowed and he wasn’t adverse to displaying it to the audience. ‘Hey, you fucking Germans, check this out!’ There was always the threat of some madness.”
That was a hard act to replace, but Bruno Koschmider had to fill the void somehow. At the Two I’s, he’d liked what he’d seen. Derry Wilkie, a real live wire, was black. He wasn’t Tony Sheridan, not by a long shot, but for the moment he was the next-best thing. Plus, the Seniors cooked. “[Koschmider] made us an offer on the spot,” Howie Casey recalls. “We didn’t even ask how much money we’d be paid. It didn’t matter. We had a gig—great! We were going to Germany for a month.” And off they went.
The Kaiserkeller was all Allan had cracked it up to be—“as big as the Rialto,” thought Casey, when he and the Seniors walked in—with a decent-size stage and P.A. system, but was foreboding. Willy Limper, the club’s manager, scoffed when they asked about their accommodations. “You stay here!” he declared, pointing toward the floor. Downstairs, it turned out, were two windowless rooms, with one bed, a settee, and two armchairs—for six men! One blanket—an old Union Jack—was provided, to be shared. No sink, no shower or bath. They could wash up in the ladies toilet, which was used by hundreds of people each night and not cleaned until the following afternoon, so “you just became funkier and funkier as time wore on.”
Work began at seven o’clock, and the pace was grueling: four 45-minute sets, with fifteen minutes off for the band to tank up on free beer. The forty-five-minute blocks meant learning more material, or just stretching each song into drawn-out jams. The band also filled time with long calypso numbers whose melodies were borrowed from Lord Woodbine but whose rude lyrics were improvised on the spot. “It was all to do with ‘wanking’ and ‘cocks,’ ” recalls Casey. “And, of course, we were killing ourselves laughing, thinking how amusing it was that the Germans were dancing away, digging it, without understanding a word.” Not that anyone minded. “The crowds were great. When we played, they leaped on the tables, going absolutely apeshit.” But they were also fickle. As soon as the set ended and the jukebox went on, the place emptied out, which meant that intermissions were eventually abolished.
It didn’t matter. When the joint was rocking, there was no better place to play. But as time wore on, the once-naive Scousers began to notice another vibe in the Kaiserkeller—a core of intense, dark violence just under the glitzy surface. Willy Limper had presented himself as a dimpled, jolly old German geezer, but “a nice vicious streak” revealed the essential man. He ran Koschmider’s infamous empire—a network of seedy music and strip clubs—with an iron fist that struck swiftly and without mercy. As one musician remembers observing: “When somebody didn’t pay their bill, they were hauled into Willy’s office so we could watch what was going on. The waiters had koshes”—leather saps—“and would stand in a semicircle, whacking the guy from one waiter to the next, playing tennis with him.” Other times, violators were kicked senseless and then hauled into the back alley, where they were dumped, unconscious, alongside the garbage. Entertainment was merely a sideline for Koschmider. His tentacles extended to all kinds of vice—prostitution, child pornography, drugs, and protection. “Limper was the leader of his gang, and the waiters were his enforcers,” says an observer.
It was a familiar showbiz story. As in Cuba and Las Vegas, entertainment provided a glamorous front for racketeers. But as Derry and the Seniors acclimated themselves to the Reeperbahn, they viewed their situation as being quite wonderful indeed. “We were in heaven,” Casey says. Audiences loved them. They drank their weight in free vodka and whiskey. They discovered big department stores in Mönckebergstrasse, whose restaurants served schwartzwalder kirschtorte—rich cakes filled with wonderful cream that were unlike anything they’d eaten in Liverpool. And they gorged on sex. According to one of the musicians, “you had to chase and work at British girls.” The minute they hit Hamburg, however, it seemed as if “girls came out of the woodwork.” There was a girl for everybody, and not just edge-of-the-bed virgins, like back home. These girls were polished, stylish, smart, and fashionable. The musicians were invited to the homes of their German girlfriends, introduced to approving mothers, and then hauled upstairs to bed. The Scousers were shocked, just shocked! Even more so when they all got gonorrhea. “We were going to marry those girls,” says one of the Seniors, “never realizing that Willy Limper was giving it to them, as were most of the waiters.”
To each of the Seniors alike, it “was like being released into a sweet shop, a first-class orgy.” So it was not surprising that after a month of pure bliss, the Seniors panicked when a letter from Allan Williams arrived, threatening to torpedo their perfect world. According to Williams, Koschmider had another club on the Grosse Freiheit that begged for another Liverpool band. That, in itself, actually seemed promising; it would be good, they thought, to have some companionship in Hamburg. But the Seniors were convinced that the group in question “would ruin the scene.”
Williams’s letter delivered the news: he was sending the Beatles.