WHATEVER happens tomorrow, one thing is certain; it must not be allowed to look after itself. For tomorrow is the cardinal problem and it must be tightly under my control.
Yesterday was a wonderful day. It was warm and dry and the sun shone and the Beatles were brilliant and the others too. Today is nice too. There’s still no change in the weather, except for the faintest breeze which suggests we must be on guard. Probably it might be as well to carry our raincoats tomorrow. Then it won’t rain.
It’s a great privilege being the weatherman, keeping the Beatles and Billy J. and Cilla dry and comfortable. I enjoy it far too much to relax but of course, I cannot see too far into the future so it’s no use asking me how long it can go on. ‘How long will the Beatles last?’ You ask. And some of you say ‘it’s only a craze really’.
Well I don’t know how long the Beatles will last and neither do they. Nobody does but the barometer looks very promising. They are the biggest attraction the entertainment industry has ever known, or will know and this sort of bigness doesn’t dissolve overnight or even in a year. I believe that really the future is entirely up to the Beatles and to me. If we are very careful we may keep on making show-business history, by bridging not only the gulf between the ages of fans—they did that a year ago—but by stepping over their own age problems.
George Harrison wrote in his Daily Express column months ago: ‘We obviously can’t go around as Beatles when we’re in our forties,’ and to an extent this is true. But so fast have they developed and expanded up to now, that they may, changing imperceptibly, month by month and stage by stage, become an extraordinary force in other branches of entertainment.
I see tremendous possibilities in films and this may well be the way I shall guide them. Clearly they cannot be expected to tour the country on one-night stands, living out of suitcases year after year, issuing a disc every three months. But the Beatles themselves delight in personal appearances—audience response is their only stimulant drug—and any change from present policy must be gently and easily effected.
How do I handle them and the other artistes? Well I remember primarily that I am their manager and not their keeper. Nor am I a parent with a duty to teach them manners, how to speak or hold their forks. I am not a schoolmaster to make them read or cultivate themselves. I am most certainly not their judge on morals or behaviour.
I am, simply, their guide and I am not myself absolutely certain how it has all happened. I try to ease them into doing a song in this order or that order in a show, and similarly, merely hint that this style of suit is right for that singer. Imperfect as we all are, example is also useful and I believe that as I have learned from the Beatles so they have picked up some good habits from me. From Gerry I have been taught something of the benefit of robust earthiness. From me he may have learned a little repose.
From Cilla Black, a beautiful lady, all of us have drawn something.
She is what she is—an untutored girl from a large, happy, working-class family in a lowly part of Liverpool. She may not curtsy by instinct, but she is warm and natural and frank and this may be far more important than protocol.
Yet one night when I took a famous man to see her, he said later: ‘You will, of course, be teaching that young lady how to behave with a star like me. After all I am a household name and she didn’t exactly acknowledge this.’
Said I: ‘I thought she was rather nice,’ and though he may not have known it, Cilla thought he was a decent sort of chap. The difference between them was that she made no remarks behind his back. I shall never attempt to dragoon my artistes into unnatural postures, for the very reason I engage performers is that I see in them a quality of stardom which, if warped or altered, would be lost.
The Beatles remain an extension of their early selves. They are older and wiser and they have absorbed some sophistication but it is still their naturalness which wins them the admiration of people like Lord Montgomery—a straight man himself—and involves the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in voluble, rival claims to the ownership of the Beatles.
I have never actually made a star. The material is woven when I buy it over a sixpenny stamp on a contract. But I am a demon for balancing the careers of my artistes so that when, for instance, Billy J. Kramer left for his first major U.S. trip, his first American disc-release was heading for No. 1 in the U.S. charts.
Billy provides another example of balancing and planning. This summer he and his group, fresh from ‘Little Children’s’ No. 1 hold on the British charts, entered what seemed to be a doldrum period. Billy said: ‘We’re not getting enough work,’ though in fact they were starring in one theatre or another or on TV more often than he had noticed. I was faced either (A) with filling in odd nights with unsatisfactory dates or (B) building his morale with talk of first-class bookings already established for the near future. I explained the alternatives. He insisted: ‘I’d like to be working non-stop Brian.’
‘Right,’ I said. You can do ballrooms if you want for £400 a night. Is this what you want?’ He had to agree that it was not, for at that stage in his career ballrooms were over. They were part of his development but they were in the past. He saw the reasoning and he said: ‘OK I’ll just be patient,’ and patient he was and he was a huge success in America three weeks later.
I’m convinced that many a manager or agent, faced with an impatient artiste and also a chance of a few hundreds in commission would have put the artiste out to the ballrooms the following week. Therein lies the road to nothing for I believe that there are only two worthwhile routes in show-business—up or out.
The most satisfying feature of my life in show-business is that I enjoy it. I like artistes enormously—all artistes. I like meeting them, I like being amongst them, I enjoy their conversation, and I derive tremendous satisfaction from developing new artistes.
I think the best part of the business is guiding and watching the progress of newcomers, because after all the pop business is very much a business for new people. Without them popular music would die, and this, probably, is the reason why although I am far too busy to be handling more artists than I already have I sign up fresh talent from time to time.
Certainly the Beatles themselves are a full time job, but now that they are top of the world their challenge to me has diminished and I work better with a challenge than with a fait accompli. I find the pop scene fascinating and probably the most intriguing feature is the imponderable ‘What makes a hit?’
This is unanswerable but one does develop an instinct, and I am a great believer in tunes. Although not all records get to the top of the hit parade because they are great tunes, generally speaking melody sells. Sir Thomas Beecham once said this at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall when I was there as a boy. He said ‘I’m often asked why operas survive generation after generation—La Bohème and things like that. And I always reply. ‘They survive because they consist of bloody good tunes’.
Naturally songs without good tunes also get to the top of the hit parade. ‘Please, Please Me’ was not a great tune but it was an exciting new sound, as was The Animals’ ‘House of the Rising Sun’.
Tunes can go wrong because a great deal happens to a tune in a recording studio, particularly nowadays when so many electronic devices and dodges are available. But basically if you can get a good melody that is going to suit the artiste and, equally important, if the artiste is going to like it you are almost home and dry with a hit.
I have known good tunes to be spoiled by rotten recordings, either because the people who are singing them have not been able to cope with the song or haven’t liked it.
The outstanding example of this in my experience is ‘How Do You Do It?’ which the Beatles rejected because they didn’t like it although they knew it was a good tune, and which of course Gerry made a great success. There have been other examples recently—The Fourmost had a hit with ‘A Little Lovin” by Russell Alquist, who then brought up what I thought were three very good melodies for a follow-on disc.
The Fourmost recorded two of these numbers but I knew, and they knew that they didn’t like them. They didn’t do a good job, and consequently the records weren’t released, but later we found more numbers for the Fourmost which they did very well. There are no hard and fasts in the pop world.
I am often asked whether I think a lot of the stuff in the hit parade is rubbish, and I could not agree less. Very little rubbish makes any progress in the charts although occasionally—very occasionally—some frightful nonsense is bought but I think less now than ever.
Some problems I have still not solved although the past three years have taught me how to tackle most of the snags which crop up from day to day when you are dealing with artistic people, with a fickle public and with people with far greater experience than I. One of the problems I still have to tackle is what to do about an artiste who I know to be good, who has material I know to be good, and yet who cannot produce a hit.
Such a man is Tommy Quickly who is extraordinarily popular with audiences, an amiable young man and a very good singer. He made a record which came from America called ‘You Might As Well Forget Him’. It was extremely good and everybody in the business including the Beatles and my other artistes, thought it was tremendous. We made a very good recording of it and the fans went wild over it at concerts. But it failed dismally. Not a thing happened to it.
One of the first lessons I learned in show-business was that agents were not as bad as people had told me. Like everything else in life when you get to know them they take shapes and forms as individuals—like restaurants and people you get to know very well—there are some good, some nice, some bad, some sharp, there are some who mean well and some who don’t mean well at all.
I find, curiously enough, that the most difficult agents are those who have only been in the business a short time and I find this now after only having been in the business three years. Agents who suddenly have success can also be difficult, and I know that as my success was fairly immediate this could apply to me. I trust I am not too difficult.
I know one man who is becoming almost impossible. He is the manager of a well-known group and he has recently done very well with another group. He is quickly getting himself a very bad name because suddenly, because his groups are doing well, he is becoming difficult with managers and agents who previously in the early and lean days offered the groups work, and he is telling them ‘Oh no. Now they’ve done well we can’t go ahead with such and such a contract.’
Now this is a thing I never did. By and large I went along with all the things I’d agreed to, and I didn’t let pieces of paper stand in my way if I’d agreed to it verbally. I stood by contracts. With the exception that if I thought that a very unfair advantage was being taken I too could be difficult.
The Beatles themselves carried out all the dates in their £25, £50, £60 bracket even though by the time the dates arrived they were in a very much bigger fee bracket. Likewise Gerry and all my other groups. Many people forget that contracts are frequently arranged many months ahead and an artist who in July can attract a fee of £1,000 a week may still have to fulfil a contract fixed in January at £100 a week.
The Beatles for instance played the Ed Sullivan Show in February—a contract fixed in the previous November when they were not important in America. They received about £1,000 a show—that would be about 10,000 dollars for the three shows, but the top rate which they could probably have asked for in February was about 7,000 dollars a show and possibly a little bit more. Not that it matters because the main thing is to fulfil contracts and exchange good will with good people.
I am constantly being confronted with people who have new talent to offer—either their own or their artists. I quite honestly have not the time to go into the talents of every individual, but I still believe that were a new Beatles to emerge it would be impossible for me to overlook them, as my Beatles were overlooked in 1962 by people who should have known better but didn’t.
I enjoy the spirit of rivalry in show-business. It is so strong that it provokes a great deal of healthy competitive mania and I find it most stimulating. The record charts have been criticized but I believe them to be very reasonable, very fair and extremely honest. The charts are one of my chief delights. The Beatles of course are not really in competition with anyone any more. I believe they, in their modest way, are enormously proud to have beaten the world and to have done it all with our own organization rather than having to be tied up in any way with one of the big London groups. We take great pride in what has been termed the provincial breakthrough.
I think that as time goes on my relationship with older elements in show-business mellows. At first they thought of me as a young upstart, and one who would inevitably fall. I think a lot of them hoped I would, but I didn’t and now my acceptability is complete. Other people in the business still find me very remote, and all over the world this has been said of me—that I am aloof and stand apart and to a certain extent this is true. It is not studied—it is simply me.
This may seem curious in a necessarily extrovert world like Tin Pan Alley but the combination of me and pop music seems to work and consequently I don’t mind people delving deep into me, searching for reasons and secrets because there is nothing too bad there. Even if there were something to be ashamed of, if it were true and it were known and it were published I could not complain. I am extremely fond of the truth and I wish I could find it as often as I find the reverse in my day by day contacts with people.
It is fascinating in the pop context—in the competitive field of young people making their own music—to guide the development of my artistes. So many mistakes have been made by other managers, directors and agents that the lessons are plain and alarming and I trust I will not make too many. Most certainly the Beatles must be guided with great skill and it is doubtful at this stage that they will make many more personal appearance tours overseas.
Morale is vital. I do everything I can to sustain it at the highest level, and though I can often ill-afford time away from the desk and the telephone, I travel thousands—tens of thousands of miles—to be with my artistes at important times and at times not so important whether it is the Palladium—as it has been for Cilla in her triumphant year, and for the Fourmost—or at the pub in Bolton where I discovered Michael Haslam, I will be there because it really is what I exist for.
If I go to America with Billy, I cannot cry off when Gerry goes. If the Beatles make a film, then I must cast around for a film vehicle for the others. This is not to feed any envy; it is simply one’s duty as a manager.
There are occasions, however, when my influence is limited. I can suggest this show or that song because they have a bearing on professional development. I could, though I haven’t, object to a choice of clothing. But I am powerless in the private lives of my artistes beyond asking them to keep them separate from their working lives.
In 1963 Paul McCartney started to go out with a pretty young actress, Jane Asher. The press found out and there has been a daily rumour since of marriage—in London, Paris, New York or wherever else couples marry. Both Jane and Paul know that it is unwise for pop-singers to marry and so they stay single. But if they were determined to wed, there is nothing I would wish to do to stop them.
Similarly with Ringo and George, both of whom have had their names linked with attractive girls. Though I believe the Beatles are a more solid unit without girls in the foreground, they have a right as citizens and human beings to go out with whom they please. They are not slaves, either to me or their contracts, or, indeed to show-business.
The time will come, of course, when they will marry and so, if I can get two days off, may I. And when this happens I must be sure that my own organization is strong enough to endure the changes.
The Beatles may move more and more into films; most of the remaining artistes will endure and mature but I am anxious to build on the foundation of the beat groups and create other enterprises.
In Michael Haslam I have my first ballad-singer; a twenty-four-year-old tanner from Lancashire. He, I believe, is going to be very big. Later in 1964 I signed two non-Liverpool groups—The Ruskies and Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers. In Sounds Incorporated I had already signed my first entertainers not from the North. The reason for a slight shift from beat is not because I see an end of heavy amplified guitar rhythm but because one must be able, literally, to call the tune. A ‘hit’, after all is simply the song which is most popular at any given time. It need not be part of a trend—the Bachelors have proved this—it is far more likely to be the best disc available, whether Ramona or Rock Around the Clock.
I have known some failure in the midst of the winning streak. I attempted to bring Pops into the West End on Sunday night. All the top groups and soloists played week by week in elegant Prince of Wales Theatre on Piccadilly Circus. The quality was there but the fans weren’t and I lost a good deal of money, none of which I regret because I learned a lesson and I was happy to have attempted something new.
My income permits me to spread into legitimate theatre, in which few make a fortune, and I have, as I said, invested in a new little theatre in Bromley, Kent, with Brian Matthew. Later I intend to buy a wonderful American musical for one of my own artistes. I should also like to direct or play in a straight drama without the slightest interest in profit, for I am not concerned with great wealth.
Though my terms with artistes are well known—friendship and 25 per cent all-in on top fees—I am, I fear, accused of greed. I am thought of as a hard businessman. In fact I am neither greedy nor hard but I am deeply concerned in preserving the status and upward climb of artistes. This is what they pay me 25 per cent for.
And if, through no manipulation of mine, the fees for top artistes are high—and, incidentally, I believe they are ridiculously high—then those are the fees I must charge. The fees were there when I was still selling furniture and if Star X is worth £1,500 a week, I must charge more for the Beatles.
I could, I suppose, be hugely rich but I cannot see what good it would do me. I live well and spend largely and buy things I like, but I always did and if I stopped earning tomorrow I could quite easily decimate my standard of living and still have a wonderful life. Though I adore eating and wining in, say, the Caprice in London, I am happier still in a small country restaurant.
However much I socialize with the great and famous, I would prefer a quiet afternoon with George Martin and Judy, making a bob or two at Lingfield Park races. And best of all and far beyond anything money can buy, I love to lean on my elbows at the back of the stalls and watch the curtain rise on John, Paul, George and Ringo, Gerry, Billy, Tommy, Michael—or the wonderful songbird daughter of a Liverpool docker and christened Priscilla Maria Veronica White who will stun the world as Cilla Black. Tomorrow?
I think the sun will shine tomorrow.