IN gold cowboy boots, with a grey streak in his hair and a desperado’s thin moustache and beard, Ringo Starr was playing the drums at Butlin’s holiday camp in Skegness in the summer of 1962 when the first crisis hit the Beatles under my management.
George Martin had not been too happy about Pete Best’s drumming and the Beatles, both in Hamburg and at home had decided his beat was wrong for their music. I wasn’t sure about that and I was not anxious to change the membership of the Beatles at a time when they were developing as personalities. So I tried to talk to Pete about his drumming, without hurting his feelings and at the same time I asked the Beatles to leave the group as it was.
They, however, had decided that sooner or later they wanted Pete to leave. They thought him too conventional to be a Beatle and though he was friendly with John, he was not with George and Paul. And one night in September the three of them approached me and said: ‘We want Pete out and Ringo in.’
I decided that if the group were to remain happy, Pete Best must go, and I knew that I would have to do it quickly and decisively. I had a sleepless night after mentioning casually to Pete that I would like him to call into the office the following day as there was something I wanted to discuss with him.
He arrived on time, as quiet as ever. I hedged a little and then said that we would be bringing in a new drummer for the Beatles, and I suggested many alternatives. That he could be the nucleus of a group which I would form, that he could be fitted into one of my existing groups and so on. None of these suggestions were acceptable and after two hours of talking around the subject Pete left the office very upset and pessimistic.
He failed to turn up that same day for an engagement at the River Park Ballroom in Chester and never again played with the Beatles.
Neil Aspinall, the faithful ‘Nel’, the Beatles’ tough and brilliant road manager-guide-support, did however arrive though he was a close friend of the Best family and he felt a great division in loyalty which he resolved in our favour. For this I am profoundly glad because I do not know how we should get the Beatles on the road without Nel. He is a splendid man, loved by all.
The sacking of Pete left me in an appalling position in Liverpool. Overnight I became the most disliked man on the seething beat-scene. True, I had the support of the Beatles who were the city’s darlings and they were delighted to have Ringo. But the fans wanted Pete Best as a Beatle and there were several unpleasant scenes.
For two nights I dared not go near the Cavern. Gangs prowled Matthew Street above the cellar-club and chanting crowds cried: ‘Pete for Ever, Ringo Never,’ and waved banners. I could not stay away for too long so I applied to Ray McFall of the Cavern for a bodyguard and he sent along a massive doorman who hustled me and the Beatles as we ran a gauntlet of fists and jeers.
It was not a happy period and though I dodged all the blows, George Harrison got a black eye which he took with him to the recording session as a proud symbol of his support of the new fourth Beatle.
Ringo settled in marvellously well and dissipated my early fears that he was not the right type. He shaved off his beard and combed his hair down and became pure Beatle. I remembered the ’phone conversation of initiation when John Lennon told him: ‘You’re in, Ringo. But the beard will have to go. You can keep your “sidies”, though.’
Keep his ‘sidies’ he did and there isn’t a better set of sidewhiskers in beat music, nor a more lovable man.
One problem of relationships remained as a result of Ringo’s Beatledom for he had been a valuable member of an excellent group called the Hurricanes, led by Rory Storme, one of the liveliest and most likeable young men on the Scene. Rory was very annoyed when Ringo left and he complained to me. I apologized and Rory, with immense good humour, said: ‘O.K. Forget it. The best of luck to the lot of you.’ I still see a fair amount of him for he is almost one of the fittings of Alan Williams’ ‘Blue Angel’ club in Liverpool which is where beat groups go to relax.
Many other things had been happening in that first extraordinary year. I had become a full-blown manager of several first-class artistes.
After the Beatles I had signed Gerry and his Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and a group called the Big Three. I was taking a close interest in a slim, lively little thing called Priscilla White, and I had half an eye on the star potential of a freckled lad named Quigley. It was, in fact, all happening.
Gerry Marsden was one of the biggest stars in Liverpool, with a smile as wide as he was short, a huge generous personality and a fascinating voice, full of melody and feeling. With the Beatles he alternated at the most popular lunch-time sessions at the Cavern and I remember being amazed when I first spoke to him, early in 1962, to find that no-one had ever approached him with a serious offer of management.
I felt that in him was much of the little folk-hero quality which had raised Tommy Steele to a position of importance in the theatre—the same native talent and warmth and instinctive showmanship. Events have proved me right and I am convinced that were it not for the Beatles, Gerry would have been Britain’s Number One young artiste.
I love watching Gerry at work—his communication with an audience, his winks and his nods and his feeling for humour or pathos. Off-stage he is a robust and earthy character with an impressively salty vocabulary, but on stage he is the boy-next-door who would no more swear than miss an engagement. For this reason I protested once—and I rarely protest to newspapers—to a music paper who suggested I had ordered him to stop cursing during performances. The paper apologized the following week.
From the Cavern, Gerry moved swiftly through the ranks of groups to emerge as a huge crowd-puller on television, stage, in cabaret and, surely soon, in films. Princess Alexandra twice requested him for cabaret at Society balls, and in the summer of this year the makers of ‘Tom Jones’ produced him and the Pacemakers in his first feature-length film ‘Ferry ’Cross the Mersey’, for which he wrote all eight songs.
Gerry is no butterfly on the Scene. He will be with us for a great many years because you cannot exhaust natural ability, and, because a pop-singer who sends his first three discs to the Number One spot in the disc-charts does not do it by accident.
Away from his work, Gerry has been a wonderful friend to me. He is intelligent and kind and more than any of the other artistes, he wants to demonstrate his friendship with presents. From him I’ve had gold cuff-links, bracelet, tie pins and he remains the most outwardly grateful of all the people I managed. Thankfully, one feels able to repay him with good work and a good future and I don’t believe either I, or George Martin or publisher Dick James ever had a fragmentary doubt about Gerry’s worth as an entertainer.
Yet, in 1962, before what is now known as the Liverpool Sound was a passport to success, even Gerry had to be sold hard to the commercial interests who make up the entertainment industry. George Martin himself had to be convinced and for this purpose I persuaded him to come North with Judy to see Gerry at work.
Gerry had been a little impatient for a disc for, though I had signed him in June, there was still no sign of a recording contract in December. I had stalled because I wanted ‘Love Me Do’ and the Beatles to get away, but as Christmas approached, I realized that Gerry needed some tangible proof that he was important to me. I asked George to come to Merseyside.
On December 12th he suddenly decided to come and I was in a frightful panic for this was one of the few days on which Gerry had no booking. At the last moment I managed to fix a junior date—for under fifteens—at the Majestic Ballroom in Birkenhead. It would have been awful for George to arrive to see my new star and find him without work.
Gerry was splendid with the kids and George was very impressed—particularly with Gerry singing the new number ‘How Do You Do It’ which, three months later, was to win him a silver disc. But contrary to a half-true press story which, I’m ashamed to say, we put out without George’s knowledge, Gerry was not signed on the spot. George simply said: ‘Come to London and we’ll give you a test.’
At any rate, Gerry went to London and has since sold many more than a million discs.
Later that night George, Judy and I went to the Cavern where the Beatles were playing. They had become very ‘hot’ in Liverpool not only because they were the best group in the city but because they had become a sensation with a record actually in the national charts. The four of them—John, Paul, George and Ringo—were now a well-knit unit with Pete Best a figure in the past, and they looked pretty splendid, wearing black velvet waistcoats and trousers, white shirts and black silk knitted ties.
George was thrilled with the Cavern and planned to make an L.P., live in the cellar. It hasn’t happened yet but there is still time.
It was very warm in the Cavern that night, though outside a wild December gale was blowing over the Mersey, and we left our coats with a chirpy cloakroom attendant with bright orange hair. George, who responds quickly to a feminine smile, was impressed enough to murmur to me: ‘Pretty girl, Brian,’ and I agreed. Her name was Priscilla and given second sight, we would all have been interested to know that eighteen months later that lively cloakroom girl was to emerge as Britain’s leading girl singer with a season at the London Palladium and two magnificent discs far and away at the head of the record charts—‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ and ‘You’re My World’.
The girl, of course, was Cilla Black, then named Priscilla White. My lovely Cilla—one of the very great stars of the future—the most photographed girl in England, the singer everyone loves and admires but whom no-one envies because of her utter simplicity.
Cilla was one of the girls who was always around the Cavern. She was a singer, I knew, but I had no idea that she took music seriously—practically everyone in and around the Cavern was some sort of singer or guitarist and though I liked Cilla I had no ideas of management until midway through 1963.
I first heard her sing with the Beatles in Birkenhead but had not been greatly impressed because the acoustics had been wrong for her voice, but the next occasion was early one morning in The Blue Angel Club in Liverpool. She looked, as always, magnificent—a slender graceful creature with the ability to shed her mood of dignified repose if she were singing a fast number, I watched her move and I watched her stand and I half-closed my eyes and imagined her on a vast stage with the right lighting. I was convinced she could become a wonderful artiste.
Cilla was that morning singing with a jazz group, but she had also done a few numbers—for nothing—with the Beatles and with other Liverpool groups including, notably, King Size Taylor and the Dominoes. I went across to her after her last number and I said: ‘I thought that was absolutely wonderful. Have you ever thought of turning professional?’ She laughed that wild joyous laugh which later won her millions of fans on ‘Juke Box Jury’, and said: ‘Who’d have me?’
I said: ‘Me, for one. Would you care to have a manager? I can’t promise anything yet but I think you would be a very good recording artiste.’ Cilla said ‘Hmmm. Well, it’s a bit risky but I love singing and if I could make a success of it, it’d be great.’
So a few days later I made a firm offer of management and asked Cilla to take a long time to think it over. She did and she signed a contract with me in September, 1963. Eight months later she had become the girl-symbol of British youth, the most exciting singer in Britain and a limitless source of pride to me.
Cilla has never given me a moment’s anxiety. Her style and her natural ease make her a joy to manage but, curiously, she was innocently involved in one of the most frightening experiences of my life.
News that I was soon to sign a management agreement with her had spread swiftly around Liverpool and in the small hours one morning I had an anonymous telephone call. On the other end of the line there was a thick, coarse voice which said, baldly: ‘Keep off Cilla White, Epstein. She doesn’t need your management. She’s signed with friends of mine.’
The caller then hung up, leaving me wondering why I should buy myself a problem like this. The following morning, I realized that this was precisely what the caller had wanted-—to scare me off.
I spoke to Cilla and she assured me she had no agreement with anyone else and I decided to take no more notice of the call. But at about two a.m. another call came. It was a different voice but the message was much the same. This time I was able to speak and I said: ‘Neither Miss White or I are the least bit interested in this nonsense,’ and this time I hung up. The calls persisted for a few days but the claims and threats became more and more feeble until they finally stopped. I was very relieved because I didn’t wish—and never will want—to pirate artistes.
Cilla was the last Liverpool artiste I secured and she is, of course, the only girl. This is not accidental; for I was finding it difficult, in the first case, to select talent from so much in the beat city, and, in the second case, I didn’t care to dilute the special attention I wanted to give Cilla by managing a girl-competitor. The disc charts cannot stand very many girls, however gorgeous they may look on stage.
After the Beatles and Gerry, with great care and precision, I selected four more Northern groups to present Tin Pan Alley with an irresistable onslaught. I signed Billy J. Kramer from Liverpool and linked him with Manchester’s four-man Dakota group, not only because I like the Dakotas’ work, but also because Billy’s own group, the Coasters—now with Chick Graham—did not wish to turn professional.
Billy Kramer had in fact won a prize as a result of a poll organized by Merseybeat for the best-known non-professional group in Liverpool. Nems gave the prize and it was partly because I was impressed with this achievement that I signed him, and also because John Lennon of the Beatles thought a lot of Kramer’s voice. He was, I thought, an outstanding artiste for his age and experience.
Also from the Cavern Scene I took on the Big Three—a group which has changed membership to such an extent that half Liverpool seems to have played with them at one time or another—the Fourmost and the Remo Four.
The Big Three are no longer with me. I gave up management because the group broke and I don’t approve of groups breaking, particularly as, in this case, the mainstay of the group left and the balance was lost.
Balance, in groups as in life, is all.
This group, when I took them on, had a very good sound and I was most optimistic, but there was a lack of discipline and this cannot be tolerated because it is bad for business, awful for reputation and extremely bad for morale.
I was sorry to lose them because Johnny Hutchinson, one of the original members, was a good drummer. And vocalist Johnny Gustafson, bass guitarist—now with the Merseybeats—is a very fine property, strong musically and physically and very good-looking.
With The Fourmost—in contrast—I have had an increasingly happy relationship and they are now one of the country’s leading groups, full of fun and brain with a lot of the reckless charm of the Beatles. They, more than any of the others, were the most difficult to secure for a contract for though they were old hands at the Cavern and enjoyed playing, they were firmly involved in apprenticeships or at college and they didn’t wish to know about management or full-time professionalism.
Between them they have twenty-seven G.C.E. passes—I remember being impressed by this since I had none—and they had promising careers ahead of them. But I felt sure I could offer them a solid living in music and so it has turned out. It was George Martin who convinced me they were ripe for development for he heard them at the Cavern and said: ‘I would like to meet them sometime and see if we can’t make a hit or two.’
So be it. He met them, I signed them and a hit or two or three they have made. They opened at the London Palladium with Cilla in May and of them the theatre critic of the Times said in his notice: ‘For sheer charm they stole the show.’
Billy J. Kramer, perhaps in some ways the best-looking pop-singer in the world, if I may lapse into superlative, sent his first two songs to the Number One spot and that’s not a bad start. He was another of the Cavern crowd—a tall, well-made ex-railway lad christened William Ashton. Paul and John wrote his first three numbers: ‘Do You Want to know a Secret’, ‘Bad to Me’ and ‘I’ll Keep you Satisfied’.
Inexplicably—though you can’t win them all—the third failed to make Number One but Billy and the Dakotas compensated by crashing to the top with ‘Little Children’ in England and near the top in America.
His success in the States was particularly pleasing for it consolidated my success over there and proved to me that it was not only Beatlemania that impressed the Americans.
My first solo artiste was a freckled-faced boy called Quigley and his discovery was more like the American film/musical conception of star-making than any of the other people I manage. It happened one night in a hall in Widnes in 1962. I was running Monday night concerts there, with Gerry and the Beatles and other fairly well-established performers and the eight to eight-thirty spot was occupied by ‘unknowns’ who used the opportunity for a form of audition. I paid them nothing but they got themselves a hearing.
One night I was in the manager’s office—discussing takings, no doubt, for though I love not money, I adore takings—when I heard a very fascinating voice over the amplification system. I ran from the office into the hall and saw a youth in a depressing green suit, singing his heart out to the great delight of a young, mostly-female, audience. I thought he was excellent—with a lot of mischief in his presence and much voice in his lungs.
When he came off stage I spoke to him and he said his name was Tom Quigley. ‘No,’ he said he was not managed, but he wouldn’t mind. I said I couldn’t offer him management but I would like to assist him in his career, and much later Bob Wooler of the Cavern came and told me that Quigley was a little unhappy. He had no job and he was receiving offers of management, was I prepared to take him on full time. So I did and the relationship has worked, very well. He has changed his name to Quickly and he is going to be a star.