BEATLEMANIA descended on the British Isles in October, 1963. It happened suddenly and dramatically and we weren’t prepared for it.
The Beatles say it started when they returned from Sweden after a five-day working trip. I believe it started earlier when they were named for the Royal Variety Show at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. At this time, although it is less than a year ago, the Beatles were still performing in ballrooms for comparatively small fees, and it was possible to see them and visit their shows without fighting through a crowd of screaming teenagers—until the Royal Show.
When this news broke—and I felt it was inevitable that the show business sensation of 1963 should be represented in this show—pressmen from Liverpool poured into a Southport ballroom to see the Beatles. The boys themselves were alarmed. They were accustomed to press interest but not to a solid wall of implacable questioning, which is what they faced that night.
The general trend of the questions was: ‘Why not?’ And Ringo said: ‘I want to play the drums before the Queen Mother. Is there anything wrong in that?’ The press agreed that there was not but this first hint of widespread interest—outside teenage record bars—was to me a significant change in attitude.
Early morning
at Liverpool Docks
and a few minutes
of solitude.
For the first time the Beatles were being challenged about their loyalty to the very young—and about their recognition of their lowly beginnings.
Well, they played the Royal Show and London was brought to a stand-still by the screaming youth of the south of England. The Royal Family, the wealthy and the great were captivated by the naturalness of the four young men and we were all very proud.
On the show with them was Marlene Dietrich, who was herself won over by the back stage aplomb of entertainers young enough to be her grandchildren. She said to me later: ‘It was a joy to be with them. I adore these Beatles.’
The Beatle Queue became a feature of British life. With transistors and blankets, hot water bottles, and with or without their parents’ blessing, the young people of provincial England braved every weather hazard for a small slip of paper which would permit them, for twenty-five minutes, to view and hear their idols.
Hundreds of thousands were disappointed, for several teenagers—and spivs, or teenagers hired by spivs—were buying them up en bloc. But this didn’t seem to matter. It was enough to have been involved in Beatlemania. The press, slow at first, decided to take an active part in their promotion of Beatle-interest without, I should say, any prompting from me, for it was in October that I had the first warning of the dangers of over exposure.
Daily, articles appeared on the front pages of the great national newspapers.
Triumphant return. Down
the aircraft steps after their
U.S. victories.
The Daily Telegraph, October 28, quoted: ‘… Police at Newcastle upon Tyne struggled yesterday with screaming teenagers fighting to get tickets for the Beatles ‘pop’ group. A policewoman was kicked …’
(Note that even as recently as October it was necessary to elaborate and say Beatles ‘pop’ group.)
In Newcastle—and this was typical—nearly four thousand Beatle fans had queued in freezing conditions for tickets. Said the Telegraph: ‘It looked more like a death watch than the prelude of a joyous Beatle event. … Three ambulances, rarely short of patients, some of them school girls, dealt with more than a hundred cases of fainting or exhaustion. Several were treated at hospital. Seventy-four police were on duty and special check points had to be set up.’
At Hull there were still three thousand in a Beatle queue after five thousand tickets had been sold. A senior police officer told the Daily Telegraph: ‘This has been an incredible night,’ and at Coventry a theatre manager said: ‘I have never known anything like it. The queues and the excitement are beyond belief.’
It was the same throughout Britain. The Beatles had ceased to be purely a pop group and were becoming a cult. The concerts themselves were wild and exciting, and successful to an extent I had never thought possible. Every ticket could have been sold twice over, and after the early scenes of the ticket queues the concerts themselves consolidated the view of everyone in show business that the Beatles were the biggest thing since Sinatra in the 194o’s. All of us involved with them—everyone who had known them at the Cavern—were serenely proud.
When, on October 31, the Beatles arrived home from Sweden they could not believe what they heard. Thousands of howling, screaming fans had converged on London airport hours before their plane was due in, and crush barriers had been erected to keep the youngsters from the tarmac. Paul said later: ‘It has all been happening in England while we were away. We were amazed because although he had had several No. 1’s in the record charts, teenage interest had only been on the normal, pop level.’
There were questions in Parliament about the queues and about the safety of teenagers outside theatres. ‘Shouldn’t we,’ suggested one M.P., ‘withdraw the police and see what happens,’ and George told a reporter: ‘If they do, the injuries would be their own fault. We don’t want people to get hurt.’
Curiously, though mob-attention had never been more dramatic or extensive, there was no violence. I am not being priggish when I say that the Beatles have never been associated with actual rioting, vandalism or damage of any sort, I don’t know why this is so, but it is. The 1955 wave of hooliganism in the days of Bill Haley and Rock Around the Clock was quite another matter. Seats were slashed, cinemas burned, windows broken, and policemen and passers-by attacked.
Yet, though the Beatles’ music is rock and roll, though it is as exciting and stimulating as the mid-fifties version, it has remained remote from savagery. And even this year, no one—not even the most resentful—levelled any charges at the Beatles when the Mods and the Rockers battled it out on the beaches of south-east England.
Far from the key cinemas and the beat-centres of Britain, the Beatles were becoming a household word. Naturally, I found it impossible to enter a discussion without the Beatles being mentioned. But men, women and children of all ages, all classes, all shades of belief and intelligence were finding the same problem.
The Beatles undoubtedly became the chief talking point of 1963. A journalist told me in October: ‘By Christmas it will be impossible to look at the front page of any newspaper in England without seeing a reference to them,’ and he was right.
We became, all of us, over exposed. At first the sight of the Beatles in the newspapers, the discussion of their views, their habits, their clothes, was exciting. They liked it and so did I because it was good for them and it was good for business.
But finally it became a great anxiety. How much longer, I wondered, could they maintain public interest without rationing either their personal appearances or their newspaper coverage. In fact, by a stringent watch on their contacts with the press and a careful and constant check on their bookings, we just averted saturation-point. But it was very close, and other artistes have been destroyed by this very thing.
By 1964 it had become fashionable to be a Beatle fan. There were no longer any barriers of any sort. Grandmothers and tiny children joined the middle and teen age ranks and, as a result, we could expect a certain million sale in England alone of any new release. By the summer of this year, practically every senior citizen, king of commerce, aristocrat or charity organizer was clamouring to illuminate his name, or his industry or his promotion with the name, ‘Beatle’. It became clear that if you had a Beatle at a party you were ‘made’ socially.
In my brief lifetime I have never known anything like it. The boys themselves took it very blandly because it was, after all, only two years since they had fought to increase their earnings from 25/- a night to £3/10/-.
But apart from Stockholm, there was little interest overseas at this stage. The huge key American market had yet to be conquered, and far away in Australia no one was the least bit bothered.
In January this year, when the Beatles went to Paris, there were forty curious pressmen at Le Bourget airport, but no fans. Not all the tickets at the Olympia Theatre had been sold. But by the end of three weeks there were wailing, chanting mobs surging around the theatre, and baton charging gendarmes were on nightly patrol in their hundreds.
Paris stores were full of Beatle wigs and several of them relayed the songs of Paul and John eight hours daily over their loudspeaker systems.
Paris fell—later, dramatically, America of course and, in the summer, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and the whole of Australasia followed.
Every crowd-record in every country they visited was broken. In Amsterdam, 150,000 of the townspeople packed the banks and the bridges of the canals to watch the four young men take a 90-minute boat tour. Again, all ages, all classes and both sexes.
Even in Hong Kong, the placid, phlegmatic Chinese were overwhelmed by the curious alchemy and the pounding beat of the mop-heads as the Americans had christened them. Police in all these centres admitted that the experience was new and overwhelming.
When the Beatles arrived in Adelaide in June this year, it was in response to a petition signed by 80,000 townspeople. Nearly a third of a million citizens lined the Anzac Highway from the airport to the city centre, cheering and applauding, waving flags, throwing streamers, garlands and flowers in the path of the Beatles’ open car as if it were a Caesar returning from the wars.
Happy and gay though they are, teenagers milling in their thousands around town halls and hotels and theatres would kill the Beatles if they got their hands on them.
Fans unleashed on one of their idols would be murderous. This is why the apparent imprisonment of the Beatles is essential.
One of the facts of life which they and those around them have to learn is that freedom of movement is no longer possible. I had my first taste of crowd mania on a railway station in Washington, when a solid wall of clambering ecstatic teenagers drove me to the edge of the platform as an express train thundered in from New York.
It was snowing and I slithered on my knees and was only saved when a security man—himself hanging from another man’s belt—grabbed my ankle and hauled me into the comparative safety of the mob.
It is sad that the fans cannot see more of the Beatles and vice-versa. We feel it especially outside theatres and in hotel lobbies when they wait for hours to catch a glimpse of a head or a smile. But it is at these very points that we must exercise the greatest caution.
The get-away car is our life-line to work and freedom. This, normally, is an Austin Princess which can comfortably seat four Beatles, their road manager and, if necessary, a security officer or policeman.
In England the driver is always the same, a huge man called Bill Corbett, who knows the problems, chief of which is the ability to speed fast enough to frighten fans out of the way, but not so fast that they get run over.
It is commonplace for fans to hurl themselves at a Beatle vehicle if it is travelling at anything less than twenty miles an hour.
After a concert in London one night four of John’s admirers wrenched off a near-side door and hurled themselves into the vehicle. The fans were fought out and Corbett drove off without the door, with the four Beatles huddled against the wind.
He returned later for the door, to find that it had been captured as a souvenir.
Every entry and exit to the theatre is carefully planned between road manager, driver, police and theatre manager. There are various systems to avoid trouble. One is to use rear and side entries—the obvious one. Another—the least apparent—is to swing the car to the front entrance to allow the boys to dash through the main foyer.
A third system involves the use of decoy cars or armoured police vans which draw the fans to one side of the Theatre while the Beatles slide quietly in the other side.
Very often—for getting out of the theatre—the Beatles and I have been taken in tunnels beneath the theatre into the adjoining building to be released more than 100 yards away from the outer circle of fans. Rather like P.O.W. escapes.
It is all very exciting the first few times. For the Beatles it is a routine part of life.
Abroad, we are often at the mercy of inefficient or over-zealous police forces. The chief feature of all things Beatle is that they are unprecedented. Police who believe they know all about crowds and fans admit, after a Beatle visit, that they had never known anything like it.
Frequently, for instance, the police undervalue the magnetism of McCartney or underestimate the determination of girls to tear at his clothes.
In Holland, however, the police took no chances and, punched, swung and hurled my assistant Derek Taylor, and road manager, Neil Aspinall, to the ground half a dozen times a day because they thought they were trying to attack the Beatles.
The Dutch police, in their enthusiasm to protect the four long-haired young men, did everything on a majestic scale. Even on a run to the country, masses of jack-booted, helmet-clad officers on motor cycles and side-cars flanked the Beatles’ car, telephoning constantly to a central control point while, at front and rear, police cars with sirens and blue lights shrieked and flashed warnings.
It would probably have been much more effective to drive them quietly in one private car—though not nearly so exhilarating.
On the first American trip squads of private detectives were engaged to protect the Beatles’ hotel suite, to guard them while relaxing. But, even so, two girls almost succeeded in being delivered as a parcel to the Beatles’ room.
It was, incidentally, in Miami that my then Press officer, Brian Sommerville, remarked to the Chief of Police: ‘I am told that in Miami you have the best police money can buy. …’ A statement memorable for the innocence of its ambiguity.
Arrangements in Australia, though smooth were different. We worked not on a dramatic flashing-light, strong-arm system, but with two small cars, which would have been quite anonymous but for the posters and the letters on the side proclaiming the Beatles.
We relied on the restraint of crowds, and largely they were very well behaved, barring the near-destruction of Ringo Starr when he arrived at the Southern Cross Hotel. Had the police not rescued him, the Beatles would still have been without their regular drummer—possibly for ever.
Australian crowds were unquestionably the largest we had ever known, certainly the friendliest. But still we dare not underestimate the violent potential of 20,000 surging human beings. Indoors, one often feels less safe than in the street.
At an elegant civic reception in Adelaide, autograph pencils flashed like knives around the valuable features of Lennon, Harrison and McCartney and it was a relief when the Lord Mayor of Melbourne barred autographs at his reception in honour of the Beatles. There, too, there was one tricky incident when a young man made an offensive remark about the length of Ringo’s hair, repeated it and then lunged forward to grab it.
He was jabbed smartly in the ribs by the sharp elbow of an otherwise non-violent Beatle-minder and later complained, with surprising naïvety, that he had been attacked.
Ringo’s hair is an occupational hazard. For at the sprawling, appalling British Embassy reception in Washington there was the incident of the scissors when a guest snipped off a curl of the famous locks.
Is it surprising that we take a long hard look at receptions at embassies?
The Beatles run other risks—the more obvious ones are on stage in the world-wide barrage of jelly-beans, pennies, toys, autograph books and, indeed, anything throwable.
Paul was nearly blinded once by a safety-pin, George took a sharp knock in Hong Kong when a silver dollar struck him on the ear. Thus are the many demonstrations of love manifested violently.
End-of-show enthusiasm can sometimes be alarming. Excited fans can leap to the stage in a second or two, and Billy J. Kramer recently fled for his life at an aristocratic gathering in England when a number of our future leaders stormed him and the group. He escaped unhurt, but several fans were trampled and his equipment was wrecked.
It is not all danger, however, and I find all large gatherings of fans immensely exhilarating and thrilling. I can think of no warmer experience than to be in a vast audience at a Beatle concert.
I hope Beatle crowds continue to scream themselves hoarse in a frenzy of exultation.
I hope everybody has a wildly, wonderfully, good time. For this—and only this—is what the Beatles are all about.