On 18 June 1963 it was Mike’s brother’s twenty-first birthday and we were invited to the party at Aunty Jin’s house in Huyton. It was only a matter of months since ‘Please Please Me’ had been number one in the charts and Beatle mania was limbering up on the touchline. The top act of the day was still the Shadows and Paul was dead chuffed that they’d made the effort to turn up, although their Cecil Gee outfits and Brylcreemed quiffs seemed slightly dated. Brian Epstein, a born circulator, circulated with ease from group to group, a word here, a hand on the shoulder there, and there was already a sense of rivalry between those signed to NEMS and those still playing in hope. Although there were other agents and managers on Merseyside, and some notable groups like the Searchers and the Swinging Blue Jeans who achieved success outside Epstein’s empire, there was a growing sense that if the NEMSmobile didn’t stop to pick you up you’d be doomed to a life on the hard shoulder, and it wasn’t endearing to watch butch guitarists and tattooed drummers flirting with Eppy.
One of the Beatles’ favourite bands was the Fourmost, who were later to have hits with ‘Hello Little Girl’ and ‘I’m in Love’, written especially for them by John and Paul. They performed in Aunty Jin’s lounge and it must have been while watching them playing that I missed the punch-up between Lennon and the popular DJ Bob Wooler, who may or may not have insinuated that John had enjoyed a holiday fling with Mr Epstein. Nowadays half of Liverpool appears to have witnessed the fight, especially musicians too young to have been there, but at least my claim to fame is that I was there and still missed the action. However, I did see Bob Wooler wandering around with what looked like a butcher’s apron clutched to his nose, muttering darkly about people not being able to take a joke.
I was in the kitchen with Thelma and Billy Hatton, the bass player with the Fourmost, looking at a reproduction of Breughel’s painting The Fall of Icarus and so was not witness to the other talking point of the evening, when John touched a girl called Rose in an inappropriate place. The marquee in the back garden. Her response was a good old-fashioned slap in the face, to which he replied with an equally old-fashioned right hook to the consternation of everyone on the dance floor. While Billy J. Kramer was helping Rose to her feet and John was apologising, we were still in the kitchen, discussing W. H. Auden’s response to Breughel’s painting in his poem ‘La Musée des Beaux Arts’, in which he notes how ordinary life goes on while, unobserved in the background, ‘miraculous births’ and disasters take place.
This morning I attended a service at the Brompton Oratory where my youngest son’s school choir sang the mass in Latin and sang it beautifully. Matthew is no chorister himself, but many of his friends are and I was struck by how these teenage boys, whom in ‘real life’ I know to be as slovenly, lazy and sullen as one could wish for, could suddenly be transformed into a choir of angels, able to touch the congregation with a sense of the divine. I don’t know if John Lennon was in the choir when he was at school, and I’m pretty certain he never sang the mass in Latin, but to hear him sing or watch him on stage, even then, was to witness a kind of transformation into something other-worldly. As a young man he seemed to be a seethe of contradictions, the insecure, piss-taking bully on the one hand and the fallen angel with aspirations to be a spiritual leader on the other. But it goes without saying that if John had been as well-balanced, easygoing and charming as Paul, the velvet glove of the Beatles would have lacked the iron fist. He was the chilli to Paul’s jam, the knuckle to his duster, the pole to his lap-dancer, the ‘sod-off’ to his ‘nice-to-meet-you’, the hallucinogenic icing to Paul’s birthday cake.
As all I’d ever wanted to be was a poet, I had never really planned a career and was quite content to go along with the forces that propelled me, which in those days were Mike and John. Although I was perfectly happy with Hope Leresche, who continued to look after my literary interests well into the eighties, they were impatient for the kind of success they believed only Epstein could bring. He had never seen us perform, but as a favour to Paul agreed to take us on, so in 1965 the Scaffold climbed aboard the NEMSmobile. Having been three big fish in a small pond, we were now three small lobsters in a big pan of boiling water, for not only did the NEMS menu feature the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black and so on, but it had expanded to include American dishes such as the Supremes and Johnny Mathis. I’ve no idea where this restaurant analogy is headed, but it hints at the sense of confusion that overwhelmed us almost immediately. Where were we going? Why had our bodies turned bright red?
I don’t recall ever having a conversation with Brian Epstein and, although he would greet Mike warmly, I think he remained puzzled as to what John and I actually did. On the rare occasions I visited the NEMS office in Soho I felt like an impostor.
GIRL BEHIND DESK Hi.
ME Hello, I’ve come to see Mr Epstein.
GBD And you are?
ME Er … Roger McGough.’
GBD I’m sorry?
ME I’m one of the Scaffold.
GBD Scaffold?
ME Yes, with Paul McCartney’s brother, Michael, I’m with him. We’ve got a meeting, you see, and I’m early …
GBD If you’d just take a seat, Rodney …
However, if we were going to topple the Beatles off their perch we had to start by making a record. Eppy had no problem in getting us a recording deal and, more important, in persuading George Martin to produce our first single. As well as having the obvious Beatles connections, George had worked with the Goons, and the Peter Sellers album he produced, Songs for Swingin’ Sellers, was a comedy classic. As un-rock’n’roll as you could get, he would not have looked out of place behind a desk in the Foreign Office, but he was kind, patient and determined to give us a leg-up into the charts. However, it would have taken more than genius to transform the pair of pig’s ears that we brought into the studio that morning, and ‘Today’s Monday’ and ‘Three Blind Jellyfish’ failed to hit the G-spot. Untoppled from their perch, the Beatles went off to conquer the USA while we set off for Stockton-on-Tees and a tour that still gives me nightmares, although mild no doubt, compared to the blind jellyfish whose singing keeps George awake at night.
The Marquee Tour organised by Georgio Gomelski was to be a pop tour with a difference. The difference was that instead of a compère coming on stage between acts and failing to keep the crowd amused, the Scaffold would perform their unique brand of zany humour. (And fail to keep the crowd amused.) The Yardbirds and Manfred Mann topped a bill that included Paul and Barry Ryan and Goldie and the Gingerbreads, and we rehearsed comedy sketches with everybody for a week before setting off. It has to be said that all these teenage idols, particularly Keith Relfe, Jeff Beck and Paul Jones, were more than happy to shed the pop star image and take the mickey out of themselves, and so we couldn’t wait to set off and shake the country with this ground-breaking fusion of rock and comedy.
Unfortunately, many of the theatre managers objected on legal grounds (Entertainments Act 1843, whereby props cannot be used on stage during a pop concert, nor will rude jokes or satirical remarks be uttered in front of a teenage audience). And worse still, as soon as Keith, Jeff or Paul appeared on stage with the Scaffold to act out a simple comedy routine the whole place erupted, with 2,000 screaming girls deaf to the insouciant wordplay, the carefully crafted one-liners and the punchlines that would have brought the house down, had the house only taken its hands off its ears for a minute and stopped bloody screaming.