One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

15

Their return to Liverpool after a stint of three and a half months in Hamburg was such a sorry affair that they avoided telling their families what had happened.

In brief, they had been tempted away from the Kaiserkeller by a rival club-owner. To exact revenge, the thuggish Koschmider reported George to the police for being under-age, and he was duly deported. On returning home, George felt ‘ashamed, after all the big talk’. Koschmider subsequently reported Paul and Pete on the spurious grounds of setting fire to their lodgings, and they too were deported. On 1 December 1960, they arrived back in Liverpool disillusioned and penniless. Ten days later, John followed. Stu remained with Astrid in Germany, a Beatle no more.

The Beatles’ fall from grace had been abrupt and painful. John woke Mimi in the middle of the night by throwing stones at her bedroom window. ‘He just pushed past me and said, “Pay that taxi, Mimi.” I shouted after him up the stairs, “Where’s your £100 a week, John?”’

‘Just like you, Mimi, to go on about £100 a week when you know I’m tired.’

‘And you can get rid of those boots. You’re not going out of this house in boots like that!’

Most of their equipment was stranded in Hamburg. They had nothing to show for their time away. Similar groups who had stayed in Liverpool were now several steps ahead of them. The Swinging Blue Jeans were clearly in the lead, headlining a regular ‘Swinging Blue Jeans Night’ at the Cavern in Mathew Street.

In the three months they had been away, fashions had moved on: everyone was now copying the Shadows, wearing slinky suits, playing instrumentals, performing synchronised dance routines. At first, the individual Beatles were so despondent that they didn’t even bother to get in touch with one another: George was unaware that John and Paul had returned. John retired, depressed, to his bedroom at Mendips, refusing to see anyone. While Aunt Mimi grudgingly indulged John’s self-pity, Jim McCartney refused to have Paul slouching around the house. ‘Satan makes work for idle hands,’ he said, telling him to go out and get a proper job. ‘This music thing is all right on the side, but Paul, it will never last.’ Paul worked briefly for a delivery company, then did donkeywork at Massey & Coggins, a cable-winding firm. The moment his workmates discovered he was a musician, they nicknamed him ‘Mantovani’. Being bright and personable, Paul was swiftly earmarked as management material. ‘We’ll give you an opportunity, lad,’ declared the managing director, impressed by his exam results, ‘and with your outlook on life you’ll go a long way.’

Uncharacteristically, Paul was ready to throw in the towel. After a few weeks John and George turned up at Massey & Coggins. They had been booked for a lunchtime gig at the Cavern, they said, and they wanted Paul to join them. He told them he had a steady job, and was now on £7.10s a week. ‘They are training me here. That’s pretty good. I can’t expect more.’

But they persisted, and Paul gave way, bunking off work on 9 February 1961 to play the Cavern at lunchtime. He did the same on 22 February, but it’s possible that his employers issued a warning, because when another lunchtime gig at the Cavern was mooted for the following week, he ummed and erred. ‘Either fucking turn up today or you’re not in the band any more,’ snapped John.

What to do? If he chose the Beatles, his father would be furious. If he obeyed his father, and stuck it out at Massey & Coggins, he would have to say goodbye to the Beatles, and any remaining chance of stardom. As usual, John was in no mood for compromise; his intransigence towards Paul may also have been a way of subcontracting his own Oedipal struggles: ‘I was always saying, “Face up to your dad, tell him to fuck off. He can’t hit you. He’s an old man” … But Paul would always give in. His dad told him to get a job, he dropped the group and started working on the lorries, saying, “I need a steady career.” We couldn’t believe it. I told him on the phone, “Either come or you’re out.” So he had to make a decision between me and his dad …’

What would have happened had Paul chosen to stay at Massey & Coggins?1 Looking back, he is adamant that he had been ‘hopeless’ at winding coils – ‘Everybody else used to wind fourteen a day. I’d get through one and a half, and mine were the ones that never worked’ – but it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t have mastered the technique. And he had already been fast-tracked towards management. His subsequent career suggests that he possessed the drive, initiative and skills necessary for steering even the most troublesome company through rocky times.

Instead, he bunked off to rejoin the Beatles. A week later he received his wage packet through the post, along with his National Insurance card and his P45.

1 A decade later, when pop music grew more solemn, Massey and Coggins might have been a winning name for a group, like Loggins and Messina, Gallagher and Lyle, or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

16

A Party:

10 Admiral Grove, Liverpool

8 July 1961

Ritchie Starkey spent his seventh birthday in a coma, having been rushed by ambulance to the Royal Liverpool Children’s Hospital. Doctors found he had a burst appendix, and was infected with peritonitis. As he was being wheeled into the operating theatre he asked the nurse for a cup of tea. ‘We’ll give you one when you come round,’ she replied sweetly. But Ritchie failed to come round for another ten weeks. Three times during that first night, doctors told his mother Elsie that they did not expect him to survive. He was to remain in hospital for a year.

Ritchie was back in the same hospital for his fourteenth birthday, in 1954. This time he was admitted with pleurisy, and then developed TB. Convalescing in a hospital in the Wirral, he was taught to knit, to make baskets and to construct a toy farm out of papier-mâché. Every fortnight a music teacher arrived at the ward with a selection of percussion instruments – tambourines, maracas, triangles, tiny drums – and the children were expected to join in, playing ‘Three Blind Mice’ and ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’. But Ritchie stubbornly refused to participate unless he could play a drum. When the teacher left, he would continue drumming on his bedside cabinet, in the absence of anything more drummable. This time he remained in hospital for two years.

But his twenty-first birthday is a much happier affair. Not only has he survived, but he has turned his percussive skills to advantage. He is now the drummer with Liverpool’s top band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and he even drives his own Ford Zodiac. Not long ago, he assumed the name Ringo Starr; his drum solos are billed as ‘Starr Time’.

Rory Storm and the Hurricanes are playing a season at Butlin’s holiday camp at Pwllheli in Wales, but they have one day a week off, so the day after his birthday Ringo drives home for a proper party. So many friends and family have packed into 10 Admiral Grove, his mother’s tiny two-up, two-down – Ringo counts sixty-four people in all – that there is a continuous queue to get in. Guests include the Hurricanes, the Dominoes, the Big Three and the Pacemakers, as well as the young Priscilla White, who sometimes takes to the Cavern stage as ‘Swinging Cilla’, and regularly styles Elsie’s hair in return for Spam and chips.1

Ringo is showered with presents, including two rings to add to the three he already wears, and a gold identity bracelet from Elsie, engraved with ‘Ritchie’ on one side and ‘21st birthday, love Mum’ on the other. From his Auntie Nancy he receives a gold St Christopher medal. It depicts the patron saint of travellers carrying the Christ child on his shoulders across a river. Ringo hangs it around his neck, to keep him safe wherever he goes.

1 Priscilla White is soon to become Cilla Black, and, under Brian Epstein’s guidance, a big star. ‘I always reckoned that if I wasn’t going to be a singer, I’d be a hairdresser. Elsie was a real character, a surrogate mum to Pat and me and to the other Beatles, and we were forever bumping into each other there. She would cook us all delicious Spam, home-made chips and beans for tea, and she never seemed to mind how often we came round for more or how loud we played the latest records. I thought I did Elsie’s hair really well, but, some thirty years later, Ritchie’s stepdad Harry told me otherwise: “We didn’t say anything at the time,” he muttered, “but you used to make a right bloody mess of poor Elsie’s hair!”’

17

5 More Postcards from Hamburg

i

On their second stint in Hamburg the Beatles are working at a new venue, the Star Club, for a new manager, Manfred Weissleder, at new lodgings, a lovely clean flat in the Grosse Freiheit. Herr Weissleder tacks on one condition, though: ‘I always want you should enjoy yourselves in the Star Club, but if you make shit I send you home.’

Within days, George has been sick on the floor by the side of his bed. The next morning, the unshapely pool is still there, glowering back at him.

The cleaning lady refuses to clear it up, arguing, not unreasonably, that it is not part of her duties. For reasons of his own, George refuses to dispose of it. He has always had this stubborn streak.

ii

The next day, the pool remains doggedly present. The cleaning lady grumbles at the Beatles’ general squalor: the smelly socks, the empty bottles, the clothes strewn all over the place. This latest infraction takes their misdemeanours to another level. She goes straight to Herr Weissleder and voices her complaints. Herr Weissleder lends a sympathetic ear. He will take a closer look.

iii

Having examined the evidence, Herr Weissleder rules against George, charging his henchman and bouncer, Horst Fascher, with the job of forcing him to clean it up. Fascher is a former championship boxer. He has also spent time in prison for manslaughter, following a fracas with a sailor. Only the bravest of souls refuse to obey him. John has already fallen foul of him. When John called him a Nazi, Herr Fascher retaliated by marching him to the toilet and urinating over him.

But George, stubborn George, continues to put his foot down, or if not down, at least to one side. No, he says, he is definitely not going to clear it up. Why should he? It isn’t his job. For all he cares, it can just stay there. When he needs to get in or out of bed, he simply climbs over it.

iv

The dispute has reached an impasse. The cleaning lady will not clean up the pool of vomit; nor will George. Over the next few days Pete Best observes its sluggish, odoriferous progress with a morbid fascination, watching it ‘grow, and grow, mushrooming and taking on a life of its own. Cigarettes were crushed in it, bits of food fed to it, until it assumed the look of a hedgehog.’

The Beatles christen it ‘The Thing’, and treat it almost like a family pet. Before long, The Thing acquires a local reputation. Pete remembers how ‘its fame spread, and people wanted to come and see it’. He estimates it measures roughly six inches in diameter, and it keeps growing upwards, ‘like a miniature flower garden’.

As it blossoms, George harbours scary thoughts. ‘I’m frightened to sleep in case it eats me,’ he confesses.

v

One morning, Herr Fascher pays a return visit, unannounced. He takes one look at the ageing vomit before deciding that enough is enough. He returns with a shovel. ‘Don’t do it! That’s our pet!’ yell the Beatles. But their pleas fall on deaf ears. Fascher scoops it up and transports it down the stairs, through the front door and onto the Grosse Freiheit. The Beatles follow in a mock funeral procession. Fascher finds a bin on the street, and tips The Thing into it.

As for George, he feels he has won a small but significant victory. He kept his word, and refused to back down. Honour has been served.

18

It’s late August 1961. Rory Storm and the Hurricanes have come to the end of their summer season at Pwllheli. They were such a success that they have already been invited back next year.

Ringo loves to travel. The Hurricanes were promised tours on the Continent in the autumn, but somehow or other these failed to materialise. Ringo grows fidgety: now might be the time for a bold move, away from the group, away from Liverpool, away from Britain.

He has always been attracted to America, its large cars and country music and blues music and rock’n’roll and westerns. Why not live there? Inspired by Lightnin’ Hopkins, he opts for Houston, Texas. Accordingly, he walks into the American Consulate in the Cunard Building in Liverpool and picks up the immigration forms. It turns out he will need to prove that he has money and the promise of a job. Undaunted, he writes to the Houston Chamber of Commerce; in return, he receives a list of local employment agencies. After more to-ing and fro-ing he picks out a job in a factory, thinking he can switch to something else once he gets there.

He’s now all set, but what he later calls ‘the really big forms’ prove a stumbling block. The Americans want to know everything about his family, including their political affiliations. ‘Was your grandfather’s Great Dane a Commie?’ is his way of describing it. These extra forms get the better of him: he simply can’t face grappling with them, and eventually he calls it a day.

A few days later, Tony Sheridan asks him to join his backing band for a stint at the Top Ten Club in Hamburg. He doesn’t hesitate. He gives Rory Storm twenty-four hours’ notice, and sets off for Heathrow, a little nervous before boarding the aeroplane, as it’s the first time he has ever flown. But for one or two forms, he might well have been flying on a different plane, in the opposite direction.

19

Halfway through June 1962, Joe Flannery, the manager of Lee Curtis and the All Stars, drops by.

‘When are you going to join us, Pete?’ he asks.

Pete Best smiles. ‘You must be joking. Why would I want to quit the Beatles when we’re about to get our big break?’

Flannery stalls. ‘Maybe I’ve jumped the gun. It’s just a rumour going the rounds.’

‘Why would anyone start a rumour like that?’

Pete is mystified. He has no intention of leaving the Beatles, not after drumming with them these past two years.

Michael Ochs Archives/Handout

The conversation preys on his mind. What rumour? In mid-July he broaches the subject with Mr Epstein. Mr Epstein blushes and stammers. Pete cuts to the chase.

‘Look, Brian. Are there any plans to replace me in the Beatles?’

Mr Epstein brushes away his fears. ‘I’m telling you, as manager, there are no plans to replace you, Pete.’

That’s good enough for Pete. Nothing more is said. Things carry on as usual: each morning, Pete and their road manager, Neil Aspinall, set off in Neil’s van with all the Beatles’ gear, which is still kept at Pete’s mum’s huge house in Hayman’s Green. They pick up the other Beatles – John, Paul and George – along the way.

On 15 August the group plays two gigs at the Cavern, one at lunchtime, the other in the evening. ‘Pick you up tomorrow, John!’ calls Pete as he is leaving. ‘No,’ replies John. ‘I’ve got other arrangements.’

They are to be the last words ever spoken to Pete by any member of the Beatles.

Before Pete leaves the Cavern that night, Mr Epstein says he’d like to see him in his office at ten o’clock the next morning. Nothing odd about that: they often meet to discuss arrangements. Neil drives him in, and drops him off at the NEMS1 office. Mr Epstein seems uneasy, blathering away about nothing at all. He asks Pete how he thinks the group is doing. Pete says, ‘Fab,’ a word not as fashionable as it will shortly become. He senses that something is on Mr Epstein’s mind. Who can blame Epstein for his prevarication? He is still only twenty-seven years old, with a background in furniture sales.

Out of nowhere, Mr Epstein blurts out, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. The boys and myself have decided that they don’t want you in the group any more, and that Ringo is replacing you.’

Pete finds it hard to speak. ‘Why?’

‘They don’t think you’re a good enough drummer, Pete,’ he says. Then he adds: ‘And George Martin doesn’t think you’re a good enough drummer.’ George Martin is the producer from Parlophone who auditioned the Beatles. When Pete was out of earshot, he told Brian Epstein that Pete couldn’t keep time, and that he planned on using a session drummer for the actual recording.

Pete says he thinks he’s just as good as Ringo, if not better. ‘Does Ringo know about this yet?’ Ringo is a good friend.

‘He’s joining on Sunday.’

Mr Epstein continues, briskly, with business. The phone rings. Mr Epstein picks up the receiver, and listens.

‘I’m still with him at the moment,’ he says, putting the receiver back down. He returns to their conversation. He says that while Pete is still under contract, he’ll pay him his current wage – £50 or £60 a week – and he’ll also put him in another group, and make him leader of it.

‘There are still a couple of venues left before Ringo joins,’ he adds, almost as an afterthought. ‘Will you play?’

Pete doesn’t know what to say, so he says yes. Then he leaves.

As Mr Epstein remembers it, the meeting lasted two hours. Pete thinks it lasted ten minutes.

Neil Aspinall is waiting for him downstairs. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,’ he says. ‘They’ve kicked me out!’ says Pete. Neil, who is going out with Pete’s mum, says in that case he’ll quit too. Pete talks him out of it. ‘Don’t be a fool – the Beatles are going places.’

Neil drops him home. The minute Pete closes the door, he bursts into tears. He feels like putting a stone round his neck and jumping off Pier Head. He can’t face playing another two gigs with the Beatles, and doesn’t turn up at the Riverpark Ballroom in Chester that night. ‘I had been betrayed, and sitting up there onstage with the three people who had done it would be like having salt rubbed into a very deep wound.’

Only later does he discover that the Beatles were offered a contract with Parlophone a fortnight ago. No one told him about it.

His forthright mother Mona, who helped manage the group before Brian came on the scene, and always calls them ‘Pete’s group’, immediately phones George Martin in London. The charming record producer assures her that, though he had wanted a different drummer for the recording session, it wasn’t up to him whether or not the Beatles kept Pete.

Mona berates Brian Epstein: ‘It’s jealousy, Brian, jealousy all the way, because Peter is the one who has the terrific following – he has built up the following in Liverpool for the Beatles!’ She is sure they got rid of Peter to stop him being the focus of attention, ‘with the others just props’.

Whodunnit? As so often with the Beatles, everyone has a different story. In The Beatles Anthology – which is, in Biblical terms, the Authorised Version – Paul recalls that after their audition at Abbey Road, George Martin took the other three to one side and said, ‘I’m really unhappy with the drummer. Would you consider changing him?’ ‘We said, “No! We can’t!” It was one of those terrible things you go through as kids. Can we betray him? No. But our career was on the line. Maybe they were going to cancel our contract.’

Yet George Martin always claimed to have been baffled by Pete’s sacking. He was unimpressed by his drumming, and he had certainly noticed that he was out on a limb from the other three, who all liked larking around. ‘But I never thought that Brian Epstein would let him go. He seemed to be the most saleable commodity as far as looks went. It was a surprise when later I learned that they had dropped Pete Best. The drums were important to me for a record, but they didn’t matter much otherwise. Fans don’t pay particular attention to the quality of drumming.’

But Pete Best always maintained that during his two years as a Beatle, not one of them ever complained about the quality of his drumming: ‘Right to the end we were still drinking together and seemingly the best of friends.’

As time went by, John grew increasingly outspoken on this issue, as on so many others.

‘We were pretty sick of Pete Best,’ he said in 1967. ‘He was a lousy drummer. He never improved. There was always this myth built up around him that he was great and Paul was jealous of him because he was pretty and all that crap … The only reason he was in the group in the first place was because the only way we could get to Hamburg, we had to have a drummer … we were always going to dump him when we could find a decent drummer.’

Ringo, too, showed his steel. Thirty years on, he was asked if he ever felt sorry for Pete. ‘No. Why should I? I was a better player than him. That’s how I got the job. It wasn’t on my personality. It was that I was a better drummer, and I got the phone call. I never felt sorry for him. A lot of people have made careers out of knowing the Beatles.’

As in the dénouement of an Agatha Christie, it was the least likely suspect who finally confessed. Many years later, George – quiet, thoughtful young George – came clean. Pete kept calling in sick, he said, so they used to ask Ringo to take his place, ‘and every time Ringo sat in, it seemed like “This is it.” Eventually we realised, “We should get Ringo in the band full time.” I was quite responsible for stirring things up. I conspired to get Ringo in for good. I talked to John until they came round to the idea … We weren’t very good at telling Pete he had to go. But when it comes down to it, how do you tell somebody? … Brian Epstein was the manager so it was his job, and I don’t think he could do it very well either. But that’s the way it was and the way it is.’