CHAPTER SIX: DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS OF THE INTERVIEW

Back in Liverpool, the Beatles’ old schools were getting some strange requests. Teenagers from all over the world were writing for any old desks belonging to the Beatles, or old caps or old exercise books. There were soon scores of signed exercise books in circulation, far more than they could ever possibly have had.

‘We were getting these very funny letters from girls, mainly in America,’ said Mr Pobjoy of Quarry Bank. ‘Asking if our boys would write to them. I thought they were howlingly funny. For the boys’ amusement as well as mine, I used to read them out in the hall after morning prayers.

‘The boys enjoyed them so much they were convinced for a long time that I was making them all up, but I gather that quite a few boys in the end did write to the wretched girls.’

The Beatles’ parents were also being contacted by a lot of American fans, some of them turning up on their doorstep, having forced their parents to stop off on their European grand tours to fit in the Dingle and Woolton.

‘I’d usually ask the ones who’d come a long way if they’d like some tea,’ says Jim McCartney.

‘When they said yes, I’d say, there’s the kitchen. They’d go in and start screaming and shouting because they’d recognize the kitchen from photographs. They knew more about me than I did myself.

Fans would make very good detectives.’

On George’s 21st birthday, Mrs Harrison was unable to find room in her house for all the cards and presents. They came in mail vans by special deliveries.

Elsie and Harry, Ringo’s parents, like the others, began to find themselves surrounded and barricaded in their own home, while fans camped outside and stole bits of the door or chalked on the walls.

‘The first time I really noticed how well they were known,’ says Elsie, ‘was when we woke up one morning to find a busload of fans knocking at the front door. It was seven o’clock on a Sunday morning. They’d travelled overnight from London. Well, what could I do? I fetched them all in and gave them tea and biscuits. I thought it was marvellous. All that way, just for Ritchie. They never ate anything. They wrapped them up to take back as souvenirs.

‘They used to climb over the backyard wall, or sleep in the street for days. They were physical wrecks, most of them, but they were just too excited to rest or eat. They’d ask, which is his chair? I’d say, sit on them all love, he has. They always wanted to go up and see his bed as well. They’d lie on it, moaning.’

Cyn and Julian had by this time moved out of Mimi’s house and into a place of their own. She was still avoiding the press as much as possible. ‘A gang of reporters trailed me round for days, when they found out who I was. They cornered me one day when I was visiting my mother in Hoylake. This reporter chased me all over the place and besieged me in a shop. I managed to dart out the back and into a fruit shop next door, where I hid for half an hour till he’d gone.’

The Beatles came back from America to the usual hysterical scenes. The prime minister, Sir Alec

Douglas-Home, called them ‘our best exports’ and ‘a useful contribution to the balance of payments’.

Mr Wilson, leader of the Labour Party and a Liverpool MP, didn’t like the inference that a 14th Earl should be trying to cash in on the Liverpool Beatles. ‘The Tories are trying to make the Beatles their secret weapon,’ he said.

They were invited to dinner by the master and dons of Brasenose College, Oxford, where they asked for jam butties. A Roman Catholic bishop called them a ‘menace’, but Prince Philip met them and thought them good chaps. He had a chat with John about books. They met Mr Wilson at last, at a Variety Club presentation, and called him Mr Dobson.

John’s first book came out in March. It was called In His Own Write, a title suggested by Paul.

They discarded another idea, In His Own Write and Draw, as the pun (right-hand drawer) was too complicated. Most literary experts and most publishers said it was a stunt that would fail – how could a beat-group player write anything that was any good? It went to the top of the best-seller list, beating James Bond. The Times Literary Supplement said: ‘It is worth the attention of anyone who fears for the impoverishment of the English language and the British imagination.’ John was invited to be guest of honour at a Foyles literary lunch. He didn’t speak, except to mutter ‘Thank you, you’ve got a lucky face,’ and got a few boos for not doing so. But Brian Epstein made a very nice speech.

On 24 March, their sixth single, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, came out. It went straight to number one. It also went immediately to number one in America. In Britain and America, before it had come out, the advance sales were three million, a world record. Not long after, they had the top six records on the United States hit parade.

Ringo was elected a Vice-President of Leeds University in preference to a former Lord Chief Justice. Madame Tussauds put wax effigies of all four Beatles on show. Paul Johnson, in the New Statesman, did an article headed ‘The Menace of Beatlism’. A writer in the Sunday Telegraph said that the group would break up, because eventually they would all get married and ‘the chance of four random women liking one another or even being able to get on with one another will be small indeed.’

In March they started shooting their first film. The title, A Hard Day’s Night, wasn’t decided until it was almost finished and Ringo came out with the phrase, though John had used it earlier in a poem.

Paul was by this time going out with Jane Asher, daughter of a Wimpole Street doctor. On the first day of the film, George met Pattie Boyd. Like Jane Asher, she has a a south of England background, completely different from the background of the girls in the other two Beatles’ lives.

Pattie was working as a model, mainly in magazines, and did a TV commercial for Smiths Crisps, which was very successful. This was directed by Dick Lester, which was how she came to be auditioned for a part in the Beatles’ film.

‘I met them and they said hello. I couldn’t believe it. They were so like how I’d imagined them to be. They were just like pictures of themselves coming to life. George hardly said hello. But the others came and chatted to us.

‘When we started filming, I could feel George looking at me and I was a bit embarrassed. Ringo seemed the nicest and easiest to talk to, and so did Paul. But I was terrified of John. After that first day’s shooting, I asked them all for their autograph, except John. I was too scared.

‘When I was asking George for his, I said could he sign it for my two sisters as well. He signed his name and put two kisses each for them, but under mine he put seven kisses. I thought he must like me a little.’

He did and they started going out. ‘I took him to Mummy’s, then he took me to see this house in Esher he was interested in. I thought it was lovely. The next weekend was Easter. I went with George and John and Cynthia to Ireland for the weekend on a private plane. It was a dead secret, but it got out and there were hordes of pressmen at the hotel.

‘This was my first experience of that sort of thing. The manager tapped their phones and we could hear them sending back the most awful things to Fleet Street. When we went out, they all followed us with cameras.

‘It was impossible to get out. In the end Cyn and I had to dress as maids. They took us out a back way, put us in a laundry basket, and we were driven to the airport in a laundry van.’

Naturally, with all the publicity and gossip interest in her, she was offered even more modelling jobs. ‘I took a lot, the ones I fancied, but George said I shouldn’t. He didn’t like it. They were just wanting me for the wrong reasons.’

She was very worried by the threatening letters and even physical attacks all the girlfriends and wives were getting from girl fans. ‘The letters upset me a lot. They were really nasty and said awful things, especially from the States. I used to worry that perhaps I was nasty. They always said they were really George’s girlfriend, I’d better leave him alone or they’d get me.’

They moved into George’s new house in Esher. ‘We lived together for about a year before we got married. My mother knew, but she never mentioned it.’

In the summer of 1964, the tours started again. They went to Europe first of all, starting with Denmark. In Amsterdam a crowd of 100,000 turned up in the streets to see them. Girls were diving into canals to get near them. Then they went to Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

The American tours had, and always will have, the most publicity associated with them, simply because they were beating the Americans at what the Americans had always been leading the world in. But, surprisingly, the biggest ever crowd to turn out to watch the Beatles was in Adelaide. This was simply to watch the Beatles arrive. Every newspaper that day put the figure at over 300,000.

Numbers like this never turned out to see them in New York, or even in Liverpool.

Back in London, on 6 July, A Hard Day’s Night had its premiere, in front of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon. The LP of the film came out the following month.

On 19 August 1964 they left for their first major American tour. The trip in February had been a short, two-week trip, with only a couple of concerts and TV shows.

This tour, in August and September, covered in all 32 days. It was the longest, biggest and most exhausting tour they ever did. They travelled in all 22,441 miles, spending a total of 60 hours, 25 minutes flying. They visited 24 cities in the United States and Canada. They gave a total of 30 performances, plus one charity show. ‘During that American tour,’ says Mal, the road manager, ‘each of us lost one and a half stone in sweat.’

Norman Weiss of GAC, their American agent, spent six months planning this tour. ‘It took about as much planning as the invasion of Normandy. Millions and millions of dollars must have changed hands. It would be impossible to work out what it all cost, from the Beatles’ fees down to all the hot dogs sold and films used up.

‘We could easily have charged three times the price and still sold out, but Brian said it was unfair to the fans. We had it written into all contracts, stating what the prices had to be. We dictated all the contracts, set the terms ourselves. Every promoter agreed, thankful to be putting them on.

‘The Beatles and Elvis are both in show business. After that, any comparison is just a joke. No

one, before or since, has had the crowds the Beatles had.’

Records were broken everywhere, but to the Beatles themselves, it all became meaningless. It was just like it had been yesterday. Even the questions were always the same – what did they think had caused their success and when did they think the bubble would burst. They almost got to screaming point, with the endless repetition.

They fled to a remote country town for a day’s rest and the locals very kindly kept out of the way.

But as they were boarding their plane to take off again, the sheriff and other town dignitaries could be seen coming across the tarmac towards them. Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ press officer, was sent out to see what the locals wanted. They said they wanted autographs and photographs standing with the Beatles, which was the least they could do, as they’d been so kind and left them alone.

‘I went back on to the plane to ask the boys,’ says Derek. ‘Paul was sitting beside the window, looking at them. He was smiling like mad at them, nodding his head wildly up and down, but he was saying to me, “Get out there quick. Tell them we want to go out and meet them, but you won’t let us because we’re too tired. Go on.”’

Even George Harrison, the Liverpool Echo one, became numbed by it all. ‘But I’ll never forget this big noise from Kansas City coming to see Brian when we were in San Francisco. Kansas City wasn’t on the tour. He was a millionaire, the owner of the local football club or something. He said he’d promised Kansas City that he would get the Beatles for them.

‘Brian said no. They couldn’t fit it in. This bloke said would 100,000 dollars change their minds.

Brian said he’d go and ask the boys. They were all sitting playing cards and hardly looked up. Brian told them about the offer of 100,000, which is £30,000 in anybody’s money. They said it’s up to you, Brian, and went on playing.

‘Brian went back and told the man he was terribly sorry. They couldn’t give up a day off. The man said he’d promised Kansas City and he couldn’t go back without them. He tore up the cheque for 100,000 dollars. Then he wrote out one for 150,000 dollars. This was the highest fee that had ever been offered to any artist in America. He was offering them £50,000 for 35 minutes. Brian could see the prestige value of beating all American artists would be fantastic. So he said all right. The Beatles didn’t look up when Brian told them.

‘So the bloke went home, dead happy. But he knew he couldn’t possibly make any money. The ground wasn’t big enough to get back anything like he’d had to pay, but he’d kept his promise to Kansas City.’

The pillowslips on which they slept in their Kansas City hotel were later sold to two Chicago businessmen for £375. They cut them into 160,000 one-inch squares, mounted them on certificates saying whose bed they had come from, and sold them at one dollar each. A New York syndicate offered Brian £3,715,000 for the Beatles, but he turned them down.

During all the shouting and screaming and boasting of all their record-breaking tours, in Britain and America, the Beatles were crouching somewhere inside the giant piece of machinery that was transporting them round and round the world. They’d retreated inside it in 1963, forced by all the pressures, and remained there, hermetically sealed.

They were trapped in their dressing room before a performance. Then, afterwards, there was the mad dash, guarded by hordes of police and bodyguards, to the hotel. There they stayed, with the outside world locked out, till the time came for the next move. They never went out in the street, to a restaurant or for a walk. Neil and Mal serviced them, bringing sandwiches, ciggies and drinks. Out of

jealousy, and sometimes out of fear of being left unprotected, they wouldn’t let Mal or Neil go out either. So they all sat in their hotel bedrooms, smoking, playing cards, playing their guitars, putting in the hours. Earning £1,000 or £10,000 or £100,000 for one-night stands was meaningless. Being rich and powerful and famous enough to enter any door was pointless. They were trapped.

For a long time, of course, there was great excitement. They had waited so long for this. They’d been playing for seven years together and getting nowhere, which at least meant they were physically and emotionally prepared for the terrible conditions of one-night stands. Even the one-night stands weren’t as strenuous as the Hamburg clubs, where they’d really learned to churn it out endlessly.

After the first record, so many stages came one after the other so quickly that they never got bored or complained about the slowness, at least for some time. They all remember the excitement of going from one peak to another. Getting a record in the charts, then a number one, then another, then TV shows, the Palladium, the Royal Variety Show and then, America.

Although John, Paul and George were not taken in or affected by all the publicity, they considered themselves good. They knew their music was good and were annoyed when anyone didn’t take it seriously. They didn’t for one minute consider, as so many people did, that they would just disappear.

At last they were in, and they couldn’t see any reason why they shouldn’t stay in. This probably explains part of their attitude to the press. They didn’t feel grateful or in any way humble. They didn’t care about being funny or rude because they didn’t consider they owed anything to anybody.

Only Ringo was in any way rubbing his eyes. It had all suddenly happened to him. He joined them, then immediately they were away.

‘None of us ever worried about things like the future. I’ve always just taken chances myself and been lucky. I was lucky to get an apprenticeship when I did. I’ve always had a few bob in my pocket.

But I always thought it was bound to come to an end some time.

‘There were good nights and bad nights on the tours. But they were really all the same. The only fun part was the hotels in the evening, smoking pot and that.’

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