At the Art College John and Stuart were becoming even closer friends. Stu spent most of his time following the group round and watching them practise. He and John together managed to persuade a college committee to buy them a tape recorder, ostensibly for use by all students.
John took it over for himself, to record his group playing, so that they could hear what they sounded like. They also got a 'public address system' bought for use at college dances. This ended up as part of his group's amplification equipment.
Stu was still as interested in art, despite spending so much time with John and his group. He entered some paintings for the John Moores Exhibition, one of the best exhibitions of its type, not just on Merseyside but throughout Britain. It is named after John Moores, a member of the wealthy Liverpool family that is connected with Littlewoods football pools and the mail order firm.
Stuart Sutcliffe, although still a student, won a prize worth £60, a huge sum and a great success for one so young.
John, his best friend and biggest influence, immediately saw a way of using the money in the best possible way. Stu had always been saying that he wished he could play an instrument and really be in their group, instead of just hanging around. John said now was his chance to join. With his £60, he could buy a bass guitar. It didn't matter that he couldn't play. They would teach him.
Paul and George were equally keen on the idea, as they needed another member for the group. From what George remembers, Stu was offered an alternative – he could buy himself a bass or a set of drums. They needed both as they had three stars on guitars and no backing of any sort. 'Stu had no idea how to play it,' says George. 'We all showed him what we could, but he really picked it up by playing on stage.'
In those early days, as can be seen from photographs, Stu usually had his back to the audience, so that no one could see how very few chords he was playing. They were doing more and more engagements, still earning only a few bob, playing at working men's clubs and socials. But as the beat group boom took over Liverpool, little teenage clubs slowly began to spring up. They were basically coffee clubs, on the lines of the hundreds of coffee bars, serving espresso coffee amidst lots of rubber plants and bamboo, which had arisen all over the country. The Liverpool ones occasionally put on live shows for the teenagers, which gave the hundreds of beat groups somewhere to play.
The beat groups could never get into the traditional sort of clubs, like the Cavern. They were only for jazz fans and jazz bands, which was considered a much higher art form. The beat groups were all scruffy and amateur and Teddy Boyish. It was a working-class art form, full of electricians and labourers. There was a tendency to look
down upon all beat groups and the people who played in them.
'We were always anti-jazz,' says John. 'I think it is shit music, even more stupid than rock and roll, followed by students in Marks and Spencer pullovers. Jazz never gets anywhere, never does anything, it's always the same and all they do is drink pints of beer. We hated it because in the early days they wouldn't let us play at those sort of clubs. We'd never get auditions because of the jazz bands.'
The beat groups were by now all trying to get wired up, with electric guitars and amps, which skiffle groups had never done. There were other rock-type singers who had come along in Elvis's wake, like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, spawning many British imitators.
But it was still in London that everything in Britain happened. Britain's first rock and roll singer who had any national success in Britain on the lines of the American stars was a Cockney, who made it in London through the London coffee bars – Tommy Steele. Then there was Cliff Richard, who modelled himself completely on Elvis. John, George and Paul seem to have been unaware of Tommy Steele, at least they can't remember him making any impression on them. But they actively hated Cliff Richard and the Shadows. John says it was Cliff's sort of Christian image, even then, that offended him. But they also hated the traditional pop ballads Cliff Richard went on to sing.
Paul, as the one who always tried to make things happen, was prepared to play down their likes and dislikes and chat up anyone who looked like helping them.
He was always trying hard to get them some publicity in the local newspapers.
He wrote a letter around this time to a journalist called Mr Low they had met in a pub.
'Dear Mr Low,
I am sorry about the time I have taken to write to you, but I hope I have not left it too late. Here are some details about the group.
It consists of four boys: Paul McCartney (guitar), John Lennon (guitar), Stuart Sutcliffe (bass) and George Harrison (another guitar) and is called ...
This line-up may at first seem dull but it must be appreciated that as the boys have above average instrumental ability they achieve surprisingly varied effects. Their basis beat is off-beat, but this has recently tended to be accompanied by a faint on-beat; thus the overall sound is rather reminiscent of the four in the bar of traditional jazz. This could possibly be put down to the influence of Mr McCartney, who led one of the top local jazz bands (Jim Mac's Jazz Band) in the 1920s.
Modern music, however, is the group's delight, and, as if to prove the point, John and Paul have written over fifty tunes, ballads and faster numbers, during the last three years. Some of these tunes are purely instrumental (such as "Looking Glass",
"Catswalk" and 'Winston's Walk") and others were composed with the modern audience in mind (tunes like
"Thinking of Linking", "The One After 909", "Years Roll Along" and "Keep Looking That Way").
The group also derive a great deal of pleasure from rearranging old favourites ("Ain't She Sweet", "You Were Meant For Me", "Home", "Moonglow", "You are My Sunshine" and others).
Now for a few details about the boys themselves.
John, who leads the group, attends the College of Art, and, as well as being an accomplished guitarist and
banjo player, he is an experienced cartoonist. His many interests include painting, the theatre, poetry, and, of course, singing. He is 19 years old and is a founder member of the group.
Paul is 18 years old and is reading English Literature at Liverpool University. He, like the other boys, plays more than one instrument – his specialities being the piano and drums, plus, of course ...'
The rest of Paul's highly colourful mix of fact and fiction is, unfortunately, missing. He wasn't, of course, 18 or at Liverpool University, but it was true, as he indicated by the dots, that the group didn't have a name. Later in 1959 they started seriously trying to think of what to call themselves, just as they'd done for the Carroll Levis audition, as it looked as if they were about to get another important audition.
This is when the idea of calling themselves the Beatles came up. No one is definitely sure how it happened. Paul and George just remember John arriving with it one day. They'd always been fans of Buddy Holly and the Crickets. They liked his music, and the name of his group. It had a nice double meaning, one of them a purely English meaning, which Americans couldn't have appreciated. They wished they'd thought of calling themselves the Crickets.
Thinking of the name Crickets, John thought of other insects with a name that could be played around with.
He'd filled books as a child with similar word play. 'The idea of beetles came into my head. I decided to spell it BEAtles to make it look like beat music, just as a joke.'
That was the real and simple origin of their name, though for years afterwards they made up different daft reasons each time anyone asked them. Usually they said a man with a magic carpet appeared at a window and told them. Though they'd at last thought of a name they liked, they weren't permanently called the Beatles for a long time.
They met a friend who who asked them what their new name was. They said Beatles. He said you had to have a long name for a group. Why didn't they call themselves Long John and the Silver Beatles? They didn't think much of his idea either. But when this important audition came up and they were asked what they were calling themselves they said 'Silver Beatles', which was a name they stuck to for the rest of that year, 1959.
The important auditioner was none other than the assistants asked them for a name that they came out with Silver Beatles. They also arrived without a drummer. A drummer they'd been using had promised to turn up, but didn't. Once again, they were drummerless.
A drummer who was at the Blue Angel for the audition with another group did them a favour and stood
in with them. He was Johnny Hutch, looked upon as one of the top three drummers of the time in Liverpool. There is a photograph of the Silver Beatles taken at that audition (see pages 50–1). Johnny Hutch is sitting at the back looking very bored and superior. As usual, you can't see much of Stu. He has his back to Larry Parnes, trying hard to hide his fingerwork on the bass.
The audition was to find a backing group for Billy Fury. Larry Parnes didn't think any group was good enough, but he offered the Silver Beatles a two-week tour of Scotland, as the backing group to one of Larry Parnes's newest but unknown discoveries, Johnny Gentle. It was in no sense their tour. The Silver Beatles were to be very Institute, remembers arguing with him and saying he was silly to go off and not do any work for his exams. Paul somehow managed to convince his father that he'd been given two weeks' holiday off school. They'd been told to take things easy. He said he would be back just in time for the exams and the tour would be a good rest for his brain.
No wonder he passed only one subject.
They had to get yet another new drummer for this tour of Scotland. He was called Thomas Moore. They can't remember anything else about him, except that they went to his flat to get him and that he'd been living on the dole.
Thomas Moore, apparently, was his real name. The Silver
Beatles, in this first flush of being pro, all wanted to change their names. That was the fashion.
'It was exciting changing your name,' says Paul. 'It made it seem all real and professional. It sort of proved you did a real act, if you had a stage name.'
Paul turned himself into Paul Ramon. He can't remember where he got the Ramon bit from. 'I must have heard it somewhere. I thought it sounded really glamorous, sort of Valentino-ish.' George became Carl Harrison after one of his heroes Carl Perkins. Stu became Stu de Stijl, after the art movement. John can't remember what he called himself, if anything, but others remember him as Johnny Silver.
The tour of Scotland was to be in the far north, round little ballrooms on the northeast coast. Paul can remember Inverness and Nairn but no other names. He sent back postcards to his father saying: 'It's gear. I've been asked for my autograph.'
They were all a bit jealous of the fact that George was getting on particularly well with the star of the tour, Johnny Gentle. He promised to give George a present after the tour, one of Eddie Cochrane's old shirts, so he said.
They argued as usual amongst themselves, but most of all they picked on Stu, the newest member of the group. John, George and Paul had been with each other long enough to know that rows and arguments and criticism didn't mean much. If it did, you just argued back.
'We were terrible,' says John. 'We'd tell Stu he
to sleep in it. So Stu had to. 'That was how he learned to be with us,' says John. 'It was all stupid, but that was what we were like.'
After the great excitement of Scotland, nothing happened. Larry Parnes didn't offer them any more work.
He admits now he missed a great chance, but at the time he had enough successful solo stars not to be interested in groups. The Beatles went back to dances full of drunken Teds, working men on their night out, or sleazy clubs.
They got a few dates, not long after Scotland, at a strip club in Upper Parliament Street. They had to accompany Janice the stripper as she shed her clothes.
'She handed us the music she wanted,' says George. 'It was something like the "Gypsy Fire Dance". As we couldn't read music, it wasn't much use to us. We just played
"Ramrod" then "Moonglow", as I'd just learned it.'
They did manage a couple of dates at the Cavern Club in Mathew Street around the same time, though it was still a jazz stronghold. They used to get little notes passed up to them telling them not to play rock and roll, so they would introduce the next number as if it were a genuine jazz piece. 'And now an old favourite by Fats Duke Ellington Leadbelly, called "Long Tall Sally".' And they'd go straight into the beat number. Naturally, this wasn't liked by the management and didn't help them to get many further dates.
But most of the time they didn't do much, except hang around each other's houses or, when they had any money, the clubs. 'Scotland had been a faint hope, our first glimpse of show business,' says George. 'It was a bit of a comedown being back in Liverpool. We were lucky to get more than two dates a week. All we were making was
about 15 bob a night, plus as much eggs on toast and cokes as we could take.'