Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney. Howard Sounes

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СКАЧАТЬ in the room, as if that was a big deal, and all eyes turned to the gentleman at the entrance. Brian was only 27, but must have appeared middle-aged to the denizens of the Cavern, though many were likewise in their twenties. It was the way Brian dressed, carried himself and spoke. ‘He could speak English, which none of us could,’ comments Tony ‘Measles’ Bramwell with hyperbole. ‘Brian had been elocuted [sic].’

      George Harrison asked what brought Mr Brian down to see them. Epstein asked in reply about their song, ‘My Bonnie’, and they proceeded to banter back and forth. ‘They were extremely amusing and in a rough “take it or leave it way” very attractive,’ Epstein later wrote, giving the clear impression of a flirtation. ‘I will never know what made me say to this eccentric group of boys that I thought a further meeting might be helpful to them and me.’ Still, a meeting was scheduled at his office, which was over the NEMS shop, for 3 December. The Beatles approached the date with a mixture of hope and scepticism. After all, what could the manager of an electrical shop do for them in show business? At least they’d been to Germany, played on stage and cut a record. Brian hadn’t done much except get kicked out of the army and RADA. He only had his current job because Daddy owned the store.

      When the appointment came, Paul couldn’t even be bothered to be punctual, which was out of character, though it wouldn’t be the last time he would keep Brian waiting. Brian asked George to telephone Forthlin Road and ask what had happened to young McCartney. ‘Paul’s just got up and he is having a bath,’ Harrison reported.

      ‘This is disgraceful!’ fulminated Epstein, who took himself far too seriously. ‘He’s very late.’

      ‘And very clean,’ quipped George, who though not academically bright possessed a lively wit.

      When Paul finally showed up they adjourned to a milk bar to talk business. Brian asked the boys if they’d considered professional management. They talked about how this might work and agreed to meet again. In the meantime, Epstein asked around town about the group. He consulted Allan Williams, who was so bitter about the way the band had treated him that he’d banned the boys from the Jacaranda. He advised Epstein not to touch the Beatles with a barge pole. ‘Then I clarified it. I said, “Look, they are good musicians. But believe me they’ll walk all over you once they’ve used you.”’ Not put off, Epstein went to see Rex Makin, asking his lawyer to draw up an ‘unbreakable’ contract for himself and the Beatles. ‘I told him there was no such thing,’ said Makin, who thought Brian’s latest brainwave stupid. So Brian went to another lawyer and duly presented the four Beatles – that is John, Paul, George and Pete Best – with a contract that bound them to him for five years, during which time Brian would have a hand in every part of their act, taking up to 25 per cent of their gross earnings in commission. It was a key decision. Paul was hesitant, weighing up the pros and cons. Then he said he hoped the Beatles would make it. ‘But I’ll tell you now, Mr Epstein, I’m going to be a star anyway.’

* Ruth Lallemann wasn’t.

       CHAPTER 4 LONDON

      EMI

      The boys put their names to Brian Epstein’s contract in January 1961, Paul’s bold signature countersigned by his dad because he was still under 21. Epstein himself didn’t get around to signing until October, but they had an agreement, one of the stated aims of which was to get the band a recording contract. The Beatles were in fact already under contract to Polydor in Germany, but Brian was determined to get them out of that deal and sign them instead to a major British company. Naturally, he went first to EMI.

      ‘The greatest recording organisation in the world’, as it liked to be known, Electrical Musical Industries (EMI) had been created in 1931 following the merger of the Gramophone Company and its rival, the Columbia Phonograph Company. EMI was part of the British Establishment, George V having recorded a message to the Empire with the company in 1923, and its subsidiary labels embraced a wide variety of music. His Master’s Voice (HMV), for example – with its famous emblem of a dog listening to an old record player – was celebrated for its classical releases, but the company also remained in touch with popular trends, releasing records by American singers such as Peggy Lee and Gene Vincent, both favourites of Paul.

      At the start of his working relationship with the Beatles, Brian sent ‘My Bonnie’ to EMI headquarters in London as a sample of the band’s work, receiving a letter of reply informing him that neither HMV nor the Columbia label wanted to sign his group. It was the first of several slaps in the face, but Brian persisted. He had recently been corresponding with journalist Tony Barrow, who wrote a record review column in the Liverpool Echo as a sideline to composing sleeve-note copy for Britain’s second biggest record company, Decca. This contact led to Brian securing an audition for the Beatles at Decca. It would be in London on New Year’s Day, 1962.

      Then, as now, London was more than just the capital of the United Kingdom; the city was the financial, mercantile and creative heart of the nation, to which all roads led. Paul knew that if he meant to make it in show business he had to go ‘down south’, even though southerners had a reputation for being unfriendly and condescending to northerners such as himself. The Beatles’ first professional foray in this direction had been inauspicious. A few weeks before Christmas, Merseyside promoter Sam Leach, having tried and failed to book the band in London proper, got them a gig at the Palais Ballroom in Aldershot, 43 miles west of the capital, but nonetheless ‘a gig down south’. When advertisements for the show failed to appear in the local newspaper, however, a mere 18 people attended. Seeing the funny side, Paul sang ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’. At the end of this absurd evening the boys travelled into the metropolis and took a turn round the clubs of Soho, the bohemian neighbourhood north of Shaftesbury Avenue and south of Oxford Street, a place Paul liked so well he later established his private office there. Three weeks after this first sniff of London air the Beatles headed south again, driven by Neil Aspinall in the band’s newly acquired van. At a time when Britain’s motorway system was only just being constructed, the drive from Liverpool took up to ten hours, made more arduous that New Year’s Eve by snow. The lads arrived in the capital late, checking into the Royal Hotel on Russell Square, sufficiently excited about being in London to rush over to Trafalgar Square where they helped usher in 1962. Hardly had the boys got back to the Royal Hotel than they had to be up again for their audition.

      Fifteen songs from the band’s live show had been selected for the Decca audition, including covers and standards such as ‘Three Cool Cats’ and ‘The Sheik of Araby’, which the boys sang with Goon-ish comedic asides. Also showcased were three early and rather weak Lennon-McCartney compositions, including ‘Like Dreamers Do’. Epstein had the say-so in the choice of material and he forbade the boys from playing their usual, much more raucous rock ’n’ roll set (though they did perform one rave-up, ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’), and the result was a sadly lacklustre audition, partly because the musicians were nervous and over-tired. Some weeks later Brian went back to Decca to receive the decision. ‘Not to mince words, Mr Epstein, we don’t like your boys’ sound,’ record executive Dick Rowe told Epstein, ensuring his place in history as one of those hapless souls who let the Beatles slip through his hands. Brian gave the Beatles the bad news when he met them on his return at Lime Street station. ‘And Pye have turned us down,’ he added gloomily.

      Brian’s family was starting to weary of the Beatles, Mum sighing indulgently when her son insisted that his boys would be ‘bigger than Elvis’, while Dad was concerned that Brian was neglecting his real job running the family’s record outlets. It was therefore with a sense of having one last go that Brian returned to London in February 1962 to have the Decca audition tapes transferred to vinyl, at the HMV shop in Oxford Street, with a view to hawking the discs around town. The technician cutting the discs suggested, in light of the fact Brian’s act wrote СКАЧАТЬ