Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney. Howard Sounes

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СКАЧАТЬ at home a Beatles single was often released as an extra treat, with an exclusive and often equally delicious B-side, neither of which would be on the LP. The new single, ‘I Feel Fine’, was not on Beatles for Sale, for example, but did feature on Beatles ’65 in the USA.*

      Beatles for Sale had been recorded by George Martin on the fly between the Beatles’ engagements, and Martin rates it as one of their lesser works. ‘They were rather weary during Beatles for Sale,’ he has commented. ‘One must remember they’d been battered like mad throughout 1964 …’ As with previous albums, the LP was comprised of original compositions and cover songs including the rock ’n’ roll warhorse ‘Kansas City’, but there was still much of interest. Dylan’s influence is heard on John’s ‘I’m a Loser’, while Paul’s ‘I’ll Follow the Sun’ was pretty. The inspiration for ‘Eight Days a Week’ came from a casual conversation Paul had with his chauffeur on the drive to Kenwood. ‘How’ve you been?’ Paul asked as they headed out of town.

      ‘Oh, working hard,’ grumbled the chauffeur, ‘eight days a week.’

      When Paul arrived at John’s country mansion, he told his friend what the driver had said. ‘John said, “Right – ‘Ooh, I need your love babe …’” and we wrote it. We were always quite quick to write.’ When they finished a new song like this, Lennon and McCartney would usually perform it for Cynthia Lennon, or whoever else was around, to see what sort of reaction they got, making sure to write down the chords and lyrics. ‘We couldn’t put it down on a cassette because there weren’t cassettes then,’ notes Paul. ‘We’d have to remember it, which was always a good discipline, and if it was a rubbish song we’d forget it.’

      The first full year of Beatlemania ended in December with Another Beatles Christmas Show, staged at the Hammersmith Odeon, a huge West London cinema that was becoming one of the capital’s premier music venues. Once again the Beatles were obliged to act the fool as well as perform, and again there were a host of support acts, including the Yardbirds, featuring Eric Clapton who became an important friend. ‘Paul played the ambassador, coming out to meet us and saying hello,’ recalls Clapton, who also remembers Paul playing a new tune backstage. It had come to him in a dream at Wimpole Street, and he wasn’t sure whether it was an original composition or an old melody that had lodged in his unconscious. Neither Clapton nor his band mates recognised it.

      The Christmas show compère this year was Jimmy Savile, night-club owner and DJ. One of Jim’s business interests was the Three Coins club in Manchester, which the Beatles played twice, in 1961 and 1963. ‘The first time, they travelled over from Liverpool and got a fiver for the whole gig, and they went down well. So they came back [and] got £15 [$23],’ recalls Savile, who was best known as a Radio Luxembourg disc jockey. As such, Jim had helped promote the Beatles’ career. They rewarded the DJ with what he calls ‘the greatest non-job’ he ever had.

      Because first of all you couldn’t hear yourself think, at all. And the audience, when they saw me come on, knew that I was coming on to introduce the lads, and you could actually taste the noise. The noise was just quite unbelievable! And for the whole of the [20] days I never, ever uttered a word. All I did was just mime all sorts of things, and sort of dived about the stage, and suddenly I would look over to the wings and put my hands on my head as though I can’t believe what I’m seeing, and then I’d run off the other side, and the Beatles would run on this side, and that was it. That’s how I’d introduce [them].

      The DJ also appeared in skits with the boys in Hammersmith.

      I was a yeti, and what I did I appeared, having climbed up a ladder with a yeti outfit on, looking at the Beatles who were standing about down there doing bits of things, and of course all the crowd is shouting ‘Behind you! Behind you!’ It was real pantomime stuff.

      After a break in which Paul took Jane to Tunisia, and Ritchie married Maureen Cox, the Beatles went back into the studio to record songs for their second United Artists movie, Help! Despite having had little time to prepare, John and Paul were able to write strong new material for the film and its soundtrack album, much of which has a Dylanesque quality. There is a new introspection in ‘Ticket to Ride’, for example, the title of which is also a punning reference to Paul’s Uncle Mike and Aunt Bett, who were now running the Bow Bars pub in Ryde on the Isle of Wight. To visit Uncle Mike, Paul was obliged to buy a ferry ticket from Portsmouth – literally a ticket to Ryde.

      John later claimed the title song ‘Help!’ was a cry of anguish at a time when he had lost direction in life, though this wasn’t apparent to his band mates. The only sign John may have been unhappy was that he had put on weight, which altered his appearance markedly. One of the curious things about John was how much his looks changed over the course of a relatively short life. His original boyish face fattened and widened around the time of Help!, giving him the full face of Henry VIII. As he lost weight in the latter druggy stages of the Beatles’ career, his face became thin, pinched and bony, making him look like a different person entirely, which was appropriate for a man of many moods. In contrast, one could always see the happy boy Paul had been in the confident man he became.

      George Martin kept the tape running continuously when the band was in the studio, to capture every precious second of Beatles’ sound, with John and Paul’s between-songs chatter preserved for posterity as a result. The boys were working on one of John’s songs, ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’, on Thursday 18 February 1965, when Paul broke a glass in the studio. ‘Paul’s broken a glass, broken a glass …’ Lennon chanted like a child, before asking: ‘You ready … Macca?’ using his friend’s schoolboy nickname. They were still making music together much as they had when Paul sagged off from the Inny to hang out with John at Forthlin Road, but now the friends were partners in business, too – big business. This very day Northern Songs was floated on the London stock exchange.

      The flotation of Northern Songs was tax efficient for John and Paul. High earners were taxed excessively under Harold Wilson’s Labour Government of 1964–70, those earning over £20,000 a year ($30,600) suffering a 50 per cent surtax on their income, rising to 55 per cent in 1965, meaning that most of the Beatles’ money went to the taxman. By floating the company in which their songs were held – 56 titles so far – Paul and John created shares that could be sold tax-free. Northern Songs was divided into five million ordinary shares, two and a quarter million of which were offered to the public at seven shillings and nine pence each in pre-decimal money (39 new pence, or 59 cents). The prospectus revealed that the Beatles were contracted to the company until 1966, with Northern Songs having an option to renew for a further three years, with John and Paul obliged to write at least six new songs per year. In reality they were writing many more, and figures showed that Northern Songs was a rapidly growing business. In its first two years, the company reported six-monthly profits rising from £17,294 ($26,459) to almost a quarter of a million pounds. The flotation was oversubscribed, giving Northern Songs an initial paper value of £1.9 million ($2.9 m). The share value then fell below offer price, as speculators took a quick profit. Thinking this might happen, the Beatles bought shares back, a shrewd move as the shares recovered and doubled in value over 12 months, during which time they added another 35 songs to the catalogue. Paul had initially been allotted one million shares in Northern Songs, to which he added bought-back shares, giving him just over a fifth of the public company, worth approximately £300,000 ($459,000), a vast sum at the time. John had the same, with Brian, George and Ritchie all holding smaller stakes. Over half the limited company was still owned by Dick James, though.

At this stage in his career, Paul left business decisions to others, more interested in making music and having fun than reading contracts. Having been introduced to marijuana, grass had become part of the Beatles’ quotidian lives, creating a problem for director Richard Lester when he came to shoot Help! in February 1965. ‘We showed up a bit stoned, smiled a lot and hoped we’d get through it,’ СКАЧАТЬ