When They Were Boys (16 page)

Along with his ability to rage, John had a great sense of loyalty and an intense pride in sharing the spotlight. It was, after all, John who welcomed young Paul McCartney into his band in 1957.

“He was an amazing guitar man,” John reminisced to me backstage in 1965. “He also had this ability to play to the audience. Paul brought in George, who was much more serious than both of us about the guitar. And I brought in Stu, Larry. And we began the journey.”

When John took his Three Musketeers, all-for-one-and-one-for-all stance against Parnes, he was nineteen years old. He risked the big break, the Scotland tour, to keep his group together. Although their future together would face insurmountable obstacles, on that fateful day in the spring of 1960, John Lennon wasn't even thinking about going without Stu Sutcliffe.

After John's display of outright loyalty, Paul nodded his head in agreement, and George quietly did the same. For that moment, at least, Stu was for keeps. Although accounts of this event are conflicting, John was always defending and supporting his merry band.

Not for keeps was the band's name, the Quarrymen. Hoping for just the chance that Parnes was providing, the boys had spent considerable time contemplating the moniker to accompany their act. There are many stories of how the boys came to be named “the Beatles,” but despite myth and mystery, only two theories stand the test of time. Faced with the prospect of a
real touring gig, the Quarrymen decided at that point to change their name. Led again by John, they considered a name. Stuart was obsessed with the 1953 movie
The Wild One
, starring Marlon Brando. The saga of motorcycle gangs included a rival gang known as “the Beetles.” Ironically, the film was banned in Great Britain for fourteen years.

The second theory of evolution came from John and Paul's adoration of Buddy Holly and the Crickets.

Bill Harry—the high commissioner of the “keeping the record straight” bureau—remembers the steps that led the boys from the Quarrymen to the Beatles:

I
THINK IT WAS
J
UNE 1960; THEY STARTED TOSSING AROUND
“J
OHNNY
A
ND
THE
M
OON
D
OGS
.” N
O, THAT WASN'T GOING TO BE IT
. T
HEN
S
TUART AND
J
OHN AND
R
OYSTON
E
LLIS, THE BEAT POET, WERE SITTING THERE CHATTING [WHEN]
J
OHN AND
S
TUART SAID THEY WOULD LIKE TO COME UP WITH SOME SORT OF NAME
. S
TUART SAID
, “H
OW ABOUT SOMETHING LIKE
B
UDDY
H
OLLY'S ‘THE
C
RICKETS
'?” B
ECAUSE, AS THE
Q
UARRYMEN, THEY PLAYED A LOT OF
B
UDDY
H
OLLY TUNES
. S
O, THEY THOUGHT
, “O
KAY, THAT MIGHT WORK—INSECTS
. O
KAY
, B
EETLES
.” T
HEN
J
OHN SAID
, “W
HY NOT BEATLES WITH AN ‘A' FOR THE BEAT GENERATION
?” “O
KAY, THE
B
EATLES
.”

But, Harry remembers, it didn't stick right away.

“They still thought at the time this name, the ‘Beatles,' was a bit too punchy because at the time there was a fad for longer names. So originally they went out as the Silver Beetles, the Silver Beatles, the Beatles, and the Silver Beats. But by August 1960, they said let's just be the Beatles. So this was confirmed—the Beatles—by John and Stuart as the official name of the band in August 1960.”

And so, if Chubby Checker emerged after Fats Domino, and if Buddy Holly had the Crickets, why couldn't the Quarrymen be called the Beetles, or the Beatles? And the Quarrymen? The name would remain forever legendary as the name of John Lennon's original group.

There was other business to attend to, mainly figuring out a sneaky escape from school to get to the Scotland gig with Johnny Gentle. This would take
some imagination. George had left Paul behind at school and was working as an electrician's apprentice. While George took his vacation early, John and Stu just decided to skip classes, declaring that no one would notice. Paul, on the other hand, opted for deception, advising his parents that his school had given students time off to prepare for testing. His charm and guile, adored by millions for decades to come, had worked on his own family. It was a difficult moment for young Paul, who was close to his dad, but in retrospect, it was an important, if fleeting, moment.

When the boys showed up for the Scotland gig to back up Johnny Gentle, they were nervous and poorly dressed. Shaken up by an accident in their van en route to the venue, a mishap that dampened their spirits, the boys moved on to their first out-of-town gig. Their performance was well received by the audiences, but not memorable, except by the star. Gentle was impressed and passed the word on to all of his friends.

The Silver Beetles returned to Liverpool, depressed at their lack of good gigs, but soldiered on by doing shows on the Wirral Peninsula, across the Mersey from Liverpool, at venues like the Grosvenor Ballroom, the Neston Institute, and Lathom Hall in Seaford. They continued accepting appearances for a handful of pounds. There was little gratification and a lot of internal strife. Paul and George were complaining to John that Stu was contributing little, but John, loyal to the bone, would have none of it. Despite the band's being limited to unheralded appearances in church and social halls after the Scotland tour, word was starting to spread about the under-dressed, chain-smoking lads.

Yet the Silver Beatles (they inserted the “a” in July 1960) were unaware that teenagers in Liverpool were spreading the word.

Derek Taylor was working in Manchester when he first heard of the Quarrymen/Silver Beatles.

During the 1964 tour, the Beatles press officer told me, “There was talk of a bunch of boys, and a lot of talk from the girls. At first, the kids were talking about a dance band. They just couldn't get enough of them. These guys were turning on little teenage girls, just by being raw and, I might add, a kind of sexual sensation.”

It would be years before Liverpool would see the Beatles as the world saw them. And in the beginning, the band had a purely physical impact. Professor Michael Brocken, the Beatles scholar at Liverpool's Hope University, says, “Before they had a record deal, the people that came to see them were from both north and south Liverpool, in the days when they played here and there and were regarded as a relatively good group to whom people could dance. They weren't necessarily fans, but they knew the Beatles could play.”

Brocken, who is the preeminent scholar of the history of Merseyside music, says that even in 1961 and 1962, the Beatles were not the favorite musical group in Liverpool, but they were stirring up feelings like few people could—not as great composers or writers yet, but as musicians with an animalistic instinct for the power of dance.

O
NE OF THE PARTIALLY MISCONCEIVED HIDDEN NOTIONS IN THE DAY WAS THAT, TO THE LOCAL PEOPLE, THEY WERE A DAMN GOOD BAND IN
1961–62,
BUT THEY WERE GOOD, NOT NECESSARILY BECAUSE THEY TURNED EVERYONE INTO
B
EATLES FANS—WHAT WE REGARD AS
B
EATLEMANIA NOW—BUT THEY WERE REGARDED AS A BAND THAT WOULD GET THE PEOPLE UP AND DANCING
. A
ND THEY TOOK REQUESTS
. . . . I
T WASN
'
T LIKE YOU GO TO A CONCERT AND SEE A BAND LIKE
P
INK
F
LOYD, AND JUST SAT AND WATCHED
. P
EOPLE WENT TO DANCE, TO MOVE
. T
HE ATMOSPHERE WAS USUALLY FAIRLY INTERACTIVE WITH THE BAND
. Y
OU HAVE TO REMEMBER, DANCERS RULED IN THOSE DAYS
. T
HE
B
EATLES FAN BASE WAS FORMED, INITIALLY, ABOUT THE PRAGMATIC POTENTIAL OF GETTING PEOPLE UP
[
ON THEIR FEET
].

Colin Hall, a young teenager, witnessed firsthand the band's power to rouse the internal stirrings of young girls and boys. Hall, who would fatefully become the curator of Mendips, the Lennon home on Menlove Avenue, went to an early concert at the Empire Theater. He remembers the fever, and mostly, the girls:

“I had been hearing about them. I was shocked but kind of excited. It was with wild abandon. They [the girls] were just out of it with no inhibition. They were beside themselves with hysteria. I grew up thinking that girls
didn't get dirty and climb trees, etc., and so to see such unbridled ecstasy was pretty much life-changing as much as the music for me.”

To Hall and his friends, it was an awakening.

I
T WAS THE THRILL OF THE MUSIC AND THE ENERGY THEY RELEASED IN YOU
. I
T WAS A CELEBRATION OF BEING YOUNG
. I
CAN SEE THAT THE GIRLS WENT CRAZY BECAUSE IT IS THE KIND OF MUSIC THAT ELEVATES
. I
T WAS THAT KIND OF MUSIC THAT MADE THEM STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD. THE MUSIC HAD SUCH A STRONG BEAT AND IT WAS SO POWERFUL . . . COMPELLING ALMOST
. T
HE PROXIMITY TO THE MUSIC IS SUCH A STRONG PHYSICAL AND INTIMATE EXPERIENCE
. I
T WAS THE MUSIC THAT TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE YOUNG. IT WAS THE MUSIC THAT MIRRORED SOMETHING WITHIN YOU, THAT DRIVING THING THAT YOU HAVE WHEN YOU
'
RE YOUNG—YOU CAN DO ANYTHING, YOU
'
RE INVINCIBLE
. I
T OPENED A WHOLE NEW WORLD; IT WAS SOCIAL AT A TIME WHEN EVERYTHING WAS SUPPRESSED
.

So, that animal-like craving of the fans would be the initial attraction—not the music—that remains the band's primary legacy. When the physical, the musical, and the sexual combined to create stardom, the greatest band in history would never be remembered as a dance band that started “getting people up,” as Professor Brocken would say.

Bob Bonis, the Beatles' tour manager in America from 1964 through 1966, would stand by the stages with me, taking pictures and marveling at their appeal. We would watch Paul flirt with 20,000 fans. He would smile and look adoring, while John hugged the microphone, and George put his head at an angle, listening to the music. Partially hidden by the drum set, Ringo bounced up and down. Along with Paul, he grinned from ear to ear. So many of those fans truly believed that each one of them, their favorite, was singing to them.

“You know,” Bonis would say in his New York accent, “these guys are amazing. They are electric. I mean, look at those girls. I think the girls want them, if you know what I mean, but what makes it so unstoppable . . . is the music. You mix the music with the men, and what have you got? Hysteria.”

The music would be discovered. But first it was the dancers who began to
notice the passion of the newly named Silver Beatles in 1960. But it should be noted that, even on those North American tours, some of the obsessed girls and boys staring into the eyes of the Beatles were also dancing feverishly to the rhythms. The kids tried to hide their naked emotions, at first in the small clubs, and later on the big-time tours, but they rarely held back. But it was always a two-way deal. The boys, even before Pete Best, before Ringo, before Brian Epstein, and in the flush of close-up contact with teenagers just like them, felt the love and responded in kind, mostly with smiles and sexual body language.

The man this author calls the Prince of Mathew Street, Sam Leach, felt the stirrings. He saw them, and acted as quickly as he could.

In January 1961, he was trying to find a band to open a new club, the Casanova. He decided to check out the boys, who were playing at a low-rent location, the Hamilton club. As they were known to do, the kids, dancers all, broke out in fistfights on the dance floor. Much to Leach's surprise, the fists stopped pounding when the boys started playing,. Leach, ever the promoter, decided to act quickly.

Leach, his eyes staring straight ahead, breaks out in a smile. The memories make him even more animated. His head rocks up and down as he recalls the patrons at the club.

“I wasn't going to miss this. . . . First time I ever saw that happen. I literally followed them into the converted-toilet dressing room and started up a conversation with them, directed at Paul and John, as I recall. I offered them eight pounds, about twelve dollars, a day to play at the Casanova. I told them they were going to be as big as Elvis. John looked at me. His eyes rolled.”

Leach, a man who loved being part of the Merseyside music revolution, declares that he knew inside, just by watching them, the fame that lay ahead for the boys.

Bigger than Elvis? That was impossible, wasn't it? Even the publicly confident John Lennon was incredulous at the statement.

Leach says, “He turned his head around, grimaced, and looked at me like I was mental.”

John, and especially Paul, talked to me in 1972 about the probability of their success, which in those days looked like an impossibility. But unlike their first full-time drummer, Pete Best, and his eventual replacement, “Richie” from Rory Storm's group, and the loyal but otherwise free-spirited Sutcliffe, the two were anxious optimists.

“We always thought we had a chance, but we had to grow, get bleeping better,” John said. “Back in 1960, it looked bleak, my friend, fucking bleak until a door was opened. And even then, who knew? I didn't.”