13 years ago
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
The Apple Boutique Story
This first Apple venture was located at 94 Baker Street, London W1 and was as Paul said "A beautiful place where you could buy beautiful things."
The Apple boutique started life in the 19th century as a four-story house. Over the years it evolved into an office and shops in the busy part of London at the corner of Baker Street and Paddington Street. During the 60's three Dutch designers, Mr. Simon Posthuma, Ms. Josje Leeger, and Ms. Marijke Koeger had an initially successful fashion boutique called the Trend in Amsterdam. It was closed due to financial problems. Simon and Marijke wandered around Europe before moving to London where they met Simon Hayes and Barry Finch. Hayes became the business manager while Finch joined the 3 Dutch designers who became known as the "Fool." Pattie Harrison was familiar with them and even wore some of their designs. How it all started is not clear, but in September 1967 the Beatles gave the "Fool" 100,000 pounds to design and stock the new Apple Boutique.
The "Fool" engaged several dozen art students to paint a huge psychedelic mural across the entire front and side of the store. Instant complaints from local merchants soon had them erasing the mural. The "Fool" also created the psychedelic designs for John's Rolls-Royce and a fireplace for George. Pete Shotton managed the store with Pattie Harrison's sister Jennie. Invitations to the grand opening, on 5 December 1967, read 'Come at 7.46. Fashion Show at 8.16.' John and George were the only Beatles that attended. The only drink available that night was apple juice. The Apple Boutique turned out to be a financial disaster and was closed just 8 months later. On Tuesday morning, 30 July 1968 the staff was told they could give everything away. Paul's "beautiful place" was no more.
Posters
Apple Post Card
Apple Paper Shopping Bag
Apple Bookmarker
Apple Clothing Tag She Loves You: the Lost Beatles Track Story
by David Haber
What happened to the original masters of She Loves You and the subsequent making of Sie Liebt Dich is one of the biggest mysteries in the history and lore of the Beatles. This is my own theory.
The History of She Loves You
She Loves You was recorded at EMI Abbey Road Studio 2 on July 1, 1963. Mono mixing and editing was performed on July 4. Since the original tapes for these sessions no longer exist, all that Mark Lewisohn could say about this session in his book The Beatles Recording Sessions, besides the dates, was:
"Precise details of the recording takes no longer exist, but three reels of tape were filled in putting down She Loves You and its B-side I'll Get You..."
On January 29, 1964, while in France for live performances at the Olympia Theater, the Beatles recorded Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand and Sie Liebt Dich for their German fans at a recording session at EMI Pathe Marconi Studios, Paris. The first takes of Can't Buy Me Love were also recorded during those Paris recording sessions that day.
While it is commonly known that the original rhythm (instrumental backing) track from I Want To Hold Your Hand was used to record Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand, it is also commonly believed that the entire recording of Sie Liebt Dich was done completely from scratch. Quoting again from Lewisohn's Recording Sessions:
"First task was to add Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand vocals to the English rhythm track of I Want To Hold Your Hand, mixed down from four-track to two-track. The 'best' versions were takes 5 and 7, with overdubbed handclaps, edited together later.
"For Sie Liebt Dich, the Beatles recorded a new rhythm track, the 1 July 1963 two-track tape having been scrapped once the mono master was prepared. This was done in 13 takes, onto which they overdubbed, in one take, the vocals in the rhythm left/vocals right pattern of their earlier two-track tapes."
Because the two-track master is missing, She Loves You exists only in mono, as it was never mixed into stereo.
In addition, Allen J. Weiner, in The Beatles Ultimate Recording Guide, agrees:
"Sie Liebt Dich was a completely different recording from She Loves You and included a new instrumental track."
My Revelation
I've always personally accepted the above descriptions of how Sie Liebt Dich was created. Compare the released versions of She Loves You and Sie Liebt Dich yourself, they do sound very different from each other.
Although She Loves You only exists in mono, there are stereo versions of Sie Liebt Dich on both the Parlophone and Capitol Rarities albums. These versions sound as Lewisohn describes the final Paris recordings above, rhythm track on the left and German vocals on the right.
When listening to this stereo version of Sie Liebt Dich recently, I thought it might be fun to try and make a fake stereo She Loves You by synching the mono She Loves You on one channel with the rhythm track from the stereo Sie Liebt Dich on the other. (Others have attempted to do this as well, one bootleg actually passed off such a synch job as "the missing stereo version of She Loves You".)
However, when I attempted to do this, I immediately noticed that the two tracks are possibly more than coincidentally the same.
Despite the accepted documentation, I have found strong evidence that the Sie Liebt Dich that was recorded on January 29, 1964 in Paris might be new vocals overdubbed onto the July 1, 1963 She Loves You rhythm track, in the very same way they made Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand.
This means that even though the July 1, 1963 two-track master of She Loves You may now be destroyed or missing, I believe it could have still existed on January 29, 1964 for the making of Sie Liebt Dich.
Keys To The Puzzle
The key to proving that both tracks have identical origins is to hear them both at the same time. However, it is very hard to successfully play back She Loves You and Sie Liebt Dich together and keep them synchronized. I believe this is due to two major factors. These two factors are also very instrumental in understanding why, upon casual listening, the tracks seem to sound so different.
1. Tape Speed
Every release of Sie Liebt Dich is slightly faster than the Parlophone She Loves You. To add to the confusion, the Parlophone release is slightly faster than the American Swan and Capitol releases, which are similar. This makes the difference for American listeners even more acute. (Listen to the comparisons of the Swan She Loves You and the Odeon Sie Liebt Dich above.)
It is possible that the original speed difference is due to differences between the tape decks at Abbey Road where the rhythm track was recorded and those at Pathe Marconi in Paris where Sie Liebt Dich was produced (a difference which was later compounded when the mono mix of She Loves You made its way to America).
A turntable or tape recorder with a vari-speed function or a computer's sound editing program can be used to successfully match the speed of the two versions. When this is done, both versions become perfectly in tune musically with each other. This is an important fact. If they were totally separate recordings, played in the same key but at slightly different tempos, when corrected to match speeds, their musical keys would not match. But this is not the case.
The speed differential between the original Parlophone mix and the German mix may also be at least partially intentional, keep reading.
2. Tape Edits in Mono Mix
We can hear that the mono mix of She Loves You is very heavily edited. Sie Liebt Dich does not appear to be. Listen to this sound clip which contains three examples of edits in She Loves You from the version on the Past Masters 1 CD.
The first edit in the above version is slightly hard to hear, it takes place in the middle of the guitar after "you know you should be glad", this is approximately 1:15 into the song. The next two are much easier to hear, right before "pride can hurt you too" at 1:22 into the song, and then again right before "because she loves you" at 1:29 into the song.
These edits, and others, are in every release of She Loves You but they are easiest to hear on the Past Masters CD. Steps were taken during the mastering of earlier 45 and LP versions to hide the edits somewhat, this seems not to have been done when Past Masters was released.
The edits throw any synchonization attempts off, as they were done by hand and each physical tape edit possibly includes a tiny bit more of each recording than it should, or a tiny bit less. These slight editing mistakes are not big enough to notice upon casual listening, but are big enough to cause synch attempts to seem to drift in and out of synchronization as the edited version first includes tiny snippets of the original recording where it shouldn't, and then loses tiny bits later that should be there, when compared to the seemingly unedited Sie Liebt Dich.
A Controversial Theory
But why is the mono mix of She Loves You so highly edited, much more than any other early Beatles release? I have a theory as to why this is.
It is documented that at the time She Loves You was recorded, the Beatles were recording on a two-track tape machine. That means the song would have been recorded with the rhythm track on one channel and the voices on the other.
We also know that it took much time, especially in the early years, for George to work out his lead guitar parts, although once he worked out the part, he played very well. This is reason to believe that George's guitar might have been recorded separately from the rhythm track which was done first.
In the two-track days, for that to be accomplished, since both tracks were already taken up, one for the rhythm track and the other for the vocals, it would have been necessary to "mix down" both of these tracks to one track of a new tape, thereby opening up a new free track.
It's possible George Martin opted not to do this for two main reasons. First, a "mix-down" step would mean an additional tape generation, meaning the introduction of a lot of tape noise (hiss). Also, it meant relinquishing the ability to re-mix. Once mixed-down, the levels of the vocals to the rhythm track would be forever set and unchangeable, and it would be impossible, for example, to change something in the vocal without affecting the rhythm track.
Instead, it's possible to believe that George's lead guitar track was simply recorded on a separate tape, to be played back in synch with first two-track tape when making the mix. There is evidence they had done something similar to this earlier, on a smaller scale, with things like John's harmonica on From Me To You and Thank You Girl, where we know the harmonica is not part of the main rhythm track, because of tape evidence of the actual edit pieces, and differences in the mono and stereo mixes of the song.
If George's guitar had to be synched with the main tape when making the mono mix, that could explain why the mono mix is so heavily edited. It was way too difficult to get it all perfectly synchronized in one take, so they edited together all of the best attempts.
In addition, this perhaps explains why there is no stereo mix of She Loves You, because it would have been too hard to do, and there's no way they could do a stereo mix that sounded exactly like the mono one. There is documented evidence that George Martin did something like this again later, issuing I Am The Walrus in fake stereo rather than attempt a true-stereo mix because an effect created during the mono mix (the King Lear voice-over) could not be recreated in the same way.
I admit I have no proof that there was a separate George guitar track, it is only a theory. At the very least, upon the evidence of all the tape edits in the mono mix, the She Loves You master tapes must have been comprised of several separately recorded components which were assembled for the mono mix. This sheds some light on many of the lingering questions in the making of She Loves You and Sie Liebt Dich mystery.
Norman Smith, engineer for both She Loves You sessionsIt's important to remember that all of the documenation we have on the making of both She Loves You and Sie Liebt Dich is shaky, at best. Taking a look again at the quote from Lewisohn:
"For Sie Liebt Dich, the Beatles recorded a new rhythm track, the 1 July 1963 two-track tape having been scrapped once the mono master was prepared. This was done in 13 takes, onto which they overdubbed, in one take, the vocals in the rhythm left/vocals right pattern of their earlier two-track tapes."
We know at least part of that account is wrong, the vocal overdubs were not accomplished in one take, as the outtake from Anthology proves.
I think it is reasonable to believe that the thirteen takes that Lewisohn describes it took to re-record the Sie Liebt Dich rhythm track could instead have been thirteen takes to successfully reconstruct the rhythm track for Sie Liebt Dich from the components of the original She Loves You master tapes. This process would have been very laborious, and could have easily taken thirteen tries, the very reason a stereo mix was abandoned originally.
At the same time, is it reasonable to believe it would have taken the Beatles thriteen takes to re-record the rhythm track for a song they already knew very well by this point?
If indeed some recombining of the master tapes was involved in recreating the She Loves You rhythm track, this could be the very cause of the speed differences between the two releases. It may have been necessary for them to slightly speed up the She Loves You two-track master in Paris as they were making the mix, in an attempt to make the various tape components match better.
Deciding For Yourself
Despite the difficulty due to the factors described above, it is still possible to synchronize She Loves You and Sie Liebt Dich enough to demonstrate the phenomenon of how alike they sound. When you listen to them synchronized, it sounds as if the lead guitar and bass guitar parts are identical throughout. In addition, the drum part also sounds like it is identical in several unique passages.
To help you explore the striking similarities between She Loves You and Sie Liebt Dich, I suggest to listen to the same segment of both songs, the Parlophone mono mix of She Loves You and the stereo mix of Sie Liebt Dich from the Parlophone Rarities LP.
Besides being generally alike, here are some specific things to look for:
The de-emphasized drum beat after the second "Yeah Yeah Yeah".
The lead guitar has an identical note-doubling in the phrase right before the vocal.
The unique drum break before "and you know..."
Extra notes in bass line under "but now she said she knows..."
The lead guitar phrases, the first of which starts sloppily.
When listening to these examples, try to focus on one instrument at a time. Listening in headphones makes it easier to focus on each instrumental element.
Also, listen for what is alike, rather than what is missing from one or other, as missing sounds can easily be explained by being "buried" in their respective mixes by other sounds or differences in the mixing and mastering processes.
After hearing the two versions of the song synchronized, and considering the details described above, it's my opinion that the two recordings, She Loves You and Sie Liebt Dich, were made using the same instrumental performance. However, we may never know the answer for sure. Many of the people involved are no longer with us, and it was years ago. Perhaps if more of the Sie Liebt Dich recording session (a bit of which is included above) is ever released from the EMI vaults, we may know if they really did record a new live rhythm track for Sie Liebt Dich that day in Paris in 1964. Until then, we'll just have to depend on our own ears.
And remember, it was George Martin who said "All you need is ears".
Why the Beatles Broke Up
Mikal Gilmore on his new investigation into the Fab Four's fall.
I came of age in the time that was also the age of the Beatles, and I've always been grateful for that simultaneity. Along with the Beatles, and no doubt because them, many of us grew into an awareness that shared tastes in music might also amount to shared community, and that community could amount to new ideals, new oppositions, new fun, art, fear and political power. Now, these years later, I think of the Beatles as one of the most romantic and dramatic exemplars of democracy that helped move youth culture in the 1960s: They were themselves a democratic unit — all for one, one for all, and in times of disagreement, they nonetheless enjoyed a fraternal sense of accord that made consensus a functional part of their shared dreams.But democracy is always tenuous and, in any real way, ephemeral, and it was how the Beatles exemplified these latter qualities that is what made for the dynamics we saw at work in the Beatles' end story. By the time they came apart, no matter the personal differences and rivalries and any internal pain and madness, the Beatles were just too big and important to break up without saying something about the world that they had helped shape. As the 1960s' hopes of community and free-form democracy gave way to something harder and more bitter, the Beatles too fell prey to the dissolution, and they knew it. After all, they had believed so deeply in love as a means to personal and social redemption, there was no way they could leave each other without breaking both their times and each other's hearts.
This has all been observed in many ways in the past, and will be for generations to come. Yet even if it makes a sad sort of sense — a symbol of unity that ends, like the era it centered, in disunity — there will still always be something mysterious about why and how the Beatles came apart the way they did, in so much rancor and avarice. John Lennon always referred to the band's end as "a divorce," but that was simply how he justified his own leave-taking (and clearly, Lennon was no model for how to separate fairly from others, given how he left his first wife, Cynthia).
What actually happened, I've come to believe, was something different and worse than divorce. I started work on this story well over a year ago, making my way through over 65 texts and taking (exactly) 1,440 pages of notes. Not surprisingly, the various historians, critics, biographers, musicologists, sociologists and journalists I read had strong views about whose motives accomplished what in the debacle, who was guilty and who was simply helpless in the sweep of events. In truth, there were good guys and no villains, but because these were fallible people, they certainly made some grievous errors.
Through all my research, certain conclusions became inevitable, and they managed to surprise me a bit: The Beatles' end was an accident, a maneuver by John Lennon that went horribly wrong.
It's long been known that the Beatles in fact ended when, in September 1969, Lennon announced to his bandmates, to his wife Yoko Ono and to manager Allen Klein that he was leaving his famous group, even as the album Abbey Road was meeting with the biggest sales the Beatles had yet known. Several months later, as this article chronicles, Paul McCartney also announced he was leaving the Beatles, though unlike Lennon, he said so publicly.
Though there are numerous moments in the group's chronology of dissolution that were crucial events, this move by Paul was perhaps the most critical of them all. He had loved the Beatles more than the others had — he had certainly loved John more than John had loved him — and it was due to Paul's resourcefulness and tenacity that the Beatles held together and moved forward so remarkably after the death of the manager who had made them famous, Brian Epstein. Though Lennon is more commonly regarded as the Beatles' true genius (which is inarguable: he wrote the bulk of their masterpieces and until the last couple years of their career, wrote the best tracks on their albums), it is also fair to say that without McCartney, the Beatles would not have mattered in history with such ingenuity and durability. Also, unlike Lennon, McCartney understood that the Beatles' four members would never create so much wonder separately as they had collectively. So for Paul McCartney — the only Beatle who had never left the group in a fit of pique or out of whim — to leave meant, in fact, the Beatles were over. He wasn't about to play any games about his love for what the Beatles were, nor was he going to dishonor his own pain.McCartney had simply been forced into an impossible position by John Lennon, George Harrison and Allen Klein. At least two of those men should have loved Paul as much as he loved them, but instead they had come to resent what they saw as his drive and his domineering ways. Who knows what Lennon and Harrison thought would have become of the Beatles had it not been for McCartney — the only opinion they ever offered on the matter was that they had never expected to survive past Epstein's demise. The fact that they did is also what made them great forever, but no doubt in the midst of their unprecedented reality, any outside perspective was impossible; they were, after all, a notoriously insular outfit.
To the degree that any of this is tragedy — given that all things must pass — then it's indeed a manifold tragedy. Harrison and Lennon were profound men who understood the necessity for hope and fellowship, and yet they were also men who could be profoundly petty and ungrateful. Both of them early on came to dislike the reality of the Beatles' massive audience — "Fucking bastards, sucking us to death," John Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970 — and both men became uncharacteristically obsessed with financial eminence near the group's end.
But what I found most troubling, most tragic, in all of this was two things: Both Lennon and Harrison (Lennon, clearly, in particular) did their best to sabotage the Beatles from mid-1968 onward, and when it all came irrevocably apart, I believe that both men regretted what they had wrought. I don't think that John Lennon and George Harrison (but Lennon, again, in particular) truly meant the Beatles to end, even though they might not have known it in the moment. I think they meant to shift the balance of power, I think they meant for the Beatles to become, in a sense, a more casual form of collaboration, and I think they clearly intended to rein in Paul McCartney. But they overplayed their hand and — there's no way around it — they treated McCartney shamefully during 1969, and unforgivably in the early months of 1970.
The immediate aftermath was as dramatic as everything that led up to it, though that isn't something we had the room to track much in this article, given its already considerable length. Lennon was furious and hurt when Paul said he was leaving — he too knew there would be no repairing this, even though he had already been indicating he thought the band would resume — and he and McCartney soon launched into some sour exchanges in interviews and in song.When McCartney sued to dissolve the band's partnership, the three other Beatles claimed in court papers that they saw no reason to dissolve, that there was no real incompatibility that would prevent them all from continuing to make music together. They were saying this for legal and financial reasons, of course, but on some level, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr almost certainly meant it. They had thrown away something special, and the man they chose to align themselves with, accountant and manager Allen Klein, turned out to be somebody they lost faith in. After that happened, they again had Paul McCartney to thank, because his legal actions at the end probably saved their legacy. But the other Beatles never apologized to McCartney for how they handled him in 1970. Some things healed with time, but some losses were eternal. Near the end of his life, John Lennon said, "My partings are not as nice as I'd like them to be. I regret a bad taste to it."
I realize there's an unseemly aspect to concentrating on how terribly the Beatles ended. Clearly, their music outshines the disaster and it always will. And though Lennon and McCartney no longer collaborated in the same ways in the group's last few years, their presence together as they continued to make music, including their contrasts, was still a partnership — one that was too often missed in their subsequent music apart.
Unbecoming or not, though, I've never come across a story that fascinated or moved me more than this particular one. The end of the Beatles was convoluted and acrimonious, but it was also transcendent: No matter their problems, no matter how much they viewed one another with suspicion in their last year or two, the Beatles still knew how to talk to each other through their music, and nobody else has truly matched that heart-to-heart they achieved. Describing working with them at the very end, on Abbey Road, their longtime producer George Martin said, "There was an inexplicable presence when all four were together in a room. Their music was bigger than they were."
That presence went well beyond the confines of room; it was a presence in the world at that time. Better than that, it was a force in history; it made possible the world we now live in, and nothing will ever unmake that. I will always be grateful to have lived in the time of the Beatles.
©Copyright 2009 Rolling Stone
George Martin - The Record Producer
BBC Radio 6, Broadcast on September 5, 2009
If the re-release of the Beatles catalogue, known among fans as Beatles Remastered Stereo and Mono 2009, rekindled interest in the Fab Four, then listeners might also like to cast their minds back to another prominent “member” of the group - producer Sir George Martin. (Of course, they’d like to include manager Brian Epstein in the group as well.)
In this BBC programme, Richard Allinson and Steve Levine examine Sir George’s work as a producer, arranger and, through his experiments with sound, technical innovator. Highlights include excerpts from the newly restored versions of the original master tapes for Please Please Me, along with analysis of the original multi-track of Come Together.
This programme also gives listeners the opportunity to hear some of the Beatles most famous songs in a new way. Because of the limitations of tape machines during the 1960s, it was necessary to either record or mix various instruments and voices onto the same track. Once they’d been committed to tape there was no way of separating them. But now, through the use of revolutionary software, listeners can hear some of these parts in isolation for the very first time.
In his exclusive interview, Sir George talks about various aspects of the studio and recording process, the albums Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road, along with a number of songs, including Strawberry Fields Forever, Tomorrow Never Knows and Rain.
If the re-release of the Beatles catalogue, known among fans as Beatles Remastered Stereo and Mono 2009, rekindled interest in the Fab Four, then listeners might also like to cast their minds back to another prominent “member” of the group - producer Sir George Martin. (Of course, they’d like to include manager Brian Epstein in the group as well.)
In this BBC programme, Richard Allinson and Steve Levine examine Sir George’s work as a producer, arranger and, through his experiments with sound, technical innovator. Highlights include excerpts from the newly restored versions of the original master tapes for Please Please Me, along with analysis of the original multi-track of Come Together.
This programme also gives listeners the opportunity to hear some of the Beatles most famous songs in a new way. Because of the limitations of tape machines during the 1960s, it was necessary to either record or mix various instruments and voices onto the same track. Once they’d been committed to tape there was no way of separating them. But now, through the use of revolutionary software, listeners can hear some of these parts in isolation for the very first time.
In his exclusive interview, Sir George talks about various aspects of the studio and recording process, the albums Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road, along with a number of songs, including Strawberry Fields Forever, Tomorrow Never Knows and Rain.
Download directions: Do NOT click on links, but select them with right button and then choose "save object as..."
Disc 1
Track 1 Track 2 Track 3 Track 4 Track 5 Track 6 Track 7 Track 8 Track 9 Track 10 Track 11
Disc 2
Track 1 Track 2 Track 3 Track 4 Track 5 Track 6 Track 7
Thanks to Bruce M.
The Mal Evans Diaries
When Mal Evans died in 1976, rumors swirled that he had been working on some memoirs. Tentatively titled “Living the Beatles’ Legend,” the book was to have been based on some 15 years of diary entries in which Mal was ensconced in the life of all four Beatles as they rose to superstardom, wrote and recorded scores of classic songs and ultimately broke up.One would have thought that like other posthumous works, Mal’s memoirs would have been published soon after his death. This had the potential to be the mother of all Beatles biographies: A member of the Beatles’ inner circle – one that was honest to a fault – giving the real scoop on the Fab Four.
But the diaries vanished.
No one knew of their whereabouts; a briefcase was once found in Sydney, Australia that allegedly contained the lost diaries, but further inspection revealed it to be a fraud. Three years ago, however, the London Sunday Times Magazine revealed the truth. The diaries had been with Mal’s widow, Lily Evans, ever since the mid 1980s, when Yoko Ono saved them from the basement of a New York publisher.
While a book has yet to be published containing the full story, the Times published excerpts of the diaries that are tantalizing at times, but reveal little about the Beatles. It does, however, give us a great deal of insight into Mal’s life and his devotion to the Fab Four.
Only Mal Evans could (or would) chronicle his time with the Beatles with recollections such as, “Late afternoon went over to the McCartney’s in Wirral, and had dinner with them. Paul and Jane [Asher, McCartney's then girlfriend] had traveled up for the New Year – also Martha. Fan belt broke.” He writes of these times nonchalantly, but he was there when the Beatles let their guards down.
He gives us insight into possible alternatives to the name for Abbey Road, mentioning Four in the Bar, All Good Children Go to Heaven, Turn Ups and Inclinations as possible titles (none seem to fit in retrospect, do they?). He played on several Beatle songs; in a hilarious prelude to the Saturday Night Live “cowbell” skit, Mal played one on “With a Little Help From My Friends,” prompting Paul to ask, tongue-in-cheek, “Who played that great cow bell?”
At times, though, Mal felt he was being taken for granted. Being paid a pittance for his devotion and work – less than £40 per week – he was often broke, having to support a wife and two children while spending most of his time with the Beatles. He was the main go-fer boy: “”I would get requests from the four of them to do six different things at one time and it was always a case of relying on instinct and experience in awarding priorities.” Often, John would be in a stupor, only to snap out of it and mutter, “Socks, Mal,” and off Mal would go to the local department store to get several pairs of socks. Once, the Beatles had no cups to drink milk with their sandwiches; Mal pulled out four plastic cups from his pocket.
Mal realized his role within the Beatles, and it bothered him, but he was doing what he truly loved. In perhaps the most poignant moment of the diaries, he confesses:
I feel very hurt and sad inside – only big boys don’t cry. Why I should feel hurt and reason for writing this is ego… I thought I was different from other people in my relationship with the Beatles and being loved by them and treated so nice, I felt like one of the family. Seems I fetch and carry… I always tell myself – look, everybody wants to take from, be satisfied, try to give and you will receive. After all this time I have about £70 to my name, but was content and happy. Loving them as I do, nothing is too much trouble, because I want to serve them.
Beatles' Wives - 3: Maureen Tigrett/Starkey
From SEVENTEEN:she's on a month long holiday with a Beatle And MAUREEN's DAD SAYS 'WHY NOT?'
She is attractive, wonderful company... and sweet seventeen.
And he is... well HE is Ringo Starr, the Beatles drummer, the pop idol, and heart-throb of thousands of girls.
And they are on a month-long holiday together in the tropical magic of the Virgin Islands in the West Indies.
Even in this with-it age, the golden age of the teenager, is it the kind of holiday most parents would like for girl of 17?
The father of Ringo's friend, trainee hairdresser Maureen Cox, has no qualms about his daughter's holiday.
He said at his council flat in Boundary -street, Liverpool: "Maureen is a sensible girl and well able to look after herself. I cannot see her gettting into any kind of trouble."
Maureen's father, Mr. Joe Cox, 50, did not know his daughter was 5,000 miles awayon a Carribean cruise until he read a newspaper report.
He said: "Maureen told me she was going with Ringo for a few days in London.
"But it really didn't come as a surprise to my wife or myself when we learned she was half-way across the world.
"In any case it would have made no difference. I would have given my permission to go anyway."
Maureen met 23-year-old Ringo at Liverpool's famous Cavern Club two years ago.
Mr. Cox said: "Ringo and my daughter are nothing more than friends."
Sharing the holiday happiness with Ringo and Maureen are fellow Beatle Paul McCartney,21, and his friend actress Jane Asher, 18.
Ringo's Wife Shy, QuietBy EDDIE GILMORE
London, England - The eighteen year old wife of Ringo Starr - one of the world's best known bridegrooms - is one of the world's least known brides.
Maureen Cox, or Mrs. Starr, is a small, shy girl of few words.
Since her Feb. 11 wedding to the Beatles' off beat drummer, her public utterances have been about as rare as signatures of Button Gwinnet, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independance.
Mrs. Starr will not grant interviews.
"She doesn't want to get mixed up with publicity," said a spokesman for the mop headed musicians, "and Ringo doesn't want her to, either."
A search of the records indicates that Mrs. Starr (real married name Mrs. Richard Starkey) has spoken only a few scentences in public, all in answer to reporters' questions.
Her declarations were made in the flowerless back yard of a seaside villa in Hove on the English Channel, where she and her husband agreed to meet the press on the second day of their three day honeymoon.
Learning to Cook
Even as she spoke, she nervously clutched her 24 year old husband's hand.
Here's the record:
QUESTION: "Has Ringo changed since you met him three years ago?"
ANSWER: "No."
Q. "Have you missed Ringo when he's gone away on tours?"
A. "He went away but he always came back to me."
Q. "Do you agree with marriage?"
A. "Yes."
Q. Do you expect to have children?"
A. "Yes."
Q. "How many?"
No answer, but Ringo said: "Maureen hasn't made up her mind."
Q. "Are you enjoying your honeymoon?"
A. "Yes, but I don't like the publicity."
Q. "Can you cook?"
A. "No." But Ringo said, "She's not bad. She's learning."
Q. "Where did you meet Ringo?"
A. (Very softly) "I can't remember."
Earlier in the news conference, Ringo had said they met at Liverpool's Cavern Club where the Beatles got started three years ago.
Q. "Where are you and Ringo going to live?"
A. "I'm not really fussy where I live - providing it's with Ringo."
Q. "How does it feel to be married to a man that millions of girls all over the world would like to marry?"
No answer.
Born Mary Cox in Liverpool, she began calling herself Maureen shortly before she met Ringo.
By trade she was a hairdresser.
Maureen looks a lot like a Beatle herself.
SHE HAS AS MUCH HAIR as Ringo, Paul McCartney, George Harrison or John Lennon. Like the Beatles, Maureen wears bangs that flop downward almost to her eyelashes. She wears her ears exposed as do the Beatles. Shapely in the right places, she's about 2 1/2 inches shrter than Ringo and he stands about 5 feet 7. Her education is not extensive, for she stopped school at the age od 15. That's when she met Ringo.
Will Ringo's marriage affect The Beatles? The Beatles don't think so. John Lennon, who is, perhaps, the most articulate of the musicians said:
"You're bound to loose a few fans - the ones who believe that one day they might marry you." Jhn is the other married Beatle. His wife is Cynthia and he keeps her out of the limelight.
"I DON'T THINK IT'LL really affect our popularity," Lennon went on. "There might be a reshuffling of fans from one Beatle to another - at least that's what happened when I got married, but now they seem to carry on as if I'm not married."
How Many Records Did the Beatles Actually Sell?
The Fab Four once again is in the news with the announcement that remastered versions of their catalog will be available in September 2009. The Beatles were Capitol Records’ most famous recording artists. Although their mercurial career spanned but a few short years in the 1960s their phenomenological impact was incalculable. Their prodigious output (some 19 albums in 7 years) remains a profound legacy of enduring artistic influence. Literally and figuratively the Beatles defined the cultural mores of a decade, affecting the attitudes, orientations and outlooks of a generation. But there still remains a nagging question - how many records did they actually sell?
During the period 1964 - 1985 the answer is 75 million (74,786,835 million to be exact). During the period 1991 - 2008 the answer is 57 million (source: SoundScan results quoted in Randy Lewis, “Beatles’ catalog will be reissued Sept. 9 in remastered versions,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2009). My informed estimate is that during the period 1986 - 1990 they sold approximately 1.5 million albums per year, for a total of approximately 7.5 million. Thus the answer to the question is approximately 139.5 million albums since 1964.
Here’s how I arrived at early sales data. In 1985 I was Vice President of Capitol Records and one of my jobs was overseeing the marketing of Beatles records in the U.S. This required more finesse than one might think because the Beatles constantly were suing Capitol (not to mention each other) over one thing or another. The nuances of the Beatles’ contracts and exactly what they were suing about is an interesting topic in its own right. But for right now I’d like to concentrate on sales. The table summarizes net U.S. sales of Beatles albums during the period 1964 - 1985 and the figure visually depicts the same information. Beatles sales comprised some 25% - 30% of Capitol’s total sales during this period.
During the period 1964 - 1985 the answer is 75 million (74,786,835 million to be exact). During the period 1991 - 2008 the answer is 57 million (source: SoundScan results quoted in Randy Lewis, “Beatles’ catalog will be reissued Sept. 9 in remastered versions,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2009). My informed estimate is that during the period 1986 - 1990 they sold approximately 1.5 million albums per year, for a total of approximately 7.5 million. Thus the answer to the question is approximately 139.5 million albums since 1964.
Here’s how I arrived at early sales data. In 1985 I was Vice President of Capitol Records and one of my jobs was overseeing the marketing of Beatles records in the U.S. This required more finesse than one might think because the Beatles constantly were suing Capitol (not to mention each other) over one thing or another. The nuances of the Beatles’ contracts and exactly what they were suing about is an interesting topic in its own right. But for right now I’d like to concentrate on sales. The table summarizes net U.S. sales of Beatles albums during the period 1964 - 1985 and the figure visually depicts the same information. Beatles sales comprised some 25% - 30% of Capitol’s total sales during this period.
It’s possible to derive some tentative conclusions from this data.
First, sales generally declined after 1975, only to be resuscitated in 1980 and 1981 by the unfortunate death of John Lennon. Sales reached an all-time low in 1983, improving only slightly in 1984 and 1985.
Second, the sales and returns behavior of the band’s last album of new material resembled most conventional pop product in that it had a short product life cycle. It was shipped heavy on initial release only to confront subsequent returns and much lower sales. “Rarities,” released in March 1980, had gross U.S. sales of 380 thousand units in the first 15 weeks following its release - approximately 80% of its total gross sales at the end of 52 weeks. Returns at the end of 52 weeks were approximately 13% of gross sales. After that net sales scarcely were sufficient to justify the album’s continued inclusion in the active catalog. This high degree of sales velocity indicates the album appealed to a relatively small cadre of followers who either acquired it quickly or not at all.
Third, the sales performance of the then-most-recent compilation albums was poor. “Reel Music” (released in March 1982) achieved net sales of only 225 thousand units. In 1983 and 1984 returns exceeded gross sales. While “20 Greatest Hits” (released in October 1982) did somewhat better, it still was the lowest-selling compilation album after “Reel Music.” Was there a genuine fall-off in demand for Beatles records? Or was Capitol simply unable to devise, implement and maintain the requisite sales and marketing strategies to bolster sales? The simple fact of the matter is that the advent of the CD circa 1985 saved both Capitol’s and the Beatles’ respective butts. The rest is history with re-issues, remastered versions, new compilations and the like.
OK here are the small-print caveats. This information was compiled right at the advent of CDs (in fact the reason why it was pulled together to begin with was in connection with whether Capitol even had the right to issue Beatles CDs). It doesn’t include anything after 1985. It’s albums only and not the kajillions of singles they also sold. It includes all configurations of albums that were then-existing, including LPs, 8-track cartridges, cassettes and picture discs. It includes records that were manufactured in the U.S. but then exported elsewhere. It does not include records that were manufactured in Canada or anywhere else outside of the U.S. It does not include bootlegs, solo records, or records derived from masters not recorded for EMI (such as the Vee-Jay brouhaha and records released by United Artists that were the soundtracks of the Beatles’ movies, until Capitol acquired United Artists). Nor does it include records that were handed out the back door, given away as free goods or record club freebies, if some of the Beatles’ lawsuit allegations are to be believed. All of this information is public record in various court files so I’m not disclosing anything that’s secret.
Now if I only could get my hands on some Rolling Stones sales info ….
by David Kronemyer
Story References: » Deconstructing Pop Culture: How Many Records Did the Beatles Actually Sell?, by David Kronemyer, Beatles SoundScan results, remastered, Vice President of Capitol Records, Wed, 29 Apr 2009, © Music Industry Newswire™
Writing The Beatles' first contract
As The Beatles' first contract sells for £240,000, the man who drew it up reflects on how he came to write a piece of musical history.
The Beatles' original contract between themselves and Brian Epstein has fetched £240,000 at auction.
The document, which was drawn up in 1962 went under the hammer at an auction of rock memorabilia in London on 4 September, 2008.
It was written by Liverpool solicitor and now retired district judge, David Harris, "I was a young solicitor with Silverman and Livermore, I'd been made a partner in the middle of 1961 and I was doing general litigation," recalls David.
David Harris knew of Brian Epstein, but had never acted as solicitor for him when he was approached to write a contract between Epstein and The Beatles.
"It was in December 1961 and I got a call at the office from Brian, for whom I'd never previously acted.
"He said that he was interested in a group called The Beatles, which meant nothing to me at all, and he said he's like me to draw up a contract between him and them.
"That was in the middle of December and he wanted it before Christmas, therefore, I had to work very hard to draw up this contract as after all it was a new sphere for me, and in fact we got it out in time."
The Beatles' original contract between themselves and Brian Epstein has fetched £240,000 at auction.
The document, which was drawn up in 1962 went under the hammer at an auction of rock memorabilia in London on 4 September, 2008.
It was written by Liverpool solicitor and now retired district judge, David Harris, "I was a young solicitor with Silverman and Livermore, I'd been made a partner in the middle of 1961 and I was doing general litigation," recalls David.
David Harris knew of Brian Epstein, but had never acted as solicitor for him when he was approached to write a contract between Epstein and The Beatles.
"It was in December 1961 and I got a call at the office from Brian, for whom I'd never previously acted.
"He said that he was interested in a group called The Beatles, which meant nothing to me at all, and he said he's like me to draw up a contract between him and them.
"That was in the middle of December and he wanted it before Christmas, therefore, I had to work very hard to draw up this contract as after all it was a new sphere for me, and in fact we got it out in time."
The contract signed by The Beatles and Brian Epstein in 1962
Never signed
This first contract was never signed by Brian Epstein who vowed not to sign it until it he had secured a recording contract for the group.
"At that time in late December 1961 Pete Best was still the drummer," David Harris remembers. "Initially the contracts were all done in Brian's name, as an individual, but then things progressed.
"He realised it was more sensible to form a company, and in fact I formed the company for him, NEMS Enterprise Ltd, which meant of course there had to be a further contract drawn up between the new company and the group."
This contract, the successor of the one David Harris wrote in such a hurry in December 1961, is now hailed as one of the most important in rock and roll, marking the beginning of the groups journey to international stardom.
The contract is signed by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
The signatures of Harold Harrison and James McCartney, George and Paul's parents are also featured as their consent was needed because their sons were under 21.
Ted Owen, the managing director of The Fame Bureau, which is holding the auction has described it as "one of the most important documents in music history."
David Harris says Brian Epstein acted very properly throughout the process, "I was very concerned, and he was too, that their parents should be fully involved.
"They were of an age when it was necessary and desirable that the parents knew exactly what was going on.
"He did say he wanted to be scrupulously fair to them and did not want to take advantage of them.
At the time the contract was just one of many items of legal paperwork that David Harris was working on, it was only later as The Beatle's became superstars that he realised the significance of his contribution to musical history.
"Yes, it was a surprise that things happened so quickly," says David Harris.
"They did extremely well, they were very talented and are very talented."
By Paul Coslett, BBC Liverpool
Beatles' Wives - 2: Pattie Boyd/Harrison
George and Pattie Harrison: married in 1966
The inside story of George Harrison's marriage to Patti Boyd, as told us by his mother and mother-in-law!
by John Howard
from: Motion Picture Magazine, 1966
I had been told by George Harrison, Sr., to get in touch with the Warrington police to find out the secret location of the 40,000-pound sterling bungalow that Beatle George Harrison had given his parents to celebrate his wedding.
Accompanied by two plainclothes policemen, we drove from liverpool through Lancashire and Warrington to Cheshire.
Alas, the yellow-and-blue eaved bungalow, situated on the rolling Cheshire plain, looked deserted, and the bottles of milk were piling up on the front doorstep. A few telephone calls later, I learned that Mr. and Mrs. Harrison's plane had not been able to leave Heathrow airport because of snow on the runway, and were returning to the Liverpool area by train the following day.
An interview with George's mum-in-law, Mrs. Gaymer-Jones, awaited me at Wimbledon the following morning, so I flew off from Speke Airport.
I expected Diana Gaymer-Jones to be rather dishy from the intriguing wedding photographs I had seen. So my jaw dropped a few inches when the door to the modern, terraced house in Strathmore Road was opened by a youngish version of Honor Blackman (of Pussy Galore fame).
"Come in, Mr. Howard." she said. "You're just in time for coffee - how many sugars?" Diana Gaymer-Jones had just been collating press clippings of her doll-like daughter, Patti's wedding. So minutes later she was relating details of the romance that culminated in the wedding of the second last Beatle.
"George proposed to Patti on the night of their first date. It was love at first sight for both of them. The evening before, Patti had come home from work on the film A Hard Day's Night to tell me that she had met george Harrison and that he had asked her out. She had to refuse him, however, because, up to that point, she had a steady boyfriend and couldn't cancel a date with him just like that. Still, George wasn't to be daunted: He proposed to pat many times after that.
"It was so exciting the day she told me that she would like to bring George home to dinner. The children and I loved him immediately. He's such a fine boy and such a gentleman.
"And it all happened before we knew it. There was never any engagement or engagement ring - both Patti and george just knew they were going to get married eventually, so they felt that an engagement was unimportant. But, I am pleased that my daughter decided not to marry too young. Pat told me a long time ago that she didn't want to get married until she was 21. I was really relieved because, you see, my first marriage took place when I was very young. Unfortunately both my marriages failed. So I was pleased that Pat was so sensible.
"I first learned of the 'engagement' in a very casual way. Two Wednesdays ago, while we were driving to the theater, Pat told me very off-handedly, that she and george had decided to name the day. I nearly died of excitement. But I kept it a secret from all except two or three of my close friends - other than the members of the family, of course.
"The children were really marvelous about keeping the secret too. Patti was originally going to have a short white fox fur by Mary Quant, but then decided on the red one. And she bought me a lynx fur hat for Christmas, which I wore to the wedding. Later on at the reception, though, I took off the hat and let my hair down. The suit I wore - I'm wearing the skirt right now, incidentally - was from Ely's, a store here at Wimbledon where I worked, as a temporary before the Christmas rush.
"The morning of the wedding, the 'Princess' pulled up to the front door, Patti, her brothers and sisters, and I, were as excited as we could be. We drove to Epsom, arriving there before George, and were ushered inside. My brother, John Drysdale, who is managing director of Africa Research Ltd., was there to give the bride away. Two of our relatives were still expected. Brian Epstein, Beatle manager, started to get a bit nervous and suggested we get on with it.
"It all went so swiftly. There was no music - I'm sure I would have cried if there had been. When the rest of our relatives arrived, we all drove off to george and Patti's new home at Esher to celebrate."
"What did it feel like to have a daughter married to a millionaire?" I asked curiously. Diana replied, "We've never even thought of George like that. I never did believe money meant much at all. After having so many children, though, I realised that money is a necessary part of life. (Diana's other five children are, Colin, 20; Jennise, 18; she's a model, has visited the United States with Patti, and as a result gets lots of Beatle mail addressed to her; Paula, 16; David, 12, and Robert, 10.)
"I must admit I am pleased to know that Pat will be comfortable and won't have to coo and scrub the floors. Of course, George and Patti have this wonderful housekeeper of George's, Margaret, to look after them. Margaret is a treasure. She doesn't live in but comes by each day to do the housework and prepare meals. Patti will plan the meals and cook the special delicacies for things like dinner parties.
"I must tell you, the wedding presents are piling up. The children and I gave Patti and George a silver dressing-table set. My brother gave them two Chinese vases that are about three feet high and have been in the family for generations, and Patti gave George two silver goblets. They are George III 1700 circa, I think. 'Mummie,' Pat said to me wonderingly, 'they mst have been awfully expensive.' "
The mother of the bride is always happy when her daughter has made a good match - but it's sometimes sad for the mother of the groom. And Mrs. Louise Harrison in Warrington was no exception.
That evening I was finally able to reach her by phone, "Mrs. Harrison" I felt compelled to say, "you sound so sad. Don't tell me you're feeling a little down in the dumps about losing a son?"
"Well," replied george's motherly Mum. "I have got to admit it, John, I do feel a little sad right now, now that the excitement of the wedding has died down. Then, too, I had a fall and hurt my arm just a few days before the wedding, and I really haven't been so well since." "I'm sorry to hear that." I said. "You see, I'm doing a story on the wedding. Would you mind terribly if I asked you a few questions?"
"Not at all, John, go ahead."
"Do you mind if I do the story based on our telephone call?"
"Certainly," she said. "Go right ahead." And she began.
"The wedding happened so quickly. George told us it was going to take place, but we didn't know when. Then only four days in advance, we got word of the exact date. It's a shame our daughter, Louise, couldn't come over from America, but we couldn't cable or phone her for fear the news would leak out. No celebration was planned for after the wedding, and we couldn't tell george's two brothers Harry and Peter and their wives about it ahead of time, either.
"Nothing happened exactly the way it was planned. Mr. Epstein thought there would be a brief ceremony and that would be all. Harry and peter didn't know about it until the last moment, and by then it was too late for them to come down.
"But George is planing a second wedding celebration, just for family, when he comes home to Liverpool with his bride. George is very thoughtful. It was so generous of him to give us this lovely home as a surprise. It's very much like his own bungalow. he has one large living room, which we don't have, and an extra bathroom, but the main difference is we have a room upstairs as well. But most important, george has got himself a lovely bride who will look after him well. Patti's a great cook, too. George likes good English cooking - like roast chicken and legs of lamb - and patti knows how to cook for him.
"They are an ideal pair and I'm sure they'll be so happy together. They have had lots of cables from fans saying how pleased they are about the wedding, and there was loads and loads of mail from the fans waiting when they got home from London.
"George and Patti wanted to keep the wedding a secret, and John and Ringo's going away served as a cover-up. Mr. Epstein and Paul were both best men, but it was Mr. Epstein and my husband who actually signed the register as witnesses.
"We were a bit worried before the wedding, because a reporter came out to george's place at 6 A.M. and waited there for us to come out. George had to deny that he was getting married. Then the reporter's car followed us through the fog all the way up to the place at Epsom." (Luckily for the wedding party, the reporter took his photographer along, and Brian Epstein allowed him to take shots inside the Registry Office to supplement photographs taken by the Beatles' official photographer. Just as well, because none of the official photos of the actual ceremony turned out).
"We're pleased that everyone has been so happy about the wedding," said Mrs. Harrison. Meanwhile on the first days of their honeymoon as Esher two people were very happy for the sake of George's fans.
"The fans have been just wonderful to us," said Patti. "They are used to it all by now. Fans are more sensible and sensitive than most people realise, and they've showed us they love George and the other Beatles for themselves." To a query about the possibility of future Beatle babies, George replied, "We have got some definite ideas on how to bring up children." "In a year or so we shall probably start a family," he added. "and we'll try to keep our children with us as much as possible. But at the same time we wouldn't want them to be mixed up with any publicity lark.
"But there's plenty of time to think about that," he concluded. "In the meantime, we are expecting to slip away on our honeymoon shortly."
The inside story of George Harrison's marriage to Patti Boyd, as told us by his mother and mother-in-law!
by John Howard
from: Motion Picture Magazine, 1966
I had been told by George Harrison, Sr., to get in touch with the Warrington police to find out the secret location of the 40,000-pound sterling bungalow that Beatle George Harrison had given his parents to celebrate his wedding.Accompanied by two plainclothes policemen, we drove from liverpool through Lancashire and Warrington to Cheshire.
Alas, the yellow-and-blue eaved bungalow, situated on the rolling Cheshire plain, looked deserted, and the bottles of milk were piling up on the front doorstep. A few telephone calls later, I learned that Mr. and Mrs. Harrison's plane had not been able to leave Heathrow airport because of snow on the runway, and were returning to the Liverpool area by train the following day.
An interview with George's mum-in-law, Mrs. Gaymer-Jones, awaited me at Wimbledon the following morning, so I flew off from Speke Airport.
I expected Diana Gaymer-Jones to be rather dishy from the intriguing wedding photographs I had seen. So my jaw dropped a few inches when the door to the modern, terraced house in Strathmore Road was opened by a youngish version of Honor Blackman (of Pussy Galore fame).
"Come in, Mr. Howard." she said. "You're just in time for coffee - how many sugars?" Diana Gaymer-Jones had just been collating press clippings of her doll-like daughter, Patti's wedding. So minutes later she was relating details of the romance that culminated in the wedding of the second last Beatle.
"George proposed to Patti on the night of their first date. It was love at first sight for both of them. The evening before, Patti had come home from work on the film A Hard Day's Night to tell me that she had met george Harrison and that he had asked her out. She had to refuse him, however, because, up to that point, she had a steady boyfriend and couldn't cancel a date with him just like that. Still, George wasn't to be daunted: He proposed to pat many times after that.
"It was so exciting the day she told me that she would like to bring George home to dinner. The children and I loved him immediately. He's such a fine boy and such a gentleman.
"And it all happened before we knew it. There was never any engagement or engagement ring - both Patti and george just knew they were going to get married eventually, so they felt that an engagement was unimportant. But, I am pleased that my daughter decided not to marry too young. Pat told me a long time ago that she didn't want to get married until she was 21. I was really relieved because, you see, my first marriage took place when I was very young. Unfortunately both my marriages failed. So I was pleased that Pat was so sensible.
"I first learned of the 'engagement' in a very casual way. Two Wednesdays ago, while we were driving to the theater, Pat told me very off-handedly, that she and george had decided to name the day. I nearly died of excitement. But I kept it a secret from all except two or three of my close friends - other than the members of the family, of course.
"The children were really marvelous about keeping the secret too. Patti was originally going to have a short white fox fur by Mary Quant, but then decided on the red one. And she bought me a lynx fur hat for Christmas, which I wore to the wedding. Later on at the reception, though, I took off the hat and let my hair down. The suit I wore - I'm wearing the skirt right now, incidentally - was from Ely's, a store here at Wimbledon where I worked, as a temporary before the Christmas rush.
"The morning of the wedding, the 'Princess' pulled up to the front door, Patti, her brothers and sisters, and I, were as excited as we could be. We drove to Epsom, arriving there before George, and were ushered inside. My brother, John Drysdale, who is managing director of Africa Research Ltd., was there to give the bride away. Two of our relatives were still expected. Brian Epstein, Beatle manager, started to get a bit nervous and suggested we get on with it.
"It all went so swiftly. There was no music - I'm sure I would have cried if there had been. When the rest of our relatives arrived, we all drove off to george and Patti's new home at Esher to celebrate."
"What did it feel like to have a daughter married to a millionaire?" I asked curiously. Diana replied, "We've never even thought of George like that. I never did believe money meant much at all. After having so many children, though, I realised that money is a necessary part of life. (Diana's other five children are, Colin, 20; Jennise, 18; she's a model, has visited the United States with Patti, and as a result gets lots of Beatle mail addressed to her; Paula, 16; David, 12, and Robert, 10.)
"I must admit I am pleased to know that Pat will be comfortable and won't have to coo and scrub the floors. Of course, George and Patti have this wonderful housekeeper of George's, Margaret, to look after them. Margaret is a treasure. She doesn't live in but comes by each day to do the housework and prepare meals. Patti will plan the meals and cook the special delicacies for things like dinner parties.
"I must tell you, the wedding presents are piling up. The children and I gave Patti and George a silver dressing-table set. My brother gave them two Chinese vases that are about three feet high and have been in the family for generations, and Patti gave George two silver goblets. They are George III 1700 circa, I think. 'Mummie,' Pat said to me wonderingly, 'they mst have been awfully expensive.' "
The mother of the bride is always happy when her daughter has made a good match - but it's sometimes sad for the mother of the groom. And Mrs. Louise Harrison in Warrington was no exception.
That evening I was finally able to reach her by phone, "Mrs. Harrison" I felt compelled to say, "you sound so sad. Don't tell me you're feeling a little down in the dumps about losing a son?"
"Well," replied george's motherly Mum. "I have got to admit it, John, I do feel a little sad right now, now that the excitement of the wedding has died down. Then, too, I had a fall and hurt my arm just a few days before the wedding, and I really haven't been so well since." "I'm sorry to hear that." I said. "You see, I'm doing a story on the wedding. Would you mind terribly if I asked you a few questions?"
"Not at all, John, go ahead."
"Do you mind if I do the story based on our telephone call?"
"Certainly," she said. "Go right ahead." And she began.
"The wedding happened so quickly. George told us it was going to take place, but we didn't know when. Then only four days in advance, we got word of the exact date. It's a shame our daughter, Louise, couldn't come over from America, but we couldn't cable or phone her for fear the news would leak out. No celebration was planned for after the wedding, and we couldn't tell george's two brothers Harry and Peter and their wives about it ahead of time, either.
"Nothing happened exactly the way it was planned. Mr. Epstein thought there would be a brief ceremony and that would be all. Harry and peter didn't know about it until the last moment, and by then it was too late for them to come down.
"But George is planing a second wedding celebration, just for family, when he comes home to Liverpool with his bride. George is very thoughtful. It was so generous of him to give us this lovely home as a surprise. It's very much like his own bungalow. he has one large living room, which we don't have, and an extra bathroom, but the main difference is we have a room upstairs as well. But most important, george has got himself a lovely bride who will look after him well. Patti's a great cook, too. George likes good English cooking - like roast chicken and legs of lamb - and patti knows how to cook for him.
"They are an ideal pair and I'm sure they'll be so happy together. They have had lots of cables from fans saying how pleased they are about the wedding, and there was loads and loads of mail from the fans waiting when they got home from London.
"George and Patti wanted to keep the wedding a secret, and John and Ringo's going away served as a cover-up. Mr. Epstein and Paul were both best men, but it was Mr. Epstein and my husband who actually signed the register as witnesses.
"We were a bit worried before the wedding, because a reporter came out to george's place at 6 A.M. and waited there for us to come out. George had to deny that he was getting married. Then the reporter's car followed us through the fog all the way up to the place at Epsom." (Luckily for the wedding party, the reporter took his photographer along, and Brian Epstein allowed him to take shots inside the Registry Office to supplement photographs taken by the Beatles' official photographer. Just as well, because none of the official photos of the actual ceremony turned out)."We're pleased that everyone has been so happy about the wedding," said Mrs. Harrison. Meanwhile on the first days of their honeymoon as Esher two people were very happy for the sake of George's fans.
"The fans have been just wonderful to us," said Patti. "They are used to it all by now. Fans are more sensible and sensitive than most people realise, and they've showed us they love George and the other Beatles for themselves." To a query about the possibility of future Beatle babies, George replied, "We have got some definite ideas on how to bring up children." "In a year or so we shall probably start a family," he added. "and we'll try to keep our children with us as much as possible. But at the same time we wouldn't want them to be mixed up with any publicity lark.
"But there's plenty of time to think about that," he concluded. "In the meantime, we are expecting to slip away on our honeymoon shortly."
Pattie Boyd's "Letter from London"
from: 16 Magazine, February 1965
HI THERE!
It's super to be writing my first column for 16 - my first column for ANY magazine, come to that! I'd best start by telling you something about myself. My full name is Patricia Anne Boyd. I am 20 and was born on a farm in Somerset, which is one of the prettiest counties in the west of England. I don't remember anything about our farm except playing with the animals. When I was three, the family moved to Nairobi, in East Africa. SIx years later we returned.
We're a big family, we Boyds. I'm the eldest. After me comes Colin (18), Jenny (16), Paula (14), David (10) and Robert (8). With all those older sisters, Robert has been hopelessly spoiled! We all look like one another, but Jenny and I favor most. She is still in school, but hopes to be a fashion wroter one day. Paula has started training for an acting career and has already some little bits on TV.
I left home about 18 months ago to live on my own and model in London. Touch wood, I've been busy ever since - mainly working for fashion magazines. I share a mews (that is a little private street off a main street) cottage with a girl friend called Mary Bee. We used to go to the same boarding school, then we teamed up again to share our first flat in Chelsea. That was a horrid place with a pokey kitchen, and we seemed to live on hot dogs most of the time.
Our present Ovington Mews cottage is absolutely super. We have two floors with a living room, dining room, hige kitchen and two bedrooms - and we have a little black kitten named "Wee-Wee". Mary and I are very much alike, I am five feet six inches tall and we have about the same measurements, which means we can borrow each other's clothes - and that comes in handy. We both love cooking, and when we have special guests for dinner - like a couple of beatles! - we join forces over the meal. My speciality is veal scallopine and Mary makes marvelous apple-crumb cake.
When we go out of an evening we usually head for one of the new clubs which have opened to cater to the smart young set in London. Our two favorite clubs are the Crazy E (stands for Elephant) and the Ad Lib. They're both small and cozy, the lighting is dim and the music is DEAFENING - which is how we like it. Once in a while some poor mistaken middle-aged couple wanders in dressed to the nines. The blink like they don't know what hit them! As I say, our clubs are strictly for the young. What's so nice about these clubs is that no one stares at you or wants an autograph, so quite naturally the Beatles often go there. On a busy evening you are liable to bump into Ringo, George, John and Paul. Brian Jones of the Stones is a regular customer, as are the Animals. When I date George, it is usually in a foursome.
Fashions are free and easy in London, Trouser suits are very in, as are "Granny" dresses like the one I'm wearing in the picture with the Stones. As for fads in words, "super" is replacing "fab" and "grotty" (from grotesque) is for something - well UGGHH! I'm afraid "gear" is going out, too. We mostly say the whole word - fabulous - for something that is extra "super." get it?
My fave American singers are the Supremes, Impressions, Exciters and Dionne Warwick. I think the Animals are the most promising newcomers. More next letter. Cheerio!
© Free Rare Mp3 Music Downloads
Rolling Stone 2004: Forty Years of Beatlemania
A look back at the Beatles' debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show."
By David Fricke
Shortly after 8 p.m. on Sunday, February 9th, 1964, a short, stiff man with rubbery bloodhound features — Ed Sullivan, the host of the highest-rated variety hour on American television — addressed his New York studio audience and the folks tuned in at home over the CBS network.
"Yesterday and today, our theater's been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation," Sullivan said in a nasally chuckling voice. "And these veterans agreed with me that the city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool." He droned on for a few more seconds. Then the sixty-two-year-old Sullivan uttered the nine most important words in the history of rock & roll TV:
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles! Let's bring them on!"
No one in Studio 50, the 728-seat home of The Ed Sullivan Show, at 53rd Street and Broadway, heard anything else for the next eight minutes, except a monsoon of teenage-female screaming. The Beatles — guitarist John Lennon, 23; bass guitarist Paul McCartney, 21; drummer Ringo Starr, 23; and lead guitarist George Harrison, two weeks shy of twenty-one — opened their U.S. debut performance with a machine-gun bouquet of twin-guitar clang and jubilant vocal harmonies: "All My Loving," "Till There Was You" and "She Loves You." Forty minutes later — after songs and routines by Frank Gorshin, British music-hall star Tessie O'Shea and the Broadway cast of Oliver! — the Beatles returned to tear through both sides of their first U.S. Number One single, "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
"But you could not hear them playing anything," says John Moffitt, associate director of The Ed Sullivan Show, who was vainly calling out cues to the cameramen shooting the band. "The noise was incredible. Nobody could hear a thing except the kids in the audience, screaming. They overpowered the amplifiers. The cameramen couldn't hear. Even the kids couldn't hear anything, except each other screaming."
Production assistant Vince Calandra had been a cue-card boy for Sullivan back in 1957, when Elvis Presley made the last of his three appearances on the show. "The reaction from the kids then," Calandra claims, "was nothing close to what it was for the Beatles. I remember the producer, Bob Precht, who was an audio freak, just going, 'Jesus Christ!'"
"It was deafening," says Harrison's older sister Louise, now seventy-two, who sat in the seventh row, surrounded by shrieking. Lennon's then-wife, Cynthia, stood at the back of the studio, stunned by the reaction. "They're more enthusiastic here than at home," she raved to Beatles roadie Mai Evans.
Lennon himself couldn't believe the din and devotion, even after playing to hysterical crowds and being chased by ecstatic mobs in Britain throughout 1963. "They're wild, they're all wild," he said of the Americans. "They just all seem out of their minds. I've never seen anything like it in my life."
Meanwhile, more than 73 million people were watching the Beatles' Sullivan performance on television — then the biggest audience ever glued to a single program and, forty years later, still one of the largest ever. And they got the whole show, including the music.
On TV, the snap and sizzle of Starr's drumming and the crisp electric attack of Harrison's and Lennon's guitars cut through the female squall. Also, Moffitt notes, the group's two vocal mikes were wired directly into the control room's mixing desk, "so we didn't lose that much singing on the air." Viewers heard every "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" in "She Loves You" and high, wild "Woooo!" in "I Saw Her Standing There," while Sullivan's cameras cut back and forth between the Beatles' magnetic poise — the cocky smiles and deep bows after each song — and kinetic shots of young women leaping in their seats and sobbing with delight.
Rock & roll was, by 1964, an established, sanitized presence on network television: on Dick Clark's afternoon dance party American Bandstand; in Ricky Nelson's singing cameos on the sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. But Sullivan delivered the nation's first blast of Beatlemania in extreme close-up, an unprecedented display of the liberating, openly sexual ferocity of live, loud rock & roll. In one hour and five songs, the hottest rock act in Britain became the biggest pop group in America, immediately transforming the character and future of a generation. In Studio 50, at one point in the broadcast, a musician in Sullivan's house orchestra turned to a colleague in grim shock. "These are the people," he asked, "who are going to be running the country twenty years from now?" The answer, of course, was: Yes.
"We knew we could wipe you out — we were new," Lennon crowed years later, in his famous 1970 Rolling Stone interview. "When we got here, you were all walking around in fuckin' Bermuda shorts, with Boston crew cuts and stuff in your teeth."
"John and I knew we were writing good songs," McCartney told the magazine in 1987. "You had to be an idiot to listen to what we were writing and not say, 'Hey, man, this is good. . . . We could even do well in America.'
"One of the cheekiest things we ever did," McCartney added, "we said to [manager] Brian Epstein, 'We're not going to America till we've got a Number One record,' because we knew it would make all the difference."
Yet the Beatles could not have achieved so much, so fast, without Sullivan's Sunday-night might. The Beatles actually appeared on American television for the first time in November 1963 to little avail — in NBC and CBS news reports about the group's British success. (The CBS segment aired on the morning of November 22nd, a few hours before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.) On January 3rd, 1964, Jack Paar featured on his NBC talk show a BBC clip of the Beatles playing "She Loves You."
Sullivan, however, had been a prime-time institution since 1948. A former sports reporter and Broadway gossip columnist, he combined a Catholic booking policy — opera singers, ventriloquists, stand-up comics, acrobats, rock & roll pioneers such as Bo Diddley and LaVern Baker — with a golden gut for ratings. He was in London, at the airport with his wife, Sylvia, on October 31st, 1963, when the Beatles returned from a Swedish tour to a tumultuous reception. At first, Sullivan thought everyone had turned out to greet the queen mother. But by November IIth, he was back in New York, negotiating with Epstein.
Technically, Sullivan refused the Beatles top billing. He reserved that honor for himself every week. But he granted the Beatles an extraordinary amount of air-time: opening and closing segments on February 9th and 16th — the latter on location from the Deauville Hotel in Miami — plus an appearance to be taped early on the 9th for broadcast on February 23rd. It was headlining status in all but name for a group without a U.S. hit. (Previous Beatles singles on Vee-Jay, Swan and Tollie had stiffed; Capitol would not issue "I Want to Hold Your Hand" until late December.) In return, Epstein accepted a total fee of $10,000, far less than the $7,500 Sullivan often paid big acts for a single show.
"I remember the reaction in the audience," says Calandra, "when Ed started promoting the Beatles on the show, telling people they were coming. The first two weeks in January — nothing much. The third week, that's when you heard the reaction from the kids."
By the weekend of February 9th, he says, "We were told not to drive our cars into the city: "We're going to barricade the streets.' And normally Sullivan never came to rehearsals on Saturday. He would show up on Sunday for the rundown. But he came to rehearsal that Saturday for the Beatles. That was a sign: This was special."
Harrison was the first Beatle to disembark from Pan American Flight 101 at the recently christened John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Friday afternoon, February 7th. He was followed by Lennon (wearing a leather cap), McCartney and Starr. Harrison was also the only Beatle who had ever been to America before. In September 1963, he had taken a two-week vacation from British Beatlemania, visiting his sister Louise at her home in Benton, Illinois.
"We went camping, and he had a wonderful time with my kids, being an uncle," says Louise, who was eleven years older than George, married and had lived in North and South America since leaving England in 1956. She had never seen the Beatles perform or met George's band-mates, although she passionately promoted the group's records to area newspapers and radio stations.
But on the night before her brother left for England, Louise witnessed his U.S. solo debut: at a VFW hall where George sat in with a combo, the Four Vests, jamming on Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry numbers. "It was like a bolt of lightning went through the room," she says. "When George finished singing, somebody came over to the bandleader and said, 'That kid who's trying out for your band tonight — you'd be crazy if you don't hire him.'And I remember thinking, 'This is only one of the Beatles. If he can make this impact on 200 people in the middle of nowhere, what must the four of them be like?'"
They were — from the minute they got off the plane in New York — funny, charming, obliging, amazed and assured. Filmmakers Albert and David Maysles (who later made the gripping Rolling Stones tour documentary Gimme Shelter) had been commissioned by Britain's Granada Television to accompany the Beatles in America. The Maysles' all-access footage — broadcast on CBS in 1964 as The Beatles in America and now available as an expanded two-DVD set — captures the group in cool command of the whirlwind they created and, at the same time, utterly astonished by it.
In a scene from their first day in New York, the Beatles sit in their suite at the Plaza Hotel, hypnotized by themselves on TV firing quips at hapless reporters during an earlier press conference at the airport. ("Will you sing something?" Lennon: "No, we need money first." "What is the secret of your success?" Starr: "We have a press agent.") During a chaotic photo call in Central Park, a paparazzo asks Starr, "Can you do that gesture with your arms once more?" "Why?" Starr replies tartly. "I haven't stopped."
"Luckily, we didn't know what America was — we just knew our dream of it," McCartney confessed in 1987, "or we probably would have been too intimidated."
"They had total confidence," says Louise Harrison, who finally met the rest of the band at the Plaza that weekend and was part of the entourage for several days. "George once said to me that he felt sorry for Elvis: 'There was only one of him, whereas there were four of us. Whatever happened, it happened to all of us, so we could laugh it off.'"
In fact, on Saturday afternoon, February 8th, only three Beatles turned up at Studio 50 for rehearsal. George was at the Plaza, suffering from strep throat and running a 104-degree temperature. Unwilling to trust a celebrity patient to an outside nurse, the Plaza house physician left George in Louise's care; she used ice packs to soothe his neck and gave him antibiotics hourly.
As Sullivan's cameramen blocked shots for the Sunday taping and broadcast, Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall stood in for Harrison. When Aspinall left to tend to other business, Calandra was given a guitar and a Beatle wig — a gag from the crew — and sent to center stage in Aspinall's place. "I was up there for three songs," says Calandra, who didn't play a note. "I didn't know anything about music. But Lennon said to me, "Was this the stage that Buddy Holly and the Crickets played on?' I said yeah. He went, 'Wow!'"
The Beatles returned — with Harrison — the next day at 9:30 A.M. for dress rehearsal. "They came on time, with no attitude," says Moffitt. When the Beatles weren't onstage or facing the press corps, they hung out backstage — in dressing rooms 52 and 53, according to an original production memo — drinking Coca-Cola.
But when it came to music, the Beatles asserted themselves. After the dress rehearsal, Lennon and McCartney walked into the control room to hear a playback — a historic breach of decorum. Acts were not permitted there, much less allowed to have a say in on-air sound. "I was in shock," says Calandra. "But what they wanted was not the usual Sullivan mix, where the lyrics were more dominant than the music and noise was kept to a minimum. The Beatles wanted the guitars and voices in equal balance.
"But they had such a likable attitude: 'Can we do this? Can I suggest that?'" Calandra adds. "They were respectful and pleasant." They also got the mix they wanted.
The only pre-show tension Calandra witnessed that day came as Sullivan wrote his introductions for the live show. "When Ed wrote his copy, that was his domain," Calandra says. "You didn't bother him." Nevertheless, Epstein — who meticulously attended to every detail of the Beatles' public image — strode over to Sullivan, leaned over the host as he wrote ("Which you never did," Calandra notes) and said, with impeccable English grace, "I would like to know the exact wording of your intro to the Beatles."
Sullivan looked up at Epstein and coldly responded, "I would like for you to get lost."
The Beatles were on the air that night for about thirteen minutes. But the visual impressions they left behind are now pivotal rock & roll iconography: the tight, sharp cut of their black, Victorian-mod suits; the flying, pudding-bowl hair as the four shook their heads in unison during "She Loves You"; the individual shots of each Beatle with his first name superimposed on the screen and, under John's, the famous line Sorry Girls, He's Married.
Today, against the hypertensive editing and technicolor computer graphics that pass for music television, the black-and-white simplicity of the Beatles' Sullivan debut seems antique, like a moving daguerreotype. But that broadcast — now part of a two-DVD set containing all of the Beatles' '64 and '65 Sullivan spots, The Four Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows Featuring the Beatles (see "Meet the Beatles") — still packs the exhilarating force of prophecy and, with the combined bedlam of music and screaming, barely controlled chaos.
That evening, the Beatles celebrated their triumph with a night out at the Playboy Club and at a hot New York discotheque, the Peppermint Lounge, where the Maysles got a juicy reel of Starr twisting on the dance floor with local fillies. Sullivan's staff had little time for self-congratulation. "We didn't talk about making history," Moffitt admits. "It was more like, 'What are we going to do next week? Not only are we doing this again — we're on location.'"
Between Sullivan shows, the Beatles gave their first full-length concerts in this country, on February IIth in Washington, D.C., and two sets on the 12th at New York's Carnegie Hall (co-presented by Sid Bernstein, who promoted the group's 1965 and '66 dates at Shea Stadium). Capitol Records' plan to tape the Beatles at Carnegie Hall was reportedly foiled by the musicians' union. But the Maysles' footage from the Washington Coliseum suggests that the Beatles' real opening night in America was also their last truly great rock & roll show, before touring became a numbing routine and a distraction from making records.
For half an hour, playing mostly ravers such as "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Wanna Be Your Man," the Beatles cranked up the guitars, vocals and body language. Lennon stamped his foot on the floor between songs like an impatient racehorse; Starr thrashed his drums with such precise fury they seemed about to tumble off the riser. The band performed under woeful conditions: on a bare square stage in the center of the hall (the Coliseum was a boxing arena), through an appalling PA and without spotlights. Every three songs, the Beatles made a quarter-turn, to face a different part of the crowd; Starr had to be his own roadie, rotating his kit with Mai Evans. But the music was supercharged garage rock: the Beatles' Cavern and Star-Club days writ large. The Beatles knew they had hit the jackpot, and they reveled in the frenzy and adoration surrounding them.
They found more of the same when they got to Miami on February 13th. While Sullivan's crew readied the Deauville Hotel's convention room for the February 16th telecast, fans overran the building, pressing the doorbells to each room, Moffitt says, "thinking in their great innocence that a Beatle would come out and say, 'Hello, how are you today?' The hotel guests were irate. I don't know how many moved out."
On Sunday, the Beatles stayed in their rooms until showtime. As Sullivan made his opening remarks, the group stepped from an elevator and tried to cross the Deauville's lobby, through a lunatic army of teens. The police formed a flying wedge around the Beatles, slowly cutting through the kids. "Meanwhile," Moffitt says, "we're on the air. Someone is signaling to Ed, 'They're not here.' Ed started to ad-lib, then went to a commercial" — at which point the Beatles burst through a door at the back of the hall, raced through the audience and onto the stage.
The Beatles reprised four numbers from the previous week, adding their third British single, "From Me to You," and the ballad "This Boy," a stunning demonstration of liquid three-part harmony, sung by McCartney, Harrison and Lennon, shoulder to shoulder, at a single mike. At the end of the show, gathering the Beatles around him, Sullivan lathered on the love. "Richard Rodgers, one of America's great composers, wanted me to congratulate you," he said, "and tell the four of you that he is one of your most rabid fans.
"And," Sullivan quickly added, "that goes for me, too."
Nearly every Sunday after that, Sullivan featured a hot rock, soul or Top Forty act in the lineup. The Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, the Supremes, the Byrds, the Doors, Santana, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Janis Joplin were just some of the legends and Rock & Roll Hall of Famers who sang for Sullivan in the wake of the Beatles, until CBS canceled his program in 1971 after 1,087 shows. The Beatles themselves kept returning, mostly in video clips, until 1970.
"The later music acts — Ed didn't like them very much," Moffitt notes. "He knew they got ratings. But he truly loved the Beatles. He was really proud of them. It was almost like he was their godfather — Uncle Beatle." In October 1974, four years after the Beatles broke up, Sullivan died of cancer. Uncle Beatle was seventy-three.
On February 21st, 1964, THE Beatles flew from Miami to New York, then on to London aboard a Pan Am plane with Jet Clipper Beatles emblazoned on the side. Two nights later, the Beatles were back on The Ed Sullivan Show, playing "Twist and Shout," "Please Please Me" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" — all previously recorded on the afternoon of February 9th. The screaming, like the band, was on tape. In Studio 50, Calandra says, "the excitement was not there. It was just another eight and a half minutes of songs."
But nothing was back to normal. With their immediate conquest of The Ed Sullivan Show and, by extension, America, the Beatles became the world's most important and successful rock group. They still are. And rock & roll is now a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week fact of television, from The Tonight Show to Total Request Live. MTV Unplugged, Live Aid, Behind the Music, American Idol, even the Queen and Ramones songs you hear between plays in professional sports telecasts: They are all descended from that one night, February 9th, 1964. Music acts still perform almost nightly on the Studio 50 stage. The building, rechristened the Ed Sullivan Theater, is the home of Late Show With David Letterman.
Louise Harrison recalls sitting with George in his living room at Friar Park in England, watching the Maysles brothers' film. It was years after the Beatles had split. "George was looking at himself, with the Beatles, coming down the steps of that plane," Louise says. "And he said to me, 'If we had had any idea of how important this turned out to be, we would have been scared stiff. But look at us — a bunch of cheeky chappies. We were just enjoying ourselves.'"
©Copyright 2009 Rolling Stone [From Issue 942 — February 19, 2004]
By David Fricke
Shortly after 8 p.m. on Sunday, February 9th, 1964, a short, stiff man with rubbery bloodhound features — Ed Sullivan, the host of the highest-rated variety hour on American television — addressed his New York studio audience and the folks tuned in at home over the CBS network.
"Yesterday and today, our theater's been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation," Sullivan said in a nasally chuckling voice. "And these veterans agreed with me that the city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool." He droned on for a few more seconds. Then the sixty-two-year-old Sullivan uttered the nine most important words in the history of rock & roll TV:
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles! Let's bring them on!"
No one in Studio 50, the 728-seat home of The Ed Sullivan Show, at 53rd Street and Broadway, heard anything else for the next eight minutes, except a monsoon of teenage-female screaming. The Beatles — guitarist John Lennon, 23; bass guitarist Paul McCartney, 21; drummer Ringo Starr, 23; and lead guitarist George Harrison, two weeks shy of twenty-one — opened their U.S. debut performance with a machine-gun bouquet of twin-guitar clang and jubilant vocal harmonies: "All My Loving," "Till There Was You" and "She Loves You." Forty minutes later — after songs and routines by Frank Gorshin, British music-hall star Tessie O'Shea and the Broadway cast of Oliver! — the Beatles returned to tear through both sides of their first U.S. Number One single, "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
"But you could not hear them playing anything," says John Moffitt, associate director of The Ed Sullivan Show, who was vainly calling out cues to the cameramen shooting the band. "The noise was incredible. Nobody could hear a thing except the kids in the audience, screaming. They overpowered the amplifiers. The cameramen couldn't hear. Even the kids couldn't hear anything, except each other screaming."
Production assistant Vince Calandra had been a cue-card boy for Sullivan back in 1957, when Elvis Presley made the last of his three appearances on the show. "The reaction from the kids then," Calandra claims, "was nothing close to what it was for the Beatles. I remember the producer, Bob Precht, who was an audio freak, just going, 'Jesus Christ!'"
"It was deafening," says Harrison's older sister Louise, now seventy-two, who sat in the seventh row, surrounded by shrieking. Lennon's then-wife, Cynthia, stood at the back of the studio, stunned by the reaction. "They're more enthusiastic here than at home," she raved to Beatles roadie Mai Evans.
Lennon himself couldn't believe the din and devotion, even after playing to hysterical crowds and being chased by ecstatic mobs in Britain throughout 1963. "They're wild, they're all wild," he said of the Americans. "They just all seem out of their minds. I've never seen anything like it in my life."
Meanwhile, more than 73 million people were watching the Beatles' Sullivan performance on television — then the biggest audience ever glued to a single program and, forty years later, still one of the largest ever. And they got the whole show, including the music.
On TV, the snap and sizzle of Starr's drumming and the crisp electric attack of Harrison's and Lennon's guitars cut through the female squall. Also, Moffitt notes, the group's two vocal mikes were wired directly into the control room's mixing desk, "so we didn't lose that much singing on the air." Viewers heard every "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" in "She Loves You" and high, wild "Woooo!" in "I Saw Her Standing There," while Sullivan's cameras cut back and forth between the Beatles' magnetic poise — the cocky smiles and deep bows after each song — and kinetic shots of young women leaping in their seats and sobbing with delight.
Rock & roll was, by 1964, an established, sanitized presence on network television: on Dick Clark's afternoon dance party American Bandstand; in Ricky Nelson's singing cameos on the sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. But Sullivan delivered the nation's first blast of Beatlemania in extreme close-up, an unprecedented display of the liberating, openly sexual ferocity of live, loud rock & roll. In one hour and five songs, the hottest rock act in Britain became the biggest pop group in America, immediately transforming the character and future of a generation. In Studio 50, at one point in the broadcast, a musician in Sullivan's house orchestra turned to a colleague in grim shock. "These are the people," he asked, "who are going to be running the country twenty years from now?" The answer, of course, was: Yes.
"We knew we could wipe you out — we were new," Lennon crowed years later, in his famous 1970 Rolling Stone interview. "When we got here, you were all walking around in fuckin' Bermuda shorts, with Boston crew cuts and stuff in your teeth."
"John and I knew we were writing good songs," McCartney told the magazine in 1987. "You had to be an idiot to listen to what we were writing and not say, 'Hey, man, this is good. . . . We could even do well in America.'
"One of the cheekiest things we ever did," McCartney added, "we said to [manager] Brian Epstein, 'We're not going to America till we've got a Number One record,' because we knew it would make all the difference."
Yet the Beatles could not have achieved so much, so fast, without Sullivan's Sunday-night might. The Beatles actually appeared on American television for the first time in November 1963 to little avail — in NBC and CBS news reports about the group's British success. (The CBS segment aired on the morning of November 22nd, a few hours before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.) On January 3rd, 1964, Jack Paar featured on his NBC talk show a BBC clip of the Beatles playing "She Loves You."
Sullivan, however, had been a prime-time institution since 1948. A former sports reporter and Broadway gossip columnist, he combined a Catholic booking policy — opera singers, ventriloquists, stand-up comics, acrobats, rock & roll pioneers such as Bo Diddley and LaVern Baker — with a golden gut for ratings. He was in London, at the airport with his wife, Sylvia, on October 31st, 1963, when the Beatles returned from a Swedish tour to a tumultuous reception. At first, Sullivan thought everyone had turned out to greet the queen mother. But by November IIth, he was back in New York, negotiating with Epstein.
Technically, Sullivan refused the Beatles top billing. He reserved that honor for himself every week. But he granted the Beatles an extraordinary amount of air-time: opening and closing segments on February 9th and 16th — the latter on location from the Deauville Hotel in Miami — plus an appearance to be taped early on the 9th for broadcast on February 23rd. It was headlining status in all but name for a group without a U.S. hit. (Previous Beatles singles on Vee-Jay, Swan and Tollie had stiffed; Capitol would not issue "I Want to Hold Your Hand" until late December.) In return, Epstein accepted a total fee of $10,000, far less than the $7,500 Sullivan often paid big acts for a single show.
"I remember the reaction in the audience," says Calandra, "when Ed started promoting the Beatles on the show, telling people they were coming. The first two weeks in January — nothing much. The third week, that's when you heard the reaction from the kids."
By the weekend of February 9th, he says, "We were told not to drive our cars into the city: "We're going to barricade the streets.' And normally Sullivan never came to rehearsals on Saturday. He would show up on Sunday for the rundown. But he came to rehearsal that Saturday for the Beatles. That was a sign: This was special."
Harrison was the first Beatle to disembark from Pan American Flight 101 at the recently christened John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Friday afternoon, February 7th. He was followed by Lennon (wearing a leather cap), McCartney and Starr. Harrison was also the only Beatle who had ever been to America before. In September 1963, he had taken a two-week vacation from British Beatlemania, visiting his sister Louise at her home in Benton, Illinois.
"We went camping, and he had a wonderful time with my kids, being an uncle," says Louise, who was eleven years older than George, married and had lived in North and South America since leaving England in 1956. She had never seen the Beatles perform or met George's band-mates, although she passionately promoted the group's records to area newspapers and radio stations.
But on the night before her brother left for England, Louise witnessed his U.S. solo debut: at a VFW hall where George sat in with a combo, the Four Vests, jamming on Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry numbers. "It was like a bolt of lightning went through the room," she says. "When George finished singing, somebody came over to the bandleader and said, 'That kid who's trying out for your band tonight — you'd be crazy if you don't hire him.'And I remember thinking, 'This is only one of the Beatles. If he can make this impact on 200 people in the middle of nowhere, what must the four of them be like?'"
They were — from the minute they got off the plane in New York — funny, charming, obliging, amazed and assured. Filmmakers Albert and David Maysles (who later made the gripping Rolling Stones tour documentary Gimme Shelter) had been commissioned by Britain's Granada Television to accompany the Beatles in America. The Maysles' all-access footage — broadcast on CBS in 1964 as The Beatles in America and now available as an expanded two-DVD set — captures the group in cool command of the whirlwind they created and, at the same time, utterly astonished by it.
In a scene from their first day in New York, the Beatles sit in their suite at the Plaza Hotel, hypnotized by themselves on TV firing quips at hapless reporters during an earlier press conference at the airport. ("Will you sing something?" Lennon: "No, we need money first." "What is the secret of your success?" Starr: "We have a press agent.") During a chaotic photo call in Central Park, a paparazzo asks Starr, "Can you do that gesture with your arms once more?" "Why?" Starr replies tartly. "I haven't stopped."
"Luckily, we didn't know what America was — we just knew our dream of it," McCartney confessed in 1987, "or we probably would have been too intimidated."
"They had total confidence," says Louise Harrison, who finally met the rest of the band at the Plaza that weekend and was part of the entourage for several days. "George once said to me that he felt sorry for Elvis: 'There was only one of him, whereas there were four of us. Whatever happened, it happened to all of us, so we could laugh it off.'"
In fact, on Saturday afternoon, February 8th, only three Beatles turned up at Studio 50 for rehearsal. George was at the Plaza, suffering from strep throat and running a 104-degree temperature. Unwilling to trust a celebrity patient to an outside nurse, the Plaza house physician left George in Louise's care; she used ice packs to soothe his neck and gave him antibiotics hourly.
As Sullivan's cameramen blocked shots for the Sunday taping and broadcast, Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall stood in for Harrison. When Aspinall left to tend to other business, Calandra was given a guitar and a Beatle wig — a gag from the crew — and sent to center stage in Aspinall's place. "I was up there for three songs," says Calandra, who didn't play a note. "I didn't know anything about music. But Lennon said to me, "Was this the stage that Buddy Holly and the Crickets played on?' I said yeah. He went, 'Wow!'"
The Beatles returned — with Harrison — the next day at 9:30 A.M. for dress rehearsal. "They came on time, with no attitude," says Moffitt. When the Beatles weren't onstage or facing the press corps, they hung out backstage — in dressing rooms 52 and 53, according to an original production memo — drinking Coca-Cola.
But when it came to music, the Beatles asserted themselves. After the dress rehearsal, Lennon and McCartney walked into the control room to hear a playback — a historic breach of decorum. Acts were not permitted there, much less allowed to have a say in on-air sound. "I was in shock," says Calandra. "But what they wanted was not the usual Sullivan mix, where the lyrics were more dominant than the music and noise was kept to a minimum. The Beatles wanted the guitars and voices in equal balance.
"But they had such a likable attitude: 'Can we do this? Can I suggest that?'" Calandra adds. "They were respectful and pleasant." They also got the mix they wanted.
The only pre-show tension Calandra witnessed that day came as Sullivan wrote his introductions for the live show. "When Ed wrote his copy, that was his domain," Calandra says. "You didn't bother him." Nevertheless, Epstein — who meticulously attended to every detail of the Beatles' public image — strode over to Sullivan, leaned over the host as he wrote ("Which you never did," Calandra notes) and said, with impeccable English grace, "I would like to know the exact wording of your intro to the Beatles."
Sullivan looked up at Epstein and coldly responded, "I would like for you to get lost."
The Beatles were on the air that night for about thirteen minutes. But the visual impressions they left behind are now pivotal rock & roll iconography: the tight, sharp cut of their black, Victorian-mod suits; the flying, pudding-bowl hair as the four shook their heads in unison during "She Loves You"; the individual shots of each Beatle with his first name superimposed on the screen and, under John's, the famous line Sorry Girls, He's Married.
Today, against the hypertensive editing and technicolor computer graphics that pass for music television, the black-and-white simplicity of the Beatles' Sullivan debut seems antique, like a moving daguerreotype. But that broadcast — now part of a two-DVD set containing all of the Beatles' '64 and '65 Sullivan spots, The Four Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows Featuring the Beatles (see "Meet the Beatles") — still packs the exhilarating force of prophecy and, with the combined bedlam of music and screaming, barely controlled chaos.
That evening, the Beatles celebrated their triumph with a night out at the Playboy Club and at a hot New York discotheque, the Peppermint Lounge, where the Maysles got a juicy reel of Starr twisting on the dance floor with local fillies. Sullivan's staff had little time for self-congratulation. "We didn't talk about making history," Moffitt admits. "It was more like, 'What are we going to do next week? Not only are we doing this again — we're on location.'"
Between Sullivan shows, the Beatles gave their first full-length concerts in this country, on February IIth in Washington, D.C., and two sets on the 12th at New York's Carnegie Hall (co-presented by Sid Bernstein, who promoted the group's 1965 and '66 dates at Shea Stadium). Capitol Records' plan to tape the Beatles at Carnegie Hall was reportedly foiled by the musicians' union. But the Maysles' footage from the Washington Coliseum suggests that the Beatles' real opening night in America was also their last truly great rock & roll show, before touring became a numbing routine and a distraction from making records.
For half an hour, playing mostly ravers such as "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Wanna Be Your Man," the Beatles cranked up the guitars, vocals and body language. Lennon stamped his foot on the floor between songs like an impatient racehorse; Starr thrashed his drums with such precise fury they seemed about to tumble off the riser. The band performed under woeful conditions: on a bare square stage in the center of the hall (the Coliseum was a boxing arena), through an appalling PA and without spotlights. Every three songs, the Beatles made a quarter-turn, to face a different part of the crowd; Starr had to be his own roadie, rotating his kit with Mai Evans. But the music was supercharged garage rock: the Beatles' Cavern and Star-Club days writ large. The Beatles knew they had hit the jackpot, and they reveled in the frenzy and adoration surrounding them.
They found more of the same when they got to Miami on February 13th. While Sullivan's crew readied the Deauville Hotel's convention room for the February 16th telecast, fans overran the building, pressing the doorbells to each room, Moffitt says, "thinking in their great innocence that a Beatle would come out and say, 'Hello, how are you today?' The hotel guests were irate. I don't know how many moved out."
On Sunday, the Beatles stayed in their rooms until showtime. As Sullivan made his opening remarks, the group stepped from an elevator and tried to cross the Deauville's lobby, through a lunatic army of teens. The police formed a flying wedge around the Beatles, slowly cutting through the kids. "Meanwhile," Moffitt says, "we're on the air. Someone is signaling to Ed, 'They're not here.' Ed started to ad-lib, then went to a commercial" — at which point the Beatles burst through a door at the back of the hall, raced through the audience and onto the stage.
The Beatles reprised four numbers from the previous week, adding their third British single, "From Me to You," and the ballad "This Boy," a stunning demonstration of liquid three-part harmony, sung by McCartney, Harrison and Lennon, shoulder to shoulder, at a single mike. At the end of the show, gathering the Beatles around him, Sullivan lathered on the love. "Richard Rodgers, one of America's great composers, wanted me to congratulate you," he said, "and tell the four of you that he is one of your most rabid fans.
"And," Sullivan quickly added, "that goes for me, too."
Nearly every Sunday after that, Sullivan featured a hot rock, soul or Top Forty act in the lineup. The Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, the Supremes, the Byrds, the Doors, Santana, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Janis Joplin were just some of the legends and Rock & Roll Hall of Famers who sang for Sullivan in the wake of the Beatles, until CBS canceled his program in 1971 after 1,087 shows. The Beatles themselves kept returning, mostly in video clips, until 1970.
"The later music acts — Ed didn't like them very much," Moffitt notes. "He knew they got ratings. But he truly loved the Beatles. He was really proud of them. It was almost like he was their godfather — Uncle Beatle." In October 1974, four years after the Beatles broke up, Sullivan died of cancer. Uncle Beatle was seventy-three.
On February 21st, 1964, THE Beatles flew from Miami to New York, then on to London aboard a Pan Am plane with Jet Clipper Beatles emblazoned on the side. Two nights later, the Beatles were back on The Ed Sullivan Show, playing "Twist and Shout," "Please Please Me" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" — all previously recorded on the afternoon of February 9th. The screaming, like the band, was on tape. In Studio 50, Calandra says, "the excitement was not there. It was just another eight and a half minutes of songs."
But nothing was back to normal. With their immediate conquest of The Ed Sullivan Show and, by extension, America, the Beatles became the world's most important and successful rock group. They still are. And rock & roll is now a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week fact of television, from The Tonight Show to Total Request Live. MTV Unplugged, Live Aid, Behind the Music, American Idol, even the Queen and Ramones songs you hear between plays in professional sports telecasts: They are all descended from that one night, February 9th, 1964. Music acts still perform almost nightly on the Studio 50 stage. The building, rechristened the Ed Sullivan Theater, is the home of Late Show With David Letterman.
Louise Harrison recalls sitting with George in his living room at Friar Park in England, watching the Maysles brothers' film. It was years after the Beatles had split. "George was looking at himself, with the Beatles, coming down the steps of that plane," Louise says. "And he said to me, 'If we had had any idea of how important this turned out to be, we would have been scared stiff. But look at us — a bunch of cheeky chappies. We were just enjoying ourselves.'"
©Copyright 2009 Rolling Stone [From Issue 942 — February 19, 2004]
Beatles' Wives - 1: Cynthia Powell/Lennon
John and Cynthia Lennon: married in 1962
Quotes
"I met Cynthia at art school. She was a right Hoylake runt. Dead snobby. We used to poke fun at her and mock her, me and Geoff Mohammed. 'Quiet Please,' we'd shout, 'No dirty jokes, It's Cynthia.' We had a class dance and I asked her to dance. Geoff had been having me on, saying, 'Cynthia likes you, you know.' As we danced I asked her to come to a party the next day. She said she couldn't. She was engaged." - John Lennon
"John asked me to dance and I nearly died. Bingo! I then amazed myself by being very cool, calm and collected outwardly-inside I was out of this world. The dance was slow and smoochy. I was aloof and John, I think, was slightly embarrassed. It was all very painful and beautiful at the same time. The remaining students were looking on with puzzled expressions at such an unlikely combination." - Cynthia Lennon
"We used to take the mickey out of her, but John always said he fancied her. He called her Miss Prim. He was certainly always attracted to her from the first time he saw her in the canteen." - Thelma Pickles
"I was triumphant at having picked her up. We had a drink and went back to Stu's flat, buying fish and chips on the way." - John Lennon
"She was very pretty-Bardot like. I used to look at her from across the canteen and then I heard she had been caught by that shit Lennon. They looked at eachother adoringly, totally fixated." - Michael Isacson
"He wanted total commitment and I was pleased to give it. If I as much as looked at another man, he would go mad and say, 'Who's he?' in a moody voice." - Cynthia Lennon
"I was hysterical. That was the trouble. I was jealous of anyone she had anything to do with. I demanded absolute trust from her, because I wasn't trustworthy myself. I was neurotic, taking all my frustrations out on her. She did leave me once. That was terrible. I couldn't stand being without her." - John Lennon
"George and Paul both thought it a great laugh that John was so keen on Cynthia, the lovely girl who used to go to art school with him. Even then, four years before they married, they were crazy over each other. Cyn used to travel thirty miles a night from her home in Hoylake just to sit by the stage of the Casbah, listening to John playing with us." - former bandmate Ken Brown
"Postman Postman don't be slow! I'm in love with Cyn, so go man, go!" - John Lennon on envelope to Cynthia.
"When John was with me, it was total commitment. Whatever he did outside our relationship didn't seem very important. We were together such a lot of the time that whatever other affairs he had once we met couldn't have amounted to much because I was with him most of the time. He kept me in Liverpool as late as I dared stay." - Cynthia Lennon
"They were totally opposites but right for eachother, and although they came from different backrounds, they were a perfect match. I think they would have obviously taken longer to get married, but it would have happened. They loved eachother very much. There was no separating them" - Phyllis McKenzie (mutual friend)
"I fell in love with Cynthia. It's as simple as that." - John Lennon in a Beatles interview
"It's not like we denied it. It's just no one asked us." - John Lennon regarding marriage to Cynthia.
"We were both sort of bowled over by the fact that we were married. It wasn't a question of 'Have we done the right thing?' It was all perfectly natural that we should be together. But John didn't get a real chance to be first a real husband or later, a real father. Once he got on the Beatles bangwagon he couldn't get off, even if he wanted to." - Cynthia Lennon
"John needed to escape his reality. I understood completely but I couldn't go along with him." - Cynthia Lennon regarding John's drug taking.
"The beginning of the end." - Cynthia Lennon regarding John's drug taking.
"It was at this point in our marriage that I realized that unless I joined the club, we weren't going to survie, so I succumed to one of John's never ending requests to take LSD with him. I didn't want to but I felt that I had to save our marriage. I also believe John in his own way was doing the same. During my trip John was marvellous. But whatever happiness and awareness John gained through it, I didn't. I hated every moment. It was hell on earth. The hallucinations sent me into a panic. Through my tears and fears I would look at John in the hope that he could in some way help me out of the prison my mind had become., only to see the man I loved turn into a giant mule with razor sharp teeth leering and laughing at me. All the time John kept telling me he loved me and would never leave me. All I could reason was that I was definitely going mad. It was something I never wanted to experience again." - Cynthia Lennon
"I lost John to drugs." - Cynthia Lennon
"It was said I never loved Cyn. That's far from the truth. We were young, bigheaded, and got into a physical relationship too soon. Perhaps if we took things slow we would have made it. I know we would have made it." - John Lennon 1974
"Cynthia's grown up with it, with me." - John Lennon
"There were definitely two sides to John...his softer side came out in his initital love and tenderness for Cynthia." - Pete Best
"People say Cynthia was a mundane, hometown girl, 'mumsy' - your average Mrs Liverpool. That's a load of nonsense. Cynthia was a highly talented woman in her own right. She painted, she drew, she sculpted, she designed." - Julia Baird John's sister
"It was said I never loved Cyn. That's far from the truth. We were young, bigheaded, and got into a physical relationship too soon. Perhaps if we took things slow we would have made it. I know we would have made it." - John Lennon 1974
Quotes"I met Cynthia at art school. She was a right Hoylake runt. Dead snobby. We used to poke fun at her and mock her, me and Geoff Mohammed. 'Quiet Please,' we'd shout, 'No dirty jokes, It's Cynthia.' We had a class dance and I asked her to dance. Geoff had been having me on, saying, 'Cynthia likes you, you know.' As we danced I asked her to come to a party the next day. She said she couldn't. She was engaged." - John Lennon
"John asked me to dance and I nearly died. Bingo! I then amazed myself by being very cool, calm and collected outwardly-inside I was out of this world. The dance was slow and smoochy. I was aloof and John, I think, was slightly embarrassed. It was all very painful and beautiful at the same time. The remaining students were looking on with puzzled expressions at such an unlikely combination." - Cynthia Lennon
"We used to take the mickey out of her, but John always said he fancied her. He called her Miss Prim. He was certainly always attracted to her from the first time he saw her in the canteen." - Thelma Pickles
"I was triumphant at having picked her up. We had a drink and went back to Stu's flat, buying fish and chips on the way." - John Lennon
"She was very pretty-Bardot like. I used to look at her from across the canteen and then I heard she had been caught by that shit Lennon. They looked at eachother adoringly, totally fixated." - Michael Isacson"He wanted total commitment and I was pleased to give it. If I as much as looked at another man, he would go mad and say, 'Who's he?' in a moody voice." - Cynthia Lennon
"I was hysterical. That was the trouble. I was jealous of anyone she had anything to do with. I demanded absolute trust from her, because I wasn't trustworthy myself. I was neurotic, taking all my frustrations out on her. She did leave me once. That was terrible. I couldn't stand being without her." - John Lennon
"George and Paul both thought it a great laugh that John was so keen on Cynthia, the lovely girl who used to go to art school with him. Even then, four years before they married, they were crazy over each other. Cyn used to travel thirty miles a night from her home in Hoylake just to sit by the stage of the Casbah, listening to John playing with us." - former bandmate Ken Brown
"Postman Postman don't be slow! I'm in love with Cyn, so go man, go!" - John Lennon on envelope to Cynthia."When John was with me, it was total commitment. Whatever he did outside our relationship didn't seem very important. We were together such a lot of the time that whatever other affairs he had once we met couldn't have amounted to much because I was with him most of the time. He kept me in Liverpool as late as I dared stay." - Cynthia Lennon
"They were totally opposites but right for eachother, and although they came from different backrounds, they were a perfect match. I think they would have obviously taken longer to get married, but it would have happened. They loved eachother very much. There was no separating them" - Phyllis McKenzie (mutual friend)
"I fell in love with Cynthia. It's as simple as that." - John Lennon in a Beatles interview
"It's not like we denied it. It's just no one asked us." - John Lennon regarding marriage to Cynthia.
"We were both sort of bowled over by the fact that we were married. It wasn't a question of 'Have we done the right thing?' It was all perfectly natural that we should be together. But John didn't get a real chance to be first a real husband or later, a real father. Once he got on the Beatles bangwagon he couldn't get off, even if he wanted to." - Cynthia Lennon
"John needed to escape his reality. I understood completely but I couldn't go along with him." - Cynthia Lennon regarding John's drug taking."The beginning of the end." - Cynthia Lennon regarding John's drug taking.
"It was at this point in our marriage that I realized that unless I joined the club, we weren't going to survie, so I succumed to one of John's never ending requests to take LSD with him. I didn't want to but I felt that I had to save our marriage. I also believe John in his own way was doing the same. During my trip John was marvellous. But whatever happiness and awareness John gained through it, I didn't. I hated every moment. It was hell on earth. The hallucinations sent me into a panic. Through my tears and fears I would look at John in the hope that he could in some way help me out of the prison my mind had become., only to see the man I loved turn into a giant mule with razor sharp teeth leering and laughing at me. All the time John kept telling me he loved me and would never leave me. All I could reason was that I was definitely going mad. It was something I never wanted to experience again." - Cynthia Lennon
"I lost John to drugs." - Cynthia Lennon
"It was said I never loved Cyn. That's far from the truth. We were young, bigheaded, and got into a physical relationship too soon. Perhaps if we took things slow we would have made it. I know we would have made it." - John Lennon 1974
"Cynthia's grown up with it, with me." - John Lennon"There were definitely two sides to John...his softer side came out in his initital love and tenderness for Cynthia." - Pete Best
"People say Cynthia was a mundane, hometown girl, 'mumsy' - your average Mrs Liverpool. That's a load of nonsense. Cynthia was a highly talented woman in her own right. She painted, she drew, she sculpted, she designed." - Julia Baird John's sister
April 1962: John writing to his girlfriend Cynthia during The Beatles' stay in Hamburg, Germany
Star Club
39 Grossse Frieher
Actona Hamburg
Dear Cyn,
I love love love you and I'm missing you like mad. I wonder why all the newspapers wrote about Stu' - especially the 'People' - and how the hell did they find out, who could have told them, as I wrote that I suddenly remembered there's a fellow at the 'Jacaranda' who's a freelance journalist. It could have been him because Allan Williams has been helping Mrs. Stutcliffe or something. I haven't seen Astrid since the day we arrived. I've thought of going to see her but I would be so awkward - and probably the others would come as well and it would be even worse. I won't write any more about it 'cause it's not much fun. I love you - I don't like the idea of Dot moving in permanently with you 'cause we could never be alone really - I mean when I come home - can't she have the other room or find another flat - imagine having her there all the time when we were in bed - and imagine Paul coming all the time - and especially when I wasn't there. I'd hate the idea. I love you Cyn.
The club is massive and we only play 3 hrs one night and 4 the next - and we play an hour - then an hour break so it doesn't seem long at all really. The boss of this place is a good skin - we're off tomorrow 'cause it's Good Friday and they can't have music so the boss - (Manfred) is taking us and the other group out for the day in his car and all the rest of them like Horst are coming, so it will be a big mob in our 5 cars. We're going somewhere healthy like the Osr Sea (Stuart again)
God, I'm knackered its 6 o'clock in the morning and I want you. (I've just found out that there's no post tomorrow so I will pack in good night. I love you boo! hoo! I hate this place).
That was Thursday night now its Sunday afternoon, I've just wakened up and there no post tomorrow (Easter Monday I think) anyway happy Easter Cyn. I love you. We went out, but all we did was eat and eat and eat (Good Friday) it was all free so it was okay. We drove somewhere about 80 miles away and ate.
My voice has been gone since I got here (it was gone before I came if I remember rightly). I can't seem to find it - ah well! I love you Cyn Powell and I wish I was on the way to your flat with the Sunday papers and cherries and a throbber! Oh Yes! I forgot to tell you I've got a GEAR suede overcoat with a belt so I'll look just like you now! Paul's leaping about on my head (he's in a bunk on top of me and he's snoring!) I can hardly get in a position to write its so cramped below stairs captain, Shuttup McCartney! grunt grunt.
I can't wait to see your new room it will be great seeing it for the first time and having chips and all and a ciggie (don't let me come home to a regular smoker please Miss Powell) Hmm I can just see YOU and Dot puffing away I suppose that's the least of my worries. I love you cyn I miss miss miss you miss Powell - I keep remembering all the parts of Hamburg that we went to together. In fact I can't get away from you - especially on the Way, and inside the Seaman, boo! hoo! I love love love you. X
Did I tell you that we have a good bathroom with a shower, did I? Did I tell you? Well, I've had ONE whole shower aren't I a clean little raker? hee! hee! I love you I haven't written to Mimi yet but I know how to send her money so it gets there in 2 hrs. XXX
I can't think what to write now so I will pack in and write some tomorrow seeing as how like I can't POST it anyway so good afternoon Cyn I love you. Will you send me the words to "A SHOT OF RHYTHM AND BLUES" Please? There's not many.
It's Monday night and we finished playing about 3/4 hrs ago (its 2 o'clock). I'm dead beat my sweet, so I hope you won't mind if I finish now and have lovely sleep (without you but it'll still be lovely - don't be hurt - but I'm so, so tired). I love you Cyn - I hope you realise why this letter took so long lovey but there has been no post Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon - and this one will go by the early morning Tuesday post 'cause I will nip downstairs and post it any minute (handy isn't it?) I love you, I love you please wait for me and don't be sad and work hard and be a clever little Cyn Powell. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, write soon ooh its a naughty old Hamburg we're living in!!
All my Love for Ever and ever
from
John
XXXXXX XXXXXX
P.S. They're leather PANTIES not pants (just in case y'know!)
I LOVE YOU, GOOD NIGHT
August 1965: John writing to Cynthia during The Beatles' American Tour
...what he said about it. It's not that much bother really, is it? When you think about it - 'cause I'm sure Dot [the Lennon's housekeeper] and Lil' [Cynthia's mother] and Bennigs, Tommy, Jordy, etc. can understand something as simple as us wanting to be alone for a day - I don't mean Julian - I mean don't pack him off to Dots or anywhere - I really miss him as a person now - do you know what I mean, he's not so much 'The Baby' or 'My Baby' anymore, he's a real living part of me now, you know he's Julian and everything and I can't wait to see him, I miss him more then I've ever done before - I think it's been a slow process my feeling like a real father! I hope all this is clear and understandable. I spend hours in dressing rooms and things thinking about the times I've wasted not being with him - and playing with him - you know I keep thinking of THOSE stupid bastard times when I keep reading bloody newspapers and other shit while he's in the room with me and I've decided it's ALL WRONG! He doesn't see enough of me as it is and I really want him to know and love me, and miss me like I seem to be missing both of you so much.
I'll go now 'cause I'm bringing myself down thinking about what a thoughtless bastard I seem to be - and it's only short of three o'clock in the afternoon, and it seems the wrong time of day to feel so emotional - I really feel like crying - its stupid - and I'm choking up now as I'm writting - I don't know what's the matter with me - It's not the tour that's so different from other tours - I mean I'm having lots of laughter (you know the type hee! hee!) but in between the laughter there is such a drop - I mean there seems to be in between feelings. Anyway I'm going now so this letter doesn't get to draggy.
I love you very much.
To Cyn
From
John XXXXXXXXXX
P.S. Say hello to Charle etc. for me
P.P.S. I think you can ring me if you have a phone there try - if not I'll see you in about a week.
271-6565
LOS ANGELES,
CALIFORNIA.
P.P.P.S. It's Monday the 23rd today and I leave this house next Monday the 30th of August - so try to please
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