Tune In (The Beatles: All These Years, #1)

by Mark Lewisohn

and the studio equipment was sometimes worse and sometimes better, but a key ingredient—feel, soul, energy, vitality, all of them in shades—perpetually lacked in the covers. There’s really no better way to describe it than “they sounded British” … and you knew that could be bad.

Brian’s five tutors were pleased with him though. His “sensitivity” and “intelligence” were complimented in the written reports, and all agreed that he showed promise as an actor.

One of Brian’s routines, self-appointed, was to compile Nems’ own Top Twenty chart. He liked dealing with the pop side, and through relations with record companies felt he was maintaining an attachment to show business.

May recalls seeing John, Paul and George strumming together in the empty Life Drawing room at college. Without bass and drums they were really just half a group. “They weren’t very good. In fact, they were really bad.

George just wanted the group to get off the ground—“It was better to have a bass player who couldn’t play than to not have a bass player at all”—and he’d liked Stu from the start.

Johnny Burnette and the Rock ’n Roll Trio, a 1957 ten-inch LP on the Coral label that John had somehow acquired, became a most important and influential record for the group

from which it’s clear they could play and sing and were especially good at harmonies—this is, inexplicably, a horror of a tape, suggesting they were chronically bad when testimony has them better than proficient.

At that Stadium show we became aware of all the other bands in Liverpool, about twelve in total.”51

Were Long John and the Silver Beatles any good? Probably not, given that they incorporated a beginner bass player and used two drummers, one who didn’t want to play with them and the other who hadn’t played with them before, arrived late and used the first man’s kit.

as Paul would reflect: “It was a vital experience for us, because after that we knew it was no breeze—you’d have to work hard and sort out where the money was coming from. It taught us a lot of lessons. It gave us an insight into what it could be like.”

Beatles had played seven times in eight days—more than in the previous five months combined—and they’d learned plenty.

Mr. Brian’s behavior earned their loyalty but kept them ever wary; arrogant and adorable, cutting and charming, flawed but fair, here was a man they could love and hate in the same breath.

vitally unconventional independent labels across the States—the bravura blend of two immigrant classes, blacks and Jews—continued to pump out great new R&R, R&B and more.

“Money” became John Lennon’s song, one he always sang, a scarred boy who craved money and sex and was injecting passion into every performance.

but especially George, were Duane Eddy fans, and his ultra-twangy “Shazam!” lodged in their minds, as did “Road Runner” by Bo Diddley (“I’m a rooooooad-runner honey!”), and they liked “Only the Lonely,”

twelve-bar structure is suited to less technical musicians. In these, the Beatles sound positively bad.

As Rod Murray observes, “None of them had any business sense, and without Allan Williams I don’t think they would have got anywhere.”

a coincidence so extraordinary it beggars belief, also sitting in the 2i’s at that moment was Bruno Koschmider. He was back in London to find another English group for the Kaiserkeller.g “It was like Stanley meeting Livingstone,”

The great 2i’s, wellspring first of British skiffle, then rock and roll, completed the holy trinity by propelling Liverpool groups to Hamburg.

Hamburg just looked like any other city, foreign but still a city, and then suddenly we started to drive into a different area with lights and clubs. These naive boys were being driven into this hell-hole of iniquity—it was marvelous.”

Paul remembers their attitude at such times: “We had this way of getting over problems—someone would say, ‘Well, what are we going to do now?’ and we’d say, ‘Well, something’ll happen,’ and the four of us believed that. Nobody would ever go, ‘What do you mean, “Something’ll happen”? That’s no answer!’ We’d go, ‘Yeah, something will happen.’ There was this, like, faith.”

session with the Shadows, the four talented

would become the sound of the late summer and autumn, inspiring a glut of groups to play precision-perfect twangy instrumentals, point their guitars upward and outward in unison and do choreographed footsteps, left-stop-right-stop. This was the Britain the Beatles would return to after playing hard rock and roll for thirty hours a week in Hamburg. This was the fashion they happened to skip.

When we were all depressed—thinking the group was going nowhere and this is a shitty deal and we’re in a shitty dressing-room—I’d say, “Where we going, fellers?” and they’d go, “To the top, Johnny!” in pseudo-American voices. And I’d say, “Where’s that, fellers?” and they’d say, “To the toppermost of the poppermost, Johnny!” I’d say, “Riiiight!” and we’d all cheer up. That was our little mantra that got us through.8

To begin with, however, no matter how appealing their harmonies, they simply didn’t have the repertoire.

longest they’d ever had to play in one stretch was about two hours, now they had to do up to six.

They were a bar band, and though no customer stuck around all night long, the Beatles set themselves the challenge of not repeating themselves. The result was a brisk broadening of their output...

they did the whole first Carl Perkins LP, the whole first Johnny Burnette LP, the whole first Buddy Holly and the Crickets LP, the whole first Elvis Presley LP as well as all of Elvis’s Golden Records, and the whole first Gene Vincent LP (one of their favorite numbers ...

Paul could make Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” last fifteen minutes without any difficulty, and John did something similar with Elvis’s “Baby Let’s Play House”: “We’d make it last about ten mi...

they did all the Chuck Berry numbers they knew, all the Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Coasters, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino and Larry Williams. John sang Hank Williams country numbers like Honky Tonk Blues, they did oldies like “Moonglow” and “The Harry Lime Theme” and new tunes like “Money,” “Besame Mucho,” “Shakin’ All Over” and “Apache” (but without the Shadows’ dance steps). “We had to learn millions of songs,” George would say, “because we’d be on for hours. Hamburg was really like our apprenticeship, learning how to play in front of people.”11

In this way, almost from the start here in Hamburg, the Beatles became all about stamping feet and clapping hands, to generate noise and excitement and keep themselves musically together. “We kept that big heavy four-in-a-bar beat going all night long,” George said.

with relief that the Beatles heard about the British Sailors’ Society, at Johannesbollwerk 20, down by the pier. Though dispensing little religion, it was essentially a mission, a shelter for seamen and anyone else from the old country who happened to wander along.

Deeply unhappy—actually, morally offended—by such antics, Bruno Koschmider started to keep a behavior logbook (long lost, regrettably) that could be used against these Liverpool louts if things got seriously out of hand.

had fights breaking out every ten minutes because of the Beatles,” he said, which might have been true, but blaming the Beatles for starting Grosse Freiheit bar brawls would be like blaming the Poles for the Second World War.

“Ringo used to ask us, in a slurred, drunken voice, to play 3:30 Blues.”34

In seven extraordinary mach Schauing weeks at the Kaiserkeller the Beatles had doubled the vast amount of stage time already accrued at the Indra.

In total, inside just fourteen weeks, they’d rocked Hamburg for about 415 hours—like 276 ninety-minute shows or 830 half-hours—and

and every night tried not to repea...

No one stopped to realize it, and there was no way of knowing anyway, but the Beatles had to be the most experienced rock gro...

it toughened their voices, seasoned their characters, enriched their personalitie...

instruments. I asked John what it was like in Hamburg and he said, “Fookin’ great! They roll up the pavements in Liverpool at eleven, but in Hamburg they’re just rolling them out at midnight.”

All the groups raced to cover Elvis first, and the Beatles won again with “Are You Lonesome Tonight.” It came out in Britain on Friday, January 13, and they did it the next night at Aintree Institute.

This was the way John dealt with things, and he also knew the Beatles must have a solid front line, not back a soloist. As he said, “Every group had a lead singer in a pink jacket singing Cliff Richard–type songs. We were the only group that didn’t … and that was how we broke through, by being different.”

He gave them prime position in every show, not the final spot but the middle one, around 9:30; people would be drifting off by 10:15 to catch the last bus home and the closing group generally played to a fraction of those who’d been in the hall earlier.

Bass player Johnny Gustafson, one of so many to benefit from the increased opportunities, summarizes it succinctly: “The Beatles cracked Liverpool open, and the avalanche came after that.”15

Wooler’s relish for alliteration and liberal use of eye-catching exclamation marks made them, in this first month alone, Dynamic, The Great! The Sensational! and, on the last day of the month, in one of his Hive of Jive ads, the Stupendous, Stompin’ Big Beat Beatles.

The curtains fell open and there they were. Even now, I can still feel the kick. You couldn’t mistake how good they were. Even the fighting stopped.

A fair number of the Liverpool rockers took this risk—the so-called rock ’n’ dole—but not, it seems, the Beatles. They had no need. Ringo briefly, semi-seriously, looked around for a proper job, one that would enable him to earn by day, play by night and leave him free to go away when necessary,

The three Beatles saw a wider picture. There was no question Pete’s forceful four-in-the-bar drumming was one of the ingredients that ignited their explosion.

No other group was close like the Beatles, three of whom functioned as intimate friends with their own shorthand language, humor and complexities.