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

by Mark Lewisohn

“Love Me Do” was issued only in Britain for now. Just as the Beatles had to break out of Liverpool to reach the rest of the country, so they’d have to break out of Britain to reach the rest of the world.

newly opened and secretly owned New York enterprise, Transglobal Music, Inc. It was essentially British EMI in America,

for people to say they “knew right away” the Beatles were special, but many did find “Love Me Do” interesting in 1962. Even if they didn’t buy it, the recording stuck in the ears of listeners: it was engaging, appealing, unusual, audibly different from everything else around.

Michigan and their sweetly bewitching “Devil in His Heart.” The Donays

Wishing,” from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. “Want to know a secret? / Promise not to tell? / We are standing by a wishing well.” “Do You Want to Know a Secret” was the first-born of John and Paul’s parallel calling,

Beatles twice shared Merseyside backstages with Little Richard in October, and in November they’d be spending close on two weeks together in Hamburg.

Billy Preston was a 16-year-old organist from Los Angeles, a child prodigy steeped in the Church and gospel music.

Richard was Preston’s legal guardian.

Alan Smith got the real scoop, scribbling in his notebook Little Richard’s unqualified praise: “Man, those Beatles are fabulous! If I hadn’t seen them I’d never have dreamed they were white. They have a real authentic Negro sound.”22

Home Office report singled out Liverpool as England’s worst for drunkenness, with arrests in 1962 up by a third on 1961; the number of young unemployed was greater here than anywhere outside London, and higher than at any time since 1940; and it was estimated that two hundred thousand—almost a third of the population—would quit Liverpool during the next twenty years in search of a better life.

artist, saxophonist and Gorman’s friend—said to his colleague at the André Bernard hair salon, Mike McCartney, “You’re interested in these arty-farty things, aren’t you? Do you want to come to this Event at the Everyman?”

thought one show-off in the family was enough and said, ‘No, I don’t do that kind of thing.’ They said, ‘Neither do we, let’s do it for a laugh.’

He wrote several pieces in this period, including “No Flies on Frank,” an extended (six-hundred-word) tale of a man upon whom no flies had landed, although plenty gathered on his wife after he “had clubbed her mercifully to the ground dead.”33

never found out why, and he called himself Pool McCooby or “our kid.”

For the Beatles in 1962, “making it” meant a car, a record in the charts, and radio and TV broadcasts, and they’d bagged the lot.

Beatles’ first TV appearance vanished into the ether on transmission, never to be seen again, not so much lost as never had.

It wasn’t suggested by Brian, it was their own idea. They’d mach Schaued and messed around for a long time and now were trying something different. As John would explain, “Gradually, we cooled it and cooled it, and used less energy. We had a choice between dancing about, creating havoc, and playing. So we concentrated on the playing.”46

Personality was conveyed by attitude, looks, humor and natural charisma: they were still having a great time and it still showed, just differently.

David John Smith, a sharp 16-year-old musician and fan who began what amounted to a postal campaign to push the Beatles in particular and Liverpool groups in general. To this day, he’s not quite sure why he did it: “I wasn’t a letter writer by nature, but I suppose I just wanted to get the Beatles some exposure—even

John nicknamed him “Letters” and Paul asked Brian to give him a job at Nems Enterprises—but someone else was plugging away on their behalf too, a man they knew nothing about and to whom they owed so much. Kim Bennett—professional manager at music publisher

Ardmore and Beechwood, in

was for another reason: because it had been his idea that got the Beatles their Parlophone contract in the first place.

“Look, I honestly think this record is better than you’ve given it marks for. What about it? Have another listen.”49

Watson, who usually played one disc a day and allowed “Love Me Do” as a personal favor.50 Bennett also tapped one of his lunch companions, BBC producer Brian Willey, to give the Beatles their

Bennett’s best achievement was to persuade producer Jimmy Grant to play “Love Me Do” on Saturday Club. It was the ideal showcase for the Beatles’ target audience, averaging ten million listeners a week, but just days before the broadcast the record was suddenly excluded,

Tuesday/Wednesday, October 23/24, the Beatles’ sole two-day break of the year,

The new song was “I Saw Her Standing There,” though it had no title as yet. Its melody and structure skidded into Paul’s head late on Monday as he drove back from a Nems Enterprises Showdance in Widnes.

elegant squares—I think Fitzroy Square was one—while he made up rhyming lines and asked me what I thought of them. He said, “What rhymes with ‘We danced through the night’?” and I came up with “We held each other tight,”

for playing forty-five or sixty minutes, jumped by two-thirds from £30 to £50—and

think your record ‘Love Me Do’ is great. Please don’t be offended, but I think you

sound like a colored group. Very few white people have that sound. You should come to America and be famous—you’d go big in the States.”

He took the time to teach me how to play the harmonica. I learned “Love Me Do” and reciprocated by making sure that he, George, Paul and Ringo ate.

He’d liked the Beatles as people, and appreciated right away how different and appealing they were. They had personality, originality, talent and a strong core following, and now they also had tours and bigger and better radio

The Beatles already knew their November 15 return from Germany would be to London and not Liverpool,

Eleven days later, “Love Me Do” got into Two-Way Family Favourites—heard by the week’s biggest radio audience, in excess of seventeen million.

He’d noticed it the instant a Beatles photo arrived in the office. “Their look

was a cross between art college and modernist. Music hadn’t caught up with fashion and film—all the pop singers and instrumental groups were still so old-fashioned,

It conjured up a pleasingly surreal image: the Beatles hadn’t taken people with them, they’d taken an audience,

George’s ability to hear a catchy song was usually faultless, but he’d erred

with “Love Me Do” and knew it. Despite his misgivings, and lack of support, it had gone into the charts and stayed there—it was now in its sixth week, still rising,

original act that people were talking about, and the combination of this and his fascination for them as people, as personalities,

He’d told them the original was too slow and been impressed by their rearrangement—and now he had a new suggestion to improve it further: that John should play the harmonica.

This was all great news, and then George Martin floored them with his next suggestion. He wanted to make an LP.*

His gift for recognizing unconventional artistry, and for cultivating that talent in the studio, had made him the most

daring and inventive producer in Britain.

but the Beatles made it known they had artwork ideas.

George Martin’s productions with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan “made him all the more acceptable”

of well-being, of being happy” in the Beatles’ company; he found them attractive, talented and funny, and cared they thought well of him.

meeting focused on how to maximize “Please Please Me” ’s potential, and George had a specific suggestion that would reverberate forever: that Brian should give the record’s publishing

to another music company and not to Ardmore and Beechwood.