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

by Mark Lewisohn

The Beatles wanted someone who could further their career in a very positive way: they wanted somebody with nous, somebody with clout, somebody with cash, and somebody who drove a car.36

think The Beatles are No. 1 because they resurrected original style rock ’n’ roll music, the origins of which are to be found in American negro singers. They hit the scene when it had been emasculated by figures like Cliff Richard and sounds like those electronic wonders The Shadows and their many imitators. Gone was the drive that inflamed the emotions. This was studio set jungle music purveyed skillfully in a chartwise direction by arrangement

with the A & R men. The Beatles, therefore, exploded on a jaded scene.

Here they were, first five and then four human dynamos generating a beat which was irresistible. Turning back the Rock clock. Pounding out items from Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, The Coasters and the other great etceteras of the era. Here they were, unmindful of uniformity of dress. Unkempt-like long hair. Rugged yet romantic, appealing to both sexes. With calculated naivete and an ingenious, throw-away approach to their music. Affecting indifference to audience response and yet always saying “Thank-you.” Reviving interest in and commanding enthusiasm for numbers which descended the Charts way back. Popularizing (more than any other group) flipside items—example, “Boys.” Compelling attention and influencing, wittingly or unwittingly, other groups in the style, choice and presentation of songs.

Musically authoritative and physically

magnetic,

A remarkable variety of talented voices which song-wise sound distinctive, but when speaking, possess the same

naivete of tone. Rhythmic revolutionaries. An act which from beginning to end is a succession of climaxes. A personality cult. Seemingly unambitious, yet fluctuating between the self-assured and the vulnerable. Truly a phenomenon—and also a predicament to promoters! Such are the fantastic Beatles. I don’t think anything like them will happen again.

While Rory’s repertoire hardly changed, the Beatles’ varied show to show—they kept the fans on their toes and themselves in touch with the latest releases coming into Nems.

The Beatles weren’t averse to doing number 1s—

Mostly, though, they stuck to obscure numbers no other group was

d...

“Lennon [had] attitude,” said Bob Wooler, “and, taking his lead from Lennon, McCartney could be similar. At times, they reminded me of those well-to-do Chicago lads Leopold and Loeb, who killed someone because they felt superior to him. Lennon and McCartney were ‘superior human beings.’ ”59

“They were like brothers, with John as the elder, Paul’s mentor. They were so tight it was like there was a telepathy between them: on stage, they’d look at each other and know instinctively what the other was thinking.”

They were an incredible pair: always great fun, irreverent, and so close.”

The Beatles got their American music from shops, not ships.

pact agreed between the Beatles not to give one another presents was maintained, save that Paul sprang for the hamburger and Coke that was John’s big-birthday dinner.8

The Beatles haircut was born that afternoon, perhaps October 12 or 13, 1961, in the tranquility of 29 rue de Beaune, a narrow side-street shaded by tall buildings.

“George changed his style to match John and Paul’s but this was a real tester for Pete. It was like a gauntlet had been thrown down. And Pete absolutely didn’t

want to put his hair down. A decision had to be made—and he decided no.”3

November 9, 1961,

their sound, look, charm, charisma, honesty and humor.

But Brian Epstein had never been so certain of anything in all his twenty-seven years. His conviction in the Beatles’ qualities was unshakable from the start. He loved, and he believed, and top of these beliefs—and it does appear that he thought this right away—was that they would be the greatest. “I knew they would be bigger than Elvis. I knew they would be the biggest in the world.”32

The Beatles were damaged goods: they had that reputation for being unreliable, unpunctual, arrogant and bolshie. Their perfunctory, take-it-or-leave-it attitude was so disliked by promoters that two had left it, and several others steered clear altogether.

I could tell he wasn’t going to manage the Beatles for the money, and that he wasn’t a typical showbiz manager who’d rip them off. He loved them. I could see that. Brian Epstein was the best thing that could have happened to the Beatles because he was devoted.

I liked them very much indeed. I liked them even more off the stage than on. Everything about the Beatles was right for me—their kind of attitude to life, the attitude that comes out in their music and their rhythm and their lyrics, and their humor, and their own personal way of behaving—it was all just what I wanted. They represented the direct, unselfconscious, good-natured, uninhibited human relationships which I hadn’t found and had wanted and felt deprived of. And my own sense of inferiority evaporated with the Beatles because I knew I could help them, and that they wanted me to help them, and trusted me to help them.

“treating him to one of our Beatle Silences, which could be quite frosty, with solemn, sour faces gazing vacantly into space.”

Without even realizing it (and they’d have been thrilled to know), the Beatles broke the Detroit

“Motown sound” to the British listening public.

This day, May 9, 1962, was six months exactly since he’d first seen them in the Cavern, on November 9, 1961; half a year had led them to this moment.

All that changed in the second week of May 1962. This was the moment when John Winston Lennon (21 years, 7 months) and James Paul McCartney (19 years, 11 months) looked each other full in the face and saw that something, saw white-hot ambition, determination, daring, craving, personality, talent and ego, and went for it.

was just after ‘Hey! Baby’ came out—[and] we were hoping to be the first British group to use harmonica on record.”

All the other bands said, ‘Thank you, the next song is …’ but the Beatles made jokes on stage.

Both

men decided that Pete was unsuitable for recording, not to be used on future occasions. It was the fourth time in four sessions he’d been rated not good enough—at least once too many.

They all looked at each other for a long while, shuffling their feet, then George Harrison took a long look at George and

said, ‘Yeah. I don’t like your tie.’

George Martin did not...

appreciate the joke (he was, he says, rather proud of his tie, black with a red horse motif, bought at Liberty’s) and t...

fleeting tension: “There w...

of ohhhhh, but then we laughed and he did too. Being born in Liverpool you have to be a comedian.” Paul recalls “a little tense second and then everyone laughed,” and Smith’s account would prevail: “It cracked the ice, and for the next fifteen to twenty minutes the Beatles were pure entertainment. When they left, George and I just sat the...

was with them they gave me a sense of well-being, of being happy. The music was almost incidental.

And as George Martin would add, “It was love at first sight. John, George and Paul—I thought they were super. They had great personalities, and they charmed themselves to me a great deal. George

was probably the most vociferous of the lot. Pete Best was very much the background boy—he didn’t say much at all, he just looked moody and sullen in the corner.”

There were no groups like the Beatles. Three guitars and drums, all three front-line guitarists singing lead and harmonies, a group who wrote their own songs—it was simple, direct and not done. George Martin’s decision to accept them this way, as a leaderless unit, was, correspondingly, a first too—and precisely what they’d hoped for and Brian had been trying to help them find. They’d lucked into the only producer in London who shared their resistance to convention, the only man with a reputation for sound experimentation and a strong knack for the unusual … and he’d lucked into the Beatles.

This was a Liverpool-Lennon love song: beyond the politeness of the first word, he’s urging his girl to please him like he pleases her.

John always said the song was entirely his, and Paul confirms it, but still they were both involved.

I

told Mr. Epstein that I was not satisfied with the performance of their drummer Mr. Peter Best, and as far as my recordings were concerned I would prefer not to use him on the actual record but that I would use a session drummer. Pete Best did seem to be “an odd man out” and while the other three were very unified in their performance and enthusiasm, he did not seem to be a true part of the group.

Brian also didn’t like the idea of Ringo as Pete’s replacement. “I thought he was rather loud—I didn’t want him,” he’d reflect two years later.10