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Actually, though, the leader of the gang viewed Ringo with some sense of awe.
As John put it, “To be so aware, with so little
education, is rather unnerving to someone who’s been to school
Ringo was even older than John, by three months, and Paul would always see him in this light: “He’s a grown-up, Ringo—always is, always has been. I suspect when he was
about three he was a grown-up.”
As Paul would say a few years later, “When Ringo joined us
I used to act all big time with him because I’d been in the business a bit longer and felt superior. I was a know-all. I’d been in the sixth form and thought I’d read a bit, you know. I began putting him off me, and me off me.”
one—the Beatles’ third songwriter. Showing real guts, he revealed for their approval a little country and western ditty he called “Don’t Pass Me By.”
They loved oddballs and eccentrics and he certainly was one. They didn’t always know which way to take him, but they made light of his gruffness or dour countenance (“I’m quite happy inside, it’s just the face won’t smile”) because they could pick on his big nose and that weird streak of gray in his hair. They were fascinated by his strictly simple diet and all the things his weakened stomach couldn’t tolerate; they were amused by the fallout from his fractured education, like his phonetic spelling and enjoyment of the weekly kids’ comics; they laughed when he signed LOVE AND LUCK above his
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John, Paul, and George's love for Ringo, other than his solid drumbeat.....from Tune In...
He also popped Prellies with them, smoked with
them, swore with them, womanized with them and enjoyed late starts and late nights with them, hanging out after work at the bowling alley or Blue Angel, Joe’s caff or Ma Storm’s. Their religion was different—John, Paul and George all had Irish blood and were the not-so-common fruit of Catholic–Protestant marriages; Ringo was pure Protestant—but his antipathy toward church-going was identical. And where Pete had been solidly into sport, with his boxing background and rugby talent, in Ringo the three of them found just about the only other male on Merseyside utterly indifferent to it. The
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They were on their way to becoming the closest of brothers—and Ringo, the sick only-child who’d stared through the window, longing to go outside and find someone
George brought Ringo into the group but chose not to room with him when they stayed at hotels in order to avoid the possibility of the Beatles falling deeper into two divisions, with them in one and John and Paul the other. He suggested Ringo share with Paul, and then, after a period of doing this, with John.34 They all accepted it and had brilliant times in every combination. Core robust relationships were critical to the Beatles’ strength and durability, every permutation
of allegiance binding them tight.
four northern lads with the strange group name and weird haircuts were considered rough scruffs on their first visit—now they had a different drummer with a big hooter and what looked like gray dye on one side of his head, and the lead guitarist had been in a fight.
Apart from all their other attributes, the Beatles sang and played the instruments they put down on tape, and so would be able to
perform their record the same way for live audiences, and this made them highly unusual in 1962.
There was only one proviso: they agreed that the order of the song’s credit would indicate its principal author. They’d continue to work on songs together, one bringing his ideas to the other, but where John was main creator, it would be Lennon-McCartney, and where Paul was main creator, it would be McCartney-Lennon. The credit for 50:50 collaborations would be decided if and when there were any (there’d been none since 1958). Accordingly, as “Love Me Do” and “PS I Love You” were mostly Paul’s songs, Brian took a pen to the Ardmore and Beechwood contract and amended part of the inserted
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“LENNON/McCARTNEY” “McCARTNEY/LENNON.”
finalized contract was presented for signatures. John and Paul—“The Composers”—agreed to appoint Nems Enterprises Ltd. as their sole and exclusive manager and agent until September 30, 1965, on a 20 percent commission. The document said nothing about the name order—Lennon-McCartney or McCartney-Lennon—and it would never be put into writing.
At least one of them wrote To——; boys got a plain from, girls got a love from with usually three kisses; the first to sign would also write The Beatles—a reminder for people of who and what they were—and one or two of them might also draw an inky doodle beetle. All this would be crowded on a single pastel-colored page in every book. They were a band.
Theirs was constantly a united group message
“We used to think they were soft,” John said—anything “soft” in their eyes being crap, finished, down the nick, fookin’ LAST. As George would explain, they never had any intention of going down that well-trodden, misbegotten road: “We’ve always disliked the phoney ‘star image.’ We’d much rather be ourselves. We always came out as ourselves, and we thought, ‘If they don’t like us how we are, then hard luck,’ and they did. People like natural better, I think.”5
As Tony Calder remembers, the young journalist who interviewed the Beatles “was a horrible, Bri-Nylon white-shirted guy with acne and supposed power because he worked for a magazine ‘people wanted to be in.’ He made it clear he didn’t really feel like giving the Beatles his valuable time, and said to them at the start, ‘Guitar groups are finished. It’s over. It’ll never happen again.’ ” After a few minutes of hard answers to soft questions, John Lennon unilaterally terminated the interview. “John just couldn’t take any more of it. He looked at me and said, ‘Let’s fucking get out of here, the
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John produced the first printed intimation of what had
always been his group’s hallmark—the speed with which they moved on, putting a present-day achievement fast behind them, even choosing to diminish it, in their dash to the next: “We weren’t expecting big things with ‘Love Me Do,’ in fact we aren’t so fond of it now. We’ve already recorded our follow-up and think it’s great.”11
“They don’t call themselves a vocal group or an instrumental group or a rhythm and blues group. They just don’t know what they are.”
It entailed finding a singer, a song and an arranger; they’d work as a trio around his office piano, select the right key and tempo, then discuss the musical treatment, how it should sound and what orchestration it should have; then he’d book the session players, get the music written out for different instruments, and finally head into the studio. Such archetypal A&R functions didn’t apply when it came to the Beatles. Their sessions would start with one or some or all four of them demonstrating how the new song went, George would tidy it up as necessary and then they’d record it (along with
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three hours. By letting the Beatles bring along their own songs, George was clearly accepting they were a self-contained group and not to be messed with—the very thing they most wanted. The songs were their songs and the sound was their sound, with a little help.
George experienced “a sense of well-being, of being happy” in the Beatles’ company; he found them attractive, talented and funny, and cared they thought well of him. “It shouldn’t really have mattered to me, whether they liked me or not,” he’d explain, “but I was pleased they seemed to.”
“The thing I like about the Beatles is their great sense of humor—and their talent, naturally. It’s a real pleasure to work with them because they don’t take themselves too seriously. They’ve got ability, but if they
make mistakes they can joke about it. I think they’ll go a long way in show business.”
The song as it emerged from here incorporated a number of ideas. “John and I used to nick a lot. ‘We’ll have this bit from the Marvelettes, we’ll have that bit from …’ If you really nick then it’s a disaster, but [the way we did] it just gets you into the song, and in the end you never notice where it was nicked from. You pull it all together and it makes something original.”
Some nicks are conjectural. “I saw her standing on the corner” is the opening line of the Coasters’ “Young Blood,” and “she’s too cute to be a minute over seventeen” is from Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie”—both songs still in the Beatles’ set. “How could I dance with another / Since I saw her standing there” has a similar melody and meter to “I want to be in that number / When the saints go marching in”—the tune Paul learned on trumpet in 1955–6 and the B-side of their own “My Bonnie” record. Other nicks are definite. In a 1964 interview, Paul cheerfully admitted to the wholesale lifting of the
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But Ringo knows the numbers, and his musical synergy with John, Paul and George is complete. They can wing it, he can swing it, and their combination defines tight.
The tape throws great light on the Nerk Twins’ chemistry. While Paul is singing “A Taste of Honey,” John suddenly shouts “SHUT UP TALKING!” to someone in the audience, interrupting Paul much more than the chatterbox. Paul knows this, and is pitched into laughter. When he sings “Till There Was You,” John—just a beat behind—speaks most of the lines in a persistent piss-taking echo: “No, I never heard them at all” (“No, he never heard them”). Paul chuckles and plows on; he can’t stop it, and he’s not even necessarily cross about it—he knows it’ll happen because this is John, and John is his
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probably also pulling crips. John couldn’t do this to anyone else without risking a thump, Paul wouldn’t accept it from anyone else; Paul gets to sing his song, John gets to undermine him. It’s just one facet of the complex sibling relationship they’ve always had, one among so many reasons they’re special together.
Brian had invested extraordinary energy in the Beatles these twelve months, fast-tracking their rise from rough local heroes to the brink of (and it really did seem due) national stardom. They’d matched his commitment and gone along with his plans all the way, their talents blending tremendously well. To coincide with the second Mersey Beat poll win, Brian put together a full-page ad titled 1962—the Beatles Year of Achievement; never one to miss a beat, he also had it printed as giveaway publicity posters on eye-catching colored paper (the Beatles signed them). Here are four of Astrid’s arty
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As he’d explain in summer 1967, “One of the most perfect relationships there has ever been, in my experience, is that which exists between the Beatles and myself. If I’d been domineering or dictatorial they would never have accepted me and it would all have gone wrong. You have to allow for freedom.”
Brian had the ideal marriage of enthusiasm, intelligence and instinctive entrepreneurial flair, swept high by trust, belief and love. He loved the Beatles as people and he loved them as artists: he loved their authenticity, originality, attitude, talent, truth, cynicism and fun, the A Grade alchemy that grabbed him—and many others—100 percent. He loved them for their uncompromisingly direct communication, for stimulating and challenging his thinking. He loved their sheer lust for life.
“We went in young boys and came out old men.”
It was obvious, and felt among them. As leader Lennon would explain, “We were the best fucking group in the goddamn world … and believing that is what made us what we were. Whether you call it ‘the best rock ’n’ roll group’ or ‘the best pop group,’ whatever—as far as I was concerned, we were the best. We thought we were the best in Hamburg and Liverpool—it was just a matter of time before everybody else caught on.”
Beatles’ Hamburg total was ±1,110 hours in thirty-eight weeks of playing—the equivalent of three hours every night for a full
