Beatles (68 page)

Looking back over the last 15 years, I am surprised that no one has taken their place. Some people will argue with this. Seven years ago, it was said the Osmonds were making more money. Now it is said to be Michael Jackson. Probably, dollar for dollar, it is true. In five years’ time, some other singing sensation will astound the world, sell more records, and will be said to be bigger than the Beatles.

There will also be composers who will come along and write individual tunes that will earn more money. Andrew Lloyd Webber is probably already on the way to doing this. There will be pop stars to come who will capture the imagination of the times, who will have wide social effects, create new fashions, new attitudes. As I write, Boy George is on the radio in my younger daughter’s room. He has certainly made an impression, right across the so-called civilized world. Will we still be impressed by him in 15 years’ or even five years’ time?

As an entity, as a group who could compose and perform and influence their generation, it is hard to think of any rival in the last 15 years. With the Beatles, we got those three elements in one. They will be a hard act to beat.

But this is not meant to be a winning game, trying to prove they are better or more successful than anyone else. They were. They did. They have been. So let us celebrate. Let us forget those draggy Apple days, those pathetic squabbles and rows, and most of all, let us try to rise above the awful tragedy of
John’s death. He, and the Beatles, left us more than enough to rejoice over.

This book was meant, is meant, to capture them at their height, to explain how they got there, in their own words and in the words of those who were with them at the time. What they did together was unique. By some mysterious alchemy, their different talents and personalities intermingled, overlapped, overran, so that the result was a mixture that was so much finer and stronger and more original than the sum of their parts. What they produced as Beatles, during that relatively short span together, is what I am still happy to remember them by and for which I give thanks. The Beatles are now long dead. Long may they live.

So many of the people who appeared in this book in 1968 have since died – or, in the case of Brian Epstein, died during the course of the book itself. Later on came the deaths of John Lennon in 1980 and George Harrison in 2001.

Looking back, I find it hard to believe that Brian Epstein was only 33 when he died in 1967. When I first met him, I didn’t realise how young he was – just two years older than me – because he appeared so mature, sophisticated, polished, successful, metropolitan. I felt like a scruffy provincial hick by comparison. I remember going to his house in Chapel Street, Belgravia and ogling his L S Lowry paintings, the first real ones I’d ever seen. Then his country house in Sussex – that was even more impressive. I didn’t know, nor did the Beatles, about his private life and tortured inner state. (The end of which I tried to capture in
Chapter 26
.)

John and George, and also Brian, have had their lives well remembered and recorded, and will continue to have books written about them, but I thought I’d set down a few facts and personal memories about some of the other characters, major and minor, whom I met all those years ago in the course of doing the book and who are now sadly no longer alive.

NEIL ASPINALL (1942–2008)

Neil died in March 2008, aged 65. He featured highly in the 1968 book as the Beatles’ original road manager and friend, and went on to even greater influence on their lives. He was the only person of any importance in the Beatles saga who never did a book about his life with them.

(The other person with a tale to tell, though more of a sliver really, a slice of their life, is Jane Asher, once engaged to Paul McCartney and around him when some of his best work was written. She has always refused to indulge in any beans-spilling.)

Neil Aspinall was there, all the time, from the very beginning, a constant friend and associate, never leaving the magical mystery circle, becoming the head of Apple Corps, looking after their business interests. Quite a job, when you think of all the legal dramas after the Beatles split, and the personal differences at one time between Paul and Yoko.

Neil was born in Prestatyn in 1942 and was in the same year at Liverpool Institute as Paul, and the year above George. His first memory of George was George asking him for a drag on his ciggie behind the bike shed.

He got nine GCEs and went off to study accountancy. It was his friendship with Pete Best, then the Beatles drummer, which brought him back in contact again with Paul and George.

Neil was living at Pete’s house. Pete’s mother, Mona, ran the Casbah, the little club where the Beatles played in their early stages as the Quarrymen. Neil started working for them as a part-time roadie in 1961, running them to local gigs in an old van for five shillings per man per gig – £1 a night.

One of the more dramatic events in early Beatles history, known well by all true believers, occurred in 1962 when Pete Best was sacked and Ringo took over. There were demonstrations on Merseyside, fans campaigning for Pete, who was looked upon as much more handsome. The Beatles didn’t do the dirty deed themselves, leaving Brian Epstein, their manager, to inform Pete. Pete then went on to slice bread for a few pounds a week
while the Beatles went on to be the most famous group in the world.

What never came out at the time of the Pete Best sacking was that Neil, friend of both the Beatles and Pete Best, was having an affair with Mona, Pete’s mother. In fact, they had a son who was born that same year. Neil, aged only 19, was thus caught in a terrible emotional turmoil, with Pete sacked by his new best friends, and Mona, his lover, furious at how her son Pete had been treated.

John did tell me this gossip, sniggering, in 1967 when I was doing the book, but said not to repeat it. So Neil’s relationship with Mona is not referred to in the book, though it was a vital element in the whole Pete Best drama. At the time I only half believed John anyway, just as I wasn’t sure about his story that he’d had a one-night stand with Brian Epstein.

In recent times, Neil’s relationship with Mona, all those years earlier, became known to many people – and he had kept contact with their son Roag, despite going on to get married and have children of his own.

That same year, 1962, Neil gave up his accountancy studies and joined the Beatles full-time, quite a brave thing to do when no one knew where the Beatles were going. Later, when they had started national touring, he was joined by another roadie, Mal Evans.

Neil was with them through all their years of fame, the tours and concerts. He would get shouted at, told to fetch impossible things, fix ludicrous arrangements, such as hiring a plane that time when Paul and Linda decided on the spur of the moment to come and visit me in Portugal.

But Neil was more than a roadie and fixer – he was their friend and confidant, he helped with words of songs when the boys got stuck, and with personal relationships when they wanted them unstuck.

His accountancy training proved invaluable during the decades when he ran Apple, as of course none of the Beatles knew
much about money. As the years went on, he masterminded much of the group’s professional affairs and back catalogues, dealing with some mighty international companies who were able to hire the best accountants and lawyers. On the whole, Neil won most of the battles, helping the group make further millions. He also had a creative streak, acting as the producer of the film
Let It Be
and organising
The Beatles Anthology
.

Neil was totally trusted, knew where all the skeletons lay, was loyal and faithful to the Beatles and yet was not at all star-struck. He was more than aware of their foibles, greed, stupidities, unreasonableness, would readily slag them off, moan about their latest outrage. I often used to think, having lunch with him over the years, that in fact he wasn’t really a Beatles fan. It was just something he got caught up in. But it was clear he was part of the family, part of them for ever. So while moaning as all family members do, he would never betray their secrets.

He was well paid, of course, so never needed to do a kiss ’n’ tell. When I pressed him for inside stories or his take on events at which we had both been present, he used to say he couldn’t remember. Which is what Mick Jagger always says. In Neil’s case, it was possibly because he wasn’t really much interested in the personal stuff. His mind didn’t quite work that way. He had a dry, austere, rather resigned, cynical view of most people, more interested in facts and figures than tittle-tattle. So perhaps he couldn’t have done a revelatory book after all. He was there, no question, but was somehow floating above it all. The Beatles were very fortunate to have him.

MAL EVANS (1935–1975)

Mal Evans joined the Beatles in 1963 as the assistant roadie, helping Neil with the increasingly heavy workload – humping more and bigger pieces of equipment, and soon travelling with the group all over the world.

He’d been working for the Post Office as an engineer since leaving school, then had become a bouncer at the Cavern. He
was big – six foot two inches – and burly, while Neil was lean and slender. Neil always seemed a bit of a worrier, rather neurotic, and perhaps a bit resentful when put upon to do demeaning tasks way below his intellect. Mal, however, appeared perfectly content, an affable giant, just pleased to be with the boys and in work, doing anything that was demanded, from keeping the fans at bay – now and again allowing the prettier ones access to the inner sanctums, of course – to bringing cups of tea and going out for cigarettes.

I can see him now, arriving in Abbey Road studios one evening with bundles of socks and shirts, all in their packets, brand new. He’d been asked by one of the boys to get some new clothes, then the others had chipped in, so he’d practically emptied the whole shop, buying everything in sight. The boys clambered over him, fighting to grab the best shirt.

He was always on hand to play occasional instruments, banging a tambourine in ‘Dear Prudence’, hitting an anvil in ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’. And he made brief appearances in some of their films, such as
Help!
, where he could be seen fleetingly as a long-distance swimmer.

The boys tried out new lyrics on Mal, the man in the street, to see what he thought of them, did he get them, and they would also ask him for suggestions. It was supposedly Mal who first came up with the name Sergeant Pepper. Such contributions have to be put in context. Other people, such as Pete Shotton, have laid claim to various words and phrases of Beatles lyrics, but John and Paul, like many creative people, would ask anyone who happened to be around what they thought. Often they were just trying out ideas they already had, some of which were used, others discarded.

Mal was constantly teased because they all knew that his real love, his first fave in the pop world, was not the Beatles, but Elvis. It was the highlight of his life when he met Elvis, through working with the Beatles. He was a great collector of Elvis records and memorabilia.

When the Beatles stopped playing, he worked for Apple for a time, did a bit of producing on the Apple label, notably with a group called Badfinger. He then moved to America, having become estranged from his wife and two children.

He was, by the sound of it, looking for a new role, not having been able, like Neil, to settle down to a desk-bound life. He was working on his memoirs, supposedly, and had retained quite a few valuable pieces of personal Beatles memorabilia, when he was killed in a bizarre shooting incident in Los Angeles in 1975.

He had apparently locked himself in a room with a gun, in some sort of depressed or perhaps drug-induced state, threatening suicide. The police were called, shots were fired, Mal was killed instantly. He was aged 40, the same age as John when he was shot dead.

DEREK TAYLOR (1934–1997)

Derek was the most amusing, most likeable, most urbane and possibly the most talented of all the Beatles insiders who worked with them over the years. He had their sense of humour, sense of ridicule, and John’s scatological way with words.

He was born in Liverpool, worked on local papers, then moved to Manchester in 1962 as northern show-business writer for the
Daily Express
, based in Manchester. At the time it was a very influential job on what was still a great paper. He covered one of the early Beatles concerts in Manchester, in May 1963, thought they were brilliant and refreshing, said so in his column, and began to write about them regularly, ghosting for a while a
Daily Express
column supposedly written by George.

He was asked by Brian to ghost his memoirs,
A Cellarful of Noise
, which was published in 1964. He became Brian’s personal assistant and toured with the Beatles round the world. This lasted until he and Brian had words, supposedly because one evening after a social engagement Derek went off in a posh limousine that Brian maintained had been ordered for him. Brian was left stranded.

Derek moved to America for a few years, from 1965 to 1968, and worked as a press officer for leading American groups. This was why, when I was doing the biography, I didn’t have much contact with him, as he was rarely in the UK.

But I had by chance already met him, before he’d begun working for the Beatles. In 1963, he and I were guests at the Galway Oyster Festival in Ireland, for which the organisers were trying to get UK publicity. Derek was representing the
Daily Express
and I was from
The Sunday Times
. Then, as now, young journalists are keen on covering anything which might turn out to be a free piss-up.

I thought Derek one of the wittiest people I’d ever met, and it wasn’t just the influence of the Guinness. We became friends from then on – though he did play a rotten trick on me and my wife. She was with me that weekend, pregnant with our first child, which Derek spotted, though she was only three months gone at the time.