Shout! (43 page)

Brian justified the low fee, once more, against the publicity value. France, until now, had remained noticeably indifferent to Beatlemania. He was determined that the Beatles should conquer Paris, and that Paris should be in no doubt concerning who had engineered that conquest. Before the journey, he asked Dezo Hoffman the photographer to print up five hundred giveaway pictures of himself. Hoffman persuaded him this was not a good idea.

A vast contingent of British journalists went to Paris to cover the event. This time, the
Daily Express
led the field, having signed up George Harrison to write a daily column. The writing was actually to be done by Derek Taylor, a Hoylake-born
Express
reporter, formerly the paper’s northern dramatic critic. This cultural background, no less than his Italianate good looks, recommended Taylor to Brian for what was a deliberate attempt to give George a share of the limelight. “It will be
nice
for George,” Brian told him. “John and Paul have their songwriting and Ringo is—ah—rather new.”

The George V’s foyer was thronged with expectant photographers, hungrily noting the comings and goings of various important stakeholders in the quartet. George Martin, their record producer, had flown over to supervise a German-language recording of “She Loves You.” Dr. Strach, their accountant, was there; so was Walter Shenson, their prospective film producer, accompanied by Alun Owen, a Liverpool playwright whom the Beatles themselves had requested as scriptwriter. Nicky Byrne, of the Stramsact company, was there to arrange large deals, so he expected, for Beatles merchandise in France and throughout Europe.

As well as variety acts such as jugglers and acrobats, the Beatles shared the Olympia bill with two singers whose French followings greatly exceeded theirs. One was Sylvie Vartin, France’s own turbulent pop chanteuse. The other, Trini Lopez, was an American with a huge Continental chart success called “Lemon Tree.”

Lopez’s manager, Norman Weiss, instantly sought out Brian at the George V. Weiss worked with the American General Artists Corporation, whose former associate, Sid Bernstein, had already booked Carnegie Hall in New York in the hope of being able to present the Beatles
there. February 12, the date of Bernstein’s booking, was only three days after their first
Ed Sullivan Show
. Weiss, therefore, concluded the deal at last on Sid Bernstein’s behalf. Brian agreed that the Beatles would give two concerts at Carnegie Hall, each for a flat fee of $3,500.

They themselves were very different now from the four boys in George Martin’s studio, earnestly doing everything their producer told them. Martin, waiting at EMI’s Paris studio to supervise their German-language recording of “She Loves You” (“Sie Liebt Dich”), was coolly informed by telephone that the Beatles had decided not to come. He stormed over to the George V to find them lounging round their suite while Paul’s girlfriend, Jane Asher, poured out tea. Such was Martin’s schoolmasterly wrath that all four scattered in terror to hide under cushions and behind the piano.

On the eve of their first concert, while the French and English press jostled for position outside, John and Paul slept until 3:00
P.M.
Dezo Hoffman in the end accepted the hazardous job of waking them. “I told John,
‘Paris-Match
is waiting. They want to do a cover story.’
‘Paris-Match?’
John said. ‘Are they as important as the
Musical Express
?’”

Emerging into the Champs-Elysées in a circle of retreating lenses they found Paris rather less than ecstatic at their arrival. According to Hoffman, very few passersby even recognized them. The British press made a valiant attempt to stimulate Beatlemania, posing John and Paul at a sidewalk café and hedging them in among waiters and reporters. Vincent Mulchrone remarked on the prevailing apathy in his dispatch to the
Daily Mail
. “Beatlemania is still, like Britain’s entry into the Common Market, a problem the French prefer to put off for a while.”

Backstage at the Olympia the following night naked violence broke out after the French press had had the Beatles’ dressing-room door slammed in their faces. French photographers, especially those who have served in theaters of war like Algeria and Indochina, are not so easily discouraged. A fierce scuffle followed in which Brian Sommerville received a rabbit punch and Brian—who tried to interpose himself with outstretched arms and a querulous, “No—not
my
boys!”—was shoved backward by a burly French pressman who was simultaneously treading on his toes.

The show ran late, as French shows invariably do, and the Beatles did not go onstage until well after midnight. Trini Lopez, who had closed the first half hours before, seemed much more like top of the bill. To
add to their unease, a glimpse through the curtains showed the audience to be almost entirely male. “Where’s all the bloody chicks then?” they kept asking in agitation.

During the performance their usually reliable Vox amplifiers broke down three times. George, enraged by his fading guitar, began to complain openly of sabotage. Neither John nor Paul made any attempt to speak French, and the audience, for its part, evinced boredom toward Lennon-McCartney songs. All they seemed to want were rock ’n’ roll numbers like “Twist and Shout,” which they greeted with cries of
“un autre, un autre
.” At one point, a strange chant became audible. “Ring-o,” it sounded like. “Ring-o, Ring-o.”

The reviews next morning were tepid.
France-Soir
called them
zazous
(delinquents) and
vedettes démodées
(has-beens). According to Nicky Byrne the effect on merchandising prospects throughout Europe was swift and disastrous. Galeries Lafayette, the department store, decided, after all, not to fill an entire window with Beatles goods. Nor did Lambretta, the Italian motor scooter corporation, proceed with its plan to market a special model with a Beatles wig for a saddle.

The barbs of
France-Soir
, in common with everything French, had ceased to matter to the
zazous
and their entourage several hours earlier. Dezo Hoffman, eating dinner at a small restaurant with Derek Taylor, received an urgent summons back to the George V. Both returned, to find the Beatles’ suite in a state of eerie quiet.

“Brian was there as well,” Hoffman says. “He was sitting on a chair and the Beatles were sitting on the floor around him. He said the news had come through that ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ was number one in the American Top Hundred. The Beatles couldn’t even speak—not even John Lennon. They just sat on the floor like kittens at Brian’s feet.”

TWELVE

“THEY’VE GOT EVERYTHING OVER THERE. WHAT DO THEY WANT
US
FOR?”

E
arly on February 7, 1964, when the New York streets were still empty but for snow and steam and fast-bouncing cabs, a disk jockey on station WMCA sounded the first note of impending madness. “It is now 6:30
A.M.
, Beatle time. They left London thirty minutes ago. They’re out over the Atlantic Ocean, headed for New York. The temperature is 32 Beatle degrees.”

America’s interest, until the eleventh hour, had remained no more than cursory. The American press is at the best of times notoriously parochial, and these were the worst of times. Since November 22, there had been only one newspaper story in America; only one picture, on an amateur’s movie film, endlessly replayed up to that same frozen frame. A young man, next to his wife in an open car, slumped sideways as the bullets tore into him.

Just before a Christmas holiday that very few Americans felt disposed to celebrate, Walter Hofer, the New York attorney, sat in his office on West Fifty-seventh Street. Hofer, like many New Yorkers, had the habit of perpetual work. It was one way, at least, to shut out the dull, slow, directionless feeling that, since President John Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, had shrouded Manhattan like a fog.

“Out of the blue, I got this call from Capitol Records. They wanted to know, was it right that I acted in New York for a British company called NEMS Enterprises? I told them, yes, I did. They said they were trying to find out who controlled the publishing on a song called ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ by this British group, the Beatles.”

Capitol, prepared to release that unknown British group’s record into the sluggish post-Christmas market, had received some puzzling news from out of town. A disk jockey in Washington, D.C., working on station WWDC, had somehow obtained a copy of “I Want to Hold Your
Hand” and was playing it on the air amid a commotion of interest from his listeners. The record had come not from Capitol but direct from London via the disk jockey’s girlfriend, who was a stewardess with British Overseas Airways.

“Capitol wanted to get clearance on the publishing side, to be able to ship a few hundred copies into the Washington area,” Walter Hofer remembers. “In fact, I had to tell them that the publishing rights had been sold to another company, MCA. Sold for almost nothing, it so happened, just to give the song any foothold that was possible over here.”

While Capitol tried to resolve this trifling matter, a second, identical commotion was reported, from Chicago. A radio station was being besieged by enquiries after playing a song called “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by this British group, the Beatles. Apparently it had been sent on tape from a friend of the disk jockey’s at WWDC, Washington. From Chicago, by the same fraternal taping process, it moved west again, to St. Louis.

In New York, as the sidewalk Santas pessimistically clanged their bells, a drastic change was ordered in the marketing strategy of Capitol Records. A week earlier, Brown Meggs and his colleagues had been uneasy about a prospective pressing for “I Want to Hold Your Hand” of two hundred thousand copies. Now three entire production plants—Capitol’s own and that of CBS and RCA—were alerted to work through Christmas and New Year’s to press one million copies.

By the time the news reached Brian Epstein in Paris, sales were closer to 1.5 million. The night disappeared, after speech had returned, in a wild spree of drinking and piggyback riding and a restaurant party, joined by George Martin and his wife-to-be, Judy Lockhart-Smith, when Brian so far forgot himself as to sit and be photographed with a chamberpot on his head.

Next morning, the American press were there en masse.
Life
magazine’s London bureau chief, having planned to slip over to Paris merely for lunch, found himself, to his dismay, assigned to write the week’s cover story. Equivalent responsibilities had suddenly devolved onto representatives of CBS, Associated Press, the
New York Times
, and the
Washington Post
. The Beatles, roused from sleep at 1:00
P.M.
, were brought in, still in their dressing gowns, to meet the first deputation.

The deputation, crop-haired and collegiate-looking as all good
American media types ought to be, saw at once what element in the story their readers would find of consuming but abhorrent fascination.

The
New York Times
tried to put it tactfully.

“Who does your hair while you’re in Paris?”

“Nobody does it when we’re in
London
.”

“But where did those hairdo’s…”

“You mean hairdon’ts,” John said.

“We were coming out of a swimming bath in Liverpool,” George said, amid earnest note-taking, “and we liked the way it looked.” So the story went out on the AP and UPI agency wires.

The most celebrated journalistic visitor was Sheila Graham, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last love and one of America’s most widely syndicated columnists. She waited an hour and a half while the Beatles underwent medical examinations for their forthcoming film.

At length, only George put his serious face around the door. “Why—hello, dear,” Miss Graham said, rising. “Now tell me quickly—which one are you?”

Nicky Byrne and his Seltaeb partners were already in New York. They had gone ahead of the Beatles to set up merchandising deals according to the 90–10 percent contract in their favor. Nicky Byrne wore an overcoat with an astrakhan collar. Lord Peregrine Eliot wore a scruffy leather jacket belying his ancestral home with its 130 chimney stacks.

New York, by this time, late in January, made only one kind of sound. Every radio station every few seconds played a Beatles record. Capitol had now also released the
With the Beatles
LP—renamed
Meet the Beatles
—and, to their blank astonishment, had seen it go instantly to the top of the album charts.

Nicky Byrne and his Seltaeb young men stayed at the elegant Drake Hotel and worked out of offices on Fifth Avenue. Within hours, they were besieged by manufacturers seeking a part in what the American business world already recognized as the biggest marketing opportunity since Walt Disney had created Mickey Mouse.

The procedure was that Seltaeb, having satisfied themselves as to the suitable nature of the merchandise, issued a license in exchange for a cash advance against 10 percent manufacturing royalties. An early licensee, the Reliant Shirt Corporation, paid twenty-five thousand pounds up front for exclusive rights to produce Beatles T-shirts in three
factories they had bought for the purpose. Three days after the T-shirts went on sale, a million had been sold.

At Seltaeb’s Fifth Avenue office three or four presidents of major American corporations would obediently wait in line outside Nicky Byrne’s door. With magnificent hauteur, Byrne refused to talk business with anyone below the rank of president. Not the least confusion among these urgent supplicants arose from the knowledge that one Seltaeb director they might deal with was an earl. Lord Peregrine Eliot, more than once, was buttonholed by an anxious, “Say, listen Earl—”

Within a week of setting up in New York Nicky Byrne received an offer of fifty thousand dollars for Seltaeb from Capitol Records. “They were willing to pay the money straight into the Bahamas,” he remembers.
“And
they were willing to let us keep a half-interest in the company. But I turned them down. Part of the deal was that they were going to get me one of the top American merchandising men—a man who’d worked for Disney and who’d since retired. Then I found out that Capitol had no intention of persuading this man to work with us. I turned them down because they’d lied to me.