I know very little about Frank Sinatra; I know a bit
more about Elvis Presley because he's nearer to my time but The
Beatles really clashed with my time line; I know what there is to
know about them and where they came from, what influenced them and
what was influencing me at the same time. People coming to The
Beatles afterwards and maybe, even though they were great fans, loved
the music and got to know everything about them, still wonder
what the fuss was about.
Sinatra was one of the greatest voices of the century;
I got to know how he breathed, how he held a phrase, when others might
have 'pointed' the note and how he let half a bar go through,
sometimes, before coming in with the next note. We could feel those
high notes paining him or was it the emotion in the lyric? – Set
'em up Joe – whatever the case he was a 'one off' – but he
could only do one take when acting in a movie.
John Frankeheimer said he had to leave a scene, which
was out of focus, in the movie The Manchurian Candidate because
'old blue eyes' couldn't do the same performance again.
I sat in the same town as Sinatra, Los Angeles, watching
the same local TV stations going out, seeing someone on there, who had
run in to hard times, someone who needed money for surgery, or a
funeral or a trip somewhere to save their life and I got to know that
someone somewhere in Los Angeles called up the TV Station, found out
who needed the money and I eventually got to know that the anonymous
donor, the guy who came up with the big bucks was Frankie Boy
himself – Sinatra.
Terrible things have been written about him; a bag man
for the Mafia and all the other stories of his dubious associations
but I know nothing about that; I know about The Beatles.
When a novelist or a great artist paints something or
writes a novel they start with the first mark and finish with the
last one and The Beatles were started the day John Lennon picked up
that first guitar and finished with . . . . finished with what?
Finished with four beats on the drums by Ringo and a
cymbal crash on the day they made their first LP – that was the day
we lost our virginity – 'between Lady Chatterley and the Beatles
First LP!' - to paraphrase Philip Larkin.
The Beatles were three working class lads and a posh one
– a middle class one; the middle class one – the posh one - was
John Lennon and he was the one who, ironically, eventually wrote
Working Class Hero – but that was when it was all over and
it was all over the same year it started; 1963; fifty years ago.
I saw The Beatles three times live and those three
performances summed up their progress. There were two performances at
a small dance hall in King's Heath Birmingham and one as a support
act for Tommy Roe and Chris Montez; The Beatles closed the first half
of that show and when they had finished their act a third of the
audience left. That show was sandwiched in between the two shows at
the aforementioned ballroom.
The first show at the dance hall was magnificent; most
of the audience were men; well 18 to 25 age group men – about the
same age as The Beatles - and not that many girls. This meant that
nobody screamed and we could hear them. Ringo still had the Teddy
Boy hair cut and had bits of tape wrapped around his sticks. My
brother walked up the stairs with him and in the bar afterwards John
and Paul played around with the photographers and tried to get Ringo
and George to come out and take part and people, who were with us,
were included in the photos.
Not us; we were cool dudes propping up the bar, on the
look out for girls and eventually when Ringo and George came George
was wearing a fur coat right to the ground.
George looked to be the hard man even though John hit
the headlines a few weeks later when he got into a drink induced fist
fight with one of their roadies.
The difference between the two 'dance hall' performances
was huge. They were tired the second time, we'd just found out John
Lennon was married and the girls screamed too loud and, even though
we could just about hear them that night, nobody heard them again.
I realise the many people who saw The Beatles in their
live performances over the years, right up to their final performance
at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, had to make do with seeing them
in a huge stadium and not being able to hear them at all, but when we
saw them they were less than 20 feet from us and they sang all the
songs they sang on their first LP the first time and a variation of
that the second time.
Before The Beatles, pop singers in the UK covered
American songs that hadn't been released in the UK; songs such as
Rubber Ball (Bobby Vee/Marty Wilde), Tower of Strength
(Gene McDaniels/Frankie Vaughan), 100 pounds of Clay (Gene
McDaniels/Craig Douglas) and many others. The British covers are the
second artist mentioned above after each song title.
In those days, covers were covers and revivals were
called revivals which are called 'covers' today. In those days not
many singers wrote their own songs; they concentrated on their voices
so everybody was what they would call today a 'cover band' –
although we didn't call them bands. The bands in those days were
bands - big bands with trombones, trumpets saxaphones: Joe Loss, Ted Heath – going back to Glenn Miller.
The Beatles were a group
who sang mostly other artists' songs – these days called covers.
They sang Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry songs,
mainly and they also sang a lot of the black girl singers' songs: The
Shirelles, The Marvelettes etc. The last time I saw them
they opened their act with Paul McCartney singing the Tony Orlando
version of Beautiful Dreamer – note for note from the
phrasing to the screaming wows!
Each time I saw them they finished their act with John
Lennon singing Twist and Shout – an old Isley Brothers song.
John Lennon ruined his throat the day he recorded it for their first
LP, album, whatever you want to call it and that LP was called Please
Please Me!
There is a lot of confusion about Ringo's status as the
drummer; the fact remains that he was and still is, a better drummer
than Pete Best; he is a better drummer than most rock drummers who
used to bore the pants off us in those days with their fifteen minute
drum solos. Ringo was left handed (on the drums) and The Beatles
wanted him to join the group because they knew him from Germany where
he played with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and, more
importantly, he knew them.
The great thing about their first LP was that they
recorded it in one day; they showed up at Abbey Road Studios at about
ten in the morning and Lennon finished his famous Twist and Shout
shortly before midnight – although I'm told it was more like 8:45
pm. At lunch time the workers went to lunch but 'the lads' stayed
behind and rehearsed A Taste of Honey – which was one of the
few 'over dubs' on the LP – and the rest were recorded in single takes;
I don't mean one take per song but complete takes till it was right.
And that was it – The Beatles had done it! As soon as
Ringo joined the others and they made that recording it was the
beginning of the end; all the hard work had been done and the
business plan, the publicity plan, the image controllers and
publicity men took over and that innocent day February 11
1963 would never be repeated.
We were lucky enough to see them on February 15th
(so I am told) just four days after they made the Please Please Me!
LP.
The LP is as close as you can get to their live act and
is their best. Oh you can worship Sergeant Pepper and The
White Album, the changing sound of pop music with John Lennon's
Tomorrow Never Knows but the innocence of the Please Please
Me LP and the sound of the group that day would never be
repeated. Four beats on the drums by Ringo, a cymbal crash and it was
all over.
