Best of the Beatles (11 page)

George Harrison liked Pete Best, but as the months went by he found he would rather have his friend Ringo Starr in the group. He was pressing for Ringo once Ringo had depped for Pete in February 1962. He, too, was delighted when George Martin thought Pete was the weak link. The fact that George Harrison got the black eye suggests that he played a significant role.

John Lennon was more devil-may-care when it came to musical ability. He tolerated Stu Sutcliffe’s musical limitations longer than he should have done. He got on well with Pete, although they only had girls and rock ’n’ roll in common. At first he didn’t want to disturb the
status quo
of the band but, when distracted with a pregnant girlfriend and a forthcoming marriage, Paul and George seized the opportunity to decide that it was time for Pete to go. What’s more, Pete had to be replaced before that
all-important
first TV appearance.

John was not the instigator of Pete being sacked. If he was, he wouldn’t bother to cover it up and he’d have sacked Pete himself, perhaps bringing things to a head in an argument. The reason he felt embarrassed later is because he hadn’t done enough to defend him. As he told Hunter Davies from
The Beatles: The Authorised Biography
(1968): “We were cowards when we sacked him. We made Brian do it. But if we’d told Pete to his face, that would have been much nastier than getting Brian to do it. It probably would have ended up in a fight if we’d told him.”

Brian Epstein was happy to go along with the plan as it gave him a freer hand with managing the group, while George Martin, who disliked Pete’s drumming, was surprised they’d taken such drastic action.

Whatever the reason, Pete Best’s sacking had dramatic and unforeseen circumstances.

“Who’d had a record? Arthur Askey was the last one, I think”
Ringo Starr in
Anthology 1
, Apple video, 1996

The filming of the Beatles’ lunchtime appearance at the Cavern on 22 August 1962 was a disaster. It wasn’t the Beatles’ fault – just that the Granada technicians hadn’t worked out the best way to capture sound and vision in a noise, vision-restricted dive like the Cavern. They recorded the Beatles with their new drummer, Ringo Starr, performing ‘Some Other Guy’ and ‘Kansas City’.

The film was not shown but shelved rather than destroyed. Once the Beatles’ became nationally famous it was dusted off and has been screened at regular intervals ever since. Listen hard and you will hear someone shout, ‘We want Pete!’ – and it wasn’t Paul or George.

Barron Anthony of the Barron Knights: “The first time I saw the Beatles it was a whole new ball game. There were these four blokes who fitted so perfectly – Paul was so economical on bass, and Ringo concentrated on simple rhythm patterns and was unlike most drummers of the day who were too loud or speeding up, putting fill-ins at the end of each verse. The backing was very economical and all three of them harmonised so beautifully and yet it had an
oomph to it that I had never heard before. I was knocked out by them and that was before I’d heard their own songs.”

George Martin had sent Brian Epstein an acetate of a song he wanted the Beatles to learn. It was a bright, bouncy song called ‘How Do You Do It’ and was written by a young Tin Pan Alley songwriter, Mitch Murray. He was hoping for a hit with Garry Mills’ ‘Save A Dream For Me’ and Mark Wynter was about to record ‘That Kinda Talk’ which would become the B-side of his Top 10 hit, ‘Go Away Little Girl’. Mitch says, “I wrote ‘How Do You Do It’ but Adam Faith’s management had not taken it up. The music publisher Dick James had heard ‘How Do You Do It’ along with a comedy number, ‘The Beetroot Song’, and he said, ‘I think “The Beetroot Song” will be a very, very, big hit.’ A singer called Johnny Angel was going to record ‘How Do You Do It’ but he changed his mind and recorded another song of mine, ‘Better Luck Next Time’, so better luck next time, Johnny Angel. The next thing I heard was that a new group from Liverpool was going to record ‘How Do You Do It’ and I said, ‘I’d prefer a big artist but let’s see how it goes.’”

Just before the session, Brian Epstein told George Martin that the Beatles had dismissed Pete Best and he had been replaced by Ringo Starr. Epstein told him that he was a better drummer than Pete Best and that the band would prefer to record without a session drummer. George Martin agreed.

So, 3 months after their Parlophone audition, the Beatles returned to Abbey Road on 4 September to record their first single. They arrived around half-past two to run-through their material with Martin’s assistant, Ron Richards. ‘How Do You Do It’ was a certainty and two of their own songs were chosen, ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘PS I Love You’. They went for a quick meal with George Martin
and the session itself was from 7 till 10pm. They recorded several takes of ‘How Do You Do It’ and ‘Love Me Do’ but because of union restrictions, they couldn’t work past 10pm and cut the third song.

Mitch Murray: “The Beatles recorded ‘How Do You Do It’ and I hated it. I felt that something had been screwed up, perhaps deliberately, although it is now very evocative of the early Beatles. I can’t blame them because they were songwriters themselves and didn’t want to do it, but it was a waste of a good song. I thought it was terrible, and fortunately, Dick James agreed with me. He told George Martin that the Beatles had made a very good demo record. George took it very well and said that he was planning to re-do it with the Beatles later on.”

Paul McCartney told Martin: “We can’t go back to Liverpool singing ‘How Do You Do It’. We can’t be seen with that song.” It was recognised as a commercial song but it was nursery-rhyme pop as far as the Beatles were concerned. As Paul says in
Many Years From Now
, “We knew that peer pressure back in Liverpool would not allow us to do ‘How Do You Do It’. We knew we couldn’t hold our heads up with that sort of rock-a-pop-ballad. We would be spurned and cast into the wilderness.”

So George Martin gave up on ‘How Do You Do It’ and realised ‘Love Me Do’ would be a more suitable single, but there was a problem – Ringo’s drumming.

The recording engineer, Norman ‘Hurricane’ Smith, told Mark Lewisohn (
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, 1988
), “I’ve a feeling that Paul wasn’t too happy with Ringo’s drumming and felt that it could be better. He didn’t make too good a job of it. I remember too that there was a fair bit of editing to be done.”

George Martin, Ron Richards and Norman Smith thought the same as Paul and it was agreed that ‘Love
Me Do’ would be re-recorded a week later with a session drummer. The drummer was 32-year-old Andy White who was married to Lyn Cornell, formerly of the Liverpool group the Vernons Girls.

Andy White told the US
Drumming
magazine (1986), “George called me because I had the reputation for being a rock drummer. I happened to be working on the rock ’n’ roll shows
Drumbeat
and
Oh Boy!
I got the reputation of being a rock drummer even though I wasn’t really a rock drummer. I played with Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent.”

Despite the slight to his drumming abilities, Ringo stayed around at the session and played the tambourine on the new version of ‘Love Me Do’ and maracas on ‘PS I Love You’. They also attempted ‘Please Please Me’, but George Martin felt the song could be improved if they upped the tempo and added some harmonies. All five musicians received a session fee of £5.15s (£5.75) – John Lennon’s was sent to 251 Mew Love Avenue (sic).

Ringo Starr told
Drumming
(1981): “I’m not sure about this, but one of the reasons they also asked Pete to leave was George Martin didn’t like Pete’s drumming. When I went down to play, he didn’t like me either, so he called on Andy White, a professional session man, to play the session. There were two versions but you can’t spot the difference in the drumming because all I did was what he did because that’s what they wanted for the song.”

The Beatles may not have cared for ‘How Do You Do It’ but it had a life of its own. The song’s writer, Mitch Murray, says, “It makes me cringe to think that George Martin told the Beatles to come up with a song as good as mine, but he knew that I was a professional songwriter and he liked the song. Brian Epstein then suggested that Gerry and the Pacemakers should do the song instead and I was told he was like a Liverpool Bobby Darin. George Martin
asked me to hear Gerry at the Cavern but I said, “I don’t care what he sounds like live, it’s the record that counts.” Arrogant little sod, wasn’t I? They made the record, I loved it and it delighted me that it got to Number 1.”

Gerry Marsden: “I thought at the time that the Beatles had just made a demo for us, which was sent to us in Germany. We were very surprised when we recorded it because we had never heard our voices played back, apart from on crummy old tape recorders. We couldn’t believe it was us. It sounded really good but, blooming heck, we never thought it would be a hit.” (Again, this is misleading as some tapes of Gerry and the Pacemakers, professionally recorded at Lambda Records in Crosby in 1961, have come to light.)

Gerry’s drumming brother Fred: “At that stage, we were going to do ‘Hello Little Girl’ but Brian Epstein suggested that we did ‘How Do You Do It’ instead and he would give ‘Hello Little Girl’ to the Fourmost. We heard the Beatles’ demo and we decided to put a heavier beat on it than the Beatles. We had been playing together for several years and we really wanted to make a hit record. It didn’t matter to us if a song was poppy because having a hit was more important. The Beatles should have stuck with ‘How Do You Do It’ as they might have had their first three records at Number 1. Instead, we’re the group who did that.”

Mitch Murray: “When you have a Number 1, you think, ‘Phew, at last.’ It’s not bottles of champagne but relief. Then you think ‘Maybe it’s a fluke’ and you spend your whole career trying to prove yourself. I wrote ‘I Like It’ for Gerry’s follow-up but John Lennon had given him ‘Hello Little Girl’. John threatened to thump me if I got the follow-up and I thought it was worth a thump. “I Like It” had the same cheekiness and innuendo and it also went to Number 1. I didn’t get a thump.”

On Friday 5 October 1962, the Beatles’ first Parlophone single was released – ‘Love Me Do’/‘PS I Love You.’ Much to Ringo’s delight, George Martin had chosen the first recording with him on drums.

Many people believe that Brian Epstein bought thousands of copies to hype it into the charts. Firstly, this wouldn’t work as the sales charts are compiled from the Top 10 statistics of many different shops across the UK. Secondly, NEMS was the largest record retailer in Liverpool and was always going to sell thousands of copies. Brian Epstein might order 1,000 copies of a potentially big single, and my guess is that he ordered 5,000 ‘Love Me Do’s and secured them on very favourable terms.

According to
The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles
, ‘Love Me Do’ made Number 17 on the UK charts, which is following the trade charts in
Record Retailer
. Most music fans went by the chart in
New Musical Express
and there the single made Number 27 for 1 week on 27 October 1962. Strangely enough, the difference in positions was the other way round for the second single, ‘Please Please Me’ – the single was Number 2 in
Record Retailer
and Number 1 in the
NME
– which means that the perennial quiz question, “What was the Beatles’ first Number 1?” does not have a definitive answer. NEMS was such a big record retailer that it released its own Top 10 each week for its shop windows and for publication in the
Liverpool Echo
. According to the chart, proudly displayed on a cardboard rectangle in their windows, ‘Love Me Do’ went straight to Number 1.

‘Telstar’ by the Tornadoes was Number 1 on both charts, and several other classics were doing well – ‘The Locomotion’ (Little Eva), ‘It Might As Well Rain Until September’ (Carole King), ‘Let’s Dance’ (Chris Montez), ‘Sherry’ (Four Seasons), ‘I Remember You” (Frank Ifield) and ‘The James Bond Theme’ (John Barry). Entering at
Number 26 was another Liverpool performer, Billy Fury, who was bravely covering an Elvis Presley album track, ‘Because of Love’. The only other Parlophone single on the chart was the country-styled ‘Don’t That Beat All” by Adam Faith.

An interesting fact which may or may not be of significance:
Record Retailer
published a list of the shops participating in their survey but the NME didn’t. Did Eppy put any pressure on the named shops to push ‘Love Me Do’? If he were a less principled businessman, I’d have said yes, but being Brian Epstein, I doubt it. In all, ‘Love Me Do’ sold a respectable 100,000 copies, but it deserved to do better. In 1964 it was a US Number 1 and in 1982, a UK Number 4.

Nowadays so many different versions of hit songs are released that it is difficult to determine which the definitive version is. That didn’t happen in 1962 as there was usually only one version of a hit song. It is odd, therefore, that George Martin decided to go with the Andy White version on later pressings of the single and on the
Please Please Me
LP, released in March 1963. To distinguish between them – listen for the tambourine.

On 12 October 1962, Little Richard came to the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton with a supporting bill that featured so many of the people caught up in this extraordinary drama. It included three people who had drummed with the Beatles that year – Ringo Starr, Pete Best (with Lee Curtis) and Johnny Hutch (with the Big Three). Then were was Ringo’s old group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and the Merseybeats, whose drummer, John Banks, could have lost his job to Pete Best. The promoter, Bob Wooler, must have had fun in putting that show together.

He was also running a book. Rock ’n’ roll vocalist Karl Terry: “Bob Wooler was offering bets that the Beatles
would be bigger than the Shadows within 6 months and nobody believed it.” I wonder what the odds were, how the success of the two bands would be measured and, most of all, whether Pete Best had a flutter.

Disk Jockey Alan Freeman recalls: “The Beatles were well known on Merseyside, and we were all waiting for a new musical explosion. The world was ready for a new sound even though it was quite an old sound. It was fresh and invigorating.”

Brian Epstein had been concerned that the fact that John Lennon was a husband and a father might have gone against the group’s popularity with young, female fans were it known. Cynthia Lennon: “It was someone from the
Daily Mirror
who finally found out John and I was married. One afternoon I was taking Julian for a walk and this group of photographers had been hanging around for a few days. They followed me around and snatched some photographs. I was trying desperately to keep them away, saying it was my twin sister’s baby, but by the end of the day it came out.”

Joe Flannery managed his brother Peter, who became Lee Curtis, by reversing the name of the American singer produced by Phil Spector, Curtis Lee. Ironically, Lee Curtis and the All Stars were signed by Decca and Pete Best was featured on their storming single, ‘Let’s Stomp’. Lee Curtis: “‘Let’s Stomp’ was diabolical. The original by Bobby Comstock was absolutely brilliant, and as the Stomp was popular on Merseyside, we’d ask Decca if we could do it. They wanted us to rave madly at the end by doing a repeat of the words, ‘Let’s Stomp’. We were a bit green and I think we repeated the words ‘Let’s Stomp’ thirty-six times. I got sick of counting. The record was released and it died.”

Nothing went right for the All Stars’ recording career. Lee Curtis intones this litany, “We asked Decca if we
could do ‘Twist and Shout’. They said no, and then a few weeks later it was a hit on Decca for Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. We asked if we could do ‘Money.’ They said no, and it was hit on Decca for Bern Elliott and the Fenmen. Next, we asked if we could do ‘Shout’ and it was a hit on Decca for Lulu and the Luvvers. We asked if we could do ‘It’s Only Make Believe.’ They said no, and it was a hit on Decca for Billy Fury. We wasted our opportunities with ‘Let’s Stomp’ and that monotonous ending.”