Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion (7 page)

Lennon was uncharacteristically evasive when I asked if Sutcliffe was still around, saying, “No comment, mate. You’re on your own with that one.” When I pressed the issue, John gave me a backhand to the noggin that sent me flying across his living room. After I wiped the blood from my face and sloppily taped up my broken nose, I changed the subject and made a mental note to never again mention Sutcliffe in Lennon’s presence.

So in the fall of 1999, it was off to Germany for the first of my three meetings with Astrid Kirchherr, photographer/stylist/early Beatles worshipper, and Sutcliffe’s fiancée at the time of his supposed death. When the talk turned to Stu’s current, shall we say, situation, Astrid was polite but vague; she insinuated that there was a possibility he was still around but provided no concrete leads. Realizing Lennon was right—that I was on my own with this one—I followed a hunch and made what some might construe as a questionable decision: I flew to Liverpool, bought myself the biggest shovel I could find, took a taxi out to the Huyton Parish Church cemetery, and dug up Stu’s grave.

Turned out my hunch was on target: Stuart Sutcliffe’s death was a nondeath, an elaborate piece of performance art. His casket was empty, save for an index card that said, “Probably in Ibiza, living the eternal nightlife. Ta-ra!” Based on the two-sentence note, my gut told me that Stu had been turned into a vampire; after what I’d seen over the previous several years, somebody Stokerizing Sutcliffe seemed like a logical conclusion. My gut, it turned out, was right.

The vampire community in Ibiza is downright cordial—hell, if you got to spend eternity partying in paradise each night from dusk to dawn, you’d probably be pretty darn cheery yourself—and I had no problem finding Mr Sutcliffe. After offering a succinct, sarcastic, and patently false story about how he was transformed from human to bloodsucker (“John knew a guy who knew a guy”) and snidely explaining why he’d gone underground (“I was trying to avoid journalists—you know, like you”), Stu bought me one of the best meals I’d ever eaten—the so-called blood martini was a little creepy, but when in Ibiza, do as the Ibizans—then spoke until sunrise about his brief tenure with John’s merry band of misfit zombies.

STUART SUTCLIFFE:
I couldn’t play a damn bit of bass, and it drove Paul “Mr. Perfectionist” McCartney nuts. Yeah, I sometimes played a half step out of key, but so what? Where’s it written that just because everybody else is playing in E, the bassist can’t play in E-flat?
Nowhere,
that’s where. Okay, I’m having a laugh here. I couldn’t play for shite, but John’s attitude was, you look good, you dress cool, and, frankly, we can’t find anybody else we can stand, so climb aboard.

Sometimes after we finished up a rehearsal, I’d hang out in the doorway and listen to John and Paul have these endless arguments about me. John would say things like, “Band unity, mate. All for zombies, and zombies for all. Toppermost of the Poppermost.”

Paul would say, “What the bloody hell is ‘Poppermost’?”

John’d say, “Don’t worry about it. So listen, I’m transforming Stu.”

Then Paul’d say, “No. Don’t. We need
somebody
in our group who has blood coursing through his veins. The audience has to have one person onstage—just
one
—who they won’t be afraid of, y’know.”

John’d then say, “Stu’s a pussycat. Nobody’s gonna be scared of him, dead or alive.” Frankly, he was right about that one. Nobody was
ever
scared of me. Even now, even when I’m trying to suck the blood out of some poor soul, they’re like, “Oi, Stu, lookin’ good, mate! Properly pale, an’ that! Talk to Johnny Moondog lately?” Why do you think I always wear shades? It adds mystique, brother … and maybe a tinge of fear.

And then one day—it was a Sunday afternoon, I recall—Paul let
his true feelings out: “The man can’t play, John. If you zombify him, we’re stuck with him, y’know. Forever.” Obviously they didn’t know I was eavesdropping.

John said, all quietlike, “I don’t have a problem with that, mate. He’s the kind of guy I’d
like
to have around forever.”

Paul said, “Yeah, he’s a decent bloke, I suppose, but if you want this band to make it—if you honestly, honestly want to take over the world like you’re always bloody saying—we need to keep our options open. If he’s undead, he’s with us for eternity, y’know. If he’s alive, we can sack him whenever we want.”

I couldn’t listen to any more, so I tiptoed out of the house and headed home. Music wasn’t my true artistic love—I was a painter first and a bass player second, or maybe even third—and Paul wasn’t exactly my best mate in the world, so I wasn’t particularly concerned what he thought about me. But I did respect him, and hearing him say that hurt.

And by the way, that particular Lennon/McCartney discussion led to a, ehm, physical altercation that left Paul with a cracked guitar, and John with a missing ear … which George discovered when he slipped on it at rehearsal the next day.

GEORGE HARRISON:
I tried my best to stay out of the arguments. John wanted Stu in the band, and Paul didn’t, and I kept my opinion to myself. As a matter of fact, I’m
still
keeping my opinion to myself.

They argued about everything, those two. After the blokes from Quarry left the band, John wanted us to be called Johnny and the Maggots. Paul said no way, and if John wanted it to be Johnny and the Something-or-others, it would have to be Johnny and the Moondogs, because he’d heard that
moondog
was an American slang term for “oversize zombie pecker.” I actually spoke up that time and took Paulie’s side.

STUART SUTCLIFFE:
I should note that Paul fancied me enough to keep me around for the Larry Parnes thing. Man, witnessing that cock-up was worth the price of admission.

A
well-known English club owner and music impresario who shaped the careers of pseudonymous teen sensations such as Duffy Power, Lance Fortune, and Dickie Pride, Larry Parnes allowed John, Paul, George, and Stu to audition for him in 1960—not, however, as an entity unto themselves, but rather as backing band to one Ronald William Wycherley, aka, Billy Fury.

The audition was held at the Blue Angel, a Liverpool club owned by Allan Williams, a local music heavy who’d taken on the position of manager for the artists temporarily known as the Moondogs. Several Liverpool bands and a whole bunch of hangers-on were at the Angel that day, but only one was able to speak about the audition on the record. Neither Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, nor Sutcliffe wished to discuss what went down that afternoon, and Parnes and Fury had both been dead for decades, and who the hell knew where all those other bands disappeared to. So, in December 2003, after dozens of unreturned phone calls, letters, and emails, I had no choice but to invite myself over to Allan Williams’s house in Liverpool.

Williams greeted me at the door with a big smile on his face and a bigger shotgun pointed at my schnozz. Knowing he was a rabid jazz fan, I came armed with a copy of
Hard Bop Academy,
my biography of jazz drummer Art Blakey, which had been published back in 2001. His smile expanding by the second, Williams took the gift, tossed it into the air, pulled the trigger of his Remington Express Super Mag, and blew my book to confetti; it was literary skeet shooting at its finest. He then invited me in, prepared me a cup of tea, and told me exactly what happened on May 5, 1960.

ALLAN WILLIAMS:
The boys’d played a few shows at the Jacaranda in Liverpool, but nobody paid them much mind—nobody except me, of course, because I was the only bastard in the whole city who had any ears. John and Paul were frustrated with the less-than-enthusiastic response, so a week or three before the audition for Parnesy, I suspect in order to bolster their confidence, they did a few gigs at a place in Caversham called Fox and Hounds. Since it was just the two of them, they didn’t want it to be a Moondogs gig, so John suggested they call themselves the Rotting Oozing Fetid Corpses. Fortunately for everybody, Paul convinced him that the Rotting Oozing Fetid Corpses was a tad too long for the marquee, and he suggested they call themselves the Nerk Twins, NERK being an acronym for Never Eat Road Kill. They both found that hilarious, but I didn’t get it. Zombies have an odd sense of humor, I’ve found.

They played all right for Parnesy at the Blue Angel, the four of ’em did. I don’t remember what they started out with—probably some Buddy Holly song or some blues tune or another—but it sounded fine, just fine. They weren’t world beaters yet, but anybody with even an iota of musical know-how—like me, thank you very much—could tell they had
something
. Little Billy Fury, however, didn’t even crack a smile, but I don’t think the boys were particularly concerned with his opinion. I know I wasn’t, because the bloke was, at best, semitalented. No, Parnesy was the one we wanted to impress. He had a proven track record, and if he got behind the boys, he’d be able to get them some gigs and some dosh. And that’d make me look good, damn good.

So they finish up the second song, and Parnesy doesn’t move a muscle. No nod, no smile, no thumbs-up, no clapping, no comment
about Stuart playing with his back to the crowd, no nothing. All you could hear was crickets, and I don’t mean crickets of the Buddy Holly variety. Paul looked over John, then back at Larry, then he gulped and said, all dodgily, “Er, wouldja like to hear something else, Mr. Parnes?” That was the first and last time I ever heard Paul McCartney sound nervous.

Before Larry could answer, I stood up and said, “Hold on, lads,” then I ran over to John and Paul—the zombie brains of the outfit, at that point—and gently led them into a back corner. I told them, “As your manager, I’d like to make a business suggestion. I recommend that you put down your instruments and do that hypnotizing thing you always talk about.
Make
him give you the gig. You deserve it. Shit,
we
deserve it.”

John glared at me, and for a minute, I thought he was gonna tear my head off. He said, “Listen, Allan, we will never, ever,
ever
use fookin’ hypnosis to get a gig. I’ll take a job only if we’re hired on merit. If Parnes likes us, great, and if he doesn’t, sod him, we’ll find somebody who does.”

I told him if that’s the way he feels, I was behind him 100 percent. I’d seen what an angry zombie could do, and even though I wanted to earn a few bob off these blokes, I didn’t want to die doing it.

So we all went back to our proper places, then Paul counted off “Bye Bye Love,” and despite the fact that Stu flubbed note after note after note, they were spot-on; in comparison, the Everly Brothers sounded like rotting oozing fetid corpses themselves. Billy Fury clapped for a bit, until he noticed that Parnesy still wasn’t moving, at which point he folded his hands on the table and said, “That was all right, I suppose.” Billy Fury wasn’t one to cheese off the boss.

Parnesy walked over to the bandstand and said, “Boys, boys, boys, I don’t hear it, I don’t feel it, and I don’t want it.” He pointed at
John and said, “You can sing a little.” Then he pointed at Paul and George and said, “And you two can play a little.” Then he pointed at Stu and said, “As for you, well, I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, mate. If I were you, I’d take off those shades, cut my hair, throw that bass in the river, and apply for a job down at the local chemist.”

Now even at that early date, there was no love lost between Paul and Stu, but seeing one of his bandmates get blasted set Paulie right off. He dropped his guitar and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Parnes? Can you repeat that?”

Parnesy shook his head. “Not necessary. You heard what I said, mate. Loud and clear.”

John put down his guitar, very calmly—too calmly, as far as I was concerned—strolled up to Parnes, grabbed his earlobe between his thumb and index finger, and lifted him off the ground, then said, “Paulie asked you to repeat what you said,
mate.
If you do, maybe I’ll let you live. Maybe.”

Parnes was a soft cunt who probably hadn’t been in a fight of any kind since primary school, and he was pissing his pants. Literally. George pointed at the front of Parnesy’s trousers and said, “Looky, looky, Parnesy went wee-wee.” Back then, George generally kept quiet in public, and he was rarely snarky, so for him to have opened his mouth, you know he was cheesed.

John then did something I’ll never forgive him for: he let go of Larry’s ear, dropped him on the floor, grabbed him by his wrist, picked him up, twirled him over his head—around and around and around, like he was a football hooligan waving an Arsenal banner—then he threw him across the club, right into the bar, breaking every bottle of booze in the place. That cost me about three hundred pounds, which, in 1960, was a fookload of dosh. Like I said, unforgivable. But if violence was what my boys wanted, I was all for it. Back then, I stupidly supported all their decisions. If I knew then what I know now, I might’ve tossed those cunts out right then and there.

And then Paul, in what seemed like three steps, bounded across the room, grabbed Parnesy by the ankle, and did the same thing John had done: Arsenal banner spins, then a toss. John caught Larry, and for the next few minutes, Lennon and McCartney alternately kicked and threw Larry Parnes across the Blue Angel. I yelled at them to watch the furniture, and they were somewhat respectful. I asked them if they wanted any help, and they just laughed. Cunts.