Authors: Philip Norman
At the very last minute, however, there was a hitch. Cochran and Vincent had appeared at the Hippodrome theater, Bristol, and were returning to London by road. Near Chippenham, Wiltshire, their rental car skidded and struck a tree. Eddie Cochran—who, by one of those bilious musical ironies had just recorded a song called “Three Steps to Heaven”—suffered fatal injuries. Gene Vincent and another passenger, the songwriter Sharon Seeley, were both seriously hurt.
A telephone call to Larry Parnes confirmed the news that Allan
Williams had heard over the radio. Eddie Cochran would not be able to appear at Liverpool boxing stadium. Gene Vincent, despite fresh injuries added to his residual ones, might be fit, Parnes thought; just the same, it would be wiser to cancel the promotion. Williams, having sold most of the tickets, and feeling death to be insufficient as an excuse to a Liverpool audience, insisted the show should go ahead, and feverishly went in search of more local groups to pad out the program.
His search took him, among other places, to Holyoake Hall, near Penny Lane, and one of the better run local jive dances. The hall, unlike most, had its own regular emcee and disk jockey, Bob Wooler. A clerk in the railway dock office at Garston, Wooler possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of local bands and their personnel. On his earliest recommendation Allan Williams booked Bob Evans and the Five Shillings and Gerry and the Pacemakers, the latter an up-and-coming quartet whose leader, Gerry Marsden, worked on the railway also, as a van delivery boy.
The Gene Vincent boxing stadium show, jointly promoted by Larry Parnes and Allan Williams, thus inadvertently became the first major occurrence of a brand of teenage music indigenous to Liverpool and the Mersey. By an inscrutable irony the three individuals destined to carry that music into undreamable galaxies of fame were not then considered competent enough to take part. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison had to be content with ringside seats and watching Rory Storm, Cass and the Casanovas—even their old rivals, the group that featured the midget Nicky Cuff.
The concert proceeded on a note of rising pandemonium, at the height of which Rory Storm was sent out with his incapacitating stammer to appeal for calm. The show’s best performance was unanimously felt to be that of Gerry and the Pacemakers, singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
Carousel
. No more inappropriate introduction could have been given to the infirm, black leather–clad figure of Gene Vincent himself, who was at last propelled through the ropes into the boxing ring. As the ringside spectators made a rush to join him, Larry Parnes and Allan Williams trotted round briskly, stamping on their hands.
It was shortly after this memorable night that John Lennon sidled up to Williams at the Jacaranda’s kitchen door and muttered, “Hey, Al, why don’t you do something for us?” John had been there with George and
Stu Sutcliffe after the boxing stadium show when Williams brought the great Larry Parnes back to discuss further copromotions. Parnes, impressed by the Liverpool music, had hinted at the possibility of using local groups to back solo singers from his stable when touring brought them northward.
Allan Williams, while thinking no more highly of John’s group than anyone else, felt he owed them a favor in return for the arts ball floats. Though not prepared to offer them to Larry Parnes, he did agree to help Johnny and the Moondogs become better organized. They, in return, would do such small general jobs as Allan Williams required.
Williams further promised to try to find them the drummer they so chronically lacked. From Cass, of Cass and the Casanovas, he heard of a man named Tommy Moore who sometimes sat in on drums at Sam Leach’s club and who, despite owning his own full set, belonged to no group permanently. Within the week, Tommy Moore had been persuaded by Allan Williams to throw in his lot with Johnny and the Moondogs.
The new recruit was a small, worried-looking individual of thirty-six, whose daytime job was driving a forklift truck at the Garston Bottle-making Works. For all that, in his audition at Gambier Terrace, he proved to be a better drummer than any who had ever sat behind Johnny and the Moondogs. When he showed himself able to produce the slow, skipping beat of the Everly Brothers’ song “Cathy’s Clown,” even Paul McCartney seemed satisfied.
Tommy Moore began practicing with them downstairs at the Jacaranda, in preparation for the work that Allan Williams had promised them when they were good enough. Williams, meantime, used them as odd-job men to redecorate the Jac’s primitive ladies’ lavatory. John and Stu Sutcliffe were also encouraged to cover the brick walls of their rehearsal room with voodooish murals.
Tommy soon noticed what peculiar tensions were at work within Johnny and the Moondogs. “John and Paul were always at it, trying to outdo each other. It was them at the front and the rest of us way behind. George used to stand there, not saying a word. And didn’t they used to send up that other lad, Stuart! Oh, they never left off teasing him. They said he couldn’t play his bass—and he couldn’t, though he tried.”
To begin with, Allan Williams would allow them to play to the Jacaranda customers only when his regular attraction, the Royal
Caribbean Steel Band, had the night off. Since the cellar had no microphone stands, two girls had to be persuaded to kneel in front of John and Paul, holding up hand mikes attached to a mop handle and broom. “I could have retired on what we used to get for playing at the Jac,’” Tommy Moore said. “A bottle of Coke and a plate of beans on toast.”
The great Larry Parnes, meanwhile, had contacted Allan Williams again about the possibility of using Liverpool musicians as backing groups for the solo singers in his stable. It happened that Mister Parnes Shillings and Pence was experiencing difficulty in finding London bands willing to go on tour in the north and Scotland for the rates of pay he offered. When Parnes contacted Allan Williams again, it was with a request that Williams should marshal some local groups for audition as possible sidemen for Parnes’s biggest male pop star, Billy Fury.
The news caused a particular stir in Liverpool because Billy Fury was himself a Liverpudlian. Born Ronnie Wycherley in the tough Dingle area, he had been a Mersey tugboat hand until two years earlier, when his girlfriend had sent Larry Parnes some of the songs he had written. Parnes had worked the usual transformation with a tempestuous stage name, a brooding persona, and a series of hit records sung in an Elvis-like mumble. Billy Fury, it was further announced, would be coming up to Liverpool with his manager to attend the auditions in person.
Every group that frequented the Jacaranda was agog for what seemed a heaven-sent opportunity. Williams, in the end, narrowed the field down to Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Cass and the Casanovas, Derry Wilkie and the Seniors, and Johnny and the Moondogs. In Allan Williams’s opinion, Johnny and the Moondogs were now ready for something more than decorating the ladies’ lavatory.
One pressing requirement, before Larry Parnes saw them, was for a change of name. What they needed was something spry and catchy, like Buddy Holly’s Crickets. On an empty page in his sketch-book, Stu Sutcliffe wrote “The Beetles.” He was not thinking of small black insects but the motorcycle gang led by Marlon Brando in America’s prototype youth rebellion film,
The Wild One
. Although
The Wild One
had been banned by the timorous British film censor, pop culture–vultures like Stu and his circle would undoubtedly have known all about it. Coincidentally, Buddy Holly’s own group had made the same connection a couple of years earlier and almost named themselves the Beetles before deciding on the Crickets.
“Crickets” were one thing, but “Beetles,” even allowing the Brando precedent, were quite another. No group that wished to be taken seriously in the late fifties could possibly identify itself with so lowly and unattractive a form of life. Still, the idea was kicked around, undergoing various barely serious mutations along the way. John, unable to resist any pun, turned it into “Beatles,” as in beat music. Stu himself took to spelling it “Beatals” in the sense of beating all competition. Nonetheless, he is the one who must go down in history as the only true begetter.
However it might be spelled, the name was greeted with the same disbelieving scorn by both their supporters and rivals at the Billy Fury audition. Allan Williams pleaded with them to think of something—anything—else if they didn’t want the great Larry Parnes to laugh them into extinction. This opposition had the predictable effect of making John determined now to go on as the “Beetles,” “Beatles” or “Beat-als.” A more persuasive voice, however, was that of Brian Casser, lead singer with Cass and the Casanovas: If they had to ally themselves with bugs, Casser urged, then at least stick to the conventional formula of such-and-such and the so-and-so’s. Prompted by memories of R. L. Stevenson’s
Treasure Island
, he suggested “Long John and the Silver Beatles.” Though John jibbed at calling himself Long John, the Silver Beatles won the vote.
The place fixed for the auditions was a small workingmen’s club, the Wyvern, in Seel Street, just round the corner from the Jacaranda. Allan Williams had recently acquired the premises with the object of turning it into a plushy London-style night spot. Punctual to the minute, in through the half-demolished foyer walked Larry Parnes, silk-suited and affable, accompanied by the nervy-looking ex–tugboat hand, currently the biggest name in British pop music, who cared rather less for stardom than for the dog and tortoise he was permitted to keep at his manager’s London flat.
Down in the basement the Silver Beatles viewed the competition with dismay. Every group was locally famous, smartly suited, and luxuriously equipped. Derry and the Seniors had been well known in Liverpool for years as an authentic rhythm-and-blues group featuring a black singer, Derry Wilkie, an electric keyboard, and a real live saxophone. Johnny Hutch of Cass and the Casanovas was already setting up the sequined drum set that he was said to be able to play in his sleep. Rory Storm was there, deeply tanned, with his Italian-suited Hurricanes.
Rory’s drummer, the little sad-eyed, bearded one, came from the Dingle also, and had been in Billy Fury’s class at school. Neither John nor Paul in those days much liked the look of Ringo Starr.
Parnes, sitting with Billy Fury at a small table in the twilight, was impressed by the power and variety of the music. Derry and the Seniors and Rory Storm’s Hurricanes were both marked down as strong contenders for the prize. Parnes also favored Cass and the Casanovas, thanks mainly to their bass player, Johnny Gustafson, a black-haired, extremely good-looking boy. “Johnny Gus,” in fact, was later called down to London to experience the Parnes star-making process on his own.
The Silver Beatles, when their turn came, made rather less of an impression. “They weren’t a bit smart,” Larry Parnes remembered. “They just wore jeans, black sweaters, tennis shoes—and lockets.” There was a delay as well, owing to the nonarrival of Tommy Moore, who had gone in search of some stray pieces of drum equipment at the Casanova Club. At length, when Tommy still had not appeared, Johnny Hutch had to be persuaded to sit in with them.
A snapshot, taken in mid-audition, shows the Silver Beatles exactly as Larry Parnes saw them that day at the Wyvern social club. John and Paul occupy the foreground, back to back madly bucking and crouching over their cheap guitars. To the right stands George, his sole concession to rhythm a slight hanging of the head. Stu Sutcliffe, to the rear with his overburdening bass guitar, turns away as usual to hide his inadequate playing. In the background, Johnny Hutch sits at his magnificent drums, showing a great deal of patterned ankle sock and, very clearly, bored to death.
As to what Larry Parnes thought of them, there are conflicting eyewitness accounts. Allan Williams’s version is that both Parnes and Billy Fury were knocked out by the Silver Beatles, excepting Stu Sutcliffe. Parnes would have signed them at once, at one hundred pounds per week, provided they would agree to drop Stu. It was John Lennon’s curt refusal to betray his friend, so Williams says, that robbed them of their first big chance.
Parnes himself, unfortunately, had no recollection of finding fault with Stu’s bass playing. To Parnes, the eyesore of the group was the worried, rather elderly-looking man who arrived halfway through the audition and took over from Johnny Hutch on drums. Tommy Moore had
finally made it across town from Dale Street. “I thought the boys in front were great,” Parnes said. “The lead guitar and the bass, so-so. It was the
drummer
, I told them, who was wrong.”
What Larry Parnes really wanted, it transpired, were cut-rate musicians to accompany his lesser-known artists on tour to Scotland. Cass and the Casanovas were first to be so engaged, as the backing group for a gravel-voiced Parnes singer named Duffy Power.
The next letter from Larry Parnes to Allan Williams concerned the Silver Beatles. In mid-May, Parnes was sending another of his stable, Johnny Gentle, on a two-week Scottish tour. The Silver Beatles could have the job of backing him, for the same as Cass and the Casanovas had received: eighteen pounds each per week.
The offer sent the Silver Beatles into transports of elation. Since the Wyvern social club audition they had thought they’d lost any chance of finding stardom via Larry Parnes. That Johnny Gentle was the least-known of all Parnes’s singers did not diminish the excitement of being offered their first work as professionals, of going on tour the way the big names did, of performing in real cinemas and theaters and staying in hotels the whole night.
All five immediately set about disentangling themselves from their everyday commitments in mid-May. For Stu and John it was simply a matter of cutting college for two weeks. It was less simple for Tommy Moore, whose girlfriend set great store by his weekly wage packet from Garston bottle works. Tommy pacified her with visions of the wealth he would bring back from across the border.
George Harrison, too, was now a working man. He had left the Institute grammar school at sixteen, without O-levels and, for want of anything better, had applied for a job as a window dresser at Blackler’s department store. That vacancy had been filled, but there was another one for an apprentice electrician. To be an apprentice, as his two elder brothers were, represented both a safe and an honorable course. But the only way he could get time off to go to Scotland was to take his summer holiday early.