When They Were Boys Read online

  WHEN

  THEY

  WERE

  BOYS

  Also by Larry Kane:

  Ticket to Ride:

  Inside the Beatles’ 1964 and 1965 Tours that Changed the World

  (Running Press, 2003)

  Lennon Revealed

  (Running Press, 2005)

  Larry Kane’s Philadelphia

  (Temple University Press, 2000)

  Death by Deadline,

  an e-book novel

  (Dynamic Images, 2011)

  WHEN

  THEY

  WERE

  BOYS

  The True Story of the Beatles’

  Rise to the Top

  Larry Kane

  © 2013 by Larry Kane

  Published by Running Press,

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

  Books published by Running Press are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013938630

  E-Book ISBN 978-0-7624-5095-4

  987654321

  Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

  Cover and interior design by Bill Jones

  Edited by Greg Jones

  Typography: Adobe Garamond and Neutra Text

  Running Press Book Publishers

  2300 Chestnut Street

  Philadelphia, PA 19103-4371

  Visit us on the web!

  www.runningpress.com

  To Donna, Michael, Alexandra, Doug, Jen, Aiden,

  Benjamin, and Peyton

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  First Words: Present Day/Violent Past

  Part One: Stirrings

  Chapter One: The Milkman

  Chapter Two: Inspiration, Perspiration, and Admiration

  Chapter Three: Paul—Yesterday

  Part Two: Fever

  Chapter Four: See You at the Jac

  Chapter Five: Pen Pal #1—Bill Harry

  Chapter Six: He Was Just Seventeen

  Part Three: Across the Sea

  Chapter Seven: Hamburg Part 1—The Wild Side

  Chapter Eight: Breakthrough at Litherland

  Chapter Nine: The Life and Death of Stuart Sutcliffe

  Chapter Ten: Hamburg Part 2—“Love Me Do”

  Chapter Eleven: The Fearsome Foursome

  Chapter Twelve: Forgotten Friend—Hurricane Rory

  Photo Insert

  Part Four: Where Were You in ’61?

  Chapter Thirteen: Nineteen Steps to Heaven

  Chapter Fourteen: The Prince of Mathew Street

  Chapter Fifteen: The Poll

  Chapter Sixteen: Tower of Power

  Chapter Seventeen: Bob Wooler—“Can You Dig It?”

  Chapter Eighteen: Brian Epstein—Silky Soft Whispers in the Dark

  Part Five: Turning Points

  Chapter Nineteen: “Mean, Moody, Magnificent”—Pete Best

  Chapter Twenty: The Decca Disaster

  Chapter Twenty-One: On the Poor Side of Town—Hurricane Ringo

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Triumph at Parlophone

  Part Six: Secrets to Success

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Bands on the Run

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Secret-Agent Girls

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Boys of the Road

  Chapter Twenty-Six: The Makeover

  Part Seven: 1963–New Year’s Day

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Music Stampede—A Story of Two Countries

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Barrow on the Beat

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Pen Pal #2—Derek Taylor

  Chapter Thirty: Momentum with a Royal and Foreign Touch

  Chapter Thirty-One: A December to Remember—The End or the Beginning?

  Bibliography

  Index

  Photography Credits

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are so many people to thank, but let me start with Bill Harry, Tony Barrow, Sam Leach, Allan Williams, Yoko Ono, the staff at Studio One, Ron Ellis, Ellen Ellis, Freda Kelly, Denny Somach, Louise Harrison, Jerry Blavat, Julia Baird, and Tony Bramwell. Also thanks to Chris Carter of KLOS and XM–Sirius Satellite Radio, Alan White, Rod Davis, Colin Hanton, Colin Hall, Len Garry, Hunter Davies, Colin Fallows, Kathy McCabe, Mac Walter, Dave Forshaw, Sir Ron Watson, Joe Flannery, Jude Southerland Kessler, Mark Lapidos, Bruce Spizer, David Bedford, Ed Jackson, Roag Best, the White House Social Office, June Furlong, Horst Fascher, Pauline Sutcliffe, Billy Kinsley, Billy J. Kramer, John Rose, Tony Guma, Jodi Blau Ritzen, Dr. Mike Brocken, Joe Ankrah, Jonathan Davies, BBC TV, Buz Teacher, Spencer Leigh, Kevin Roach, John Gannon, Theo Somach, Jim Turner, Kevin Donahue, Marc Hudson, Joe Johnson, Andre Gardner, and Tim Riley.

  Special gratitude to my family, to whom this book is dedicated; literary agent Faith Childs; the book’s editor, Greg Jones (this makes three books with him); and Running Press Editorial Director Jennifer Kasius, Publisher Chris Navratil, Photo Consultant Sue Oyama, Designer Bill Jones, Project Editor Annie Lenth, Tina Camma, Allison Devlin, and Gigi Lamm.

  Thanks to all.

  FIRST WORDS: PRESENT DAY/VIOLENT PAST

  From Alpine Valley to the East Wing of the White House

  When the former Richard Starkey began his rendition of “Yellow Submarine,” we all started to scramble, looking for some shelter from the storm on this sweltering summer night at Alpine Village in East Troy, Wisconsin. As he would sing later, “It Don’t Come Easy.”

  It was 1989, the summer that Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band was created, and the 37,000-seat venue nestled between Chicago and Milwaukee was under attack from the gods of water and lightning. There was no place to hide as our TV team scattered backstage under canopies, under anything we could find, seeking shelter.

  Three hours before, the sun was shining during the afternoon sound check when the drummer and I sat on stools on the stage, sharing, during a videotaped interview, some memories of the Beatles’ historic North American tours of 1964 and 1965. In the first of those unforgettable summers, I was a twenty-one-year-old newsman with a ticket to ride to cover young Ringo and his three extraordinary bandmates. It was an unlikely assignment for a man who can’t hold a tune or even dance to one, but it began an odyssey, a true life adventure, that would bring me onboard not just for two summers of touring plus parts of the 1966 tour, but for a lifetime of adventure and memories.

  My life experience would include fifty-six years of covering news, often having to cover my behind in some really bad and violence-filled places. My love of politics would lead me to presidents, senators, governors, mayors, and politicians of all stripes. I also went to jail, as a visitor, chronicling the life-after-political-death of many a corrupt politician. I anchored the TV news for a long time, and reported on all sorts of stories. But I would always be tethered to the one story I originally didn’t want to cover. For—and this is the truth—I never wanted to travel with “the boys,” as insiders called them early on. After all, in early 1964 I had predicted to my puzzled bosses that the “mop tops,” as the Beatles were unceremoniously described by the grown-ups of the time, had no real future. My talent for
forecasting the future was bogus. Tell me in 1964 that I would wind up writing three books on the “Fabs,” as Starkey would later call them, and I would suggest that you were smoking dope, which many of you may have done at one time or another.

  The interview with Ringo went well, but the skies were clouding up. By showtime it was a driving rain, like a tropical storm, and the promoters invited us to the green room, the warm and fuzzy green room, which I will forever remember as the magic room. It was there that I found out what Ringo Starr was really doing.

  My wife, Donna, who rarely accompanied me to news events, was checking out the green room. Donna, who loves photography, had taken pictures of my reunion with Ringo earlier. The green room was subdued. There was an unkempt skinny guy sitting in the corner, looking lonely, sipping a Coke, and sporting a thousand-mile stare into nothingness. I introduced myself. With a sheepish handshake, he said, “I’m Joe Walsh.” Joe Walsh of the Eagles? Yes, it was. On the other side of the room, E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons had that always-cheerful look.

  Not far away, munching on some food, was Dr. John, the king of the piano, the pride of New Orleans. And the hits just kept on coming in the magic room: Nils Lofgren; musician supreme, the one and only Billy Preston; drummer Levon Helm; bassist Rick Danko; and drummer Jim Keltner. “Amazing,” I thought. Ringo had made magic, assembling an all-star lineup of musical greats to supplement his limited repertoire. Could Ringo alone sustain a McCartney-like concert for two hours or more? Probably not. But in the process of putting together this extraordinary collection of artists, he had created a knockout concert; it was more than just a casting call to help rejuvenate stifled careers of fellow artists. For the ex–Beatles drummer, this was, in fact, the beginning of redemption. And it was an experience he was delighted to share.

  I walked outside, under a large canopy. It was still raining. I sat down at a picnic table and started reflecting on this strange and sensational reunion between the two of us.

  “It don’t come easy.” It didn’t for Starkey, aka Ringo, whom I watched slowly walk down a narrow, metal staircase, dressed in a bathrobe with a towel draped around his neck. He waved, tenderly, and smiled as he prepped for act one of the show. After all, the drummer had been given up for lost before he finally found a way to surface from oblivion. And that’s why the magic room was so magic, and the evening so special. It was especially so for the men assembled in that room, the flesh and bones of stars whose spotlights had faded, legends scattered to the winds by a changing business. Some of them, like Ringo, were felled by substance abuse; others by fate. No surprise was it at all that some of the band members in this most-unusual green room were in the process of resurrection. Lazarus would have been proud.

  With a little help from his friends—and they, with a lot of his own help—Ringo was unselfishly prepared to chart the course for the rest of his career. It was an act of grace, a display of kindness; it was part of the fiber of the boys who, back in the Liverpool days and nights, made the joy and dreamed of the music they could make and the stories they could tell. In an era of celebrity misfits and coarse role models, the four dreamers from so long ago still stand out, for their character as much as their intrigue. And there is plenty of that, as you will soon learn.

  The road to glowing stardom and success is paved with more than gold. It is hard and scathing, and sometimes treacherous. We all know what happened at the end, which to this day has been an endless ending to an unlikely story. But the story of how Richie and his three mates came to that point really starts at the beginning, and I’m talking here about the exit from the womb, and the arrival in a dark, dank, and battered city, where all hell was breaking loose in a daily struggle for survival. It was there, amid the crushing bombs and abject poverty, that the story of the Beatles really began.

  On the 1989 stage in Wisconsin, Ringo feigned a loss of memory as I quizzed him about the touring days. After a few minutes, his mind seemed to stir. His eyes lit up. We recalled together the crazy nights and the crazier crowds and the tumult.

  At the end, he just smiled.

  “Remember, Larry.”

  “Yes?”

  “We were just boys then, just boys.”

  “Just boys,” he added for emphasis.

  The “boys” became men and the men endured in a way that few world icons endure and evolve, making an imprint larger, in some cases, than the tenure of some world leaders.

  ***

  The spotlight moves 1,200 miles east to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House. The date is May 30, 2010.

  The sun shines brightly on the East Wing of the president’s house. An anteroom is set up for cocktails and finger food, the invitation-only crowd beaming with the excitement generally reserved for a superstar. But this was not Barack Obama’s night. The superstar is somewhere inside the intense security wall of the White House. On event days, his own security bubble resembles the president’s, its layers so deep. But on this day, his private security detail waits outside. After all, the star is inside the president’s bubble.

  The East Wing is known as the first lady’s wing, including her offices and the headquarters of the White House Social Office, which has carefully planned this special evening.

  I arrived, along with other invited guests, holding what was described to me as the hottest ticket to any White House event in decades—the annual concert (taped for later broadcast) and presentation of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The recipient was Paul McCartney, who was, at the early hour of my arrival, not to be seen. As I walked down the corridor of the ground floor of the East Wing, I saw other entertainers gathering, along with members of the McCartney family led by Paul’s affable brother, Mike McCartney. But with the excitement building, I had little understanding of the grandeur and scope of the extravagant event I was about to witness, until I scanned the embossed program booklet and the profiles inside, listing a collection of creative genius:

  British singing sensation Corrine Bailey Rae

  Rock legend Elvis Costello

  Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters

  Piano jazz legend Herbie Hancock

  Grammy winners Emmylou Harris and Faith Hill

  The Jonas Brothers

  Chinese pianist Lang Lang

  Jack White, rocker and actor

  Jerry Seinfeld, strictly for laughs

  Stevie Wonder; would he sing “Ebony and Ivory” in duet?

  It was a breathtaking lineup. And at 7:25 p.m., a voice somewhere in the East Room announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States, the first lady of the United States, and Sir Paul McCartney.”

  Paul, dressed in a black show suit, with a collarless shirt, took to the stage and immediately started into “Got to Get You into My Life.” I watched him carefully. I thought, “It’s like, well, it’s just like 1964 or 1965 all over again.” Frankly, since I was the only one in that room who had been there in person, stage-side, during those heady times in the sixties, it was a clock stopper—but there was also a shocker. The years had put some age lines on the famous boyish face! But the body moved quickly to the rhythm of the music, and the classic composer and cowriter of the most delicious anthology of music in the modern era wasn’t missing a beat. Was I the only one who could appreciate all the years that passed, and the continuity of vibrancy that remained in the never-ending story of Paul and the “lads,” as the older American reporters liked to call them in those blood-flushing, enrapturing early days? I think so. I know that I was probably alone in my thoughts, but I was beaming quite naturally at the irony of fate, time, and the coincidence of my presence.

  The next ninety minutes were bathed in greatness, the kind you rarely see on one platform on any given night. As the other artists sang, Paul sat in the front row, mouthing the words and enjoying each unique version of some of his greatest hits. “How amazing,” I thought. “All the way from Merseyside to these heights. All that way in a journey of fame and glory, bu
t never conceding excellence.” And yes, Paul and Stevie sang “Ebony and Ivory.” And yes, it was unbelievable.

  When the music ended, the forty-fourth president of the United States, Barack Obama, took the stage. His brief but thoughtful comments illuminated the meaning of the honoree.

  BY ITS VERY DEFINITION, POPULAR MUSIC IS FLEETING. RARELY IS IT COMPOSED WITH AN EYE TOWARDS STANDING THE TEST OF TIME. RARER STILL DOES IT ACTUALLY ACHIEVE THAT DISTINCTION. AND THAT’S WHAT MAKES PAUL’S CAREER SO LEGENDARY. IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE THAT IT’S BEEN NEARLY HALF A CENTURY SINCE FOUR LADS FROM LIVERPOOL FIRST LANDED ON OUR SHORES AND CHANGED EVERYTHING OVERNIGHT. . . .

  OVER THE FOUR DECADES SINCE, PAUL MCCARTNEY HAS NOT LET UP, TOURING THE WORLD WITH THE BAND WINGS OR ON HIS OWN; ROCKING EVERYTHING FROM SMALL HALLS TO SUPER BOWLS. HE’S COMPOSED HUNDREDS OF SONGS OVER THE YEARS, WITH JOHN LENNON, WITH OTHERS, OR ON HIS OWN. NEARLY TWO HUNDRED OF THOSE SONGS MADE THE CHARTS—THINK ABOUT THAT—AND STAYED ON THE CHARTS FOR A CUMULATIVE TOTAL OF THIRTY-TWO YEARS. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE.] AND HIS GIFTS HAVE TOUCHED BILLIONS OF LIVES.

  I enjoyed the remarks, although I believe the president did not adequately cover the enormous and creative influence of John Lennon on Sir Paul’s life and times, which were and remain our times as well. But even that miscue couldn’t diminish a very special moment in time.

  Soon the show was over. The people, about two hundred of them, were exiting to a brief postevent reception. I walked across the room and said, “Paul, it’s Larry.”

  He looked back. And then he shouted, “Oh my God, it’s Larry! It’s Larry Kane! Look at you.”

  “Look at you,” I answered.

  He grabbed me in a big bear hug. He whispered, “It’s so great to see you.”

  We chatted the private chat of people who have shared the same experience, and both thoroughly enjoyed our brief reunion.

  The truth is that I have never been a “fan” of anything. I’ve always enjoyed great performances, but that special night, in of all places, the White House, I felt like, acted like, and was totally enveloped in fandom. And as I left the East Wing a little later and hailed a cab, I started thinking back over the years and realized just how truly lucky I was to have been part of the beginning. But of course, my beginning with the Beatles was not the real beginning, which occurred long before 1964 and has always been a subject of fascination and mystery.