We poached our rhythm section—bassist Peter O’Flaherty and drummer Tony Ransley—from a Southampton group with a pretty solid following. I’m not sure why they wanted to leave except they said they liked playing with us better. They brought a jazzy swing to the band that upped our game. We were tight but not stiff, and we played with groove and attitude. We were happening. Mostly we played covers of songs by artists like Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Otis Redding, Don Covay, and Wilson Pickett, and we became a top touring band on the South Coast of England. We practiced all the time and were on a nearly professional level by the time we played our first batch of gigs at established clubs. We worked our asses off because we had to.
John was a great manager for a new, developing band, and he had experience pitching ideas at the BBC and acquiring and cultivating successful TV programming. At his corporate job, he was clever and inventive. At one point, he proposed an idea for a program where people would bring in old artifacts they had around the house and have them appraised by a panel of experts. He called it Going For A Song. Years later, the idea became the hugely popular BBC show Antiques Roadshow, which branched into an even more successful US version on PBS. There’s another show in England called Gogglebox that features people watching TV and offering their opinions of what they’re seeing. That was John’s idea, too, and it predated all those huge YouTube gamer videos by 50 years. For some reason, he never received the credit he deserved for his innovation.
Fortunately for us, John saw a lot of potential in Simon Dupree & The Big Sound. He eagerly took the promotional helm, pitching us to his media and record label contacts and calling up venues to get us gigs, all while holding down his job at the BBC. There were two choices for new bands. You either became very good very quickly and developed a fanbase, or you became very not-so-good and looked for another line of work. We became very good, and with our manager working his contacts, we made a big splash.
John had a plan to get us national attention. We booked some studio time in Bristol, where he and Evelyn lived, and did some demos. Then John took the recordings to his contacts at the BBC and convinced them we were the next big thing. He told them they should keep their options open for covering us so they would be ahead of the curve because, pretty soon, we were going to be everywhere. Then he appealed to his DJ friends, which might have had something to do with getting us an audition for Parlophone at Abbey Road Studios. We knew we were lucky to have the opportunity to play in front of such a high-profile company, and we made sure we were well-rehearsed. Even so, we had no idea about the kind of high-level scrutiny we were facing.
We plugged in and looked up. Staring back at us, expressionless, were all these major-league music executives in their snazzy day suits. There was Beatles producer George Martin, pioneering studio engineer and producer Geoff Emerick (who also worked with The Beatles), award-winning sound engineer (and Alan Parsons Project founder) Alan Parsons, Dave Paramor (our assigned producer), and about twelve other EMI staffers. It looked like they were obliged to be there, and they couldn’t wait to leave and move on to their next appointment. It was nerve-racking, yet we were relentlessly determined to overcome any adversity. And this wasn’t adversity. This was an opportunity—our entry into the world of rock stardom. There was no way we were gonna fuck this up. It was bizarre and exciting, and we were full of energy.
Strangely, the Parlophone staff didn’t ask us to play one or two songs. They had us do our entire set—a full concert for corporate royalty. I picked up the mic. ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ said someone I didn’t recognize. Tony did a four-count, and we were off. Despite (or maybe because of) our audience, we weren’t stiff or tentative. We were bouncing off the walls, playing like we were in front of a packed crowd at our hometown pub. I always loved performing at any time, any place, so the audition was fun. I struck poses for the executives and made rock’n’roll faces, some of which were practiced but most of which came naturally. We killed it. We were tuned in, in tune, and we sounded great.
It was tight. It was amazing. And I had no idea if we made any sort of impression on anyone. Most of them had their arms folded the whole time. I thought I saw a few smiles here and there, but even those seemed like accidental slip-ups. It was like these guys had been specifically instructed not to clap, bob their heads, or grin. We got offstage and we were introduced to George, Geoff, Alan, and the other suits, who all said hello and shook our hands in a very British, businesslike way. No one told us they liked our performance. No one told us they didn’t.
I knew we were great, but my confidence was dissolving into a puddle of doubt. One thing I’ve discovered about myself is whenever there’s a pause in the action and I have enough time for introspection, I start to second-guess myself. I guess it’s just a symptom of being a neurotic Jew, but over the past sixty years it’s literally given my ulcers.
‘Maybe we weren’t what they were looking for,’ I said to Ray when we were back home. ‘Maybe they didn’t like the songs.’
‘You think?’ Ray said. ‘I don’t know. Maybe you’re right.’
Ray had always looked up to me and generally trusted my opinion. He was the eternal peacemaker, never wanting to contradict me and even less interested in being at the receiving end of my frustration.
I wasn’t depressed about maybe not getting the gig. But I was confused.
‘We don’t need to worry,’ I said, as if Ray was also riding my rollercoaster of self-doubt. ‘Even if they don’t sign us, someone else will.’
The next few days lasted forever. In the early evening of the fourth day, John King knocked on the door. ‘Congratulations. You got a record deal,’ he said matter-of-factly, as if he was telling us we’d got a job peeling potatoes in a soup kitchen. ‘You’re booked to go into Abbey Road studios next week for three hours.’
When John said three hours, he meant it. Abbey Road was strict about schedules. Back then, there was no such thing as ‘rock’n’roll time’ (meaning however long it took). You did your three hours and you got out. Those were the rules, and if you wanted to make another record with the label, you obeyed them. The music business ran like clockwork, and at Abbey Road, there was good reason for that. You never knew who was coming in after you. It could be Cliff Richard. It could even be The Beatles. Naturally, The Beatles were the darlings of the studio. It was like they owned the place, though they never did. They used to leave a lot of their instruments there, and when they weren’t around, we were able to borrow their gear and play it without them knowing. It was better than being left alone in a music store without a salesman. Ray’s eyes bulged when he picked up George Harrison’s 1957 Gretsch Duo Jet, and though I wasn’t playing guitar anymore, I couldn’t stop myself from strumming a few chords on John Lennon’s Rickenbacker 325. It was terrifying and electrifying. They also had a Mellotron, which we used a number of times. We used a lot of their gear, though we handled it as carefully as delicate Waterford crystal.
The Fabulous Four held dominion over Abbey Road—the three-hour rule didn’t apply to them. At one point, John and Yoko moved a bed into the studio, and when we saw it there after one of our sessions, we did what kids do: we started jumping up and down on it. Maybe we were a little old to be jumping on other people’s beds, but I think we subconsciously knew we’d never have another opportunity to play on the trampoline where a Beatle sleeps, so we went for it.