Looking back over the last 15 years, I am surprised that no one has taken their place. Some people will argue with this. Seven years ago, it was said the Osmonds were making more money. Now it is said to be Michael Jackson. Probably, dollar for dollar, it is true. In five years’ time, some other singing sensation will astound the world, sell more records, and will be said to be bigger than the Beatles.
There will also be composers who will come along and write individual tunes that will earn more money. Andrew Lloyd Webber is probably already on the way to doing this. There will be pop stars to come who will capture the imagination of the times, who will have wide social effects, create new fashions, new attitudes. As I write, Boy George is on the radio in my younger daughter’s room. He has certainly made an impression, right across the so-called civilized world. Will we still be impressed by him in 15 years’ or even five years’ time?
As an entity, as a group who could compose and perform and influence their generation, it is hard to think of any rival in the last 15 years. With the Beatles, we got those three elements in one. They will be a hard act to beat.
But this is not meant to be a winning game, trying to prove they are better or more successful than anyone else. They were. They did. They have been. So let us celebrate. Let us forget those draggy Apple days, those pathetic squabbles and rows, and most of all, let us try to rise above the awful tragedy of John’s death. He, and the Beatles, left us more than enough to rejoice over.
This book was meant, is meant, to capture them at their height, to explain how they got there, in their own words and in the words of those who were with them at the time. What they did together was unique. By some mysterious alchemy, their different talents and personalities intermingled, overlapped, overran, so that the result was a mixture that was so much finer and stronger and more original than the sum of their parts. What they produced as Beatles, during that relatively short span together, is what I am still happy to remember them by and for which I give thanks. The Beatles are now long dead. Long may they live.
HUNTER DAVIES
London, 1985
appendix a
memento mori: 2009
So many of the people who appeared in this book in 1968 have since died — or, in the case of Brian Epstein, died during the course of the book itself. Later on came the deaths of John Lennon in 1980 and George Harrison in 2001.
Looking back, I find it hard to believe that Brian Epstein was only 33 when he died in 1967. When I first met him, I didn’t realise how young he was — just two years older than me — because he appeared so mature, sophisticated, polished, successful, metropolitan. I felt like a scruffy provincial hick by comparison. I remember going to his house in Chapel Street, Belgravia and ogling his L S Lowry paintings, the first real ones I’d ever seen. Then his country house in Sussex — that was even more impressive. I didn’t know, nor did the Beatles, about his private life and tortured inner state. (The end of which I tried to capture in Chapter 26.)
John and George, and also Brian, have had their lives well remembered and recorded, and will continue to have books written about them, but I thought I’d set down a few facts and personal memories about some of the other characters, major and minor, whom I met all those years ago in the course of doing the book and who are now sadly no longer alive.
NEIL ASPINALL (1942–2008)
Neil died in March 2008, aged 65. He featured highly in the 1968 book as the Beatles’ original road manager and friend, and went on to even greater influence on their lives. He was the only person of any importance in the Beatles saga who never did a book about his life with them.
(The other person with a tale to tell, though more of a sliver really, a slice of their life, is Jane Asher, once engaged to Paul McCartney and around him when some of his best work was written. She has always refused to indulge in any beans-spilling.)
Neil Aspinall was there, all the time, from the very beginning, a constant friend and associate, never leaving the magical mystery circle, becoming the head of Apple Corps, looking after their business interests. Quite a job, when you think of all the legal dramas after the Beatles split, and the personal differences at one time between Paul and Yoko.
Neil was born in Prestatyn in 1942 and was in the same year at Liverpool Institute as Paul, and the year above George. His first memory of George was George asking him for a drag on his ciggie behind the bike shed.
He got nine GCEs and went off to study accountancy. It was his friendship with Pete Best, then the Beatles drummer, which brought him back in contact again with Paul and George.
Neil was living at Pete’s house. Pete’s mother, Mona, ran the Casbah, the little club where the Beatles played in their early stages as the Quarrymen. Neil started working for them as a part-time roadie in 1961, running them to local gigs in an old van for five shillings per man per gig — £1 a night.
One of the more dramatic events in early Beatles history, known well by all true believers, occurred in 1962 when Pete Best was sacked and Ringo took over. There were demonstrations on Merseyside, fans campaigning for Pete, who was looked upon as much more handsome. The Beatles didn’t do the dirty deed themselves, leaving Brian Epstein, their manager, to inform Pete. Pete then went on to slice bread for a few pounds a week while the Beatles went on to be the most famous group in the world.
What never came out at the time of the Pete Best sacking was that Neil, friend of both the Beatles and Pete Best, was having an affair with Mona, Pete’s mother. In fact, they had a son who was born that same year. Neil, aged only 19, was thus caught in a terrible emotional turmoil, with Pete sacked by his new best friends, and Mona, his lover, furious at how her son Pete had been treated.
John did tell me this gossip, sniggering, in 1967 when I was doing the book, but said not to repeat it. So Neil’s relationship with Mona is not referred to in the book, though it was a vital element in the whole Pete Best drama. At the time I only half believed John anyway, just as I wasn’t sure about his story that he’d had a one-night stand with Brian Epstein.
In recent times, Neil’s relationship with Mona, all those years earlier, became known to many people — and he had kept contact with their son Roag, despite going on to get married and have children of his own.
That same year, 1962, Neil gave up his accountancy studies and joined the Beatles full-time, quite a brave thing to do when no one knew where the Beatles were going. Later, when they had started national touring, he was joined by another roadie, Mal Evans.
Neil was with them through all their years of fame, the tours and concerts. He would get shouted at, told to fetch impossible things, fix ludicrous arrangements, such as hiring a plane that time when Paul and Linda decided on the spur of the moment to come and visit me in Portugal.
But Neil was more than a roadie and fixer — he was their friend and confidant, he helped with words of songs when the boys got stuck, and with personal relationships when they wanted them unstuck.
His accountancy training proved invaluable during the decades when he ran Apple, as of course none of the Beatles knew much about money. As the years went on, he masterminded much of the group’s professional affairs and back catalogues, dealing with some mighty international companies who were able to hire the best accountants and lawyers. On the whole, Neil won most of the battles, helping the group make further millions. He also had a creative streak, acting as the producer of the film Let It Be and organising The Beatles Anthology.