The beat groups were by now all trying to get wired up, with electric guitars and amps, which skiffle groups had never done. There were other rock-type singers who had come along in Elvis’s wake, like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, spawning many British imitators.
But it was still in London that everything in Britain happened. Britain’s first rock and roll singer who had any national success in Britain on the lines of the American stars was a Cockney, who made it in London through the London coffee bars — Tommy Steele. Then there was Cliff Richard, who modelled himself completely on Elvis. John, George and Paul seem to have been unaware of Tommy Steele, at least they can’t remember him making any impression on them. But they actively hated Cliff Richard and the Shadows. John says it was Cliff’s sort of Christian image, even then, that offended him. But they also hated the traditional pop ballads Cliff Richard went on to sing.
Paul, as the one who always tried to make things happen, was prepared to play down their likes and dislikes and chat up anyone who looked like helping them. He was always trying hard to get them some publicity in the local newspapers.
He wrote a letter around this time to a journalist called Mr Low they had met in a pub.
‘Dear Mr Low,
I am sorry about the time I have taken to write to you, but I hope I have not left it too late. Here are some details about the group.
It consists of four boys: Paul McCartney (guitar), John Lennon (guitar), Stuart Sutcliffe (bass) and George Harrison (another guitar) and is called…
This line-up may at first seem dull but it must be appreciated that as the boys have above average instrumental ability they achieve surprisingly varied effects. Their basis beat is off-beat, but this has recently tended to be accompanied by a faint on-beat; thus the overall sound is rather reminiscent of the four in the bar of traditional jazz. This could possibly be put down to the influence of Mr McCartney, who led one of the top local jazz bands (Jim Mac’s Jazz Band) in the 1920s.
Modern music, however, is the group’s delight, and, as if to prove the point, John and Paul have written over fifty tunes, ballads and faster numbers, during the last three years. Some of these tunes are purely instrumental (such as “Looking Glass”, “Catswalk” and ‘Winston’s Walk') and others were composed with the modern audience in mind (tunes like “Thinking of Linking”, “The One After 909”, “Years Roll Along” and “Keep Looking That Way”).
The group also derive a great deal of pleasure from rearranging old favourites (“Ain’t She Sweet”, “You Were Meant For Me”, “Home”, “Moonglow”, “You are My Sunshine” and others).
Now for a few details about the boys themselves. John, who leads the group, attends the College of Art, and, as well as being an accomplished guitarist and banjo player, he is an experienced cartoonist. His many interests include painting, the theatre, poetry, and, of course, singing. He is 19 years old and is a founder member of the group.
Paul is 18 years old and is reading English Literature at Liverpool University. He, like the other boys, plays more than one instrument — his specialities being the piano and drums, plus, of course…’
The rest of Paul’s highly colourful mix of fact and fiction is, unfortunately, missing. He wasn’t, of course, 18 or at Liverpool University, but it was true, as he indicated by the dots, that the group didn’t have a name. Later in 1959 they started seriously trying to think of what to call themselves, just as they’d done for the Carroll Levis audition, as it looked as if they were about to get another important audition.
This is when the idea of calling themselves the Beatles came up. No one is definitely sure how it happened. Paul and George just remember John arriving with it one day. They’d always been fans of Buddy Holly and the Crickets. They liked his music, and the name of his group. It had a nice double meaning, one of them a purely English meaning, which Americans couldn’t have appreciated. They wished they’d thought of calling themselves the Crickets.
Thinking of the name Crickets, John thought of other insects with a name that could be played around with. He’d filled books as a child with similar word play. ‘The idea of beetles came into my head. I decided to spell it BEAtles to make it look like beat music, just as a joke.’
That was the real and simple origin of their name, though for years afterwards they made up different daft reasons each time anyone asked them. Usually they said a man with a magic carpet appeared at a window and told them. Though they’d at last thought of a name they liked, they weren’t permanently called the Beatles for a long time.
They met a friend who who asked them what their new name was. They said Beatles. He said you had to have a long name for a group. Why didn’t they call themselves Long John and the Silver Beatles? They didn’t think much of his idea either. But when this important audition came up and they were asked what they were calling themselves they said ‘Silver Beatles’, which was a name they stuck to for the rest of that year, 1959.
The important auditioner was none other than the famous Larry Parnes, then the king of British rock and roll who had in his stable Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Duffy Power and Johnny Gentle. They’d heard about Larry Parnes coming to Liverpool while hanging around the Jackaranda, a club where many beat groups used to play. This was owned by a Liverpool-Welshman called Allan Williams. He also ran the Blue Angel, the club in which the Larry Parnes audition was going to be held.
They arrived at the Larry Parnes audition without a definite name — it was only when one of Larry Parnes’s assistants asked them for a name that they came out with Silver Beatles. They also arrived without a drummer. A drummer they’d been using had promised to turn up, but didn’t. Once again, they were drummerless.
A drummer who was at the Blue Angel for the audition with another group did them a favour and stood in with them. He was Johnny Hutch, looked upon as one of the top three drummers of the time in Liverpool. There is a photograph of the Silver Beatles taken at that audition (see pages 50–1). Johnny Hutch is sitting at the back looking very bored and superior. As usual, you can’t see much of Stu. He has his back to Larry Parnes, trying hard to hide his fingerwork on the bass.
The audition was to find a backing group for Billy Fury. Larry Parnes didn’t think any group was good enough, but he offered the Silver Beatles a two-week tour of Scotland, as the backing group to one of Larry Parnes’s newest but unknown discoveries, Johnny Gentle. It was in no sense their tour. The Silver Beatles were to be very minor. But it was their first ever proper engagement as professionals, and a real tour at that, however short and however second-rate.
George, who was then coming on for 16, took his two weeks’ holiday so that he could go. Paul at the time was about to sit his O levels, but he had no intention of missing the chance of a tour for something as trivial as studying for his GCE. Ivan Vaughan, his friend at the Institute, remembers arguing with him and saying he was silly to go off and not do any work for his exams. Paul somehow managed to convince his father that he’d been given two weeks’ holiday off school. They’d been told to take things easy. He said he would be back just in time for the exams and the tour would be a good rest for his brain. No wonder he passed only one subject.
They had to get yet another new drummer for this tour of Scotland. He was called Thomas Moore. They can’t remember anything else about him, except that they went to his flat to get him and that he’d been living on the dole. Thomas Moore, apparently, was his real name. The Silver Beatles, in this first flush of being pro, all wanted to change their names. That was the fashion.