‘John appeared a day or so later at my house,’ says Astrid. ‘He said he was going home as well because his work permit had been taken away. He said he’d sold some of his clothes to buy his ticket.’
‘It was terrible,’ says John. ‘Setting off home on my own. I had my amp on my back, scared stiff I was going to get it pinched. I hadn’t paid for it. I was convinced I’d never find England.’
Eventually Stu was told that he too would have to leave. The real reasons for all their deportations, apart from George obviously being under age, were never really clear. Perhaps there was a bit of interclub rivalry.
Stu was the only one who came home in any style. He flew back to Liverpool. He’d had a touch of tonsillitis. Astrid didn’t want him to get worse on a long journey by land and sea, so she’d given him his air fare.
The others dragged themselves back to Liverpool under their own steam. What had been the greatest experience of their careers so far had ended in pathos and squalor.
They got home, in ones and twos, broke and in tatters, dejected and dispirited. They didn’t see each other or make any contact for some time. They even wondered if the Beatles would ever get going again.
13 liverpool — litherland and the cavern
John arrived back home from Hamburg in the middle of the night. He had to throw stones up at Mimi’s bedroom window so that she would get up and let him in.
‘He had these awful cowboy boots on, up to his knees they were, all gold and silver. He just pushed past me and said, “Pay that taxi, Mimi.” I shouted after him up the stairs, “Where’s your £100 a week, John?”’
‘Just like you, Mimi,’ shouted John, ‘to go on about £100 a week when you know I’m tired.’
‘And you can get rid of those boots. You’re not going out of this house in boots like that.’
John went to bed and stayed at home for over a week, not because of the awful boots but because there didn’t seem much alternative. Cyn was naturally pleased to see him. He’d written to her all the time he was away. ‘The sexiest letters this side of Henry Miller,’ says John. ‘Forty pages long some of them. You haven’t destroyed them, have you?’
George, who had got home first, didn’t know for some time that the others had eventually followed him. ‘I felt ashamed, after all the big talk when we set off for Hamburg. My dad gave me a lift to town one night and I had to borrow ten bob off him.’
Paul was also hanging around at home and soon had his father to contend with. Jim hadn’t wanted him to leave school and go to Hamburg in the first place. He said Paul should now get a job and not just mess around doing nothing.
‘Satan finds things for idle hands,’ so Jim told Paul, with great originality, several times a day. Paul, never a rebel on principle and always willing to please, eventually gave in.
‘I went down to the Labour Exchange. That seemed to be the scene. They fixed me up with a job as second man on a lorry. I’d been on the Post Office the Christmas before from school, so I thought I’d try something different.
‘The firm was called Speedy Prompt Delivery — SPD. They did deliveries round the docks way. I got the early bus down to the docks and bought the Daily Mirror, trying to be a real working lad, though I was really just a college pudding.
‘I used to sit on the back of the lorry and helped to carry parcels. I was so buggered sometimes. I fell asleep on the lorry when we went to places like Chester. I was with them about two weeks and felt very worldly, having a job and a few quid in me pocket. But I got laid off. The Christmas period was over and there wasn’t so much work.
‘Dad started moaning again, the usual stuff about the group being all very well but I’d never make a living at it. I half agreed with him, but there was always somebody who said we were promising, some fans liked us and made us feel good.
‘I got another job at Massey and Coggins, winding electrical coils. I had to wear a donkey jacket for that. A fellow called me Mantovani, with me long hair. I had to stand astride this winch and wind the coils. I was always breaking it. I did about one and a half coils in a day, some of the others could do eight, even 14. I wasn’t much good.
‘The tea breaks were great, though, with jam butties and all the lads playing football in a sort of prison exercise yard.
‘I’d actually gone, now it’s all coming back to me, for a job brushing up the yard, which I thought would be all right. When the bloke noticed I had a few GCEs, he became suspicious, as if I might have a criminal record as well. Then he decided I was OK and gave me a better job, which was winding the coils. He said if I stuck in I’d be all right. I imagined myself as working my way up, being an executive one of these days, if I tried hard.
‘I was getting £7 a week for winding coils and making the tea. The group had got going again but I didn’t know if I wanted to go back full-time. I stayed on at work, just going over the wall for lunchtime sessions or being off sick. But I left in the end. I was there about two months all together. I quite enjoyed being a working man. I met this bloke Albert and had some good chats with him.’
‘I’ll say this for Paul,’ says his father Jim. ‘He was always a tryer. He wasn’t really interested in either job. It was just to oblige me.’
They’d come back from Hamburg in early December 1960. In all they were probably not more than two or three weeks without a date. With a bit of luck, they might have started club work straight away, which would have brightened up their pathetic arrival home. While they’d been away, Allan Williams had decided to build a large beat club on the lines of the Hamburg ones. He’d by now sent so many groups over there, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, that he thought there should be somewhere for them back in Liverpool. Just before the Beatles arrived home, he opened a new Liverpool club called the Top Ten, after the Hamburg one, and put in a manager called Bob Wooler. But six days after it opened, it was burned down. What would have been an ideal place for the Beatles disappeared before they’d even seen it.
Their first post-Hamburg date turned out to be back at the Casbah, Pete Best’s mother’s club. They got a great welcome there, especially from Pete’s friend, Neil Aspinall.
Neil had been a friend of Pete’s for a couple of years. He was actually living at the Casbah, at least he’d left home and taken a room in Mrs Best’s house. He hadn’t gone to school with Pete but had been at the Institute, starting in the same form as Paul. He’d known George as well. They’d both been in trouble for smoking. But he hadn’t been affected by the skiffle craze, though he’d supported the local groups. With a gang of his classmates, he’d gone along to cheer the Beatles (or Moondogs) at the Empire in the early audition for the Carroll Levis Show.
Neil had left the Institute with eight O levels and was training to be an accountant. He was getting £2 10s. a week, plus luncheon vouchers, and seemed all set for a professional career. Most of his nights at first were taken up with correspondence courses. ‘I hated taking abuse from some fellow 300 miles away. It was like sending it off to the moon, just to get shit on.’ When he started hanging around the Casbah, his courses began to slip, especially when he moved in and lived there full-time.
‘Pete had written to me all the time he was in Hamburg,’ says Neil. ‘He said it was going great and they’d been asked to stay on another month, then another month, and another.