During their third tour, with Roy Orbison in May 1963, they started causing riots, though not the sort that made many national papers, who were still ignoring them. This was their first tour as the stars of the show and they were beginning to have everywhere the sort of reaction they’d had in the Cavern in Liverpool.
Although Brian had made them more show business and polished, so John thought anyway, they were still larking around on stage, singing corny songs if anything went wrong and making funny introductions. ‘And now for a song by that Red Hot Gospel-singing Mama, Victor Silvester.’ In any interview they managed to get with the pop music writers, they were much the same. Maureen Cleave had said in her Evening Standard piece that it was like living it up with four Marx Brothers.
It was on this tour with Roy Orbison that a black market started in tickets, Jelly babies were thrown at them on stage — after George had been foolish enough to say he liked them — and they were mobbed in the theatre, at their hotel and everywhere they went.
Roy Orbison got equal billing with the Beatles, but he was the second-to-last act on the bill, with the Beatles following him, as the main stars of the show.
‘It was terrible following him,’ says Ringo. ‘He’d slay them and they’d scream for more. In Glasgow we were all backstage, listening to the tremendous applause he was getting. He was just standing there singing, not moving or anything. As it got near our turn, we would hide behind the curtain whispering to each other — guess who’s next folks, it’s your favourite rave. But once we got on the stage, it was always OK.’
It wasn’t OK for Neil Aspinall, their road manager, once the touring days began. It hadn’t been so bad in Liverpool, round and round the same old places. But now it was a new road, a new hotel, a new theatre and new problems every day.
‘There was always trouble with the mikes on every tour,’ says John. ‘No theatre ever got it how we liked it. Even rehearsing in the afternoon first and telling them how we wanted it, it still wouldn’t be right. They’d either be in the wrong position or not loud enough. They would just set it up as they would for amateur talent night. Perhaps we had a chip about them not taking our music seriously. It drove us mad. Brian would sit up in the control room and we’d shout at him. He’d signal back that that was all they could do.’
They used to shout most of all at Neil. It was one of his jobs to get them and their gear everywhere at the right time and help set it up. As the fans started mobbing, endangering them physically as well as trying to steal bits of equipment, it became more and more impossible for Neil to do everything.
‘In five weeks of touring I lost three stones in weight. No one will believe it, but it was true. I went down from eleven stone to eight stone. I just didn’t eat or sleep for five weeks. There was no time.’
So Malcolm Evans, the bouncer from the Cavern, was taken on. He joined Neil as road manager and continued throughout their touring days. They are both still with them today, as their closest companions and friends.
Neil is thin, highly intelligent, quietly efficient but with very strong opinions and by no means a yes-man. He looks a bit like George. Mal is big and hefty, open-hearted, good-natured and easy-going. Neil gave up a career in accountancy to join the Beatles. Mal’s job was less imposing, but he was completely settled into it.
Mal had been working for eleven years as a telecommunications engineer when the Beatles came along and changed his life. He was 27, married with one child, paying the mortgage on a terrace house in Allerton Road, Liverpool, the proud owner of his first car and on a good salary of £15 a week. He had absolute security, paid holidays and a pension when he retired. He looked obviously set for life.
One day in 1962 he came out of work at the Post Office and decided not to walk around the Pier Head, which is where he usually went for a walk in his lunch hours. ‘I saw this little street called Mathew Street that I’d never noticed before. I walked down it and came to this club, the Cavern Club. I’d never been inside a club before. I heard this music coming, real rock it sounded, a bit like Elvis. So I paid me shilling and went in.’ He went in so often after that it was suggested if he became a bouncer, guarding the door, he could get in for nothing.
He’d been bouncing part-time for about three months, when, in the summer of 1963, Brian asked him to give up the Post Office and be their second road manager. Mal’s job, during all the years of touring, was to drive the van containing the equipment to the next theatre, set it up and test it in time for them coming on. Afterwards, he packed it all up safely and looked after it till the next stop. Neil looked after the Beatles personally.
During his first week with the Beatles, Mal estimates he was sacked six times. ‘I’d never seen a drum kit close up before. I didn’t understand any of it. Neil helped me the first couple of days, but the first day I was on my own was terrible. It was a huge stage and my mind went a blank. I didn’t know where to put anything. I asked a drummer from another group to help me. I didn’t realize each drummer likes his cymbals at a special height. He did them his own way, but they were useless for Ringo.
‘The worst of all was at the Finsbury Empire in London, when I lost John’s guitar. It was one he’d had for years as well. It just disappeared. Where’s my Jumbo, he said. I didn’t know. It’s still a mystery today. I fairly got it that day.
‘It was great meeting all the people I’d seen on TV. I was really star-struck. I still am. I soon realized, of course, that people were being nice to me, trying to get to know me, just to use me to get to the Beatles. I soon got to spot them a mile off.’
‘It was OK for him,’ says Neil. ‘Going out in front, getting the instruments ready. Dead popular he was. As they cheered and shouted at him, he talked to them and made jokes. He didn’t have to physically fight them off, once it started.’
‘My ideas about the fellows soon changed,’ says Mal. ‘Up to then, they’d been four beautiful people. I’d looked upon them as gods. I soon found out they were just ordinary blokes, not made of platinum. I got some bellyaching and I couldn’t answer back. I just had to put up with it.’
The worst part of all touring, they both say, was the dressing room before a show. It would be jammed with reporters, police and theatre staff, while outside, fans were trying to break in. ‘I had to look after all that,’ says Neil, ‘until we got a press man ourselves. And I was supposed to get food.
‘When things got too much, if someone was going on a bit, John or one of them would shout “Cripples, Neil.” This meant get rid of somebody. It originally had just meant cripples, but it came to mean anyone who was in the way.
‘We always got masses of cripples, even from the first tours. They would be in the dressing room when we arrived at the theatre. The management would let them, thinking we’d love to see them, as we were supposed to be such lovely blokes. It was terrible. You couldn’t move for them. What could you do? They wouldn’t be able to move themselves so Mal or I usually had to carry them out. Mal got a claw stuck round his neck one night.
‘As the Beatles’ following got bigger, we got more and more. The image of the Beatles was so good and nice, for some reason. They thought we’d want to see them, or we’d be disappointed.’
Some even thought that being in the presence of the Beatles might miraculously cure them. It was one aspect of their adulation which never made the papers. Pictures of cripples being carried out of their dressing room would not have been very suitable.
Riots were starting on these early tours, as they travelled up and down the country, but they were still completely a Liverpool group, doing shows round their old Merseyside haunts between tours. They didn’t do their last performance at the Cavern until 23 August 1963.