John was home in Liverpool for the birth of his son Julian — named after his mother, Julia. When he visited Cyn at Sefton General Hospital he had to wear a disguise so no-one would see him. This was still April 1963. They were household names in Liverpool, but unknown elsewhere. ‘A few did recognize me. “Dere’s one of dem,” I heard someone shout, and I had to run for it.’ A few days after the birth, John went on holiday to Spain with Brian.
Cyn moved out of the little flat they’d had in the centre of Liverpool and moved in with Mimi in Menlove Avenue. ‘When I was pushing Julian in his pram round Woolton, people would come up to me and say, “Are you Cynthia Lennon?” I’d say no.’
They were all still Liverpool-based in June 1963, when it was Paul’s 21st birthday. All the fans knew of course, so he couldn’t have a party at his home in Forthlin Avenue. Instead he had it at his Aunt Jinny’s, one of the two aunts who had helped a lot when his mother died.
This was a huge, drunken, noisy orgy, with all the other groups playing, as at Ringo’s party, and as at all their welcome homes from Hamburg. The Fourmost, who had also been signed on by Brian, played, and so did the Scaffold, the Liverpool group that had just got going. This consisted of Roger McGough, the Liverpool poet, John Gorman, a comedian actor and boutique owner, and Michael McGear, formerly Michael McCartney, Paul’s brother.
Michael was still working as a hairdresser, but had started appearing with the Scaffold in his spare time. Once Paul became famous in Liverpool, Michael had changed his name for any acting work, in case anyone felt he was cashing in. He also refused to sing.
During this party, John picked a fight with a local disc jockey, who at one time had done a lot, before Brian, to get them bookings.
‘I smashed him up,’ says John. ‘I battered his bloody ribs for him. I was pissed at the time. I think he’d called me a queer.
‘He sued me afterwards, for thumping him. I paid him £200 to settle it. That was probably the last real fight I’ve ever had.’
The end of an era, in many ways. It was the beginning of the end of John’s violently aggressive, chip-on-the-shoulder attitude to life and everyone. And it was the beginning of the end of the whole Liverpool stage, as their touring was at long last receiving national attention.
Back in London, in August 1963, they produced their fourth single, ‘She Loves You’. This was the start of ‘Yeh Yeh’ and the beginning of national fame. Liverpool was now where they had come from.
22 beatlemania
Beatlemania descended on the British Isles in October 1963, just as the Christine Keeler — Profumo scandal fizzled out.
It didn’t lift for three years, by which time it had covered virtually the whole world. There was perpetual screaming and yeh yeh-ing from hysterical teenagers of every class and colour, few of whom could hear what was going on for the noise they were making. They became emotionally, mentally or sexually excited. They foamed at the mouth, burst into tears, hurled themselves like lemmings in the direction of the Beatles, or just simply fainted.
Throughout the whole of the three years it was happening somewhere in the world. Each country witnessed the same scenes of mass emotion, scenes which had never been thought possible before and which are unlikely to be repeated. Today, it all sounds like fiction, yet it was only yesterday.
It is impossible to exaggerate Beatlemania, because Beatlemania was, in itself, an exaggeration. For those who can’t believe it, every major newspaper in the world has miles of words and pictures in its cuttings library, giving blow-by-blow accounts of what happened when the Beatles descended on their part of the globe.
Once it had stopped, by 1967, and everyone was overcome by either exhaustion or boredom, it was difficult to believe it had all happened. Could everyone have been so mad? People of all ages and all intellects eventually succumbed, though perhaps not all as hysterically as the teenagers.
World leaders and famous personages, who had often started by warning or criticizing, fell over each other to drag in references to the Beatles, to show that they were in touch, to let people see that they also knew that a phenomenon of mass communication had occurred.
It occurred suddenly and dramatically in Britain in October 1963 and Brian Epstein said he wasn’t prepared for it. He was prepared for success, because they were already having it. What he wasn’t prepared for was hysteria.
‘She Loves You’, which had come out at the end of August, also went to number one, following the pattern of their previous two singles. As early as June, even before it had a title, thousands of fans had already ordered the next Beatle single. The day before it went on sale, there were advance orders for it of 500,000.
By September the Beatles had reached a unique position in Britain. They had the top-selling LP record, Please Please Me. They had the top-selling EP record, ‘Twist and Shout’. They had the top-selling single, ‘She Loves You’.
But it wasn’t until the night of 13 October 1963 that the Beatles stopped being simply an interesting pop-music story and became front-page hard news in every national newspaper.
This was the night they topped the bill at the London Palladium, on a show that was televised as Sunday Night At The London Palladium. An estimated audience of 15 million viewers watched them that night.
Argyll Street, where the Palladium is situated, was besieged by fans all day long. Newspaper reporters started arriving, once they’d heard the stories of the crowds. The stage door was blocked by fans, mountains of presents and piles of telegrams. Inside, it was almost impossible to rehearse for the continual screams of the thousands of fans chanting outside in the streets.
Other TV companies turned up, from the news departments, to record the crowd scenes, even though the show was being put out by a rival network. The police, taken completely by surprise, were unable to control most of the crowd. It was decided that the Beatles’ getaway car should be stationed at the front doors, as everyone expected them to leave afterwards by the stage door. Their car, by this time, was a chauffeur-driven Austin Princess. Neil’s old van had long since been discarded, once the hit records started appearing.
The police, thinking they were clever, moved the car slightly away from the front door, trying to conceal it. This meant that when the Beatles did appear, shepherded by Neil, they had to search wildly for the car, then make a dash of 50 yards, almost being killed by the mobs in the process.
The front page of every newspaper next day had long news stories and large pictures of the hysterical crowd scenes. The stories weren’t about how well or how badly the group had played their songs, but simply about the chaos they had caused.
‘From that day on,’ says Tony Barrow, their press officer, ‘everything changed. My job was never the same again. From spending six months ringing up newspapers and getting no, I now had every national reporter and feature writer chasing me.’
His job entailed simply selecting, along with Brian and other press officers who were later used, journalists who were allowed to interview the Beatles.
‘Even before that, I’d never been in any sense a publicist, the way most groups have publicists, thinking up publicity stunts. I didn’t know about that, as I’d never been one. Brian anyway would have been against any stunts. We never used any and we never had to.’
The following Wednesday, Bernard Delfont announced the names for what is looked upon by most British show-business people as the biggest show of the year — the Royal Variety Performance. Marlene Dietrich was also to be on the bill.