The Daily Mirror appears to have been the first paper to drag out a tame psychologist to try to explain what was happening. This was a practice that kept tame psychologists, especially Americans, in easy money for the next three years. This psychologist said the Beatles were ‘relieving a sexual urge’. Doctors later came forward to say that girls had had orgasms during Beatle concerts.
On tour they arrived at Cheltenham, a very refined country town in Gloucestershire. The newspaper headlines next day announced ‘Squaresville Falls’, which was probably a headline the subeditors had got ready the day before. A local policeman was quoted as saying that it had been ‘the craziest night since Mafeking’.
In Plymouth, on 14 November, hoses had to be turned on screaming fans to control them. There was great panic at Portsmouth, because Paul had slight flu and they had to miss a concert. Every paper gave hour-by-hour bulletins on his condition.
In Birmingham, on 11 November, they managed to escape the crowds, disguised as policemen. On 18 November a Church of England vicar got a lot of space in the papers when he asked the Beatles to tape for him ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Yeh, Yeh’, for Christmas.
EMI sales were shooting up. When the story came out about Decca and all the other companies having turned them down, it was compared to 20th Century turning down Gone With The Wind.
At the end of November they brought out their fifth single, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, which went direct to number one. It had advance orders in Britain of one million.
Their second LP, With the Beatles, came out a few days before. This had the stark, but very arty, photograph on the cover, showing their four heads and shoulders, dressed in black polo-neck sweaters. Their faces were cleverly lit so that one side was in the shade, as Astrid had photographed them in Hamburg. When this LP was announced, at the beginning of November, it had immediate advance orders of 250,000. It was noted at the time that this was the best advance for an LP record anywhere in the world. The best Elvis Presley had done was 200,000 for his Blue Hawaii album.
Every big bylined feature writer in Britain was competing for an interview, waiting for hours and hours outside their dressing room, hoping for a word. Donald Zec of the Daily Mirror was one of the first to do a large interview with them, right at the beginning of their nationally famous days, on 10 September. Describing their hairstyle, which journalists still felt they had to do, he said it was a Stone Age cut.
By December 1963, the posh Sundays had at last got in on the act, doing long and very solemn investigations on the phenomenon, dragging out their own psychologists, but using even longer words. The Observer had a picture of a guitar-shaped Cycladic fertility goddess from Amorgos that it said ‘dates the potency of the guitar as a sex symbol to about 4,800 years before the Beatle era’. The Sunday Times commented on how they had enlarged the English language, bringing Liverpool words like ‘gear’ (meaning good or great) into general usage. This rather put the Conservative politician, Edward Heath, in his place. Earlier he had criticized them by saying their language was ‘unrecognizable as the Queen’s English’. But Mr Heath redeemed himself slightly later, when he was reported as saying ‘Who could have forecast only a year ago that the Beatles would prove the salvation of the corduroy industry?’
Even the Daily Worker, the British Communist party newspaper, was getting its comment in. ‘The Mersey Sound is the voice of 80,000 crumbling houses and 30,000 people on the dole.’
By early December they had seven of their records, singles as well as EPs, in the Top Twenty. On 11 December they went on the TV programme Juke Box Jury, the four of them taking over the complete jury, and gave the show the highest rating it had ever had.
A film deal was announced. Walter Shenson and George Ornstein, in association with United Artists, said they were going to star the Beatles in their first film, with a script by the Liverpool playwright, Alun Owen. Brian Epstein was in on this deal, making sure that the Beatles were to take a large percentage. He was, by now, doing the same with their tours, once it was obvious that their name alone was enough to guarantee a full house everywhere. The Beatles Tour, which had begun in November, was ‘presented by Arthur Howes, by arrangement with Brian Epstein’.
In October Brian had moved his own office to London, joining Tony Barrow and the growing number of secretaries and assistants.
The fan club was also growing to huge proportions, and was soon completely unable to cope with the thousands of application forms. There were many stories in the newspapers about poor fans not having their letters answered for months, but the deluge was just too much. By the end of 1963, the official fan club had almost 80,000 paid-up members, compared with only a couple of thousand at the beginning of the year.
BBC TV did a half-hour show from the Northern Area Convention of the Beatles Fan Club from the Liverpool Empire.
At Christmas time the Beatles did a Christmas show, along with other Brian Epstein artists — Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer, Tommy Quickly and the Fourmost. It opened in Bradford, then Liverpool, then came to London at the Finsbury Park Empire, which was where Mal lost John’s favourite guitar, alas.
The intellectual following was now in full cry. The heavy papers were giving them as much space as the populars. They were on everyone’s lips, in every paper, jokes were created about them, cartoons were full of them. The Daily Mail stopped using the word Beatle in headlines, and had the same little drawing of four Beatle haircuts, four mop tops as they were called, to illustrate every story.
Brian worried at first about his own name and personality becoming famous, but eventually he couldn’t help it. He realized that it made things easier for him to get things done. ‘I was worried about all of us becoming overexposed. At first sight, the endless discussion in the newspapers of the Beatles’ habits, clothes, and views was exciting. The boys liked it at first and so did I. It was good for business. But finally it became an anxiety. How long could they maintain public interest? By carefully watching their bookings and press contacts, we just averted saturation point. But it was very close. Other artists have been destroyed by this very thing.’
At the time, judging by the newspaper and TV reports, it looked as though there was no control at all. Every paper, every day, had something on them. In one week, five national newspapers were serializing what they called the Beatles’ life story, most of it taken from the old handouts. Almost anyone with any opinion on them, for or against, was guaranteed to be reported. They were so new in a jaded scene and so different from the usual show-business glitter, and they were British.
Several people said that Brian Epstein was the Svengali. He’d cleverly created and promoted them. Brian always denied this. ‘In all our handouts,’ says Tony Barrow, ‘and in all our press dealings, Brian only stressed what was good about them. He never created any non-existent good points. The Beatles were four local lads from down the street, the sort you might have seen at the local church hall. This was the essence of their personal communication with the public. People identified with them from the beginning. Brian realized this and never tried to hide it.’
But Brian did, of course, create a smooth machinery, organized their lives meticulously, never let people down, which they had done when they were on their own.