The contract was eventually drawn up, with Brian organizing it personally, in his capacity as their manager. Heinemann agreed to pay £3,000 for the book, which meant £2,000 to me, less ten per cent, of course, for the agent’s fee. Even in those days, it was not a large amount. Now, of course, it looks unbelievably small, when I know that one subsequent writer of a Beatles book in the 1980s managed to earn 100 times that amount.
However, I was very pleased. I had secured access to the four people I most wanted to meet. Even if it all collapsed for some reason, I would have been inside their homes and been in the recording studios and seen them at work. One worry was that other people might get to hear about the book, and do a quick version, based on some passing conversations with them, or just newspaper cuttings, so we all agreed to keep the project secret.
I also worried, though I hate to admit it now, that perhaps there was some truth in the feeling, held by many in 1966, that the bubble would very soon burst. I liked their music, but the world at large in two years’ time could have moved on to something else. That would explain why nobody had done a proper book about them so far. I didn’t want it to be a flop, with poor sales, and I would feel embarrassed about having taken the money. As for the Class of ’66 book, it was agreed I could put that back till I had finished the one on the Beatles. We could always call it the Class of ’67.
On 7 January 1967, my 31st birthday, I started work on the book by talking to Ringo. I thought he might be the easiest. With all biographical books, at least to do with living people, there is always the fear of falling out, of not getting on before the project is properly under way. Ringo always looked kind. As a fan, that was the image I had picked up. That same day, I got a call at The Sunday Times, where I was still writing the Atticus column, planning to do the Beatles book in the evenings and at weekends, which was how I had produced my previous two books. It was from a strange-sounding lady called Yoko Ono. She said I was the most eminent columnist in London, so she had been told, creep creep, and that she wanted to feature my bare bottom in a film she was making. Don’t bugger around, I said, who are you? I thought it must be some drunken journalist from the Observer, having me on.
No, no, she said, this is very serious, and she proceeded to list other films she had done, all of them sounding equally dopey. She gave me the address where the filming was taking place and implored me to come along. I said I might, but I wasn’t promising; anyway, if it meant revealing my bottom, she would have to contact my agent.
I went along, as it sounded the sort of daft story I might need for the column that week, though still half expecting it to be a hoax. Sure enough, there was a queue of blokes in this very smart apartment in Park Lane, lining up to stand on a revolving stage, like a children’s roundabout, while Yoko filmed them as in turn they dropped their trousers. I talked to a rather distracted American called Anthony Cox, who turned out to be her husband, and I gathered he had put up the money as she, apparently, had none. He looked so clean-cut, an educated Ivy League American, I found it hard to believe he had fallen for all this nonsense. The more he explained, the more there did seem quite a serious point she was making. I’ve forgotten now what it was.
Yoko tried to persuade me to strip off. I made an excuse and left, as all the best journalists have done since time immemorial. I could not really write objectively about her film, so I said, if I was in it.
I did a piece in the paper on 12 February 1967. I hoped I hadn’t poked too much fun at her, though I worried that the title of the article, ‘Oh no, Ono’, might offend her, but she had got what she wanted, some prime publicity. She rang me afterwards to thank me.
I never met her again, in the flesh, until I walked into Abbey Road studios one evening in 1968 and there she was, sitting in a transcendental state with John transfixed by her, looking at her adoringly, and the other three Beatles completely bewildered, not knowing what had happened.
Meanwhile, I had a first, quick meeting with Ringo, and then in turn with the other three, but not to interview them, just to say hello, introduce myself, explain the project and get from them the names of school friends, schoolmasters, neighbours and, most of all, an introduction to their parents. I knew I would need that to pave the way.
I had decided I would spend the first six months of my work on the Beatles book by not talking to the Beatles themselves. I sensed, without knowing it, that they must be fed up with the same old questions from people who only knew what they knew by having read it in the newspapers. I wanted to go back in time, and then move slowly, stage by stage, through their careers, so that each time I arrived to see them again, I would bring news and chat and observations about what had happened to all the people and places they had long left behind. That way, I estimated, I might be a welcome visitor. Unless, of course, they were now so fame-drunk and success-sodden that they had ceased to have any interest in where they had come from.
So those first chats were brief, hurried conversations, mainly at Abbey Road, before recording sessions. In those early days, I made sure not to outstay my welcome, knowing that they had always refused to have any strangers or outsiders present when they were actually working.
John must have taken in my few words of introduction, saying who I was, where I’d come from and what I was doing. Some time later I received a letter from him, addressed to ‘White Hunter Davies, c/o William Heinemann Ltd, 15 Queen Street, London, W1’. Not a bad joke. Inside was a cutting, with no date, which appeared to be from a local Liverpool newspaper, saying a rhythm group called the Beatles had made their debut at Neston Institute.
It is only recently that I have at long last been able to date the cutting, after searches in Liverpool and at the British Museum’s newspaper library. It appeared on 11 June 1960 (the day of my wedding) in the Heswall and Neston edition of the Birkenhead News. This was apparently the first time that the word ‘Beatles’ appeared in print. (Mersey Beat, the local popmusic newspaper, which wrote about them constantly, did not appear till the following year, in June 1961.)
It’s interesting that the newspaper should call them ‘The Beatles’ as only two weeks earlier, on 27 May in the Hoylake News and Advertiser, they were still known as the Silver Beetles. They did not permanently call themselves The Beatles till later that year.
The cutting shows that John had stuck to his own name. Paul had become Paul Ramon, giving himself a Hollywood-1920s persona. George was Carl Harrison, after his hero, Carl Perkins. Stu Sutcliffe had become Stuart de Stijl, after the art movement. Thomas Moore, the drummer, an equally false-sounding name, was in fact called Thomas Moore.
Although John always appeared to have no interest in the history of the Beatles, the fact that he had kept this cutting, which obviously must have been a big thrill for him at the time, made me realize that he did have some interest in his past. On the back of the envelope that contained this cutting, John had written the words ‘JAKE MY ARSE’.
I must have given him some personal information during our hurried chat, and told him I had recently had a baby son, though I thought from his shortsighted look, staring blankly through his National Health spectacles, that he hadn’t been listening.