Peter Brown, who was Brian’s closest friend and personal assistant, has taken over most of the personal handling of the Beatles, although it was laid down by Clive Epstein that the Beatles were free to decide all their own affairs from then on. He and NEMS would not try to take Brian’s place in that respect. This is what the Beatles now do. They run themselves. But Peter is their link with NEMS and with the outside world. Anybody wanting them, if they’re not fobbed off immediately, has to go through Peter. He does all the arranging and fixing that they want him to do. He has an ex-directory phone, his Beatles phone, whose number only they know.
Tony Barrow is still their senior press officer, although he also heads his own independent PR organization — Tony Barrow International. He is still writing Disker for the Liverpool Echo. He also does a lot of work coordinating the fan club, whose secretary is still Freda Kelly. It costs seven and six a year to be in the fan club, for which members get a regular bulletin and a Christmas present. There has always been a special Christmas record, made by the Beatles, exclusively for the fan club. They usually do little sketches and sing a few corny songs, as in their old Cavern days. The membership of the fan club is now just over 40,000. In 1965, at its height, it had twice that number. There are 40 regional secretaries, all voluntary, and 40 overseas branches.
The Fan Club runs at a loss and always has done. The cost of sending out 40,000 bulletins and posters several times a year alone uses up most of the subscriptions. On top of that there is the cost of the contents — the special Sergeant Pepper colour photo which everyone got cost £700 — plus the salaries of the two full-time fan club officials.
The Beatles Monthly makes a good profit. This is separate from the fan club, though most fan club members buy it, and a lot more besides. It costs two shillings a month and has a sale in Britain of 80,000. In America it comes as a supplement in Datebook magazine.
It has been going since August 1963 and is the longest-running fan magazine in Britain. It is not produced by NEMS but by a firm called Beat Publications, who pay for the privilege. Instead of taking a lot of the profits out of it, NEMS insists on its quality being maintained by having, for example, many full-colour pictures. It is an excellent publication. The best photographs of the Beatles appear in it, much better than any that appear in newspapers.
Very few new people have moved into the Beatles’ magic circle. Professionally, they are still associated with those who first gave them their chance when they arrived in London in 1962.
Outside NEMS and Apple, their most important adviser and friend is George Martin. But in five years his position has almost been reversed. In 1962 he was the God figure from Parlophone, the great A and R man, upon whom everything depended. Today, they depend on nobody.
George Martin left EMI in August 1965 after 15 long years. During this time he saw Parlophone saved and the profits of EMI itself soar to immense heights.
‘I never made any money out of the Beatles’ successes. I just got my same EMI salary, which I would have done anyway, as I was under contract. I never participated at all in their huge profits. I’m glad of this, because I’ve always been able to speak freely. No one could say I rode on the backs of the Beatles.
‘But at EMI everyone always thought I must be in on their profits somehow, through one of their many companies. And the Beatles always thought I must be OK, because EMI must be looking after me.’
During that first phenomenal year of Beatlemania, 1963, he was probably the only person at all connected with the Beatles who did not make a lot of money because of them. Dick James, their music publisher, certainly did.
In 1963 George Martin was responsible for more number-one records than any other record producer in the history of British pop music, which, admittedly, hasn’t a very long history. Most of his successes, during his 37 weeks with a number one, were by the Beatles. But he was also responsible for all the hit records by Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer, Matt Monro and others.
In 1964 his salary went up to £3,000 but this was as part of his contract with EMI, made before the Beatles came along. He started negotiating for some sort of incentive scheme. ‘I thought the person doing all the hard work should be entitled to some recompense. But EMI were very unhappy about this.’
So he decided to leave, which didn’t make EMI any happier either, because he took two other A and R men with him, John Burgess and Ron Richards. Along with a fourth, Peter Sullivan from Decca, they began their own company, Associated Independent Recordings, AIR for short.
It was a big chance to take at the time, as everyone told them. It was going against the traditional pattern of the record industry. Independent A and R men just need one flop to fold up completely, whereas a big record company, with a huge staff, can afford lots of flops.
But the biggest chance George Martin was taking was whether or not he could retain the Beatles. Legally, their contract was still with EMI. George Martin was simply EMI’s staff A and R man employed on Beatles records. If he was no longer on their staff and became a freelance, EMI need no longer give him any more work at all — unless of course the Beatles particularly requested him to be their A and R man.
‘I didn’t consult the boys about leaving. I just took the chance that they still wanted me.’ Which they did. And EMI agreed. EMI still produce Beatles records, but George now looks after them, not as an EMI man but as a freelance. They have to pay him for his services, very highly. ‘I suppose now I am earning more than the managing director of EMI records.’
Today, AIR have, in their own little way, transformed the British record industry. Many of the best and most creative brains have opted out of the big corporations, selling back their services for double and treble what they got before.
In early 1968, AIR produced such artists as the Beatles, Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Shirley Bassey, Adam Faith, Lulu, Tom Jones, Manfred Mann and many others.
George Martin, with his 23 gold discs behind him, has at last got few financial worries. He now lives in style in a large, brand new, luxury town house near Hyde Park, and has a country cottage in Wiltshire. He and his wife Judy have a baby daughter called Lucy, no connection with ‘Lucy In The Sky’. She has a full-time nanny to look after her.
He is trying to cut down more and get on with his own composing, which slightly amuses the Beatles, as they tend to think that only young people can write pop music. He has done several film scores on his own and did most of the knocking together of Paul’s score for the film The Family Way. He composed the BBC’s Radio One signature tune and has contracts to do more film music.
When the Beatles’ plan, through Apple, to have their own recording studios and A and R men, gets properly organized, this might in some ways affect George Martin’s position. But whatever happens, his own company’s success seems solid enough. They have an interest in Playtape, a system which he says will one day replace gramophone records completely.
Musically, George Martin now tends to keep in the wings when they’re doing their records, as we shall see in Chapter 30. They have now grown so sure of themselves as composers, and even as arrangers, that they make jokes about Big George.