The Beatles Messages from John, Paul, George and Ringo

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HAMBURG

AT Massey & Coggins – the Liverpool electrical firm where he landed his first job, winding coils – they nicknamed Paul ‘Mantovani McCartney’ after the well-known classical conductor because of his long hair. Ringo, a favourite target for local bullies, got badly beaten up as he walked home one night from the Admiral Grove pub in the Dingle district of his home city because he wouldn’t give them the shilling (5p) each demanded. On the road George became depressed when he felt the others were pushing him into the background. John used to cry himself to sleep when his thoughts turned to the mother who had abandoned him.

All of that is gleaned from the notebooks I wrote in endlessly during my first days (well, mostly nights) with the Beatles at the back of the Star Club, a dive of a club in the Grosse Freiheit off Hamburg’s notorious Reeperbahn in 1962. I was there as a temporary roadie for Little Richard (it’s a long story, but I’ll come to it) and the ‘Fab Four’, as the legendary American rocker named them, were working their passage in the music business.

It was a shaky start (John didn’t trust ‘reporters’) but we got on well once we discovered we had two things in common: all five of us were crazy about rock’n’roll – and we were hungry. Little Richard’s fat salary solved the latter problem – we ate in his dressing room and he charged the food to the club owner, Manfred Weissleder.

We were of similar age – two of them were older than me, two younger (John and Ringo were born in 1940, Paul in 1942, George in 1943 and me in 1941). Oh yes, and we all took ‘uppers’, amphetamines which loosened tongues particularly when washed down with strong German beer.

The main topic of conversation on the first day was … the Beatles. ‘Our manager Brian Epstein says we’re going to be bigger than Elvis,’ snapped John. ‘So one day you’ll have to queue up with the rest for an interview with us.’

That day had not arrived, however, and I went through the familiar ritual of asking them about their musical aspirations. Who was their greatest influence? ‘Little Richard,’ said Ringo aware that the singer was within earshot, ‘Chuck Berry,’ said George. ‘Elvis,’ said Paul. ‘Yeah, before Elvis there was nothing. He’s the King,’ said John in a quote that was to be re-published many, many times over the years, although it was actually a barb aimed at Richard whose shrill response was ‘Ah, am the King of rock’n’roll. Ah was singing rock before anybody knew what rock was. Sure Elvis was one of the builders, but Ah was the architect.’

‘Sure thing, grandfather,’ said John whom I was later to refer to in print as ‘The Beatle that bit’. When he had an audience – even if was only his fellow band members and me – he had to perform. In reality, he was highly respectful of the American legend and had earlier asked him for an autograph. He showed me the one he got. It read ‘To John. May God bless you always, Little Richard, 1710 Virginia Road, Los Angeles, California.’ It was something he treasured although in later years he was to question the sanity of those who collect stars’ signatures.

Much of the conversation in those heady nights was about things back home. John sent his Star Club earnings back to Liverpool for Cynthia (who, he told me, he had married the that summer and who was expecting their son, Julian, though he was under strict instructions from manager Epstein to keep both facts secret: ‘Fans don’t like stars who are unavailable, John.’). He survived on what he could earn by moonlighting between Beatles sets at nearby clubs where he played for the strippers: ‘I love talking to the prossies (prostitutes). They’re honest. They’ve got nothing to hide.’

Being honest himself, he also admitted that he had a Hamburg girlfriend: Bettina, a buxom barmaid who kept him in drink and pills and could be relied upon to call out for her favourite numbers when the Beatles were on stage.

The topic inspired Ringo to deliver the message about one of his most disastrous dates: ‘I turned up in me best gear – a real Ted suit complete with crepe sole shoes. I thought I was going to knock her dead with that lot! Anyway, we took the bus to a cinema, walked into the foyer and I bought the tickets. She started heading upstairs where the best seats were. But I took her arm and led her down to the stalls where the only two seats left were right in the front row. It was as much as I could afford, you see. We sat there for three hours with our necks achings. Funny I never saw her again . . . ’

I heard him repeat the story almost word for word a few nights later when Richard and his keyboard player Billy Preston invited us back to his hotel suite ‘for supper’. Alas, the supper turned out to be some dried-up sandwiches and our hosts had other ideas about how to entertain us. In a bid to emphasise our heterosexuality, Ringo told the story of his date and I talked about the girl I was going to marry. In a lull between anecdotes, the pair of us made a dash for the door and returned to the relative safety of the Grosse Freiheit. Lucky escape.

‘That’s one little adventure I won’t be telling Harry and Elsie about,’ he said, referring to his parents as he always did by their first names.

I had accompanied Richard to Hamburg at the request of the promoter Don Arden after losing my job at the NME. Arden – Sharon Osbourne’s father, incidentally – had asked me to set up a rival music paper which he wanted to call The Enemy because he hated the NME’s owner Maurice Kinn. When Mr Kinn heard about it he gave me my marching orders. Alas, Arden failed to raise the money for his planned paper and, temporarily out of work; I accepted the two-week job as Richard’s minder for the German engagement.

Paul talked about how his employment at the firm – the one where they called him Mantovani – came to an end. ‘I was hopeless [at the job]. Everybody else would wind fourteen coils a day while I’d get through one and a half – and mine were the ones that never worked. After a bit I started getting lunchtime dates playing at the Cavern. I had to whip out of work over the back wall at lunchtime and go in the next day and say I’d been ill. One day I just didn’t get back and that was that.’ Paul’s message was that had he been any good at the job one of the most famed musicians of all time might today be a retired coil winder.

Wherever he went Paul, the strolling minstrel, said he composed songs in his head. ‘I used to walk home if I didn’t have enough for the bus fare, but I never minded that. I wrote lots of songs on those walks home: World Without Love and Love of the Love included, though John helped me polish them up. I used to go to his house and I remember those walks home very well. I had to cross this horrible pitch-black golf course. I’d always be singing, but if ever I came across someone in the dark, I’d shut up and try to pretend it hadn’t been me. Met a copper like that once. I had a guitar round my neck and was quite cheerfully playing and singing at the top of my voice. I thought he was going to arrest me, but he walked up and asked if I’d give him guitar lessons.’

All four came from similar backgrounds although George was anxious to point out that John was the only one who was raised in a privately owned house (his Aunt Mimi’s) whereas he, Paul and Ringo all lived in council houses. Ringo, who had spent more than three of his childhood years in hospital suffering from peritonitis and pleurisy, was the worst off. His job paid just over £2 a week of which he had to pay all but fifteen shillings (75p) over to Elsie for his keep, which is probably why he was reluctant to hand the Admiral Grove bullies the cash they needed for the pub.

With the seemingly endless pill-popping going on it was inevitable that the subject of drugs would arise. John was fascinated by what effects could be achieved by trying substances other than the moderate ‘speed’ pills which Bettina came up with. A German friend addicted to heroin had told him of the dream-like status the drug induced: ‘Just think of the songs we could write on that,’ he said. ‘They say it brings back vivid memories.’

At that stage, however, ‘prellies’ (the appetite suppressant drug Preludin then freely available in Germany) and Benzedrine, supplied by the Star Club waiters, was all they needed to stay awake until (and often long after) dawn.

Inevitably, discussions about music always came round to the mention of one man: Elvis Presley. John said he was just 15 when Elvis’s first British hit, Heartbreak Hotel, entered the charts. He heard it on Radio Luxembourg and the song, about the feelings of loneliness followed by the break-up of a relationship, struck a chord with him. But it was the voice of this mysterious stranger, just five years his senior, which had a devastating effect on him.

‘When I saw pictures of him I tried to copy the way he looked. I did my best to copy his hairstyle by growing long sideboards, shrunk my jeans and did everything I could to look mean and moody. [Aunt] Mimi says I changed overnight. I had this poster of him in my bedroom and nothing else mattered. I left everything everywhere. Rock’n’roll had taken over and Elvis, according to Mimi, was the culprit.’

From an earlier conversation Paul remembered that I had mentioned striking up a telephone acquaintance with Elvis’s manager ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker. Using the office phone during my early NME days, I had called his office in the Hollywood studios...