Best of the Beatles Read online

  Allan Williams reminds me of Arthur Daley in Minder. It may be unfair, but the image is of his own making, as the entrepreneur can be found in Liverpool pubs, dreaming up new ideas to make him millions. Somehow they never come off. His scheme to turn Spain into another Blackpool by manufacturing rock for tourists fell foul of the authorities, and people say he was on street corners going, “Psst, want to buy a stick of rock.” Some old leather trousers, allegedly worn by Paul McCartney, appeared in a Sotheby’s catalogue with a certificate of authenticity from Allan Williams. It transpired that they belonged to Faron of Faron’s Flamingos.

  It was Allan Williams, a one-time plumber, who introduced bullfighting (with a real bull!) into Liverpool club land. It was Allan Williams who booked the Beatles to back Janice, an over-endowed Manchester stripper, for a week in a dodgy Liverpool Club. It was Allan Williams who planned to get the tapes of the Beatles in Hamburg released; he also planned to cut up the original tapes and sell one-inch strips in key-chain souvenirs. On the videotape of Imagine…The Sixties, Billy Butler refers to a club burning down, adding, “And Allan Williams didn’t own it.” When Allan asked Paul McCartney to sign his book about the Fab Four, The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away, Paul said, “I’ve got to be careful here. Whatever I write is going to be quoted on the paperback.” He wrote, “To Allan, Some parts of this book are partially true, Paul McCartney.”

  Allan Williams and the former Cavern DJ Bob Wooler have often appeared at Beatle Conventions, even travelling to New York for a prestigious one. They stayed at the same hotel as Richard Nixon and several aides, and Allan and Bob had the larger bar bill paid, of course, by the organisers. Nice to think that Brits can do some things better than the Yanks.

  Every city presumably has one, but Allan Williams is one of the most colourful characters around. I can’t help liking the guy even though I’d never buy anything from him.

  (I passed this text to Allan Williams before publication and asked him if there was anything he wished to amend, secretly hoping that he would add a few more hilarious misadventures. He told Bob Wooler that a few things were wrong – he was more like Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses than Arthur Daley – but he never gave me the amendments. Not that he would be bothered; when ghosting The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away, Bill Marshall of the Daily Mirror found that he had not enough material. He asked Allan if he could invent some stories about the Beatles to fill it out. Allan said yes, and didn’t even see them before publication. These stories have become part of Mythew Street and Allan Williams recounts them at Beatle Conventions as though they really happened. Allan Williams is contemplating another semi-fictional book of Beatle reminiscences when he should be writing about his other business ventures. There’s a wonderful book to be written about Liverpool’s underworld in the late 1950s/early 1960s, a book that could do for Liverpool what Colin MacInnes’ Absolute Beginners did for Soho.)

  In 1958, Allan Williams, himself a trained singer, opened the Jacaranda coffee-bar in Liverpool’s city centre – 23 Slater Street to be precise. It’s still there and in the basement you can see the original murals by Stuart Sutcliffe and, possibly, John Lennon – well, guess who claims that? Don’t all rush at once – they’re nothing to write home about, just gloomy, sub-Picasso doodlings.

  Early in 1960 Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent were touring the UK for impresario Larry Parnes. The tour played the Liverpool Empire for a week and Allan Williams suggested that the two rockers might top a show at the Liverpool Stadium on their return in May. Cochran was killed on 17 April but Vincent was forced to honour his contract. The Stadium show included Gerry and the Pacemakers but not the Beatles, who were not considered good enough.

  Parnes told Williams that he was looking for a backing group for Billy Fury, and the Beatles attended the auditions on 10 May with Johnny Hutchinson of Cass and the Cassanovas playing drums. As a result, the Beatles backed another Parnes protégé (and Scouser), Johnny Gentle, on a tour of Scotland. John, Paul, George and Stu (on bass) took Tommy Moore as their drummer.

  Artist and blues singer Al Peters: “Stu Sutcliffe was a bass player who was passing through and that’s putting it kindly. He was in the band because he was a friend of John’s. The first thing you do when you have a band is to have your friends in because you can relate to them easier than strangers. Also, John and Stu had artistic endeavours between them; they were kindred spirits and could talk about the same things. I saw the TV programme in 1997 about Paul McCartney’s art work and if you compare that to the depth in Stu’s work, you’ll see the difference. Paul is a musician who is dabbling in art and if you reverse that, you have an artist who is playing a bit of bass to help his mates out. Paul is enjoying what he does, but how he arrives at his points on the canvas is totally different to the way that Stuart arrived at his. Stuart had emotional and physical problems and that also shows in his work.”

  Allan Williams: “Nobody rated the Beatles at all early on, they were known as a rubbish group, and they had difficulty finding a drummer. Also, John was very difficult person to get on with. Poor Tommy Moore was recommended by Cass of The Casanovas. He was 10 years older than John and stood no chance at all.”

  As well as suffering John’s vicious wit, Tommy Moore lost several teeth in a car accident. When John came to see him in hospital, he insisted he joined them on stage in Fraserburgh that night. Back in Liverpool, the group played at the Jac and secured a booking at the Grosvenor Ballroom in Wallasey. When Moore didn’t turn up, Allan Williams went to collect him from his home in Toxteth. “You can piss off,” screamed his girlfriend, “he’s got a job on the nightshift at Garston Bottle Works.”

  So ended the career of another Beatle drummer. Norman Chapman played a few gigs but was conscripted into the Army. However, my favourite has to be Rockin’ Ronnie. John Lennon announced on stage that they were minus a drummer and could anyone help. Rockin’ Ronnie stepped forward and although the huge Teddy Boy had never touched a set of drums before, the Beatles had to do the best they could – or suffer the consequences.

  Lord Woodbine, Allan Williams’ front for his strip club, was forced to close it down. Allan Williams divulges, “We sold the club and the show, and Woody and I went to Amsterdam on the dirty businessman’s trip you could get for £10 return in an old Dakota. We moved on to Hamburg and heard a German group singing rock ’n’ roll songs that they had learnt parrot-fashion. The Kaiserkeller agreed to take some Liverpool groups, but we couldn’t agree a fee. Unknown to me, Bruno Koschmider went to London to find Rory Storm, Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Beatles and he was persuaded to take the Jets with Tony Sheridan instead. Meanwhile, Derry Wilkie and the Seniors had been let down by Larry Parnes and blamed me for this. I took them to the Two I’s in London and quite by chance, Bruno was there looking for some groups.” Koschmider was a Grade A thug and although the Liverpool beat boys assumed he had been injured during the war, he had not been old enough to fight. He was very tough and imposing, given to hitting offenders with a hard truncheon, and it is possible he had had his damaged leg since birth. He looked threatening, certainly to John Lennon who had an aversion to anyone who was crippled. Although only thirty-three, Bruno Koschmider must have looked out of place in that teenage coffee bar.

  So, by the summer of 1960, Allan Williams was a booking agent for the Hamburg club owner, Bruno Koschmider. The Seniors were performing with success at the Kaiserkeller and Koschmider wanted a second Liverpool group for the Indra. Williams needed a group whose members were not tied to day jobs and, having little choice, selected the Silver Beatles. There was a problem. The contract stipulated a drummer and the Beatles didn’t have one. Curse the contract – if Bruno Koschmider wanted a drummer, you had to have one. In the Anthology series, Paul McCartney defended the drummerless Beatles: “People would say, ‘Where’s the drums?’ and we would say, ‘The rhythm’s in the guitars.’” Such an argument wouldn’t convince Koschmider. As an aside, it would be noted that the Hamburg club managers had wonderfully ono
matopoeic names – Bruno Koschmider, Horst Fascher, and Manfred Weissleder. In Liverpool, on a lighter note, there was George Blott and Sam Leach. These names are worthy of Charles Dickens.

  The Silver Beatles consisted of four guitarists – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Stu Sutcliffe – and they had to find a drummer. On 6 August a local booking had been cancelled and they gravitated to the Casbah. The Blackjacks were playing but because of college commitments, they were on the verge of breaking up. However, Pete Best, with his new kit, wanted to be, at least, semi-pro.

  A vintage interview with John Lennon was included in the Anthology series. “People who owned drum-kits were few and far between because it was an expensive item and they were usually idiots, you know. We got Pete Best just because we needed a drummer for Hamburg.”

  Harsh words – and how the film-makers must have been delighted to find that – but Allan Williams would agree, “Pete Best wasn’t a Beatle. When I got them the Hamburg job, they needed a drummer and they came up with Pete Best. He didn’t fit in with their image or get on socially with them. I don’t think he was sacked because of his drumming.”

  From 17 August to 3 October 1960, the Beatles played at the Indra on the Grosse Freiheit in Hamburg. Then they moved to the Kaiserkeller playing alternate sets with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes until they were deported for alleged arson on 30 November. No Allan Williams jokes please. Actually, Paul and Pete had gone to their dilapidated sleeping quarters at Koschmider’s cinema, the Bambi-Kino, to collect their belongings as they were moving to the new Top Ten club with Tony Sheridan. There was no light in the room so they attached contraceptives to some old tapestry on the walls and lit them. They gathered their belongings together while the contraceptives burnt out, leaving scorch marks on the wall. No harm done, certainly not in a dump like that, but Bruno did not want the Beatles playing at a rival club. He didn’t want to start a gang war at that time; hence the deportation.

  The Beatles had played 106 nights in Germany and their throats must have been like raw liver. It’s hard to credit John Lennon’s voice being on its last legs at a Parlophone recording session, and George Martin having to get ‘Twist and Shout’ down in one take. The session was easy-peasy compared to this – and heck, you can’t tell Bruno Koschmider you’re sick. “Anyone of us could have been beaten up or killed in Hamburg,” says Tony Sheridan, “but fortunately, the gangsters and the pimps loved the musicians.”

  Because the Beatles returned home unexpectedly, they had no work to hand. Of course they could play the Casbah, and did so on 17 December and New Year’s Eve. Allan Williams found them a Christmas Eve dance at the Grosvenor Ballroom in Wallasey. They could have played at his new Top Ten Club in Soho Street, but one night in early December it mysteriously burnt down. Allan Williams had to go to court as the suspicious insurance company refused to pay out. (Another aside: I was in a pub with a Merseybeat group a year or so ago and one of them said, just as you might point out an accountant or a barrister, “That’s Tommy the Torch. He’s done more damage to Liverpool than Adolf Hitler.”)

  The torching of the Top Ten was unfortunate for its new compere, DJ Bob Wooler. He had resigned his daytime job with British Railways and so passed his time in the Jacaranda. Bob Wooler: “You can write your own entry for Who’s Who and Paul McCartney has written, “Made first important appearance as the Beatles at Litherland Town Hall near Liverpool in December 1960.” It was Tuesday 27 December 1960, a BeeKay (Brian Kelly) dance. I am pleased that I got them the booking. I asked for £8 and Brian nearly collapsed because he was a tight wad – but most of the promoters were. He said he would give them £4 and we compromised on £6, which is £1 a man, five Beatles, and £1 for the driver. I didn’t take my ten per cent.”

  Brian Kelly added a sticker to the promotional posters, “Direct from Hamburg – The Beatles.” This didn’t say that the Beatles were German, although this is how it was interpreted. Bob Wooler: “The impact was so tremendous on that Tuesday evening that Brian Kelly posted a bouncer on the door that led backstage to stop any promoter who might be there getting to the Beatles. Brian Kelly signed them to a string of dates for £7.10s, 30 bob a man.” The Beatles played 36 dances around north Liverpool for Brian Kelly in the first 3 months of 1961.

  If Beatle fans could go back in time, that performance at Litherland Town Hall is the one that most would choose. By all accounts, John, Paul, George, Pete and Chas Newby were sensational. Chas Newby? Oh, I forgot to tell you – Stu Sutcliffe stayed with photographer Astrid Kirchherr in Hamburg, so the Blackjacks’ Chas Newby played bass. So, if we could go back in time, you now know who the mysterious stranger is.

  Paul McCartney became the Beatles’ permanent bass player. He is quoted in the guitar book British Rock Guitar, “None of us wanted to be the bass player – we wanted to be up front. In our minds, it was the fat guy in the group who nearly always played bass, and he stood at the back. None of us wanted that, we wanted to be up front, singing, looking good, to pull the birds.”

  Johnny Guitar was with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He kept a diary, which deserves to be published in full with annotations. This is an extract:

  28 September 1960. Got band-jackets from C&A.

  29. Got train from Lime Street, missed the other three, caught up with them on the boat train.

  30. Arrived in Holland 6am, caught the 7am Hamburg Express. Arrived about 5pm. Derry and the Seniors was there, also Beatles.

  1 October. Kaiserkeller. We played six hours and finished at 6am. It was hard work. We slept like logs.

  2. Had to get up and start playing again. We finished at 5am.

  3. We only played four 30-minute sets. The talent contest was a farce; we couldn’t understand what people were singing.

  4. Indra closed down. Beatles move in with us. Rory, Ringo and I staying at hotel, good one.

  9. We started at three, finished at three.

  10. Refused to sign extension contract. We get more money, send 80 marks home.

  12. Allan Williams came. The Beatles sign their contract so I doubt that they’ll get any more cash.

  14. Wally and Beatles going to make a test recording tomorrow.

  That heralds a significant event in the Beatles’ early history. Pete Best was not well on the 15th and so John, Paul and George met up with Lou Walters and Ringo Starr of the Hurricanes to make a demo at a small recording studio. Wally sang the idyllic lullaby, ‘Summertime,’ and it was the first time that John, Paul, George and Ringo were captured together on record. It’s never been heard in public and, as far as I can tell, the only remaining copy is owned by Wally’s former wife.

  Johnny Guitar’s diary gives an overview of the 3 months from October to December 1960: “At first hard-going. Rory got notice because he wouldn’t stay on stage. The Beatles and us wrecked the stage; Bruno sacked Rory and said we had to pay 65 marks damages. Rory took our big poster. Bruno got the police on to him. Rory got a job in the Top Ten with Tony Sheridan, he worked for a bed, then Beatles got a job in the Top Ten for 2 weeks and got deported because they burnt down the Bambi Kino. Bruno gave me champagne for my 21st birthday. Gerry and the Pacemakers came from Liverpool and we had a Christmas dinner in the mambo. We got a job in a fab place when we finished Kaiser, but we had to quit because we signed not to play within 6 months. Two girls saw me off. Rory got home free, we bluffed our way home. New band in Kaiserkeller no good. We picked up pile of souvenirs, mine were smashed. I was sick in the boat, all over the floor, very rough.”

  Promoter Sam Leach described Pete Best as ‘The Atom Beat Drummer.’ Pete Best: “I had to hit the bass drum really hard in the clubs in Hamburg to wake up the crowd. We played non-stop for 8 hours sometimes. When we came back to Liverpool, all the groups copied our big drum sounds. It was like the birth of Merseybeat.”

  Harry Prytherch, drummer with the Remo Four, was on the same bill as the Beatles on 5 February 1961: “Blair Hall had a stage with a big slope. The first time we saw the Beat
les there the curtain opened and this mighty, mighty sound came out. Pete Best was really hammering the drums and the bass drum started sliding forward. He was hanging on to his bass drum with one hand and playing it with a stick in the other. He was in real trouble so I got some string and wrapped it around his bass drum pedal and his seat, and every time after that he took a piece of string with him.”

  Howie Casey (Seniors): “There was a Liverpool fashion for drummers to play four in a bar on the bass drum, which is a bit military, Germanic really. Pete used to talk to our drummer Jeff Wallington quite a lot, and George used to talk to Brian Griffiths, who was a wonderfully melodic guitar player. There was learning curve going on. You’re always influenced by other people.”

  This is from Pete Best’s second autobiography, The Best Years of The Beatles, written with Bill Harry, the editor of Mersey Beat: “When I rehearsed with the band or practised by myself, if I felt something sounded good I decided to develop it. A lot of it was self-taught, plus I always had in the back of my mind Gene Krupa and his big, powerful sound which carried everything. In Germany I was still doing the same thing, but because of the long hours and the fact that we had to develop the music and make it wilder, I began to emphasise what I was doing more. I started slapping the bass drum more to make it a lot stronger, doing more rolls, more cymbal work, and a lot more tom-tom work, which was, again, a throwback to Krupa. Instead of just playing a single or double-snare drum shot, I started doubling up, so you had this powerful effect. What my right hand was doing on the cymbal, my left hand was doing on the snare drum, basically to emphasise the beat. So you had stages where it was one bang, one bump bump, and you had that fierce bass drum going on all the time, which was like the backbone to it. Drummers and other members of bands commented on my style as, ‘This beat which is booming out and surging everything forward.’ I think it was then when people began to remark on it, that I began to think about it myself. ‘What is it that I am doing which is different to them?’ Drummers were coming and asking things like, ‘How do you keep your bass drum going all the time?’ Questions like that stumped me, I thought, ‘Doesn’t everyone do that?’ Then it became apparent, because other people were picking up on it, that there was something special there.”