My Missing Years (1966)

 My Missing Years

By Maureen O'Grady

Rave Magazine

February 1966

    Freddie Lennon looks a very happy man, but don't be deceived. Hidden deep down are things that have happened in his past that he cannot forget, things he will never forget. As I realized, as we sat and talked in the offices of Pye Records, where a few weeks earlier, he had recorded his record "That's my Life."

     "The two saddest things about my life were losing my son and my wife." The breakup with his wife-- he said she was leaving him and starting to move furniture out of the house, he helped her, thinking she was joking and would come back, but she didn't. She meant it. And John, his son, who, on the death of his mother, lived with his Aunt Mimi. Things can never be the same between them again, not a proper father/ son relationship. He knows this. How could it be when the last but one time he saw John was when he was six, and then the last time when John was 24? For nothing can replace those missing 18 years.

     The last meeting happened a year or so ago in Brian Epstein's office. It was a strange experience for both of them. All the years in between, while Freddie had been away at sea, he had thought of John. "It's only natural," he said warmly, "after all, he is my son. And the funny thing was, I always knew, had a feeling that one day I would see him again.

     "The first two or three minutes were very awkward. I mean, it wasn't a situation where we would run into one another's arms. But after a while, we talked about things, laughed, and joked. John would have stayed longer, but he had to rush off to the BBC. His life is so busy now.

     "And then we said goodbye in typical Liverpool fashion, 'see you then'. Just friends." What does he think of John's well-known sarcastic nature?  "Well, the boy's obviously got a chip on his shoulder, that's all. But I'm partly to blame for that, I know."

     Freddie himself didn't grow up in a happy family atmosphere. He was raised in an orphanage, Blue Coat Hospital, in Liverpool. He remembers that John's first teacher, a Mr. James Bond, who still recalls John, went to the same orphanage. He remembers loads of little things like that, as though it were only yesterday. It's strange to think that during those missing years in between, Freddie didn't realize that his son was one of the world-famous Beatles. 

    "People kept saying to me, when the Beatles were in the papers nearly every day, 'For sure, that's your son, Fred. ' And eventually I discovered it was. You know, I wouldn't have come forward as I did. I was going to leave things as they were, but I couldn't.

     "Things were being written about me, lies. Everything was getting twisted. I came forward to tell my side of the story -- not for money, but so everyone could know the truth." He's heard that people think he's just cashing in on his son's name. "I know a lot of people think so, but it's not true. I have no reason to change my name, have I? It's no gimmick. The words of my song came naturally and sincerely, and that proves it."

     His last job, working at a ship hotel in Shepperton, is where he met his managers, Tony Cartwright and Tom Jones. Tom and Tony would tell Freddie that his voice was still as good as ever. He has been singing for years now on his own right, organizing ship concerts, and has sung in places like New York and Montreal. "Why don't you make a record?" They continually asked, and he followed their advice.

     Freddie laughed. "I told John that I was the first one to take the Liverpool sound to America. He seemed very pleased and amused when he heard that. John said he would buy a copy of his record. I was hoping he'd buy 20,000 copies, then I'd be able to knock the Beatles off the top of the Hit Parade. That would be a laugh."

     In fact, every mention of John seemed to light him up. What would he do if he earned a lot of money? "I want to get a little business with a house attached. I have no home at present. I wouldn't marry again. A new mother for John would just about be the last straw with him. I know I wouldn't do that."

     He says his son's feelings still matter to him. He doesn't want to embarrass or annoy him, for there's been too much of that in the past. He's fond of John and wants to stay friends. Losing a son is something that happened, but he's trying to make it a little bit better, even if it just means they stay friends.

The Long and the Short (1966)

 

The Long and the Short 

Rave Editors

Rave Magazine

February 1966

    The long and short of this particular Beatles lunch date was that the Beatles weren't exactly the world champion spaghetti eaters. It's not that the four boys didn't like the stuff- they did. It was a question of, how did they ever get to eat it? Like their spaghetti, our story begins here and goes on.

     When in Rome, do as the Romans do. That's the old saying, and the Beatles, non-conformist that they are, went along with the idea, just for a laugh and a giggle. Every good Roman has his daily spaghetti, just as the Scotsman has his porridge. 

    So with two days to spend in Rome, John, Paul, George, and Ringo decided to have a go at spaghetti, eating at a special luncheon in their hotel. This all took place on the Beatles' last European tour. All over the continent, they went tasting --wine in Spain, delicate dishes in France. So it was only natural, really, that spaghetti in Italy was to be the next in line. 

    The results rather bewildered the Italian photographer, as you can imagine. With comments like, "Is it dead?" From John as he inspected a single strand from his plate.  "No. One of them just wriggled off my fork," George replied, looking rather dubiously at his mountainous pile. 

    Ringo, meanwhile, had wound most of his spaghetti over his fork, and it was now progressing up his arm. "Get back, you fools!" he shouted to the advancing white strands. Paul twirled on. John, however, soon decided that the best way to win was to twist the spaghetti round his fork until it was the size of a candyfloss and then take big bites out of it, candyfloss style, unsuccessfully. We might add. 

    His next move was to take a huge handful, hold it above his head, and just let it all drop, well, most of it anyway, into his mouth. George nodded approval at John's move. "Yeah, John, think you're right. It's quicker by hand. Can't understand how Italians get fat. It'll take me a week to get this lot untangled, let alone eat it."

     Rango, meanwhile, had been taking spaghetti eating tuition from an Italian girl present at the lunch. She was the president of their Italian fan club, and though it was only fair to help, her name was Anna Maria Cecchi, a cousin of Gina Lollobrigida --unsurprisingly enough, an expert on the matter at hand.

     Now spurred on to great things, Ringo started eating professionally from his plate and Paul too at the same time, a continuous stream of spaghetti going into his mouth. "Beat that," said John. They could not. So the other three retired, covered in most of their lunch, leaving Ringo as the champion of the day, a very unusual day in the life of a Beatle.

The Beatle Who Lost Out (1964)

 

Ken Brown

George, Paul, Ken, and John at the Casbah 

The Beatle Who Lost Out

By George Tremlett (with Ken Brown)

Rave Magazine

December 1964

    "Sometimes I could kick myself--- hard. I could still be one of the Beatles, earning 1000s of pounds a week instead of living in a caravan. I was with John, Paul, and George the first time they played together at the Casbah. I knew John's wife, Cynthia. In fact, I saw their romance blossom. I knew George's first girlfriend, Ruth Morrison. 

    "We shared everything: our music and the £3 a night we used to earn in those far-off days in August 1958.

     "Now my 10-watt amplifier lies a little tattered after six years in a corner of my caravan. The Hofner guitar I played hangs on the wall, and I still play it for my wife, Marcia. These are my only souvenirs. If it hadn't been for a row over a paltry 15 bob, I might still be with them. The memories flood back.

`    "I was with the Beatles the day they were formed, quite by accident. It happened like this: In the summer of 1958, the skiffle craze had finished, and George Harrison and I were playing in the Les Stewart Quartet with a chap called Skinner. We spent hours practicing in the Lowlands Club, Heyman's Green, but the most we ever earned was £2 for a wedding.

     "We would probably have gone on playing at clubs, but for George's girlfriend, Ruth Morrison. George had never really been keen on girls. He was still only 16, and at the Liverpool Institute with Paul McCartney. He suddenly seemed to go head over heels for Ruth, a lovely girl with long auburn hair who later moved to Birmingham to become a nurse. She was the first girlfriend George had, and they went everywhere together.

     "One evening, the three of us were sitting in the Lowlands drinking coffee, moaning about the fact that we had nowhere regular to play. Ruth sat twiddling a spoon as we talked, and then she said, 'Why don't you ask Mrs. Best?' 'Who's that?' asked George. And Ruth explained that this woman at 8 Hayman's Green was planning to open a coffee bar club. 'You go and see her,' said George. 

    "Mona Best lived in this great Victorian house and wanted to convert the basement into a club to be called the Casbah. I offered to help, and for five months, worked on the conversion with two pals. Often, we worked past midnight. Then there was a three-mile walk home. But I didn't mind. Mrs. Best promised that the Les Stewart Quartet would play at the club when it opened.

     "On the Saturday we were due to open, I went around to Les Stewart's house. George Harrison was sitting in the lounge. His Hofner guitar across his lap, idly plucking at its strings. The atmosphere seemed a bit tense. 'What's up?' I asked. George looked down at his guitar and said nothing. So I turned to Les, who is now with a Decca group.  The long and the short, he looked daggers. 'You've been missing practice,' he said. 'I know,' I replied, 'but only so we can have somewhere to play. I spent hours working on the club.'

     'You've been getting paid for it,' challenged Les.

     'No, I haven't.'

     'Well, I'm not going to play there,' said Les. As our argument got steadily more heated, I turned to George, 'Look,' I said, 'the club opens tonight. We spent months waiting for this. You're not backing out, too?'

     "George thought for a moment, then he told me that he would go on with me. So we left Les at his house. As we were walking down the road, I turned to George and said, 'We can't let Mrs. Best down now. Let's try to get a group together ourselves. Do you know anyone?'

     'There are two mates I sometimes play with out at Speke', ventured George. 'Okay, let's ask them,' I said, and George went off on the bus, joining me two hours later at the Casbah with his two mates, John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

     "That was the first time I had met them. Paul was 15, still at school, and had a schoolboyish haircut. But John was a bit of a beatnik, with his hair hanging over his collar, dressed in a check shirt and old jeans. I told them we would each be paid 15 bob a night. They seemed glad about that; most groups played just for experience. 

    We talked over various names to call ourselves, and finally settled on the Quarry Men, a name John had used once or twice before for skiffle groups he had formed since leaving Quarry Bank Grammar School. So that night, the Beatles were born, and the Casbah opened. After all, we went down great, particularly when Paul sang 'Long Tall Sally.'

    "Our most popular numbers were John and Paul's vocals. I was the rhythm guitarist. John's pet solo was 'Three Cool Cats', which he used to growl into the mic. John was always very quiet. He was a lonely youngster, seldom talking about his family, maybe because his father had deserted him at childhood and then his mother had been killed by a police car. 

    "John seemed in need of affection, and depending on Cynthia, the girl, he later married. Cyn, a lovely girl with long blonde hair, traveled nearly 30 miles a night from her home in Hoylake just to watch John play. She used to sit at the side of the stage, mostly dressed in skirts and sweaters, never saying much. She seemed very shy. Whenever we had a break for coffee and a sandwich, John would sit on the edge of the stage talking quietly to her. Sometimes when he was singing, he would turn to give her a little grin. George and Paul thought it was a bit daft, really, a couple going potty over each other like that.

    "Paul never really bothered much about girlfriends, though they all went mad over him, especially when he sang romantic ballads like 'Around the World'. George was not too keen on girls either, apart from Ruth, but he was not really in love with her, though perhaps she was with him. 

    One evening, I went around the back of the Casbah for some fresh air. (It used to get very hot downstairs in the basement) and found Ruth sitting on a bench, sobbing. 'What's the matter?' I asked, putting my arm around her shoulders to console her. 

    'George won't go to the pictures with me,' she sobbed. 'He just doesn't seem to bother any more.'

     "I went inside and told George, who was sitting down having coffee in the interval. He just shrugged and started playing again without going out to Ruth. That was the end of them, really. They still saw each other, but it was never the same after that. 

    For nine months, we played together at the Casbah until one night, just when we were due to start a Saturday session, I felt a crippling pain in my leg. I could barely stand, but insisted on doing something. So Mrs. Best asked me to take the money at the door instead, and for the first time, John, Paul and George played without me. 

    Just as everyone was going home, I was sitting in the club when Paul came back down the steps. 'Hey, Ken, what's all this?' he asked. 'What?' I asked him. 

    'Mrs. Best says she's paying you even though you didn't play with us tonight.'

     'That's up to her,' I replied.

     As Paul bounded back up the stairs, still arguing over it with Mrs. Best, they all came downstairs to me. 'We think your 15 bob should be divided between us because you didn't play tonight,' said Paul. 

     'That's up to Mrs. Best,' I said. 

    "As the argument continued, by this time, we were all shouting, and Mrs. Best insisted on paying me the 15s.

     'Right. That's it then!' shouted Paul, and they stormed off down the drive, headed towards West Derby village, shouting they would never play at the Casbah again. But that wasn't the last time I saw them or the last time they played at the Casbah. Though they did play together again, we didn't play together again. I hadn't left the Beatles. The Beatles had left me."

    The last time Ken Brown saw the Beatles was on March 16, 1963. They were temporarily broke and wanted to borrow £20. Ken had moved to London and married Marcia. Their telephone rang. It was Neil Aspinall, The Beatles' road manager. "He told me the boys were in a bit of a jam. They had run out of money. The next night, they were due to appear in Sheffield; unless someone had helped them out, they would have to sleep in their van. Neil wondered if I would lend them £20.

     "Eventually, I agreed, and they all turned up at our flat. Neil came to the door, but the boys didn't even get out of the van, so Marcia and I went down to see them. I handed over the money, which they repaid me six weeks later.

     "I told them we were moving into a caravan. 'Great,' said Paul, 'we'll all drop in to see you one night.' But they never did. Now, I only see the Beatles on the TV."

      After splitting with Ken Brown, the Quarry Men barely hung together. By early 1959, dates were scarce, though John, Paul, and George still rehearsed together. All three of them felt their sound needed a little depth, which was how Stuart Sutcliffe came to join them. He could play no instruments, but was talented enough as an artist to sell his paintings and buy a bass guitar, and that was a good enough start.

     They needed a drummer, too, but that was a problem. Drum equipment was expensive, so anybody with the gear was given a chance to join in, and there were many drummers, but few lasted long.

     After a lot of disappointments, things took a turn for the better. Alan Williams, now owner of the Blue Angel Club, a late-night venue for Liverpool's best young musicians, became the Beatles' manager. He started booking them for many Mersey side beat shows, and through an arrangement with Larry Parnes, secured their first tour--- a fortnight in Scotland, backing Johnny Gentle for £15 a week each.

     Gentle, now one of the Viscounts, remembers the tour. "At first, I wondered what on earth Parnes had sent me. They arrived in jeans and sweaters --- the roughest bunch of lads I had seen in my life. John and Stu were both at art college, and looked it. Their hair fell over their collars and  Stu sported a beard. 

    "George was then serving an apprenticeship, and looked neat as did. Paul who was still at school, studying for his A levels. John told me, excitedly, 'This is our big break. We've been waiting for this.' Every night we were booked in different dance halls in Scotland, though we stayed in Inverness. Some of the girls didn't like the Beatles much and complained to the promoter that they were no good. At the end of the week, he wanted to sack them and use a local group instead. 

    "John was downhearted. 'We thought it was really going to be our big break,' he said despondently. They all seemed so upset that I felt sorry for them, and we had a workout in the hotel bar at the Inverness, trying out all my numbers over and over again until we got the right sound. 

    That night, after we finished our show, a girl approached the boys and asked for their autographs. John couldn't believe it. The others were thrilled. 'It's the first time anyone has ever asked us for our autographs,' George told me.  'This is great,' said John. 'This is the life-- marvelous. Do you think we ought to chuck everything up and turn full time?'

     "He was still talking about it when we were driving off to another show in our Dovermobile, when suddenly we crashed into a car at a crossroads at Banff. All the equipment jerked forward, and the boys tumbled over each other into the front seats. The van was almost a write-off, and the police had me for careless driving. Cost me £5. The last time we saw each other was at Dundee station. They were going back to Liverpool. 

    "John said, 'Ask Larry Parnes if he wants us again. We'd love to back you again, if we could.'"

     The next big break was the Beatles' first trip to Hamburg. Their manager, Alan Williams, was auditioning groups for Germany, and suggested the Beatles. "But you'll have to get a drummer," he said. And that was where Pete Best came into the picture. With Ken Brown, he had formed the Black Jacks, who played regularly at his mother's club, the Casbah. 

    Ken remembers, "I was sitting in the kitchen with Mrs. Best and Pete having a cup of tea when the boys arrived, all excited and asked to have a word with Pete. We went outside with them. I sat there, not very bothered. After all, Pete and I had built up a good group. Then Mrs. Best came in and said, 'John, Paul, George, and Stu had asked Pete to go to Hamburg with them as their drummer.' She told me they had been offered this session at the Indra and said it was too good an opportunity for Pete to miss. I agreed. 

    The very next day, the Beatles left for Hamburg. The Indra was on the Reeperbahn, the Soho of Hamburg. Late at night, the clubs were packed, but the police had one strict rule: everyone under 18 had to be out by 10pm. After complaints that this rule was not being observed, the police closed the Indra, and the Beatles moved to the Kaiserkeller, just along the street. 

    The Beatles' Hamburg adventures ended when the police discovered that George was only 17 and John had no work permit. All four Beatles were sent home to England. Stu, who had fallen in love with a German girl, stayed behind.

     Back home in Liverpool, the boys were dispirited. Without Stu, they felt the group could not continue. But for the encouragement of three people, Mrs. Best, Neil Aspinall, and Bob Wooler, the Beatles would have been  no more.

     When they were in Hamburg, the Casbah had gained in popularity here. Though Mrs. Best had their chance to regain their confidence. She booked them for December 23, 1960. While Neil trained to be a chartered accountant, he drew up posters billing the Beatles as direct from Hamburg. Their performance was sensational. 

    Ken Brown was in the Casbah that night. "The boys were tremendous!" Four nights later, Bob Wooler presented them at Litherland Town Hall. Neil was standing at the back of the hall as Pete set up his drums and Paul, George, and John tuned their guitars. Suddenly, Paul launched into "Long Tall Sally", and the audience went wild, storming the stage. 

    "None of us had ever seen anything like that before," said Neil. "It was as if they had happened overnight."

     From that night on, the Beatles were Liverpool's top group, and they won their way to world conquest..

Now I Can Reveal My Secrets (Pete Best 1964)

 Now I Can Reveal My Secrets

By Pete Best

Rave Magazine

May 1964

How we stormed the cavern. "My mother got us our first date there. She phoned the boss, Ray McFall. He tried us out one Wednesday afternoon, the shops were closed, and we played a packer. The result: a long list of bookings.

Bottom of the bill. Litherland Town Hall was the scene of many of the Beatles' triumphs. A report in his scrapbook says "The curtain opened, and the Beatmakers exploded on an astonishing crowd with the sound bigger than the Guns of Navarone." Adds Pete, "The cause was actually the Beatles and the Pacemakers together. Freddie Marsden had his drums on stage. I had mine. We went to town on numbers like 'What I'd Say'."

TV didn't want to know. Pete's mother had written to Granada TV and received the above reply from producer David Plowright. Recalled Pete, "The Beatles never appeared on TV during the two years I was with them, nor for quite some time after that."

We played through the fights. Pete's eyes gleamed as we turned to this handbill. "In those days, you could see the Beatles for half a crown," He grinned. "'The sensational Beatles' they called us, but you'd pay a tanner more if you come after 8pm. We used to play there once a week, and the crowd's favorite request was 'Hully Gully'. This used to go down well, perhaps too well. For some reason, it usually started a free fight. We just used to play on."

John's start as an author. One of John Lennon's earliest stories was published in Mersy Beat, edited by his college friend Bill Harry. The story is a light-hearted look at the beginnings of the Beatles. Said Pete, "John's way of humor always gave us a lift if we ever felt down."

 Jazz and rock mixed. Pete remembers this all-night session at the cavern as a great time. "The bill was half jazz, half rock. The band room was about six foot by six with half a dozen groups all trying to change. " He told me Kenny Ball was hemmed in one corner and occasionally struggled free and let rip on his trumpet. 

The break we strived for. The Beatles were in Germany when news of their recording contract came through. "We celebrated like mad that night," recalled Pete, "As we read about it, in Mersey Beat, I had no idea I would never be a part of the international Beatles."

    By August 1962, The Beatles, stars in Hamburg as well as Liverpool, were poised to break nationally. They had a disc contract. Then came the decision that brought Pete Best's whole world tumbling down. "Brian Epstein asked to see me-- ordinary, routine business, I supposed. Hadn't a care in the world as I went in," Pete recalled.  "And seconds later, he was saying I wasn't with The Beatles anymore. It didn't seem real."

     Aimless days followed. "At times, I felt like quitting show business. Offers poured in. I finally took one with the Lee Curtis All-Stars, and I was back in action. I felt a million times better. 

    Now I have my own group, and I'm pitching into the disc scene for all I'm worth.  The Beatles? Sure, I've seen them several times since. At first, there was an atmosphere, but we're good friends now. A little success with my own group is 100 times better than worrying about what might have been.  After all, does that get you? 

I Filled My Beatle's Last Days With Love (1964)

 

Message from Sara:   When you read this article, the errors really stand out.  We know the Beatles did not go to Hamburg in 1959.  We know the order in this story is a bit wrong.  I am sure that you will find other mistakes as well.  What I do think is true is Astrid's thoughts and feelings around Stu, their love, and his death.  This 1964 article is most likely the first time fans really got an opportunity to learn about Stuart Sutcliffe and I found it to be a touching article in spite of all of the glaring mistakes. 

I Filled My Beatle's Last Days With Love

By Ed Blanche

Rave Monthly

September 1964

    Tenderly, the girl with long blonde hair picks up the photograph. From it, the proud, sensitive eyes of Stuart Sutcliffe gaze up into hers. Shadows fall across her face as she says huskily, "It was a beautiful moment when my Beatle asked me to marry him. We were so very much in love." A long silence, then she breathes. "I never dreamed he would... die."

    

     In the quietness of the darkened room. I know that she is once again inside that ambulance in its sickening, jolting race to the hospital, staring down with anguish, foreboding at the white, motionless face of the boy she loved. 

    The photograph slides from her fingers and falls face down on the floor. On the back, I read "photograph by Astrid Kirchherr." This girl is Astrid. The photograph is one of many brilliant pictures she took of Stuart and the other Beatles, John, Paul, George, and Pete Best in their riotous days in her hometown of Hamburg, Germany, before they became international stars. 

    Astrid is dressed in all black. She says simply that she just prefers black. Time has soothed away the emptiness and the sorrow. Now she can tell quietly, almost unemotionally, the full story of her tragic love for Stuart, the fifth Beatle, for she is happy again. 

    She has been engaged to another Liverpool musician, drummer, Gibson Kemp, since January. Astrid sits curled up on the floor in front of 19-year-old Gibson in the living room of his home in Litherland, a suburb of Liverpool, within a mile of the town hall where the Beatles' story got underway more than six years ago. 

   Gibson, who occupied the vacant drum stool with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes when Ringo left to join the Beatles, later played at the Star Club with King Size Taylor and the Dominoes. He now has his own group, the Eyes.

     Astrid is 25 now, and doesn't take photographs anymore.  She lives with her mother in their Hamburg flat. She dresses in black, but not because she is still mourning the death of Stuart. "I always dressed in black. I like it. I even buy colored dresses and dye them black," she explains. 

    She speaks very good Scouse. Her knowledge of English slang is prolific and expert. Learned from Stuart, The Beatles, and practically every visiting Liverpool musician. There is very little trace of German when she speaks. Only occasionally does she falter over a word. Then she will turn to Gibson, who is never far from her side, and ask, "What is that word, dear?"

     She first met the Beatles in 1959, when they were a wild gag-pulling gang of beat musicians who thrived on playing 12 hours a night at Hamburg's crowded Kaiser Keller club for £16  a week. There were five of them then. Stuart, the bass guitarist; John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and drummer Pete Best, living and thinking like one person. "The stage was about as big as a sofa," laughs Astrid, "and there they were, the five of them crowded on it with all their equipment. The first time I saw them, the club was packed, and I was with a boyfriend of mine. I couldn't take my eyes off these lean, wildly exciting boys. I'd never heard anything like them before," she says, excitedly, remembering an old enthusiasm. 

    She remembers that Stuart was wearing dark glasses. "I could see he was looking at me all the time," she says.  "At first, there was nothing special between us, but later, we wanted to be with each other all the time. He was different than the rest in a way, more gentle and quiet. Seemed to think a lot more. Stuart and John were old friends, close friends. They had studied together at Liverpool College of Art before forming a beat group and asking George and Paul to join them. They liked the same things, laughed at the same jokes, but their outlooks and ambitions were different.

     "Whereas John tended to be cynical, sometimes hard, Stuart was more gentle and sympathetic. He had only one ambition: to paint. He found peace in it."  Astrid remembers that in Hamburg, he painted day and night for months in a converted studio in her mother's flat, searching for a beauty he never seemed to find. 

    He painted more than 500 pictures in less than a year. She says it was after those first few riotous months at Hamburg that Stuart asked Astrid to marry him. "It was a beautiful moment," she says, reverently. "Stewart was very quiet when he came to the flat. He knew that he would be leaving me in a few days to go back to Liverpool when the group's contract ran out. When he asked me, I wanted to cry. I said, 'Yes.' I think he had wanted to ask me for some time, but just couldn't work himself up to it."

     It was a silent and lonely Hamburg after the Beatles left, and not just for Astrid; the whole city was buzzing with the question, "When are the Beatles returning?" But for Astrid, it was something more than just listening to a good group. Within weeks, they were back, this time at the rival Top Ten Club.

     Astrid and Stuart were overjoyed at being together again, but trouble wasn't far off. The tough city police were after them. They had been accused of burning the small, cell-like room. They had stayed in the projection room of a converted cinema while they were playing at the Kaiser Keller. Beat groups were not the Hamburg Police Department's favorite people, so they searched the city for the Beatles. Within hours, they were all in jail, and Peter Eckhorn, manager of the Top Ten, had to bail them out.

     Astrid said, viciously, "The police were terrible. They weren't going to release the boys, but Peter said he would pay anything to get them out. He liked them a lot, but it was the Beatles who were filling his club every night. He couldn't afford to have them in jail." Now, Stuart was painting more and more, drifting away from the group during the daytime. He couldn't afford to buy expensive oils, so he drew with ink, crayons, and pencils on cheap art paper. He began to miss sessions at the club all the time. 

    He was painting as though his life depended on it. He'd paint anything, the grimy Hamburg skyline, the forest of cranes in the docks, the drab back alleys, and for a model, Astrid always sat for him. Many of these works were exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool this spring. 

    The Beatles returned to Liverpool when their six-month contract to the Top Ten expired in 1960, but Stuart stayed behind. He had been awarded a scholarship to Hamburg University to study art.. When John Paul, George, and Pete came back to the Top Ten later in the year, Stuart was a different person. Art and Astrid were his whole world, his whole life. His parents and sisters, Pauline and Joyc, in Aigburth Road, Liverpool, belonged to another life. 

    "Stuart was so sensitive," Astrid quietly recalls. "He liked beautiful things. When we used to go out, which wasn't very often, because I wasn't making much money and he only had his grant to college, we went to the ballet or classical concerts." 

    Astrid lights another cigarette and almost whispers through a cloud of gray smoke. "He used to write stories and poems, too strange things to me. They were often incomprehensible. I would read them and say how good they were, but Stuart would read them again and then tear them up. I'm sure they were his philosophy, but I couldn't always understand them."

     She speaks faster now, as though the dam had been broken, and at last she could talk about Stuart.  She sounds relieved. "He was very intelligent, "she says proudly, "very sensitive with a wonderful sense of humor. He was always doing something. He couldn't sit still for long. If he wasn't painting, he was writing or playing the guitar. He used to spend hours writing letters to John in Liverpool. Put down all his feelings, all his experiences, even put in illustrations and pages of poetry. These letters used to run to 20 pages or so, and John's were just as long and deep."

     Stuart and Astrid were not to have much longer together. Within a few months, he would be dead. He began to have sudden, painful headaches, which would almost drive him mad. They would go as suddenly as they had come. Astrid thought it was overwork and fatigue. "He would study all day, then come home and go straight up to his studio and paint all night," she says. "But the pains got worse and the headaches more frequent. Once he fainted in class and had to be brought home. He was put to bed, and the doctor who examined him couldn't find anything wrong. "

    Astrid's mother made him stay in bed and rest, but the pain did not go away. Several top specialists examined him, but the answer was always the same. 'We can't find nothing wrong.'  A brain tumor was suspected, but a long series of X-ray tests showed nothing. The stabbing pains got so bad, Stuart had to have morphine to deaden the pain.

    "Sometimes he'd get up and be walking around, laughing and talking as though nothing was wrong. Then, suddenly, he clutched his head and groaned with the pain," she said. She stops, puts out the cigarette in the glass ashtray, already overflowing with stubs. She looks out the window on the small, square green lawn behind Gibson's suburban home. Perhaps she is thinking that she and Stuart may have lived in a house just like this.

     She continues trying to sound as matter-of-fact as she can. "The day before he died, Stuart was up and around the flat. He wanted to go and meet the Beatles at the airport. This was their fourth trip, just after they had signed with Brian Epstein, but I wouldn't let him. He said that 'I must go'. Then he went to bed."

     The next morning, Astrid found Stuart in bed, unconscious, deadly white, and breathing very shallowly. As she made an emergency call for the ambulance, she sat with him. On the way to the hospital, watching him get worse, she shouted to the driver to hurry. But when they got to the hospital, Stuart was already dead. "They put his body on a trolley," said Astrid, "and wheeled him to the lift to the operating theater. A doctor poked at him and told me he was dead. I just couldn't believe it."

     Astrid wandered out of the hospital dazed and alone. She cried softly to herself, still unable to grasp that Stuart was dead. No more peaceful evenings sitting for him in the studio, no more cooking his meals, no more concerts. Stuart was dead. But the tragedy was not over yet. There were to be more tears. Astrid cabled Stewart's mother, the appalling news, the grief-stricken Mrs. Sutcliffe caught the first airplane to Hamburg. Also on it was George, who had been ill and missed the earlier flight with the other three.

     The jubilant Beatles, who had arrived the day before, were there at the airport to greet George. They were happy and confident. Things were beginning to move with Brian Epstein handling them, they were booked for a two-month date at the new Star Club at £45 a week, a fortune. And then they saw Astrid with George and Mrs. Sutcliffe, "Where Stu?" they asked.  Tears streaming down her face, Astrid sobbed out that he was dead. 

    John, Stuart's biggest chum, cried hysterically when he heard. Paul and Pete wept unashamedly. George and Stuart's mother held Astrid and wept also. She lights another cigarette and continues. "The boys had to play at the club that night. I thought they wouldn't be able to go on, but somehow they managed it. They said very little, and they didn't gag about much like they usually did."

     A few months later, when the Beatles were back in Britain with an EMI recording contract, John wrote to Astrid. It was a long letter, a very personal letter. It meant a lot to her. For John wrote how close he and Stuart were, how Stuart told him how much he loved Astrid and wanted to marry her, how John was happy for them both. How empty it must seem now that Stuart was dead. How lucky he himself was to find Cynthia. "It was a very beautiful letter," said Astrid. "John will never know how much it meant to me. It's the only letter I've ever had from him, but it doesn't matter; he knew how I felt and said some very wonderful and true things in it. I'll always treasure it, for it's like something of Stuart to me.

    "After he died, I sat down and told myself, 'I must live again'. I made myself think of Stuart's family and the way they must feel." Gradually, Astrid learned to live her life again, knowing that she must mingle with her friends, learn to laugh and smile, and make her memories of the happiness she shared with Stuart.

     Part of Stuart's cluttered studio in the Kirchherr home is still more or less as he left it: dozens of his paintings, some unfinished, lean against the black-painted wall. Astrid's pictures of the Beatles and other Mersyside singers and musicians hang on the wall alongside a giant photo portrait of Stuart. In the corner stands his high-backed chair. "I used to sit in that room", said Astrid, "because Stuart and I had had so many happy moments there, but I had to go on living. I had to look ahead, not living in the past. But nothing much has changed in that room."

     She still saw as much of the Beatles as she could, but it was becoming difficult. As the group became more famous, they visited Hamburg once more at the end of 1962 before they exploded onto the British pop scene. Till then, they hadn't been known outside of Hamburg and Liverpool, and always it was John she found she was most relaxed with. John, Stuart's closest friend, with whom he had shared all his hopes and dreams. 

    When John and Cynthia were in Paris, it was John who paid for Astrid to visit them. "He insisted," she said. "It gave him so much pleasure now that he could afford it, and I was very grateful."

     This spring, she flew over to stay with George and Ringo and their fifth-floor Mayfair flat. "I knew Ringo when he was in Hamburg with Rory Storm, and later when he came over with the Beatles in Pete Best's place," she said. "He's a marvelous character, always laughing and dancing. George and he are very close."  She also visited John and Cynthia while she was in London. "John is a wonderful husband and a devoted father," she smiles. "He thinks the world of his family. He hasn't changed at all since I first knew him, a bit quieter, maybe, but still as funny and witty as ever. He'll never change. He's too intelligent and aware of himself and the things around him to do that."

     Astrid is quiet now. Her memory is exhausted. She sighs and leans back in her chair, lights another cigarette. The room is silent. Photographs she took of Stuart, which she had shown me while she talked lie on the carpet. She runs a hand through her long, straight golden hair and says quietly the trace of a wistful smile touching the corner of her mouth. "You know, I would have liked to live over here in a little house with Stuart."

Heart to Heart with Paul McCartney (1964)

 

Heart to Heart

By Alan Freeman

Rave Monthly

September 1964

    Loyalty. It's a word you don't hear too much of in show business, and when you do, nine times out of 10, it's used by some star who has come up the hard way.

     Loyalty isn't just about remembering to send a birthday card or a good-luck telegram the night the show opens. It's something a lot deeper than that. Pop-pickers, loyalty is the bond that welds the lives of people together in such a way that if one of them goes, it's unthinkable for anyone to try to take its place. 

    Remember that miserable fortnight when Ringo Starr lay ill? Well, I can tell you now that if Ringo's illness had been permanent, The Beatles would have broken up. The most phenomenal partnership in the history of stardom would have just integrated for all time. The stunning thought was no accident. It was a deliberate pact on the part of the Beatles themselves, and it has been kept secret from the whole world until Paul McCartney disclosed it to me in our latest heart-to-heart talk.

     "If anything happens to one of us, we wouldn't go on," Paul told me, as he was standing beside me in the kitchen of my London flat while I fixed some scrambled eggs, Paul's favorite meal for a very late breakfast. 

    I nearly upset the pan as I looked at him. "It's true," Paul said. "When Ringo was ill, we didn't want to do the tour of Holland and Australia. 'It'd be a drag without him,' we thought. If it hadn't been just a temporary illness, then that would have been it; all would have been packed in.

    "If one of us dropped out, the group would break up. We definitely wouldn't perform as three Beatles. I hate that idea. It'd be well -- like the son of somebody famous, trying to get by on his father's name."

     I ladled out the food. "But I thought Jimmy Nickel did a good job for those 12 days," I said. "Oh, sure." Paul said, "We got along all right. Jimmy was fine, but he wasn't Ringo, and it was Ringo we missed."

     We took our plates out on the roof garden, and while a couple of cockney sparrows hopped hopefully along us, Paul ate the eggs and told me the rest.  Manager Brian Epstein intervened at the last moments in an effort to get John, Paul, and George to change their mind about abandoning the tour. "He argued with us for more than an hour, pleading that 1000s of Dutch and Australian fans had already bought tickets, and it would be cruel to disappoint them. It was this plea of Brian's that finally brought us around." Their loyalty to their sick mate had, for once, conflicted with their loyalty to the fans, but only for once.

     I knew Paul wasn't kidding. An extraordinary pact for four stars with the world to lose. "No", said Paul. "We're dead normal, it's just that we're all mates." As often as I had met him and the other Beatles in the past, I felt humbled. This was loyalty on a grand scale. And if you didn't know Paul McCartney, you might suspect he was some weird kind of idealist. But one glance down at the famous zippered boots reassured me that both his feet were resting very firmly on the ground. And make no mistake about it, pop-pickers, that's where they're likely to stay. 

    The Big Time has turned many a nice kid into a big head, but I'll bet anyone my entire disc collection that it'll never happen with this Beatle, not with this very practical Paul and the world's best known group; he remained a distinct and fascinating individual with his own crisply definite attitude. 

    I had met the Beatles many times before, but too often, there was a rush and glare of the studio or the theater, the shouts of producers and call boys to wreck our chances of a quiet chat. Out here on the roof with London snorting and rumbling away beneath us, I had talked a few weeks before to George Harrison. From him, I had learned the uncanny details of the Beatles' astounding lives. Now the opportunity had come to hear another side of it from Paul.

     The Beatles' chauffeur, Bill Corbett, had driven him over to my place for a bite and a long, quiet natter. As soon as he dropped Paul at the entrance, Bill Corbett headed back into town on an errand to pick up a couple of dozen shirts and casuals, which were being specially made up from Paul's drawings. Between them, Paul and John Lennon are the creative side of the group. And apart from songwriting, one of Paul's big interests is designing gear for himself and the others. He has been painting since he was 12. In fact, he won his school's art prize. As you'd expect from a Beatle, his preference was for action painting.

     "I did some great big things," he said. "I'll get these six-foot rolls of paper and kneel down on the floor and blow the paint all over them. After an hour of that, you get all dizzy and funny, and you feel 'Yeah, man, I'm going high, baby.'" 

    Who'd ever imagined Paul McCartney as a school master? But he almost was. With an A-level in English and 5 O-levels, he was on the brink of going on to Teachers Training College when he made a slight mistake. "I should have been getting ready for this exam", Paul told me, "but I couldn't. I was on a tour in Scotland with Johnny Gentle. It was ridiculous."

     Paul got into trouble. He was invited to pay his Headmaster an awkward visit. Instead, he vanished and wrote a letter from Hamburg saying he had resigned from school. "I said, 'Dear Sir, I've got a great job in Germany, and I'm earning 15 pounds.' We were playing for this bloke who owned a club in a broken-down old cinema. He put us in the cinema in a terrible old room right next to the toilets, where they used to keep old reels and rubbish."

     One by one, the embryo Beatles were deported or otherwise returned from Germany.  In the case of George Harrison, it was because he was too young.  Pete Best and Paul were supposed to be looking for jobs in Liverpool, but Paul didn't look further than the piano in his parlor. He wrote his first song, "I Lost My Little Girl."

     "Had you lost a girl?" I asked him. He laughed, "No, I used to just make them up. I mean, you don't have to have murder experience if you want to write a murder play. It's the same with songs. There was nothing personal about "World Without Love" either. I just imagined this fellow sitting there shouting about a world without love."

     Oddly enough, Paul's imagination never extended to his own future. "I never remember wanting to be anything. I never had any ambitions like driving a train. I suppose one of the things that formed my character was never being under the thumb of authority. My mum died when I was 14, and my dad was a big influence. He was a great believer in moderation. 'Never overdo it,' he'd say. 'Have a drink, but don't be an alcoholic. Have a cigarette, but don't be a cancer case.'"
    

     We amble inside the flat. Paul sat down and lit a filter tip. "Setting a bad example to the teenagers of England," he grinned. "There must be 50 million lads about who smoke, drink, and go out with girls. If Joe Boggs and the three of his mates went out and got stoned, all anybody would say the next morning was, 'Did you have a good time last night?' But if it came out that last night, the Beatles went crackers, drank and fell about in a club somewhere, the papers and the public would say, 'Good grief. Terrible, terrible.'

     "The one thing I dislike about being popular, and I hate all the words like popular, star, famous, is that people think you're untouchable. Some blokes I know from Liverpool I used to be the best of mates with, somehow come up now and say, 'How are you? ' And seem to act very carefully, almost as if they're embarrassed."

     I told him, I know the feeling from time to time. Pop-pickers, you hear people pitying The Beatles, as if they were prisoners in some kind of golden traveling jail, all herded together in chains of glory. I asked Paul how four performers could manage for so long in such close, crowded contact without getting on each other's nerves. He said, "Because we're each other's mates, and always have been. I'm not going to tell you we're Goody Goodies about these things. Occasionally, we do have arguments. It's normal. 

    "Maybe something goes wrong, and three of us will turn on the other, or maybe there's a mess up, and we're all turn on Mal, our road man, but it never goes on for long. Five minutes is the most. Then we're all cool off and it's fine again. I suppose we're all sensible enough to realize that. 

    "These little rows are sort of safety devices." But a much more important safety valve, Paul told me, is laughter. This is really the thing that prevents the Beatles' boilers from bursting when the strain gets to be too much. "It can start with anything, even with some joke that's absolutely terrible, crummy," said Paul, "like one time Ringo was trying to drink his coffee, and every time he got it near his mouth, he'd get the laughs again and spill it all over the place. Then John or somebody would say a line, and we'd get real crazy laughing. Then we mightn't laugh at a thing for hours afterwards."

     I began to feel faintly guilty about asking Paul questions. Questions translated from every language under the sun have been their unending torment since the Beatles first began to knock the world on its heels. But Paul, taking it easy and lying back on the big sofa, talked on comfortably. 

    "There's one question I've given up thinking about," he said. "It's no good, and that is 'what's going to happen if it all finishes one day'. We're not stupid. We know it can't last forever, but it doesn't seem to be any good worrying about it these days. We just say, 'leave it till the situation comes up.' And I'll tell you this, though, Alan, the fellows, all of us, have grown up together. We all knew each other very well indeed. We've found out that being together, being thrown into strange situations together, like, say, the wicked nightlife of Hamburg, we could have all gone potty. But like I said, we're all dead, normal, we're reasonable, middling. 

    "We can always work it out between us, what's right and what's wrong. We used to read about groups and hear about them. You know, the' so-and-sos are splitting up, and this guitarist is being replaced by somebody else'. And 'did you know that this other group isn't really friendly and that they hate each other's guts?' We'd hear all this, and then we'd suddenly realize that we'd always been real mates, but we've always had this best friends thing, and it's been good, particularly when things have been lousy, when our nerves have been on edge, and we could have really, have got really ratty. There's always been that to keep us up.

     "With John and me on a song, if I come up with some lines which I know aren't really good, and I'm just hoping to fool him, I know I won't. 'I Saw Her Standing There' was the best example of it. I thought of the idea driving home from a concert in Southport, I think. I had, 'She was just 17, and then a beauty queen.'  I knew this was rubbish, that I'd put it down just because it rhymed. When I showed it to John, he screamed with laughter, and he said, 'You're joking about that line, aren't you?' And I realized that, in fact, I was, and so we changed it.

     "So you see, this business of knowing each other works with things like that. We find out each other's faults, and it's easy for us to discuss work songs policy. That's why I'm sure that if anything happens to one of us, we wouldn't go on."

     But pop-pickers, I have a feeling that that day is a long way off. 20 years ago, people were saying, "Well, we shan't hear any more of Frank Sinatra", but we still do, and Sophie Tucker, at 76, we still hear from her. 

    Paul nodded. "That's it. We just don't know. The only future plans I have are to leave and see." I asked Paul whether, while filming A Hard Day's Night, they were asked to perform any differently from their usual public shows. "The worst thing about the film", he said, "was that all of us felt we could have been better. We were put into a picture, and we weren't actors, and we had to try and do it. It was a completely new medium for us. We had lines to say. Whereas we never done anything with a script. Nobody has ever written jokes for us to put in an act, even at the Palladium; John and I would make up any stuff we needed. But in the film, all we could get in was a few ad-libs.

     "I hope the next film will be a bit better. We're supposed to do something early next year." There was a knock at my door. Paul sat up and grinned a welcome to Bill, the chauffeur, as he came in, carrying a pile of boxes. "I got the shirts, Paul", he said. "Let's see them!" Paul said, eagerly, tearing off the string, as if he was opening a birthday present. He took out one shirt after another. All very sharp, a white one with a black velvet collar, a few in deep reds and blues with the latest big buttons. Three open-weave, casual, tailored in sackcloth and silk. 

    "Want to try one on?" Paul said. In five minutes, the flat was like Carnaby Street on a Saturday morning as we tried on Paul's designs. Listen, a certain Brian Epstein knows a little about clothes. If anything ever splits the Beatles, he and Paul would make a number one living in the rag trade. Paul's a keen eye for price, too. What he paid to have that gear made up would make some big clothing names blink. It was less than half what you'd expect to shell out at a good shop

    . Paul winked. "I get two Hungarians down the West End to make all my stuff. A little upstairs place only a few of us know it. "And me!" said big Bill, grinning back. He looked at his watch. "Paul..."

     "I know," said, Paul, changing back into street clothes. "Sorry, Alan, it's been great. Thanks for the eggs."

     I went downstairs with them and watched the big car purr out of the forecourt where it was taking Paul McCartney, I don't know, but for certain, it was leaving one by the name of Freeman, who realizes, as he goes on, that there are some really tremendous individuals in the world today, and if only one has the luck to meet them, 

Heart to Heart with George Harrison (1964)

 

Heart to Heart 

By Alan Freeman 

Rave Monthly

June 1964

    George Harrison -- in MY flat, sitting on MY  settee, drinking MY coffee! Pop-pickers, how many of you wouldn't have given a right arm to have been in my position? Sure, I've met the Beatles plenty of times, often when we've been all working, perhaps at a party at their houses or mine, but never have I had the chance to sit down without any rush and just talk heart to heart. 

    George didn't just arrive. He breezed in, not exactly on time, of course. They're leading such a hectic life just now that would have been like expecting a top hit from Victor Sylvester!

     But from the moment he dropped his black corduroy coat casually on the floor and started thumbing out a two-fingered version of "chopsticks" on my baby grand, we were laughing two beats to the bar.

     But that was one of the snags, because this, I reckon, was a rare chance to talk to George. He's been labeled the most serious of The Beatles. Well, if that's true, the others must be the zaniest characters ever. He just doesn't believe in being serious for long, about a couple of minutes in every hour, if you care, to check it with the stopwatch. 

    But I tried. I mentioned one of the last times I had been with the boys an evening, which, on the face of it, had been hilarious, yet in truth pinpointed the trouble of being a Beatle. "That's the sort of thing which annoys us," George suddenly burst out as he recalls it. "People treat us sometimes as if we're just things and not human beings."

     This feeling that people sometimes treat them as objects nags. They try not to face it, but at times, as has happened just now, they have to blurt out their real feelings. Of course, they've worked hard to be world famous. They like being liked, but what they can never be sure of now is how genuine people are being to them. Is it because they are really liked, or is it because they happen to be Beatles?  They can never get away from it, as the recent fiasco at their attempted holiday proved to their cost; they are discovering that the world is too small for them.

     But George had been serious long enough; the suspicions that had triggered off the outbursts were pushed into the background. His face cracked into a grin that evening. "You mentioned Alan, a scream, wasn't it? We were all in an Austin Princess when the fans spotted us, and the chauffeur made a dash for it."

     "Yes", I said. "And the door Paul McCartney was leaning against flew open as we rolled around a corner. "

    Friends, you should have seen it!  It was a scene that would have made the Keystone Cops look like Dr Kildare weepie. The swinging door hit a parked car and flew clean off with the fans closing in for the kill. We had to shoot off like lightning, leaving the door and Klaus, one of the Beatles' friends, who jumped out to recover it, standing in the roadway.

     "The best part of the joke," George reminded me, "was that the police were going to arrest Klaus for trying to pinch the door. Can you imagine it? The thing was so heavy it would take a couple of men to lift it anyway."

     After circling half a dozen blocks with a tartan rug tied over the door so that it looked like a mobile tent, we arrived back at the scene of the crime to find the place swimming with policemen. We managed to sort things out peacefully enough, but that pop-pickers is the funny side of some of the things that happened to the Beatles all the time. 

    The grin left George's face as he said, "It's great being world famous, but when people start jumping into your car, when you're out on a private night out, then it becomes a bit of a strain."

     "Do you ever feel, George," I said, "that show business and the fame that goes with it is stifling you?"

     "How could it? Show business is my life. None of us have ever done what you might call 'an honest day's work'. I was employed for a couple of months as an apprentice electrician. Not that I ever worked at it. 

    "John did a bit of ditch digging to help buy his first guitar, and Paul was once second in command of a lorry. Not what you'd call an ambitious array of trades. 

    "We eat, breathe, sleep, and dream, beat music, and then get up and play it. Started doing it because we enjoyed it. We still enjoy it. When we stop having a ball, we'll pack it in."

     I produced one of my prized pieces of furniture, an old mahogany tea chest converted into a cigarette box. "Tea must have been valuable in those days," George cracked, "I see you've even got a lock on it."

     Then he casually dampened my pride by flicking out his solid gold cigarette lighter, a £130 birthday present from manager Brian Epstein. "Now I know why you enjoy being a Beatle," I told him, as he lit up my ciggy with a flourish. I was joking, of course, because money isn't the motive that has taken these fabulous young men to the top.

     "We never had any great ambition to do things with music," George told me. "Everything just sort of happened. In fact, if Brian Epstein hadn't taken us in hand and started organizing things, we would probably still have been playing dance halls for £5 10s a night between the four of us."

     Now this, I thought, was a fascinating confession. Could it possibly be true that this great group didn't even take their world-shaking Mersybeat seriously? 

    "Mersybeat? There's no such thing," George insisted. "What we play is the old rock and roll warmed up modern style. Our great idols were Elvis, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, Larry Williams, Little Richard, and all the old rock and roll kings. When others threw their guitars in the dustbin, we kept on playing their stuff.

     "I remember during the skiffle craze, we were playing one club where the manager kept handing up bits of paper saying, 'Will you kindly stop playing rock and roll? Rock and roll is dead.' So we introduced each number by saying it was one made famous by Lead Belly or Blind Lemon Jefferson or somebody, and just kept on beating out the same old stuff. Nobody noticed the difference. We were pretty crummy in those days."

     Incidentally, Paul McCartney plays a left-handed guitar, and George curled me up with the story of how he learned to play. "Paul started off as a trumpet player," he told me, "but then he decided he wanted to sing. He had a bit of trouble trying to sing and play the trumpet at the same time, so he packed it in and brought a guitar. In those days, though they didn't cater for left-handed guitars, so he had to buy an ordinary one, and then play the chords back to front. It was a scream, really, because instead of strumming the strings down, he had to scratch them up from the bottom. Finally, he switched the strings over.

    "And then the funniest thing happened, we started playing with John's skiffle group, the Quarrymen, and we found that John didn't have a proper guitar, just a weird old thing that he used to pluck out a few strange banjo chords that his mother had taught him. Anyway, he started learning to play on Paul's guitar, which by this time, had been converted for a left-handed player, and that left John with the same problem.

     "He had to learn to play back-to-front chords too, beating his fingers up over instead of down. We made a terrible old sound in those days. We really did."

     Then I asked him, "When did the Beatles decide they wanted to become stars?"

     "We didn't. We never took it seriously at all. I remember all the fuss and bother. We went to a couple of auditions for Carol Lewis' Discovery Show. Eventually, we got through a couple of heats to the big regional final in Manchester. We had to dash off for a train after our number and didn't even go on stage for our applause. It didn't bother us. We didn't hear any more, and we didn't even care. It was all a great giggle. And it stayed that way since."

     While I was talking, George had wandered restlessly over to the baby grand and started picking out a few restless chords. "Ringo and me have had an organ moved into the flat," he announced, in part explanation of his keyboard doodling, "And we're both learning how to play. Ringo's gone a bit potty and is trying to learn the guitar, and I'm having a crack at the drums. So the place looks a bit like a madman's music shop."

    Then he remembered that he ought to ring the flat, but he stopped in dismay halfway to the telephone. "I've just thought, Oh, I don't know the phone number. It's so secret. They don't even let me know it. They can't trust me with it."

     You know, he wasn't joking either. It just so happened that I had that very, very, very secret number in my little book of very, very, very secret addresses. So I was able to help him get in touch with this old drumming buddy. I know what you're thinking, pop-pickers, but you might as well save the stamp. That number goes no further than the walls of my flat, not even for good friends like you.

     As a refugee from Melbourne, where I began my checkered pop-picking career, I was eager to know how the boys were looking forward to their three weeks in Australia, which were scheduled for this month. George didn't bother trying to flatter me. "It's not the same as America, is it? I mean, America's a place I'd like to spend a holiday in. 

     "Australia, yes, but this won't be a holiday, and we won't see much of the country at all. We're really excited, though, about our return trip to the States for the premiere of our film over there in July.

    " Actually, I wouldn't mind buying a house over there, say, in California or Florida, where we could live some of the time. "

    How did he think the film had turned out? "We like it, but we're not trying to kid anybody that we're actors. We've seen all the rushes, and we all agree that Ringo comes out of it better than anybody. It's hilarious, really. We made a lot of it up as we went along."

     They didn't take it seriously. Of course, they didn't take anything seriously, least of all themselves. "School was a giggle. Skiffle was a laugh, and Germany was the greatest gag of all," said George. "The first time we went, I was kicked out for being underage. I was 17. Then, Paul and Pete, our drummer at the time, were both deported. The owner of the club where we were playing claimed that they tried to burn down his cinema or something. John was asked to leave more quietly because he didn't have a work permit. They just gave him a train ticket and told him to be out of town by the morning. When we got back from Hamburg, the second time, the Liverpool promoters started billing us as 'the group from Germany', and people kept congratulating us on speaking such good English, crazy, isn't it?"

     I was tempted to ask George whether or not he took his new girlfriend seriously, but there are some things you don't talk about, even to your friends, so I asked about his guitar playing instead. Surely he was serious about that?

     "Nah, I'm just fooling with it. Really, what I'd really like to do is play classical guitar. If I could do that, I'd really have achieved something. It's so complicated. The trouble is, I've learned to play the guitar my own way, and it's the wrong way around.

     "It's almost like having learned to play the piano with your feet, then having to make a start with your fingers. You just haven't got a clue. I wouldn't mind going back to scratch, but I could never find anyone to teach me. 

    "I learned one piece, Box Prelude, in Tenerife last April. I've had time to learn nothing more since.  I know I have the feeling for it. I'm sure I could do it with practice. But for the moment, the pop parade comes first."

     I don't know about you pop-pickers, but I, for one am, pretty pleased to hear it. In my book, George Harrison is already one of the greatest.