Nowhere Man
By Art McCulloch
Daily News
September 22, 1996
Sound engineer Howie Nicol's proudest possession is an award for his work on the Beatles' Anthology home video, currently selling in stores for a staggering $150. But behind the inscription on the little brass statuette lies the secret story of his dad's brief, but heady days as the fifth Beatle.
It should have been Jimmie Nicols' ticket to ride. As the Beatles prepared to fly out on a 50-date tour, Ringo Starr collapsed with tonsillitis and was taken to the hospital. The band needed a replacement, a fifth Beatle, and they chose Nicol for 10 glorious days in the summer of 1964.
He joined the band for the start of their first world tour. Sitting shyly behind his drum kit, Nicol became the only outsider to play live with the Beatles as part of the band after they became famous. The fans screamed at him and tried to touch him. His face was in every newspaper and on all the TV screens, but not for long. Within a year, he was bankrupt. His marriage had collapsed, and he was on welfare.
Today, the forgotten Beatle lives with his second wife in a tiny apartment in London, eking out a living as a carpenter. The three surviving Beatles enjoy lives of luxury, but for Nicol, the glory days are gone. He no longer even owns a drum kit.
"While I was with the Beatles, John had told me that I was a better drummer than Ringo, but that I'd miss the boat. When Ringo rejoined the band in Australia, and I was on the plane back home, I just felt like a bastard child sent back from a family that didn't want me," he says.
"My treatment by the fans was like night and day. The day before I was a Beatle, no girl would look at me. The day after, when I was in my suit and riding around in the back of a limo with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, they were all dying to touch me.
"When the fans forget, they forget forever. After the Beatles, I played on for a few years, but then dropped out of music. Things didn't go well for me. It's a period of my life that I just want to forget about now. I mean, when you played with the best, the rest are just the rest."
Despite this praise, Nicol insists, "I'm not and have never been a Beatles fan." The 30 years since his brief experience of fame has left their mark on Nicol. Now, age 57, with his thinning hair, stooped shoulders, missing teeth, and scruffy clothes, there is nothing to remind you of the smiling young man with the tight suit and the mop-top haircut.
The irony of Nicols' story is that the man who called him into the Beatles' lineup, their legendary manager Brian Epstein, is also the man who destroyed him. Epstein wanted a drummer who looked the part, but would mime his drumming, to tape recordings of Ringo playing to preserve the Beatles' unique sound.
What Epstein did not want was a musician with an established reputation, but what he got was a musician with principles. Nicol, who was working with Georgie Fame when Epstein called him, insisted on playing and refused to mime. Epstein was furious and spread the word to the world of promoters and booking agents that Nicol was trouble.
Nicol, who was then 25, recalls when that call came through from Epstein. "I went to his office, I just couldn't believe it when he told me he wanted me to play for the Beatles. I was stunned. All the Beatles, with the exception of Ringo, who was already in the hospital, were there to meet me. I shook hands and told them how much I admired them, which I think embarrassed them a bit.
But throughout it all, they were all very nice to me. Next on the agenda was money. I got very worried when Epstein started talking to me about money. They paid me $500 for the gig and a signing bonus. When John said, [Good God, Brian, you'll make him crazy,' I thought it was all finished. But then he said, 'Give him $20,000.' Everyone laughed, but that night I couldn't sleep. I was a Beatle!"
He was measured for his Beatles suit and had his hair cut into the trademark mop top. His five-year-old son Howard ran round to the neighbors, crying, "My dad's a Beatle!" The next day Nicol was on a plane to Copenhagen for his first concert on the historic tour. "It was fantastic. The best thing about being a Beatle is that you can have anything you want. Paul was not always the clean-cut person people thought he was, and John drank a hell of a lot. And although everyone thought George was shy, he loved to party all night with the rest of us."
Nicol inadvertently made a lasting contribution to the group. Hunter Davies, a Beatles biographer, recalls after every concert, John and Paul would go up to Jimmy Nichol and ask him how he was getting on. All that Jimmy would ever say was, "It's getting better." It ended up becoming a joke phrase for the band. It stuck in their minds and later inspired the song "Getting Better" on the Sgt. Pepper album. It was in Melbourne that reality caught up with Nicol. Ringo had rejoined the band at the airport. Jimmie Nicol sat alone, waiting for the flight that would take him home to obscurity.
His manager announced to the world that he would be starting up his own band,: "He's a big name now. He's not just a 10-day wonder." Unfortunately, that's exactly what Nicol turned out to be. His band, the Shub Dubs, waited for bookings, but the calls never came.
Despite Lennon's plea to pay him more, he had made less than $4,000 from his work with the Beatles. He ended up joining a spoof act called the Spot Nix, and while on tour in Mexico, he met and married a Mexican Indian girl, Josephina. When he left the Beatles, Epstein and the band had given him a joke retirement present, a gold watch. In Mexico, Nichols smashed it in anger and resentment at fate and Epstein, as Nichol struggles to find carpentry work, the ex-Beatle insists, "I have thought about cashing in on it from time to time, but I don't want to upset the Beatles."
The final irony is that Paul McCartney met Howie Nicol during the recording of the Anthology documentary. He told him how much he wanted to see Jimmie again and suggested Howie ask Jimmie to appear in the program, but the answer was no. What Howie didn't tell McCartney, says one of the people who worked on the documentary, was that Jimmie wants nothing to do with the Beatles. Those 10 days had ruined his life. He wished it had never happened
