A Beatles Fantasia:
John Lennon In Leather
By
R. E. Prindle
Dizzy Dez, a
fellow Beatles researcher and internet friend, recently wrote a piece ( https://thenumbernineblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/taking-the-world-by-hurricane/ )
about the strange story of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Rory Storm led the most popular Liverpool
band of the period. He was more important
in Liverpool and Frankfurt than the Beatles.
Yet, as Diz points out, when all the shouting was over and the dust had
settled, the Beatles went unto worldwide fame pulling the best of the Liverpool
bands after them, Rory Storm was left out in the cold. He never knew other than Liverpool success.
Just an
inconsequential odd fact (except to Rory) that I found interesting but also
significant. It was good of Diz to dig
this story up, but then, Diz left me with a thought: What if the Beatles’ success had nothing to
do with their talent; what if the only reason they found success was a fact
that had nothing to do with their musical skills; what if their success
depended on a queer’s fascination with one John Lennon?
Consider
that Liverpool was an English backwater, a tough , gritty town with little
sophistication and small hopes. If you
have ever been in the Liverpool/Bristol area you really know what depression
is. I was never so happy to leave an
area since. I had become acquainted with
a bottom surpassing Philadelphia and that is saying a lot.
So, in
1960-62 what you had was a city full of louts, what the English call Yobboes,
desperately trying to find some distinction for their lives by playing in rock
bands. In 1960 that was a desperate hope
indeed. The hope was so desperate that
the bands ended up playing before a bunch of rowdies and prostitutes, the underbelly
of civilization, in Hamburg’s red light district on the Reeperbahn. Not the place for refined cultured
manners. More like changing you from a
lout or Yobbo into a super Yobbo. The
indications are that the Beatles became very rough. What the homosexuals call ‘rough trade.’
In any event
the Beatles went to Hamburg where they refined their rock n’ roll skills coming
back to Liverpool to take their place in the hierarchy of Liverpool bands where
they were a sensation although lower in the hierarchy than Rory Storm and his
Hurricanes. Still in their locality and
in their age and social set they were prominent.
Now, the
local record store, NEMS, was managed for the family firm by a young homosexual
Jew, Brian Epstein. At the time it was a
punishable offence to public morals to be a homosexual so Brian Epstein was
quite repressed. Raised on all the
Jewish holocaust nonsense he felt like a powerless oppressed Jew. Therefore as a homosexual Jew he favored the
rough trade.
Probably
having heard the Beatles talked about along their outrageous leader John Lennon,
dressed all in black leather, Brian made it down to the local rock emporium,
the Cavern, to have a look.
What he saw
made his dick throb. There on stage was
God’s own Yobbo, John Lennon resplendent in his leather while projecting
confidence and totally outrageous. Rough
trade on a stick. Gimme dat ding. So, totally smitten Brian has to figure out a
way to realize his dream.
It is clear
that Brian wasn’t on the make to find a band to promote; for Christ’s sake he
had a city full of rock bands to choose from including Liverpool’s number one,
Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and he made no effort to sign any. But, suppose he heard of Lennon’s desire to
be the toppermost of the poppermost.
Perhaps, Brian thought, I’m in the record business, I know execs at the
London labels, perhaps if I gave John what he wants he would let me make him
mine. Sounded good.
Now, let’s
be clear, when Brian approached the London labels there was no interest in the
Beatles or any other Liverpool band.
There was no reason for any exec to ever even visit Liverpool and
perhaps none ever had. Regardless of any
talent, that had not yet been demonstrated, the Beatles were not going
anywhere. The execs even considered the
name stupid; what in the hell does beatle mean? Can’t even spell it right. Brian persisted and if he hadn’t the Beatles
would never have had a shot at the bigtime.
They would have disappeared the way they came in, unnoticed. The Beatles were going nowhere.
But, and
this is the important fact here, Brian had a hard on for John. Bear this in mind, Brian had a tin ear, he
could have cared less about the Beatles as a band; he had a hard on for John.
And hopefully by making John the toppermost of the poppermost, and this meant
only the small market of England, it was inconceivable that any band, let alone
an English band, could become a worldwide phenomenon. Whatever happened next was totally
serendipitous. Who could have dreamed of
worldwide fame and hundreds of millions of dollars.
So Brian
signed his Boys, as they say in the managerial parlance, and left for London to
put them in a recording contract. Of
course NEMS was a major account in the retail record world so Brian got a
polite hearing but no real enthusiasm.
Probably to get rid of a pest who wouldn’t quit he was allowed an
audition. But this was only after making
the rounds.
The Beatle’s
ended up at EMI’s sub-label Parlophone and had George Martin assigned to them
as a producer. While the Beatles had
been all the rage on the Reeperbahn of
ill fame and the backwater burg of Liverpool, what set the four aflame in those
two locations was not so evident in the London recording studio. It was like someone from Poughkeepsie showing
up on the Great White Way. George Martin
found their musicianship flimsy but something apparently appealed to him about
them. Everything about them was off,
they still had the aroma of the Reeperbahn, but, the story goes, George was a technical
wizard, so somewhat in the way David Seville created Alvin and the Chipmunks
George’s wizardry created the Beatles.
This is the legend.
The label
thought they were hopeless so perhaps as a joke they allowed the Beatles to
make ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ as a first record. And as with Alvin and the Chipmunks they
probably viewed the disc as a novelty record; something along the lines of Mrs.
Miller the off key virtuoso.
They were
surprised when the record took off. No
less surprised than I was when the record was a success in the US. Why the hell does anyone like that I
wondered. But I and we were witnessing
several seemingly unrelated things:
First the song was the first true teenybopper, bubble gum song that soon
inspired groups like the Ohio Express and the Lemon Pipers. ‘Yummy, yummy, yummy, I’ve got love in my
tummy.’ Remember that inspired
tune? A step up from, I Want To Hold
Your Hand.
The social
conditions were right for the Beatles innocent, probably tongue in cheek,
song. The Fifties had been tense what
with the Cold War and the Bomb and things were getting more tense. Nerves were frayed. Perhaps a return to innocent pleasures of the
young were in order. At any rate after
becoming the rage in England Brian had actually jockeyed the Beatles and John
into the toppermost of the poppermost in that small sceptered island but after
a terrific promo campaign in the US when their plane landed, they hit exactly
the right insouciant note at the exact right psychological moment in time. You can’t plan this. Nobody, nobody, could have forecast
that. Brian and the Beatle’s ship had
come in.
John Lennon
had realized his dream in a Spade Royal Flush.
The Beatles, words fail me, were on top of the world. The planet’s first globally successful
band. They were bigger than Jesus. Oops, when John said that all hell broke
loose. Abashed, John announced they
would tour no more. When it came to
business sense John was lacking but he and the band were only musicians, a ‘hot
little band’ as McCartney recently characterized them.
But what
about Brian?’ What about Brians’s
reward. He had little business sense too
and hadn’t been working for the success that came or was prepared for it. Of course John and the rest knew Brian was a
poof. Who didn’t except for those who
chose not to see. Brian had always been
attentive to John in that peculiar way, certainly that hadn’t escaped he leader
of the band. He joked about how Brian
and the whole record industry was Jewish and queer.
According to
Peter Brown in his ‘The Love You Make:
An Insider’s Story Of The Beatles’, Brian did get his reward. Brown says that Brian invited John on a
holiday in Spain and there John gave him the reward he wanted.
What if the
story of the Beatles success had nothing to do with their musicianship, their
songwriting, their personalities or anything else but Brian Epstein getting a
hard on for a bit of rough trade: John Lennon in leather.
Wouldn’t
that make a fabulous movie? Wouldn’t
that be as ironical as all get out? It
might not be literally true but it can’t be too far from the truth. Forget about poor old Rory Storm and the Hurricanes,
history’s forgotten band. Once again,
what a movie.
