Tune In by Mark Lewisohn

Author:Mark Lewisohn [Lewisohn, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Beatles, Biography & Autobiography, Music, Musicians, Nonfiction, Retail
ISBN: 9780804139342
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2013-10-29T04:00:00+00:00

The Beatles weren’t at the party. John, Paul and George’s absence is more puzzling than Pete’s, and there’s no known explanation for it. Perhaps they were in Hamburg when the invitations went out, or were engaged elsewhere. This was their holiday week and John and Paul may have gone away for a few days;2 George, meanwhile, was busy on the domestic front. His mother was home from Canada and they were reunited after eleven months, and he was also trying to hang on to his girlfriend. Gerry Marsden had moved in on Pauline Behan while the Beatles were in Hamburg; George accused Gerry of being “a flirt,” then he and Pauline had one or two more dates before he said she had to choose between them, and she chose Gerry.3

This same week also marked the first appearance of Mersey Beat—Britain’s first regional pop paper—the inside front page of which included “Being A Short Diversion On The Dubious Origins Of Beatles,” that larf-a-line history by John (with a little help from George) written before they left for Hamburg. Except for a poem and drawing in his school magazine, this was John’s first time in print; Bill Harry recalls him being so delighted that he loped along to Mersey Beat’s office and handed over a scrappy bundle of 250 stories and poems, saying, “Use whatever you want.”

If Mersey Beat was to survive, it needed all the local support Harry could muster. One of its keenest advocates, from even before the start, was Brian Epstein. His 1961 diary notes a June 20 meeting with Bill Harry in the office at Nems Whitechapel. Harry wanted Nems to take a stake in Mersey Beat, to put the paper (published fortnightly) on a sounder financial footing, but Brian declined—a decision he came to regret; Ray McFall became its primary investor instead, the paper’s unobtrusive owner, with Harry as editor. But Brian did take a dozen copies of the first issue: he displayed them prominently on the serving counter in both of Nems’ city-center stores, and when these sold out he requested more, after which he placed an order for twelve dozen copies of issue two. Promoting local activities was good for everyone’s business.4

Whitechapel had been open more than a year by this point and its success was greater than anyone might have expected, save Brian himself. His comanagement with younger brother Clive was running like clockwork. Brian had also appointed a junior member to his executive team, a 25-year-old married man named Alistair Taylor, who combined general sales duties with the new position of “Personal Assistant to Brian Epstein.” No other record shop manager had a PA. Taylor quickly became accustomed to his master’s cultured voice and imperiously flamboyant manner, and, like most Nems staff, he was drawn into serving Mr. Brian with scarcely resistible devotion—even when spitting nails over his autocracy. One day Brian would be refusing with illogical obstinacy the necessary purchase of a £14 filing cabinet, the next he was inviting Taylor to

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