History of England 1-6

Boredom can awaken the sleepiest creative urge. The banality, as much as the poverty, of post-war Britain inspired the musical bloom of the Sixties. For there was little or nothing to do when John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend and the Davies brothers grew up, little at least in the way of leisure. The family could provide music, fun and a hearth, but this triad is itself suggestive that England had not only declined but contracted. Beyond the home, the world of pleasure was thin. The music halls were in retreat and the cinema was a minnow beside the whale it had been in previous years. Rationing was still in force. Children still played in bomb craters, often finding toys sturdier than any to be glimpsed in shop windows.

For those in their teens, the world was scarcely brighter. Simple pleasures, furtive transgressions, sporadic and apolitical violence were the recreational prospects to hand. The young men brought up amidst the ruins of the Blitz had nothing but a promise of freedom offered from abroad. And one could always improvise: having nothing, the young had to make. As we have seen, however much rock ’n’ roll might be worshipped, loved and danced to in England, it could not easily be emulated in its most glamorous form. Even guitars were almost a luxury item. As for drum kits or amplifiers – these items might as well have been the golden fleece. How could anyone follow Elvis on a budget of shillings?

Liverpool had a proud, if murky, past but no observable future until, as if by magic, there appeared four saviours. The Beatles arrived at the Cavern Club via a long and winding road. In the late Fifties, John Lennon, an artistic maverick of workingclass stock and middle-class upbringing, had established a skiffle group called the Quarrymen. When the polite Paul McCartney offered to play, Lennon was confronted with a choice. The younger man’s obvious talent was clearly a threat, yet it would enrich the band immeasurably. Later, George Harrison, a friend of McCartney’s, joined, with nothing but a slow, wise wit and ‘the dogged will to learn’ to recommend him. The future Beatles lacked only a drummer. Indeed, the search for a permanent drummer, one who moreover would be a true ‘Beatle’, was to exercise them for almost three years. During those years, the Beatles had served in Hamburg. Their career had been undistinguished to date. One rival even complained of the impresario Alan Williams’ decision to recruit ‘a bum group like the Beatles’. But it was in Hamburg that they became the Beatles. Forced to contend with nightly bar fights, they learned that playing music was about pleasing others, or else. When they returned to Liverpool in 1961, they were hardened and fast. The songwriting partnership forged between Lennon and McCartney seemed to later commentators a gift from the gods: a minor lyrical genius (Lennon’s) was smelted with a major musical talent (McCartney’s). Now they needed only a manager far-sighted enough to see this.

He appeared in the shape of Brian Epstein, a charming, gifted salesman, who owned a record shop in Liverpool, and was, moreover, homosexual. Invited to the Cavern, he found himself entranced by the group and offered his services as their manager. ‘All right then, Brian,’ said the typically gracious Lennon. ‘Manage us.’ ‘Guitar groups, Brian,’ said one unimpressed producer. ‘They’re on their way out.’ And so it seemed. The record labels were unimpressed by the Beatles’ music, and still more by their caustic humour. Decca, the biggest corporation of all, turned them down. But there was still Parlophone, which had George Martin, a classically trained musician who was used to orchestras and the occasional novelty act. He recognized their talent and, having recently worked with the Goons, was amused by their irreverence. When, at the end of one session, he asked if there was anything they didn’t like, Harrison observed, ‘Well I don’t like your tie, for a start.’

They had to do the rounds of cover versions, of course, but then they presented Martin with a song of their own, ‘Love Me Do’. It was pronounced an ‘odd little dirge-like thing’ by Martin. When Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones first heard it, he felt ‘physical pain’, and he cannot have been alone. It was not much of a song by later standards, but it reached number seventeen in the charts and was a respectable achievement.