As the four Cadillacs sped in from Kennedy Airport among their weaving and shouting and grimacing motorcade, the Plaza strove valiantly not to capitulate. The Palm Court served tea, as usual, with violin music, though the orchestra leader was vexed to receive requests for Beatles songs. Waiters moved among the pillars and heaped pastries, discreetly requesting the odd errant guest to remove his Beatles wig.
The Beatles and their party had been allocated the hotel’s entire twelfth floor. A special force from the Burns Detective Agency was on duty around the clock to screen all arrivals and conduct periodic searches in the floors above, where some female fans had climbed several hundred fire stairs to lie in wait. A bevy of undermanagers ran around, fearful, as well they might be, for the hotel’s cherished fabric. When a photographer asked John to lie down on a bed and show his boots, a Plaza man interrupted, “Oh no—that’s not the image we want to project.” “Don’t worry,” John reassured him. “We’ll buy the bed.”
Interconnecting suites, ten rooms in all, had been provided for the Beatles, their solitary wife, their two autograph-manufacturing road managers, and their overworked publicist. Only Brian had separate accommodations, on the Central Park side, far away from everyone else.
One of the first to get through the security was Geoffrey Ellis, Brian’s old Liverpool friend, the Royal Insurance man. “The whole scene was extremely surrealistic,” Ellis says. “The Beatles were all sitting round with transistor radios in their ears, listening to their records playing and watching themselves on television at the same time.”
All the evening TV news bulletins carried the airport scenes as top story, though not all expressed unqualified delight. On NBC, Chet Huntley, the celebrated anchorman, quivered with bilious distaste. “Like a good little news organization, we sent three cameramen out this afternoon to cover the arrival of a group from England, known as the Beatles. However, after surveying the film our men returned with, and the subject of that film, I feel there is absolutely no need to show any of that film.” A dissident radio station, WNEW, repeatedly observed that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” made some people want to hold their noses.
On every other pop frequency Beatles’ voices could be heard, conversing in prerecorded form or as they had spoken a few minutes earlier, live from their hotel suite. Fast-talking disk jockeys found them an easy target, instantly friendly and funny and willing to endorse anything or anyone. The great success in this field was scored by Murray the K Kaufman of station WINS; having first interviewed the Beatles by telephone, he arrived in their suite, accompanied by an entire girl singing group, and was seldom, if ever, got rid of thereafter.
The strain was beginning to tell already on Brian. First, there was a furious dispute with Brian Sommerville over the room arrangements, which ended with Sommerville threatening to resign. Then Brian came into the Beatles’ suite, crimson with anger. Among the products they had obligingly endorsed by telephone were several bootleg recordings of their own music, smuggled out of England and now on sale in the New York shops. “Brian screamed at them for what they had done,” Dezo Hoffman says. “They listened to him like naughty children. He still had some authority with them then.”
Shortly after their arrival George went to bed, complaining of a sore throat. He had been unwell in Paris, too, dictating his Daily Express column—as he was to continue to do—without mention of the disconcerting French habit of administering medicines in suppository form. His elder sister, Louise, who had just arrived from St. Louis, moved into the Plaza to nurse him.
The other three, despite the crowds outside, managed some limited after-dark movement. Paul visited the Playboy Club, leaving subsequently with a Playboy Bunny. The Lennons and Ringo, under Murray the K’s garrulous protection, went to the Peppermint Lounge, finding it the home of the Twist no longer; its resident group were imitation Beatles. Later, John and Cynthia scuttled back past the photographers, their two heads covered by a coat. Ringo did not return; it was feared for a time that he might have been kidnapped. He returned in the early hours, unaware of the frenzied unease he had caused.
The next morning, it drizzled. Twelve floors below, the crowds and police horses still struggled together in a muted chant of “She Loves You.” Brian, in his sequestered drawing room, made a series of urgent telephone calls. The first was to Walter Hofer, the attorney, on West Fifty-seventh Street. Hofer, at this time, was not sure if he was still NEMS’s New York lawyer. “Brian told me, ‘You’re our attorney—we need you over here.’ He gave me the job of dealing with all the Beatles’ fan mail. I put my usual messenger service to work on it. Later on, I got this call from the messenger. ‘Mister—I’m seventy-seven years old! There’s thirty-seven sacks of mail here.’
“We set up a special department in another hotel to deal with it. One of the letters that was opened had come from Lyndon B. Johnson. Another was from the manager of the Plaza. ‘When are you guys going to settle your check?’ it said.”
An urgent appeal went to Capitol Records for a temporary secretary to help Brian in New York and travel on with the British entourage to Miami. Through their classical music department Capitol found Wendy Hanson, an imposing blonde who had until recently been personal assistant to Leopold Stokowski. “I had to fight my way into the Plaza through all this pandemonium,” Wendy says, “and there, absolutely cut off from it all, was this baby-faced young man, drenched in Guerlain. ‘Hello, my dear,’ were his first words. ‘Would you like some tea?’”
The Beatles, meanwhile—minus George—sat in a limousine packed so close among keening girls the chauffeur could get in only by crawling across the roof. John Lennon, in dark glasses and Bob Cratchit cap, was asked if all this bothered him. “No,” he replied in all innocence, “it’s not our car.”
At the Ed Sullivan Theatre on West 53rd Street, a set had been constructed of half a dozen inward-pointing white arrows. The program designer explained to a posse of journalists his desire “to symbolize the fact that the Beatles are here.” Even for the rehearsal, with Neil Aspinall standing in for George, three high-ranking CBS executives were turned away at the door. Sullivan himself was all amiability, rebuking his musical director for having told the New York Times the Beatles would last no longer than a year, and threatening to put on a Beatles wig himself if George was not well enough for the broadcast. He became a little less affable when Brian approached him and said grandly: “I would like to know the exact wording of your introduction.” “I would like you to get lost,” Ed Sullivan replied.
The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9 was watched by an audience of 70 million, or 60 percent of all American television viewers. At the beginning, a congratulatory telegram was read from Elvis Presley. Conditioned as they were to hyperunreality, this event still gave pause to Liverpool boys who had listened to “Hound Dog” under the bedclothes, and struggled to learn the words of “All Shook Up” as it was beamed from its inconceivable heaven.
For a generation of young Americans, only weeks after the Dallas horror, it would be another—but infinitely happier—moment fixed forever in their memories. And, whether their destiny was to turn into famous pop stars, film directors, industrial magnates, politicians and even presidents, or simply suburban dads and moms, the same image would be eternally etched on their memories, its slightly distorted monochrome image and warbly sound quality somehow enhancing the rush of incredulous delight. Not only New York, the Bronx, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Queens, but Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, the snowbound Midwest, the Southern swamps and bayous, and the far-western prairies, all succumbed to the same instant, laughing adoration of those four little, jiggling figures with their shiny suits, preposterous hair, and indefatigable smiles. Like some rare entomological specimen, each Beatle was given a subtitle bearing his name. John’s caption said “Sorry girls—he’s married.”
The New York Herald Tribune, next morning, called them “75 per cent publicity, 20 per cent haircut and 5 per cent
lilting lament.” The Washington Post called them “asexual and homely.” The New York Times carried reviews by both the television and the music critic. The former judged the Beatles “a fine mass placebo” while the latter, anxious to out-obfuscate William Mann, discovered in “All My Loving” “a false modal frame… momentarily suggesting the mixolydian mode.” Earl Wilson, the New York Post columnist, was photographed at the head of his afternoon’s paragraphs in a bald wig. From UPI came the news that Billy Graham, the evangelist, had broken a lifetime’s rule by watching television on the sabbath.
On that one night America’s crime rate was lower than at any time during the previous half-century. Police precinct houses throughout New York could testify to the sudden drop in juvenile offenses. In all the five boroughs not one single car hubcap was reported stolen.
The nervous plans, the small-scale hopes, the little deals for cut-rate fees all coalesced in a moment that was miraculously right. America, three months earlier, had been struck dumb by a great and terrible event. America now found her voice again through an event that no psychiatrist could have made more therapeutically trivial. That voice was in itself therapeutic, reassuring a suddenly uncertain people that at least they had not lost their old talent for excess.
It was a moment when the potential existed for a madness that nothing indigenously American could unleash. It was a moment when all America’s deep envy of Europe, and the eccentricity permitted to older established nations, crystallized in four figures whose hair and clothes, to American eyes, placed them somewhere near Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It was a moment simultaneously gratifying America’s need for a new idol, a new toy, a pain-killing drug, and a laugh.
On the morning after the Ed Sullivan Show the Beatles were brought to the Plaza Hotel’s Baroque Room to give a press conference that was itself record-breaking, both in size and fatuousness. Even superior organs like Time magazine and The New Yorker stiffened themselves to the task of determining whether Beatle hair was correctly described as bangs and their footwear as pixie boots. The Saturday Evening Post had sent a photographer with one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of equipment to shoot a cover. The New York Journal-American had sent Dr. Joyce Brothers, a psychologist with flicked-out blonde hair and her own television show. Dr. Brothers had her pulse humorously taken by the Beatles and afterward reminded her readers that “Beatles might look unappetizing and inconsequential, but naturalists have long considered them the most successful order of animals on earth.”
However patronizing, insulting, or plain clueless the question, the answer would be the same disarming mixture of angel-faced politeness and needle-sharp wit. As well as new music, the Beatles were inventing what would one day be known as sound bites. “Either they’re employing the most marvellous concealed gag man,” Maureen Cleave cabled the London Evening Standard, “or Bob Hope should sign them up right away.”
“What do you think of the Playboy Club?” Paul was asked.
“The Playboy and I are just good friends.”
“Why aren’t you wearing a tie?” a woman journalist snapped at George.
“Why aren’t you wearing a hat?” he fired back.
The inquisition continued all day, without a break for lunch. Instead, some plates of hotel chicken were brought in. “I’m sorry to interrupt you while you’re eating,” a woman reporter said, “but what do you think you’ll be doing in five years’ time?”
“Still eating,” John replied.
“Have you got a leading lady for your movie?”
“We’re trying to get the Queen,” George said. “She sells.”
“When do you start rehearsing?”
“We don’t,” John said.
“—oh yes we do,” Paul put in.
“We don’t, Paul does,” John amended. Some papers had already discovered the fact that among the other three, Paul was referred to as “the star.”
The American press, in its wild scramble, paid little attention to the other young Englishman, in a polka-dotted foulard scarf, who stood at one side, observing the scene with what the New York Times described as “a look of hauteur.” Even when Jay Livingstone—the same Capitol boss who had said, “We don’t think the Beatles will do anything in this market”—stepped beamingly forward to present them with two million-sale gold records, Brian still did not allow himself the relaxation of a smile. “He had ice water in his veins before,” another Capitol man remarked. “Now it’s turned to vinegar.”
Actually Brian’s “hauteur”—like the seeming cool imperturbability with which he had greeted Wendy Hanson—was nothing but a front. A far more accurate index to his feelings were his frequent mysterious bursts of weeping or the furious, red-faced rows he kept having with Brian Sommerville. For the ever-increasing size and fury of the Beatles’ American hurricane only made Brian more and more aware of his inability to manage it.
For example, he had presumed that the only Beatles records available to their new American fans would be the brand-new product on Capitol. But, inevitably, the other U.S. labels that had released Beatles’ songs when they were nobodies now hastened to cash in on their success. The Chicago Vee Jay label, which had grudgingly put out “Please Please Me” a year earlier, rereleased it, and within a day saw it rocket to number three. The MGM label even got hold of “My Bonnie,” which the Beatles had recorded long ago in Hamburg as “the Beat Brothers” with Tony Sheridan. These unauthorized, but genuine, Beatles releases were bad enough, blocking the ascent of official Capitol releases up the charts and earning almost nothing in royalties, but even worse were the number of counterfeit Beatles groups—known as “Beetles” or “Bugs”—already recording and being bought by fans by mistake for the genuine article. One unscrupulous producer had even talked his way into the Beatles’ suite and tricked them into taping an endorsement for his particular poor facsimile of themselves.
Only now, too, was Brian starting to realize what a catastrophic deal had been made on his behalf with Nicky Byrne’s Seltaeb merchandising company. In the aftermath of the Ed Sullivan Show, Beatles goods were pouring into the New York shops. REMCO industries had already produced one hundred thousand Beatles dolls. Beatles wigs were flopping off the production line at the rate of thirty-five thousand a day. The overindulged American child could choose from a range including Beatles masks, pens, bow ties, “Flip Your Wig” games, edible disks, and Beatle nut ice cream. Agreement was reportedly pending between Seltaeb and a major cola company. Woolworth’s and Penney’s were negotiating to put “Beatles counters” in hundreds of their stores, coast to coast. The Wall Street Journal estimated that by the end of the year $5 million worth of Beatles goods would have been sold in America.
Nor was it reassuring to observe the progress around New York of the man whose company’s share of the profits would be 90 percent. For Nicky Byrne did business on a magnificent scale. His lunches took place at the Four Seasons or the New York Jockey Club. He had two chauffeur-driven limousines, on twenty-four-hour standby, and a private helicopter. His style quickly communicated itself to the five young men from Chelsea who were his partners. Lord Peregrine Eliot has pleasant memories of dropping into the Seltaeb office once or twice a week to draw a thousand-dollar bill from petty cash.
Nicky Byrne argued—and still argues—that it was the only way to do business with large American corporations. He is equally firm on a point later to be disputed—that as the money in manufacturers’ advances poured into Seltaeb, the 10 percent due to Brian and the Beatles was paid over to them within seven days.
“When Brian arrived in New York, I’d just banked ninety-seven thousand dollars. So, of course, I handed a check to Brian for nine thousand seven hundred dollars. He was delighted at first. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘how much of this do I owe you?’ ‘Nothing, Brian,’ I said. ‘That’s your 10 percent.’ He was amazed and furious all at the same time. ‘But this is marvelous, Nicky,’ he was saying—because he’d been told I’d fixed the airport business. ‘How did you do it, Ni
cky—but you had no right to do it! But it was marvelous, Nicky.’”
Having proved his talents as a fixer with the Kennedy Airport crowds, Byrne remained on hand throughout the tour, pushing Beatles records on the radio—at one point, he claims, even buying off a photographer who had obtained some pictures of Brian in his secret gay life and was threatening to make them public.
“Brian said, ‘You must work for me, Nicky—I’ll make you a president, I’ll give you a thousand a year.’ I said, ‘A thousand a year? Oh come on, Brian.’ Then all of a sudden I realized he was crazy.”
On February 11, the Beatles were to fly to Washington to give their first American concert, at the Coliseum sports arena. The booking had been made for Brian by Norman Weiss, of the General Artists Corporation, to help offset the loss on the overall trip. Brian had also accepted an invitation from the British ambassador to a function as yet unclearly defined. “Is it true,” the press kept asking them, “that you’re going to a masked ball?” By coincidence, Sir Alec Douglas Home, who had succeeded Macmillan as Britain’s prime minister, was also due in Washington for talks with Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson. On hearing of the Beatles’ imminent arrival in D.C., Sir Alec wisely postponed his own until the day afterward.
The morning of their departure snow began falling thickly on New York. Led by George, the Beatles flatly refused to fly in a “fookin’ blizzard.” They were, however, amenable to traveling by train. A private carriage was sought, and miraculously appeared in the magnificent shape of an Edwardian sleeping car from the old Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad. This equipment drew out of a shrieking Pennsylvania Station, carrying, with the Beatles and their entourage, dozens of journalists, several TV crews, and the egregious Murray the K. Cynthia Lennon, disguised by sunglasses and a brunette wig, was almost left behind on the platform.