Now, Which Record Company Wanted The Beatles Least?
Paul McCartney counts it off: “1, 2, 3, 4!!!!!” And so begins the first song, “I Saw Her Standing There,” on The Beatles’ first album, Please, Please Me, released in the UK on March 22, 1963. McCartney’s firing off the numbers launched more than just a great new rock ‘n’ roll song; it kicked off a realm of musical creativity that continues to this day, more than 53 years after The Beatles called it quits. Their music is still celebrated, discovered by people born since the ‘60s, and then rediscovered as their songs are mined for further illumination.
On The Beatles Please Please Me To With The Beatles, Bruce Spizer places us in the early ‘60s, when The Beatles were hustling to get their songs out, win over new listeners, and move up from the Star Club in Hamburg, with its audiences comprised of inebriated seamen and bored whores. The Beatles gave 250 shows at the Star Club from August ’60 through Dec. ’62. The shows were tough, an “apprenticeship,” as George Harrison recalled, but it was an apprenticeship that would get them to Carnegie Hall on February 12, 1964. They had a manager, Brian Epstein, who believed in them, a producer in George Martin, who recognized The Beatles as inquisitive and talented musicians, including a new drummer, Ringo Starr, who gave his mates -- McCartney, Harrison, and John Lennon – confidence they were indeed a solid band.
The Beatles Please Please Me To With The Beatles is Spizer’s seventh book published on The Beatles’ albums. All have been excellent, each better than the one before. The book is mostly Spizer’s, with Beatles experts and observers of the wider culture contributing as in previous Spizer volumes. The formula works again as Spizer and company cover all the bases: the growth in musicianship and creativity The Beatles made in their early years as recording artists, their increasing popularity, and the events and changing attitudes of the world at large, ’62-‘64.
Concise, but thorough, Spizer provides pertinent information on all The Beatles’ recording sessions from ’62 and ’63 with special emphasis on the 28 songs included on Please Please Me and With The Beatles. Both albums, released in the UK on EMI’s Parlophone label over an eight-month period in ’63, shed light on the consummate songwriting team of Lennon-McCartney. No hints of an “Eleanor Rigby” or “A Day in the Life” were manifest, but there had yet to be a collection of rock and roll songs so inventive with such power and effervescence. Besides the 15 Lennon-McCartney originals, the albums contained imaginative covers of American rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm and blues songs that had been hits by Black recording artists, some well-known like the Isley Brothers’ “Twist and Shout,” and others below the radar, such as the Shirelles’ “Boys,” the flip side to their No. 1 hit, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.”
Spizer’s observations on the two albums and associated singles are abundant and crisply reported -- fresh takes on songs we know by heart. One surprising discovery is how the opening melody line of “All My Loving,” written by McCartney, bears a strong similarity to a set of notes and chords that appear over five seconds on “Kathy’s Waltz,” from the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out album, released in ’59. Spizer doesn’t indicate whether McCartney was inspired by the Brubeck number or subconsciously lifted the line when writing “All My Loving.” Most likely, it’s just an intriguing coincidence.
Even more intriguing is that despite The Beatles’ huge success in the UK, Dave Dexter, Jr., an executive of Capitol Records in the USA, owned by EMI, gave the group scant attention. Yes, that’s the same EMI, which owned Parlophone, The Beatles’ label in the UK. With EMI purchasing 95% interest in Capitol for $8,500,000.00 in 1955, the US label received a huge cash infusion to compete more strongly against Columbia, Decca, and other US labels while also getting first dibs on EMI’s European releases. The deal was like manna from Heaven. But Dexter, in charge of reviewing EMI foreign product for Capitol, passed on Beatles singles, “Love Me Do,” and “Please Please Me” because he didn’t care for Lennon’s harmonica-playing. He also rejected “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You.” Dexter cared little for rock ‘n’ roll and even less for The Beatles. Perhaps Dexter, a jazz aficionado, might’ve been impressed by Paul McCartney coming up with the same chords as Dave Brubeck on “Kathy’s Waltz;” that is if he ever truly listened to “All My Loving.”
The story of getting a record label to release Beatles records in the USA is truly Seinfeldian, importers/exporters division. A long and winding road was taken after Capitol rejected The Beatles’ early recordings, as well as other EMI offerings. EMI needed a company serving as a “middle man” of sorts, so it subsidized a start-up, Transglobal Music Company (TMC), incorporated in New York by an EMI attorney. TMC would present the recordings Capitol rejected to other American record labels.
Vee-Jay Records, far from the first label to be pitched, signed on to a licensing agreement with TMC that gave the company right-of-first-refusal on Beatles records for 5 years. More manna from heaven. Think on that. It’s late spring ‘63. The agreement would’ve taken the small, Black-owned Vee-Jay through Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and more. In the midst of what should have been its greatest moment or even the greatest moment for any record company, Vee-Jay is roiled by a corporate shake-up. The label’s president, Ewart Abner, resigned after it was alleged he used company money to cover his personal gambling debts.
Vee-Jay not only cancelled the planned July ‘63 release of Introducing… The Beatles, its version of the Please Please Me album, but also failed to report royalties on their sales of the two Beatles singles released earlier in the year (“Please Please Me” and “From Me To You”). TMC declared its contract with Vee-Jay null and void in August ‘63. However, 5 months later, Vee-Jay’s board, desperate for cash and risking lawsuits, voted to release Introducing… The Beatles on January 10, 1964, as they still had 16 Beatles tracks in their vaults. The album went to number 2 on the Billboard chart, remaining in that position for 9 weeks. By the end of October, due to the lawsuits, Vee-Jay took Introducing… The Beatles off the market. More than 1.3 million copies of the album had been sold by that time.
In one of Spizer’s earlier Beatles albums books, The Beatles Records on Vee-Jay, he took us through the intrigue behind and beyond the scenes when one of the world’s finest record companies is slow to recognize a young rock ‘n’ roll band that would very quickly become the biggest act in show business. Spizer is not only a fine reporter with a sharp eye for detail, he’s also a lawyer who knows how to follow the money. He understands where farce and finance come together:
The termination of the licensing agreements with Vee-Jay in early August of 1963 once again gave Capitol the right of first refusal for Frank Ifield and Beatles recordings. It was around this time that Alan Livingston started getting calls from London informing him of the group’s success. He also began to read about them in the British music press. This prompted him to bring up the Beatles at a weekly A&R meeting. In his interview with the author, Livingston recollected the following: “So at one meeting, I said, ‘Dex, what about the Beatles? I read a lot about them, they’re doing well in London.’ He said, ‘Alan, they’re a bunch of long-haired kids. They’re nothing. Forget it.’ I said, ‘OK.’ I trusted Dexter. And I had no interest in British product at that point. And so a few weeks went by and I began to get nervous because of the British press. I could tell they were doing really well, so I said, ‘Dex, what about the Beatles?’ And he said, ‘Alan, forget it, they’re nothing.’ I said, ‘OK.’ And so we turned them down.”
Dexter’s actions appear humorous when one examines the facts surrounding his decision to pass on the Beatles in August 1963. After Transglobal terminated the licensing agreements with Vee-Jay, Dexter was sent copies of the two latest singles by each artist —I’m Confessin’ by Frank Ifield and She Loves You by the Beatles. Apparently Dexter was unaware that the Beatles at that time were receiving air play in the Los Angeles area, Capitol’s own back yard, with From Me To You, a top forty hit on radio station KRLA. After listening to both discs, Dexter was confident that one of these songs would be a hit and arranged for a full-page ad in the August 24, 1963, issue of Billboard. Amazingly, Dexter chose I’m Confessin’ and recommended passing on the Beatles for a third time in the belief that She Loves You was not worthy of being released by Capitol.
George Martin was furious with EMI and Capitol and remembers getting a curt reply from Capitol that the label did not think the Beatles would do anything in the American market. Transglobal was directed by EMI to find a company to release the new Beatles single. Livingston and Marshall confirm that Transglobal tried unsuccessfully to place the Beatles with several companies. According to Livingston, “they sent them to Decca, RCA, Columbia, A&M and every record company they could get to. They got to them all, and every one of them turned them down
Dexter’s inability to appreciate The Beatles was only part of Capitol’s blundering with The Beatles’ albums. Reconfigured editions of Please Please Me and With The Beatles were released in the USA as Introducing The Beatles, and Meet The Beatles in January ’64. Introducing… The Beatles was released on Vee-Jay, It went to number 2 on the Billboard album charts, remaining in that position for 9 weeks. By the end of October, due to the lawsuits, Vee-Jay took Introducing… The Beatles off the market. More than 1.3 million copies of the album had been sold by that time.
Capitol, finally realizing what a gold mine it was sitting on, released Meet The Beatles, the first of their 10 reconfigured Beatles albums, ten days after the Vee-Jay release, selling over 4,000,000 copies in ‘64 alone. (Capitol would release The Early Beatles, its own version of Introducing… The Beatles in March ‘65.)
In Please Please Me To With The Beatles, Bill King considers the UK releases versus their USA counterparts, while favoring Capitol’s Meet The Beatles over its Parlophone rendition.
Truly delivering the goods with his chapters in the book is Al Sussman, especially so with “Beyond The Beatles & Beyond The Fringe,” a review of critical world events from late ’62 through early ’64. Interesting times indeed: The Cuban Missile Crisis, a quiet but deepening American involvement in the Vietnam War, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washington.
In a better world, the big event of November 22, 1963 would’ve been the release of With The Beatles in the UK. As it is, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, in Dallas that day to persuade conservatives to work for the common good, looms as the most tragic event of the era, and the one America still has difficulty getting past. However, in the months ahead, there were events to celebrate. A boxer, then known as Cassius Clay, possessing the world’s most unique personality, defeated Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight title on February 25, 1964, just 16 days after The Beatles made their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Joy was abounding from sources Americans had given little thought a few months back.
Sussman also provides a chapter on popular music during the 16 months prior to The Beatles arriving in America in February ’64. The period is often considered a lackluster time for rock ‘n’ roll, an unfair assessment, writes Sussman, who offers several examples of why the pop scene at the time wasn’t so bleak. It was particularly a robust period for soul music. The Drifters, The Shirelles, Jackie Wilson, Stevie Wonder, the Isley Brothers, and Marvin Gaye, were among the Black American recording artists prominent on Top 40 radio and serving as significant influences on The Beatles. The songs of Carole King, the Four Seasons, Booker T. and the MGs, and Roy Orbison also filled the airwaves. The chapter, “The Not-So-Dark Ages of Rock ‘n’ Roll” includes pictures of albums and single pic-sleeves from the period, illustrating, if you will, Sussman’s salient point.
The layout of photos, album covers, magazine covers, movie posters, advertisements, etc. throughout the book is lavish, adding flair to the wealth of information conveyed. Please Please Me To With The Beatles is another great ride on Bruce Spizer’s time machine.
Lots of research in this one, Jeff. My favorite phrase is "bored whores"!