Listening the other day to Ray Connolly being interviewed by Tim Haigh on BooksPodcast about his novella "Sorry, Boys, You Failed The Audition", I remembered that it is well worth reading. There have been earlier attempts to evoke the Beatles in imaginative ways, some of which I'll discuss below, but Connolly has the distinct advantage of having known the group well, especially John Lennon - he's also written a biography of Lennon and, according to the critic Philip French, the protagonist played by David Essex in Connolly's film That'll Be the Day was based in part on John. (I haven't seen this claim made by anyone else but Jim McLaine's relationship with his mother does seems to resemble that between Lennon and his stern-but-loving Aunt Mimi.)
"Sorry, Boys, You Failed The Audition", which started life as a radio play, has an intriguing premise: what if the Beatles hadn't been accepted by George Martin after all? Would they still have stayed together or become so demoralised that they gave up the ghost, made their various accommodations with the "real" world of boring-but-secure employment? ("The guitar's alright as a hobby, John ...")
In order to tell his story Connolly makes use of a fictionalised version of Freda Kelly, the real-life president of the Beatles Fan Club (below), who doggedly persists in her efforts to chronicle the disillusioned musicians' activities long after after The Toppermost of the Poppermost has proven unscaleable.
As it's a matter of historical fact that the Beatles did not fail the audition (look up wikipedia, why dontcha?) Kelly never needed to act as described but Connolly's model was happy to feature in the tale in whatever way he wanted - partly because she goes by her married name these days so identification is less likely, and partly, I imagine, because she adjudged Connolly to be trustworthy.
An example of his integrity is that, as he tells Tim Haigh in the podcast, when John Lennon handed him the kingsize scoop that the Beatles had split up but asked him not to reveal it yet - he didn't. Fast forward several months and Paul McCartney announces it to the world, much to Connolly's chagrin, especially as he'd kept pleading for permission to go public.
When he got in touch with his confidant to discuss the situation, however, Lennon asked why he hadn't reported it earlier himself. Stunned, Connolly said he'd had told him not to. "Well, you're the journalist, Connolly!" was that cheeky ex-Beatle's reply.
This novelisation - novellaisation? - is faithful to the original radio drama, by which I mean that it's not padded out with extra pages containing all sorts of abstruse details about the characters' inner lives and motivations; it's just highly readable, told well and entertainingly, at a length suited to the conceit. And, crucially, the characters' behaviour convinces as much as their dialogue. The main reason for writing the novellla, Ray Connolly told Tim Haigh, was a wish for permanence: a radio play is repeated a few times then disappears; a book sticks around. Sadly, however, his hopes that the idea might blossom into a stage play or film someday are tempered by an awareness of the prohibitive cost these days of music rights.But even if it never makes it to the West End or your friendly local multiplex there are many small pleasures to be had for readers who know something about the Beatles. It's a pleasing parlour game, if nothing else: what sort of careers would that foursome have fallen into if the group were no longer a going concern? I won't spoil your fun by giving any clues but will say that the relationship between the faithful Freda and her father threaded threaded through "Sorry, Boys ..." is touching and funny, adding considerable charm to this not-altogether-unlikely tale.
Snodgrass was later adapted as a short TV film, which is pretty good, although if I remember rightly it ends on more of an upbeat note than the original story (but I won't spoil either for you here). I did once toy with the notion of adapting the story as a radio play but didn't pursue it with any vigour; I tell myself that this was because I realised in short order that, the action being in Lennon's head, the printed page remained the narrative's natural home but radio would have have suited it almost equally well. McLeod does a decent job of evoking his protagonist's voice - though, fittingly enough, it seems to be the voice familiar from early letters reproduced in biographies as opposed to that of a Beatle whose utterances have been at least slightly tempered by a thousand press conferences and interviews.
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
There is a particularly memorable scene in the hotel where the two are staying which doesn't directly involve Epstein. An air hostess whom they met on the plane also happens to a guest there but proves herself unwilling to be as compliant and grateful for Lennon's attentions as a Beatle in his pomp might expect. This occurs at a point when Lennon, mulling over recent interactions with Epstein, is at his least loveable and most acerbic, but when he rebukes her: "You're not playing your part, Dolly Bird," she simply retorts: "Nor you yours." The impasse is broken when, by way of a change of subject, she brings out a copy of the new Little Richard record ... which might seem, in this bare outline, like a corny get-out by Munch but the moment is both poignant and joyful: it is one pleasure, at least, which they can share unreservedly, even it doesn't magic away the other barriers between them.
The play Presence, by David Harrower, is also sombre in tone but worth seeking out. It was staged at the Royal Court (London, not Liddypool) in 2001, a production I was lucky enough to see. Hunt down the playscript rather than waiting for a stage revival, though, as it's not the sort of hit-packed celebratory show which might hit the West End or get picked up for a nationwide tour. It wasn't even presented in the Court's main space but the smaller, more intimate Theatre Upstairs, reserved for more experimental work, and apart from a brief burst of offstage harmonica from one "Winston" near the start no music is featured.
It's set during the group's first Hamburg stint, when they were working for Bruno Koschmider at the Kaiserkeller club and dossing down in the squalid backstage area of the Bambi Kino cinema, scene of the prank involving a condom which led to Paul McCartney and Pete Best being arrested for arson - hence the above image used on the cover of the play and possibly other publicity, though I can't recall whether a jacket was set alight in the play or even during the incident which inspired it. Possibly it was an invention of Koschmider's; I have read that he exaggerated the extent of the fire damage, looking to get his own back on the group because they had signed up to play at another club.
That aforementioned snatch of harmonica is as close as we get to a representation of John Lennon onstage in Presence (maybe Ian Hart had a previous engagement?), though in a sense the whole piece is informed by him. In Lennon Remembers, his notorious Rolling Stone interview, he told Jan Wenner that in order to make it the Beatles had had to become "the biggest bastards on Earth", which would seem to be the premise of Presence as Harrower explores the young and callow Beatles (though they aren't actually identified as such in the play) in the process of hardening up in this foreign setting.
The play is the sentimental education of the George Harrison figure in particular, youngest and callowest of them all (above left, as played by Ralph Little). And as Pete Best was their drummer then, there is no lovable Ringo type to lighten the mood with droll remarks. A keen awareness of the still-recent war with Germany is also a factor in their behaviour towards those with whom they come into contact. This is a fascinating play, set around the same time as the feature film Backbeat - though in both imaginings Pete Best is not granted more than a few words.
Backbeat was later reworked as a stage musical which I didn't see but I enjoyed the film - small wonder that Ian Hart has been called upon several times to play John Lennon - though the decision to have the group's Hamburg era repertoire played in a more modern rock style by a band made up of well-known 90s names on the soundtrack grated a little.
I can see the twinning of commercial logic - enticing a younger audience as well as longtime fans - and artistic intention - trying to make the music sound as fresh and unusual to the cinema audience as it undoubtedly did to Klaus Voormann when he first heard the group at the Indra Club before they graduated to the Kaiserkeller - but the original Hamburg tapes ain't exactly staid, and it would have been interesting to hear something approximating more closely to a hi-fi recreation of those lo-fi recordings.
Backbeat centres around Stuart Sutcliffe (above right, as played by Stephen Dorff), the art school friend of Lennon's who was persuaded to join the group on bass despite his limited musical skills, and his swift-growing romance with Voorman's friend Astrid Kirchherr, an alliance perceived as a threat by the insecure Lennon to his own relationship with Stuart. The other Beatles are more lightly sketched in; all I remember of Paul's dialogue is a moment towards the end when he apologises to Sutcliffe for berating him for his musical inadequacies, telling him it was nothing personal; I suspect that this limited exploration of McCartney's character might have been deemed politic, just as the surviving Rolling Stones in the biopic Stoned aren't given a lot to say.
I vividly remember that, when first seeing Backbeat, the most poignant moment came not during the main action but at the very end, when we flash back to an earlier scene with John, Stuart, Astrid and the visiting Cynthia spending a carefree, idyllic day at the beach; suddenly a piece of text is overlaid which jolts us back into the present by reminding us that John Lennon was killed in 1980.
I don't say this to dismiss the rest of the film or to suggest this was a cheap device to ensure the jerking of tears, though having been immersed in that world, responding to the vigour of Ian Hart's portrayal of John Lennon in particular, to be brought to reality so abruptly was an emotional sucker punch.
Still, it's evidence of the film's artistry. A contributing factor to that final moment's impact is a scene shortly before when, having already left the group, Stuart is in the audience as the Sutcliffeless combo kicks into Please Mr Postman; Lennon, spotting him, gives him a wink, a friendly gesture which is also a benediction: his acceptance of the different path his friend has chosen to take. If I remember the scene correctly, Stuart and Astrid then walk out of the venue while the group are still playing and the waves of adulation, as it were, close over John and the others.
And for the viewer - well, me, anyway - that wink is doubly poignant. I wasn't brought up in Liverpool so can't feel, as some Cavern-era fans apparently did, that they were losing "their" group when the Fabs made their inevitable move to London, but having had the comforting illusion, for ninety minutes, of sharing Stuart Sutcliffe's intimacy with Lennon, that wink signifies the start of Beatle John, the star soon to become the property of the whole world, available yet unavailable - leading inexorably to that second and final distancing through his death.
A more recent biopic, Nowhere Boy, goes further back in Lennon's story, exploring the factors which led to music becoming both career and salvation for an aimless schoolboy. I've already written about this elsewhere so will confine myself to a few points. It's Philip French's review of the film in The Observer which mentions that Ray Connolly used aspects of John Lennon's life for the David Essex character in That'll Be the Day, though for French Nowhere Boy's main achievement is not the biopic aspect but the way it successfully evokes the atmosphere of 1950s Britain:
... rather than dwelling on the unique circumstances that produced a musical genius, it's an affecting movie about coming of age and leaving home, and about the radical changes in British life since the Second World War.
Other critics, too, were not primarily interested in the strict Lennon-biopic side of things. More than one review felt that the necessity of seeing things from the young John Winston's POV meant that the story of the complex relationship between his mother and aunt was sidelined. I did wonder whether the contrast between the characters of Julia and Mimi might have been exaggerated, especially when I read later in an interview that Paul McCartney, sent a synopsis by director Sam Taylor-Wood for his comments, took issue with the description of Mimi as "cruel" (her character was subsequently modified). Rosemary Leach would have been too old to have played Mimi by then but I couldn't help wondering what she might have brought to the part played by Kristin Scott Thomas.
What can be said, I think, is that the music used works well. Apparently the actually actors learnt their instruments for the film - though as we are still in the skiffle era with the Quarrymen that would have been an easier "ask", as they say, than in Backbeat. (Wonder how that side of things will be approached in those forthcoming linked biopics about individual Beatles directed by Sam Mendes?)
Interesting, too, at least for keen-eared Beatlemaniacs who have heard a clip from that tape which miraculously survives from the historic Woolton Fete where John met Paul, is that considerable effort seems to have gone into simulate the acoustic of that recording in the film. Despite my carping about the anachronistic music style employed for the Backbeat soundtrack, however, I'm not entirely whether that was the right decision for Nowhere Boy. After all, we see Lennon and his skiffle pals in living colour in the film even though the surviving snapshots of the real event are in black and white, so why labour to reproduce the limitations of a tape recorder of the time? On the other hand I can't help admiring them for doing so ...
Prearmed, when first viewing Nowhere Boy, with a fair amount of Beatle facts'n'info gleaned from podcasts, biographies and music papers etc, it was difficult to feel fully immersed in the fiction at times, but by the end of the film I had surrendered. And whether or not the final scene actually happened in the manner described it did provide a very satisfying conclusion to the story being told, and really that's all you can reasonably hope for in biopics. I don't suppose there will come a time, in the next hundred years or so at least, when audiences will watch films like Nowhere Boy without some basic knowledge of the individuals being depicted, but the trick is not to do a James Finlayson-type double take at every suspicion of an anachronistic turn of phrase or set detail and try to see the bigger picture.
Which reminds me of an instance when I very much didn't do that, to my lingering shame. When it was released I made arrangements to see Nowhere Boy with a friend but was just over thirty minutes late and wasn't allowed to enter the auditorium.
Despite the fact that it was entirely my own fault I wanted to scream at the cashier:
It's not fair! I'm going to appreciate it more than her, what with my
extra knowledge about the Beatles, having read all the biographies
including the "spurious" one [see below] - I've even got a complete book about the
"Paul is dead" theory - I mean, c'mon.
But (of course) I didn't; I simply walked away, mooched around in Charing Cross Road bookshops
for an hour.
There was, however, a reward of sorts, when my friend emerged from the cinema and spoke these words: "I'd forgotten she was run over."
But the feeling I had at that moment - an unlovely male sense of superiority about being in possession of more Beatle fax'n'info, basically - vanished when I later got to see that abrupt and bleak scene for myself.
The author Mark Shipper was mentioned earlier in this post; Paperback Writer, his take on the Beatles, provides a lighter note on which to end this brief and far from comprehensive survey of literally fabulous Beatles (if, unlike Peter Cook, you have the Latin).
As with Nowhere Boy I have written at length elsewhere in praise of this book, so won't go on too long about it here. This "novel", as it's called on the cover, is a spoof biography, a "spurious chronicle", as Shipper (or his publisher) calls it, which sends up well-known up elements of the Beatles' story but ultimately reveals itself as being at least semi-serious in intent.
Written when all four were still alive, Shipper imagines that decade-long fantasy of music journalists and fans, a Beatles reunion, actually taking place:
The result, however, proves a huge disappointment for the group, who have to recruit other artists to make their concert appearances viable, as above. Even so, when they play their new material live the crowd are silent, only going wild when they play a medley of greatest hits. After a stadium gig Lennon realises they have become like Bill Haley, prisoners of their audience's past. Suddenly, there is what feels like an earthquake; the four dive for cover but it's only the crowd going wild as Frampton steps onstage.
This leads a disgruntled Lennon and McCartney, in the book's most serious section, to puzzle over the reasons why musical inspiration no longer floods through them as in younger days.
"I used to get more ideas on a twenty minute walk to the grocery store than I do now sitting around for a month in this bloody room." Lennon kicked the silver tray off the coffee table, splattering tea all over the white carpeting.
Shipper's dialogue for the Beatles may be marred by Americanisations but the book is still thoroughly enjoyable - and packed with so many gags that it seems churlish to complain about their variable quality. It's similar territory, I suppose, to Eric Idle's and Neil Innes's Rutles documentary - I'm not sure which came first - but it has a flavour of its own. Here's a sample:
By 1976, Ringo Starr was no longer enjoying hit records with the same sort of regularity that he had in the early 70s. An occasional record appealed to him, like Elton John's Philadelphia Freedom, but by and large he found little to enjoy. Perhaps his negative opinion was due to his own lack of success on the charts.
Oh, and just before the sun turns out his light on this made-up-Beatles melange, allow me to squeeze in an honorable mention for Scrambled Eggs, the sitcom writer Simon Nye's contribution to Sky's rock-related Urban Myths series. He makes a better job of capturing the Beatles' voices than Mark Shipper, suggesting that A Hard Day's Night, Help! and Yellow Submarine as well as recordings of press conferences have long been his constant study - the Beatles as we would wish them to be, in short.
Scrambled Eggs is the oft-told tale of how the song Yesterday came to Paul McCartney in a dream, followed by saucy doubts and fears about whether it was indeed an original composition or a melody he had heard and forgotten then unwittingly regifted to himself.
Nye's Lennon feels threatened by this evidence of an entirely solo effort by his collaborator, fearing it signals a sundering of their creative partnership; as I've always understood that most of their truly cowritten numbers date from their early days (as opposed to the editorial suggestions and encouragement which continued all through their time together) I'm not sure to what extent that characterisation of Lennon would be true at that precise point in the group's career but it certainly works for the story.
And Nye manages to work in a few jokey allusions to later Beatles songs, one of which proves poignant. It's the sort of thing which could feel clunky in a serious biopic but in what is essentially a sketch (the piece is around twenty minutes) it's fine. Reviewing Eric and Ernie, the TV drama about Morecambe and Wise's early days, their biographer Graham McCann said: "Taken as a fondly nostalgic 'once upon a time' tribute it works rather well ... simplified and romanticised, the story slips down smoothly like a festive sweet sherry". And I think that's the best way to regard Scrambled Eggs too: a lighthearted celebration of a story familiar to most fans.
The running time means that Nye can't fit in much dialogue for George or Ringo because they are not central to this story about the Lennon-McCartney relationship being under threat but he does include a short interaction which feels convincing as well as comic, when Ringo tries to emulate John's wordplay and makes a hash of it.
John, George and Ringo are midway through a "homework" session, as in A Hard Day's Night - signing a batch of photographs to be sent to fans - and chatting as they do so.
George: D'you think Chuck Berry signs his own photographs?
John: Course he doesn't. He isn't given homework like a schoolboy - he's treated like a proper artist.
Ringo (hesitantly): Buck Cherry, the ... frog and bowl singer, doesn't slime his own ... photo ... guffs.
Ringo gives a little laugh to himself, obviously hoping for a reaction. George and John, suddenly immersed in their work, don't look up; the nice touch is that it's George who then rescues him, which suggests Nye understands the group dynamic.
Ringo: Speakin' nonsense is harder than it looks, isn't it?
George: Don't worry - you're doing a fantastic job.
But for all the occasional felicities in his snatches of Fabbish banter the comic masterstroke in Nye's story is his suggestion that having the Tiggerish McCartney as permanent houseguest might not be proving an unmixed blessing for Jane Asher's long-suffering parents, however well-disposed they might feel towards him - indeed, that could be a premise for a sitcom series or three ...
Fred pushed up his periscope to see if his calculations were right. Through the viewer he saw green fields and trees, and knew he was in England. But there was something else. Very faintly, but getting louder all the time, he could hear singing. Puzzled, Old Fred turned the periscope round to see where the noise was coming from. He couldn't see anyone. He turned the periscope back to the river and gasped, for skipping across the stepping stones were four young men. But these were not just four ordinary young men.
Thank you, Pismotality
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