With the Beatles
Описание книги
When we went to the Palace to get The Beatles their OBEs. John Lennon had some acid with him. 'I'm gonna slip it into the Queen's tea,' he told me. 'I want to open her mind and try to get her to declare war on somewhere nice and warm so we can all go and fight on the beaches.' After Jane Asher dumped Paul McCartney he literally used to cry on my shoulder. We hit the bottle together. Hard. 'I had everything and I threw it all away,' he would say. Alistair Taylor was with The Beatles from the moment they signed with Brian Epstein. In fact, apart from the signatures of each of the Fab Four, his is the only other name on the contract. From the very beginning he travelled, ate, partied, and even holidayed with them, right up until the beginning of the group's spectacular break up. As the group's 'Mr Fixit' he settled paternity cases, bought islands, houses and estates, and took care of John, Paul, George and Ringo when their lifestyles became a little too lively. Alistair Taylor was privy to all the secrets that we were never supposed to know. Now, on the 50th anniversary of Ringo's appointment as drummer, he reveals for the first time what it was really like to ride the rollercoaster that was the sixties with The Beatles.
Отрывок из книги
I would like to dedicate this book to my wife Lesley; and to the memory of Brian Epstein and all the Epstein family; and to Beatles fans everywhere. I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to Stafford Hildred, without whose help this book would never have been written.
1 The Start
.....
The next day, I gravely advised Brian that five copies in each shop would be more than enough. When this order was despatched to Top Rank, the rep was so disappointed he appeared in the shop with a copy of the record to see if Brian could be persuaded to change his mind. Brian and I listened together and I remained imperiously dismissive. But there was something in the lyrics that Brian liked. He asked for it to be played again and then, with just the slightest flicker of a smile, said, ‘We’ll take 250 copies, please.’ By then, I knew much better than to protest. Brian was clearly confident that ‘Johnny Remember Me’ was going to be a considerable hit. I still thought it was deeply forgettable.
But Brian, of course, was right. The day it was released, we experienced an enormous rush of people wanting to listen to those haunting lyrics and it went rapidly into the charts. Our competitors on Merseyside had reacted in the same way as me and had hardly taken any copies. But thanks to Brian’s ear for a hit, we had a sales rush. Brian was delighted and the rep confided that Brian’s taste was rarely wrong.
.....