usual. An umbrella of purple smoke hung over the coffee table, Coke bottles lay scattered like chess pieces. As Newby moved toward the couch, his eyes filled with a vision that looked like one of Rouault’s Gothic monochromes: four ravenlike figures were grouped there, clad in ominous bruised leather and blackness—trousers, T-shirts, jackets, boots, a riot of black. It took him a few seconds, reading the faces of the caped quartet, to realize they belonged to Pete Best and musicians he’d previously known collectively as the Quarry Men.
The band hadn’t played a date in weeks, owing to a creeping malaise that nearly rendered them extinct. Then, a week ago, four decent gigs materialized, which they’d hungrily accepted, despite one glaring obstacle: their bass player, Stuart Sutcliffe, was spending the holiday in Germany with his girlfriend.
“We need a bass player,” one of the musicians complained, courting Newby.
Best nodded significantly. “Get yourself a bass and practice with us,” he said. Newby was amused and touched by their invitation. His know-how extended only to rhythm guitar, but he was familiar with droning bass figures, and George Harrison, the band’s true technician, volunteered to simplify it for him.
Newby borrowed a bass from his friend Tommy McGurk and agreed to an impromptu practice. They set up shop in the Bests’ capacious basement—a room that moonlighted as the Casbah jive club, where kids came to hang out and dance—and ran down some songs. “The sort of music they played was fairly easy to pick up,” Newby says. But the sound they made unnerved him. It was still dependent on cover versions of current hits, but unlike the reverential copies performed by all other Liverpool bands, they burst through an entirely new dimension. These songs were not meticulous imitations, there was nothing neat or controlled about them. They were fierce, rip-roaring, they had real muscle, underscored by Best’s vigorous drumming—a lusty, propulsive volley that drove each song over a cliff—and the vocal acrobatics of McCartney. Newby was amazed at how Paul, especially, had transformed himself from an able crooner into a belter whose vocal range seemed to spiral off the charts. “Paul had developed this way of falsetto singing that knocked me for a loop,” he says. “No one in Liverpool sang like that, like Little Richard—
no one.
”
Lennon, more than anyone, knew they had made great strides. (Years later he would acknowledge as much, saying, “ We thought we were the best before anybody else had even heard us, back in Hamburg and Liverpool.”) But only that August the band had left Liverpool a virtual embarrassment. Their playing was haphazard, their direction uncharted. The word around town was that their band was the worst outfit on the circuit—not even a band, if you took into account that they were unable to hold a drummer. Howie Casey, who fronted the Seniors and would one day play for Wings,says, “ We sure didn’t know them , and I don’t think anybody else… knew them either.” Only one bandleader of significance was able to recall a nightmarish triple bill they’d played that May at Lathom Hall, in the Liverpool suburb of Seaforth. “ They were so bad ,” he said, “[the promoter] just shut the curtains on them!”
So it had been off to Hamburg and then, afterward, the bleak likelihood of an apprenticeship on the Liverpool docks, a clerk’s position at the Cotton Exchange or British Rail, or rivet duty at one of the automobile plants sprouting in the suburbs. No doubt about it, after Germany there would be no further high life. John Lennon had been chucked out of art college for extreme indifference, a disgrace he seemed to court, as if a dark diagnosis had been confirmed. Paul McCartney had squandered his early academic promise by performing so poorly on his exams that teachers abandoned any hope that he’d advance to the university level. George Harrison, who
The band hadn’t played a date in weeks, owing to a creeping malaise that nearly rendered them extinct. Then, a week ago, four decent gigs materialized, which they’d hungrily accepted, despite one glaring obstacle: their bass player, Stuart Sutcliffe, was spending the holiday in Germany with his girlfriend.
“We need a bass player,” one of the musicians complained, courting Newby.
Best nodded significantly. “Get yourself a bass and practice with us,” he said. Newby was amused and touched by their invitation. His know-how extended only to rhythm guitar, but he was familiar with droning bass figures, and George Harrison, the band’s true technician, volunteered to simplify it for him.
Newby borrowed a bass from his friend Tommy McGurk and agreed to an impromptu practice. They set up shop in the Bests’ capacious basement—a room that moonlighted as the Casbah jive club, where kids came to hang out and dance—and ran down some songs. “The sort of music they played was fairly easy to pick up,” Newby says. But the sound they made unnerved him. It was still dependent on cover versions of current hits, but unlike the reverential copies performed by all other Liverpool bands, they burst through an entirely new dimension. These songs were not meticulous imitations, there was nothing neat or controlled about them. They were fierce, rip-roaring, they had real muscle, underscored by Best’s vigorous drumming—a lusty, propulsive volley that drove each song over a cliff—and the vocal acrobatics of McCartney. Newby was amazed at how Paul, especially, had transformed himself from an able crooner into a belter whose vocal range seemed to spiral off the charts. “Paul had developed this way of falsetto singing that knocked me for a loop,” he says. “No one in Liverpool sang like that, like Little Richard—
no one.
”
Lennon, more than anyone, knew they had made great strides. (Years later he would acknowledge as much, saying, “ We thought we were the best before anybody else had even heard us, back in Hamburg and Liverpool.”) But only that August the band had left Liverpool a virtual embarrassment. Their playing was haphazard, their direction uncharted. The word around town was that their band was the worst outfit on the circuit—not even a band, if you took into account that they were unable to hold a drummer. Howie Casey, who fronted the Seniors and would one day play for Wings,says, “ We sure didn’t know them , and I don’t think anybody else… knew them either.” Only one bandleader of significance was able to recall a nightmarish triple bill they’d played that May at Lathom Hall, in the Liverpool suburb of Seaforth. “ They were so bad ,” he said, “[the promoter] just shut the curtains on them!”
So it had been off to Hamburg and then, afterward, the bleak likelihood of an apprenticeship on the Liverpool docks, a clerk’s position at the Cotton Exchange or British Rail, or rivet duty at one of the automobile plants sprouting in the suburbs. No doubt about it, after Germany there would be no further high life. John Lennon had been chucked out of art college for extreme indifference, a disgrace he seemed to court, as if a dark diagnosis had been confirmed. Paul McCartney had squandered his early academic promise by performing so poorly on his exams that teachers abandoned any hope that he’d advance to the university level. George Harrison, who
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