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22
winter
|
spr ing
was a folly equivalent to the Red Sox selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees, but
he tries not to be bitter or remorseful. “People have said to me, ‘You could
have been a millionaire,’” he says. “But I say to them, ‘I
am
a millionaire.’
I am a millionaire of fun and excitement. A money millionaire could have
never had the fun and excitement that Liverpool had during the ‘60s.”
“
Sam Leach
is a
big
liar,” Williams told us before we left the Jacaranda.
He was referring to the promoter who worked for the group in the early
‘60s, when they made £8 for 10 gigs at the Casanova. One evening, a few
hours before the concert at the Cavern Club, Leach joined the Heavies
at the Grapes. Over pints of beer, he unfurled old Beatles pictures,
distributed copies of his book, “Rockin’ City,” and volunteered that Paul
McCartney “used to pinch my girls. For some reason we always had the
same taste in women.”
Unlike Williams, Leach says he always knew the Beatles would be a hit.
“I told them that someday they’d be bigger than Elvis Presley,” he says.
Leach claims he could have been the Beatles manager but that Brian
Epstein forced him out. “
I
knew more about rock and roll.
He
had
the money. It was always between Epstein and me to become their
manager. I told them, ‘Remember me when you’re famous.’” He last
saw them January 10, 1963, but has seen Paul on his various trips to
Liverpool.
Today, Williams spends his days “virtually occupied,” and he lectures
and holds interviews frequently on the Beatles’ formative years (Paul
McCartney has referred to him as “the Dylan Thomas of the Beatles.”)
“There are only two people in the world who can talk about that period:
[former Beatles drummer] Pete Best and myself,” says Williams.
A Magical Mystery Tour
In the afternoon, the Heavies were moving quickly to catch a bus for
Liverpool’s Magical Mystery Tour. They were walking along North John
Street past the nearly finished Hard Day’s Night Hotel, a shrine for rock
and roll relics (it opened in February).
Behind Liverpool’s Beatles obsession is a deep desire to preserve the
Beatlemania that held sway in the ’60s. Loyalty to this pursuit attracts
a mixture of touristy types: sightseers, souvenir chasers, and Beatles
fanatics whose devotion to history and detail is as spirited as those of avid
coin collectors or baseball statisticians. Within this diverse culture and
economy, everything is for sale and worthy of name recognition, whether
it’s a photo of the Beatles at the pub the Grapes or of the J&S Trading Post
where John Lennon bought his groceries.
In Liverpool, even people with the most tenuous ties to the Beatles
are elevated to celebrity status. This includes Beatles tour guide
Neil
Brannan
, who played Pete Shotton in the movie about John Lennon, “In
His Life,” and claims to be “the only person who gave his autograph to
Paul McCartney and never asked for one in return.” Like the memorabilia,
stories of the Beatles’ true origins and success are also for sale and therefore
always in contention. The enmities dating back to that era strengthen with
the release of every book on the subject.
Pete Best’s brother Rory gives daily and exhaustive tours of The Casbah,
the club on the outskirts of Liverpool where the Beatles played their
earliest performances, and which has remained untouched since the band
last performed in 1962.
Rockin’ the Cavern
Two hours after the opening festivities of Liverpool as 2008 European
Capital of Culture and Ringo Starr sang to the world, “Liverpool I left
you, but I never let you down,” the Heavies stood on the stage of the
Cavern Club, Mike tuning his guitar and Vince tilting the mic stand
toward the audience. For an entire day, Vince had stayed quiet and
reserved, and he later confided he had been saving his voice. He wasn’t
nervous, he said, but that he would be if a raucous crowd showed up.
“Everybody goes into this walking on the edge,” Jesse told me before the
performance. “No one really knows what to expect.”
But on the same stage that Brian Epstein first discovered the Beatles
in 1961, the Heavies played a lively set of solid rock samples to the
enjoyment of the local crowd. Vince stomped through every number with
verve and aplomb while Mike stood as still as the head on a nickel. He