#maureen cleave

[sont-des-mots]

Part II Of "The Year of the Beatles": This is where the 'O' level world becomes Rock...

Maureen Cleave, The Evening Standard, 18 October 1963

WHAT DISTINGUISHES the Beatles and the Liverpool Movement from the rest is their self-confidence.

They say that to get into one of the 300 rock groups comprising the Liverpool Scene ("Oh Wondrous Scene" as Beatle Paul McCartney calls it) you have to have a fair complement of 'O' levels.

Perhaps these 'O' levels have not been put to the use intended by the education authorities, but being bright does make it less easy to push these young men around.

The Beatles, hurling rude remarks at their audiences (redoubled screams), would never become big-headed. I suspect they were pretty full of themselves all along, convinced (with reason) that they were rather splendid fellows and not minding if you disagreed.

It is, I think, impossible to get a Beatle under your thumb. "I know that if I don't like anything, I don't do it," says John Lennon. At an early age the Beatles were playing seven hours at a stretch in Hamburg night clubs, sending up the audience by singing idiot words which the Germans thought were basic English.

Because nobody dared mould them into plaster angels with rehearsed quotes on teenage morals and South Africa, their remarks, like their music, sound honest.

"At grammar school" said John, "I tried to look like a Ted. 'You are not a Ted,' they would say. 'Teds work in factories.' I liked Teds.

A student

"Then the headmaster got my old auntie and he said, 'The boy must do art or nothing,' so I became a student. College life was so free I went potty. I got myself voted into the students' union just to get rock played.

"I don't suppose I think much about the future. I don't really give a damn. Though now we've made it, it would be a pity to get bombed. It's selfish, but I don't care too much about humanity — I'm an escapist.

"Everybody's drumming on about the future, but I'm not letting it interfere with my laughs, if you see what I mean. Perhaps I worried more when I was working it out about God.

"I used Him, like everybody else, for things I wanted. God give me a guitar, I would say.

"I get spasms of being intellectual. I read a bit about politics. I don't think I'd vote for anyone; no messages from any of those phoney politicians are coming through to me.

"I think if I have a bit of money I'll be OK. They say you're bored and miserable with money but you're bored and miserable without it.

"I suppose I would be a Conservative. I've got it into my head they like you if you're rich. The only thing I like about Labour is the history of it, hating the bosses and that.

"I don't know what I will do with the money. I wanted a black velvet suit but they talked me out of it.

"The only thing I'm afraid of is growing old. I hate that. They get old and they've missed it somehow. Then the old always resent the young and vice versa."

Paul McCartney was making what George would call soft remarks about Screaming Lord Home.

"Politics? " he said. "You're joking. I'm not apathetic but I didn't like history at school and it's the same with politics.

"It's disturbing that people can go round blowing us up, but if there was an atom bomb I would say 'Oh well.' No point in saying anything else, is there? People are so crackers. But I wouldn't go around crying.

"I know the bomb is ethically wrong. I suppose I could do something like wearing ban-the-bomb things. But it's something. like religion, that I don't think about. It doesn't fit in with my life.

'I can rot'

"I don't feel I have to be religious. I may need it as I grow older to comfort me when I'm dying. But now as far as I'm concerned, I can rot.

"I like going to the theatre. I love to see people doing their nut. I don't read much nowadays but I've read The Representative and I will go and see that.

"At school we had a great hip English master and instead of keeping us to the drag stuff like Return of the Native he would let us read Tennessee Williams, and Lady Chatterley's Lover and The Miller's Tale.

"Schools think they're filthy but they're great; sustain your interest."

George, the handsome one with the long eyelashes, talks in a deep, thick, lazy voice. He says he didn't do much at school but, what he did learn was common sense.

"Let's get our kicks today for tomorrow we die, man — that's rot. Some people are like that, thick people blowing up the world. I'm interested in what will happen though I don't bother much with Macmillan and whether the Chinese are winning. I was born a Catholic, so what ?

"In this business I think you've got to broaden your mind, adapt yourself. If you're surrounded by a band of screaming girls, you adapt yourself to that. You don't think they're all lusting after you.

"If there's a nice bird you fancy, you forget about all the others, don't you? You get married when you find the right bird.

"People say we have more money than our parents but when they were kids they could go to the pictures and it cost 1d and they got a bag of sweets and an orange as well.

"Naturally I'm part of my generation. I like the way people now bring things out in the open. I'd hate it if when you spoke about sex everybody curled away. And I couldn't stand waiting for a horse to take me to the village pub like they used to."

Ringo, the shy one, agreed that marriage was a case of the right bird.

"If I wanted to go with you it would take ages to approach you. I can't say things like 'How're you doing, baby, let's go for a ride.' I like to get to know them. I can't stand people saying 'I Love You' when they don't mean it.

"It's never interested me to go with a different girl every night. I like to go with girls for weeks or months. Then you know what's happening and you can have your laughs.

Old at 23

"I feel old at 23. When I'm 30 I'll be an old man. Look around and it's funny. The 15-20s look like they're 30.

"I've always been free, since I was 16. You have to fend for yourself. I'm lucky, aren't I? I'm a sort of name and I earn a good wage. As far as food goes, a steak is a steak, isn't it? Though down here they call chips French-fried.

"I don't know about the future. I suppose I live for today though that's a soft thing to say. I'm not worried about my pension.

"I don't fancy being a bus conductor. I'd like to be sort of comfortable, with a nice house and a few hairdressing businesses. That's a good game.

"I suppose," said Ringo. "I'd like to end up sort of unforgettable."

TOMORROW: Their laughs, travels and hair

[harrisonarchive]

Photos by Leslie Bryce (?).

“George, the handsome one with the long eyelashes, talks in a deep, thick, lazy voice. He says he didn’t do much at school but what he did learn was common sense.‘Let’s get our kicks today for tomorrow we die, man — that’s rot. Some people are like that, thick people blowing up the world. I’m interested in what will happen though I don’t bother much with Macmillan and whether the Chinese are winning. I was born a Catholic so what? ‘In this business I think you’ve got to broaden your mind, adapt yourself. If you’re surrounded by a band of screaming girls you adapt yourself to that. You don’t think they’re all lusting after you. ‘Naturally I’m part of my generation. I like the way people now bring things out in the open. I’d hate it if when you spoke about sex everybody curled away.’” - article by Maureen Cleave, Lancashire Telegraph, November 2, 1963

[beatlessideblog]

[Brian's] working area is done in stripped pine panelling, a whole section concealing records, television set, film screen. He did originally toy with the idea of hiding these with false book spines, but the Beatles were so shocked he gave it up. "It would have been different," John Lennon said with feeling, "if he'd done a whole ceiling with them - or a whole room, even."

"I might have decided myself," Mr Epstein said somewhat desperately, "not to have those book spines."

Maureen Cleave in The Liverpool Echo and Evening Express, 4th April 1966

[korkyofesher]

From Evening Standard, 2 February 1963 by Maureen Cleave

But I think it’s their looks that really get people going, that start the girls queuing outside the Liverpool Grafton at 5.30 for 8pm. Their average age is twenty and they have what their manager likes to call “exceptional taste in clothes”. They look scruffy, but scruffy on purpose.

John Lennon has an upper lip which is brutal in a devastating way.George Harrison is handsome, whimsical and untidy. Paul McCartney has a round baby face, while Ringo Starr is ugly but cute. (He’s called Ringo because he wears two on each hand.)

“Their physical appearance,” said my friend, who is a Liverpool housewife, “inspires frenzy. They look beat-up and depraved in the nicest possible way.”

[gardenwalrus]

MAUREEN CLEAVE: You must remember in those days, pop singers did not have points of view. And this was why they were- Cliff Richard, what point of view did he have? I don't know. They quite often didn't have their own names. They very rarely wrote their own songs, they did exactly as their managers told them. They were very humble, they bought nice houses for their mothers. They were grateful to be alive, and grateful to their fans. And the Beatles were none of those things. [ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE OF PAUL OFFERING AN INTERVIEWER A CIGARETTE] MAUREEN CLEAVE: They came along and they turned the whole thing upside down

- Maureen Cleave on the Beatles in Timewatch: Beatlemania (2007)

[tavolgisvist]

“I used to read ads for guitars in Reveille and just ache for one. Like everyone else, I used God for this one thing I wanted. 'Please God, give me a guitar.’ Elvis was bigger than religion in my life. We used to go to this boy’s house after school and listen to Elvis on 78s; we’d buy five Senior Service loose and some chips and go along. Then this boy said he’d got a new record. He’d been to Holland. This record was by somebody called Little Richard, who was bigger than Elvis. It was called Long Tall Sally. When I heard it, I couldn’t speak. You know how it is when you are torn. I didn’t want to leave Elvis. We all looked at each other, but I didn’t want to say anything against Elvis.”

(John Lennon for Maureen Cleave, The Telegraph)

I was born on 29 September 1940, just days before JWL, at 69 Dovedale Road and lived there until I was 22 when I left Liverpool to live and work overseas. I never went back to live in UK. My house was at the other end of Dovedale Road from Dovedale Road School and from Penny Lane. I was near the Rose Lane end of Dovedale Road. I first met John when, after moving to live with his Aunt Mimi, he joined Dovedale Road Infants School aged 5. We were in the same class in primary and junior schools, both passed the 11 plus exam together and both went on together to Quarry Bank where I first met Pete Shotton. John and Pete were inseparable at QB and they with me and my friend Don Beattie made a frequent foursome. Don, Pete and I went on a Liverpool grammar schools exchange holiday to Amsterdam in April 1956 when we were all aged 15. John didn't come. We had a ball. I returned with Little Richard's record of ‘Long Tall Sally’ with ‘Slippin' an Slidin' on the B side. At that time we used to regularly break school rules and cycle to my house from QB on school days at lunch time. Just after the Amsterdam trip on one of those lunchtime sessions I played John the record having first got his attention by telling him the singer was better than Elvis Presley.  Well, it stopped John in his tracks and he was lost for words. This was so unusual we all remembered it and many years later after John's murder when Pete Shotton wrote his book he described this incident in detail as it was in every sense a critical moment in John's life. From that point music was going to be his life and it was.

(How I Turned John Lennon onto Rock 'n' Roll by Mike Hill for Mersey Beat)

"I never thought I'd ever meet Little Richard. He was my idol at school. The first song I ever sang in public was 'Long Tall Sally,' at a Butlins holiday camp talent competition! I love his voice and I always wanted to sing like him."

(Paul McCartney in The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Authorised Biography by Charles White, 2003).

Then I broke my arm and had to go into hospital. Who knows what might have happened if I hadn’t broken that arm? We could have taken “We are Siamese if you please” to the top of the pops and become the Elderly Brothers. But Paul and George had already gone a long way together at that time. Actually, viewers, I shared the limelight with Paul on what might be described as his first public stage appearance – certainly on any stage outside the school theatre. When I was well enough to leave hospital, Dad brought Paul and me down to a holiday camp at Wales for a break. Our cousin Mike happened to be producer of the camp talent show and gave us our big chance. Mike thought Paul a rave mimic – although this made him a minority in the family. The rest of them thought that we were simply crackers. I think the only joke they ever laughed at was Paul’s Irish joke. This is about the two Irishmen who came out of a pub just as an aeroplane was flying past. Mick says: “Begorra, Pat, I’d hate to be up in that plane,” and Pat replies: “Oi, Mick, but I’d hate to be up there without it!” And the only reason they laughed at that was because of Paul’s cod Irish accent. Bet you didn’t know that, brother! Anyway, cousin Mike had this idea that Paul was really good. “Why don’t you do your Little Richard piece?” he suggested. Paul’s face was a book study. “Oo-er,” he said doubtfully. “Do you really think so?” “You’d be great, real great,” cousin Mike told him. “I’d be too nervous,” said Paul. In fact he was shaking like Patrick Kerr’s left leg when we finally got him as far as the wings in the theatre. And even then we had to give him a push before we could get him out on stage. But when he found himself standing in the spotlight – without quite knowing how he had got there, may I say – he did his little turn successfully. The applause was just about to die away when the compere turned the spotlight to where I was standing in the wings and called upon me to join Paul in a duet. We must have looked a couple of junior-sized Laurel and Hardys – Paul chubby and all owl-faced, me skinny, pale as powder, and with my arm still in a sling. Anyway we sang “Bye-Bye Love” together and were rewarded with a bar of chocolate each. Talk about the big time!

(Mike McCartney, August 21, 1965, Portrait of Paul for Woman Magazine)

My memories would be more musical, more to do with reaching out through music. I remember the end of term, bringing my guitar in, the only day you were allowed to—and standing on the desk of the history teacher Cliff Edge, a particularly nice teacher, and singing Long Tall Sally. I remember George [Harrison] bringing his guitar in too. The reaction you got from all the boys "Yeah! Wow! This is great"—I guess it made an impression and made me think yes, I should do more of this.

(Paul McCartney, interview with Jonathan Power for Prospect - 'A political Paul' - January 17, 2009)

Early on, I’d sung ‘Long Tall Sally’ at an end-of-term party. You could bring your guitar into school on the last day. We had a history teacher named Walter Edge, though we called him ‘Cliff’ Edge because we thought hat was really funny. He was one of our favourite teachers. I got to stand up on the desk in front of all my mates in the class and sing ‘Long Tall Sally’ with my guitar because he let us.

(Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, 2021)

[pleasantlyinsincere]

"these vivid and colourful characters are quite missing from their own true story all 400 pages of it"

Maureen Cleave's review of Shout, 02 April 1981

[ilovedig]

Do yourself a favor and never ever watch "Composing the Beatle Songbook"

It is a bunch of straight cis white middle age men pretending they know more about the Beatles than their contemporaries and making up random facts that have no actual basis.

Also it's 45 minutes of these same men trying to fuck Bob Dylan.

And there's the guy who wants to fuck Paul but hates John and the guy who wants to fuck John but hates Paul.

Even as a hate watch it's too painful.

It's in this Google Drive, so in case you thought, "oh this sounds interesting," no, no it does not. Save yourself.