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 Lennon’s postcard to Hunter Davies at Boscastle Road |
Paperback writer looks back at Beatles book 40 years on
Hunter Davies’s seminal Beatles biography gave him rare access to John, Paul, George and Ringo, largely at a house in Kentish Town, writes Gerald Isaaman
The Beatles.
By Hunter Davies, Ebury Press
BEATLES Towers ought to be the name emblazoned on a house in quiet Boscastle Road, Kentish Town, and perhaps there should be a blue plaque on the wall too, reminding fans and passers-by alike that this is strictly Beatles territory.
Not that anyone wants to do down Liverpool as the birthplace of the boisterous boys who totally captured hearts and minds around the world with their magical music and lyrics.
But this is the place where Hunter Davies conceived his idea of a major Beatles biography decades ago, these are the rooms packed with memories where the lads congregated so often, and where Hunter wrote his hymn of praise to their remarkable talent.
So it is appropriate to celebrate the publication of Hunter’s seminal saga with a 40th anniversary edition, one to which he has added a new 20,000-word introduction packed fascinating with insights and recollections.
“I never expected the book to be in print still after all these years, and in all major countries,” he tells me. “Because even though I loved the Beatles dearly – and their music – I did expect other groups would come along and take their place, take over all the attention, sell even more records and be even more creative.
“But it just hasn’t happened. The longer away we get from the Beatles, the bigger they become. They gave us more than 100 songs, now classics, which will be hummed as long as we are on the planet with the breath to hum the tunes.”
It is a sensational saga, the more so when you read how Hunter hesitantly went to Paul McCartney with the idea, believing the mighty Beatles would want someone more distinguished than a Sunday Times hack to tell their story.
McCartney insisted that Brian Epstein, the manager whose talents promoted the Beatles with such audacious skill, should make the decision.
So off he went to Belgravia to pitch his bid for a definitive and authorised biography with the backing of his agent and publisher Heinemann, and offering to split his advance with Paul, John, George and Ringo.
That wasn’t necessary. The deal was done.
“Heinemann agreed to pay £3,000 for the book, which meant £2,000 to me, less 10 per cent, of course, for the agent’s fee,” Hunter recalls. “Even in those days it was not a large amount. Now, of course, it looks unbelievably small when I know that one subsequent writer of a Beatles book in the 1980s managed to earn 100 times that amount.
“I was very pleased. I had secured access to the four people I most wanted to meet. Even if it all collapsed for some reason, I would have been inside their homes and been in the recording studios and seen them at work.”
Indeed, everything has been amazingly exaggerated since then, sadly including the assassination of John Lennon and the death from cancer of George Harrison, which Hunter poignantly covers, along with Paul’s traumatic divorce from Heather Mills.
“I reckon that there are about 5,000 people around the world today who are living on the Beatles – writers, researchers, dealers, academics, performers, souvenir merchants, conference organisers, tourism, hospitality and museum folk,” says Hunter.
The prices Beatles memorabilia fetches today is now scarcely believable – the handwritten lyrics of A Day in the Life selling at auction in New York for £1.3million last year, he points out. And a set of Beatles autographs on a photograph can make £5,000 compared with £50 in 1981.
Hunter built up his own collection, before handing over to the British Museum in 1986 his 10 sets of original lyrics, which are now in the British Library manuscript room on permanent loan alongside the Magna Carta and works by Shakespeare, Beethoven and Wordsworth.
The British Library also has the rest of his memorabilia for safe keeping, the latest item being a yellowing scrap of paper with a 67-word forgotten – and unrecorded — lyric by George Harrison. Now it is on public display together with eight other major items, mostly picked up from the floor at Abbey Road studios.
“I asked all of the Beatles for examples of their handwriting and George gave me this,” says Hunter. “But a few months later he gave me the lyrics of Blue Jay Way. So I forgot all about it. Maybe it is a first or second draft of a song he wrote while playing his guitar.”
However, there have been unhappy moments at Beatles Towers that Hunter prefers not to remember, like the burglar who, in 1975, stole his copy of the Sergeant Pepper album, signed to him by all four.
“I claimed £3.50 on the insurance, which was the replacement cost of the album,” sighs Hunter.
“Today it’s worth around £50,000.”
And he reveals: “I had a loss of a different kind a few weeks ago. For 40 years since my book first came out, I’ve had the original prints of Ringo’s four photos of the Beatles, which he took specially for the book, hanging on the hall wall.
“I hadn’t realised that the upstairs lavatory was leaking, till mould began to appear on the frames. Alas, three of the prints are now ruined.”
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