The Beatles - Investigation of a Myth
1960 - 1962

by Eric Krasker (Paris)

© Eric Krasker 2002

Short summary of the book

My investigation work involved over seven years research and took me to both England and Germany, where I met many different people and studied dozens of original documents. While the main themes of the Beatles' story are now well known and the publication of The Beatles Anthology in 2000 made a further significant contribution to their history, there are many shadowy areas that are still open to debate and have sometimes resulted in deeprooted myths.

For this reason it is important today to go beyond the framework of standard biographies and chronicles and develop precise topics following a rigorous historical method, at last going from mere memory to history.

With this perspective in mind, I chose to work on five subjects falling within the period 1960-1962. I focused on this period for three precise reasons. Firstly, while it is very rich in all kinds of events, there is still much to be discovered. Secondly, there are a number of myths that are highly interesting to analyse and if possible disprove. Lastly, all the new information and archive documents that surface today relate mainly to this period.

It should be pointed out that this book contains first-hand information and previously unpublished photographs and documents about the Beatles, and for these reasons it is eagerly awaited - and already-publicized - on the Anglo-Saxon market.

The five subjects are as follows:

1. The Beatles and Tony Sheridan

In 1960, while the Beatles were serving their stage apprenticeship in the Sankt Pauli redlight district of Hamburg, they were invited to play with another English guitarist-singer, Tony Sheridan. The first rocker to play live on British TV and a real star in Hamburg, Sheridan was regarded as the "Elvis Presley of the Reeperbahn" and nicknamed "the teacher" by his fellow British musicians. In the spring of 1961, while sharing the Top Ten stage with the Beatles, he offered them the chance to back him on recordings he was making for Polydor. He thus gave them the opportunity to get their first professional recording contract, an agreement which bound them to producer Bert Kaempfert until 25 May 1962.

Today, thanks to the official Polydor recording sheets and other documents I was able to locate over the last few years in Germany, it is at last possible - after 40 years - to detail all the recording sessions the Beatles did with Sheridan in 1961 and 1962, and to determine which tracks were released and on which records. By separating myth from reality and eliminating grey areas, this study definitively and conclusively closes a much debated chapter of the group's history. The context in which these Polydor tracks were recorded and released has always been surrounded by confusion, even mystification. The main reason is that in these days the Beatles were not credited under their real name but under a "Beat Brothers" pseudonym, a name given to no fewer than four groups of different musicians who backed Tony Sheridan during the 1961-1962 period.

The lack of clear information about the way Tony Sheridan's My Bonnie LP - the very first album on which two Beatles' songs appeared - was recorded, prepared and released, has prompted endless speculation from specialists for over 30 years. Taking advantage of the ambiguous documentation, Swedish author Hans Olof Gottfridsson claimed in 1997 that another of the twelve songs featured on the LP, Swanee River, might also have been played by the Beatles, and the song was incorporated on a free EP included with the his book.

While it is perfectly correct that the Beatles recorded a version ofSwanee Riverwith Tony Sheridan on 24 May 1962, the docyments I discovered in the Polydor archives clearly prove that it cannot be the version included on the My Bonnie LP, as the first pressings of this album left the record plant in early April 1962. (The Beatles' version has almost certainly been lost forever). In October 2001, Gottfridsson was more or less forced to acknowledge this in the book included with a Bear Family box-set reissue of the Polydor recordings. However, his explanations did not contain any historical evidence to justify his sudden change of opinion.

Moreover, despite the fact that Bear Family admitted the only surviving version of Swanee River had no Beatles involvement - and so logically had nothing to do with the rest of the compilation - the song was nevertheless included, which only reinforced this persistent myth! This question is still today the subject of strong controversy, which I launched worldwide in specialist magazines in early 2002.

2. The Raymond Jones mystery

The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein claimed until his death in 1967 that he had first heard of the group when someone called Raymond Jones came into his shop on 28 October 196 to ask for the My Bonnie single that the Beatles had recorded with Tony Sheridan in Hamburg in June 1961. Today no fewer than three persons claim to be this mysterious Raymond Jones! Whether or not he actually existed, it is important to show that Brian Epstein used this story to present the Beatles as a "clean" group, and above all a group without a past.

It is easy to prove that Epstein did indeed know the Beatles before this date, mainly thanks to the efforts of Bill Harry, a close friend of the group and founder of the bi. monthly newspaper Mersey Beat, but also because the Beatles themselves used to buy their records in Epstein's shop in Whitechapel.

If Brian Epstein ensured he took all the credit for discovering the group, it was in fact because he was concerned about preserving the image of his proteges. If he had revealed the exact role of Bill Harry and Mersey Beat in the Beatles' rise to fame, Epstein would have run the risk of the media asking Harry for more information about the new Liverpool attraction.

Bill Harry did indeed know a lot about the Beatles' past, and by making clumsy revelations or releasing embarrassing documents he could have seriously tarnished the group's clean image. This is why Epstein implored Hamburg Star Club owner Manfred Weissleder not to circulate a handful of photographs in which the Beatles could be seen playing with tubes of Preludin amphetamines (the famous "Prellys"). Epstein also hastened to ask Bill Harry to hand over photos showing John Lennon walking along Hamburg's Reeperbahn in his underpants.

This chapter was recently updated following the publication of Spencer Leigh's book The Best Of Fellas at the end of 2002, which revealed the existence of a real Raymond Jones.

3. The death of Stuart Sutcliffe

What exactly caused the brain haemorrhage that killed fifth Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe at the age of 21, on 10 April 1962? This question would be ridiculous had it not given rise to a mass of interpretations, each as varied and incoherent as the next, all contrasting with a sober medical diagnosis that has not changed for 40 years. This chapter therefore contains a rigorous analysis of the different pronouncements and opinions, and focuses on a myth that has been promoted by some authors.

The post-mortem report did not reveal any internal injury of traumatic origin in Stuart Sutcliffe's brainpan. However, according to Pauline Sutcliffe, John Lennon had violently kicked Stuart in the head during a fight in Hamburg, and she continues to claim that it was the after-effects of this injury that caused her brother's death in 1962. By persisting with this theory, she links the formative period of a group destined for worldwide fame with a lurid quasi-fratricidal murder.

4. The sacking of Pete Best

On 16 August 1962, after two years of loyal service, the first Beatles' drummer Pete Best was officially informed by manager Brian Epstein that he was sacked from the group, because he wasn't "a good enough musician".

This unpleasant business scandalized many people in Liverpool, where groups of supporters of the dethroned Beatle demonstrated their disapproval for several weeks.

The former Beatle has never accepted the reason given for his sacking, and speculation on the real motive has never waned. Was he as bad a drummer as was claimed, and was his replacement Ringo Starr really appreciably better? Or was Pete Best far too popular with the group's female audience and sacked simply for reasons of jealousy? Was it the personality of the drummer, who was more retiring and discreet than the three others, that made the Beatles decide to get rid of him?

Was it the negative influence of his omnipresent mother? Or was Best sacked for unreliability because he missed too many concerts, or because he is supposed to have refused to adopt the famous Beatle haircut?

For the first time, all these questions are examined dispassionately and objectively. Thanks to numerous personal accounts, especially those of musicians who have worked with Pete Best and Ringo Starr both on stage and in the studio, and through an impartial analysis of all available tracks on which Best plays drums with the Beatles, it is now possible to establish that the sacking of the poor musician was in fact due to his mediocre drumming abilities.

This question formed the subject of a long and detailed article entitled "Why Pete Best was not a suitable drummer for the Beatles?" introducing my work in the magazine Beatles
Unlimited No:144 in March 1999.

5. The December 1962 Star Club recordings

In Spring 1977, new record label Lingasong released a double LP of live Beatles recordings. Of doubtful origin and legality, it did however contain 30 real historical recordings of the group recorded live in Hamburg's Star Club at the end of December 1962. On 8 May 1998, after nearly 21 years of court cases, the British High Court ruled in favour of the ex-Beatles by prohibiting any commercial exploitation of these recordings in any medium.

Why did the Star Club recordings arouse so much passion and cause such a long legal battle? And why were the tapes not simply put on the market by the Beatles own record company, EMI? The reader will find here a detailed reconstitution of the whole story of this contentious double LP, from the recording of three different gigs (not four as incorrectly claimed) on an amateur tape recorder to its release in vinyl format in 1977, and the subsequent "remastered" release on CD in the late 90s.

The reader will leam for instance that the original tapes disappeared at the end of the 60s, were rediscovered under a pile of rubbish in 1972, and then needed many hours of studio restoration work to make them commercially acceptable. The reader will also discover how record label Lingasong used a series of shrewd stratagems to get round legal obstacles, which as early as 1977 could have enabled EMI to block the release of these precious recordings - recordings which were always disowned by the ex-Beatles themselves.

To order Eric Krasker's excellent book (French text only available at this time), please Click Here

Back to the top

	Web www.beatlesireland.info

© 2006 Beatles Ireland. All rights reserved. No part of these publications may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without express written permission of Beatles Ireland.
Beatles Ireland is a non-profit site.