Standing In the Wings: The Beatles, Brian Epstein and Me
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Standing In the Wings: The Beatles, Brian Epstein and Me
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Overview
Joe Flannery has been described as the 'Secret Beatle', and as the business associate and partner of Brian Epstein, he became an integral part of The Beatles' management team during their rise to fame in the early 1960s.Standing in the Wings is Flannery's account of this fascinating era, which included the controversial dismissal of Pete Best from the group (nothing to do with London, but matters back in Liverpool), Brian Epstein's fragility, and the importance of the Star Club in Hamburg. This book is not simply a biography, as it also considers issues to do with sexuality in 1950s Liverpool, the vagaries of the music business at that time and the hazards of personal management in the 'swinging sixties'. At its heart, Standing in the Wings provides an in-depth look at Flannery's personal and professional relationship with Epstein and his close links with the Fab Four. Shortly before John Lennon's murder in 1980, it was Flannery who was one of the last people in the UK to talk to the great man. Indeed, Flannery remains one of the few 'Beatle people' in Liverpool to have the respect of the surviving Beatles, and this is reflected in this timely and revealing book.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752492933 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Standing in the Wings
The Beatles, Brian Epstein and Me
By Joe Flannery, Mike Brocken
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Joe FlanneryAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9293-3
CHAPTER 1
EARLY CHILDHOOD: 'IF YOU DON'T KICK A FOOTBALL, YOU'LL GET YOUR HEAD KICKED-IN'
THE FLANNERYS CAME to Liverpool, via Cornwall, from Ireland. They were peasants from the rural area just west of Dublin and came to England to escape the potato famine of 1845. Land was in short supply in Ireland at this time and this family, like many others, grew what they could to sustain themselves on insufficient and meagre soil. My great-grandfather was one of nine children and his parents originally had about 2 acres of farmland; however, they had decided to let 1 acre of it go because a good potato crop could sustain even a large family on only 1 acre. There would always be spuds, it seemed, and it didn't give the impression that it was worth the rent to farm 2 acres. Potatoes were the staple crop in Ireland at this time and it has been estimated that at least 4 million out of a total population of 8.5 million could, like the Flannerys, afford little else. But by the summer of 1845 potato blight had already appeared in England and by the autumn it had spread to Ireland; catastrophe ensued. Thousands starved to death, and the Flannerys gave up all they had – which was probably very little in the first place – and, along with countless others, decided to leave Ireland once and for all. The rural working classes in Ireland were faced with a very simple choice: stay and starve or leave and begin again. The Flannery family chose the latter and after initially trying their luck in the south-west of England in tin mining and fishing, they eventually ended up, along with many others of their kind, in the seaport of Liverpool.
By this time Liverpool was England's second city, unimaginably wealthy via trade and commerce (which included slavery up to the beginning of the nineteenth century); yet, not even a mile from the commercial heartland of the city could be found the densely overpopulated Scotland Road and Byrom Street districts. It was here that the vast majority of Irish immigrants were forced to live ... 'live'? Survive, more like, for dumped as they were amid the squalor, rats and degradation of Liverpool's infamous courtyard dwelling houses, they struggled to keep their heads above water in this city built on capital; they survived, but little else. A drab and dreary lack of choice seemingly followed them around; Irish and Catholic meant Scotland Road, docks and rats – it was pretty much as simple as that in a city that, one might argue, contributed to the destruction not creation of society. By the 1850s almost one-third of Britons lived in cities like Liverpool. What kind of places these actually were can only be estimated by our vivid imaginations. Smoke and filth dominated paltry water supplies and sanitation, street cleaning and open spaces, and epidemics of cholera and typhoid (together with respiratory and internal diseases) considerably shortened people's often miserable lives.
My father, at least on the surface, appears to be a typical example of a working-class Liverpudlian: second-generation, poverty-stricken, regional Irish gradually making some kind of cultural space for himself. But it was far more complicated than such class-based visages allow. By the time the twentieth century had dawned he was actually suffering at the hands of an immigrant-based class system that had evolved within the Liverpool-Irish communities. In order to survive in such a city, working-class immigrants were forced to create their own echelon systems. Pre-industrial experiences, traditions, wisdom, and to a degree moralities were no adequate guide to living as an immigrant in an urban environment such as in Liverpool but, as with the equally diasporic Italian communities, they were used as marks of authenticity, thus rank. Material incentives were often determined by one's so-called 'Irish' heritage and class while still in the 'old country'. As a consequence the Flannerys were considered in Liverpool to be rather low-class Irish, even by their own immigrant community's criteria. This had little to do with religion per se (that particular war raged essentially as an inter-district conflict), but more to do with the previous status of families back in Ireland.
So, as far as the Flannery side of my family was concerned, they appeared to possess very little kudos because of their rather rural hinterland background, and this increased the fragility of their social and economic position. Urbanity stretched to Dublin, it seemed, but not to its bucolic surroundings. Thus, although the Scotland Exchange political district of North Liverpool (where they were based) was fiercely Irish and regularly returned Irish Nationalist MPs for many years, this sense of Irishness and Irish nationalism was not cohesive and certainly not without its class echelons: hardly the 'united' district of Liverpool that local historians often spuriously claim it to be. How could it be? To deliberately misquote the great British industrial historian Eric Hobsbawm, if the immigrant Irishman in Liverpool earned more than the pittance he regarded as sufficient, he might indeed take it out in leisure, parties and alcohol, but he might also consider such financial extras as providing ways and means of rising through the ranks of his immigrant-based stratum. While Hobsbawm presumes that ignorance and thus poverty was all-pervading via these economic realities, he neglects how important money and influence could be. To have succeeded in the Liverpool of the early to mid-twentieth century, even as a second-generation Irish immigrant, was technically very difficult, but not impossible. If a rural or regional Irish background militated against progress, one way of jumping such hurdles lay within contacts: not necessarily exclusively from one's own community (especially if it appeared to lack cohesion), but rather from other diasporic communities, such, as in my father, Chris Flannery's, case, Jewish migrants. Rationality was required to come to the fore to understand the vagaries of trade across migrant communities; if it did and one possessed a skill (my father was a time-served joiner) progression was possible.
My mother's family, the Mottrams, were also Irish Catholics but from County Mayo. They lived on the so-called correct side of Scotland (known locally as 'Scottie') Road – the 'sophisticated' side. Before the deluge they had been well established back in Ireland and, by the early years of the twentieth century, had already commenced rising up the social ladder in Liverpool. During the First World War, they were making a reasonable living out of housing working horses (aka stable housing) and also became involved in a little light haulage or 'carting', as it was known locally. By the early 1930s my mother's brother Andy Mottram had expanded his small freight business to incorporate well-known Liverpool hauliers Cameron's. The Mottrams subsequently dropped their own moniker and traded on this well-established name for many years. Cameron's wagons could be seen regularly carrying flour along the dock road for the mills of Wilson King, south of the Albert Dock. Money was far from plentiful, however, for it was a very competitive trade and, particularly after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the family only really spluttered along, just like everybody else.
Mother was thus imbued with a sense of business acumen which featured prominently in both my own childhood and adulthood due to the fact that she was forced to finance the family largely from her own funds. This was due to my somewhat wayward father's tendencies to spend his (albeit hard-earned) money on wine, women and song (as Eric Hobsbawm suggests). So my own interpretation of my family history is rather pro-Mottram, for I feel that I have inherited very little from the Flannery side of my genes. I have always reflected the Mottram sensibilities and these appear to me to be my real family foundations. My sense of Irishness was affected perhaps negatively by the tribal nature of the aforesaid factional echelon system. While I fully acknowledge that my blood is Irish, I have never really considered it to be part of my make-up, as such. One of the great historical myths of our time is that all Liverpudlians, including the Beatles, have been positively affected by their Irish ancestry; I have always disputed this. Liverpool has absorbed many different cultures throughout history, not only that of the Irish (think of the geographical proximity to Wales, for example). Any Irish heritage in the Mottram family featured only sporadically because I suppose that, perhaps apart from the regular intervention of the Catholic Church, it was essentially considered irrelevant. They, like many other immigrant families, were a functional lot. They tended to concentrate on the here and now and there were few if any Mottram longings for an imaginary, pre-digested and idyllic homeland, rearticulated into a Liverpool hierarchy of influence. Liverpool, England, the United Kingdom became their collective home, and for me that was enough to be going along with!
Apart from my mother, my family hero was Uncle Peter, who was a Royal Air Force pilot prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. I still have great memories of Peter in his RAF blue serge, looking so smart. Being smart was an iconic statement for my young self. I enjoyed dressing well even as a child and the attention to detail on Peter's uniform fascinated me. Peter lived up to his uniform, too, at least in my eyes. He was very suave, sophisticated, with a typical RAF glint in his eye. He served throughout the war, contracting malaria in Burma and finally ending up at the Sealand Royal Air Force camp, near Chester, conveniently close enough at hand for us all (Chester was only an hour's bus or train ride from our Liverpool home). As suggested previously, however, Chris my father was regarded by the Mottrams as a little 'low class', a ladies' man and a bit 'fly'. He was treated with a great deal of suspicion by mother's family and received a hard time from them. I suppose they were, in their own way, snobs, and father reacted very badly to snobbery aimed directly at him for he was a 'maverick', recognised himself as such, and was determined that he was seen by others as an entrepreneur. He established a joinery workshop and although teetering on the brink of failure from time to time, he was able to connect with Jewish businesses across the city, seeing himself in the process at the centre of a rags-to-riches saga – thus expanding his locus of business, social and womanising activities. But there was always something of a rift from the moment that he and my mother were married, and it never went away.
So, resentment burned very deeply in my father, I think, and this coupled with the fact that he was always a ladies' man, somebody who really did desire women, meant that personal calamity and heartbreak never seemed very far from our door. My late mother described him as very handsome when they met. He apparently had a keen eye for detail and when they were courting, his cap, silk scarf and white tennis shoes were the height of fashion on Scotland Road! Six siblings were born between 1926 and 1939, the eldest being my sister Jean and the youngest my brother Peter (later 'Lee Curtis'). Even when Jean was born in September 1926 and, despite the fact that father doted on his daughter, mother felt ill at ease. It was as if father had a restlessness that simply could not be satiated by a loving family relationship. The all-round disapproval of the Mottrams obviously added to his paranoia for, according to my mother, they were never reluctant to remind both of them that Agnes (mother) had effectively married beneath her.
Father was, and was also known to be, very quick and useful with his fists. It was a man's world, no doubt about it, and in his eyes a real man had to watch his back. But he took to using his power whenever it pleased him and his violence began to rule our lives. I was born in 1931 and as I grew I became increasingly aware of two distinct atmospheres: one created by my mother's unconditional love, and another that sprung from my father's violent presence. A child of 3 or 4 may not know a great deal in the conventional sense of the word but he or she feels a lot. Just like my old friend John Lennon, I've always been a great believer in karma. I probably instinctively detected negative karma from my father from a very early age. Funnily enough, the first kind of memory (more of an image or a scene from a play than a memory, as such) that I have is a strange one. I distinctly remember my mother falling down the stairs with my father shouting, at the top, on the landing. I latterly discussed this with mother on more than one occasion and she stated, categorically, that the only time this happened in my presence, so to speak, was when she was carrying me. And yet I remember it as if it were yesterday. Father often moved very fast and silently when his violence came to the fore. No one else would be present (at least that's what he thought) and he would leave little trace of damage, at least physically. Those areas that were bruised and swollen were usually covered by lint, clothing and dignity.
It became increasingly apparent to my less-than-devoted father after I had reached the age of about 7 or 8 that I was never going to, metaphorically speaking, 'play football' – with all of the implications that this must have carried for him. He would almost threaten me, telling me that if I didn't start kicking a ball around then people would start to question him as a father. He frightened me. I didn't understand what he was going on about. I mean, I didn't dislike football, and would occasionally join in with a few other lads in the street, but football as a symbol came to mean so much more to him than me as the years went by. One of the few areas that a man could relate to a boy was through masculinity and he deeply resented the fact that the machismo that was part of physical contact sport was never part of my make-up. Not only had my father apparently married into a bunch of people who (he alleged) looked down on him from a higher social status, but he had also been provided with a son who was a 'wet Nellie'. I became immersed in psychological tug of war between my parents' desires for their son. I suppose that it resulted, in the long run, in my mother's everlasting love and my father's everlasting shame. It destroyed him that I was not of his mentality. He was ashamed that I could never use my fists. He was chagrined that I was a Mottram and not (by any stretch of his imagination) a Flannery. Yet I was proud of his name, and wanted him to be proud of me – but how?
As I look back upon these rather faded memories of childhood in the Liverpool of the 1930s, I can honestly say that, despite the fear that my father provoked, it was generally more than compensated by the love of my mother and her family. And, even though I cannot truthfully say that I have ever really loved my father, as such, as a consequence of the suffering that he inflicted upon my mother and myself, I feel I can at least try to understand his fatal flaw. The nexus of his crisis, I think, revolved around the status of family life, for he was forever confused about what he regarded as its shackles. I believe he viewed the family as something of a fallacy. Of course the fact that it remains at the centre of Western society's social universe, irrespective of whether it always works or not, is something of a delusion. I have known young people for whom the family has only meant misery. It is an institution that is regarded as somehow natural, but this has never fully explained itself to me. How can it be natural for somebody such as my father to be evidently so miserable after being compelled to involve himself in it? And don't tell me that he had a choice, for there was no choice at all. In the 1920s and 1930s, one didn't choose anything very much. You grew up and you got married.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Standing in the Wings by Joe Flannery, Mike Brocken. Copyright © 2013 Joe Flannery. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title,Dedication,
Foreword,
Introduction,
1 Early Childhood,
2 Ivor Novello's Poodles,
3 A Dutiful Engagement and National Service,
4 One or Two Home Truths,
5 'Don't worry Mr Loss, I won't let you down',
6 The Life of Brian plus Teenage Rebels and Further Detours,
7 Jack Good, Lee Curtis and Even More Detours,
8 The Beatles at Gardner Road, Brian Epstein and Merseybeat,
9 The Beginning of the Parting of the Ways and the Pete Best Affair,
10 The Very Root of Meaning,
11 Germany Calling,
12 Liverbirds in Love: The Decline and Fall of Carlton Brooke,
13 This is the End, Beautiful Friend,
Postscript: 'Excuse me, Mr Lennon, a Mr Flannery's on the phone',
Appendix: A Mayfield Records Discography,
Plates,
Copyright,