Before they went out, they’d smooth out the beds. Then, all of a sudden, it’s cut sharp and smart, with a fringe. And at the beginning, their hair was slicked back. Men with long hair were considered controversial at the time. He was adamant about a fresh, clean look. It was Epstein who chose their matching outfits. He knew there was promotional value if someone posed with the group and then his hometown paper printed a shot, calling their own guy “the fifth Beatle.”Įpstein loved the Beatles and they loved him. Epstein would let in even local reporters from the provinces. If people made requests nicely, it wasn’t in him to say no. He spoke like he came from Eton or Oxford. But I’d feel rather pleased with myself for what I’d done that day. I’d spend part of every night in my underwear, on my kneecaps, sweating in a sealed-off bathroom. You’d set up a transmitter and attach it to the bedroom phone and send three or four “selects” it would take about eight minutes to transmit each picture. You used the bathtub to wash the prints and negatives, drying them with a hair dryer. When you flipped the light on, you’d see a hellish mess: your hands and the bedsheet stained yellow. I’d choose the best frames, print them wet, then fix them with fixer in a small tank. My instructions from the picture desk would be: “Be sure you get Paul in the picture, old boy.” As a photographer, you could have two or three Beatles in a shot, but you always had to have Paul. (He would even marry a photographer-his first wife, Linda Eastman.) The picture editors at the Express understood Paul’s magnetism: He was the handsomest and you looked at him right away. He knew instinctively how to play to a camera. I got down on the floor, photographing, and noticed Paul had positioned himself right in the center, reading a letter. “I’ve always thought you were the cutest Beatle.” Stuff like that. The four of them sat on the rug, reading them out loud. Word had gotten out that the band was staying at the George V, so cards and letters were piling up. One day they were still in pajamas and robes when one of their road managers-Neil Aspinall or Mal Evans-came in with a big sack of mail. And I had my shot: the Beatles composing “I Feel Fine.” January 17 And as John and Paul kept at it on the piano, Ringo, in a black turtleneck, came over and stood next to George. They appeared to be writing a song right in front of me. Although John was later credited with writing the riff-influenced by Bobby Parker’s song “Watch Your Step”-the way I heard it that day was George coming up with it. John started humming what I would later recognize as the tune to “Baby’s good to me, you know / She’s happy as can be, you know / She said so…” But they got stuck: Where should it go after the melody? George wandered over with his guitar and played a catchy rhythm-and-blues riff, plucking away. At one point, John pulled up a chair and started tinkering. It wasn’t like they’d built in time to compose-they had to do it on the fly.
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