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4 CONTENTS Epigraph Soundtrack Introduction CHAPTER ONE Gentlemen or Thugs? CHAPTER TWO Shit, That s the Beatles! CHAPTER THREE A Particular Form of Snobbery CHAPTER FOUR Yankophilia CHAPTER FIVE Politics and Imagecraft CHAPTER SIX Wheel-Dealing in the Pop Jungle Epilogue Photographs Shout Outs About the Author Notes Selected Bibliography Index 4

5 For my parents 5

6 The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD 6

7 SOUNDTRACK (Recommended) Shimmy Shake (2:28) (Live at the Star Club) Bo Diddley Pretty Thing (2:48) The Shirelles Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (2:43) Love Me Do (2:22) Come On (1:48) I Wanna Be Your Man (2:00) I Wanna Be Your Man (1:49) Yesterday (2:03) As Tears Go By (2:45) Bob Dylan Girl from the North Country (3:22) The Kinks 7

8 See My Friends (2:50) The Byrds Bells of Rhymney (3:35) The Animals We Gotta Get Out of This Place (3:17) Drive My Car (2:28) Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (2:05) Paint It, Black (3:22) (stereo album mix) Stupid Girl (2:55) Let s Spend the Night Together (3:36) All You Need Is Love (3:47) We Love You (4:35) Street Fighting Man (3:16) Revolution (3:21) Hey Jude (7:11) 8

9 The Dirty Mac Yer Blues (4:39) (Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus) Yoko Ono Whole Lotta Yoko (5:03) (Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus) Sympathy for the Devil (8:52) (Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus) 9

10 INTRODUCTION In the summer of 1968, Mick Jagger attended a birthday party in his honor at a hip, new Moroccan-style bar called the Vesuvio Club one of the best clubs London has ever seen, remembered Tony Sanchez, one of its proprietors. Under black lights and beautiful tapestries, some of London s trendiest models, artists, and pop singers lounged around on huge cushions and took pulls from Turkish hookahs, while a decorated helium-filled dirigible floated aimlessly around the room. As a special treat, Mick brought along an advance pressing of the Stones forthcoming album, Beggars Banquet, and when it played over the club s speakers, people flooded the dance floor. Just as the crowd was leaping around and celebrating the record which would soon win accolades as the best Stones album to date Paul McCartney strolled in and passed Sanchez a copy of the Beatles forthcoming single, Hey Jude / Revolution, which had never before been heard by anyone outside of the group s charmed inner circle. As Sanchez remembered, the slow thundering buildup of Hey Jude shook the club, and the crowd demanded that the seven-minute song be played again and again. Finally, the club s disc jockey played the next song, and everyone heard John Lennon s nasal voice pumping out Revolution. When it was over, Sanchez said, Mick looked peeved. had upstaged him. It was a wicked piece of promotional one-upsmanship, remembered Tony Barrow, the Beatles press officer. By that time, the mostly good-natured rivalry between the Beatles and the Stones had been going on for about four years. Although the Beatles were more commercially successful than the Stones, throughout the 1960s the two groups nevertheless competed for record sales, cultural influence, and aesthetic credibility. Teens on both sides of the Atlantic defined themselves by whether they preferred the Beatles or the Stones. If you truly loved pop music in the 1960s... there was no ducking the choice and no cop-out third option, one writer remarked. You could dance with them both, but there could never be any doubt about which one you d take home. Initially the rivalry was strongest in England. began inspiring mass adulation among young teenage girls in the spring of 1963, but it soon became apparent that the group s invigorating music and seductive charm worked on adults as well. The Fab Four couldn t quite win over everyone they were too unusual for that but conventional wisdom held that the Beatles were a wonderful tonic to a society that was finally ready to shed the last vestiges of Victorian Era restraint. Their effect on British popular culture was said to be salutary, pitch-perfect, and perfectly timed. provoked a different reaction. Pale and unkempt, they did not bother with stage uniforms, and they were not often polite. Instead of laboring to win the 10