The Beatles (Pt. 1): Stoned with Dylan, Dosed with Acid, Outrunning Knife Wielding Maniacs, and Driving the World to the Brink with Beatlemania
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Double Elvis.

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Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about the Beatles are insane. In their early years as a band, they swallowed more speed than food. They inspired a generation and provoked insanity, driving one fan to slash a hotel maid to pieces when she wouldn't disclose which rooms the band were staying in. They pulled America and entire country out of a deep state of mourning and skyrocketed youth culture into a new era.

They tried marijuana for the first time with none other than Bob Dylan. By accident, they were turned on by LSD, dosed with a drug that would shape their musical creativity in world-changing ways.

And through all the drugs and all the screams, they made great music. Quite literally, some of the greatest music ever made. Truly exciting rock and roll music. And that music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Oompa Pantomime MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Love Letters in the Sand by Pat Boone.

And why would I play you that specific slice of heartbreak cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on July 6, 1957. And that was the day that John Lennon and Paul McCartney met, sparking a friendship that would change popular music forever.

On this, part one of a special two-part episode. Pep pills, dosing dentists, violent obsessed fans, and four lads who shook the world with excitement. The Beatles. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland.

Hundreds of years from now, Beatles songwriter Paul McCartney will be regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Right up there with Johann Sebastian Bach, George Gershwin, and Duke Ellington.

Paul McCartney enjoys the reverence of genius songwriting peers like Brian Wilson and Paul Simon, as well as respect from stellar next-generation icons like Bruce Springsteen and Bono. And to this day, McCartney is rightly regarded as a living treasure, held in the highest esteem by today's biggest stars, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Kanye West, and others.

and for good reason. His band, The Beatles, are the greatest rock and roll band of all time. There, I said it. As much as it pains me to do so, The Beatles, not The Rolling Stones. More than The Stones, more than The Dead, The Doors, and more so than Crosby, Stills, Nash, and whoever the fuck, The Beatles wrote and recorded generation-defining pop music that is as influential and successful today as it was when it was released over a half a century ago.

The Beatles sold more than 1.6 billion singles in the United States alone. Worldwide album sales for the Beatles are north of 600 million. The band have racked up more number one singles than any other band in the history of music. The McCartney penned Beatles single, Hey Jude, hung tough in the number one slot for a staggering 23 weeks. Upwards of 3,000 artists have covered another McCartney composition yesterday, making it the most covered song of all time.

Beyond all of the statistical data, the Beatles, first in Britain and then upon arriving in the United States for the first time in January of 1964, caused something approaching mass hysteria with Beatlemania, inspiring millions of new fans to flood streets, airports, train stations, and hotels, all in an effort to get a real-life glimpse of Paul McCartney and his three Liverpool bandmates, his songwriting partner John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.

Throughout their recording career, the Beatles created numerous controversies over innocuous comments about drugs, God, and whatever else crossed their minds while under the harsh glare of public scrutiny. And when they broke up in 1970, the public wouldn't accept it. Rumors of their impending return never ceased until John Lennon was gunned down by a crazed lunatic with a Holden Caulfield complex in 1980.

Paul McCartney, some 20 something years after the Beatles broke up, was asked by an interviewer to sum up the Beatles after all the sales and success and scandal. McCartney, perhaps with a tinge of false modesty, but accurate nonetheless, told the interviewer that when all was said and done, quote, "The Beatles were always a great little band, nothing more, nothing less." Who knows what he was actually thinking when he gave that answer, but I like to think that it was more than nostalgia.

There is an intoxicating type of excitement a band enjoys upon their earliest ascent. It is unlike anything else. This excitement happens for most bands of any notoriety, even bands you've never heard of but who put themselves on a track towards success or stardom.

Of course, most of them never make it, but still, that feeling during their initial rise cannot be denied. It's real and it's palpable, heady, addictive. Every day brings a new surprise. Someone else wants you for one amazing opportunity or another, and of course, at the end of the day, it's showtime. When you take the stage to deafening applause and set off a new type of energy with your playing that is somewhere between sexual ecstasy and godliness.

This isn't hyperbole, it's common. Bands spend their careers chasing this feeling, trying to relive it. That early excitement cannot be beat, and again, this feeling isn't reserved just for bands that go on to be famous. Bar bands, even cover bands, experience some level of this type of excitement. So imagine what this type of excitement was like for the Beatles. Imagine what Paul McCartney was really getting at when he said that the Beatles were always a great little band, nothing more, nothing less.

It's a type of excitement that you and I will never really know. It doesn't matter how successful any of us become, or how close our seats have been at various rock shows and concerts, or how many backstages we've been lucky enough to scam our way into, or how many rock stars or groupies we've slept with. We will never experience anything like the excitement the Beatles experienced during their rise as pop stars, when they were just a quote-unquote "great little band," nothing more, nothing less.

Paul McCartney knew when he uttered those words that even he would never experience that excitement again. Spring, 1965. The Beatles were on set in London filming their second feature film, Help. And the story from John and George was a welcome distraction from the boredom of filmmaking.

John couldn't shut up about it. Even George, normally short on words, was eager to recount the previous night's incredible events. Ringo listened to them eagerly, and Paul, he wasn't jealous. He was annoyed. He missed out on something big the night before, and he knew it.

George's friend, the dentist, was a better host than any of those present thought he'd be. Dr. John Riley's Strathairn Place flat was cozy, posh, of course, and the dinner and drinks that he served his guests, George Harrison, his girlfriend Patty Boyd, John Lennon, and his wife Cynthia, were a notch above most English fare, even from London's finest restaurants at the time.

John could have done without the Burt Bacharach solo album being played over and over again. But John was inclined to bite his sharp tongue and let the dentist's voluptuous wife have her way with the turntable, if it meant he got to keep watching her bend over in front of it to repeatedly flip the record. Dinner was over and the three couples were lounging about, having already drunk their post-meal cups of coffee, a normal ritual made strange by the bizarre way the dentist dropped the sugar cubes into their cups.

He made such a big show of it, like he was giving them communion or something, trying hard to impress, as most now did when in the presence of the Beatles. John would never get used to it. It was a particularly annoying and alienating effect of fame. If George was annoyed, he didn't show it. Cynthia and Patty were too polite to show anything but gratitude.

But now the four guests were all feeling the same sensation, a subtle chest swell of excitement brimming up in all of them at the same time. But for what? Seconds ago, they were planning their polite escape out of the hip dentist's flat and away from his curvy but boring wife towards somewhere more exciting. Perhaps the Pickwick Club. It was London, 1965, swinging. Surely there was something more happening going on.

The dentist's wife turned the record over, again. Bacharach's 24 hours from Tulsa came crackling out of the speakers for what seemed like the millionth time that evening. John couldn't keep quiet. "For fuck's sake, Bert, leave some for Jean Pitney." As far as John Lennon quips go, this one wasn't all that witty or humorous. Nonetheless, George, Patty, Cynthia, and John tore themselves up with laughter.

They couldn't stop. John literally fell out of his chair. Snot ran from George's nose. Patty swore she wet herself. And Cynthia kept trying to suppress her laughter, and the more she did, the more she broke up. So did John, George, and Cynthia. In seconds, they were all a mess. Tears streaming from their eyes. Non-stop belly laughs. George was helpless to make his laughter cease. He kept trying to mouth the word "stop" to John, who was now adding to the hilarity by making bizarre faces at the group to propel them further into hysterics.

Oddly, the dentist and his wife did not find the situation all that funny. They looked on at the two Beatles and their dates with amusement, incisive grins on their faces. Despite his current state, whatever it was, John Lennon was too smart, too observant not to notice that his hosts were on about something. "Well," he asked, "do the good dentist and his wife find Mr. Bacharach beyond reproach?" And the dentist answered insecurely, "No, maybe not quite."

Well then, George asked, why the long tooth? I mean face. More giggles. We're just observing, his wife answered. The humor John was feeling a moment ago quickly turned to annoyance, almost anger. Observing what, he asked. The effects, the dentist replied. Effects of what, they all wanted to know. The LSD, came the answer from the dentist.

"Of course," John thought, ignoring the anger settling in his stomach. George immediately caught on too. "The sugar cubes and the coffee," he blurted out. The dentist nodded, so did his wife. Their grins widened with madness. The anger John was feeling quickly turned to fear. Cynthia felt the chill coming off of her husband and she nearly pissed herself like Patty. Patty's brain went into full-on paranoid overdrive.

She heard about this drug, how it was used for orgies in America by Timothy Leary's weird cult. She wasn't about to get into bed with the dentist and his wife, and of course not with John and Cynthia. John's survival instincts kicked in. He leapt from the floor, grabbed Cynthia, their coats, George and Patty followed suit. Right then, Doc, time to go. As they made their way to the door, panic set in. For the recently dosed, the fear was driven by both the unknown and the known.

The unknown. What would this new drug they'd unwittingly taken do to them? The rumors about its effects were already the stuff of urban legend. Would they jump out of the window of the good dentist's flat and try to fly? Would they turn into sex-crazed maniacs? Would their brains ever return to normal after the drug wore off? Would it even wear off? And would they laugh themselves to death?

John and George, despite their paranoia, also knew this:

They were in for one hell of a ride for the next seven hours. It was all terribly exciting. Adventure lay ahead. To the Mini Cooper!

Both Beatles and their date scrammed out of Dr. Riley's flat against his protests. Where would they go? What would they do? How would they survive without him as their guide through tangerine trees and marmalade skies? They had no answers, but they knew they needed to lose the dentist and his wife. They ran downstairs and out to the sidewalk with the dentist hot on their heels. They jammed themselves into George's Mini Cooper knowing full well there would be no room for their former host and his wife in the tiny car.

George stepped on the gas and furiously started making his way through the tiny streets of London at breakneck speeds. The dentist and his wife trailed in his Jag Roadster. The chase scene they found themselves in led to hilarity. Inside the Mini, they were cutting up again as George dodged pedestrians and ignored traffic signs. He channeled James Bond and Goldfinger outrunning the bad guys.

Outside, the passing lights grew long, tails, tracers. The wind of the Mini's engine morphed into a low roar. John looked back at the dentist gaining on them. He heard the flying monkeys theme from The Wizard of Oz fill his head. Dum-pa-dum-pa-da-da, dum-pa-dum-pa-da-da.

George floored it. Patty and Cynthia locked eyes in mutual support. The faces on the pedestrians outside grew long, morphed by fear into psychedelic munchies and screams. John heard the horror in his head now. Building, building, building. The sound was piercing, rising, peaking, and then... Nothing. George had braked. The car had come to a full stop.

They were outside the Pickwick Club. A crowd of London's swingiest were queued up for entry. Paddy, Klaus, and Gibson were performing inside, and the buzz was that the trio were destined to be the next big thing, possibly dethroning the Fab Four. George and John were not worried, but their curiosity drove them here, perhaps subliminally, to see what all the fuss was about.

John, Cynthia, George, and Patty bounded out of the mini and hot-stepped it toward the club's entrance. Cynthia spotted the dentist's jag rounding the corner and beelining it toward them. They moved faster. The crowd recognized them and despite their hipness, took their cues from last year's A Hard Day's Night and started to swarm the two couples who bulldozed their bodies into the assembling mass and further toward the entrance.

George, Patty, John, Cynthia, they were overcome by the smells. Expensive perfume, aftershave, hairspray, greasy pomade, cigarette smoke, grass. It all melded into an invasive potpourri of excitement that propelled them forward, into the smothering crowd, toward the Pickwick Club's front door, to get inside, to see, to hear what all the hype was about.

to get away from the dentist who is now out of his park jag and hot on their heels out on the street. They needed to get into the hula-baloo in front of the jukebox jury. They needed to hear Patty, Klaus, and Gibson, who were surely the next big thing. Look at this crowd. The Beatles were sunk.

But it didn't matter. They had each other. The four of them. They'd move further out into the country. Live off the land like true working class heroes. Leave the good dentist and Burt Bacharach and the tedium of filmmaking and pressures of pop stardom and the sweaty smart set smell of success filling their nostrils and the screaming pedestrians and the whining mini Coopers and growling Jaguars and James Bond and Timothy Leary and the flying monkeys. They'd leave it all behind. All of it.

They just needed to get away from the wicked dentist and his boring wife and through this crowd and inside the Pickwick Club to hear Patty, Klaus, and Gibson and accept their fate, grab their tails, tuck them between their legs, and head out into oblivion to never be heard from again. But what about Paul and Ringo? With that thought, John, George, and their dates made it to the entrance and were granted entry straight away by the doorman. Finally.

Immediately upon entering, all eyes were on them and they were frozen still. The paranoia nearly swallowed them.

They each felt the walls of their skulls closing in as every eye in the club landed on them, judging them, casting them out, banishing them to the lies of obscurity they deserved. John felt at the worst, was justified for the sin of pop stardom. Patti Klaus and Gibson raged on stage like the holy trinity of rock and roll nowness that they were, barreling through their new original track rejected to the pleasure of most every swinging dick and miniskirt in the club.

But John, George, Cynthia, and Patty heard something quite different. They heard the walls closing in. They heard the dentist and his boring wife breathing down their necks. They heard the tolling bell. Time to go. They heard Paul and Ringo in their heads berating them. They heard their future calling. There was music to make after all. Patty, Klaus, and Gibson, this wasn't music. This was a Brian Epstein PR stunt masquerading as music. John, George...

They were suddenly never more certain of their ability, of their voice, the importance of what they had to say. And now, somehow, the doors to their own perception of what was possible musically had been flung wide open, and there was nothing that was going to stop them from beginning what they'd set out to become four years earlier on stage within the sweaty confines of Liverpool's Cavern Club. A great little band. Nothing more, nothing less.

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Paul couldn't believe what he was hearing. The bit about the car chase with the dentist and Patty, Klaus, and Gibson bombing at the pickwick was interesting, but to him what was more interesting was what happened later in the evening when John and George retreated back to John's place in the suburbs. Spurred by LSD, John and George each had different explosions of creativity.

George with his guitar, John with his drawing. George played some of the things he'd worked up and John shared his illustrations and Ringo quickly snatched them. Paul was less moved by the output and more inspired by the excitement in his bandmates' retelling of their separate creative experiences. And Paul wanted in. This had been brimming for some time. The promise of creative expression beyond their wildest imaginations to the use of illicit drugs.

At first, back in Hamburg and then in Liverpool, they were aided by the pills. But the creative possibilities through drug use didn't emerge until a year ago when they were introduced to Bob Dylan. America, August 1964. The screams never stopped. Neither did the police sirens, at least not when they were outside the hotel.

It was screaming from the lobby to the car, screaming from the car to the venue, screaming non-stop while they played on stage, screaming from the stage to the exiting vehicle. At Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, thousands of screaming fans watched their beloved Beatles exit the facility, this time in a helicopter. Chopper blades a welcome respite from the screams.

And there were more screams heard when the band transitioned from their helicopter to the armored truck to taxi back to their hotel. But when they arrived at New York City's Delmonica Hotel on Park Avenue on 59th, they were, of course, greeted by more screaming fans. And the Beatles sprinted inside to the service entrance and were met yet again with more screams.

Once upstairs and into their adjoining suites, the screams were replaced by barely muffled excitable murmurs from the awaiting groupies assembled by their road manager who had put the girls to work ironing the boys' clothes. It was intense and exciting. The pills kept them one step ahead of the fans, and there was no time to reflect on the insanity of it all. The pressure was non-stop and the success unprecedented.

And they were bigger than Elvis, bigger than Sinatra. Soon they'd make the mistake of believing they were bigger even than Jesus. But despite their fame, they weren't as experienced as Zimmerman. Bob Dylan's entrance into the inner sanctum of Beatlemania was negotiated by a friendly journalist. And while a sizable amount of Americans worried about the Beatles corrupting the American youth, Bob Dylan worried about corrupting the Beatles.

Possession of marijuana in New York City in 1964 was a serious offense. It was a serious offense anywhere in the USA under mandatory federal sentencing laws that carried two to ten years and penalties up to 20 grand for possession. Plus, it made you grow hair on your palms and masturbate like a furious caged monkey. I kid. Bob Dylan did not kid, and he didn't care about the legality of marijuana. But the Beatles did. They were afraid of the illicit drug.

It wasn't the hairy palms or the masturbating like a monkey stuff. They were pretty sure Ringo was already guilty of both. But the Beatles' ignorance in 1964 was such that they saw no distinction between pot and heroin. People who used either were horrible junkies. Pot wasn't like pills. Pills were issued over the counter by little old men in white pharmacist coats. All very proper. Pot was smuggled into your hotel room by sketchy beat poets who avoided eye contact.

which was exactly what Bob Dylan was doing at the moment. His very large and very domineering personal assistant barreled him through the crowd of fans outside the hotel. Once inside the lobby, he commandeered two police officers to take them upstairs to the Beatles, explaining that he was there with THE Bob Dylan and that they were invited. The cops did what they were told. They hit the elevator, then the hall, then knocked on the doors outside the Beatles' suite. Two more cops opened the door.

Dylan was shocked. Cops hanging out with pop stars? They entered.

In the first room nearest the entrance, a crowd of hangers-on that included Peter, Paul, and Mary, a group that existed for the sole purpose of commercializing the songs that he, Bob Dylan, wrote. A couple members of the Kingston Trio, some newspapermen, and a few godly-dressed dudes that could only be disc jockeys. And Dylan ignored them all. His assistant kept him moving. Through the adjoining rooms and back into the Beatles' personal suite, where they alone were relaxing post-show with their manager, Brian Epstein.

The introductions were awkward. Drinks were arranged, pills were offered. Dylan refused and offered some pot instead. All four of the Beatles' faces went blank. Brian explained that that just wasn't the sort of thing that they did. Dylan pressed John Lennon, wanting him to explain his song then, with the lyrics, "I get high, I get high." John defended himself, "Those aren't the words. It goes, 'I can't hide, I can't hide.'"

And Dylan did that little thing with his head, a slow tilt to his left, perfectly timed with a wry smile as if to say, so do you want to smoke some pot or what? John was eager to experiment, Paul, George and Ringo as well. Dylan nodded to his man who nodded to Brian Epstein, who then set about securing the room.

Doors shut, locks bolted, drapes drawn, towels pressed to the space between the doors and the floors. It was all terribly exciting. There were, after all, two policemen two rooms away. Dylan pulled out his stash and began rolling a joint. When he finished, he lit the joint, drew a hit from it, held it, exhaled, and then explained to the group how to do just as he had done in order to smoke it correctly for its desired effect.

John impatiently snatched the joint from Dylan's hand and brought it near to his lips but then thought better of it and passed it to Ringo who redeemed his quote-unquote "royal taster." Ringo smoked the whole thing. Dylan smiled, rolled more joints and passed them all around. The smell was undeniable, the feeling was miraculous. Everything fell away. The screams, the swirl of the helicopter blades, the pressure, the insanity. It was all replaced by laughter. Near non-stop laughter.

And then, inevitably, the question hit each of them. John, Paul, George, and Ringo at different points during their comedown. How the hell had this happened to them? Ensconced away in a five-star hotel suite, hidden away from fans who were ready to tear them limb from limb. Bigger than Elvis, higher than Dylan, suddenly much more than just a great little band. We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

The damn airplane wouldn't move. They'd been on the tarmac for an eternity. For what? Paul McCartney didn't know, but it looked like more delays. Out his pressure-treated plane window, he could see a small group of fans breaking past airport security. Young rabid girls sprinting and screaming across the tarmac straight toward their plane. At first, Paul was merely amused, but as the group grew nearer and he saw their faces, he started to feel something else. Fear. Fear.

These fans were determined and they weren't stopping. Furthermore, each had that rabid look about them, possessed. This was something more than fandom. It was obsession, and sometimes obsession can be dangerous. Paul learned this that morning over breakfast at the hotel the Beatles had spent the previous night in, in Houston.

Blood was everywhere, and the body of the young chambermaid was slashed to ribbons. She was just doing her job, cleaning hotel rooms. Professional as she was, when the crazed Beatles fan came upon her in the hotel hallway the night before and demanded to know which rooms the Beatles were staying in, she of course refused to tell. It would prove to be a fatal decision.

Whatever emotions Paul McCartney had over the incident, they now took a back seat to the matter at hand. The handful of crazed fans climbing all over the plane, trying to violently gain entry to smother their Beatles. When they pried at the door, they smashed coke bottles at the windows. They of course screamed and then screamed some more until airport security ultimately pried them off and the Beatles' plane was allowed to finally taxi toward takeoff.

It was jarring, but not nearly as jarring as a few months prior in New York City on February 9th, 1964, the day of the Beatles' first live performance on American television on the widely popular Ed Sullivan Show.

It was a performance that would be seen by an incredible audience of 73 million people. 73 million people. At a time in American history when the entire country's population was roughly only 189 million. Meaning that more than a third of the entire nation watched the Beatles' performance. Whatever hope the country had for its future, it was shot down by an assassin in Dallas two and a half months prior on November 22nd, 1963.

America's prince, President John F. Kennedy, was taken out and so too were America's hopes and dreams. That December was bleak. America mourned. But on December 10th, CBS Evening News aired a five-minute piece about a new phenomenon from England called Beatlemania.

four kids with long mop-top hairdos who were creating a sensation with driving backbeats and undeniable hooks. Their first U.S. single, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, was released in the States on December 26, 1963, and it was an instant hit, selling so many copies in its first three days of release that the Beatles' U.S. record label, Capitol Records, had a contract with competitors Columbia and RCA Records to press copies of the single to keep up with demand.

And by the time the Beatles hit the stage at CBS Studio 50 in Times Square that night for Ed Sullivan's audience, Americans far and wide were poised to be rapped on high. Certainly, America's youth were paying attention. Juvenile delinquency in New York City in 1964 had nearly doubled over the 10 years prior.

Baby boomers were coming of age and they were violent and angry in their adolescence. But on that night, they say the crime stopped in New York City. At least crimes committed by those under 18.

There were no hubcaps being stripped off of Bonnevilles and Bay Ridge, no purse snatchings in Forest Hills, no muggings in Harlem, no rapes, no rumbles in the park. The streets were dull and quiet that night, but living rooms were alight with the look and the sound and the excitement of the Beatles.

*music*

Hamburg, Germany, 1962. It was the Beatles' second stint to the post-war city of sin. Neon-lit brothels, live sex shows, alcohol, amphetamines, rock and roll music. John, Paul, George, and Ringo, they were boys when they arrived and they'd be men when they left. Fame wasn't yet part of the equation. Hamburg, the Star Club, and before that, the Kaiserkeller. It was all about learning their craft.

Eight hours a night on stage playing early rock and roll, Tin Pan Alley, and Rhythm and Blues standards to rowdy German thieves, American GIs, prostitutes, and visiting tourists. The experience made them as a band. It fused them from a group of musicians into a singular creative machine, into apt showmen, quick-witted song and dance men capable of doing just about anything to keep the inebriated locals entertained.

Speed was an occupational necessity. Amphetamines, or prelis as they were called, were as important to the Beatles on stage as alcohol was to the audience off stage. It kept the band fueled and fearless. Night after night, they barreled through song after song with supernatural energy and charisma. The drug made them invincible, injected their personalities with even more confidence than the four charismatic young Liverpoolians already had, which was saying something.

To begin with, neither John Paul George or Rinko were short on confidence. The speed pushed it all over the top. Inspired by Astrid Kirchner, the German girlfriend of former bandmates Stu Sutcliffe, the band began taking their fashion cues from the hip existentialist movement of a few decades prior, which to the rest of the world in 1962 meant they dressed like aliens in mourning.

Female aliens in mourning at that, with long hair that shagged over their ears and was combed down over their eyebrows. And their clothes all black, slacks, pipe fitter tight, leather, no lapels on their jackets, and pointy-heeled, shiny black boots. They made Elvis Presley and Little Richard look downright conservative by comparison.

Soon local German art students started to hear about this wild young band entertaining the very drunk adults down in the St. Pauli district and started frequenting their shows. A buzz began.

The Beatles were beginning to draw. The energy of the band was as obvious as the promise of Vice was in the air. On stage, the band would do anything to keep their audience entertained and with eight-hour sets, oftentimes, the Beatles would do anything to keep themselves entertained. Perhaps more than any of the other band members, the speed fueled John to extreme ends.

One night, John Lennon emerged on stage at the Star Club naked, with his little Winston hanging out there for the world to see and a toilet seat hanging around his neck. John Nazi goose-stepped across the stage and sighed the German audience for added insult. Half the crowd was uncomfortable and the other half in hysterics, but most important, John caught himself up, as well as Paul, George, and Ringo.

The long nights made for short mornings, and Sunday mornings for John Lennon were the worst. The band's living quarters were next to a Catholic church, and that tolling bell for Sunday mass was beyond annoying. And for what? To remind the repressed nuns that it was time for church? It was Sunday morning for Christ's sake, didn't they already know? Couldn't they set an alarm?

John would show them. His balcony was on the second story just above the nuns' path to the church. If the Catholics were going to disrupt his sleep, then he was going to disrupt their commute. He filled condoms with water and bombed the nuns as they made their way to Mass and one morning, while particularly annoyed, he urinated on the nuns' uniformed heads from his balcony. It was a total lack of respect. The only thing John Lennon respected and the only thing the young Beatles cared about was music.

Rock and roll. That backbeat. The jumped up jangle of the guitars. The driving rhythm and all that shouting. The response from the audience. The looks from the women. The constant promise of sex. The constant threat of violence. The speed, the drink, the laughs.

It was all highly addictive, and it was a conduit to the world beyond the dreariness of Germany, to the promise of America, to the excitement of Elvis Presley and Little Richard and Buddy Holly. Rock and roll, the feeling it gave John, Paul, George, and Ringo, it coursed through them. It was electric, more exciting than sex, and had been that way as far as they could remember, even before Hamburg, going back to their earliest days in Liverpool.

Brian Epstein, just 26 years old, was dressed impeccably, as was his nature. Youth would not get in the way of his ambition. He was destined to something beyond managing his family's North End music shop on Walton Road in Liverpool.

The group he'd heard about, the one the handsome teenage boy with the dirt beneath his fingernails had requested a single from in his shop, a single that it turned out didn't really exist yet, had better be worth the trip to this godforsaken piss and vomit-stench seaside section of Liverpool.

His smart leather shoes were spit-shined before this journey and were now mud-splattered and soiled beyond saving. Garbage was strewn about the ground, old produce from the fruit factory and discarded newspaper littered the cobblestones beneath his feet. It was so unevenly set that each new footfall brought a new type of pain to his lower back.

Men shouted in thick, ugly working-class accents as they unloaded trucks outside of merchant shops. The sound of their rough voices gave him a charge that he subconsciously suppressed. The menacing squawk of the seagulls, the cops barking out orders on their beat, cars racing through tiny roadways en route to God knows where with such haste, their beaters coming to within inches of the pedestrians moving about sidewalks that were too small to handle the bustling seaport's lunch hour foot traffic.

Horns beeping, steamships steaming, tugboats tugging, cruise ships cruising in and out of the port to the Atlantic. And just as the minute and hour hands of Brian Epstein's black leather strapped rose gold watch converged at the number 12, hordes of teenage kids began tearing past him on the sidewalk and down Matthew Street toward the fruit factory. School was out. Lunchtime in Liverpool in 1961. That meant one thing, an opportunity to get lost in the sound of the mercy beat.

It was the same sound the handsome boy in Brian's record shop had sought out, and its purveyors were exactly who Brian was seeking out right now. It seemed too that scores of roughneck Liverpool teenagers were doing the same. He reached the club, if you could call it that. A ramshackle sign affixed to the fruit factory wall made it official, but for all intents and purposes, the Cavern Club, as it was named, was more cavern than club.

It didn't matter. The line outside swelled instantly, and the muffled beat from inside blasted out onto the street every time the door opened and a new pair of paying teenage customers were allowed entry.

Girls online anxiously checked their makeup and their compacts. Boys dragged heavy on cigarettes, stood on their tiptoes, wondered what the wait was all about, shouted to the doorman to get his head out of his arse. And all of them bounced absentmindedly from one foot to the other, eager to get inside before the show was over. The muffled music stopped for all of four seconds and was replaced by rapid applause, and then the beat kicked back in again full force. It seemed all of Matthew Street was brimming with impatience.

Brian felt the cocktail of anxiety and excitement wash over him. Little did he know this exact feeling would intoxicate him from this moment on for the rest of his years. Finally, he reached the doorman. He had called ahead to ensure entry. The doorman's boss made sure the young music shop owner was obliged, and the door of the cavern club opened. The light from the street behind him cast a shadow on the condensation-soaked wall ahead of him. The door slammed shut and the sound pummeled him.

A mix of electrified rock and roll and hopped up teenagers shouting to be heard over the music. Brian followed the music down the 18 slippery stone steps into the subterranean den of 200 cramped dancing teenagers all wrapped in excitement. Brian Epstein immediately heard and saw what they saw. His future and theirs. The future of rock and roll. He saw The Beatles. I'm Jake Brennan and this episode of Disgraceland is to be continued.

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