RIP, Regis

Regis Philbin died Friday, July 24, 2020. Coincidentally, my turn in the hot seat on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" aired July 25, 2000, almost exactly 20 years earlier.

Regis was gracious, kind and friendly. During breaks, he was encouraging, telling me I was doing great and didn't need to rush anything. Relax and take my time, he told me as I was on my way to winning $125,000.

I was working on the sports copy desk of the Chicago Sun-Times, my employer for 29 years starting in 1982 and for whom I continue to write on a freelance basis. The following is an article I wrote about my road to the hot seat. It appeared July 23, 2000, setting up my appearance.


MY QUEST FOR THE 'MILLIONAIRE' HOT SEAT

By John Grochowski
Chicago Sun-Times
July 23, 2000

To me, TV quiz shows have never been a trivial pursuit. I’ve always loved playing along, from “It’s Academic” and “G.E. College Bowl” to “Jeopardy!” (in both the Art Fleming and Alex Trebek incarnations).

So when ABC debuted “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” last summer, my first reaction was to shout out answers along with the contestants. Why break a lifetime habit?

Then in November, the show started promoting a toll-free number with a qualifying quiz. By then, I’d seen enough of “Millionaire” to have a second reaction:

Why not me?

After trying off and on for several months, I made it to the show. And if you watch Tuesday night (7 p.m., Channel 7), you’ll see me in a show that was taped July 10 in New York. A 2 1/2-week whirlwind took me from my home office in Elmhurst to my brush with “Millionaire” and host Regis Philbin.

It started with a single phone call:

THURSDAY, JUNE 22: As “Millionaire” aired that evening, I noted that the toll-free number was open_it’s open only when a taping block is coming up. A recording gives players up to three questions of the show’s “fastest finger” variety. The player must arrange four answers in the correct order, such as: “Using the numbers on your telephone keypad, arrange the following four composers according to the date of their birth, starting with the earliest: 1. Elton John, 2. George Gershwin, 3.Peter Tchaikovsky, 4. Ludwig von Beethoven.”

When I get all three answers right, I’m instructed to enter a phone number where I’ll be the next day in the event my name is randomly selected by computer from among all who passed the quiz.

I tell my wife, Marcy, “We have to be home between noon and 3 tomorrow afternoon. Regis is calling.”

She laughs. I’ve been a first-round qualifier before, but we’ve never gotten the call.

FRIDAY, JUNE 23: I’m working in my home office, and Marcy jokes, “Regis ought to be calling any time!” Eight-year-old son David, who loves the show, is wide-eyed as he asks, excitedly, “Is he?”

Timing is everything. Just then the phone rings. Marcy answers and rushes in. “John, it’s `Who Wants to Be a Millionaire!’ ”

This time, it’s a live person, making sure I’m eligible to be a contestant. (“Are you or anyone in your immediate family or anyone living in your household employed by the Walt Disney Co., AT&T, West Teleservices, Valley Crest Productions or anyone involved in the judging of `Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’ ?”)

Finally, I’m one of 40 people given a second toll-free number to call the following Tuesday for a five-question second-round quiz.

TUESDAY, JUNE 27: I have a 15-minute window to play my second round – I have to be home between 2 and 2:15 p.m. to make the call.

The format is the same as in the first round, with five questions in increasing order of difficulty. The opener is: “Arrange these four words in order to make the name of a National Football League franchise: 1. San, 2. Niners, 3. Francisco, 4. Forty.”

The fifth question, “List these four literary characters in order of first appearance, starting from the earliest,” sounds as if it’s meant to weed out the pretenders. (Frodo Baggins? Just how old is J.R.R. Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy?)

I surprise myself by getting all five correct, and I’m asked to punch in a phone number where I can be reached from 3 to 7 p.m. that day. That’s a problem. It’s a work night. I have to leave for the office at 4:30. There would be only one attempt to reach me. I punch in my home number and hope for the best.

At 4:05, the call comes. A representative of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” takes about 10 minutes asking the same eligibility questions, then finally says, “Congratulations! You’re going to be on the show.”

Marcy and I will leave Sunday, July 9, and return home Tuesday. The show pays for airfare for two people, hotel for the duration, $50 per diem and supplies ground transportation in New York.

By the time I have everything written down, it’s time to leave for work. David is playing in the backyard, and I tell him. “Guess what? I’m going to be on the show.” He breaks into a big grin: “Hooray!”

FRIDAY, JUNE 30: About 10 a.m., an associate producer calls to gather biographical information.

“So what do you do?”

I’m an author, columnist and editor.

“Really? What do you write?”

Well, I write a twice-weekly column on casinos for the Chicago Sun-Times in addition to my duties as a sports copy editor, and I’ve written a series of Answer Books on casino games – so I guess I’m supposed to have all the answers for you.

“Oh, you’re writing Regis’ blue card for me.”

There’s not really a great hope of getting book titles mentioned on the air. Rules prohibit mentioning commercial products. But as long as he asked. . . .

The interview takes 25 minutes, and we talk about collecting fossils, Beatles memorabilia, being a baseball nut. I hope to get to the hot seat so Regis can use some of it.

Later that afternoon, Jennifer from the show phones. She will be my producer and looks forward to seeing me in New York.

SUNDAY, JULY 2: I dash off an e-mail to Roger Ebert, hoping the Sun-Times movie critic will be a lifeline. It would be fun to turn a tough movie question over to the expert, but it turns out Roger is ineligible. His TV show has Disney ties.

It’s my niece Michelle’s birthday, so Marcy, David and I head out to my sister Debbie’s house for a party. My sister Bev and her husband, Mike, will be there, and I’d asked them to bring along their “Millionaire” software. It turns out Debbie and her husband, George, have the second edition of the software, so I borrow both, and play constantly for the next week.

THURSDAY, JULY 6: It’s time to finalize phone-a-friend lifelines. We get to name up to five people, and may use one if we get to the hot seat and are stuck on a question. On the day I qualified, I’d asked Phil Blanchard, the Sun-Times telegraph editor on whom I plan to lean for geography, current events and general arcane knowledge. My others will be Darel Jevens and Jae-Ha Kim from the Sun-Times features staff, John Lavalie, a librarian friend in Des Plaines, and George Vass, an author and retired sportswriter and copy editor who is my backup on classical music, literature and history.

“I’ll be happy to do it,” George tells me, “but if it’s pop culture you’re looking for, I don’t know it.”

That works out well, since Darel warns me not to ask him questions on classical music.

SUNDAY, JULY 9: It’s time to go! Our flight is delayed slightly, and we arrive in New York about 12:30 p.m. A limo driver meets us at baggage claim. We’d checked no bags, so we’re off and arrive at the Empire Hotel at 44 W. 63rd at about 1 p.m. It’s a nice older hotel in a great location near Lincoln Center and just a few blocks from Central Park.

We’re free for the afternoon, so Marcy and I walk up Columbus, a street full of restaurants and shops, running parallel to Central Park. We stop at an Asian restaurant for lunch, then continue up to 77th Street and the American Museum of Natural History. The American Museum has one of the world’s great dinosaur collections, and we spend a couple of hours gawking. (“Look, Marcy, that’s the protoceratops skull that Roy Chapman Andrews wrote about in All About Dinosaurs, the book that turned me on to fossils when I was in second grade.”)

Finally, it’s back to the hotel, and at 6:30 p.m. the contestants gather to meet with Susan Vescera, the show’s representative who lives in the hotel. She explains the procedure for the next day’s taping. We’re to meet in the lobby at 9:45 a.m., and vans will take us to the ABC studio four blocks away. We are to bring no cameras, cell phones, pagers, computers, games, address books, magazines, newspapers, encyclopedias, dictionaries, novels, writing tablets_nothing that would giveanyappearance that a companion could conceivably signal an answer to a contestant.

Meanwhile, she says, if we need anything, give her a call. Lisa, another contestant, jokes, “Will you give me a foot rub?” Susan’s reply: “That’s not in my job description, but I can find you someone to give you a foot rub.”

MONDAY, JULY 10, 9:45 A.M.: Two vans take contestants and companions to the studio. After passing through security, dropping off our on-the-air clothes in a dressing room and handing over IDs and paperwork, we’re led into a comfortable room with overstuffed chairs and sofas for a continental breakfast.

Two senior producers, C.J. and Lauren, try to make everyone feel comfortable, while explaining a few rules. We are not to speak with anyone but other contestants, companions or people wearing badges indicating they’re associated with “Millionaire.” How serious are they about avoiding outside contact? Anyone needing a bathroom break will be escorted by a producer.

While we’re eating, associate producers pull up chairs and interview contestants, looking for tidbits that might be interesting for Regis to ask about on the air.

While waiting for Jennifer to interview me, Marcy and I chat with the couples nearest us. Kathy from Las Vegas is there with husband Gary. He’s worked in casino sports books, most recently at the Showboat, and we have a fine old chat about the casino industry. To our right, there’s Todd, the youngster of the group, with wife Andrea. Most of us are fortysomething, but Todd is in his early 30s. Andrea’s another newspaper person, working in marketing for the Knoxville News-Sentinel in Tennessee.

Once Jennifer is finished with us (“Tell me more about the fossils. What’s the oldest one you have?”), it’s time to move on.

NOON: Down the stairs, across, up more stairs, and finally we come to the set of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” for rehearsal.

In the small-world department, I’m seated next to Rose Kerley from Melrose Park, and her husband, Glenn, comes down to tell me he reads my column all the time. He manages an overhead door sales center in Elmhurst, practically in my backyard.

We get to practice on seven fastest-finger questions – not with Regis, we won’t see him until the taping – and everyone gets a turn in the hot seat.

Either Todd or another John is first in on all seven fastest-finger trials. I finished second in one, in 5.49 seconds. Todd was done in 3.98. Eight of us start to wonder if we’re there for window dressing.

Each of us gets two questions in the hot seat. The nine companions serve as the audience, and when some of the contestants want to use the “ask the audience” lifeline, our companions vote. I manage to skew the results of one. The question is, “Where did King John sign Magna Carta,” and a producer tells us, “In case you can’t tell, the practice questions come from the British version of the show.” I look back at Marcy, and she mouths an answer. I mouth back “C,” Runnymede. Other companions take up the cue, and the producer is taken aback when the poll comes up with 88 percent for Runnymede.

Finally, executive producer Michael Davies arrives for a pep talk. Much of it is on the theme “Regis doesn’t know.” Don’t worry if he seems to be trying to influence you toward an answer, or questioning your decision, Davies tells us. Regis’ screen doesn’t light up with the correct answer until the contestant says “Final answer.” Until then, Regis doesn’t know.

After about two hours, we leave the set -- and it’s about time. My teeth are chattering. It’s very cold. Had I known, I’d have brought a long-sleeved shirt or a jacket instead of the short-sleeved shirt I’d be wearing that afternoon.

2 P.M.: Over a buffet lunch, Kathy from Las Vegas tells us that this is the first time she’d tried to qualify. “Gary (her husband) called once and handed me the phone. I didn’t know what was happening. I hung up. Then I called, and got in the first time.” We chat with other contestants, and most of us agree the nervousness is building. It’s getting close to the time for the real thing.

3 P.M.: Companions stay in the lunchroom, then head back to the set as the audience files in. Contestants go to the dressing room to change clothes. Then it’s over to hair and makeup. At my son’s baseball game a couple of days earlier, I’d gotten a nice sunburn on my nose and forehead. The makeup lady puts a little something on to take the red out, does a quick spray on my hair, and I’m ready to go.

4 P.M.: At last, it’s show time! In the wings, we line up, and each shake hands with Regis and introduce ourselves. He has been given pronunciations of our names, but he wants to hear the contestants say it once.

Now we’re each introduced as we go to our fastest-finger seats. “Wave to the audience,” C.J. tells me as I walk onto the set, and I wave first to one side, then turn and wave to the other. When we’ve all reached our seats, and tried to calm the butterflies, it’s time to start.

What next? I’m sworn to secrecy. Watch the show Tuesday night, then turn to the Sun-Times on Wednesday morning and I’ll give you the instant replay.

August 2014: A conversation with Searchers singer-guitarist Mike Pender

To be an American just awakening to music at the beginning of 1964 was to be swept away with the British Invasion. I was a Beatles fan first, of course, and did watch their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show that Feb. 9. But soon I was an avid listener of WLS in Chicago, listening to the Silver Dollar Survey countdown and catching the latest by Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Peter and Gordon and the Searchers.

The Searchers’ first hit here was “Needles and Pins,” and its catchy guitar part was one of the first things I tried to learn once I knew a few chords. I still crank up the volume when I hear it today. For that matter, the volume goes up for other Searchers hits such as “When You Walk in the Room,” “Don’t Throw Your Love Away” and “Someday We’re Gonna Love Again.”

When I saw Searchers singer-guitarist Mike Pender’s name on the guest list for this year’s Chicago Fest for Beatles Fans, I knew I’d want to interview him for my annual Fest preview in the Chicago Sun-Times. You can find the Sun-Times story here: http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/29243291-421/story.html#.U-9qr6NhfNU

As with other interviews in this blog, space limitations meant I could use only a couple of quotes from a longer interview. But Pender was a great interview, with a lifetime of musical experiences to talk about. Here’s the full interview:

John Grochowski: Mike, thanks for taking the time to talk. We’re looking forward to seeing you here.

Mike Pender: Actually, I’ll be back in America again in September with Mike Pender’s Searchers. We’re touring with some of the other ’60s bands.

JG: That’s great. When’s the last time you were in Chicago?

MP: My memory doesn’t go back that far!

JG: (Laughs) I figured it had probably been a long while …

MP: Early ’60s yeah. When we’ve been in America in the last 40 years, we would have gone to New York, and I was in Springfield, Massachusetts, last year,. I did the Big E Festival, which is the typical sort of American festival they have with lots of musical people around, I was the ’60s segment. So it’s a long time since I’ve been in Chicago.

JG: Have you done other Beatle fests? Were you in New York?

MP: To be honest I’ve not done a lot with Beatles shows or Beatles festivals. The only time I’ve done a gig with the Beatles was in the ’60s. It would have been very early, about 1964, and it would have been put on by Brian Epstein down in London at one of the theaters there. I cannot remember a lot of gigs with the Beatles. Maybe two.

JG: But in the early days, you were playing the same venues in Liverpool, the Cavern and the other clubs

MP: We all played the Cavern, the Iron Door, lots of other gigs like St. John’s Hall Bootle, which is where I come from, Litherland Town Hall. Yeah, we did all the gigs because nobody was famous then, we were all just hanging around playing for beer money if you like, enjoying ourselves.

In fact the first time I ever saw the Beatles was at St. John’s Hall Bootle. I still had my job, and I got home from work and washed and changed to go along to the gig, and when I got to the gig and went to the dressing room, or what we called a dressing room, there were no chairs in those days. There were five guys sitting around on the floor in leather gear and cowboy boots, and they were called the Silver Beatles then. That was the first time I ever saw them. It was their second gig in England after getting back from Hamburg, Germany. And the Searchers were top of the bill that night. When I got to the gig at St. John’s Hall, they had a poster, the Searchers, and underneath, from Hamburg, the Silver Beatles. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen them.

JG: Tell me about what you were playing in those days. I know as American fans, we heard “Some Other Guy” as an album track from you long before we saw the clip of the Beatles playing it at the Cavern. What were you playing in the clubs?

MP: Nearly all American music from Chuck Berry to Little Richard to Jerry Lee Lewis. Hardly any of the groups played English stuff in those days. They only time they did was some of the groups played instrumentals by the Shadows and later by the American group, the Ventures. But yeah, “Johnny B. Goode,” “Rock and Roll Music.” Most groups did all the same songs. We started off like that, and then we tried to be a little bit different. We actually got a lead singer, a guy called Johnny Sandon, and we brought him into the band. We were prompted to do that by a guy called Bob Wooler. Do you remember Bob Wooler?

JG: Yes, I actually met Bob Wooler in Liverpool.

MP: Bob was they guy at all the venues in Liverpool in those days, and he said “Mike, you guys would be better with a lead vocalist,” and we got this guy Johnny Sandon. And he sounded a bit like Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash. And so we were a little bit different from the other groups we when went to Cavern and the Iron Door, where the Beatles and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and whoever were doing out and out rock and roll things. We were a little bit further afield and did those types of songs. We used to do lunchtime sessions at the Cavern. Everybody did. And I used to find that a lot of people from the local offices would come in their shirts and ties, and they’d come because we were a little bit different, and they could hear something different like maybe a Jim Reeves song. So we were a little bit different in those days.

JG: By the time “Needles and Pins” hit in the U.S., and other hits like “Love Potion No. 9,” Johnny Sandon was gone and you were singing. How did the change happen?

MP: It’s funny how it comes about. There were no meetings, no sort of thrashing out, “Mike you’re going to do this, Mike you’re going to do that.” It happened.

I didn’t sing “Love Potion No. 9.” Tony Jackson – the original band was Tony, Chris Curtis, John McNally and myself – Tony actually sang those types of songs. He had the Little Richard voice, he could get his voice way up high, and he sang “Love Potion No. 9,” and he sang our first record “Sweets for My Sweet.”

We had a bit of a confrontation with the record company after the first two big hits, which were “Sweets for My Sweet” and “Sugar and Spice.” And we felt that we had to change a little beit because the first two songs were very similar, if you recall those two songs.

JG: In Chicago, we heard covers of those first two. The Cryan Shames had a big hit here with “Sugar and Spice.”

MP: Right. The two (“Sweets for My Sweet” and “Sugar and Spice”) were in a very similar vein. And record companies do that, because when they have a big success with one record, they tend to want another record in a similar vein. So we did that in the first two, then we thought the next one has to be something different. We thought “Needles and Pins,” and the people at Pye records weren’t too keen. They said if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. You have to do another like the first two.

We got our way in the end, but we had to argue with the record company and they finally came around to our way of thinking and we did “Needles and Pins.” And it just so happened that I sang “Needles and Pins” on stage with the band. So it was just kind of Mike sings it on stage with the band, lets put it down and see what happens, and if it isn’t good we can change. But Tony Hatch, our recording manager said. “That’s it.” We even left my “pins-uh” in.

When we were recording that song, people from Liverpool have this knack of putting little things on the ends of words, and I just sang “pins-uh,” and Tony Hatch said, “Hey that sounds good, we’re going to leave it in.” So we left it in. That’s just one of those little quirks that you get now and then.

JG: Another distinctive part of your sound was that 12-string Rickenbacker. Was that you? How did that come about?

MP: That’s The Beatles connection there. We were in the TV studios in England for a show called “Thank Your Lucky Stars” in those early ’60s. “We were in the dressing room and we had the TV on, and the Beatles came on singing their latest No. 1 single, which was “A Hard Day’s Night,” because that movie that they made had just been released. They weren’t there in the studios, they recorded it somewhere.

“I noticed that the guitar in that song, in the solo, it sounded a little bit different. And when I looked up, I looked at the screen, I thought, hey I’d seen Rickenbackers before because John Lennon had one in the early days in the Cavern, that he bought in Hamburg. And I looked and I thought, wow, it’s a 12-string Rickenbacker.

We had a new single coming up. We hadn’t recorded it, but we had it in the grapevine, if you like, we had it planned. That’s the sound for “When You Walk in the Room.” And I went out and got a Rickenbacker 12, it was a 360-12, and that’s the sound you hear on “When You Walk In the Room.”

JG: It’s a great sound. I love that sound.

MP: Yeah, it is, and probably if on that day I hadn’t walked in the dressing room and seen George Harrison play his, who knows, I may never have got one, and we’d have gone some other way like double-tracking or something like that.

JG: When did you first have an inkling that this was going to take off, that the Searchers were going to become something bigger than the club circuit?

MP: To be honest with you, I didn’t have that feeling until we recorded “Sweets for My Sweet.” When we went to the Star Club in Hamburg, I had a very good job in Liverpool with a big printing firm, and they actually gave me a month’s leave. Can you believe that? They said “Mike, you go do that, we know you want to do it, but your job’s still here when you come back.”

“I couldn’t; believe it really. I thought I was going to be working at Birchall’s for the rst of my life. I had a girlfriend and I thought, “I have a good job, we’re going to save up. And I’m going to earn money working and playing in a band.” I didn’t have any inkling that we were going to be recording stars or anything like that. We came back from the Star Club, and we signed up to go again. We were there for two months that time.

And when we were in the Star Club, our manager in Liverpool at the time, a guy called Ed Napoli, we’d done an acetate of maybe 10 or 12 songs in the Iron Door, and we left it to Ed to sort of hawk around, if you like, and see what he could do with it. And while we were at the Star Club, he got in touch with record companies that turned him down, all except one, and that was Pye Records.

Tony Hatch, their producer, came up to Liverpool when we got back to Hamburg, came to the Iron Door,. We did a session, he liked it, Bam! Bingo. He said “I want to record that song ‘Sweets for My Sweet,’ I want the boys to come to London,” and we did. And then I thought, wow, I can’t believe it, we just made a record. So you could say from about summer 1963 I thought, “It’s going to happen. I had an inkling we may hit the big time.”

JG: You had so many hits, then time passed, you faded from the charts. But you had that great comeback album in 1979 (“The Searchers”) that was so well reviewed. How did that happen? 

MP: The Sire Records thing? That was the early ‘80s wasn’t it? We’d been obviously in and around the music scene since about 1968 when really our popularity had dwindled and the big record hits had gone. So we kept going to the studio and we kept trying to make a good record, but it just didn’t happen.

Seymour Stein had had groups like the Ramones on his record label, and the Ramones seemed to like our kind of music. I think they recorded “Needles and Pins,” and Seymour Stein said, “I wonder what the original Searchers are doing.” He came to England, although we weren’t still the originals because Tony and  Chris had gone. It was just John and myself and a guy called Frank Allen and a guy called Billy Adamson.

We were still performing, we had lots of gigs on the continent. Seymour Stein came to see us. And he actually said, “Mike, your voice still great, we’re going to put you guys back in the charts.” We did a couple of albums, one was released in America, and I think Rolling Stone magazine gave us a great review. Lots of people liked it. But it’s the old story. It doesn’t matter how good your product is, if nobody buys it, it’s no good. It’s a disappointment. After that of course, when they had success with the Pretenders and other groups, they more or less dropped us. We were left to go our own way again and we’ve been in and around music ever since.

In 1985 I decided, if I’m going to play Searchers hits the rest of my life, I think I’ll form my own band. And I formed Mike Pender’s Searchers,. And here I am today.

JG: When you tour, when you come back to America in September, what can we expect?

MP: Obviously we’re going to do all the early hits, because that’s what they booked us for. Nostalgia. Nostalgia is still pretty big around the world today. I find you go to all the continental countries, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, and there’s lots of people who still want to hear those sounds of the ’60s. Certain songs stick in people’s memories. “When you Walk in the Room” has that certain hook line, “dah-DAH-dah-da-da-da,” and people cotton onto those sorts of things. They remember them and they remember the riff in “Needles and Pins” as well.

So two great songs for us there, plus “Sweets for My Sweet” is always remembered, “Sugar and Spice” is sometimes remembered. One of the great songs I thought we recorded was “Goodbye My Love.” It’s not remembered by a lot of people but I thought it was a really good record.

And even songs that were on the Sire album, like “Hearts in Her Eyes,” I thought was a great single. I always thought, when we started in this business, we had a manager called Peter Burns and he was a guy, he took us to America, he could do it. When you have somebody like that, when you’re trying to make it in the charts, if you haven’t; got somebody like that at the helm, you’re pretty much going to miss out. With songs like “Hearts in Her Eyes,”  it was a great song released on the Sire label, it should have been a hit, but it wasn’t.

We still do that song, so it’s going to be a mix of the old hits with newer songs like “Hearts in our Eyes,” “I Don’t Want to Be the One.” We had some great singles later on. I thought “I Don’t Want to Be the One” was a great song. But with no management, no publicity agent, you’re going to be up against it.

JG: At the Beatles fest, will you be singing with the house band, Liverpool?

MP: For the first time in my life, I’m going to do a Beatle song. Because the Beatles were there because they were superstars, a supergroup. I always concentrated on the Searchers and never got into (playing) the Beatles music at all. It was always there, and people would say “Hey Mike, are you going to play a Beatles song?” And I always said no, because byu the time we’d done the Searchers songs there’s no time left to do anyone else’s song. So really it’s going to be the first time doing a Beatles song in my life, and it’s going to be because I got the connection from George Harrison’s Rickenbacker from seeing him play “A Hard Day’s Night.” That’s the song I’m going to do with the house band, because I think it’s a good story.

  

August 2014: An interview with Beatles author Mark Lewisohn

It’s that time of year again, with The Fest for Beatles Fans rolling into the Chicago area, Aug. 15-17 in Rosemont, Ill. Every year – well, almost every year – I preview for the Chicago Sun-Times.

This year I spoke with Searchers singer-guitarist Mike Pender and author Mark Lewisohn, whose “Tune In: The Beatles After All These Years” might be the most amazing Beatle book I’ve ever read. So much has been said and written about the Fab Four that you wouldn’t think there was much we didn’t already know. Yet Lewisohn, through meticulous research and hundreds of new interviews, has come up with a book that’s packed with surprises and revelations – and it takes us only through 1962. Volumes 2 and 3 are coming, but will be years in the making. Lewisohn takes no shortcuts.

 I’d actually met Lewisohn in Liverpool in 1983. I was with a tour group that was spending a day on a mystery tour. We had two buses, I was with the group that rushed straight for the Magical Mystery Tour bus – just had to have that experience. The other bus was bigger, more comfortable and had Lewisohn for a tour guide. After a while, the guides changed places, and he came to our bus. Everyone was just amazed with his knowledge and passion --- and believe me, if you’re impressing a group of knowledgeable, passionate Beatlemaniacs who spent their vacation money on 10 days in the footsteps of the Fabs, you’ve done more than a good day’s work.

I was able to use only one quote from our interview due to space restraints in the Sun-Times, but in this blog I can stretch out. Here is the full transcript of my 15-minute talk with Mark Lewisohn:


John Grochowski: Mark, it’s going to be great to have you in Chicago, and I love your book. Have you done many Fests?

Mark Lewisohn: The one I’ve done the most is the New York Metro one, but I have been to Chicago before, 1990 I was there. Possibly one other time right after, 1992 or 3, but I haven’t been for 20 years or more to the Chicago one.

JG: You would have been talking about “Recording Sessions” then, right? (Reference is to an earlier Lewisohn book that detailed who played, did what and was in what place and when for the recording fo their music.)

ML: Recording Sessions in 1990 I would have been, absolutely, it was in 1988, Possibly I might have come after the Chronicle was published in 1993, but I don’t recall. That’s all a long time ago

JG: “Tune In” is an amazing piece of research, and when it ends, we haven’t even reached Beatlemania. I’ve read that you’re looking at 14 more years to finish the project …

ML: It really is hard to say. People keep asking me if I can come up with an approximation of how long it might take, but until I start writing them, it’s going to be very hard to know. I’m researching volumes 2 and 3 at the moment, but then I’ll write Volume 2, publish it, do some more research for 3 and write that one. But they can’t be done quickly by the nature of what they are.

JG: I’m reading about Stu Sutcliffe and the aftermath of his death, and you mention that on one ever asked John Lennon about Stu. To be able to say that, you have to hav gone through everything written and broadcast about them.

ML: I have. As far as I know I have. That’s my job, to make sure that I do so. I can do these books any way I like, but I choose to be as thorough as possible, and I would be remiss in my professional duties if I didn’t endeavor to look for and see and hear everything and I am aware of no interviews when John was explicitly asked about Stuart, which is why there are no quotes. The absence of quotes may indicate he was callous about it, but simply he wasn’t asked. He answered questions candidly, and I’m sure he would have spoken about Stuart, of course he would have done if he asked, but he wasn’t

JG: Besides the review of earlier material, how much original interviewing did you do?

ML: I’m not actually sure of the number but several hundred, maybe 300 new interviews done for Tune In, with a great many people who have not been interviewed before. It’s like anything in life, you know, there are witnesses to events and there are some people who witness events who put their hand up immediately when anybody asks if they were there. And they get themselves interviewed many times over as time goes by. But then there are others who are more reluctant to stick their hand up, and you have to go and find them and persuade them that now is the time. Quite often I was tracking people who had never been interviewed before and who told stories much more convincing and more colorful and more authentic than the stories that have been told too many times by the same people.

JG: Can you name a few who haven’t been interviewed before?

ML: Quite a few of the people who went to art school with John, including this guy called Derek Hodkin, who actually managed John, Paul and George when they were a trio, the Japage 3. He was a good one. Many of the girls who used to go and hang around the Beatles in the Cavern and at their houses and so on. Like the two girls Lou Steen and Lindy Ness, who had a particularly good relationshop with John and Paul in ’62. John and Paul took care of them, and made sure they got to gigs and let them hang around them, so they were there when John and Paul were working on “Please Please Me” on the piano in Paul’s house in Liverpool, and they kept diaries.

Knowing when it was and how they described it, and because they haven’t told it before, it was fresh. It wasn’t something they told too often which they’d embroidered, which happens a lot. And it enabled me to tale the reader right into that private moment with John and Paul in Paul’s house,.writing a song, which would become their first No. 1.

And then there was the girl Bobby Brown, who was their first fan club secretary before Freda Kelly, who went to the “Please Please Me” session, and John asked her to play on it. No one has ever mentioned that there was a girl at that session alone, the fact that John wanted this girl to play piano on the track. These people had a lot of close proximity to the Beatles at a time when they were not yet famous but were clearly going to become so because of the talent that they had. It was great to find these people.

Two girls who actually really started the fan club in ’61 who for a brief while actually managed them before Brian Epstein. It never really got off the ground, but there was this brief period when these two girls were actually managing the Beatles. I tracked down people knowing they quite likely could have something to tell me, but very often I wouldn’t know exactly what. So I’d be sitting here floored by what I was hearing

JG: What’s the one biggest surprise, something that really shocked you as someone who has lived with the Beatles story for decades?

ML: The book is actually full of them, it’s hard to pin down, because it’s a combination of new material that no one has ever discovered before, and information that if you’d read all the books that were written before AND you retained all the information you read, maybe you might know bits of this, but you won’t know it in context, you won’t see how it all weaves together to form this complete picture.

As far as I’m concerned, as people who’ve read the book all tell me unanimously it’s just like reading like you’ve never read about them before. It’s hard to pick out these particular bits. I wrote an entire chapter, short chapter, about John and Paul’s trip to Paris in 1961 which was a real turning point in all their lives. To actually look at what happened there, and to make it real, to actually put the reader on the streets of Paris, so they can almost smell it is strong.

The fact that John and Paul went to Paris is know to some people, but they won’t really have known what happened there. The fact that John and Paul tried to play there, for example, and were rebuffed by this club owner, and that they got their hair cut on the little hotel by the Left Banke in Paris, which I went to visit because I always go and look at places I write about.

One of the things that has surprised many people is the true story of how the Beatles got their recording contract and how incredibly lucky they were they way that it happened. And the way that it happened is thanks to the efforts of a many whose name is not written in any books. A man who called himself Kim Bennett, without whom we wouldn’t be talking about the Beatles. They had the talent, but he had the tenacity to push for something on their behalf that actually got them their recording contract with George Martin in a roundabout way,

JG: The music publisher? (Bennett pushed for EMI to sign the Beatles because he thought he could do something with the publishing for “Like Dreamers Do,” and later pushed for “Love Me Do” to be the Beatles’ first A-side rather than “How Do You Do It?” because he wanted to maximize publishing value of a Lennon-McCartney song.)

ML: That’s right.

What it’s mostly about is putting flesh on the bones of who these people are. Not so much a Beatles biography, but a complete biography of John Lennon, of Paul McCartney, of George Harrison, of Ringo Starr, of Pete Best, of Brian Epstein, of George Martin, of all of these people, all woven together so you get a much, much greater sense of the characters and the drive particularly of the four Beatles. How tenacious they were, how they would say no to things very readily, as well as yes. The tough job that Brian Epstein had managring them but the brilliant job he had getting them out of Liverpool and before the nation and before the world. That much is known, but how he did it and what it says about him as a person is what’s new. So you end up feeling like you know these people and that you were there while it was happening. And that is possible through the research

JG: One thing that really hit me, which maybe as Americans we knew but never internalized, was what a tough environment Liverpool was, that Ringo couldn’t always carry a full drum kit because it made him too much of a target.

ML: It was tough, no doubt about it. Liverpool wasn’t the only tough place in Britain and Britain wasn’t the only tough place in the world. But nevertheless on a day to day basis, this is what they had to deal with. But in a sense, such experiences weeded out who really wanted to do it from those who quite wanted to do it. Because the Beatles -- all four of them – were very, very determined young men.

 All four of them, ambitious, determined and intent on disregarding all the advice they were getting from parents and other adults about this stupid thing they’re doing, this playing the guitar, this rock and roll and all of that, and why did they stick at it? Because of the personalities of who they were, rather like because the kind of music they liked was not everywhere around them like it is these days. You can’t move from hearing rock and roll music, you hear it everywhere, on television, on the radio, while you’re out shopping, wherever you might be, it’s around. But this was greatly frowned upon in the later 1950s. If you wanted it, you really had to go looking for it. And that eliminated the casually interested and kept only the passionate involved, and that is a very good process for making sure the people who are in it are in it for the right reasons.

JG: One of the other Fest guests is Mike Pender of the Searchers. At different points in the book, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes are the top band in Liverpool, and later the Beatles look at Gerry and the Pacemakers as their main competition. Where do the Searchers fit in all this?

ML: I always preface this kind of answer with I wasn’t there, but having done the deep level research, and particularly reading contemporaneous news items, letters, contracts, and all of that,. It’s clear that the Searchers were always a good band, or group, to use the correct word. Always a good group, but they somehow … in those days they were the backing group for a lead singer. Johnny Sandon and the Searchers is what they were through most of the period in “Tune In.” Johnny Sandon by all accounts was a good singer, and I’ve heard recordings that were made, but somehow or other they gelled better without him.

So really the Searchers story will rise in my trilogy in book 2 rather than in book 1, They’re around the scene in book 1, but not tearing up any trees. It’s in book 2 I will write about the Searchers becoming a No. 1 group on the charts. Never the biggest group from Liverpool, of course, but they were very well liked and respected. The Beatles liked and respected them, Brian Epstein would express the wish that he was their manager but it was too late, they had signed with somebody else. Brian clearly reckoned they were good and indeed they were.