Musician Jimmy Nicol waits at
Essendon Airport on June 15, 1964, for his plane. The stand-in drummer
for The Beatles took the place of Ringo/Starr was he was ill during ‘64
tour.
IT is one of the most poignant rock and roll photos of all time
Jimmy Nicol, the stand-in drummer for Ringo Starr at the start of
The Beatles’ 1964 world tour, sitting all alone at the departure lounge
at Essendon Airport, waiting for his flight home to England.
Packed in his luggage is a copy of The Advertiser newspaper from two days earlier.
Splashed
across the front page is a picture of Jimmy, born in London, three Lads
from Liverpool and DJ Bob Francis, standing on the Adelaide Town Hall
balcony in front of an ecstatic mob of adoring fans.
Even the
three “official” Beatles were amazed by the fanatical reception they
received in Adelaide at the start of their Australian tour that saw
300,000 on the streets — so just imagine how mind-blowing it was for the
newest band member?
Complaining he could no longer cope with the “mediocrity of life”,
Nicol, walked out of his London flat three years after that remarkable
winter’s day in Adelaide and effectively disappeared for the next four
decades.
John smiles as Jimmy Nicol speaks to the media.
Born James George Nicol in 1939, a month before the start of
World War II, Jimmy, sometimes spelt Jimmie, is older than any of the
six people to officially play in the Beatles.
Married with a son
Howie, who later became an award-winning sound recordist, Nicol had a
solid reputation as a percussionist having played with Joe Brown, Billy
Fury and Georgie Fame.
But when tonsillitis laid Ringo Starr low
on June 3, on the eve of the Fab Four’s world tour, he wouldn’t have
been top of many lists to replace him.
If George had got his way, Nicol wouldn’t even have had two weeks at a Beatle.
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| Jimmy Nicol pictured in 1996 |
Feeling a strong loyalty to Ringo, George told Beatles manager Brian
Epstein and producer George Martin he wasn’t going on stage with anyone
else and they would have to replace him for the imminent tour as well.
They had to beg him to accept Nicol who had been chosen by Martin as he was familiar with most Beatles songs.
He played as an uncredited session musician on an album of Beatles cover versions, marketed as “Teenagers Choice” and called Beatlemania, one of the first uses of the term.
Even Ringo was unsettled by developments.
“It was very strange, them going off without me. They’d taken
Jimmy Nicol and I thought they didn’t love me any more — all that stuff
went through my head,” he said later.
Nicol’s first concert with The Beatles took place the very next day on June 4 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
He
was given the distinctive Beatle moptop hairstyle but was unkindly
described as looking like “Frankenstein without the bolt,” by a scribe.
He even had to wear Ringo’s suit which was far too short in the legs.
Paul
McCartney remembered being extremely nervous about Jimmy’s performance
as he seemed besotted with the screaming girls in the front row.
Nicol
reflected: “The day before I was a Beatle, girls weren’t interested in
me at all. The day after, with the suit and the Beatle cut, riding in
the back of the limo with John and Paul, they were dying to get a touch
of me. It was very strange and quite scary.”
A week later, after
concerts in the Netherlands and Hong Kong, the band arrived in Sydney
and headed on to Adelaide where the remarkable madness of Beatlemania
hit everyone.
Nicol was still doing well with the ladies and sneaked a girlfriend into the band’s accommodation at the South Australian Hotel.
And then it was over.
The Beatles with Bob Francis in Adelaide.
Nicol flew with John, Paul, and George to Melbourne to catch
up with Ringo but was soon out at Essendon Airport contemplating the
rest of his life.
He left with a gold watch and a bank balance
enhanced by £22,500 — a small fortune at the time — if Nicol’s own
recount is to be believed.
Not that it did him any good.
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| Jimmy Nicol’s old flat in London |
Just nine months later he declared bankruptcy with debts of £4,066.
“Standing in for Ringo was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he said later.
“Until then I was quite happy earning £30 or £40 a week. After the headlines died, I began dying too.”
Nicol
reformed his old band the Shubdubs, renaming them Jimmy Nicol and the
Shubdubs but two singles found no commercial success.
He caught up with The Beatles when his band was on the same bill at the Brighton Hipperdrome on July 12, 1964.
Later he joined the successful Swedish group The Spotnicks and toured the world.
He
received a shocking reminder of his life as a Beatle when a bundle of
5,000 fan letters, passed on by an Australian DJ was delivered to him.
Nicol sent back a thank you message declaring he would one day return to Australia permanently. He never did.
Always regarded as an “independent spirit” he left for
Mexico to study Latin rhythms before returning to England in 1975 and
starting a business in house renovations.
Nothing was heard of him until rumours swept the music world in 1988 that he had died.
An article in 2005 by The Daily Mail newspaper confirmed that he was still alive and living a reclusive life in London.
Jimmy Nichol has one further legacy.
During
his brief time as a Beatle, John and Paul would often ask him how he
felt he was coping, to which his reply would always be “It’s getting
better.”
The phrase inspired the song Getting Better on the classic 1967 Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
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