There is a guy that is best known for replacing Ringo Star for 13 days. This is is the story of Jimmie Nicol and it’s both poignant and exciting.
The exciting part is that he got to be a part of The Beatles in the height of their career and had been able to taste the fruits of fame; he was Ringo Star for a week, and that was a title to kill for.
Nicol not only got the opportunity to play with The Beatles in the time they were bigger than God, but he also got the chance to hang around with Lennon, McCartny, and Harrison.
However, the poignant part of his story is, that it lasted for two weeks, and then all got back to normal, The Beatles were still the Beatles and Jimy Nicol went to his ordinary life living with a memory that for a week he lived a dream.
Nicol playing the drums in the background.SourceWhen Ringo Starr collapsed with tonsillitis and was hospitalized on 3 June 1964, the eve of The Beatles’ 1964 Australian tour, the band’s manager Brian Epstein and their producer George Martin urgently discussed the feasibility of using a stand-in drummer, rather than cancelling part of the tour.
Martin suggested Jimmie Nicol, as he had recently used him on a recording session with Tommy Quickly.
Nicol’s first concert with The Beatles took place just 27 hours later on 4 June at the KB Hallen in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was given the distinctive Beatle moptop hairstyle, put on Ringo’s suit (despite the trousers being too short) and went on stage to an audience of 4,500 Beatles fans. McCartney recalled: ‘He was sitting up on this rostrum just eyeing up all the women.
We’d start “She Loves You”: [counting in] “one, two”, nothing, “one, two”, and still nothing!’ Their set was reduced from eleven songs to ten, dropping Ringo’s vocal spot of “I Wanna Be Your Man”. McCartney teasingly sent Starr a telegram saying: ‘Hurry up and get well Ringo, Jimmy is wearing out all your suits.’ Commenting later on the fickle nature of his brief celebrity, 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.’ He was also able to shed some light on how they passed the time between shows: ‘I thought I could drink and lay women with the best of them until I caught up with these guys.’
Nicol.Source
In the Netherlands, Nicol and Lennon allegedly spent a whole night at a brothel.Lennon said: ‘It was some kind of scene on the road.Satyricon! There’s photographs of me grovelling about, crawling about Amsterdam on my knees, coming out of whore houses, and people saying “Good morning John”.
The police escorted me to these places because they never wanted a big scandal. When we hit town, we hit it – we were not pissing about. We had [the women]. They were great. We didn’t call them groupies, then; I’ve forgotten what we called them, something like “slags”.’
By then, The Beatles were becoming more restricted by their increasing fame, spending most of their free time inside hotel suites. But Nicol discovered that, beyond acting as a Beatle, he could behave much as any tourist could: ‘I often went out alone. Hardly anybody recognised me and I was able to wander around.
In Hong Kong, I went to see the thousands of people who live on little boats in the harbour. I saw the refugees in Kowloon, and I visited a nightclub. I like to see life. A Beatle could never really do that.’
Nicol played a total of eight shows until Starr rejoined the group in Melbourne, Australia, on 14 June. He was unable to say ‘goodbye’ to The Beatles as they were still asleep when he left, and he did not want to disturb them.
So he silently walked away and vanished, just as he never had been a part of them and the 13 days were rather a dream.
At Melbourne airport, Epstein presented him with a cheque for £500 and a gold Eterna-matic wrist watch inscribed: ‘From The Beatles and Brian Epstein to Jimmie Nicol– with appreciation and gratitude.’
Martin later paid tribute to Nicol whilst acknowledging the problems he experienced in trying to re-adjust to a normal life again: ‘Jimmie Nicol was a very good drummer who came along and learnt Ringo’s parts very well.
He did the job excellently, and faded into obscurity immediately afterwards.’McCartney: ‘It wasn’t an easy thing for Jimmie to stand in for Ringo, and have all that fame thrust upon him. And the minute his tenure was over, he wasn’t famous any more.’ Nicol himself expressed his disillusionment several years later: ‘Standing in for Ringo was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Until then I was quite happy earning £30 or £40 a week. After the headlines died, I began dying too.’He resisted the temptation to sell his story, stating in a rare 1987 interview: ‘After the money ran low, I thought of cashing-in in some way or other. But the timing wasn’t right. And I didn’t want to step on The Beatles’ toes. They had been damn good for me and to me.’
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