He was a Beatle for thirteen days and ended up living on the streets: the moving story of Jimmy Nicol

There are photographs capable of telling the story of a lifetime in a single image. The year is 1964 and Jimmy Nicol, a musician of little consequence, waits at the airport in Australia and in total solitude, the flight that will return him to London.

There are no fans out of control over a souvenir. Nobody asks for autographs. No one embraces him with desperate longing. Jimmy is alone. It is the loneliness that precedes his return to anonymity. Only a photographer notices the sadness of the Beatle.

For Jimmy, that trip had been as mind-blowing as it was brief. A few days earlier, his life was predictable and simple as a session musician. But a unique morning came. On the other side of the phone line Brian Epstein, the manager of the Beatles, made him an offer impossible to refuse.

When the group was getting ready to start their first world tour, Ringo Starr had to be hospitalized urgently with a severe picture of tonsillitis, and Nicol, only 23 years old, was summoned to occupy the most famous position in the world. Who would have refused?

It was George Martin, the historic Beatles engineer and producer, who suggested his name. He had met him during a session with Tommy Quickly, a London singer sponsored by Epstein, of little consequence in those years.

But in addition Nicol had also participated in the recording of the album Beatlemania, of the group The Koppy Kats, which gave him valuable prior knowledge of the repertoire.

And it all happened very fast. He was first invited to a rehearsal at Abbey Road Studios with John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. After the test (because that was really it) they asked him to pack the bags.

Just 27 hours later Nicol was sitting behind the iconic drum that bore the legend The Beatles, with that typeface that extended the baton of the T, surrounded by three of the most famous and innovative musicians of the 20th century and in front of 3,500 people sailing in an ocean of euphoria and screams.

The time that has elapsed only magnifies the scale of the challenge. With just one rehearsal, Nicol took the stage at Copenhagen’s Tivoli Garden, with his newly opened bangs and Ringo’s suit, whose sleeveless sleeves did not cover his ankles.

And so the laid-back Jimmy plunged into a frenzied journey into the eye of the storm, taking the beatle seat for eight concerts. After their debut on June 4 in Denmark, the tour continued on the 5th at the Treslong in Holland with a show recorded for television; on the 6th at the Auction Hall in Blokker, in the north-west of the Netherlands and on the 9th at the Princess Theater in Hong Kong.

The closing was on the 12th and 13th at the Centennial Hall in Adelaide, Australia.

The truth is that during those days that must have seemed like a year, Nicol not only shared shows with John, Paul and George, but also hundreds of interviews, the most varied tributes, hotels, alcohol, drugs and women as a full member of the Fab Four.

In those press conferences, Jimmy did not hide his impressions of the moment. “One day before I was a Beatle, the girls weren’t interested in me at all. A day later, with the suit and the haircut, getting into the limousine, everyone was dying to touch me. It was very strange and a little scary.”

The mind-blowing trip ended 13 days after it started. It was on June 14 when Ringo landed in Australia and regained his place, his drums and his suit for the last shows of the tour.

The story goes that Jimmy was unable to say goodbye to the Beatles. He left the hotel while they were sleeping and without disturbing them

At Melbourne Airport, where a photographer recorded his loneliness, Brian Epstein saw him off with a check for £ 500 and a solid gold wristwatch with an inscription that read: “From The Beatles and Brian Epstein to Jimmy, with appreciation and gratitude”.

Biographers do not agree on whether that sum was a premium or his total fees. The doubt persists, because years later, Nicol assured that he had received 2,500 pounds per performance and a 2,500 bonus for signing.

Shortly after, and due to those ironic plays of fate, Nicol was again called to replace another drummer in those years of Beatlemania. This time the sick man was Dave Clark, leader of the Dave Clark Five, one of the groups that rivaled the Beatles in the early 1960s.

It is clear that Nicol hoped that after his dizzying tour would be showered with opportunities and money. But the 15 minutes of fame that Andy Warhol predicted, they were already sold out for Jimmy.

Upon returning from Australia, he was greeted at Heathrow Airport by the press and promptly signed his first record deal, with which he purchased an iconic Jaguar. Leading his own gang The Shubdubs, Nicol released a first single with the songs Husky and Don’t Come Back and a second with Humpty Dumpty and Night Train.

But none were successful. Neither did the shows that he financed out of his own pocket and that only harvested semi-empty rooms.

In 1965 he declared bankruptcy with a debt that exceeded 4000 pounds. His wife asks for a divorce and takes him away from their only son. Nicol ends up living in the basement of his mother’s house. In 1976 he was summoned by the Swedish band The Spotnicks, with whom he records and travels the world.

But by then Nicol was facing another serious problem: his addiction to hard drugs. During a tour he left the group without warning and settled in Mexico without his whereabouts being known.

He survives with a small business dedicated to the manufacture of buttons and in 1975 he returned to England and dedicated himself to masonry and house renovation.

For the almost 40 years that followed, Jimmy Nicol refused to give notes, although on occasion he accepted a brief interview, as in 1984, during a Beatles fan convention in Amsterdam.

“Taking Ringo’s place was the worst thing that ever happened to me” he said at the time. “I was calm and happy gaining thirty or forty pounds a week. When the headlines of the newspapers died, I began to die too”.

However, despite living on the edge for years, Nicol resisted selling his fleeting history with the Beatles, dismissing the tempting sums they offered him and that would have come in handy.

“After the money ran out, I thought about making money in some way or another. But I never wanted to hang on to The Beatles fame. They had been very good to me,” he acknowledged in 1987.

The 90s passed and nothing was heard from Nicol. Some fans speculated about his death or his definitive return to Mexico.

But in 2005 the British newspaper The Daily Mail confirmed that he was living poorly in London and testified with the last photograph that is known to this day of the ephemeral Beatle; aged and careless in dress, wandering the city streets.

Years later, in 2013 the lawyer and journalist Jim Berkenstadt public The Beatle who Vanished (The Beatle who disappeared), the first book that explores Nicol’s sad story.

Berkenstadt was known for his earlier work: Black Market Beatles a careful investigation into the band’s “pirate” records, records taken without authorization or rights directly from shows and rehearsals.

In 2017 the producer Alex Orbison, son of the remembered singer Roy Orbison, bought the rights to the book to take it to the movies, associated with Ashley Hamilton’s Roy’s Boys Films production company, but until today the project has not materialized.

Few traces remain of Nicol in Beatle history today. Perhaps just a phrase that was made a joke as those 1964 shows went on. Every time John or Paul were asked about the young drummer about how he felt in the middle of that maelstrom, good old Jimmy answered convinced “It´s Gettin´ Better” (is improving).

The phrase, which generated laughter because of its repetition, was used years later by Paul to title one of the best songs of the world. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band released on June 1, 1967.

Nothing more than a small memento that Jimmy, at 81, if he’s still alive, may treasure along with that signed gold watch that marked the final hour of his short-lived fame.