The strange feud between Noël Coward and The Beatles: “Bad mannered little sh*ts”
In today’s world, you’ll quite often hear people of an older generation decrying how the culture of young people makes no sense to them and how they can’t get on board with it, and this is understandably how Noël Coward, a major cultural figure of the 1920s and ‘30s, failed to get on board with The Beatles as a man in his 60s.
It wasn’t for a lack of trying, and while there were many elements of the band that you’d think he’d be able to wrap his head around, such as Paul McCartney’s forays into interpreting Cowardian whimsy, it would appear that the Fab Four were not to his tastes, much like a lot of the other trends in popular culture that were emerging at the time. Never one to mince his words, Coward was known for lashing out at stars with savage quips, and this was ultimately what led to a lengthy feud between the two parties.
The Beatles would first cross paths with Coward through the singer Alma Cogan in 1964, and while his initial reception of the band would suggest that there was no bad blood between them, he would then go on to make the grave mistake of making some disparaging remarks about the band to Daily Mail reporter David Lewin. After subsequently publishing these quotes, where Coward called the group “totally devoid of talent”, Lewin had essentially created a rift between these two bastions of British culture, and it was something that Coward would never be able to escape.
Upon a later visit to Rome in 1965, Coward would be presented with an opportunity to finally witness the band in the flesh, and perhaps make amends for his earlier comments. Still, given how The Beatles’ performance at the Teatra Adriano was something of a shambles, with the auditorium being half-empty. The band resorting to joking with each other, Coward would describe the performance in his diary as “deafening,” and “one long, ear-splitting din.”
Coward’s tirade didn’t end there. “It is still impossible to judge from their public performance whether they have talent or not,” he continued, before turning his ire towards the crowd, rather than the band. “They were professional, had a certain guileless charm, and stayed on mercifully for not too long, but I was truly horrified and shocked by the audience. The whole thing is to me an unpleasant phenomenon. To realise that the majority of the modern adolescent world goes ritualistically mad over those four innocuous, rather silly-looking young men is a disturbing thought. Perhaps we are whirling more swiftly into extinction than we know. Personally, I should have liked to take some of those squeamish young maniacs and cracked their heads together.”
You’d think that this would be where Coward chose to accept that he had been defeated by modern culture, and quietly step away from the situation, having insulted the band on multiple occasions, admittedly once in a private diary. However, such was his arrogance and desire to be seen as a socialite of sorts, he introduced himself backstage to Brian Epstein, the band’s manager, and demanded to meet with the band.
Given how they were all aware of his unflattering remarks that Lewin had published, the band initially declined to come down from their hotel room to meet with Coward, but after some persuasion, McCartney would be the one to descend and attempt to be diplomatic about the entire situation. Of course, Coward didn’t hold back from commenting on this in his diary either. “The poor boy was quite amiable,” Coward said of McCartney, “and I sent messages of congratulations to his colleagues, although the message I would have liked to send them was that they were bad-mannered little shits.”
Coward’s diary wouldn’t be published until 1982, nine years after his death, and the revelation that he’d continued this condemnation of the band didn’t sit well with The Beatles. While Coward was always florid with his language in the way he berated the band, McCartney would address his comments in his own autobiography in a more blunt fashion. “I went down and met him,” he said of their Italian encounter, “but then he said some not too pleasant things about us after that, so fuck him.”
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