John Lennon Called Me Normal

Norman Smith never followed the rulebook. He was at the Beatles audition in 1962 and if he had followed the ‘standing orders’ from Abbey Road, the band would have been sent back to Liverpool. Later, as head of an EMI company, Parlophone, Norman sent out a ‘looking for talent’ letter to agents, only to be accused of poaching artists from other companies. But, against EMI's orders, Norman went off to check out a new band in a smelly basement club. The club was called UFO; the band was called Pink Floyd. But Norman’s life was like that. In his late 40’s, he decided to reinvent himself as either Hurricane Smith or Amos Gherkin. He hatched a plan to get his first record released, which involved bugging the EMI ‘New Releases’ committee to find out what they thought of it ASAP, so that he would be ‘ahead of the game.’ He was reticent about jumping on the memoir bandwagon and didn’t want to merely capitalise on his associations, but the stories were far too good not to share.