Things were coming to a boiling point. Something or someone had to give. Someone finally did. Charlie and Lee went to Skip and Ahbeeb, and said that they wanted Pete out of the band. Lee said either Pete went, or he would. Skip didn't know what to say. He brought up the fact that Pete was the only member of the band with name recognition. Lee countered with the fact that Pete couldn't keep time. Ahbeeb mentioned the fact that Pete had nice hair. Lee countered with the fact that Pete wrote "Like Me, Do." Pete was out. As if they needed added emphasis on the decision Charlie added, "that cat's weird, man."

They needed to find a new drummer, but unfortunately their first choice Ringo Starr was unavailable. Skip put the word out to his contacts, and came up with a young drummer by the name of Abraham Hoffman, but his friends called him Abbie. Abbie had been drumming with a surf band by the name of Surf's Yip! He was a hard hitter and, more importantly, hard of hearing. This would stand him in good stead, as he would be rooming with Charlie. Upon hearing of his firing, Pete was more astonished that hurt. Pete remembers:

 

"I was like, beside myself. Like, what's all this and what ever happened to the Pete Best Project? It was the Beatles all over again, except no one hit me. I said that if they were firing me, I didn't want them to play "Like Me, Do." They thanked me for that, and I never saw them again."

 

The new line-up of Marina Size only played one gig together, and it has become a now legendary debacle. It was at the Knights of Columbus Fall Festival 1962, and clearly not their kind of crowd. The Imperial Mystic Ruler of the K of C gave the boys the suggestions for the set list, which included such standards as "Misty," "Moonglow," and "The Ballad of Jimmy Joe Billy Bear." Lee was nursing a black eye he received in the kitchen by some Pro-Castro dishwashers he tried to hand "FAIR PLAY FOR CUBA" leaflets to. He responded by taking off his shirt and carving "CUBA FOR THE CUBANS" into his chest with a steak knife. Abbie was trying to convince one of the waitresses that if they joined hands, and pelvises, they could make the entire building levitate. Charlie was looking out among the throngs of forty and fifty-year-old couples in the hall, and beginning to get nauseous. He swallowed a bottle of Ajax to calm his nerves.

A hush quickly fell over the hall, as the Imperial Mystic Ruler took the stage to introduce the band. He was brief, but kind, and then Charlie approached the mike. After a squeal of feedback Charlie, back to the audience, spoke:

 

"Right now, we're gonna deviate septums with jellyfish faces. Buy our record."

The applause slowly died down, and expectation rose with every moment of silence. The hall was quiet as a church, when Abbie's drum sticks clacked out the time. One-two-three-four:

I eat vanilla yogurt, but it's your white skin.

I write a manifesto, don't know where to begin.

Take me to the Kremlin, had enough of the lies,

I defect, but there's no defect, in Marina's eyes.

 

Abbie watched the audience like a hawk. They were listening, a few were even dancing. Lee was playing in tune, and Charlie was singing the right words. Abbie implored Charlie to turn around, to "let 'em in, Charlie! Let 'em in!" They were breaking through to these Knights of Columbus, past generation gaps, past political lines, even past gender lines. The band could all feel it, and Marina Size played on with renewed vigor, as Charlie whipped around and faced the crowd:

 

When Capitalist Pigs keep my face in the slop,

It's to my Comrade's knees I drop.

I'll gaze toward heaven, straight up God's thighs,

It's there I see... Marina's eyes.

At this time, Abbie became aware that everyone had stopped dancing. Lee became aware of a slight rumbling at the back of the hall, and Charlie became aware of a beer bottle that sailed by his head. The band stayed in the pocket for a while gauging the room. Lee was frightened at the sight of a few of the higher-ranking Knights heading towards the bandstand, their gold epaulettes shining in the distance. Abbie stopped playing and ran up towards the microphone. Abbie had a way with words, and he would try and calm down the crowd. Lee and Charlie played on as Abbie grabbed for the microphone. In Charlie's Ajax-impaired state, he saw someone going for his microphone and instinctively reacted.

"Get the fuck off my stage!"

Charlie kicked Abbie in the balls, and slugged him with his guitar. Abbie fell off the stage into the crowd below. Someone tossed a full jar of peanut butter on the stage, and Charlie picked it up and began smearing his torso with it. He then threw large chunks of it into the crowd, accompanied by Lee's lone bass line.

Someone threw a full beer can at Lee and it split his nose wide open. The blood poured in copious amounts down his chin, to his bare chest, as he played on. Three Knights grabbed at Lee's feet to pull him off the stage. Lee responded by taking off his bass and swinging it at his assailants, striking one in the head-sending his large hat across the room. He kept a constant series of blows raining down on his attackers, as Charlie now played on alone. Knights were throwing hamburgers at Charlie, covering him in lettuce and ketchup. Charlie glanced over to see the trouble his bass player was in, and to find his drummer missing. More Knights in full regalia headed towards the stage in his direction. Charlie had to do something, and now. He stopped playing, grabbed the microphone tight, and laid down the law:

"Hey, mustard men! I'm on the prowl, night owl! What'chu think I'm in my head for? Huh? I'm gonna be the water shed! I'm flossin' legs! You're the apple pie, right!? How's your mother gonna jet plane my beanbag, Jack? You ain't never heard the grass eat leather, have you? Huh? I'm in your salad, and your hat! You hear me? I'm a coffee can of semen! What's your trip, Daddy? Huh?"

 

A hush fell over the crowd. Some women wept, some men looked ashamedly at their feet, and the Imperial Mystic Ruler ripped off his gold braiding in self-effacing gloom. Other men, the majority in fact, rushed the stage and beat Charlie and Lee to a bloody pulp. Lee had to be pulled off the stage by a policeman, who immediately began to beat Lee as he dragged him out. The next morning, when he bailed Lee out, Skip had to pull Lee away from the officer who was still beating Lee some thirteen hours later.

The next day Ahbeeb and Skip assessed the damage. They looked around the studio at what was left of the band. Lee's fingers were all broken, Charlie's jaw was wired shut, and Abbie was missing and presumed dead. Skip was disappointed, but saw the future as being bright. Surely radio play would bring the fame they'd hoped for, and give the band time to recover. Once the single was a hit, the band could tour for at least a year on package tours. Two minutes on stage, then straight off, and on to the next city-racking up loads of cash, and a large fan base for a full-length album. Unbeknownst to Skip, however, fate and happenstance were already lined up against them.

Through a defect in pressing the album, the sides were labeled wrong. This left Marina Size with "Like Me, Do!" on their hit side, and "Marina's Eyes" on their B-side. This calamity was coupled with the fact that every single copy sent to a radio station, was sent with Skip Fester's explicit memo that under no circumstances were DJs to play the B-side. To make matters worse, Ahbeeb had just received a western union telegram from Brian Epstein's NEMS Enterprises, Ltd. It appeared that Mr. Epstein had heard about "Like Me, Do"s overwhelming likeness to his Beatles' "Love Me, Do" and had a pay-or-desist order being drawn up in his legal department. Ahbeeb and Skip wondered how Epstein even heard of the B-side's existence, and were painfully aware that they couldn't afford to pay that kind of money. They had put all their eggs in one basket, pressing hundreds of thousands of singles to meet the as-yet-undemanding demand. They couldn't even send the band out on radio or television spots in their ailing conditions.

Into this dark situation came more bad news. The phone rang. It was Pete, calling from the airport. He was flying back to England, but called to say that he wanted them to take his name off all of the singles. Ahbeeb didn't understand why, and when pressed, Pete flew off the handle.

"What do you mean, 'why?' Didn't you hear! DJs all over the country are refusing to play "Like Me, Do!" They're breaking the records in half, on the air."

"Why would they play the B side?"

"It's not the floggin' B-side! They pressed it as the bloody A-side. Everyone's makin' fun o' me!"

Pete hung up, and boarded his plane for Mersey, via Tibet. He was clearly not willing to stick around to suffer any more abuse. He would head home for that. Ahbeeb told the group about the record-pressing faux pas. Upon hearing this, Lee stood up and cleared his throat. He seldom talked, but when he did it was usually something that required a clearing of his throat. He placed his bass case, which now read "ALL IMPERIAL MYSTIC RULERS LIE," on the floor. The room waited in silence, until:

 

"Well... um, I hate to break the peace we have between us... but I am needed in the people's struggle. I have to get out of this backward, white bread, money hungry, state.... I'm moving to Texas. There, I will make plans to bring my beloved Marina to me. If there is any residual remuneration from the sale of the 'Marina's Eyes' single, please mail it to the Attention of Guy Bannister, at The Fair Play For Cuba Committee, in New Orleans. Thank you, gentlemen... and um... Sic Semper Tyranis."

 

With those randomly chosen words, Lee left the room. The rolling snowball of bad luck was now an out of control boulder hurtling towards the hapless producing team. And so, they turned to Charlie.

Skip and Ahbeeb saw in Charlie a faint chance to rescue the entire operation. Surely a few calls to the key radio stations would set the DJs right about which side to play. As long as they still had the original singer they could back him with any number of musicians, with very little effort. Skip looked at Charlie and watched him take out a ballpoint pen. In his mute, jaw-wired, agony he wanted to write something. Skip imagined he was going to tell them not to worry, to hitch their wagon to his star and watch him ascend. He would write that they could ride him till he dropped, that they were in it together, one for all and all for.... Skip and Ahbeeb watched in horror as Charlie used the pen to carve a bloody swastika into his forehead. Skip could not imagine a more fitting postscript for the band. Charlie then took the bloodstained pen and wrote, "All them K of C piggies need a whacking," over one hundred times. Charlie then slung his acoustic guitar over his bandaged head, and limped out towards a destination in the desert, as yet unknown.

Filigree Records closed later that year, owing to "financial calamity." Ahbeeb Svenschin would eventually find success managing Elden Salt, a gaunt, albino song-belter, ironically known for his interpretation of "Got A Belly Full O' Pigment."

After Marina Size, the late Skip Fester was still in demand as a Producer and his best work, on thirty-seven different Surf Boys records (cut from 1964-1992), was still ahead of him. Skip is survived by his nephew, Pugsley.

Little was written about Marina Size during their existence and even less afterwards. A yellowing clip from Melody Maker calls Marina Size simply "one of a string of failed Pete Best projects." Music Press called Marina Size "a band, a concept, a group of men, and a joke, who's time had not yet come." There is, oddly enough, no mention of Marina Size in the Warren Report. The Warren Commision mentions only that Book Depository co-workers, when pressed, felt Lee's bass case "might have been large enough to house a Manlicher-Carcano rifle."

Lee would be reunited with his beloved Marina and settle into family life, but alas, it was not meant to be. God had a different plan for Lee, and for the three teams of two shooters who were arranged trilaterally.

Charlie would in fact form his religion, and become quite famous for his congregation, although he fell victim to the same kind of moral persecution that would later haunt L. Ron Hubbard.

Abbie Hoffman went on to form a successful anti-Adult group of his own, and would speak in front of three hundred thousand people at Woodstock for about two seconds. As for Pete Best, he's currently hard at work on a biography, "Starr: The Ringo I Knew." As for what Marina Size might have been, I think Charlie said it best, "How's your mother gonna jet plane my beanbag, Jack?" How indeed...?

 

THE END

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All text Copyright © 2000 James J. Smith.