Beatles History 1963 · 2017-09-01 · Beatles History 1963 had to knock out the rest of the broken...

Beatles History 1963

January

Singles released in January: Frank Ifield's The Wayward Wind (26th, #1)

Albums released in January: Cliff Richard's Summer Holiday soundtrack (26th, #1)

10th: Brian signed a deal with Vee-Jay to start releasing Beatles singles in the States. This only happened because EMI's sister-company in the States - Capitol - failed to see the potential that was staring them in the face. They had first refusal on all of EMI's stock, but Alan Livingston said selling 'British Beat' in the early sixties was like selling ants to a zoo - a complete waste of time. “Out of courtesy,” he said, “I would occasionally take an EMI record, English in particular, and release it in the States with no success whatsoever. There was just no interest in English artists here. And they would pressure me somewhat, but not too bad, and I'd keep trying them every now and then. We had no success at all, but because of the relationship, I felt we had to screen everything they sent us. I couldn't just brush it off, so I gave one of my producers the assignment of listening to every EMI record that was sent to us. His name was David Dexter. And Dave was a good musicologist, he was a writer, he was a producer, and I trusted his ears and was not concerned about it.”

Now, it is fair to say that David Dextor was not the world's biggest Beatles fan, because he turned down disc after disc. It was then up to another company, Transglobal, to find a label to put them out. The label they chose was Vee-Jay. They had already scored a number five hit with another EMI act - Frank Ifield - so they had experience of pushing British acts in the American market.

Despite getting the brush-off from the cloth-eared Capitol big-wigs, Brian still had high hopes of bringing them round, so his original deal with Vee-Jay was for 'Please Please Me' and 'Ask Me Why' only. He also gave them first refusal on every Beatles disc for the next five years. However, a couple of easy riders on the contract caused Vee-Jay an endless amount of problems - they had to release the songs within 30 days of receiving the masters, or their rights would expire. (This caused problems in January '64, when they tried releasing their debut LP.) They also had to pay the royalties within 45 days. (Which also caused problems, because their boss got sacked in the summer for gambling away the money!). But more on this later...

11th: EMI released their second UK single: 'Please Please Me / Ask Me Why'. Their first single had been promoted by EMI's in-house company, Ardmore & Beechwood, but Brian was unhappy about how little work they'd done to plug it, so he set about looking for another publisher. His first idea was to use an American company, but George Martin suggested trying a couple of British companies instead - one of them being Dick James Music. (Martin actually owed Dick James a favour, because James had offered him first dibs on 'How Do You Do It' - the song that The Beatles turned down in favour of 'Love Me Do'.) Brian went ahead and set up a couple of appointments with other


companies too, but the first one turned up late, so he packed his bags and left. James, however, turned up bright and breezy half an hour early and put the record straight on the player. He was immediately taken with it, and - in a legendary piece of business bravado - phoned up the producer of ITV's Thank Your Lucky Stars there and then, piped the song down the blower, and secured a spot on national telly. Brian, who couldn't believe his luck, promptly gave James the deal.

James knew all about music, because he was the first British artist to crack the American charts, with his soppy single 'You Can't Be True, Dear' back in the fifties. He also had a top-ten hit with the Robin Hood theme tune. (I kid you not!) And guess who the producer was? It was none other than George Martin! But his greatest claim to fame must be the Max Bygraves' number 'I'm A Pink Toothbrush, I'm A Blue Toothbrush' - which he wrote. (One of my favourite tunes.)

With the publishing deal all done and dusted Brian concentrated on getting the Beatles some publicity. But he wasn't much up on the ins and outs of advertising, so he asked Tony Barrow for his help. (He was the guy who worked for Decca - and had his own record review column in the Liverpool Evening Echo.) “Brian didn't know how you promoted a record,” he said. “So I put him in touch with the trade press. And then he said he hadn't got a press officer - he'd just been sending round duplicated hand-outs on his own. So he asked me if I could help. So, sitting in my office at Decca, I wrote out the very first press release for the Beatles!”

Because Tony worked for Decca, he couldn't risk using his own name and mailing list, so he used someone' else's - Andrew Loog Oldham's.

13th: Whilst the Beatles were busy taping 'Please Please Me' for Thank Your Lucky Stars, they were spotted by Tony Barrow's mate, Andrew Loog Oldham. He immediately set about trying to blag a press-rep job off Brian. He remembered: “I went up to John and told him he was good. He agreed. I then asked who handled them and he pointed over his shoulder to a paisley scarf-clad businessman chatting nervously to Ringo in the corner. I hustled Epstein and got the job, mainly because nobody else had asked.”

Oldham's lucky break lost a little of its gloss when he realised that Brian was only giving him Gerry and the Pacemakers and Billy J. Kramer to look after. (Four months later he caught the Rolling Stones playing at the Crawdaddy Club, and promptly quit NEMS to manage them instead - but that's a completely different story for another time!)

19th: The Beatles got their first real exposure on national TV, by appearing in Thank Your Lucky Stars.

20th: Mal Evans' first day working for the Beatles. He used to work The Cavern Club door, turfing out all the little kids, but when Neil came down with a fever one day, he got the job of driving them to London. He didn't have a very enjoyable trip, though, because the windscreen smashed on the motorway! John recalled: “You should have seen Mal. He had this paper bag over his head with a big split in it for eyes. He looked like a bank robber! We were all in the back of the van doing the same thing. It was freezing! Mal


had to knock out the rest of the broken glass and just drive on. It was perishing.” The next day he brought the van back good as new, having replaced the window himself, and he stayed with them for the rest of the decade.

The Beatles now had two road managers - Neil and Mal. Mal's job was to drive all the gear from place to place and set it up onstage. And Neil looked after the Beatles personally. But whilst Neil was a bit of a smart-arse (he had eight O-levels), Mal was basically just a loveable old oaf. “I remember my first show,” he said. “It was a huge stage and my mind went blank. I didn't know where to put anything, so I asked a drummer from another group to help me. I didn't realise each drummer likes his cymbals at a special height. He did them his own way, but they were useless for Ringo. But the worst of all was at the Finsbury Empire in London, when I lost John's guitar. It was one he'd had for years as well. It just disappeared. Where's my Jumbo, he said. I didn't know. It's still a mystery today.”

Ed Freeman remembered: “His basic advantage was that he could pick up one of those huge Super Beatle amps, squeeze it between his hands and lift it six feet on to the stage. He was absolutely stunning that way. He could also pick up half a dozen fans, lift them six feet off the ground and throw them over a fence. Very strong guy - but I don't think he could tune anything. As far as I could tell he was tone deaf.” February

Singles released in February: Cliff Richard's Summer Holiday (23rd, #1)

2nd: First night of the Helen Shapiro tour. This was a bit of a come-down because they found themselves at the bottom of the bill again, supporting a sixteen-year-old kid. But London was an entirely different ballgame and Ringo remembered: “Helen was definitely the star. She had a telly in her room and we didn't have one. We had to ask her if we could watch hers.” He had only been a Beatle for a few months, and was still the odd one out. “I was the new boy,” he said. “But the togetherness of this tour helped a lot. At first I was worried about who I was going to share with at the hotels, but mostly it was me in with Paul, and John and George sharing another room.”

Compared to the Beatles, Helen Shapiro was an old-pro. She burst onto the scene in '61 with the top ten hit 'Don't Treat Me Like A Child' (made when she was fourteen!). “I had a special feeling for John,” she said. “He probably realised I had a crush on him. He called me 'Helly' and was incredibly protective. I was mad on him, really mad. I had the biggest crush on him any sixteen-year-old could have on a guy... On the coach once, I picked up a copy of the Melody Maker and opened it up to the headline: 'Is Helen a has-been at sixteen?' John was sitting right behind me then, reading over my shoulder. I was really upset, but it was he who comforted me. 'Don't let the swines get you down,' he said to me.”

John said: “Touring was a relief, just to get out of Liverpool and break new ground. We were beginning to feel stale and cramped.” Kenny Lynch remembered them planning


their gig on the coach: “They were thinking of running up to the microphone together and shaking their heads and singing, 'Whoooo!' So, I said, 'You can't do that. They'll think you're a bunch of poofs!'” John said: “We didn't know anything about things like make-up, because we'd never done proper stage shows before. It was a long time before we had a go at it. I think it was after watching Frank Ifield... his eyes looked amazing. We thought we'd try it ourselves, and pranced on like Red Indians, covered in the stuff.”

By the time the tour closed in March, 'Please Please Me' had hit the top-spot and they were promoted to closing the first half. The fans were getting bolshy and the other acts were starting to feel the pressure. Kenny Lynch recalled: “Arthur Howes came to me and said, 'Look, you'd better go on just before the Beatles. You're the only one who doesn't care how badly you go down.' I introduced them every night. I'd only got to mention 'the lads' and a cheer went up. I'd say, 'I'm not bringing them on until you're quiet', and the kids would rush the stage. For a virtually unknown group, it was incredible.” One of the prescient journo's noticed that “owning the Beatles is rather like sitting on a bomb, which will soon go off in a mushroom of money.”

7th: Released their first single in the States: 'Please Please Me / Ask Me Why'. It flopped. It didn't even get into the charts! It wouldn't be long before things turned around, however. Because exactly one year to this day they would fly into JFK under much different circumstances...

8th: The Beatles were refused entry to the Crown And Mitre Hotel because they were wearing leather jackets, and the Daily Express ran an anti-Beatles story in the morning.

11th: The Beatles were forced to record the remainder of their Please Please Me LP in one marathon session, lasting 585 minutes. George Martin explained: “There wasn't a lot of money at Parlophone. I was working to an annual budget of £55,000 and I could spend it however I wished, but I had to produce a certain amount of records a year. So, I wanted to get the Beatles' first album recorded in a day and released very quickly, because once we'd made the first single, my commercial instincts told me that I had to have an album out every quickly. So I got the boys together and asked them, 'What have you got? What can we record really quickly?' And they replied by telling me, 'Only the stuff we can do in our act.' So then I chose the stuff that would appeal to the kids of the day, things like 'Anna (Go To Him)' and 'Chains'.”

Paul remembered: “We'd been playing the songs for months and months before getting the record out. And we came into the studio at ten in the morning, started it, did one number, had a cup of tea, relaxed, did the next one, a couple of overdubs... we just worked through them like that, like a stage act. And by about ten o'clock that night we'd done ten songs and we just reeled out of the studios, John clutching his throat tablets!” John was suffering from a heavy cold at the time [have a listen to 'There's A Place'], and had a jar of Zubes sitting on the piano. The engineer, Norman Smith, recalled: “He had this big jar of Zubes throat sweets on top of the piano, rather like the ones you see in a sweet shop. And paradoxically, by the side of that, was a big carton of Peter Stuyvesant


cigarettes, which they smoked incessantly.” And after he came back from the pub at lunch, he was amazed to see that: “they'd played right the way through. I couldn't believe it! I'd never seen a group work right through their lunch break before.”

Once it was all done and dusted, Paul remembered waiting weeks and weeks for a copy: “We went home and they started mixing it. Then they'd ring us in a couple of weeks, and we would say, 'Is our record ready yet?' It was rather like putting a film into the chemists.”

16th: The Beatles appeared on the front cover of Record Mirror - the first time they got onto the cover of a national music mag.

22nd: Dick James suggested to Brian that John and Paul should start up their own publishing company, so they could share in all the radio play and cover version profits. He duly agreed and Northern Songs was born. John and Paul initially assumed that they'd own the whole company, but they were only given 49 shares between them. Brian took ten of them, and the rest went to Dick James and his accountant. This deal would come to haunt them in 1969, because James sold off his shares behind their back, but back in 1963 it seemed like a very good deal indeed. After all, James could have simply signed them up to Dick James Music Ltd., which would have netted him far more money in the long run, but by giving them their own publishing deal he earned a bit of respect. George Martin said: “His idea was very clever... because in offering as large a slice as 50 per cent he ensured that they would sign a contract for a long period of time. He wouldn't have got a deal like that if he'd offered them a smaller share.” (He actually offered Martin a share as well, but he turned it down on the grounds that it would be unethical.)

The actual money that was generated by Northern Songs was paid into another company - Lenmac Enterprises. This was owned 40 per cent by John, 40 per cent by Paul, and 20 per cent by NEMS. And as soon as the Beatles broke America they set up yet another company, called Maclen Music - to handle all of their overseas payments. (And they later set up a third company, called Subafilms, to handle all of their film profits!)

As a reward for his good faith, Brian allowed James to keep the rights to their second single. March

Singles released in March: Roy Orbison's In Dreams (2nd, #6); Gerry and the Pacemakers' How Do You Do It? (16th, #1)

5th: The famous balcony shots at EMI were taken on this day.

22nd: Released their first UK album: 'Please Please Me'. It reached number one a couple of months later, and stayed on top for thirty weeks.


This was also the day that the Profumo sex scandal hit the newsstands. The Tory Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, was caught banging Christine Keeler (only 22 years old - good man!). Unfortunately, she had also been just about every other famous bloke in Britain - one of whom was a naval attache at the Russian Embassy. Profumo did the decent thing and denied the whole affair, but as soon the press started prying he had to own up - and both he and the PM were gone by Christmas. This event, along with 50,000 screaming Beatlemaniacs and the introduction of the pill has since been cited as kicking off the Swinging Sixties - a time when London lost it's sexual innocence. [Interesting note: When the Beatles did the Help! movie in 1965 they shot the Buckingham Palace scenes at Cliveden - the same place that Profumo wined and dined his lady-mates! Apparently Keeler was swimming butt-naked in the pool when he met her.] April

Singles released in April: The Chiffons' He's So Fine (13th, #16)

8th: John and Cynthia had a bouncing baby boy, and called him Julian - after John's dead mother, Julia. John asked Brian if he'd mind being godfather.

11th: Released their third UK single: 'From Me To You / Thank You Girl'. It entered the chart at number six.

14th: The Beatles saw The Rolling Stones playing at the Crawdaddy Club in Station Road, Richmond. And this was the same month that Andrew Loog Oldham discovered them as well, so they were on the verge of becoming famous! “We'd heard about this blues band,” said Paul. “And we were into American blues so we showed up at the Station Hotel. And there they were, the early Stones: Brian, Mick waving his mike in that characteristic way, and of course the little harmonica thing that he'd pull in on that tight microphone. They saw us walk in. We all had long suede leather coats on and little suede caps.” George recalled: “It was a real rave. The audience shouted and screamed and danced on the tables. They were doing a dance that no one had seen up till then, but we all know as the Shake. The beat they laid down was so solid it shook off the walls and seemed to move inside your head. A great sound.”

After the show was over they all went round Jagger's flat at 102 Edith Grove, Chelsea, and played Jimmy Reed records until the early hours of the morning. There was no such thing as a Beatles/Stones rivalry in those days - it was all garnered by the press to sell a few more papers.

18th: Paul met 17-year-old Jane Asher at the Royal Albert Hall. She was writing a piece for the Radio Times and had to interview them out the back. [In a strange coincidence, it turned out that her mother had once taught George Martin how to play the oboe at the Guildhall School of Music!] Paul said: “We all knew her as the rather attractive, nice and well-spoken chick that we'd seen on Juke Box Jury. But we all thought she was blonde, because we'd only ever seen her in black and white on television, and we went mad for


blondes. Then she came backstage afterwards and we all immediately tried to pull her. You know, being the order of the day. Anyway, one thing or another, we ended up back at the Royal Court Hotel where we were staying. We went to a journalist, Chris Hutchins' apartment on the King's Road. It was all very civilised... all very innocent... so from then on I made strenuous efforts to become her boyfriend. At the end of all that I ended up with her. Maybe I'd made the strongest play, or maybe she fancied me, I don't know.”

Cynthia Lennon remembered: “Paul fell for her like a ton of bricks. He was obviously as proud as a peacock with his new lady. For him, she was a great prize. The fact that she was already an established actress of stage and screen, very intelligent and beautiful gave an enormous boost to his ego.”

28th: Paul, George and Ringo went on a two-week holiday to Tenerife, but John and Brian went to Spain together, which started off the famous gay rumour. “Cyn was having a baby,” he said, “and the holiday was planned, and I wasn't going to break the holiday for a baby and that's what a bastard I was. So I just went on holiday. It was enjoyable, but there were big rumours in Liverpool, it was terrible. Very embarrassing.” He went on to say: “It started off all the rumours that he and I were having a love affair, but not quite - it was never consummated. But we did have a pretty intense relationship... I was pretty close to him because if somebody's going to manage me, I want to know them inside out. And there was a period when he told me he was a fag and all that. It was my first experience with someone I knew was homosexual. We used to sit in cafes and Brian would look at all the boys and I would ask, 'Do you like that one? What about this one?'”

Paul explained: “John was a smart cookie. Brian was going on holiday to Spain and invited him along. And John, not being stupid, saw his opportunity to impress upon Mr. Epstein who the boss was of this group. And I think that's why John went on holiday... I slept in a million hotel rooms with John, as we all did, and there was never any hint that he was gay.” John readily agreed that “Epstein was in love with me” but added: “It's interesting, and will make a nice Hollywood movie someday, but it's irrelevant. Absolutely irrelevant.” May

Singles released in May: Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas' Do You Want To Know A Secret (4th, #2)

1st: Tony Barrow left Decca, and started working for NEMS.

6th: Released their second single in the States: 'From Me To You / Thank You Girl'.

10th: George was judge on a beat-group contest at the Philharmonic Hall. One of the other judges was Dick Rowe (the man who turned them down at Decca) and George told him all about the Stones' gig at the Crawdaddy Club last month. So he immediately took the train down to London to check them out.


16th: Dick Rowe - the man who turned down the Beatles - redeemed himself by signing up The Rolling Stones.

18th: Start of The Roy Orbison Tour. Ringo said: “It was terrible following him. He'd slay them and they'd scream for more. In Glasgow we were all backstage, listening to the tremendous applause he was getting. He was just standing there singing, not moving or anything. As it got near our turn we would hide behind the curtain whispering to each other, 'Guess who's next folks, it's your favourite rave.”

It was during this tour that the Beatles started causing riots, with all the crazy ladies trying to get a piece. But it still went largely unreported in the press.

24th: The Beatles recorded their very-own BBC radio show, called Pop Go The Beatles. It ran for the fifteen weeks, with the first one airing on the 4th June. They ended up doing fifty-three shows in total, recording eighty-eight different songs (some as many as twelve times), leaving a stack of 280 recordings. Most of these have since been released on Live At The BBC.

30th: The Beatles performed at the Oxford Street Odeon, Manchester. This gig became famous because it was the first one attended by Derek Taylor - Apple's future press man. He had a column in the Northern edition of the Daily Express and wrote, “[the concert] was as beneficial and invigorating as a week on a beach at the pier head overlooking the Mersey. Their stage manner has little polish but limitless energy, and they have in abundance and fundamental rough good humour of their native city. It was marvellous, meaningless, impertinent, exhilarating stuff.” June

Singles released in June: Gerry and the Pacemakers' I Like It (1st, #1); The Crystal's Da Doo Ron Ron (22nd, #5); Frank Ifield's Confessin' That I Love You (29th, #1); The Searchers' Sweets For My Sweet (29th, #1)��Albums released in June: Roy Orbison's Lonely And Blue (8th, #15); Roy Orbison's Crying (29th, #17)

18th: Paul's 21st birthday party. He held it in a big marquee round Aunt Jin's house. But John rather ruined it by beating up Bob Wooler, after he jokingly suggested that he slept with Brian in Spain. John was very drunk and said: “He called me a queer so I battered his bloody ribs in.” He allegedly set upon a woman as well, and when Billy J. Kramer tried breaking it up he pushed him away, saying, “You're nothing, Kramer, and we're top!” The Daily Mirror reported it on it's back page three days later under the headline “Beatle In Brawl - Sorry I Socked You.” But because the Beatles were still largely unknown, it went relatively unnoticed.

John said: “The first national press we ever got was on the back page of the Daily Mirror, after I beat up Bob Wooler. That was the first 'Lennon Hits Out' story. That was terrible. I was so bad the next day. We had a BBC appointment and they all went down by train and I wouldn't go. Brian came to my house and was pleading with me to go


down to London. I was saying, 'I'm not. I'm not.' I was so afraid of the outcome, because I nearly killed the guy. I smashed him up. I battered his bloody ribs for him. When you're 21, you want to be a man, and all that. And I was beating the shit out of him, and beating him with a big stick. It was the first time that I thought, 'I can kill this guy.' I just saw it, like on a screen, that if I just hit him once more, than that was going to be it.”

A few days later, Brian gave Wooler two hundred quid to stop him suing, and sent a telegram that read: “Really sorry, Bob. Terribly sorry. I realise what I had done. What more can I say?” Luckily Bob was a forgiving guy, and let the matter drop.

20th: The Beatles set up a brand new company, called Beatles Ltd., to handle all of their profits. The shares were split evenly between the four of them.

21st: Don Short's article, called 'Beatle In Brawl - Sorry I Socked You', appeared in the Daily Mirror. It read: “Guitarist John Lennon, twenty-two-year-old leader of the Beatles pop group, said last night: 'Why did I have to go and punch my best friend? I was so high I didn't realise what I was doing.' Then he sent off a telegram apologising to twenty-nine-year-old Liverpool rock show compère and disc jockey Bob Wooler... who said: 'I don't know why he did it. I have been a friend of the Beatles for a long time. I have often compèred shows where they have appeared. I am terribly upset about this, physically as well as mentally.' John Lennon said: 'Bob is the last person in the world I would want to have a fight with. I can only hope he realises that I was too far gone to know what I was doing.'”

22nd: John appeared on Juke Box Jury, and, undeterred by the previous day's bad press, voted every song a miss.

July

Singles released in July: Brian Poole and the Tremeloes' Twist And Shout (6th, #4); Tony Bennett's The Good Life (20th, #27); The Isley Brothers' Twist And Shout (27th, #42); The Rolling Stones' debut Come On (27th, #21)

Sometime in the summer (date unknown) Brian thought it wise to rent a flat at 57 Green Street, Mayfair. By now the Beatles were becoming too famous to stay in small hotels because fans were busting in and wrecking the place. “By the time I got there,” recalled Paul, “the others had grabbed the best rooms and I was left with a tiny cramped room in the back.” The place was unfurnished and they never got round to buying any gear. “We kept saying, 'We must get a table, we must get a kettle.' But we were pretty hopeless about all that so it was a very cold place. There was no homeliness about it at all.”

Things didn't stay the same for long because John moved in with his missus. The press had already found out about his secret wife and son, so there was no point in hiding them up in Liverpool anymore. Cynthia soon packed her bags and bought a flat at 13 Emperor's Gate. The next to go was Paul. By November-time Paul's relationship with


Jane was becoming pretty serious, so Jane's mum Margaret offered him the spare room at 57 Wimpole Street. “She was a very warm person, a very nice mumsy-type woman, great cook, nothing was too much for her, a really nice person,” he said. “And for a young guy who likes his home comforts, boy did she spoil me. Richard the dad was a wacky medic, very intelligent, very eccentric. Then there was Jane's older brother Peter [one half of Peter and Gordon], who was an interesting, bright guy, also very interested in music and very musical. There was a lot of connection there. Wimpole Street had everything that Green Street was missing; there were people there and food and a homely atmosphere, and Jane being my girlfriend and all, it was perfect!” Needless to say, Paul couldn't pack his bags fast enough and left poor old George and Ringo on their own. They stuck it out till the Spring of '64, after which they moved to a better flat below Brian's house in William Mews, Knightsbridge.

12th: Released their first UK EP: 'Twist And Shout'. John Lennon was also forced to deny reports that he thought Ringo was ugly.

15th: Paul was fined seventeen quid for speeding. He blamed the crazy kids on his tail: “They were following behind us in a van, so in order to escape I had to exceed the speed limit.”

18th: First session for With The Beatles. They had managed to record their entire debut LP in a single day in February '64, but now that they were famous they started slacking - and they needed an entire six days spread over four months for the follow-up. (The other sessions were on the 30th July, 11th, 12th of September, and the 3rd and 23rd October.) August

Singles released in August: Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas' Bad To Me (3rd, #1)��Albums released in August: The Searchers' debut Meet The Searchers (10th, #2)

1st: The first edition of The Beatles Book came out - their monthly fan-club magazine. It was edited by Sean O'Mahony, the same guy who did Beat International. The first issue sold 80,000 copies, and at it's height a few years later it was shifting over 350,000 a month! It ran for 77 issues until December '69, after which it ceased publication.

3rd: Their last-ever appearance at The Cavern Club (after 274 shows). It sold out within half an hour. Ray McFall remembered: “I expected that we would eventually lose them, and Brian would have come to the same conclusion. He didn't want them to be playing this kind of venue anymore. But the combined smell of the snack bar, cigarettes, body odour, the cleaner's detergent fluid and urine from the toilets was pretty atmospheric. The place was steaming. The humidity was so great that the lights blew. While The Beatles were talking to the girls on the front row I had to do a quick job on the fuse, but after I'd fixed it and was flicking the switch it went again: there was a blue flash and I copped it on my left hand. That burned hand was my memento of The Beatles last performance! It was a momentous night - then all of a sudden they finished and were


gone.”

4th: John described a gig at Blackpool: “We turned up for the show and it was only five o'clock in the afternoon. But already they were massed outside the front of the theatre. Well, we might have got through the massed ranks if we had been inside tanks, or if we'd been mounted on elephants, but any other way was impossible! In the end, we were smuggled round to some doorway near the back. This took us into a builder's yard. We got onto a ladder, climbed up on that, onto some scaffolding, climbed higher and found ourselves on the roof. Then our guide led us along near the front edge of the roof, and, when the fans below spotted us, they cheered so loud, you could have heard them on Wigan pier!”

6th: Brian moved NEMS Enterprises into a new office at 24 Moorfields, Liverpool. It was handily placed above the Wizard's Den Magic Shop. “Suddenly our offices became too small and our business too big so we moved to Moorfields, a charming little street near Exchange Station in Liverpool,” he recalled. “We bought new furnishings, new people and a seething sense of urgency. A brand new switchboard was installed with two telephonists. We took on office boys, a general manager, an accountant, a press officer, and a fan-club staff who had to be set up in London.” Six months later the office followed them.

8th: The Beatles label in the States, Vee-Jay, started having money troubles in the summer and failed to pay their royalties on time. This led to Transglobal (who licensed their songs in the States) to send them a threatening letter, but they didn't reply. So they ordered them to “cease manufacture and distribution of any and all records containing performances by The Beatles with immediate effect.” This didn't bother Vee-Jay too much, because their first two singles had flopped. So they decided to bin the Beatles completely, and plans for their debut LP were put on the back-burner. (They didn't get warmed up again until Capitol had a hit with 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' in December '63.)

The cancellation of their contract naturally meant that Vee-Jay lost their first refusal on Beatles' songs - so EMI were able to offer the songs to Capitol again. This they did, with 'She Loves You' one week later, but Capitol still had wax in their ears and turned it down. The head of Capitol called a meeting with Deaf-man Dextor and remembered getting nervy: “I said, 'Dex, what about the Beatles? I read a lot about them, and they're doing well in London.' And he said, 'Alan, they're a bunch of long-haired kids. They're nothing. Forget it.' I said, 'Okay.' I still trusted Dextor. And I had no interest in British product at this point. So a few weeks went by and I began to get nervous because of the British press - I could tell they were doing really well. So I said, 'Dex, what about the Beatles?' And he said, 'Alan, forget it, they're nothing.' So I said, 'Okay,' and we turned them down.”

George Martin recalled: “From the moment the Beatles broke in England we tried terribly hard to sell them in America. Everything we attempted seemed to meet a resounding slap in the face. By then, of course, EMI had bought Capitol, so I was


naturally enthusiastic about making use of our company in the States. Of course, anyone at EMI who had had the authority could have simply instructed Capitol to issue our earlier records. But no one did, and I was still a weak force, controlling my little empire at Parlophone but with no say at all in what happened in America.” Transglobal then had no choice but to find another label, which they did - Swan. Luckily for Capitol, though, Brian had the good sense to stick with a one-record deal.

22nd: Robert Freeman's famous photo shoot for the cover of With The Beatles. “The first time I met them,” he said, “was in a hotel in Bournemouth and nationwide fame hadn't quite reached them. Old ladies were surrounding them and asking questions. The Beatles all assumed Oxford accents and every time they were asked questions like, 'How old are you?' they would give their age and ask, 'And how old are you?'”

23rd: Released their fourth UK single: 'She Loves You / I'll Get You'.

26th: Paul was fined thirty-one quid for racking up his third speeding conviction of the year. He was also disqualified from driving for twelve months. He was very nearly late for the hearing, and had to put his foot down all the way down the M1. By the time he arrived his tyres were on fire - that's how fast he was going.

28th: Martin Luther King gave his famous 'I have a dream' speech, at a civil rights march in Washington. September

Singles released in September: The Fourmost's Hello Little Girl (14th, #9); Brian Poole and the Tremeloes' Do You Love Me (14th, #1); The Crystal's Then He Kissed Me (21st, #2)

6th: Released their second UK EP: 'The Beatles' Hits'.

10th: In reference to a big gig at the Odeon, the Daily Mirror ran a story saying “the whistling banshee of the 2,000-strong audience was like a screaming power-dive from twelve o'clock high.” (The fist time that the Beatles had ever been compared to Kamikaze pilots!) The headline read: “Four Frenzied Little Lord Fauntleroys Who Are Making £5,000 Every Week.” Other stories running this week included Donald Zec's at the same paper: “They are four cheeky-looking lads with stone-age hairstyles, Chelsea boots, three electric guitars, and one set of drums, who know their amps and ohms if not their Beethoven.” He went on to call Paul “a young David Tomlinson in search of a barber.”

14th: George recalled a particularly hairy flight to London: “We were taking off from Liverpool for one of our frequent flights across the country, when the plane suddenly came to a halt just as it was about to leave the ground. That gave me the jitters, but what was to follow will make me sympathise with Elvis Presley's fear of flying for the rest of my days. As we made the proper take-off, the emergency exit, by which I was


sitting, suddenly flew open! And I've heard stories about people being sucked out of aircraft and I don't mind admitting that I was pretty terrified too! Our manager, Brian Epstein, who was sitting next to me, grabbed my arm and I yelled out for the air hostess, but she thought that I was fooling around!”

16th: The Beatles released their third US single, 'She Loves You / I'll Get You'. This was also the day that John and Cynthia flew to Paris for a little holiday with Brian, and George visited his sister in America. October

Singles released in October: Gerry and the Pacemakers' You'll Never Walk Alone (12th, #1); The Ronettes' Be My Baby (19th, #4)

Sometime in October (date unknown) Cynthia's mother came back from Canada and found a house in Hoylake. And seeing as John was always gigging up and down the country, Cynthia decided to move in with the kid.

13th: The Beatles appeared on Sunday Night At The London Palladium. Although it's very hard to believe nowadays, a band considered an appearance at this 'gig' as being a pinnacle of their career. Once you'd appeared on here, then you knew that you'd really hit the big time. (Remember, this was before stadium tours had been invented.) They performed 'From Me To You', 'I'll Get You', 'Twist And Shout', and closed the set with their new single 'She Loves You'. The next day the papers were awash with stories about kids going crazy in the street, and the Daily Mirror coined the phrase “Beatlemania” to describe the mayhem.

John said: “The worst part was coming out. The police had the front entrance [Argyle Street] cordoned off. We rushed to the taxi and found there wasn't one there. So we rushed over to another car that we thought was a taxi, but it turned out to be a police car, and they wouldn't let us in. Eventually we got into a car and drove off, with police motorbikes on each side. It was like royalty. Some cars tried to follow us, but the police must have forced them into side streets or something.” The police chief thought that their car would be less conspicuous if he moved it 40 yards up the street, so when they came out they had a mad dash to safety, with a tail-load of crazy kids screaming in their ears. Brian Sommerville remembered: “I had to guide them from the stage to their car. We had to go through where the audience would later go, as opposed to the stage-door. I remember going up the stairs and I tripped and fell. I was in a panic, I must say. I wasn't cut out for this sort of thing. I was the publicity man, not their roadie! And besides, I was in a bow-tie and running. Dashing and sweating was not my forte. Ringo said, 'He's mad, he's gone mad! He's going to bust a blood vessel.' And I got out into the street and there were no bloody Beatles! They were way behind. I had just hared off like I was doing a three-day event at Badminton or something.”

Tony Barrow cleverly tipped off the press about what was going on, and “from that day on,” he said, “everything changed. My job was never the same again. From spending


six months ringing up newspapers and getting no's, I now had every national reporter and feature writer chasing me!”

23rd: The Beatles flew to Sweden for the start of a short Scandinavian tour.

29th: Brian signed a deal with United Artists for the Beatles first feature film. John said: “After this film, they'll find out that we're not actors and that will be that.”

31st: The Beatles flew back from their week-long tour of Scandinavia and were met by thousands of screaming girls at Heathrow Airport. By a lucky coincidence, American TV-host Ed Sullivan was also walking through the airport at the same time, and was so impressed with the adulation that he contacted Brian about getting them on his show. November

Singles released in November: The Rolling Stones' I Wanna Be Your Man (16th, #12); The Dave Clark Five's Glad All Over (23rd, #1); Dusty Springfield's I Only Want To Be With You (23rd, #4)��Albums released in November: Roy Orbison's In Dreams (30th, #6)

Sometime in late October/early November (date unknown) EMI sent a copy of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' to Capitol. Dave Dextor had a little listen... and surprise, surprise... he turned it down again! (The Beatles were not the only band to fall foul of Dextor's tastes - he also turned down Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer, The Hollies, The Dave Clark Five, The Animals, Herman's Hermits and The Yardbirds. The only act that he whole-heartedly recommended to his American bosses was Freddie and the Dreamers!) By now, Brian and George Martin were getting seriously pissed off with deaf-man Dextor, and got straight on the phone to Alan Livingston: “I was sitting in my office one day and I got a call from London,” said the head of Capitol Records, “from a man called Brian Epstein, whom I did not know. He said, 'I am the personal manager of The Beatles and I don't understand why you won't release them.' And I said, 'Well frankly, Mr. Epstein, I haven't heard them.' And he said, 'Would you please listen and call me back.' And I said, 'Okay,' and I called Dexter and said, 'Let me have some Beatles records.' He sent up a few and I listened. I liked them. I thought they were something different. I can't tell you in all honesty that I knew how big they'd be, but I thought it was worth a shot. So I called Epstein back and said, 'Okay, I'll put them out.' But he was a smart man, Epstein, and he said, 'Just a minute, I'm not gonna let you have them unless you spend $40,000 to promote their first single.' And you didn't spend $40,000 to promote a single in those days, it was unheard of. For whatever reason, I said, 'Okay, we'll do it,' and the deal was made.”

Forty grand may not sound a lot by today's standards, but remember that there was no MTV in those days - no music videos, and they didn't even bother running ads in music magazines. The only publications that record companies bothered promoting in were the trade papers (like Billboard and Cashbox). Most of the money was spent on radio play. Capitol would have to dream up with some new ways of spending the money...


It was also sometime in late-November that an American promoter, Sid Bernstein, first contacted Brian to see about the possibility of getting the Beatles into Carnegie Hall. He offered him a whopping $6,500 for two shows, but Brian turned him down, sensing that it was a little bit premature seeing as they hadn't even had a hit single in America yet. Sid would later make the deal in January '64 (probably on the 22nd), after Brian booked The Ed Sullivan Show and got 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' into the charts. “I decided to make it my own independent promotion,” he said. “I had already booked Carnegie Hall, the most famous auditorium in New York. You couldn't get Carnegie Hall unless you made the reservation months ahead. So I chose 12th February 1964 - Lincoln's birthday. The lady I dealt with at Carnegie Hall had a thick Polish accent. 'The Beatles?' she said, 'Vat are they?' I knew that Carnegie Hall would never allow a pop concert to happen in it's famous auditorium so I said, 'They're a phenomenon.' 'Oh, a phenomenon,' she said, thinking that it was maybe a type of string quartet.”

1st: Released their third UK EP: 'The Beatles (No. 1)'.

2nd: The Daily Telegraph ran a piece on 'Beatlemania', comparing the Beatles' concerts to Hitler's Nuremberg rallies.

4th: The Royal Variety Performance in the presence of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret (the Queen couldn't make it because she was pregnant with Prince Andrew). They were the seventh act on a nineteen act bill, alongside the crooner Max Bygraves, the goon-er Harry Secombe, Tommy Steele, Marlene Dietrich, Buddy Greco, Eric Sykes, Steptoe & Son, the cast of Sleeping Beauty, and Pinky and Perky. They opened up with 'From Me To You' (playing it behind the curtain to crank up the excitement), before launching into 'She Loves You'. Then Paul introduced 'Till There Was You' with a crap gag: “And this one's been covered by our favourite American group - Sophie Tucker.” (Important note for non-Americans: Sophie Tucker weighed about fifty stone!) But the most famous gag of all was John's joke before the closer, 'Twist And Shout'. “For the last number,” he said. “I'd like to ask for your help... Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewellery.” (Apparently he told Brian before the show that he was just going to tell them to “rattle their jewellery”, which nearly gave him a heart attack!)

The recorded highlights pulled in a staggering 26 million viewers - over half the population of the United Kingdom.

5th: Brian flew to New York to prepare for the imminent release of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' in the States. He took a little light reading on the way - newspaper reports of the Beatles triumphal appearance the night before. “Beatles rock the Royals” said the Daily Express; “Night of triumph for four young boys” screamed the Daily Mail, adding “Yes, and even the Royal box was stomping! The Queen Mother particularly enjoyed 'Twist And Shout'.” (They also reported the big mum's 'gag' at the end: when Paul told her that they'd be appearing in Slough next, she replied: “Oh, that's near us.”) The Daily Mirror ran the following story on their front page: “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! You have to be a real square not to love the nutty, noisy, happy, handsome Beatles. If they don't sweep your


blues away - brother, you're a lost cause. If they don't put a beat in your feet - sister, you're not living. How refreshing to see these rumbustious young Beatles take a middle-aged Royal Variety performance by the scruff of their necks and have them Beatling like teenagers. Fact is that Beatle people are everywhere. From Wapping to Windsor. Aged seven to seventy. And it's plain to see why these four cheeky, energetic lads from Liverpool go down so big. They're young, new. They're high-spirited, cheerful. What a change from the self-pitying moaners, crooning their lovelorn tunes from the tortured shallows of lukewarm hearts. The Beatles are whacky. They wear their hair like a mop - but it's WASHED, it's super clean. So is their fresh young act. They don't have to rely on off-colour jokes about homos for their fun.”

Ostensibly, Brian's main reason for going to New York was to promote another NEMS act - Billy J. Kramer. But when they landed into Idlewild (it wasn't renamed JFK until after Kennedy was assassinated) they were met by pissing rain and ground staff - in stark contrast to the welcome that the Beatles received three months later.

7th: Their first (and last) show in Ireland. They were accompanied around town by Alun Owen, who was writing the script for A Hard Day's Night. John said: “We didn't want to make a shitty pop movie. We didn't want to make a movie that was going to be bad, and we insisted on having a real writer to write it. So Brian came up with Alun Owen, from Liverpool, who had written a play for TV called No Trams To Lime Street, which I knew and I think Paul knew. He was already famous for writing Liverpool dialogues. We auditioned people to write for us, and they came up with this guy and we said, 'All right.'”

Owen recalled his time with the band: “They were surrounded by fantasy,” he said. “Fantastic things happened to them all the time, like the time a girl fell on her knees before them. She was a parlour maid in a hotel in Dublin where The Beatles and I were staying. She had brought in a tray of coffee and cakes in a nice normal, sensible fashion, walking across the room and setting down the tray. Then, suddenly, she flung off her cap, dropped to her knees and cried, 'I'm going to pray for you, boys! I'm going to pray for you!' They weren't shocked. They didn't laugh. They weren't embarrassed. Paul just helped her to her feet and talked to her as if they had been introduced at a party.”

9th: Whilst Brian was busy conducting business on behalf of the Beatles in New York, their life carried on much the same as normal - gigs, crazy women screaming, more gigs, more crazy women screaming... Brian recalled the silly scenes in A Cellarful Of Noise: “The getaway car was their lifeline to work and freedom,” he explained. “This, normally, is an Austin Princess which can comfortably seat four Beatles, their road manager, and if necessary, a security officer or policeman. In England the driver is always the same, a huge man called Bill Corbett, who knows the problems, chief of which is the ability to speed fast enough to frighten fans out of the way, but no so fast that they get run over. It is commonplace for fans to hurl themselves at a Beatle vehicle if it is travelling at anything less than twenty miles an hour.” Even the entry and exit from the buildings was planned with military precision: “There are various systems to avoid trouble,” explained Brian. “One is to use the rear and side entries - the obvious one. Another - the least apparent - is to swing the car to the front entrance and let the boys


dash through the main foyer. A third system involves the use of decoy cars or armoured police vans to draw the fans to one side of the theatre while the Beatles slide quietly out the other side. Very often, for getting out of the theatre the Beatles and I have been taken in tunnels beneath the theatre into an adjoining building to be released more than one hundred yards away from the outer circle of fans. Rather like POW escapes! It is all very exciting the first few times.”

Alistair Taylor always seemed to get the thin edge of the wedge: “They once closed their set with 'Twist And Shout', and I had only just heard the familiar final chords when George shouted, 'Come on, Al', and I joined him in the mad dash to beat the fans. They grabbed me and almost bodily propelled me along corridors and down passages to the stage door which was opened for us as we sprinted. Outside, the gleaming Austin Princess limousine was there with the engine running and the doors open. In front was a police car with blue light already flashing and behind was a motorcycle escort. Then Ringo got his foot stuck in the closing door and everyone started yelling at him. When I looked straight ahead, I realised why, as hordes of fans [some with guns and knives] looked on the point of breaking through the thin blue line of straining policemen. Even I started yelling at Ringo to get his foot in so we could shut the door and escape. It was only a few seconds but it seemed like ages, and we sped off to The Beatles' flat in Green Street. We hurtled through London, helped through inconvenient red traffic lights by our police escort.” Ringo said: “I never thought I'd run away from attractive young women, but by the time they actually get near us, they seem to be completely out of their brains. I reckon if we'd used this lot in the war, we'd have overrun Germany in about a fortnight.” Film producer Denis O'Dell remembered: “There was only so much any security set-up could do in the wake of the frenzy that Beatlemania inspired... Kids threw themselves in the path of the car, clambered on to the hood and hurled themselves at the windows. Faces would appear momentarily, pressing themselves tightly against the glass until they would fall or be ripped away by security officials or rival fans jockeying for position.”

George said: “It was like Cuckoo's Nest, you know, where you are sane in the middle of something and they're all crackers. You know, the guards and nurses and the government, everybody. There was definitely a point where it became obvious that we were not crackers but that all we had to do was come to town and people would all break the shop windows and the cops would fall off their motorbikes.”

11th: Brian met the American TV-host Ed Sullivan at his suite at the Delmonico Hotel. He followed it up with another meeting on the 12th to discuss dates and money. At this initial meeting, Sullivan agreed to have the Beatles on his Sunday night show on 9th February '64, and again one week later in Miami. They also agreed that another performance should be taped for viewing after the Beatles left for England. Brian insisted that the Beatles be given top-billing - a big risk for Sullivan, seeing as the band were still relatively unknown in the States. In return, Brian agreed a piddly deal of $3,500 per show, when a normal act could expect to get ten.

The scene was now set for the Beatles' triumphant arrival into JFK. All Brian and Capitol


had to do now was increase their exposure in time for the big gig...

14th: Brian returned to London - justifiably satisfied with his business dealings on behalf of the Beatles.

15th: Time magazine ran a story called: 'The New Madness'. Bruce Spizer, in his excellent book The Beatles Are Coming!, reckons that this story represents the first significant piece of mainstream journalism on the Beatles in the States. It read: “Though Americans might find the Beatles achingly familiar (their songs consist mainly of 'Yeah!' screamed to the accompaniment of three guitars and a thunderous drum), they are apparently irresistible to the English.” It went on to say that “although no Beatle can read music, two of them dream up half the Beatles' repertory. The raucous, big-beat sound they achieve by electric amplification of all their instruments makes a Beatles performance slightly orgiastic. But the boys are the very spirit of good clean fun. They look like shaggy Peter Pan, with their mushroom haircuts and high white shirt collars, cracking jokes, gently laughing at the riotous response they get from their audience. The precise nature of their charm remains mysterious even to their manager.”

16th: All three leading American broadcasters - CBS, NBC and ABC - attended a Beatles' gig at Bournemouth, with a view to showing some footage on American telly. In the event, the only exposure they received was a four-minute segment on NBC's The Huntley-Brinkley Report, and a minor piece on CBS's Morning News With Mike Wallace. “Those are the Beatles, those are,” said Alexander Kendrick. “And this is Beatleland, formally known as Britain, where an epidemic called Beatlemania has seized the teenage population... These four boys from Liverpool, with their dish-mop hairstyles, are Britain's latest musical, and, in fact, sociological phenomena. They have introduced what their press agents call the 'Mersey Sound,' after the River Mersey on which Liverpool stands. And though musicologists say it's no different than any other rock 'n' roll, except maybe louder, it has carried the Beatles to the top of the heap. In fact, they have met royalty, and royalty is appreciative and impressed.”

18th: Another leading US magazine - Newsweek - ran a story called 'Beatlemania'. “The sound of their music,” they said, “is one of the most persistent noises heard over England since the air-raid sirens were dismantled.”

22nd: Released their second UK album: 'With The Beatles'. This was also the day that President Kennedy was assassinated.

24th: Millions of people saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV.

29th: Released their fifth UK single: 'I Want To Hold Your Hand / This Boy'.

30th: The Beatles met super-smug Jeffery Archer at a fund-raising dinner. (Yes, and I mean the Jeffery Archer - the English MP.) At the time they met him he was just an undergraduate, in charge of the Oxford University Oxfam appeal. But he was struggling to find ways of making it a success. So he hit upon a novel idea - he'd get The Beatles to promote it for him! He duly posted off a begging letter to NEMS, but was met with a


polite rebuff. But, as a sweetener, they suggested that if he turned up at the Empire Theatre the next night, then they might be able to wangle a few autographs for him instead. So he turned up, hung about, set his trap, and as soon as The Beatles put their unsuspecting noses round the door he thrust a collecting tin under their chin, unfurled an Oxfam banner and invited the handy press-pack to snap away. And when the Daily Mail printed the picture next day Brian went absolutely ballistic! But he was stuck with it now, because if he had pulled the Beatles out, then it would have looked bad on the starving kids.

Ringo recalled: “Archer was a nice enough fella, but he's the kind of bloke who'd bottle your piss and sell it.” December

1st: The New York Times ran a three-page article on Beatlemania in their Sunday supplement.

2nd: The Beatles appeared on The Morecambe And Wise Show. You can hear their funny set on Anthology 1.

10th: This was the day that started Beatlemania in the States... If one little girl called Marsha Albert hadn't been watching the telly that night, then who knows what might have happened... the whole thing might have fizzled out before it had even begun! She happened to be watching a feature on the Evening News With Walter Cronkite about Beatlemania in the UK (which included a clip of the Beatles playing 'She Loves You'). Intrigued, she wrote a little letter to her local radio station - WWDC. The disc jockey Carroll James then arranged to have their latest British single delivered to his office. But because 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' hadn't been released in the States yet (it wasn't due until 13th January 1964) he had to wait for an air-stewardess friend to fly it over from England. Little did she know what she started...

14th: The Beatles received their first major coverage in Billboard magazine. A three-page article commented on Capitol's acquisition of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' and told the story of Beatlemania in the UK.

It was also on this day that the Beatles performed a concert behind a wire steel mesh, to stop the kids invading the stage. John joked that “if they press any harder, they'll come through as chips.”

17th: The WWDC disc jockey, Carrol James, finally got his hands on a copy of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' and in a sweet piece of homely business, invited the little kid Marsha Albert to the station to introduce it. Live on air he said: “So Marsha Albert, of Dublin Drive, Silver Spring, has the honour of introducing something brand new, an exclusive, here at WWDC. Marsha, the microphone on the Carroll James show is all yours...” Marsha then said the words that went down in history: “Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on the air in the United States, here are the Beatles singing I Want To


Hold Your Hand.”

The response was immediate and overwhelming. Fans were phoning every minute of the day to have this record played. WWDC ended up airing it once an hour, every hour - every day of the week! Meanwhile, sitting at his desk in the Capitol building, Alan Livingstone had a hissy fit. He couldn't believe that a radio station would have the gall to play a record that hadn't been released yet, and briefly considered suing them. But reason prevailed and he pressed up a few thousand copies to sell in the Washington market. Mistake. James then handed a copy to his radio mate in Chicago and he started playing it too! Within days the record was airing all over America and Livingstone realised that the genie was out of the bottle. The Beatles had arrived one month early.

23rd: Capitol decided to bring forward 'I Want To Hold Your Hand''s release date to capitalise on the massive airplay. Their media blitz got under way with a four-page paper spread amongst the sales force (it was basically one big Beatles ad). It contained biographies on the band, photos and details of their upcoming releases. Unfortunately, it also contained three rather embarrassing mistakes - the photo of Paul was listed as John, John was George and George was Paul! But at least they got Ringo right.

24th: First night of The Beatles' Christmas Show at the Astoria Cinema, London. This was Brian's attempt at showcasing as many NEMS acts as he possibly could... in the rather bizarre confines of a Christmas panto! But the Beatles didn't like the idea of a proper pantomime, “so we did our own show - like a pop show, and we kept appearing every few minutes, dressed up... for a laugh.” Tony Barrow remembered: “They were never much for rehearsing. That didn't really matter as far as the songs were concerned, but the fact that they were so bad at doing the sketches was an added extra for the show - it was organised chaos but it was very funny chaos.” Paul said: “Let's face it, they would have laughed even if we just sat there reading the Liverpool telephone directory!”

Their supporting acts were all stable mates at NEMS: Cilla Black; Billy J. Kramer; The Fourmost and Tommy Quickly, and the whole lot was compered by Rolf Harris. He said: “After my spot I'd say, Last night nobody heard a word these boys sang and it's such a waste because they are fantastic. But a scream went up and it lasted for the whole of their act - they might just as well have been miming, because you couldn't hear a single note!” A couple of days later he was sent to interview them for the BBC's Light Programme, and “my hands were shaking so much that I could barely flick the switch! I shoved the mike in John's face and said, 'Well, do you like spaghetti then?' Fortunately for me, they all fell about the place. I think they said no, but I pulled out a crumpled sheet and announced, 'I've got something for you boys.' And I had written a new version of 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport' with a verse for each of them.”

26th: 'I Want To Hold Your Hand / I Saw Her Standing There' was finally released in the States, accompanied by the biggest marketing campaign in Capitol's history. About fifty billion wigs got shipped to the staff to walk around in: “As soon as they arrive,” they said, “and until further notice, you and each of your sales and promotion staff are to


wear the wig during the business day! Next, see how many of the retail clerks have a sense of humour... Then, try your jocks, especially those who hold teen-dance hops. Get your Beatle wigs around properly, and you'll find that you're helping to start the Beatle Hair-Do craze that should be sweeping the country soon. You'll also have fantastic quantities of two-inch by three-inch stickers. Now, what are you going to do with these huge amounts of stickers? Put them up anywhere and everywhere they can be seen, that's what. It may sound funny, but we literally want your salesmen to be plastering these stickers on any friendly surface as they walk down the street or as they call on radio or retail accounts. They probably won't get rid of them all, however, so make arrangements with some local high school students to spread the stickers around town. Involve your friends and relatives!”

29th: A reviewer for The Sunday Times got a little bit carried away, and called the Beatles “the greatest composers since Beethoven.”

31st: George Martin made a little bit of history by producing more No.1 records in a single year than any other record producer: his songs accounted for 37 weeks-worth of number ones! (...As well as the Beatles, he also had hits with Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and Matt Munro.) But did he get a pay rise?

“Sleep was something of a luxury that year,” he explained. “Because I was still recording a lot of my earlier artists. But the year definitely belonged to the Beatles, and the search for talent from the North became like a Klondike gold rush. Record companies are notorious for trying to hop onto a bandwagon, and if there's a smell of anything new happening they all rush after it... every record company sent men up to Liverpool to find a group - and they all came back with one! Some made it, many didn't. Pye had the Searchers, who had a big hit with 'Needles And Pins'. And even my own assistant, Ron Richards, went north in search of musical nuggets, and found, not in Liverpool but in Manchester, a group called the Hollies.”

[N.B.: This was also the day that Linda McCartney gave birth to her first kid, Heather.]

Beatles History 1963 · 2017-09-01 · Beatles History 1963 had to knock out the rest of the broken...

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