Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth

Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth
Click on the cover for information about the book. Available to order now.

24 July 2011

Ringo back in Bournemouth



Photo © Richard Lee
On 24 June 2011 Ringo Starr returned to Bournemouth for his first concert in the town since The Beatles' final show at the Gaumont on 30 October 1964. We've already shared some great footage of Ringo's All Starr Band tackling I Want To Be Your Man and a man called Derek was so pleased we'd used his video he tipped us off about his photos from the BIC. Click here to see. 

18 July 2011

From Bournemouth To Sweden, 1963

Swedish radio journalist Klas Burling was an early convert to The Beatles, so much so that he followed them to England determined not only to secure Sweden's first broadcast interview with the group, but also to book them for a tour.


He caught up with them on Friday, 23 August 1963 the day before the end of their week-long summer season at the Bournemouth Gaumont. She Loves You, which had elicited screams of approval from Bournemouth fans all week long, was released that day and by the time The Beatles came back on 16 November 1963, the town - like the nation - was in the grip of full-blown Beatlemania.


But on that summer's day in August, Klas found the four lads in characteristically playful mood exercising the quick wit that had already become a trademark. Interestingly, John and Paul offer some insight into their songwriting partnership.


Klas also succeeded in his second objective that day and The Beatles arrived in Sweden for a five-date tour on 24 October 1963. He went on to interview the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan in the 60s, but is still best remembered as the man who brought The Beatles to Sweden. And it all started in Bournemouth...  


Read the full story of The Beatles' summer season in Bournemouth in Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, published on 22 September by Natula, ISBN 978-1897-887-899




KLAS: "On my left is a boy... sounding like what?"
RINGO: "Uhh, Ringo. That's me. You know me. (imitates drums) Ting-cha, bump bah-bump!"
KLAS: "This would be the drums."
RINGO: "Yeah, that's... Well..."
KLAS: "Well.."
(Beatles giggle)
KLAS: "And after that we've got..?"
GEORGE: "George Harrison."
KLAS: "Playing..?"
GEORGE: "Guitar."
KLAS: "Solo guitar."
GEORGE: "Yes. (imitates guitar) Dee deena-lee, deena-lee dee dee."
(laughter)
KLAS: "Next in line is..?"
JOHN: (imitates guitar) "Ja-jing jing jing, ja-ja jing jing."
(laughter)
JOHN: "John."
RINGO: "Lennon."
JOHN: "Rhythmus."
(Beatles giggle)
KLAS: "And on my right side is..?"
PAUL: (imitates bass) "boom bah-boom boom, bah-boom boom. Paul McCartney."
KLAS: "All from Liverpool, known as..?"
PAUL & JOHN: "The Beatles."
KLAS: "Yeah, that's right. You've had some hits in Sweden, and have you ever thought about coming to Sweden?"
RINGO: "Well, we'd like to, you know. But we're so busy at the moment. I don't think we'll get there until sometime next year, if we go at all."
PAUL: "Actually, you know, we want to come because we've heard about the girls in Sweden. All gorgous blondes. you know."
GEORGE & JOHN: "Yeah."
KLAS: "That's Paul, and he's supposed to be the sweet boy in this family, no?"
PAUL: (jokingly) "Aww, shuttup."
(laughter)
JOHN: "His dad was a Mars bar."
PAUL: (laughs)
KLAS: "And George, you would like to go..."
GEORGE: "I would like to go to Sweden, yes."
KLAS: "By the side, by the way, is Michael Cox. An old friend of yours..."
RINGO: "Yeah...!"
JOHN: (loudly) "Hello, Michael Cox!"
PAUL: "He's from Liverpool, too."
GEORGE: "How is he?"
MICHAEL COX: "Fine, fine."
KLAS: "And he has told you a lot about Sweden, and so on."
GEORGE: "Yes."
KLAS: "You're still interested?"
BEATLES: "Yeah!"
RINGO: "More than ever."
KLAS: "After this we'll get to your recording of Twist And Shout. I watched you, and John you are singing..."
JOHN: "Shouting it."
KLAS: "Yeah, you're shouting it, really. How do you feel from that... the throat?"
JOHN: "Well, ehm, at first it was hard. But when I do it twice a night, it's easy." (imitates dog barking)
(laughter)
JOHN: (giggling) "It's quite easy now. Practice, you know, if I keep shouting every night. But a year ago I couldn't sing it."
KLAS: "And another thing in your stage act, John, is all that sick humor. You've got funny hands, and..."
JOHN: "Well, I thought it was quite healthy."
KLAS: (laughs)
RINGO: "It's not sick. He's just a cripple."
(laughter)
JOHN: (giggling) "I'm not, I'm not!"
(laughter)
JOHN: "I'm quite normal, my Swedish friends."
(laughter, The Beatles' recording of Twist And Shout is played)
KLAS: "The songwriters in The Beatles, they are John Lennon and Paul McCartney."
JOHN: (monotone) "Hurray."
KLAS: "Tell us something about how you find a song... how you get the idea about a song, to write it down."
JOHN: "Well, sometimes it's the words first, and then the music after."
KLAS: "Very often you've got a title, you know... Me and you, and everything like that?"
PAUL: "Yeah. We try to do that, to make it personal so it's... so we really mean it. When we sing a thing about 'I love you,' it's easier."
JOHN: (singing) "'And don't you forget it!'"
JOHN & PAUL: (singing together, jokingly) "'I love you and don't you forget it!'"
PAUL: "Well, you see, it's easier than singing something about the cat that lives on the hill, man."
(laughter)
PAUL: "It's a lot easier just to sing about what you feel yourself."
KLAS: "And you've given a lot of nice numbers to Billy J Kramer."
JOHN: (loudly) "Well, he's our good friend and mate... buddy... pal... friend."
PAUL: "Yeah. Listen to Bad To Me, folks."
KLAS: "Your latest recording is called..?
PAUL: "It's called She Loves You. And there's story to this one, how we wrote it. We were on tour with Roy Orbison, and Gerry and the Pacemakers. And we were in Newcastle, up north of England, and we were in a hotel room. We had about three days left in which to write a song. We had a recording date set for three days from this date. So we went to the hotel and we booked in a room, and we just decided that we have to write a song very quickly. So we sat down, no ideas came for a bit. But eventually we got an idea. She Loves You came, you know. It was just lucky."
KLAS: "But from the start that was supposed to be the B-side, John?"
JOHN: "The B-side of She Loves You was meant to be the A-side. And the same for From Me To You. The B-Side of From Me To You was the A-side, and then we wrote another song after."
KLAS: "Well, it..."
JOHN: "Came out better."
PAUL: "Yeah, see, we write one song, then we can get going then after that and get more ideas after having written one song. So we wrote I'll Get You which is the B-side, first. And then She Loves You came after that, you know. We got ideas from that, and we recorded it."
KLAS: "Yes."
PAUL: "And there ya go."
KLAS: "It sounds very easy, all of it."
JOHN: "Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's hard."
RINGO: (jokingly) "We find it difficult sometimes!"
(laughter)
KLAS: (jokingly) "Thanks Ringo."
(John and Paul giggle)
KLAS: "Well, singing too. All of you. You're singing, actually."
PAUL: "Yeah, we all sing."
JOHN: "The Singing Dogs."
RINGO: "You know me... Boys."
(Beatles laugh)
PAUL: "We've written a new song for Ringo which we are gonna do on our new LP."
KLAS: "Yes, what about that new LP? When?"
JOHN: "It's September, isn't it?"
PAUL: "No, it's November."
JOHN: (jokingly perturbed at being corrected) "Okay, okay!"
(laughter)
PAUL: "Don't know when it'll get to Sweden, though, but we hope it'll get there in November. (nasal voice) And we hope it sells!"
KLAS: "Alright."
PAUL: "That's all I can say."
KLAS: "Alright. RIght now, we'll listen to She Loves You."
(Beatles yell 'Hurray!' and applaud)
PAUL: "More!"
RINGO: "Play it twice."
(She Loves You is played).
Sources: Interview transcribed by www.beatlesinterviews.org from audio copy of the interview
Photo of Paul, George and John with Lill-Babs and John on-stage in Sweden from www.beatlemania.ca

13 July 2011

Ringo Starr, Bournemouth, 24 June 2011


Ringo brought his All Starr Band to Bournemouth International Centre in June for his first show in the town for 47 years. Until then, Paul had been the only ex-Beatle to play Bournemouth since the autumn 1964 tour with Mary Wells when Wings played the Winter Gardens in May 1973.


With previously unseen photos and first-hand accounts from the people who were there, Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth reveals the surprising connection between the greatest group that ever was and a small resort town on the south coast of England.

11 July 2011

Aunt Mimi, Sandbanks, 1981


Now I need a place to hide away...
In 1965 John Lennon bought a new home for his beloved Aunt Mimi. The bungalow, at 126 Panorama Road, Sandbanks, near Bournemouth, became his refuge from the world until he moved to New York in 1971 to be with Yoko.
This extract from Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles and Bournemouth, relates Mimi's first ever television interview, in 1981 – the year after her nephew's death:

“Mimi later recalled that John used to send her rambling 10 or 12 page letters signed, “from your lunatic, artistic son John.” She said he “used to just appear. He’d fling himself on the settee and say how lovely it was here, so quiet.”
On one occasion he was surprised to find a television news crew had found him.
“He would just turn up and there would be a whirlwind when he arrived,” said Mimi in her first television interview, with Southern Television reporter Christopher Peacock in 1981. “It was usually when the pressure got a bit much. He used to like to come here and turn cartwheels on the beach, just by himself, there was nobody else there. When the television cameras turned up – I think the ferryman must have tipped them off – I got very annoyed, but he said: ‘Oh Mimi, don’t get annoyed, he probably got £5 for telling them I was here.’”

An exhibition of photos from the book and memorabilia relating to The Beatles in Bournemouth has now been expanded to include new images and can be seen at Lighthouse, Poole until 10 March. The venue is hosting a special screening of A Hard Day's Night on 28 February and the book Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth is now on sale at the Lighthouse ticket shop.

- The photos are on show again this summer, from 9 July until 5 September in the Bourne Lounge at Bournemouth International Centre.

5 July 2011

The Beatles, Winter Gardens, Bournemouth




.

Film crews from all three American television networks were in Bournemouth to cover The Beatles' show at the Winter Gardens on 16 November 1963. The term 'Beatlemania' had only been coined a fortnight before and Britain was readily surrendering to the boys' undoubted charm.


Footage from the Winter Gardens show was broadcast on CBS Morning News on 22 November - the first time The Beatles had been seen on US television. But America would have to wait to fully embrace The Beatles. Later that day, President John F Kennedy was assassinated and the country mourned its lost leader.

No less a luminary than Walter Cronkite revived The Beatles footage on 10 December and the die was cast – Beatlemania was to sweep the USA the following year.

Read the full story of what happened that night at the Winter Gardens in Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, published on 22 September 2011.

1 July 2011

Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth





photo by Harry Taylor © Dave Robinson


The definitive account of the connections between the greatest rock ’n’ roll group that ever was and a small town on the south coast of England
- In just 14 months from August 1963 to October 1964 The Beatles played more shows at the Bournemouth Gaumont than any other concert venue in the UK outside London.
- A tape of a full Beatles concert recorded during their first visit to Bournemouth is the earliest known example of their theatre show. Despite the excellent quality of the recording it remains unreleased.
- The iconic cover photograph for the With The Beatles and Meet The Beatles albums was taken in Bournemouth.
- Howie Casey, who played with Wings in the 1970s and has lived in Bournemouth since 1978, has links with The Beatles that go back to their very earliest days. With his band The Seniors, Howie was at the same audition in 1960 when John, Paul and George first performed as the Silver Beatles. The Seniors were the first Liverpool band to go to Hamburg, paving the way for The Beatles.
- The first American TV audiences saw of The Beatles was not the Ed Sullivan show as is widely believed, but film from the band’s appearance at the Winter Gardens, Bournemouth two months before.
- George Harrison’s first Beatles song, Don’t Bother Me was written while staying in Bournemouth.
- John Lennon bought his Aunt Mimi a home just outside Bournemouth and until he left the UK in 1971 was a regular visitor to the area.
- The story told in The Ballad of John and Yoko began while John was travelling to Mimi’s house before he ended up “standing in the dock at Southampton”
- Launched in August 1963, Beatles Monthly conducted its first extensive interviews and photo shoots with the band in Bournemouth, forging a relationship that resulted in the magazine being published for almost 30 years.
With previously unseen and rare photographs of The Beatles taken in Bournemouth, photos licensed from Beatles Monthly and unpublished images of Mimi at home, the story is told using first-hand accounts from the people who were there – the fans, reporters, photographers, venue staff and musicians. 
Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth is published on 22 September 2011 by Natula Publications, ISBN 9781897887899.
For more information and pre-orders email sales@natula.co.uk