George writing Don't Bother Me in Bournemouth

This tape recording of George Harrison composing his first song for The Beatles was one of the most popular entries on this blog when first posted a couple of years ago.
The earlier clip has long since been withdrawn but now it's back!
Confined to his room at the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth during their week-long summer season at the Odeon next door from 19 to 24 August 1963, George coughs and splutters his way through the makings of what would become Don't Bother Me, his first Beatles song and featured on the With the Beatles album, the cover of which was photographed downstairs in the Palace Court restaurant that same week.
The tape was made by Beatles' driver Alf Bicknell on the reel-to-reel recorder given to him by John Lennon and surfaces from time to time as a bootleg.
Bill Harry, founder-editor of the Merseybeat newspaper, who was with The Beatles in Bournemouth that week, says he had been on at George for ages to get him to write a song for the group. George, who later dismissed the song as 'not very good' in his autobiography, finally gave in and used it to pass the time after Brian Epstein had sent him to his room for the day to keep his fresh for the shows that night.
(In fact, George had previously co-written In Spite Of All The Danger with Paul McCartney in 1958 when they were in The Quarrymen and recorded it as a demo with Buddy Holly's That'll Be The Day.)
The 2009 stereo remastering  of Don't Bother Me can be seen and heard below.

 

It was 50 years ago today...

The Beatles came to Bournemouth to play!
That's right, today is the 50th anniversary of the very first Beatles' show in Bournemouth - 19 August 1963.Whoop it up, say yeah yeah yeah!To mark the occasion a new exhibition of Beatles memorabilia related to Bournemouth has opened in town, at the Beacon Hotel on Priory Road.
Among many golden jubilee anniversaries this week, it is 50 years since George wrote his first song for The Beatles. Confined to his bedroom at the Palace Court Hotel with a heavy cold, he finally answered Merseybeat editor Bill Harry's nagging to write a song for the group.
Don't Bother Me made it to their second album With the Beatles, complete with cover photo taken in the Palace Court dining room by Robert Freeman.
And here's the first in a what will become a regular look back into this blog's archives ... the story of Don't Bother Me and the infamous Alf Bicknell recording. Click here.

From Bournemouth with love: George's first ever song for The Beatles

George Harrison would have been 69 years old on 25 February and to mark the anniversary of his birth we thought we'd direct you to Happy Nat's ever-engaging Beatle Rarity of the Week in which he discusses George writing Don't Bother Me, his first Beatles song.
It was August 1963 and as we know The Beatles were ensconced in Bournemouth on a six-day summer season at the Gaumont Theatre on Westover Road. They were staying at the Palace Court Hotel next door and on the Saturday, the day after She Loves You had been released, while the others were engaged in press duties in the hotel lounge, Brian Epstein sent George to his room to nurse a heavy cold.Previously encouraged by Merseybeat editor Bill Harry, who was with the boys that week, to write his own songs and finding himself holed up with only a reel-to-reel tape recorder that had been given to him by John Lennon for company, he picked up his guitar and started strumming. Out of the coughs, splutters, whistles and hums emerged a ditty he called Don't Bother Me. 

It wasn't his best song, indeed years later he pretty much disowned it in his autobiography, but it was his first.
Anyway, have a listen here. 
Helpfully Nat also includes takes 10-13 recorded at Abbey Road on September 12.
:: The photo of George top right was taken by Harry Taylor (copyright Dave Robinson) on the balcony of the Palace Court Hotel, probably on 20 August 1963. 
:: The photo below was taken by Sandie Taylor (copyright Dave Robinson) at the Palace Court Hotel, Bournemouth on 19 August 1963 at a birthday reception for Billy J Kramer. 
:: More than 200 rare and previously unpublished images can be found in Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, available for order at www.beatlesandbournemouth.com.

Bearded Beatles in Bournemouth!

Long before they sprouted facial hair in public, it seems The Beatles at least toyed with the idea of beards as far back as August 1963, as they trod the boards in Bournemouth during their summer season at the Gaumont.

Jim Cregan, photo by Rankin

Jim Cregan, who’s best known for co-writing and producing a string of hits with Rod Stewart including Forever Young, Tonight I’m Yours and Blondes (Have More Fun), grew up in Poole and was at one of the Bournemouth Gaumont shows that summer.

“I was one row back from the front of the balcony,” he remembers. 

“One of them wore a huge false beard for the first song – it might have been George. My friend, who saw an earlier show, said it was worn by someone different.

“They played for half an hour and it was almost impossible to hear them for the screaming.

“It was the only time I saw them although I got to meet them all at different times. More recently I played with Ringo at a benefit. 

"What a life!”

A couple of years after the Gaumont shows Jim moved to London where he established himself as one of the foremost guitarists of his generation, playing with The Ingoes, Blossom Toes, Julie Driscoll, Stud, Family and Linda Lewis before joining Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel in 1975, for whom he created the instantly recognisable guitar solo on Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) – in Studio 3 at Abbey Road.

“I’d only just joined the band so it was pretty exciting just recording in there. I remember there was cupboard under the stairs in the studio full of all these toys The Beatles had played around with.”

He joined the original Rod Stewart Group in 1976 and was musical director until an amicable split in 1995. More recently he played on the first two Katie Melua albums and now fronts his own band Cregan & Co with former X-Factor singer Ben Mills, playing the songs he wrote and performed with Rod Stewart.

:: Christmas is coming and Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth is available to order from www.beatlesandbournemouth.com as is a selection of art prints of photos featured in the book.

Why Julie had to make do with George's autograph...

The Beatles leave Bournemouth the morning after playing the 

Winter Gardens - en route to Coventry, 17 November 1963

Even though it is six months since Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth was published, new stories continue to come to light. People's memories of the time they saw The Beatles live and in the flesh know no bounds and the more the book is talked about the more stories come to the surface. Deep joy!
There will be many more to come, but for now enjoy this letter I received from Julie Snow... 
"My friend and I went to one of the Gaumont concerts on 24 August 1963 with my brother, Ashley Thorne, who was seven years older than me. I was only 12 at the time. Ashley went backstage and came back with George's autograph for me, although Paul was my favourite.
My overwhelming memory of the concert was the deafening screams of the audience. Most of the girls, myself included, were nearly hysterical. It was the height of Beatlemania and we couldn't believe we were seeing our heroes. I remember She Loves You had just been released and I'm pretty sure it was the final song of the concert. In the following weeks A Hard Day's Night was also released and we went to see it several times.  
We even cried and screamed in the cinema! Crazy times.
Sadly my brother died four years ago so I can't ask him how he actually got the autograph but I'm pretty sure he went in the interval and not after the show. At the time he was always out and about in Bournemouth, a keen ice dancer at the Westover Ice Rink, and the sort who could blag his way into most situations.
I was really sorry to miss the launch night of the exhibition as I was ill at the time. I was given your a copy of your book for Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed it. 
I'm just sorry Ashley is not around as I'm certain he would have known many of the people featured in it."
:: Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth can be ordered from www.beatlesandbournemouth.com 

Purbeck! magazine review

The second issue of Purbeck! magazine includes a fine feature on Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth based on little more than the accident of geography that resulted in the author being brought up in that most beautiful part of South Dorset. 

The full text is reproduced below by kind permission.

Copies available here.

Nick Churchill is a son of Purbeck who joined our small stable of writers for this second edition. We knew he could string a few sentences together but it still came as a surprise when he mentioned, almost in passing, that he’d published a book – Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth.

The book itself is full of fascinating insights into the impact the Beatles made on the seaside resort town, but it’s also a treasure trove of memorabilia, peppered throughout with reproductions of original posters and tickets, album covers, news clippings and some fantastic, previously unpublished behind-the-scenes photos. The stories are told by the very people who were there - from the stars who shared the stage with the fabulous quartet, their fans, venue staff, and the reporters who covered the phenomenon as it took hold.

How he fits it all in to 174 pages is a magical mystery yet nothing feels crowded; visually it is a joy to behold and the cover is, appropriately, iconic sixties. A design classic.

You can be pretty sure there’ll be a few copies of Yeah Yeah Yeah heading up Liverpool way - no Beatleography is complete now Nick Churchill is a paperback writer.

By what route did this book come to arrive at our door? A long and winding one, of course. Growing up in sleepy Stoborough through the sixties and seventies, Nick felt ‘hundreds of miles away from anywhere to do with The Beatles.’ Sitting in his nowhereland, perhaps. ‘Or so I thought’. His parents had a hand in his early musical development. 
‘I don’t know why dad and mum had three Beatles singles in the radiogram because they weren’t fans, but those records constitute my earliest musical memories. I used to tape a hairbrush to the Ewbank carpet cleaner and sang along to I Want To Hold Your Hand, I Feel Fine and Can’t Buy Me Love so many times I still know the words by heart.’ Dig that ‘radiogram’, man.

Nick was less than two months old when The Beatles quit touring in August 1966 and didn’t become aware of the Bournemouth connection until a few years later.  ‘I first heard stories about Beatles’ concerts as a kid. They were always told by hairy hippy types with acoustic guitars and too many folk records - who had ‘grown out of all that’ Beatles business, but when pressed would reveal they’d

had such tremendous fun.’ His musical tastes reflect the years in which he matured, but the early influence stuck.

‘All through the punk rock wars and my immersion in the Mod revival, those songs stayed with me. They were there when I was dancing to Northern Soul all night and right at home next to later passions like The Stone Roses. By the time their mix of classic guitar pop and dance music’s sensibilities had morphed into Britpop, I was much less concerned with music of the moment and far happier in the broader church of sound to which The Beatles ministered. 

‘The Beatles also instilled in me a healthy distrust of heavy metal and it’s bratty American cousin, grunge. I Hate Myself and Want To Die? Not round our way, Kurt! 

‘By the time I heard the first Clash album I already knew about The Beatles having played in Bournemouth - so when Clash fans rioted in the Winter Gardens in 1977 and the town’s burghers called for punk rock to be banned, I knew

then it couldn’t have been much worse than Beatles fans wetting the seats more than a decade earlier.’

Ever the dedicated follower of fashion, his interest was piqued a few years later by ‘an old boy at Wareham Quay’ who had spotted the reference to The Beatles in the Lennon-esque Nelson Cap he’d worn as part of his teenage Mod regalia. His interlocutor happened to have been in the pub when John Lennon strolled in for refreshment – way back when. A few months after hearing this story, John

Lennon was shot in New York, which had a profound effect, as it did on many of us, on the young Nick.

‘Ever since then I’ve never been far from a Beatles story with a Dorset connection. There’s the waterside home John Lennon bought his beloved aunt Mimi at Sandbanks, the instantly recognisable half-shadow cover shot for With

The Beatles that was taken in the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth. George Harrison wrote his first song in the same hotel. I’ve seen American newsreel footage of the Winter Gardens concert and talked with people who met The Beatles, and met with McCartney’s ex Wings-man and sax player, Howie Casey, whose band Derry And The Seniors was on the bill the first time John, Paul and George played as the Silver Beetles. He reckoned they were rubbish, but after they joined him in the fleshpots of Hamburg a few months later they were well on their way to becoming the greatest band the world has ever known.’

As the stories mounted up, his interest grew, but that was as far as it went. After more than twenty years plying his trade in regional journalism, a pivotal moment occurred in his life. 

‘I was suddenly granted access to a cache of rare or previously unpublished photographs of The Beatles taken in Bournemouth. What else could I do but start writing?’

Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth is available now from

www.beatlesandbournemouth.com

George in his own write

With so much attention focussed on Martin Scorsese's acclaimed documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, it seems fitting to pay tribute to George by reproducing the following excerpt from Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth. 

It relates the story of two letters written by George at the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth during The Beatles' six-day summer season at the Gaumont cinema in August 1963...

Written on Palace Court Hotel stationery, George sent a two-page letter to a fan called Boote that came up for auction a few years ago. Although they were still replying personally to fan letters, The Beatles had stopped doing so by the end of 1963.

Dear Boote

Thanks for your letter. I’m glad you like ‘She Loves You’ now… (we hope you dig it!)

Actually I, or any of the others for that matter, don’t like Jelly Babies, and the press must have made it up themselves!

I think we are in London more than Liverpool these days, because of Radio and Recording etc…

We don’t mind girls screaming in the noisy numbers, but I think we would prefer them to be a little quieter in the slow songs.

I don’t think you are too old to write fan letters.

As far as I know, we are not on the State Kilburn, but we are on the Albert Hall.

I am sorry I have got to write this letter like ‘Question Time’ but I haven’t got enough time to answer properly, so I hope you don’t mind.

Cheers for now

Love from

George Harrison xxx

In another letter written that week at the Palace Court, George revealed to a fan, Lynn Smith, that Ringo was scared of singing:

“The general public always seems to think that John, Paul and I shove Ringo at the back, don’t let him sing, smile, or do anything, which is not very true, as we are always telling him to sing... we even suggested him singing and dancing (as he can do all the dances) at the front of the stage... but Ringo wouldn’t do it, as I think he was a bit scared.”

He also complained again about the flying sweets.

“We don’t like Jelly Babies, or Fruit Gums for that matter, so think how we feel standing on stage trying to dodge the stuff, before you throw some more at us. Couldn’t you eat them yourself, besides it is dangerous. I was hit in the eye once with a boiled sweet, and it’s not funny!”

It must have been an occupational hazard for the boys at the time as Beatles Monthly also reported Paul McCartney being hit in the eye by a jelly baby at the Gaumont. 

Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth is available now from www.beatlesandbournemouth.com

Echo magazine feature

Saturday's Daily Echo Magazine carried a two-page cover story by features writer Pat Gough about Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, complete with a selection of Harry Taylor's photos. In case you missed it, here's the text...

BEATLEMANIA is set to return with the release of a new book that charts the Fab Four in Bournemouth.

Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth by author Nick Churchill offers a complete account of The Beatles’ connections to the town.

It turns out that Bournemouth was closely involved in the infancy of The Beatles. Yes, you did read that correctly.

While Liverpool was where the fledgling Fab Four played early gigs under such names as The Quarrymen and The Silver Beetles, The Beatles played the Bournemouth Gaumont more often Bournemouth than any other UK theatre outside

London, even though Bournemouth seems as far from the group’s north-west origins as The Frog Chorus is from Twist and Shout.

Yet while Dorset can lay little claim to spawning the world’s biggest pop group, the region hosted some crucial – and less-than-crucial, though interesting – episodes as the Beatle legend unfolded here, there and everywhere.

Just ask former Bournemouth Daily Echo journalist Nick Churchill who has unearthed stories of Bournemouth Beatles lore and eyewitness accounts before they disappeared forever.

“Most people’s reactions were that they didn’t know there were any strong connections. There’s nothing in the town to mark the association with The Beatles, let alone that Beatlemania ever happened here,” says Nick.

The Beatles played four Bournemouth engagements in the early 1960s. The first, at the Gaumont, involved two shows a night for six days back in August 1963.

“They were already big stars in the UK at this point, with recent single From Me To You at the top of the charts. As for Beatlemania, there was a bit of screaming, but it was all quite sweet-natured,” says Nick.

“The audience was mainly teenagers, but there are reports of curious holidaymakers wandering in and buying tickets,” he added.

While on their first jaunt to Bournemouth, The Beatles had time to shoot the artwork for their second album, With The Beatles.

The sleeve featured Robert Freeman’s iconic half-shadow photos taken in the restaurant at the Palace Court Hotel in Westover Road during the Beatles’ week-long summer residency at the Gaumont.

“Also at the Palace Court, George Harrison penned Don’t Bother Me, his first Beatles song, while confined to his room with a nasty cold.

“In a letter written to a fan at the time, Harrison expressed his views on the screaming: ‘We don’t mind girls screaming in the noisy numbers, but I think we would prefer them to be a little quieter in the slow songs’.”

As for the actual shows, The Beatles headlined a bill that included Billy J Kramer and The Dakotas, Tommy Quickly, Gary and Lee, The Sons of Piltdown Men, compere Billy Baxter and light entertainers the Glamorous Lanas and Tommy Wallis & Beryl.

Luckily, the chief technician at the Gaumont recorded one of the Bournemouth shows for his own personal use.

This tape, bought by Apple in 1998, is thought to be the only high-quality concert recording from the period and has never seen the light of day.

The Beatles second appearance, at the Winter Gardens on November 16, created media interest from around the world. American film crews from CBS, NBC and ABC were all present to capture the action.

“The audiences were far wilder than those at the Gaumont, all but drowning out the group who had been driven to the Winter Gardens in an unmarked police van. One Beatle fan was so hysterical that she had to be treated in hospital.”

Six months later the Fab Four were back at the Gaumont on August 2, 1964. By this point, Beatle fever had started to spread across the globe with A Hard Day’s Night in cinemas and a full US tour in the offing.

The final show, at The Gaumont again, on October 30, 1964, marked the final

Bournemouth appearance by the Moptops.

“The final shows were part of a UK tour that saw them champion the music of black America that had influenced their songwriting from the earliest days. Support act Mary Wells was the first Motown act to perform in the UK.”

No sooner had The Beatles said hello, than it was goodbye to Bournemouth and the last they ever saw of the legendary group.

Although individual band members continued to frequent the seaside town as Nick Churchill explains.

“Lennon bought a seafront bungalow home at Sandbanks in 1965 for his beloved Aunt Mimi, who brought him up following the death of his mother.

“The Beatle famously phoned her every day and made regular visits to Dorset to visit her.

“Paul returned to Bournemouth in the 70s with his band Wings and of course Ringo continues to visit and was here at the BIC this year.”

Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth by Nick Churchill is available now from www.beatlesandbournemouth.com

Don't Bother Me, Palace Court Hotel

This incredible tape of George Harrison working on Don't Bother Me, his first song for The Beatles, was made by their chauffeur Alf Bicknell (on the reel-to-reel recorder given to him by John Lennon) during the group's six-night summer season at the Gaumont in Bournemouth from 19 to 24 August 1963. 
Struck down with a heavy cold (you can hear him coughing and spluttering) and confined to his room at the Palace Court Hotel, George later said he passed the time writing a song as an exercise just to see if he could. 
Bill Harry, founder-editor of the Merseybeat newspaper in Liverpool, says he had been trying to get George to write a song for ages and this was the young Beatle's response to his encouragement. In fact, George had written before - co-writing In Spite Of All The Danger with Paul McCartney in their days in The Quarrymen. It was recorded as a demo in 1958 with a version of Buddy Holly's That'll Be The Day.
Don't Bother Me was released on The Beatles' second album, With The Beatles, which came out on 22 November 1963, just seven days after they had played the Winter Gardens on their second visit to Bournemouth. The released version is posted below.

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.