August 1963: The Beatles on the balcony at the Palace Court Hotel, Bournemouth.
Photo by Harry Taylor © Dave Robinson
Incredible as it may seem for a
small resort town on the south coast, The Beatles played 18 gigs – two shows a
night – in Bournemouth in just 14 months.
Kicking off with a six-day summer
season run at the Gaumont cinema in August 1963 as She Loves You went to number one; they returned on 16 November 1963
at the much bigger Winter Gardens; and twice more at the Gaumont in 1964 – on 2
August and 30 October.
What’s more, at least one
photographer was there to record them at every step.
Harry Taylor was among the first
paparazzi.
A larger than life figure, Flash
Harry as he was affectionately known to the Bournemouth social scene by the
early 1960s, had moved from his native London to the south coast of England
during World War Two and built landing craft in a factory on Poole Harbour.
After the War he started to promote his photographic abilities towards the
local press, finding a ready home at the weekly Bournemouth Times.
During their first stay in
Bournemouth, on 23 August 1963, The Beatles’ third single She Loves You was released. Written earlier that year in Newcastle
while on tour with Roy Orbison, the song remains the biggest selling Beatles
single in Britain today. Having gone into the charts at number one, it stayed
there for 31 consecutive weeks – and charted again the following April –
returning to number one the week The Beatles arrived back in Bournemouth to
play the Winter Gardens in November.
But during the landmark week in
Bournemouth in August 1963, not only did The Beatles land their biggest hit to
date, they also sowed the seeds from which would spring the phenomenon of
Beatlemania.
While staying at the Palace Court
Hotel, the first of the band’s most iconic photo shoots took place. Easily
ranking along Peter Blake’s Sgt Pepper
sessions and Iain Macmillan’s cover shot for Abbey Road, the half-shadow photos by the band’s then official
photographer Robert Freeman number among the most instantly recognisable
symbols of the Swinging Sixties.
Freeman was paid £75 – three times the
normal rate.
Also at the Palace Court during that week
George Harrison wrote Don’t Bother Me,
his first song for The Beatles, holed up in his hotel room suffering a heavy
cold.
Having left Bournemouth, happily swapping
their rock ‘n’ roll credentials for the trappings of international stardom The
Beatles embarked upon the path that was to bring them far more then they could
ever have dreamed of.
By the time they came back to Bournemouth,
to play the Winter Gardens in November, the die was well and truly cast.
The screaming audiences that night were beset
by the demands of American television as reporter Alexander Kendrick directed
camera crews that lead to the three major networks – CBS, NBC and ABC – showing
footage of The Beatles live at the Winter Gardens. It was the first time
America had seen The Beatles.
Having subsequently toured the States and
watched the spark of Beatlemania turn into a raging fireball, nine months later
The Beatles were major international stars and back in Bournemouth for a
one-off show at the Gaumont in preparation for a European tour.
The two shows of 2 August 1964 were fairly
typical of Beatles shows of that time. A couple of breaking acts were named as
support and the compere would wind up the audience of expectant Beatlemaniacs
so that by the time the boys hit the stage expectation was at fever pitch.
It was into this hotbed of old fashioned
variety show tactics that one of the young support bands that night was thrown.
The Kinks had a couple of failed singles behind them, but their third release –
You Really Got Me – had started to
make an impression on the charts. Billed to open the second half of the show,
directly before The Beatles came on, Kinks singer Ray Davies has recounted how
John and Paul, but particularly John, appeared backstage behind the Gaumont
curtain to irritate the nervous upstarts, resplendent in their new stage gear
of bright red riding jackets.
The Beatles’ final Bournemouth shows, in
October 1964, were part of a UK tour that saw them fly the flag for the music
of black America that had influenced the songwriting of Lennon and McCartney
from the earliest days.
Principal support act Mary Wells became the first Motown act to perform in the
UK and the first female singer to open for The Beatles. Red hot from her
biggest hit, My Guy, Mary Wells was
named as The Beatles’ favourite American singer. Ironically though she was in
major dispute with Motown, affording her time to tour with The Beatles, but
effectively ending her Motown career.
And that was the last Bournemouth was see
of The Beatles as a performing band for although there was to be one more UK
tour, in December 1965, before they quit playing live altogether the following
year, they stuck to major cities only.
But the south coast continued to play its
part in Beatles history.
In mid-1965 John’s aunt Mimi sold Mendips, her house in Menlove Avenue,
Liverpool – just up the road from Penny Lane – and John spent £25,000 on 126
Panorama Road, a waterside bungalow at Sandbanks, between Bournemouth and
Poole. John, his first wife Cynthia and their son Julian visited Mimi frequently
at the house.
Lennon remained close to Mimi, phoning her
every week and visiting as often as he could – being spotted by locals in
either a Mini Cooper or, later, in his famous psychedelic Rolls Royce. He even
visited during the hectic run up to the release of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 when he was
photographed with Mimi and Julian close to the nearby Sandbanks chain ferry.
It was on one such visit, on 14 March 1969,
just after Paul McCartney had married Linda Eastman, that John and Yoko
announced they were to get married. John asked
his chauffeur, Les Anthony, to drive to Southampton and ask if he and Yoko
could marry at sea. Having been told that would not be possible they chartered
a private jet to take them to Paris, but were unable arrange a wedding at short
notice so opted for Gibraltar near Spain, as related in The Beatles’ final
number one single, The Ballad Of John and
Yoko.
And it was to Aunt Mimi in Poole, as well
as to Cynthia in Liverpool and Yoko in New York, that the world reached out its
hand in sympathy when John Lennon was murdered. Then, in 1992, Lennon’s two
wives were seen together with their sons Julian and Sean at Poole Crematorium
for Mimi’s funeral service – Paul, George and Ringo all sent wreaths.
:: The full versions of these and many
other stories are included in Yeah Yeah
Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, along with more than 200 rare and
previously unpublished photographs. Copies can be ordered at
www.beatlesandbournemouth.com.
