Beatles' Bournemouth review 2

When the Rank Organisation booked The Beatles for a six-day summer season at the Gaumont in Bournemouth, hardly anyone at cinema knew who they were. But their kids did and The Beatles' arrival in town on 19 August 1963 caused great excitement with fans crammed into the alleyway by the stage door craning their necks for a glimpse of their idols as the soon-to-be Fab Four drew up in their Ford Zephyr.
By then the papers were on full Beatles alert and in Bournemouth it fell to already seasoned showbiz scribe Tony Crawley and the characterful photographer Harry Taylor to cover the group's stay in town, at the Palace Court Hotel, and keep abreast of the shows for the Bournemouth Times. As a weekly paper the Times could afford to circumspect than the somewhat breathless reviews of the Evening Echo's Stan Sowden.
This is how the Bournemouth Times reported those first shows in August 1963...

Cinema manager Charles Booth says he has a minute to relax, "Well, 45 seconds." He sits down. Somewhere between the pile of programmes, stack of autograph books, and the last mail delivery. (Most of the letters are marked "You're fab" on the envelope.)
"We've never had anything lie it," he says. "I've been in this business for 30 years. I've arranged film premieres, and big stage shows. But never have I experienced a week of demand and commotion like this."
Mr Booth is general manager of the Gaumont. And he'd right. His cinema has never witnessed such a commotion for visiting stars.
Not even Cliff Richard, Adam Faith or Billy Fury have won such screams, cheers, shouts, stomps, than is currently happening with ear-piercing regularity twice-nightly at this cinema.
The reason? Britain's most revolutionary and extraordinarily successful records stars: THE BEATLES.
It's their first visit to Bournemouth since virtually ruling the Top Ten for the last nine months. Holiday-makers, too , are making sure they don't miss the town's biggest attraction.
There are even dedicated fans on special one or two-day trips from - honest - as far away as Edinburgh and Hull.
Policemen on duty in the auditorium agree they have never heard anything like it.
Once the four, long, lean and lanky Liverpool lads come on-stage, real pandemonium sets in. Girls scream, jump up and down. Boys yell, stamp their feet. And hands are lifted outwards, upwards.
Fortunately, 99 per cent of the packed audiences (26,000 by tomorrow) know the Beatle songs by heart. I say fortunately, because no matter how much they pay, they don't hear them at the Gaumont.
Surprisingly, as these Liverpudlians don't claim to be the quietest quartet in the business. Their audio-histrionics, raucous voices, and electric guitars are loud, lusty - gutsy.
They yell, howl, stomp with gay abandon. So do their audiences.
The Beatles have won a sensational brand of success that has escaped even Cliff or Elvis.
Success like two successive no.1 hit single discs; an LP and EP (the first ever to crash the Top Ten) both selling way past the 100,000 mark; and a new single out today, She Loves You, which will be in the top three by next week as the advance orders for it already total 235,000.
They've every right to be big-heads. But off-stage, they are quiet, almost reserved, gently-spoken, expertly-mannered - and good fun.
Lead guitar is George Harrison, 20; Ringo Starr, the oldest as 23, is the drummer; the others are the singers and songwriters Paul McCartney, 21, and John Lennon, 22.
They write the main songs and the two hits by Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas; and now more songs for their other partners in the success, Tommy Quickly, The Fourmost, etc.
When do they get time to write?
"Oh anytime," murmurs a pensive Paul. "In the train, dressing room, in bed, in our sleep," adds John.
How about the fans? "We love them all,"smiles Ringo. "They made us."
And their screams? "Sam thing," grins George. "Wed start worrying if they stopped."
Also in town this week is Beatle no.5 - their ex-Etonian manager Brian Epstein, suave as their suits.
Tony Crawley, Bournemouth Times, 23 August 1963

:: This, and all the local press reviews of The Beatles' shows in Bournemouth can be read in Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, available for order at www.beatlesandbournemouth.com.

Billy J Kramer on The Beatles and Bournemouth

Billy J Kramer has been recalling his remarkable career in a brand new interview with the excellent ezine ZANI. Have a good read here.

Loaded with anecdotes and laced with rare insights, Billy seems to be in fine fettle although we have to take issue with his memories of Bournemouth. He recalls his 20th birthday party well enough, but seems to think John Lennon played him Bad To Me in a corridor when, in fact, the single was already topping the charts when he arrived in Bournemouth on his birthday - 19 August 1963 - to open a six-day summer season at the Gaumont Theatre on Westover Road.
To mark the achievement The Beatles hosted a party in their dressing room that evening between the first and second shows. Later on the boys sent Billy a telegram that read: "Happy birthday from your proud parents, The Beatles."
Bad To Me stayed at number one until it was replaced by She Loves You, released the Friday of their Bournemouth run.
:: The photo above (by Harry Taylor, copyright Dave Robinson) is taken from the book Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, available to order here.

The Beatles' first review in Bournemouth

The Beatles arrived in Bournemouth on Monday 19 August 1963 to open a six-day summer season at the Gaumont cinema on Westover Road. By the time they left town on the Saturday, the single they had been touting all week - She Loves You - had been released and the die was cast ... within months they would be the biggest group in the world.

Here's what the Bournemouth Evening Echo had to say about that historic first show:

Into Bournemouth last night on a wave of enthusiasm almost unprecedented in pop history came The Beatles, the four young Liverpool men who have really set the world of pop music alight.

Little known outside Merseyside until a year ago, the group then travelled to London and made Love Me Do. Then followed Please Please Me and after that, also into first place on the Hit Parade, From Me To You.

But the proof of their popularity came with their new EP, Twist and Shout, which made musical history by not only getting in the Top Ten but also challenging for the no.1 position.

To a smaller degree they’ve made history locally because they are the first pop group to be booked into a local cinema for an entire week. Advance booking at the Gaumont theatre was good and queues all day yesterday look like being repeated all week. There are more than 25,000 seats to be sold at the Gaumont’s 12 shows this week and a fairly high percentage of them will go, I feel sure, after yesterday’s performances.

The audience enthusiasm was terrific, making most of the numbers completely inaudible, as is usual with these shows. Trying to listen, I suddenly realised why pop records sell so well. The fans buy them so they can listen to the words at home, then they know where to scream when they see their lads on the stage.

As well as writing most of their own material, The Beatles have been penning a couple for another group, The Dakotas, who were joined in January by tall, good-looking Billy J Kramer.

Yesterday, Billy celebrated his 20th birthday, and a welcome present was the news that his latest record, Bad To Me, was on top of the Hit Parade. This was written for him by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, but I’ve a feeling that The Beatles’ own She Loves You, tried out on the audience yesterday and to be released on Friday, will soon be at the top.

Completing the line up are newcomer Tommy Quickly, the Three Lanas, versatile Tommy Wallis & Beryl, brash compere Billy Baxter – some poet! – and the oddly named but effective-sounding Sons of Piltdown Men, with Gary and Lee.

Stan Sowden, Bournemouth Evening Echo, 20 August 1963

Reviews of all The Beatles' shows in Bournemouth can be found in Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth. Order here.

Merry Christmas

Please join me in raising a glass to absent friends and wishing us all a very merry Christmas and peaceful New Year...

Sheila Casey in memoriam

The singer Sheila Casey who, with her sister Jeanette formed the McKinley Sisters and supported The Beatles on tour in 1964, lost her long and brave battle with cancer on 16 December.
Alongside her husband, Seniors band leader and former Wings saxophonist Howie, Sheila always found time for my enquiries and kindly contributed valuable anecdotes and memories to Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth.
A personal tribute can be read here.

Beatles in Bournemouth A Go! Go!

Jon Kremer with Paul backstage at the Winter Gardens Bournemouth on 15 May 1973

This photo appears in a new book, Bournemouth A Go! Go! (£19.95, Natula Publications) with a remarkable account of just how accessible Paul and Linda and Wings were on their first UK theatre tour.
Little more than a year after the McCartneys took their new band on the infamous University Tour, Wings took flight in support of their Red Rose Speedway album and to launch the Live and Let Die single from the Bond film of the same name. The fourth date on the tour, at the Winter Gardens in Bournemouth, had been well received even though author Jon Kremer (that's him on the left) suspects a sizeable portion of the audience was there as much to see a Beatle in the flesh as hear anything Wings had to offer. After the show Jon made his way backstage with friends and before long found himself in conversation with Paul and Linda, talking about reggae and writing songs for films. It being the 1970s, there was no hesitation when it came time to 'flash the ash'...
"Accepting a proffered Rembrandt International before setting fire to it in the usual way McCartney ripped the filter off, discarded it, and continued to chat. I'd not see such a casually displayed craving for a maximum nicotine hit before, and found myself entertaining a bizarre thought regarding Beatle etiquette: when next offering him a cigarette should you detach the filter first? What would you do?" asks Jon.
Bournemouth A Go! Go! also features a comprehensive account of the episode outlined in Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth in which the young Jon and his friend Al Stewart negotiate a backstage audience with John Lennon following The Beatles' opening show of their summer season at Bournemouth Gaumont on 19 August 1963.
:: Copies of Bournemouth A Go! Go! can be ordered from www.natula.co.uk
:: Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth is available at www.beatlesandbournemouth.com along with art prints of a selection of the 200 rare and previously unpublished images featured in the book. There's also a set of colour photos of Wings performing at the Winter Gardens on 15 May 1973.

The Beatles, Bournemouth: Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

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.