Category Archives: The Beatles

Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps – Pt 6 Becoming the Fab Four

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Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps - Pt 6 Becoming the Fab Four

In Part 5 of this series I wrote about how The Beatles left Liverpool for Hamburg with the hope of branching out into the big time, and for a while, through perseverance and hard work, things had gone well. They became popular with the Hamburg music crowd, but the euphoria wasn’t to last and it all ended up on a sour note.

The Hamburg club scene was run by a tough no-nonsense set of characters and not the sort of people you would want to cross – but that’s exactly what The Beatles did. Instead of setting the world on fire as they were hoping for, they were accused of trying to set fire to the Bambi Kino instead. It didn’t matter that it was a trumped-up charge, because the man they were under contract to in Hamburg, Bruno Koschmider, made sure that they would never work for him again by supplying the local police with enough evidence to get them deported.

On November 21st (1960), George was the first to be kicked out because he was underage, Paul and Pete were next to go for their involvement in the Bambi Kino incident, and John limped home alone a dejected man after his work permit had been confiscated. Stuart stayed on in Hamburg with Astrid until January, but by now their dreams were in tatters.

Back in Liverpool, they had all returned to their family homes, including John, who went back to Mimi’s. Paul had even got a job, and for a while they never even bothered to get back in touch with each other. They must have been feeling down to say the least.

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Originally posted 2022-06-20 17:22:13.

Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps – Pt 5 Hamburg

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Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps - Pt 5 Hamburg

Growing up in Liverpool, The Beatles were used to life in a tough port city, but they were now off to an even tougher one – Hamburg.

In Part 4 I explained how the group had become The Beatles,  consisting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best, and also how they had become acquainted with Liverpool nightclub owner Allan Williams, who through his Hamburg connections, was able to secure the group’s first big break.

Allan’s main contact in Hamburg was a tough no-nonsense club owner called Bruno Koschmider who had several establishments in the notorious red-light district of St. Pauli. As the group members were all still only teenagers, Allan thought it best to transport the group over to Hamburg himself, and so on the morning of 16th August (1960) he crammed himself, his wife Betty, her brother Barry, fellow promoter Lord Woodbine, and the five Beatles, into his old Austin van and drove, via the Harwich – Hook of Holland ferry, all the way to Hamburg.

The trip wasn’t without incident, not helped by Allan’s failure to get work permits lined up. They conned their way across the Dutch/ German border, and a couple of incidents with the van could have easily got them into trouble, but in the end they reached Hamburg – tired and weary, but relatively unscathed.

The picture below (which I scanned from Spencer Leigh’s excellent  book The Beatles in Hamburg) shows some of the occupants taking a pit stop at Arnhem on the way there.

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Originally posted 2022-04-19 15:05:54.

Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps – Pt 4 The Casbah

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Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps - Pt 4 The Casbah

In Part 3 of this series, I explained how John, Paul and George came together as members of The Quarrymen, and in this post I’m going to discuss the events that led up to them becoming The Beatles, and why The Casbah was the place where their road to fame really started.

Most people think of the Cavern Club in Matthew Street as being the place where The Beatles started out, and although they became famous there, the place where it really all began was the Casbah Coffee Club in West Derby, and a place where I was lucky enough to be given a personal tour by family member Rory Best, who saw it all happen.

The Cavern opened its doors as a jazz club in January 1957, and The Quarrymen, as a skiffle group, were allowed to play there a couple of times; but as their style changed to ‘Beat’ music they were forced to look elsewhere – and one of the venues where they were welcome was The Casbah.

The club was (is) located in the cellar of a large Victorian House in Hayman’s Green, and was not just where The Beatles started to make their mark, but also others like Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black and The Searchers, and it was all thanks to one woman – Mona Best. To fully understand how she had such an impact on the 1960s music scene, we really need to delve briefly into her past.

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Originally posted 2022-02-25 16:17:54.

Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps – Pt 3 The Quarrymen

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Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps - Pt 3 The Quarrymen

In the previous two posts (see links at bottom of the page), I discussed the background and schooldays of John, Paul, George and Ringo, and in this one I’ll be describing how their interest in music brought three of them together. Ringo was the odd one out as he didn’t mix in the same circles at the time and joined them later on.

As we know, John was the one who started it all off by forming the Quarrymen skiffle group when he was attending Quarry Bank School. Skiffle was popular because you didn’t need to buy an expensive musical instrument, or even know how to play one, because you could make your own. A washboard and a tea chest with a broom handle and piece of string was enough to get you going, but you still needed somebody who could play the banjo or guitar to really make it work. John could play neither – but his mother, Julia, could.

Although he was no longer living with her, they still had a close relationship: She was living in Blomfield Road in Allerton, not a million miles away from where John was living with his Aunt Mimi in Menlove Avenue. In his spare time, he used to pop down there for some lessons on how to play the banjo – and then seeing how serious he was, she helped him buy a cheap guitar.

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Originally posted 2021-12-17 10:56:58.

Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps – Pt 2 The School Years

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Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps - Pt 2 The School Years

Those of you who have read Pt 1 of Following in the Beatles Footsteps, will already know that none of the Fab Four had a privileged background, but for the main part it didn’t stop them having the opportunity of a decent education.

State School education in England basically requires children to attend Primary School between the ages of 5 and 11, after which they attend Senior School until the age of 16. At the time John, Paul, George and Ringo were growing up, an exam called the 11 Plus was used to decide whether a pupil continued their senior education in the standard Secondary Modern School, or if they were bright enough to attend Grammar School. Surprisingly, three of the four passed the 11 Plus, the exception being Ringo.

The system was meant to give everyone an equal chance in life whatever their background, but Ringo was always at a disadvantage. John, Paul and George all lived in the suburbs of South Liverpool, but Ringo lived in a rough area nearer to the city centre called the Dingle. During his years at St. Silas Primary, he was absent much of the time through ill health – and even when he was able to go to school, he was more interested in skiving off, and didn’t even get to take the exam. He was allocated a place at Dingle Vale Secondary School, but once again, he was in hospital more than he was at school. When he went back there for a job reference, nobody could even remember who he was.

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Originally posted 2021-11-06 16:25:29.

Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps – Pt 1 Getting to Know their Roots

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Following in The Beatles Early Footsteps - Pt 1 Getting to Know their Roots

The Beatles have sold more records than anyone else, a staggering 600 million copies. Just think about it – that’s 600,000,000 records, and presumably they’ve included the ones I’ve bought in that figure as well. I was a huge fan of the Fab Four and still am, and when the opportunity arose, I didn’t hesitate to use my birthday as an excuse to make a pilgrimage to visit the place where they came from, to learn more about how and why they became the phenomenon that they did.

Between 1962 and 1970 they recorded 213 songs, 188 of which they penned themselves, mostly by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Everyone has their own favourite Beatles album or song, and their music changed direction more than once, but for me personally, it was their early stuff that I loved the most. It was raw music at its best and could change from Paul hammering out a heavy rock number like Long Tall Sally one minute to John Lennon singing a ballad like This Boy the next.

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Originally posted 2021-10-07 11:29:15.