The new NME revealed its full January-June chart points table. Cliff led the way with 877 points, followed by the Beatles with 577, Frank Ifield with 548 and the Shadows with 522nd. By year’s end it would be a much different story, with the group outscoring Cliff by more than 400 points. In an article headed “World-wide Beatles, the paper reported that Del Shannon’s version of From Me To You had gone to number 87 in the Billboard chart. (Their own version would bubble under at number 116 the following month.) They were also at number 3 in Eire, number 10 in Norway, number 15 in Australia while dropping one place to number 7 in the NME chart.
The paper’s Alley Cat incorrectly stated that the group’s next album would include their version of Sweets For My Sweet. He did correct his mistake the following week. (John described the Searchers’ version as the best record to come out of Liverpool.)
More noteworthy the Alley Cat, the pseudonym for Maurice Kinn the paper’s publisher, also revealed in the week’s “Tail-Pieces,” against the wishes of Kinn’s neighbour Brian Epstein, that Tony Barrow admitted that John was married.
In Melody Maker, From Me To You dropped three places to number 8. Brian Epstein made a verbal agreement for the Beatles to tour Australia in 1964. Chris Roberts in an article headed “How to form a beat group,” wrote that “it was ambition that caused (them) to play themselves almost to exhaustion in German night clubs and Liverpool to weld their talent into a solid, saleable mass.” It was also publicly admitted for the first time that John was in fact married, although he had never denied it. “It is just that nobody ever asked me about it. But my wife, Cynthia, and I met during my days at art school and fell in love. It’s as simple as that. The reason that I have never blazoned the fact all over the papers is that I regard my private life as being completely private.” (In the following week’s paper, Chris Roberts wrote an article asking the question “Do wedding bells spell death for the big names?”)
Less than a week after doing a double header on the Regan Circuit, the group returned to the West Midlands to do a further double header - this time at the Ritz (previously a snooker hall) in King’s Heath followed by another date at the Plaza Old Hill. At the Ritz they shared the bill with Dane Tempest and the Atoms, the Redcaps and the Plazents. The Atoms’ drummer Roger Stafford recalled that “we got a message to say they were short of groups at the Ritz and that we were to go over there. We thought we’d miss the Beatles, because they’d have to go on early there so they could get to Old Hill. So we made a mad dash, getting our equipment out of the Plaza, putting it in our van and going over to the Ritz. When we got there, we didn’t even unload our gear. We went in and went straight upstairs, and the Beatles were already onstage. We saw part of their act and the only number I remember was ‘I Saw Her Standing There.’
Anyway, they finished their set and left in Ma and Pa Regan’s Ford Consul driven by Bob Bailey, who worked for them as a jack-of-all trades. While the Redcaps were getting ready to perform, we helped the Beatles’ roadie get their stuff out and into their van. I was a drummer, so obviously I went straight for the drum kit, took it down the fire escape and handed it to someone who put it in the van.
While the Redcaps were performing, we heard that they had to go over to the Plaza as well. When they finished their set, we went on and did ours. I picked up a broken drumstick off the floor, which I guess was Ringo’s. I also found a postcard which had been thrown on stage by some fans, wishing Ringo a Happy Birthday. There’s always been a mystery about that night that doesn’t seem to have been answered. The following week all the groups and the regulars were talking about the Beatles’ appearance. They left the Ritz by car to go to Old Hill, but their van, which left later, arrived at the Plaza before the car did and no one knows what happened to them in the meantime. People on that night wondered where they’d got to. The rumour was they’d popped off for some drinks in a pub somewhere.”
On their arrival, Bailey recalled a scene of “utter madness. I had the shirt ripped off my back - I’d never seen scenes like it.” Support act Dave Lacey and the Corvettes had already finished their set while Denny and the Diplomats had to keep playing until the Beatles arrived. Lacey recalled, “We couldn’t hear a word that they sang. We had to get them out of the Plaza through the window of the toilet on to the roof outside because they would never have got out of the place alive. I clearly remember pushing them out through the window. The screaming from the girls was so loud they might as well have mouthed it.”
The Diplomats’ drummer Bev Bevan remembered, “We were only due to play for about half an hour, but the mop tops were late arriving from the first of their shows that evening, and we ended up being on stage for over an hour. There were a few chants of “We want the Beatles!” but generally the crowd were very good to us, as we were probably the most popular local group in that area. Eventually we became aware that the Beatles had arrived and were watching us from the wings. One of the numbers we performed that night was a rather brave version of a hit instrumental of that time, Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, which featured me doing a drum solo in 5/4 time. When we had finished our set and the curtains closed, a most amazing thing happened - Paul McCartney - walked over to me and said, in his broad Liverpool accent ‘Ay dat was great, dat drum solo you played in 5/4 time. Tell you what mate - our drummer could never do dat!’ That was my claim to fame for the next three years!” Their late arrival meant the group gave a shortened set comprising eleven songs.
On the way home to Liverpool, they noticed a strong smell of burning in the Ford bus. They all piled out, while Neil Aspinall investigated the problem, which happened to be a series of crossed wires. Disconnecting them, they travelled back without the use of any lights. “We used to keep a couple of torches in the back of the van,” Ringo recalled. “John and Paul often got ideas for songs while travelling home. Me ’n’ George used to hold the torches while they wrote down the songs. We tied those torches on to the front of the car and off we went - keeping one of the indicators winking as an extra warning that the Beatles were a-comin’.”
“I left school at 16 and was going to go into the RAF. So I went down to Cardington in Bedfordshire, spent a week down there, did the whole rigamarole. At the end of the week they said, ‘We want you,’ and this was after National Service was finished. They asked how long would I sign up for. I said, ‘Five years, maybe seven.’ And they said, ‘Ooh no, you have to sign for at least twelve.’ I said, ‘I’m sixteen years old and you want me to sign up for twelve years of my life? I don’t think so.’ So I went back to Birmingham and got a summer job at Lewis’s, which was the biggest department store in the city.
Across the road was an amusement arcade and I used to go over there at lunchtime and play the pinball machines. I used to make more money there than at Lewis’s. I truly was a pinball wizard. The guy on the next machine as it turned out was Euan Rose, who was also working at Lewis’s. One day he leant over to me and says, ‘I’m a drummer in a band. We’ve got a gig this weekend, do you want to come and see us?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t have a life, so why not?’ I went to the gig and next week at work he said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘Well you’re not bad but your singer’s a bit rough in places.’ A couple of weeks later he said, ‘We’re having rehearsals this weekend at my house. Do you want to come over and watch us?’ So I said, ‘Sure why not?’ I go over there and halfway through the rehearsal he says, ‘Why don’t you do one?’ ‘Well, I can’t sing,’ I said. ‘Yes, you can,’ he said, ‘I’ve heard you in the stockroom at work.’ So we did some Buddy Holly stuff.
Euan said, ‘We’ve got a gig on Monday at the George Hotel on Bristol Road.’ You always remember the first place you ever played. He said, ‘Come along. We’ll do the first half and then we’ll introduce you and you can get up and do a song.’ Note the - ‘a song.’ So the first song I ever did was ‘Rave On.’ We did that and the crowd loved it and I did the rest of the night. I knew all the songs, because I sang along to all of them when I heard them on the radio. So at the end of the night they said, ‘We want you to be our singer.’ ‘Well, what about Rodney?’ I said. ‘He just wants to sing backing vocals and play bass guitar.’ And that’s how I ended up being in the Eko’s at the end of 1960 and became known as ‘Buddy Ash.’ None of us were old enough to drive so my mother became our road manager. We had a car dealership, so the first thing she did was get us a Bedford van.
Sometime in 1962 Denny Laine asked me to go and sing with him, so I sang with Denny and the Diplomats for a month or two. Later that year Dave Mountney was put in charge of putting together a house band for the Regan venues and that is how the Plazents came to be. We used to play at all four ballrooms. All these various artists came in, including all the American ones, so we came in in the afternoons and rehearsed with them and backed them on the night. We actually appeared at all four ballrooms on one night. Every time the Beatles came to town, we went on before them so when we played the Ritz we went on first and while they were performing, we headed over the Plaza in Old Hill and they came on later. We never got any credit for it and because we were the resident group we never got our names in any of the books.
Whenever the Beatles played, I think the girls started screaming when they left school that afternoon and didn’t stop until the next morning. On one occasion we were in the dressing room and the girls broke through the bar downstairs and came up the back stairs. We were at the top of the stairs pushing them all back down again. It was an absolute nut job. They were pretty friendly, ordinary guys. We didn’t take much notice of them to be honest. We figured this was a flash in the pan like everything else was. If you had a hit record, you had a hit record and then you’d go back to your ordinary life again.
At the end of 1963 Decca came walking in one night and wanted to sign us. Obviously, we couldn’t get the pens out quick enough. A couple of weeks later they came back to us and said they wanted us to do a one-off album of Beatles’ songs. They said, ‘You won’t get any royalties, but we’ll pay you well,’ which they did - in fact they paid us very well. We went down to London and made the album on December 4th, 1963. I know what day it was because it was my first wedding anniversary, and my wife wasn’t happy. We did nineteen songs. We went into the studio and six o’clock in the morning and finished at three o’clock the next morning and Decca said, ‘We’re going to call you the Merseyboys.’ It was supposed to be for the American market to coincide with the Beatles’ first visit to there. Around this time, we decided to call ourselves the Brumbeats, so for a while we were the Plazents, the Merseyboys and the Brumbeats.
The Brumbeats folded in 1964 after the release of their only single ‘I Don’t Understand.’ I then went on to form a group called the Bobby Ash Sound. I’d had enough of being called Buddy Ash. We were in the process of getting a recording contract when I decided I’d had enough. My mother had moved to America in 1963 and she said, ‘Why don’t you come over here?’ So I said, ‘Why not?’ What made my mind up was being on the road sharing a hotel room and I waking up and seeing the drummer with a needle in his arm, the bass player taking uppers and downers and I was drinking a fist of scotch every day and two on a Friday and Saturday. I thought, ‘I’m going to be dead in a year at this rate. It’s time to quit.’
So I came to America and said, ‘I’m done with the music business.’ My mother had had a bad divorce and decided to get away and start a new life. She came over as a nanny, working for a guy named Sonny Fox, who used to do a TV show called ‘Wonderama.’ She said, ‘I’m going to send you a letter and you need to take a good look at it.’
The letter arrived and it was offering us a college tour in the US and two TV shows and releasing our records over there. I was here three weeks, and I was singing with a group in Connecticut, and we had our own radio show. We then went to California, and I got a job with Rolls Royce. One day a guy comes in and says, ‘Bobby Ash! What are you doing here? I need you. I’m doing this record with this group and the singer’s crap.’
In 1974 I started singing with this group at the King’s Head, a pub in Santa Monica, and doing session work. I didn’t really want to get back into anything drastic at all. On one occasion I was driving in Santa Monica and saw this red head in the car next to me and realised it was Peter Asher. I did some work for him on one of James Taylor’s albums.
None of the words of the songs on the album had been written down and Taylor was too stoned to do it and so he had me sit down with the album and decipher everything and so I did the lyrics for the album cover. Soon after that we moved up to Washington state and I opened an art gallery, because I’m an artist as well. They have a big thing up there called ‘A Taste of Edmonds’ and I was on the board of the Chamber, and they decided to get some local acts. All they came back with was a garage band with a bunch of fourteen-year-olds. So I said, ‘I can do a spot.’ They said, ‘What can you do?’ I had never told anybody, so I brought my records in for the next meeting and so for the next few years I did the festival and got roped into doing all the Christmas carol stuff. In the meantime, we’d started going to Hawaii, and met a bunch of people and started singing with a couple of bands over there. In 1998 we actually moved to Hawaii. I used to perform quite regularly there and I still do.
When we played on the Regan circuit, we got to back all the American artists that played there. You name it, we backed them. Roy Orbison was cool. He sat in the dressing room and taught me how to do falsetto. I’ve always said this - I will quit singing when I can no longer sing ‘Crying’.”
GRAHAM ASHFORD, ARTIST AND MUSICIAN, MARYVILLE, WASHINGTON, US AND ONELOA, HAWAII, US