As the group prepared for its first date on the fourteen-date Helen Shapiro-headed package tour, the early morning temperature in Bradford, where the evening’s two concerts were to take place at the Gaumont cinema on New Victoria Street, was 4.4º. The tour bus, with Shapiro, Kenny Lynch, who had just finished a cabaret season at the Jack of Clubs in London, the Kestrels, the Honeys, the Red Price Band, compère Dave Allen, and special guest star Danny Williams on board, left the Allsop Place bus depot in London and headed north to Bradford - a journey which took the better part of five hours. Snowmen built on Boxing Day were still standing.
Having not gone to bed until after 3.00am, the group got off to a late start from their homes in Liverpool, driven directly to Bradford by Neil Aspinall. The front-page headline in the Liverpool Echo read, “Road Peril Persists On Slither And Slide Saturday.” The journey was slow because of whiteout conditions. An RAC spokesman described conditions in the area as “pretty grim all round” and the A628 between Manchester and Sheffield had been closed the previous night.
Maureen Cleave’s January 10th interview was published in the Evening Standard. “The Beatles are the darlings of Merseyside ... But I think it’s their looks that really get people going, that start the girls queuing outside the Liverpool Grafton at 5.30 for 8.00pm. Their average age is 20, and they have what their manager likes to call ‘exceptional taste in clothes.’ They look scruffy, but scruffy on purpose. They wear bell-bottom suits of a rich Burgundy colour with black velvet collars. Boots of course. Shoes seems to have died out altogether. Their shirts are pink and their hairstyles are French. Liverpool lads of 12 and upwards now have small bouffant Beatle heads with the fringe brushed forwards.
On the stage, there’s none of this humble bowing of the head or self-effacing trips over the microphone leads. They stand there, bursting with self-confidence and professional polish - as well they might, for they have been at this game since 1958. They know exactly what they can get away with, and their inter-song patter is in the Max Miller music-hall tradition, with slightly bawdy schoolboy overtones. John Lennon has an upper lip which is brutal in a devastating way. George Harrison is handsome, whimsical and untidy. Paul McCartney has a round baby face, while Ringo Starr is ugly but cute ... Their physical appearance inspires frenzy. They look beat-up and depraved in the nicest way. It takes you back, doesn’t it? To the early days of rock and roll.”
On arrival, the group met bill topper Shapiro for the first time. She recalled, “Paul, who was always the spokesman and diplomat, introduced me, one by one, to the rest of the group ... I used to watch them at every show and, although sometimes they were very loud, and some things used to go wrong with their amplifiers, they still had this magnetic quality, you just had to watch them, because you didn’t know what they were going to do next.” Ringo remembered Shapiro as the star. “Helen had the telly in her dressing room and we didn’t have one. We had to ask her if we could watch hers. We weren’t getting packed houses, but we were on the boards, man.”
The continuing bad weather had its effect, with neither of the houses at 6.00pm and 8.30pm in the 3,318-capacity cinema more than half full. (Tickets for the tour ranged from 3/6 to 8/6.) The Beatles followed the Honeys and sang six numbers. By the time the tour closed on March 3rd at the Gaumont Cinema in Hanley, Staffordshire, the group were closing the first half. Their payment for the tour? £80 a week. Ringo later told New Record Mirror journalist Peter Jones that the tour “meant we’d able to get to work before lots of different audiences all over the country. So we had another task on our hands - to get together the strongest possible act to sell ourselves on a theatre stage instead of on a dance-hall rostrum.”
Reginald Brace in his review for the Yorkshire Post wrote, “Best of all, there were four young men from Liverpool called the Beatles, who, I predict, will go from strength to strength this year. They sing and strum their guitars with enormous, infectious zest.” Local journalist Gordon Sampson writing in the NME reported that, “A great reception went to the colourfully dressed Beatles, who almost stole the show, for the audience repeatedly called for them while other artists were performing! Undoubtedly their best number was an unusual vocal treatment of A Taste Of Honey. Their current hit, Please Please Me, with which they closed, was the most popular.”
The McCartney-sang A Taste Of Honey was based on Lenny Welch’s version released the previous year. The group showed their appreciation of Sampson’s review, giving him a signed photo when they appeared in Sheffield the following month. Melody Maker wrote, “There was an air of uneasiness early in Helen’s act, and the group started in different keys from singers Danny Williams and Kenny Lynch. The ever-improving Lynch and the Beatles were the pick of the supporting acts, though the Kestrels also deserve mention.”
Disc quite simply wrote, they “brought the house down.”
“As an arts and entertainment journalist, I have attended many opening nights over the years. But the one which stands out for me was that historic evening in Bradford when the Beatles were part of a new package show - their first nationwide tour.
The Gaumont was a popular venue for concerts, as well as being a cinema, and I had seen the likes of Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Billy Fury, Cliff Richard and the Shadows there. So when the New Musical Express asked me to review a programme headlined by Helen Shapiro, plus Kenny Lynch, special guest star Danny Williams and other support, including the Beatles, I didn’t hesitate. Television was black and white in those days, so there was a real buzz in going to a big auditorium like the Gaumont, where everything came alive in full colour. And inside there was a real warm atmosphere, contrasting with the freezing conditions outside when winters were really winters!
All the performers came up to expectations but, with no disrespect to the others, it was the Beatles who created the major talking point, and rightly so, although media interest was limited to start with. That provided a great opportunity for a face-to-face meeting with the Liverpool lads and Brian Epstein after interviews with the sparkling Helen and the others.
Back then, packages were usually of two houses at each theatre, limiting the spots performers were allotted. The Beatles managed to pack in six numbers in the early house. What you saw was what you got then, long before modern technology. So the sounds could be quite raw, that only adding to the appeal as the smartly-dressed quartet bounced their way through ‘Love Me Do’, ‘A Taste of Honey’, ‘Beautiful Dreamer’, ‘Chains’, ‘Keep Your Hands Off My Baby’ and the closing with ‘Please Please Me’, which in the NME’s own chart was at number five that week.
A bonus of being there before Beatlemania took off was the chance to hear all the words, which were drowned out by noise and screaming on most of the other occasions when I saw them before they stopped touring. In between shows at the Gaumont, out came my NME Press card and I was soon in the small dressing room given to the Beatles, standing there alone chatting to Paul and John, who had plenty to say, the quieter George, and Ringo, who chipped in with some quips of his own from time to time, while manager Brian made sure that the information given about future plans was correct. They were all very polite and helpful.
When I met up with them again backstage at Sheffield City Hall towards the end of the tour, I was made to feel very welcome. John commented on how well my opening night review in the NME had been received by the group and, as a thank you, they signed a photograph and gave it to me. Although I saw the Beatles on several other occasions afterwards, they had become so big that it was impossible to get one to ones anymore as media scrums developed and press conferences were arranged with limited questions.
The four’s exploits were amazing, considering that there were few major motorway links in the ’60s for the huge amount of travelling involved, luxury tour buses were not around and they didn’t have the benefits of the digital sound and lighting systems of the modern era.”
GORDON SAMPSON, JOURNALIST, BRIGHOUSE, WEST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE
Thank you for a thorough review of the show
It must have been incredible.