Returning down south as soon as they had driven back up north, the Beatles headlined the third “Mersey Beat Showcase” at the Majestic Ballroom in the Seven Sisters Road, Finsbury Park. 2,000 fans filled the hall to also see Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas and the Big Three. June Harris, in her review in Disc, wrote “Wow - what a scene! Liverpool blitzed London with a resounding crack! The Merseybeat Showcase package just couldn’t miss making their mark south of the Mersey. But they did more than that. In a field day for Liverpool the four groups brought their sound to London with an ear-splitting crash that left 2,000 fans screaming for more.”
In the afternoon they met with Giorgio Gomelsky and Jazz Beat columnist Peter Clayton at Gomelsky’s flat in Lexham Gardens near the West London Air Terminal. Clayton recalled the meeting, “I went into a living room where four young men were sitting around eating omelettes off their laps. I suppose I should remember some of those tart witticisms which became such a feature of Beatles Press conferences, but all I can recall are the omelettes, each in the centre of a big plate, like a stranded yellow fish, and the Beatles’ pale faces and grey suits and prolific hair (by today’s standards, of course, they were short-haired; you could see their ears.) Giorgio’s idea was to make a day-in-the-life film about the group.
‘They are fabulous. So hip. Part of a new culture. They are going to be enormous and we are going to write a film for them,’ Gomelsky told Clayton. A detailed synopsis of a story was written but Epstein, in Clayton’s opinion, “probably mistook Giorgio’s explosive enthusiasm for just another attempt to stampede him into something.”
“I was a 22-year-old promoter in 1963, doing really well, and earning more money than I knew what to do with! I had a wonderful time, and still do it, although it’s a lot more difficult now. I’d started in the business in 1959 as an entertainment promoter. In those days I was promoting the big bands like Joe Loss, Eric Delaney, those sort of bands, and various other people, then the group boom happened. What really happened was that as a promoter, we always used to book all the groups that I thought were worthy of doing a promotion of several nights. The Beatles were one of those groups that we fancied as a promoter. These were the days when it was 3/6 to pay to come in on the door, and the groups were anything from £17 to £35 a night.
I went to Liverpool in early 1963 to meet Brian Epstein at his NEMS Enterprise record shop. He was a charming man, but he was very green in terms of the business, not in terms of business acumen, because he was a very clever guy, but his knowledge of the music industry at that time was very small. I suggested to him that we put together what I called ‘The Mersey Beat Showcase.’ It included the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, the Big Three and Bob Wooler. It has never been mentioned over the years that I came up with the name, but Brian and I agreed to call it that, and the fee for the four groups and Bob Wooler was £200 per night - for the lot. Brian, who was a lovely guy, saw and realised the huge potential of the Beatles. He was very shrewd and would do whatever it took, so yes, it was my idea, and he ran with it, and it involved several promoters.
Keith Wainwright Fisher and I promoted two dates - Stoke and Finsbury Park - on our own and co-promoted the other dates. I remember Brian Epstein coming up to me at the Stoke show and saying, ‘This is never going to happen again.’ What he meant was that he had just seen the enormous response that Mersey Beat had on the audiences, and ‘£200 a night - this will never happen again!’ What happened was that from then onwards, group’s fees went up dramatically and I can always remember paying Tom Jones £450 for a night at the King’s Hall, thinking that I was going to lose my trousers really. I remember going down to London for the Finsbury Park show. It was all very early days Beatle-wise, before the massive explosion. It was a great night - London was always a difficult one to promote in and, if I remember right, the owners of the venue at that time were Top Rank.
That era in the ’60s was a fabulous period because it was just the start of all the groups and I had the Who, the Small Faces, Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones, all in the same way of being booked. I booked everyone for a minimum of eight nights. That’s the way it was. I was a young guy, so was Richard Branson, Chris Wright from Chrysalis, and all these people, we were all young doing quite well. People like Chris and Richard went on to do far better than me because I was just a Stoke lad and didn’t have the vision! I was a ‘pie and chips’ promoter and not ‘First Division’ like Peter Walsh, Tito Burns and Kennedy Street Enterprises.
I also managed the Hollies for two years and got them their first record deal with Parlophone. I remember being told, ‘Well Chris, the group’s good, but there’s good groups everywhere, however, I’ll give them a try.’ I went down to London with the guys to 142 Charing Cross Road, which was the hub of musical publishing at the time. We went to the third floor. Tommy Sanderson and Eddie Donahue were there, and they wanted to sign them. They said, ‘We don’t want to sign with you.’ So Eddie opened the big window on the third floor, and said, ‘If you don’t sign, you’re going out!’ We all scooted out of the building. There was a lot of the London gangster element getting involved at the time.
I had Led Zeppelin, would you believe, placed them at Hanley and Trentham Gardens, and it was 3/6! I opened my own club, the Golden Torch, in Stoke-on-Trent in 1965, which I ran for eight years, and had acts like Black Sabbath, T. Rex, Uriah Heep, Edgar Broughton, Billy J. Kramer, the list of artists was just enormous, but that was normal then. What happens now is that an industry has been created where the public’s expectations and demands are much higher than they ever were. It’s sad that the small clubs can no longer afford these groups, but that’s show business. It’s an industry now, not a business. The glory days of the early ’60s will never be repeated. It’s a lot tougher for the artists of today who have to work their way up. In those days if you were a top group, and you had a roadie, you would turn up in a transit, with four Vox amplifiers and a Ludwig drum kit! But they had someone to carry it and set it up, as did the Stones. I’m still promoting now, mainly Northern Soul events, although not on such a great scale and even in Benidorm now, and all sorts of things. I’ve got enough on my plate for a 76-year-old. I just can’t stop.”
CHRIS BURTON, PROMOTER, MEIR PARK, STOKE-ON-TRENT, STAFFORDSHIRE