Last week, I received a great email from a first generation fan that saw the Beatles in concert in 1962! I love how he says that John performed "Twist and Shout" twice. Oh to have heard that! He is wondering if anyone else out there also was at the concerts he attended. Please see his email below.
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| Paul performing at an unknown gig in mid 1962 |
On June 23rd 1962 I went to a dance at Northwich Memorial Hall, Cheshire and enjoyed the Beatles first visit there on the 23rd June 1962. ( Dates supplied by Beatles history sources.) I think Lennon’s ”Twist and Shout” still is for me the greatest live rendering of a rock and roll hit I have ever heard. He sang it twice that night but I have read that it was too hard on his vocal chords so he had to stop singing it twice. Because they were so talented I went to their second visit and amazingly the audience stopped dancing to listen to the group. We had never experienced that before . In December Paul increased our excitement by announcing the following , and I can hear him saying it as if it were yesterday… ( Imagine him talking with a Liverpool accent)
“Well, we’ve bin to Lundon and we’ve just made a record. It’s called , ‘Luv, Luv Me Dooo. And we ‘ope you doo and we ‘ope you buy it ‘cos we need the muney. ” ( A gentle appeal Mr. McCartney and we all wanted you to make lots of it. )
On their final visit to the Memorial Hall the groups popularity had exploded having appeared on BBC TV and onto the pop charts with their own compositions, the latest at that time being ‘She Loves You’. There were places for 300 inside but hundreds more were outside and some had let in their buddies so we were packed like sardines. To get through the crowd they had to arrive in disguise to play. I hardly saw them. It seemed the police limited their performance to about 20 minutes. Great to be there but oh not long enough by any reckoning.
When I was teaching in the USA I used these experiences as a anectdotal resource and, with my occasional vocalization of some of those early songs, enjoyed a lot of smiles. Beatlemania is an internationally shared history.
It would be wonderful to hear from others who experienced The Beatles at the Northwich Morgue.
Regards,
John Capper