#mersey beat

[dearmistermuse]

Brian Jones and Keith Richards on the Mersey Beat front covers

[nedison]

An animated retelling of John Lennon's Being A Short Diversion On The Dubious Origins Of Beatles recited by Bernard Hill, in character as John, from the 1985 TV special John Lennon: A Journey In The Life.

[get-back-homeward]

August 31, 1961: Bob Wooler predicts the Beatles’ future in Mersey Beat

A PHENOMENON CALLED THE BEATLES!

by Bob Wooler [x]

Why do you think The Beatles are so popular? Many people many times have asked me this question since that fantastic night (Tuesday, December 27th, 1960) at Litherland Town Hall, when the impact of the act was first felt on this side of the River. I consider myself privileged to have been associated with the launching of the group on that exciting occasion, and grateful for the opportunities of presenting them to fever-pitch audiences at practically all of the group’s subsequent appearances prior to their last Hamburg trip.

Perhaps my close association with the group’s activities, both earlier this year and since their recent reappearance on the Merseyside scene, persuades people to think that I can produce a blueprint of The Beatles Success Story. It figures, I suppose, and if, in attempting to explain the popularity of their act, the following analysis is at variance with other people’s views, well that’s just one of those things. The question is nevertheless thought-provoking.

Well then, how to answer it? First some obvious observations. The Beatles are the biggest thing to have hit the Liverpool rock ’n’ roll setup in years. They were, and still are, the hottest local property any Rock promoter is likely to encounter. To many of these gentlemen’s ears, Beatle-brand noises are cacophonous on stage, but who can ignore the fact that the same sounds translate into the sweetest music this side of heaven at the box office!

I think The Beatles are No. 1 because they resurrected original style rock ’n’ roll music, the origins of which are to be found in American negro singers. They hit the scene when it had been emasculated by figures like Cliff Richard and sounds like those electronic wonders The Shadows and their many imitators. Gone was the drive that inflamed the emotions. This was studio set jungle music purveyed skillfully in a chartwise direction by arrangement with the A & R men.

The Beatles, therefore, exploded on a jaded scene. And to those people on the verge of quitting teendom—those who had experienced during their most impressionable years the impact of rhythm ’n’ blues music (raw rock ’n’ roll)—this was an experience, a process of regaining and reliving a style of sounds and associated feelings identifiable with their era.

Here again, in The Beatles, was the stuff that screams are made of. Here was the excitement—both physical and aural—that symbolized the rebellion of youth in the ennuied mid-1950’s. This was the real thing. Here they were, first five and then four human dynamos generating a beat which was irresistible. Turning back the Rock clock. Pounding out items from Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, The Coasters and the other great etceteras of the era. Here they were, unmindful of uniformity of dress. Unkempt-like long hair. Rugged yet romantic, appealing to both sexes. With calculated naivete and an ingenious, throw-away approach to their music. Affecting indifference to audience response and yet always saying “Thank-you.” Reviving interest in and commanding enthusiasm for numbers which descended the Charts way back. Popularizing (more than any other group) flipside items—example, “Boys.” Compelling attention and influencing, wittingly or unwittingly, other groups in the style, choice and presentation of songs.

Essentially a vocal act, hardly ever instrumental (at least not in this country), here they were, independently minded, playing what they liked for kicks, kudos and cash. Privileged in having gained prestige and experience from a residency at the Hamburg Top Ten Club during the autumn and winter of last year. Musically authoritative and physically magnetic, example the mean, moody magnificence of drummer Pete Best—a sort of teenage Jeff Chandler. A remarkable variety of talented voices which song-wise sound distinctive, but when speaking, possess the same naivete of tone. Rhythmic revolutionaries. An act which from beginning to end is a succession of climaxes. A personality cult. Seemingly unambitious, yet fluctuating between the self-assured and the vulnerable. Truly a phenomenon—and also a predicament to promoters! Such are the fantastic Beatles. I don’t think anything like them will happen again.

———

Retrospective from Bill Harry, Editor of Mersey Beat [x]

Editor’s note: Cavern disc jockey Bob Wooler, a Mersey Beat columnist, penned this piece in the August 31 1961 issue of Mersey Beat. How prophetic his last sentence proved to be! In recent years I told Bob I intended to revive Mersey Beat and I wanted him back in the fold as a columnist. Sadly, he died early in 2002 while I was still panning the website.

There are one or two things I would like to point out. The main advertisement on this page was for NEMS record store. Apart from the fact that I regularly discussed the Beatles and the Mersey scene with Brian Epstein each time I dropped copies to him, in addition to the fact that he began to review records for me from Issue No. 3, it is obvious from the sort of coverage, such as this article, which the Beatles were receiving every issue, that Epstein was aware of the Beatles from Mersey Beat and not some youngsters asking for a record in his store some months later. Bob also mentions the impact the group made at Litherland Town Hall. It was Bob who persuaded promoter Brian Kelly to book them for their debut appearance there on that date. It's also interesting to note that the only member of the Beatles mentioned by name is drummer Pete Best. Bob nicked the 'mean, moody, magnificent' tag from Howard Hughes' description of Jane Russell in the movie 'The Outlaw.' As this article was published in 1961, Bob did get something wrong: he mentions a residency at the "Hamburg Top Ten Club during the autumn and winter of last year." They only had residencies at the Indra and Kaiserkeller in 1960, although they made a few appearances at the Top Ten (Their Top Ten residency didn't actually commence until 1961).

[plus-low-overthrow]

The Swinging Blue Jeans - You're No Good (Imperial)

Also Check, Betty Everett's version!

Mersey Beat Band.

[thespliffbunker]

[hide-your-bugs-away]

Having a bit of a Magazine Renaissance in my search for Animal-Magazines, and I couldn't be happier....... 👀

[kichisaburo3]

Beatles in 1962 AUG 16th Pete Best As A Drummer Had Been Chaned To Ring Starr Twitter Reblogged

Wikipedia Pete Best https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Best

TAG of BEATLES in my Tumblr https://kichisaburo3.tumblr.com/tagged/BEATLES

Today in Beatles history, 1962. Pete Best is fired from The Beatles! Beatles Change Drummer is how Mersey Beat announced that Pete Best had left The Beatles…. pic.twitter.com/iwbU2Fdulk

— BeatleLudo (@LudoJanssens) August 16, 2024

08 SEP 2024 Sunday

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

“One time, we were worried that Gerry and the Pacemakers were going to be “the ones” to do it. In fact, John and I bought a lot of Mersey Beats when there. Figured, well, we’re allowed to. Because we wanted badly to win that poll. We felt it was, like, that would make the difference, whichever group “made it.”” – Paul McCartney, fall 1980

from All You Need Is Love (2024) by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines

[mydaroga]

It was fancy-dress too: Paul and George wore sweaters upside down, legs through arm-holes, the head-hole hanging down limply, added to which Paul dolled himself up as a woman.

Mersey Beat: The Beginnings Of The Beatles (Omnibus Press , London, 1977), p6 of Bill Harry’s introduction. Quoted in Tune In by Mark Lewisohn.

Pics or it didn't happen.

[delightfullyatomicfest]

John’s biography of The Beatles in the first issue of Mersey Beat in July 1961:

Once upon a time there were three little boys called John, George and Paul, by name christened. They decided to get together because they were the getting together type. When they were together they wondered what for after all, what for? So all of a sudden they grew guitars and fashioned a noise. Funnily enough, no one was interested, least of all the three little men. So-o-o-o on discovering a fourth little even littler man called Stuart Sutcliffe running about them they said, quite ‘Sonny get a bass guitar and you will be alright’ and he did – but he wasn’t alright because he couldn’t play it. So they sat on him with comfort ’til he could play. Still there was no beat, and a kindly old man said, quote ‘Thou hast not drums!’ We had no drums! they coffed. So a series of drums came and went and came.

Suddenly, in Scotland, touring with Johnny Gentle, the group (called the Beatles called) discovered they had not a very nice sound – because they had no amplifiers. They got some.

Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? Ugh, Beatles, how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision – a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them ‘From this day on you are Beatles with an ‘A’. Thank you, mister man, they said, thanking him.

And then a man with a beard cut off said – will you go to Germany (Hamburg) and play mighty rock for the peasants for money? And we said we would play mighty anything for money.

But before we could go we had to grow a drummer, so we grew one in West Derby in a club called Some Casbah and his trouble was Pete Best. we called ‘Hello Pete, come off to Germany!’ ‘Yes!’ Zooooom. After a few months, Peter and Paul (who is called McArtrey, son of Jim McArtrey, his father) lit a Kino (cinema) and the German police said ‘Bad Beatles, you must go home and light your English cinemas’. Zooooom, half a group. But before even this, the Gestapo had taken my friend little George Harrison (of speke) away because he was only twelve and too young to vote in Germany; but after two months in England he grew eighteen and the Gestapoes said ‘you can come’. So suddenly all back in Liverpool Village were many groups playing in grey suits and Jim said ‘Why have you no grey suits?’ ‘We don’t like them, Jim’ we said, speaking to Jim.

After playing in the clubs a bit, everyone said ‘Go to Germany!’ So we are. Zooooom Stuart gone. Zoom zoom John (of Woolton) George (of Speke) Peter and Paul zoom zoom. All of them gone. Thank you club members, from John and George (what are friends).

[philcollinsenjoyer]

guys the mersey beat award for best couple of the year goes to john and yoko

[crepesuzette2023]

Marvelous Liverpool

SDE: You witnessed Paul have all that massive success in the sixties. How did that affect you? MM: Bloody fantastic! Can you imagine little boys in Liverpool having no hope of going anywhere, our father in a trade that was dying – the cotton business – our mum dying when we were 12 years of age… we were on a hiding to nothing. Liverpool was not in a good place, the bottom fell out of the cotton industry, mum dying, so that was no money coming in, just one parent surviving. And, there was nothing you could compare it with, because it was the upper and the lower classes, it always had been, and for us, we thought it always will be. That’s why my dad always had this respect for the upper class posh London accent, and we all went along with it because they were control. People that have no chance of getting any further than… like the Indian class system, right, everyone accepts their place.  And then suddenly in the lower class Indian system somebody gave the lower class a little magic wand and they were suddenly upper class. Now, that’s what happened with us and suddenly there, this thing called ‘Mersey Beat’. We would go down to London in parties. I always tell the story, it happened virtually like this. The week before Merseybeat broke down here [London], or a couple of weeks, I’d was just down with friends and you would be at a posh party and they’d come up to you [adopts ‘posh’ voice]  “hello, how are you?”  “Great, thanks.”  “My name is Peregrine and this is Cecilia..” “oh, great, hi” “and where are you from?” “Oh, from Liverpool…” “Anyway, Cecilia, you were saying…” And they just turned their backs on you because, it was very simple – you were no good to them, no use to them. Anything north of the wash was hinterland, it was jungle. So, they didn’t give a shit. And then, the week after, suddenly Merseybeat becomes ‘wham!’ It’s down to London before it took on America and the world… and the same kind of party “oh, I’m Sebastian and this is Claudia, what’s your name?”  “I’m Mike.”  “And, where are you from?”  “Liverpool.”  “Liverpool, my God, chaps get over here, look, these chaps are from Liverpool, absolutely marvellous.” And then, they would do the Liverpool accent, and so it always came out Brummie [Birmingham] because they couldn’t do a Liverpool accent.  So, yes, you were nothing and suddenly it all changed.

Mike McCartney interview on Super Deluxe Edition, 2019

[get-back-homeward]

—From In His Own Write (1964) | First published in Mersey Beat August 17, 1961 | Written 1958-1959 (see below)

Q: There’s a very, very sad poem at the end of the play about Kakky Hargreaves who is some sort of person whose name changes during the poem who’s gone lost. Who was Kakky Hargreaves?

JOHN: Well, nobody, you know. It was Kakky, or Cathy, or Tammy. So it was all those people. But the point is that you GOT it -- the sadness that I wrote into it. But after you write something, a song or anything, you get the sadness and then you perform it or you put it on paper and then that’s gone. And the only way you get the joy back of writing it or the sadness back, is when somebody like Victor or somebody else comes and reads it to you, or acts it out. Like, when I first saw the rehearsal of the play, and they said these words back to me and I got the sadness from Kakky Hargreaves like I’d never heard it before.

Q: You wrote that one when you were very young.

JOHN: Yes. That was, sort of, pre-Beatle. Eighteen. Nineteen.

VICTOR: (laughs)

Q: And have you written lately?

JOHN: Well I write, I think, all the time. So I mean, it’s the same. I actually don’t put it on paper so much these days, but it goes into songs -- A lot of the same energy that went into those poems. I don’t know what I actually do with the thoughts, but they come out either on film, or on paper, or on tape. I’ve just got lots of tape, which, I suppose if I put onto paper it would be a book. But it’s just a matter of, do I want to make those tapes into paper or make the tapes into records.

Q: Does it feel the same to you when you’re writing something on paper and when you’re writing a song lyric?

JOHN: It does now. In the old days I used to think, if song writing was this... you know, 'I love you and you love me,' and my writing was something else, you know. Even if I didn’t think of it quite like that. But I just realized through Dylan and other people... BOB Dylan, not Thomas... that it IS the same thing. That’s what I didn't realize being so naive -- that you don’t write pop songs, and then you DO THAT, and then you DO THAT. Everything you do is the same thing, so do it the same way. But sometimes I’ll write lyrics to a song first and then I'll get the same feeling as Kakky Hargreaves or a poem and then write the music to it after. So then it’s a poem, sung. But sometimes the tune comes and then you just put suitable words to fit the tune. If the tune is (sings) 'Doodle-loodle loodle-leh,' and then you have 'Shag-a-boo choo-cha.' You know, you have sound-words then, just the sound of it. ‘Cause it IS all sound. Everything is vibrations, I believe, you know. Everything is sound, really, or vision. And just, the difference between sound and vision I’m not quite sure about. But its all just (imitates a vibrating sound) 'vuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh.'

—BBC-2 Interview of John Lennon and Victor Spinetti (about the In His Own Write play) [x] | June 6, 1968

—Remember by John Lennon | Written: started July 1969 | Recorded: October 9, 1970 (John’s 30th birthday), after seeing his father the last time | Released: December 11, 1970

—Get Enough by Paul McCartney | Written: 2016-2018 (?) | Recorded: 2018 | Released: January 1, 2019 (midnight)

[earhartsease]

the southern right whale dolphin looks like they're in a mersey beat band

[thespliffbunker]

[esherdemo]

Join my coolest ever server if you r a beatles fan

Join cause its so cool and aawwweesomeeee