With the Beatles...in Stockton (original) (raw)

TODAY'S Memories contains an eye-witness (that should probably be scream-witness) account of the night in 1963 that the Fab Four played Stockton.

Like the 1966 World Cup at Wembley and the 1969 night at the Imperial in Darlington when Jimi Hendrix had his guitar stolen, if all the people who today claim to have been at the Globe on November 22 were actually present, they would have needed a venue twice the size.

Of course, that night is also memorable because John F Kennedy was assassinated.

The Echo editor of the day was Harold Evans, and he once told me how, having put the paper to bed, he was being driven over to Stockton for the annual press ball when news of JFK's assassination came over the car radio. He turned the vehicle around, went back to Priestgate and edited an entirely new paper in his dickie bow.

It is, then, with some trepidation that I dare to criticise the great man's paper. He undoubtedly did a superb job on JFK, but the Beatles - the hottest Beat band of the moment having released their second album that morning - only got a couple of columns squeezed into the bottom of a page that appeared only in the Teesside edition. I would have thought it deserved a wider audience than that.

Anyhow, here's what the Echo said: a news story followed by a review.

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Beatles move in - without a crush

The Beatles arrived in Stockton yesterday - in silence. Not a scream was heard as they quietly drew up in the High Street and walked from their car to the Globe Theatre.

But if their arrival was scarcely noticed in Stockton one Beatle at least scarcely noticed which town this was on the five-week whistle-stop tour. Asked which county, for instance, Stockton was in, Ringo Starr said: "I haven't a clue - I don't even know what county Liverpool's in."

But at the Press reception before the show, the boys were efficiently boisterous and energetic in the off-hand mood that has taken them to fame.

John Lennon, especially, dropped his rough Liverpool tones in exchange for the occasional retort in a fine limitation Welsh accent.

Paul McCartney - noted for his looks and an off-hand ordinary-working-boy (who prefers to say Ta! instead of thank you to the applause) walked in to the crowded room in an open necked checked shirt and charcoal grey sweater.

The suits - at about £25 a time, according to Ringo, sported the conventional lapels (in his case made of velvet) which caused a stir at the Royal Command Performance and worried clothes shops up and down the country.

What had happened to the collar-less craze? - "We are just like anybody else, we wear what we feel like and we like a change now and again" said Paul - "anyway they are still selling them."

And what did these boys, two of them from high school and one a former arts student think of the fans who filled the bank books, whose screaming and stamping and clapping was bound to drown their carefully rehearsed harmony.

"They paid to come in. If they like screaming let them scream - we don't mind," said Paul McCartney, as they were hurried away by cigar smoking managers.

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Beatle bloomer

Police were called to clear away hundreds of Beatle fans from the Staincliffe Hotel, Seaton Carew, last night.

Trouble started when a rumour that the Beatles had stayed at the hotel on Thursday night.

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BEATLES SEND AUDIENCE WILD

The infectious beat of the Beatles caught the teenage audience at the Stockton Globe last night. Whipped into a frenzy by the compere, Frank Berry, they screamed, screamed, and screamed again as soon as the quartet appeared on stage.

The sense of expectancy had been running throughout the star-packed show. Big act followed big act until the Beatles took the stage and drove the audience wild with their first number, I Saw Her Standing There.

The Beatles' 25-minute spot included new tunes, All My Loving, Money, and the beat ballad You've Really Got a Hold On Me.

Outstanding in the supporting acts, Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers, risked riots by giving their own interpretation of the Beatles.

The climax came when Paul McCartney tempted fate by actually asking the audience to stamp and clap during the singing of Money.

By this time, the audience, which had bubbled like a sea of porridge all night broke into violent boiling.

The fans got the biggest surprise, however, when as the theatre awaited a final bow, the four boys sped with the last twist and shout straight through the stage door and into a car waiting behind police barriers.

There were very few casualties. A St. John Ambulance Brigade nurse reported only half a dozen.

One of those taken the Stockton and Thornaby Hospital was 15-year-old Patricia Cox, of 8 Ann's Terrace, Darlington, suffering from a sore throat and strained stomach. Her sister Susan, aged 13, went with her suffering from over excitement. She was taken away just before the Beatles came on.