At 8.30am retailers were informed of the group’s new single release, I Want To Hold Your Hand, on November 29th. By 3.30pm, over half a million copies had been ordered. Photos of the group at the Royal Variety Show, including one with Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret, graced the front cover of the week’s Disc. The paper announced a special Merseybeat edition of “Thank Your Lucky Stars” on December 21st. She Loves You stayed at number 3, as The Beatles (No. 1) EP debuted at number 24. In he New Record Mirror chart, She Loves You stayed at number 2 while The Beatles (No. 1) debuted at number 10 in the EP chart. The paper reported that With The Beatles had the biggest advance order for an LP in history. Peter Jones wrote a track-by-track review of the record.
Mr. T.E. Ward, headmaster of Overbury Secondary School in New Addington announced at a special assembly that the school’s sixth formers would be expelled if they had Beatles haircuts. He said, “I made the decision for the well-being of the school as a community.” However, some of the boys commented, “Friends outside school laugh at our schoolboy haircuts.” Schools in Ramsgate and Darlington had also banned Beatle haircuts.
An estimated 3,000 people, many of them women with prams, attended the funeral service of singer Michael Holliday at Anfield Cemetery in Liverpool. The singer had committed suicide the previous week. Their presence was not entirely due to an outpouring of grief, but because rumours had spread that the four Beatles were going to be the pallbearers, even though they were in Dublin. Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Frank Ifield, Tommy Steele and Russ Conway were among the mourners.
Just after midday, the group arrived at Dublin Airport on a specially chartered Aer Lingus Viscount (flight EI 155) from London Airport for two concerts at 6.30pm and 9.00pm at the 2,304-seater Adelphi, followed by a further two shows in Belfast, a trip sponsored by the Guinness brewery. There had been 20,000 requests for the 2,140 tickets on sale. On their arrival they were welcomed by some 400 fans, despite cold and damp weather. Paul Russell of Starlite Artistes greeted them on the tarmac. Airport and regular police smuggled them through a back door and into the VIP lounge. There they met Frank Hall, who interviewed them for Radio Telefis Éireann’s “In Town” TV show. His first question was, “Is the haircut by accident or design?” Asked about the Liverpool Sound, Paul said, “It just so happens that the new groups that have come out all happen to have come from Liverpool, so people sort of generalize a bit and say, ‘Aha! The Liverpool Sound!’ but really, you know, if you listen to the groups, they’re all quite different. It’s not all one big sound that’s coming out.”
After the interview they were driven by Russell in his white Chrysler Saratoga to the Gresham Hotel for lunch with the Adelphi’s manager, Harry Lush. They did a second interview, with Russell as the interviewer, for RTÉ’s TV show “The Showband Show.” Fourteen-year-old Ken Ronan, who had been banned from seeing either of the evening’s concerts, played truant from school to track the group down. He and a friend wandered into the Gresham and found them relaxing in the foyer. Staff ushered them out with haste. Ringo and John found time to sneak out to a nearby pub with Kestrels’ Roger Greenaway and Geoff Williams for a Guinness.
Patrick Kavanagh, the poet and novelist, wrote in his weekly column for the RTV Guide, “The Beetles (sic) have made it in the ‘Anything Goes’ stakes and there seems to be room for many more. For this is the still expanding universe - Ireland hardly included - of the Welfare State ... But I have a strong suspicion that your Beetles (or Beatles should it be?) are as blunt and wooden as the beetles with which we beetled the champ in days of yore.”
Nationalist member for Mid Londonderry Patrick Gormley tabled a question at Stormont asking if Home Affairs Minister William Craig had considered mobilising the B Specials for the Beatles’ visit to Belfast. “Wherever the Beatles go there have been stampedes. I think the public should be protected. We are spending £1,000,000 a year on the Specials, and this is an opportunity for them to be brought into use.” Harry Diamond, Republican Labour Party member for Falls, commented that Craig’s reply would be appreciated, “as most of the kindly people of Belfast would prefer to shave the Beatles rather than shoot them.”
Desmond Boal, Shankill’s Unionist member, asked, “Does the Minister agree that the form and content in frivolous terms and marked by nothing, but an inadequate and uncultivated sense of humour does nothing to enhance the dignity of this House?” Edward Richardson, Nationalist member for South Armagh, suggested changing the name of the “Specials” to the “Beatles” force. Craig eventually replied to Gormley, with a succinct two-word answer - “No sir.”
The Belfast Telegraph published the first of a two-part syndicated article by Maureen Cleave, in which she wrote, “The Beatles are the first people to make rock ‘n’ roll respectable. They have won over the class snob, the intellectual snob, the music snob, the grown-ups and the husbands ... We’ve had idols before, but we’ve never had four idols for the price of one.” Paul told her, “Security is the only thing I want. Money to do nothing with, money to have in case you want to do something,” while John commented that, “I suppose I would be a Conservative. I’ve got it into my head they they like you if you’re rich. The only thing I like about Labour is the history of it, hating the bosses and that. The only thing I’m afraid of is growing old. I hate that. They get old and they’ve missed it somehow. Then the old always resent the young and vice versa.”
Ringo, ever the practical Beatle, said, “I feel old at twenty-three. When I’m thirty I’ll be an old man ... I don’t know about the future. I suppose I live for today though that’s a soft thing to say. I’m not worried about my pension. I don’t fancy being a bus conductor. I’d like to be sort of comfortable, with a nice house and a few hairdressing businesses. That’s a good game. I suppose I’d like to end up sort of unforgettable.”
At around 4.00pm, the group were driven to the Adelphi on Middle Abbey Street, where they were escorted into the cinema’s Prince’s Street entrance. Ushered upstairs to the cinema’s boardroom, they were immediately met by the press and photographers. Paul told one reporter that he no longer owned a car because, “Thanks to Mr. Marples” he’d been “had up three times for speeding.” The afternoon showing of “Heavens Above!” starring Peter Sellers was cancelled to prepare the building. One of the group advised the press to bring earplugs. “We always bring ours.” When asked how long their success would last, Paul replied, “It could end tomorrow, but I hope it won’t.” Alun Owen, who accompanied them on the trip to get ideas for his film script, commented, “It’s most important to get to know the Beatles, to find out what exactly makes them tick, and also to ascertain which things cause those fantastic crowd receptions.” Crowds began gathering outside at around 5.30pm with the Gardai keeping a vigilant watch on both sides of the street. A lone figure, with a red nose and glasses standing on a little wooden box outside the Evening Press office talking about Salvation, went largely ignored.
After sets by the Vernons Girls, the Brook Brothers, Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers and the Kestrels, the group performed I Saw Her Standing There, From Me To You, All My Loving, Boys, Till There Was You, She Loves You and Twist And Shout, during which fans rushed the stage, pushing attendants in their way aside. Objects were thrown onstage, and fans twisted in the balcony as the safety curtain was brought down. Brid Mahon, a journalist with the Dublin Sunday Press, stood beside George’s mother in the wings. Mrs. Harrison had to take her shoes off because they were pinching her.
Crowds emerging from the first show clashed with thousands waiting for the second. The Gardai formed cordons to clear the street. Girls began screaming and shouting to be pulled to safety. Ambulances rushed nearly a dozen people to Jervis Street Hospital and many more were treated on the spot. Two plate glass windows gave way under the pressure of fans. At 9.10pm, the group’s Tuesday interview aired on ITV - an 11-minute segment for “This Week.”
At the end of the second show, “Rescue Beatles Operation” swung into action. The group jumped into an Evening Herald van with Mr. Jack Flanagan, who had been parked outside for half an hour, behind the wheel. Ron King signalled for him to start the engine, and he drove down Princess Street to the back entrance of the Gresham. In the back with them were reporter Liam Kelly and photographer Jack Murphy. They ran inside, through the kitchen into the Aberdeen Hall, and took the lifts up to their rooms. Eileen Reid and two members of her group the Cadets, one of the biggest groups in the Eire at the time, met John and Paul in the corridor outside their room. “Paul was very natural and friendly and seemed unaffected by his success,” recalled Reid, “He put his arm around me for the photograph session and gave me a playful squeeze.” She was less impressed with John.
The rioting continued after the second show. Fifty Gardai tried to move the crowd out of Middle Abbey Street and into O’Connell Street. An unruly section resisted and tried to overturn parked cars. Batons were drawn and more than a dozen young men were hauled off in squad cars and a Black Maria. A number of girls were injured in the crush and one man fractured a leg as the St John Ambulance Brigade ran a shuttle service to the hospital. The police chief said, “It was all right until the mania degenerated into barbarism.”
Once things quietened down, the group walked down Cavendish Row to Groome’s Hotel for a pint or two. Several members of the cast of “Carrie,” in the middle of its run at the Gate Theatre opposite the Groome’s were enjoying a post-show drink. George asked cast member Rebecca Wilkinson whether she would like to dance. “Carrie”’s author Wesley Burrowes recalled her telling George “to shag off. Afterwards, when she realised who it was and what she had just turned down, she was very mortified.”
Tom Hennigan wrote in the Evening Herald, “We couldn’t hear a word the boys sang or a note they played. Everything was drowned in that sea of screams. Not that we cared. When one has heard some of the greatest voices in Europe sing Ponchielli’s ‘La Gioconda’ one has nothing but pity and contempt for such as the purveyors of the ‘Mersey Sound.’ Earlier, at a press reception in the Adelphi’s board room, we tried to sort them out as flash bulbs popped and the room filled up with Liverpool accents and autograph hunters. There they sat or stood about the room, their hair down over their sunken eyes like African thatched huts.” Donal McCann commented in the Evening Press, “‘I’ll dream them tonight’ said a fat little girl of fifteen. Her eyes were shining, and her forehead was damp and she tottered out into O’Connell Street like a girl possessed by something strange. But when the curtain finally rose on THEM, the house erupted into one mad, thunderous, piercing noise that it would be impossible to forget. The Beatles twisted, shouted, clapped and yeah, yeah, yeahed their way through a programme that was accompanied by as frantic an exhibition of the Dublin Sound as I could ever hope to hear. And when the cries for more had been drowned by the National Anthem and the Adelphi emptied itself into the night, the malady lingered on.”
“1963 was the year everything changed. Everybody had their own look, people were writing their own songs, which was unheard of before then, you would just jazz up some classical stuff. Just a few months and it all changed. It was an amazing time. It is the pivotal year in the whole of that pop era, and we were just on the cusp really. Before then, everyone said, ‘Oh you’re just an instrumental group’ and after that they were saying, ‘Can you sing?’ We would have to explain that we were just an instrumental group, but they would still say, ‘Oh well you’ll have to find a singer.’
By the time the autumn tour started, ‘Beatlemania’ was in full swing. Big crowds would be waiting at the theatre in each town as our tour coach arrived and each day, we would see the bizarre sights of maybe a hundred police officers sitting in the empty theatre before going out to control the show crowd, with us and ‘the boys’ hanging around on the stage, jamming a little. It was at these sessions I realised how good a drummer Paul was. He was playing many of the cross rhythms that were unheard of then. I got on well with Ringo - being a fellow drummer. George seemed very much the youngster of the group and John already started to seem more arty and withdrawn, but we all got on well together and would often go back after the show to their hotel and play cards and talk until late into the night. During our act they would always stand in the wings and take the mickey out of our bows at the end of our act which I always counted in. 1, 2, 3, BOW!
I particularly remember the trip to Ireland when we played in Dublin and Belfast. In Dublin, O’Connell Street turned into a riot zone with cars being overturned and burned - we loved that! On returning to London, we experienced first-hand the amazing reception the ‘boys’ received. Brian Epstein stage managed these events so well, letting the fans know exactly when the ‘boys’ would be flying in - the result was thousands of fans screaming from the observation roofs of London Airport as we stepped from the aircraft onto the steps and, bearing in mind at this stage all the Jaywalkers had the Beatle look - the hair, the leather coats and boots, the hysteria that welled up was incredible, reaching a crescendo as the ‘Fab Four’ themselves appeared - a moment never to be forgotten! They told us that they used to go to the Liverpool Empire, the ‘big’ tour theatre venue, and watch us on the Larry Parnes tours. They were particularly impressed with our Cuban-heeled boots and vowed that when they made some money they would go down to London and buy some. We had purchased the boots from Anello and Davide’s on the Charing Cross Road, a stone’s throw from London’s ‘Tin Pan Alley’ in Denmark Street. The boots were made to order and originally had been made with the ‘stacked’ heels for the singer Danny Williams, who was rather short - this style of boot was later to become known around the world as the ‘Beatle boot’!
The crowds outside the theatres grew and grew and even we were having difficulty getting food into the theatres, as anyone, and I mean anyone, coming in or out of the stage door would be pulled almost limb from limb. In a famous sequence immortalised in a fanzine comic strip, the ‘boys’ laughed at our vain attempts to get a Chinese meal through the stage door crowds. We sent our roadie Nobby out through the mob to get a takeaway for us and he came back covered in chop suey from head to toe. We were literally starving, and I often didn’t leave the theatre ’til late at night.
We closed the first half of the show, and part of our act, believe it or not, was doing impersonations of other groups. We’d dress up in Beatles wigs, and as I’m a drummer, I would do this big drum roll and ... LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!’ They were all waiting for the Beatles of course, and every night you’d get this incredible roar, followed by a groan when they realised it was just us! It was just the most amazing sound, the crowd. We’d finish up the act with the ‘Can Can’, and had a bit of comedy in the act, which was all part of the package tours before it all changed, from then onwards. I also wrote a weekly diary about the tour for the New Record Mirror.
We were with them at Stockton when it was announced that President Kennedy had been shot. It was such a shock. I remember everybody running around saying, ‘Are we going to have to cancel the show?’ In the end they decided to do the show, because if they didn’t, there would have been a riot. It was only when we got to Bournemouth and a CBS film crew from America turned up that we started to suspect we were witnessing a bigger thing than had ever happened before and might reach further than the British Isles. America in those days had its own completely separate and distinct ‘pop’ scene. You’d have a few hits here, and do all right in France and Germany, but that would be about it. When you are doing one of those tours though, and it is relentless every day, you don’t really take notice of one day from the other. It all kind of runs into one. I can’t believe we did that tour with them, and I didn’t keep a programme or get their autographs. I have nothing.
We were signed to Decca early on, in the days of Dick Rowe. My parents were always in show business, theatres etc. Dad owned the theatres, Mum produced the shows, and they wanted me to go into TV production. They wanted me to go to university, so I was sent off to do my A-Levels at Norwich, and that was where we started the group. That summer of ’61 we went out on the road with Billy Fury and Marty Wilde, who is godfather to my eldest son, and our first record came out in ’62.
We’d heard about the Beatles. I can remember clearly being on the coach doing one of the Billy Fury tours, and they said, ‘Oh there’s this group in Liverpool that are doing really well.’ The thing we were discussing was the fact that they didn’t do foot movements. At that time, if you were a group, you did foot movements, you know, like the Shadows. We all had suits in different colours, but didn’t just stand there and play. It wasn’t the done thing really, then all of a sudden it completely changed, and that was down to the Beatles. The Stones took it further, where they didn’t even wear suits, but 1963 was when it all happened. I’d met Ringo a few years earlier at a party in Yarmouth, when he played at Caister Holiday Camp with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. We were doing a summer season there, but I didn’t know the others at that time. We went to see them at the ABC in Great Yarmouth in June of 1963. When we got there, they were throwing handfuls of signed postcards out of the windows with all the people screaming down below. It was just amazing to see the reaction.
In April 1963, we did a gig at a rather down-market Leyton bar, and we went on from there to see them playing at the Leyton Baths. After the show, they said to us, ‘You’re from down this way, we don’t really know where to go, can you show us?’ We took them down to Old Compton Street in Soho and sat in a Golden Egg type of place. We had tea and a hamburger or something. It doesn’t seem possible now, but that’s what happened. There was a great vibe going on in Soho then. My father was quite friendly with Paul Raymond, so I had been up there quite a few times, and my uncle had a bar in Great Windmill Street, so I knew it all well. All the musicians would hang around in Archer Street, trying to get a gig. It was amazing.
We scored a big success on the autumn tour, closing the first half. We were a good contrast to the Beatles in the second half with our different sax lead line up, light up drums and even the comedy routines - we’d got on well with the ‘boys’ and so we were gutted when our arch rivals Sounds Incorporated were booked for the Beatles London Christmas show, which followed the tour. Although they were much better musicians than us, we had a vastly better show and big fan following. We were even more upset when they got the Beatles first American tour including the classic Shea Stadium gig. It was years later that I found out that our then agent Ossie Newman had asked for an extra £200 a week for us and lost the Christmas show and probably the American tour because of this - something I’ve never forgiven him for. We were completely unaware of the increase in our price. We’d have done it for nothing to be part of what now is pop history.
I’m still doing shows, but now I run a circus - the Hippodrome in Great Yarmouth. It’s like having three separate lives, show business with my Dad - George Formby, Tommy Trinder, etc., then the Jaywalkers, and now the circus. I’m in my seventies now, and don’t consider I’ve ever had a proper job. I’ve just had fun and been paid for it! The family have a few theatres in Great Yarmouth, and some bingo halls. We bought the circus in, although I wasn’t a big fan of them, and fast forward thirty-five years, and it’s still going strong. My son is running the shows, and I’m still there, and they’re still using my drum kit in the shows!”
PETER JAY, SHOWMAN, GREAT YARMOUTH, NORFOLK
