7 March 1963
Concert:
Elizabethan Ballroom, Co-operative House, Parliament Street, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
"Imagine the scene if you will: the venue is the Elizabethan Ballroom, the date is Thursday March 7th 1963 and the occasion is the first time the Beatles played in Nottingham. The Elizabethan Ballroom was situated above Co-operative House on Parliament Street, Nottingham.
This concert was called the Mersey Beat Showcase and was organized by the Beatles manager Brian Epstein. It took its name from the Liverpool newspaper of the same name and its editor, Bill Harry, was personally asked by Mr. Epstein for permission to use the name. There were six Mersey Beat Showcase concerts held around the country on various dates, but Nottingham, coincidentally, was where the first took place.
The night consisted of an all Liverpudlian line-up, both on stage and beyond. Groups on the bill included Gerry & the Pacemakers, the Big Three, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, and last but not least, the Beatles. To keep in line with the Liverpool theme, Bob Wooler, the Cavern Club disc jockey, compeered the event.
A substantial turnout to the gig was expected that night as all the acts performing were increasing in popularity around this time. A big crowd was guaranteed, in fact, as NEMS Enterprises organized two coaches to transport eighty fans from Liverpool to Nottingham to watch the gig for the sum of £1.50 each. Regular tickets were priced at six shillings and six pence - not a bad price to personally witness groups that would go on to set the standard for a generation of music lovers.
Even though the Beatles had already broken through into the charts and gone to Number One with 'Please Please Me', they were still mucking in and helping to unload and set up their own equipment. They certainly had no time to let their flourishing fame go to their heads.
In the audience that night was local lad Rob Taylor, then in his twenties. He reminisced about enjoying the show, but it was an event afterwards that stands out in his mind above everything else:
"When the show had ended I nipped off quickly to the loo before me and my mates left for home. After a while wandering around, I realized I was lost. One of the doors I randomly tried led into a sitting area where I could see some people chatting. When they heard the door open they turned around and I could see that it was the Beatles. It could have been very awkward, me walking in on them like that, but they were very nice about it. They directed me to the toilet and I went on my way."
If this was not enough of a memory to cherish of the night, Mr. Taylor also told me of a promise of autographs he made to his friend's niece:
"She asked me to collect the Beatles autographs for her. Basically, I faked them. I didn't think they were going to become as famous as they did so I didn't think there was any harm in it. I was wrong on both counts."
The Elizabethan Ballroom, as the rest of Co-operative House, has been vacant since the late 1990s. It is currently awaiting redevelopment."
Source: The Beatles in Nottingham
"Do you remember 1963?
Most people who can would rather not, writes Nigel Kirk. It wasn't a good year, the news was consistently bad and the Cold War was at its coldest, as was the weather. It was the worst winter for 200 years with months on end of ice and snow and even colder than in 1947.
One Nottingham lady I met recently has a good reason to remember this bleak winter.
Kathleen, or Kate to her friends, was a 20-year-old Beeston girl in 1963 and on Thursday, March 7 saw The Beatles up close at the first of the band's four visits to Nottingham.
What's more, she got them to sign their autographs for her album. The autographs go under the hammer at Mellors & Kirk on October 4, and are estimated at £1,000 to 1,500.
The postcard-sized leaf is signed "Love from John Lennon XXX" and "George Harrison X". Theirs are the most highly prized Beatles signatures - for the obvious reason there will be no more, but also because the piece dates from the early years, the height of Beatlemania.
Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers fame has also signed the same piece. The Nottingham event was the first of manager Brian Epstein's six 'Mersey Beat Showcase' concerts at different venues, which also featured Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, the Big Three and Cilla Black.
Recently Mellors & Kirk sold all four Beatles signatures obtained by a former worker at the Old England Inn on the A1 where the band stopped en route for a late night supper.
She nipped out of the kitchen and got their signatures on a scrap of paper, for which we obtained £2,500 from an American collector.
Beatles memorabilia commands high prices at auction as people want to own something directly connected with the most influential pop musicians in living memory.
Ringo's own copy of the Parlophone Beatles album of 1968 sold for $790,000 in 2015, and a Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band LP signed by the Beatles sold at auction for the equivalent of £190,000 in 2013.
That sort of money would have been unthought of in March 1963 when the band had to unload their own equipment from a van when they arrived at the Nottingham venue, the Elizabethan Ballroom on the top floor of the Co-Op in Upper Parliament Street. Amazingly, on the night the room was apparently only half full.
It was to be a very different story on The Beatles' three other visits to Nottingham later in 1963 and early 1964.
On May 23 in 1963 they were at the Odeon sharing the billing with Roy Orbison, and on December 12 that year returned to a tumultuous reception from thousands of ecstatic young fans. All police leave in the city was cancelled and a fleet of ambulances were put on standby. The Fab Four also visited the city on November 5, 1964.
Kate has treasured her memento of that historic night for 54 years, but isn't sad to part with it because somebody else will treasure it.
It goes to show that its often the objects acquired without the least thought for future profit that turn out to be the best investments.
John, Paul, George and Ringo have attained a sort of immortality that only artists with something unique can. There is something so new and appealing yet sweet and sentimental about the lyrics and music which changed the way a new, post-war generation of baby boomers woke up to music.
And didn't they look great, those four nice ordinary boys from Liverpool, apparently so similar but very different personalities, full of charisma and talent? That's why the young and the young at heart really got 'Beatlemania'.
Liverpool, The Beatles' spiritual home is a place of pilgrimage with visitors heading for the Cavern Club and the childhood homes of Lennon and McCartney, both of which are now owned by the National Trust, which describes the latter property as "a small house with huge musical significance".
When John Lennon and Paul McCartney dreamt up "Ticket to Ride" they can hardly have thought it would be to their own childhood homes!
It is extraordinary how each generation discovers The Beatles and 'Beatles heritage' is big business because the songs seem timeless, appealing to young and old alike.
The buyer of Kate's album is just as likely to be a Beatle maniac who always wanted their autographs as what is usually thought of as a collector, which makes these particularly unusual 'collectable'."
Source: Nottingham Post, 8 September 2017
The Stage and Television Today, 7 March 1963
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