"We don't know, it may be next week, it may be two or three years but I think we'll be in the business for at least another four years" "You can be big-headed and say yeah, we're going to last 10 years but when you've said it, you think we're lucky if we last three months" "Probably the thing that John and I will do will be write songs, as we've been doing, as a sort of sideline" "We'll hope to develop that a bit more" "When we go home early in the morning, when we've finished the job" "The kids don't know you at home but if they find out - well, where I live, they'll get the drums out!" "It was getting really big - we noticed as we moved around town and started being noticed in the street" "I was grateful that we had a kind of staircase to climb" "First it was making it big in Liverpool, then being the best in the county then the best in England, then we'd go to Scotland and break them in" "Then it was well, what's left?" "Er... radio" "We wanted to be on Brian Matthews' Saturday Morning Club, a huge show" "The thing I loved would be to wake after a week of school or whatever..." "I had a radio by my bed and would lie in until about 11" "The most delicious lie in of your life, those teenage lie-ins, Saturday" "Lie in, feeling great, turn the radio on and this programme would be on for another hour" "We really wanted to be on that." "We knew there was a huge audience" "Many tracks for Saturday Club were never put on record" "Some good stuff we'd done at the Cavern or Hamburg, well recorded" "We come along on Saturday morning, greeting everybody with a smi!" "e" "Isn't that nice - thank you, dear Beat!" "es" "Your goal is always just a few yards ahead rather than right up there" "Neil Aspinall Road Manager When we used to tour - do those..." "Arthur Howe touring shows with quite a number of people on the bill" "Roy Orbison, Tommy Roe, Gerry and the Pacemakers" "Helen Shapiro... there'd be a number of people on the bill and everybody got 12 minutes, 15, 20 minutes, whatever" "In that time all anybody could do was plug their hit records" "The ones the audience knew" "With Helen Shapiro it was really embarrassing" "We were happy just to be on the first nationwide tour of the theatres" "She was established, she'd been around and had a bunch of hits" "We were happy just to be on the tour, but it was embarrassing because Please Please Me got to number 1 while we were on the road and all the people coming to the show were waiting for the Beatles" "It was embarrassing, because she was very nice" "I think it was the tour after that when it was Tommy Roe and Chris Montez and the Beatles" "They moved us to being... actually closing the first half of the show" "George Martin Record Producer Let's go back a bit." "The first record we issued was Love Me Do" "The second was P!" "ease P!" "ease Me which was only arrived at after much doubt on my part that they could ever write a hit song" "From that moment they blossomed, they became wonderful songwriters" "But before they showed evidence of that, I still had to have an album out" "I'd been to the Cavern and seen what they could do" "I knew their repertoire, what they were able to perform" "I said, let's record every song you've got" "We'll whistle through them in a day" "We knew those songs, that was the act we did all over the country" "Basically this album was just what we did in the clubs" "We just kept running through songs:" ""What about this... or this?"" "We'd play and he'd say, "What else have you got?"" "And 10.30 that evening, John sang Twist and Shout" "His voice was going all day" "He knew he could only give it one or two goes and it would just rip it" "Which it did - you can hear it on the record" "I couldn't sing the damn thing, I was just screaming" "I heard they were coming to the Manchester Odeon" "Derek Taylor Beatles' Press Officer We theatre critics, so-called didn't cover one-night stands of pop stars as there was no continuity" "Anyway, I bought tickets at £1 each, I think" "Gerry and the Pacemakers and Roy Orbison preceded the Beatles" "It was hard to keep up with that man, he really put on a show" "They all did, but Orbison had that fantastic voice" "We'd be on the tour bus and Roy would be at the back" "He wrote something like Pretty Woman and played it to us - great song" "So a bit of competition came in - we had to write one as good" "So we were just trying to improve all the time" "We listened to other songs and tried to beat them" "By the time we got to From Me To You..." "it was nice" "I was very pleased with the chord in the middle, which was different..." "That minor chord was something we hadn't done before" "We'd always know when we were going to be on the radio" "Brian would say "Hello boys, it's going to be on at 7.20"" "We'd all be in the car and we'd stop so we could listen to it" "The Beatles and From Me to You, their third sing!" "e re!" "ease which is this week sitting at the top of the hit parade" "Every time it moved in the charts, we'd have a celebratory dinner" "If you look at the Beatles, from their first 18 months, they went... because we were eating all this food" "That's where I discovered smoked salmon" "I'd only ever had tinned salmon until I was 22!" "We never stopped anywhere" "If we were in Elgin on a Thursday and we needed to be in Portsmouth on Friday, we'd just drive" "We didn't know how to stop this van" "Neil would drive and there'd be the passenger seat and three of us would sit on the bench seat - whichever three" "We'd sit on this bench seat, which was pretty miserable" "We'd go everywhere in the van." "We'd kip on the amps" "Some nights were so foggy, you'd be doing one mile an hour and you'd still just keep going" "We were like homing pigeons." "You have to keep getting home" "We got Mal when Neil couldn't come because he was sick" "We had to go down to do a radio show in London" "We knew this guy Mal." "He worked for the GPO and he used to be a part-time bouncer at the Cavern" "We got to know him and somebody suggested he drive for us" "He drove us a couple of times when Neil couldn't make it" "Then there was so much happening, we employed him full-time" "Once, on the motorway the windscreen got knocked out by a pebble" "Mal Evans Beatles' Roadie So Mal put his hat on backwards, punched the windscreen out and drove" "This was winter in Britain and it was freezing and foggy" "We had to look for the kerb all the way to Liverpool, 200 miles" "We were very, very cold" "I remember we lay on each other" "With a bottle of whisky" "When the one on top was so cold, hypothermia was setting in it was his turn to get on the bottom" "We would warm each other up that way and keep swigging the whisky" "It was quite an image" "People think stardom, and it's glamorous and there's us freezing, lying literally on top of each other" "Oh yeah, we were tight" "That was one thing to be said about us, we were really tight as friends" "We could argue a lot amongst ourselves but we were very close" "In the early days, we'd make a record in about 12 hours" "A single every 3 months meant we'd have to write in the hotel or in a van" "The demand on us was tremendous" "I remember sitting on a pair of twin beds in a hotel bedroom" "We had a day off so we were going to write a song" "Our early songs, Please Please ME, From ME to YOU, P.S. I Love YOU" "They were always very personal" " Thank YOU gir!" "And we hit on the idea of doing a kind of reported conversation" ""I saw her yesterday, she told me what to say, she said SHE loves YOU"" "It gave us another little dimension, just meant that the song was something different from what we and others had written before" "Half a million advance orders have been made for the Beatles' latest single, She Loves You" "It looks likely to be three number ones in a row for the Liverpool boys" "We were the first working class singers that stayed working class and pronounced it" "Didn't try and change our accents which in England were looked down upon" "Cathy" " A Fan from the Cavern Club The Beatles are Liverpudlians." "They belong to us and to the Cavern" "Yes, let the rest of the country have them and enjoy them but please let them come back to us, at least once just to be the same as they used to be" "It would be fantastic" "It was impossible to go home" "If you're in our business, you go to London" "The recordings are there, the places to be seen are there" "Where it's happening is there, it's just a natural move" "George and I shared an apartment off Park Lane, £45 a week, a fortune" "We'd go to the Saddle Rooms." "It used to be a club" "They used to have this horse and coach outside" "Two little drunken Beatles in the back were being taken home" "This is two shit kickers from Liverpool and this is far out news" ""Oh, let's take the carriage"" "It was great, we were kings and were all just at the prime" "We used to go round London in our cars and meet each other and talk about music with The Animals and Eric and we were very close to The Stones" "This song we're going to play, I Wanna Be Your Man" "We virtually finished it in front of them because they needed a record" "They'd put out Come On by Chuck Berry and needed a quick follow-up" "They did it first - we did it with Ringo after" "We were always nervous before each step we went up the ladder but we always had that comfort of being four together" "Not like Elvis, you know" "I always felt sorry later for Elvis because he was on his own" "There was only one Elvis - nobody else knew what he felt like" "But for us, we all shared the experience" "The Beatles, The Beatles..." "no, it couldn't catch on" "Big Night Out TV Show Hey, Bern!" "Is the tea ready yet?" "Good evening and welcome to Big Night Out" "The Morecambe And Wise Show It's the Kay Sisters!" "Fabulous!" "The Kay Sisters?" "This is the Beatles!" "Hello, Beatle... where is he?" "There he is." "Hello, Bongo!" "That's Ringo!" " Is he there as well?" "Oh great!" "As you can gather, this is Eric." "Say hello to Eric" "I remember you, you're the one with short, fat, hairy legs" "No, he's the one with short, fat, hairy legs" "We're the ones with the big, fat, hairy heads" "Get out of that!" "What's it like, being famous?" " It's not like in your day, you know" "That's an insult, that is." "What do you mean, not like in my day?" "My dad used to tell me about you" " In the old days" "You've only got a little dad, have you?" "All right, Bonzo?" "!" "It's Ringo!" " Yeah, him as well" "Get 'em off, they've done enough." "I'm getting insulted" "Let's do a number with the boys" " One their dad will remember" "You go and get changed" "What should we do, boys?" "Something suitable for Eric's age?" "Moonlight Bay." "OK, you go and get changed" "On television for the first time, Morecambe and Wise and the Beatles presenting that wonderful old fashioned number, Moon!" "Ight Bay" "OK fellas, that's great, you look marvellous." "Are you ready?" "Right, we'll take it from the top" "Have the Beatles gone?" " No, they're here" "What are you doing?" " It's murder..." "I can't keep up" "I haven't got one..." " Take 4!" "I can't breathe after all that mouth organ." "Can we skip it?" "I couldn't hear what chords they were going..." "A bit less of George" "I feel like I'm singing in a sock..." "a one, two, three, four..." "You've done it again" "You made a mistake" "Do it slower" " No!" "Ready" " Ringo... keep your bit dead" "Ringo!" " We're taping" "No, the first one a loud attack, the second one not quite so loud" "Rhythm and Blues, part nine" "Paul forgot to sing" " God, I'm sorry" "I was just watching George..." "What happened?" " It's every time you jump like that" "Don't slow down for christ sakes... or I'm giving you no more drugs" "Been for a shit I see, Megan?" "Take 1" " No rep!" "y" "Stop" "I just can't get anywhere near light so he'll have to do it" "I'll try to remember, John, and if I don't it's just too bad, in't it?" "You daft get!" "George, what did the bass sound like?" "Good?" "Or utterly crap?" "Did it?" "Well let's see how you like it" "Take 13" "When I was playing in the living room with Eddie Clayton my mother's friend Annie McGuire would say:" ""See you on the Palladium, son!" "See your name in lights"" "That was the place to get to, the London Palladium!" "Nothing bigger in the world than making it to the Palladium" "And I said "Yeah, sure, Annie, that's where we're going to go"" "So it was one of my things too:" ""To the Palladium!"" "That was as far as I was looking" "And I was sick" ""Here they are..." - and I spewed up and went on" "I was just nervous, craziness, you know, tension" "We played the gig and we got on that roundabout and it was dynamite" "This was it, you know what I mean" "Anyone who knew you was so..." "fucking hell... hey, look at this!" "It was just pretty far out, the Palladium" "We like the fans and enjoy reading the publicity about us but from time to time you don't realise it's actually about yourself" "You see your pictures and read articles about George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul and John but you don't actually think, "Oh, that's me in the paper"" "It's funny, it's just as though it's a different person" "It all sounds complaining but we're not, we're just putting the point" "It affects your home more than it does yourself" "You know what to expect but your parents and family don't" "We were treated differently and we had to get used to that" "Then you found yourself in a weird land" "All these people you've grown up with and lived with - suddenly it was the one place you didn't want to change" "It all changed after that" "You were never sure who your friends were unless you had them before" "People are so in awe of fame" "All you have to do is go on the radio or television once and people see you in the street and act differently" "But the Beatles were in the papers every day for a year or so" "Everybody changes, they're so impressed by it" "People forget how to act normal" "The one absolute, clear vision:" "I was at my aunty's, where I'd been a thousand times before" "We were having a cup of tea one night" "It may have been after one of those shows" "Somebody knocked the table and my tea went in my saucer" "Suddenly it was "He can't have that, we have to tidy it up"" "That would never have happened before" "I thought, things are changing." "It was like an arrow to the brain" "Drop In TV Show Sweden 3rd November 1963" "London Airport 31st October 1963" "The Beatles return from Sweden to what the press call 'Beatlemania'" "We'll see what the Queen Mother thinks of Beatlemania when the Beatles perform at the Royal Variety Show on November 4th" "I was sent to pursue them... to harass them in September '63 by the News Editor of the Daily Express, who said they'd had it" "They'd betray their young fans by appearing on the Royal Variety Show" "Go and get them." "Get a quote" "Get them to condemn themselves by saying:" ""We shouldn't be doing it, we're betraying our fans"" "We all turned up:" "The Daily Mail, the Express, the Mirror" "They were very defiant." "Ringo did the perfect quote:" ""I want to play my drums for the Queen Mum"" "John, in this Royal Variety Show, you're appearing before royalty" "Your language has to be good and this thing with Ted Heath saying he couldn't understand you" "I can't understand Teddy saying that at all really" "I'm not going to vote for Ted" "Paul, any changes in the act or will it be the usual routine?" "No, we'll have to change it." "Hey, stop hitting me" "We can't do the same thing all the time" "We haven't thought about it" " Suits with collars, parted hair?" "You never know." "We may not wear suits." "We've no idea" "Prince of Wales Theatre 4th November 1963" "Thank you very much indeed" "The next song we'd like to sing is a bit slower" "This is from the show The Music Man" "It's also been recorded by our favourite American group, Sophie Tucker" "For our last number, I'd like to ask your help" "Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands and the rest of you, if you'd just rattle your jewellery" "Thank you." "We'd like to sing a song called Twist and Shout" "We wanted to give people their money's worth with our records" "Our policy was to put 14 tracks a side - it was brand new and never put singles on the albums" "Everybody else who had a hit single made an album around it" "With the Beatles was a sort of 'first songbook'" "They gave me a list of their songs" "They were all thinking in terms of singles still" "We weren't thinking of an album being an entity by itself" "It was a collection of songs" "All we did was to record singles and the ones that weren't too good we'd put on an album which is what With the Beat!" "es was" "Robert Freeman, who took this picture copied, on request actually, Astrid Kirchherr's photographs" "We showed him the pictures Astrid took and said do it like this" "With the Beatles has broken the record for advance sales of an LP" "It has an advance of a quarter of a million" "The previous record was held by Elvis Presley's B!" "Ue Hawaii" "Brian Epstein could well be right in his prediction that the Beatles one day will be bigger than Elvis Presley" "One of the cheekiest things we ever did was say to Brian Epstein:" ""We're not going to America till we've got a number 1"" "We'd seen a lot of people, like Adam Faith, Cliff Richard - quite big stars in Britain - go to America and be 3rd or 4th on the bill after Frankie Avalon or Fabian and people like that who were one hit wonders to us" "So we thought, that's the kiss of death to go over to America" "Take a downward step in your career." "We didn't want to do that" "So we told Brian we wouldn't go until we have a number 1 record" "We were trying to get into America all the time" "I really thought She Loves You would have broken the American market but if you think of our frustration here we were being turned down by the company, which EMI actually owned" "I was so frustrated, I said if they're not going to put it out " "From Me To You was the first one we offered them - they can't deny us other people putting them out" "I would take the record back and try and get it out with another label" "I did negotiations with Swan and with VJ each of whom, tiny labels in the States, took one or other title" "They put those records out in America" "Of course, being small labels, they didn't make a great deal of success" "That was the way it worked out." "We released P!" "ease P!" "ease Me - flop" "From Me to You - flop." "Changed labels, released She Loves You" "In England they'd all been number 1." "All of them flops - nothing" "By this time the news from England and Europe was overwhelming that they were a hit group and they had to take them more seriously" "Also the Swan and VJ labels were selling by this time" "So Capitol were forced to release I Want To Ho!" "D Your Hand" "It wasn't made for the American market but it was a great record" "Le Bourget Airport, Paris 14th January 1964" "The funny thing about France was it was boys screaming" "I think the girls were heavily chaperoned because it was boys" "Yeah oui, OK, you know." "Dear me, a funny crowd" "We went down kind of medium." "We were on the bill with Trini Lopez:" "If he had a hammer - if you remember" "I didn't know Trini was on that show." "I thought it was Sylvie Vartan" "It was very strange because suddenly... we had all these boys chasing us all over Paris" "We had visions of all these French girls, ooh la la, and all that" "But the opening night audience were tuxedoed elderly French people" "Hanging round the stage door, all seemed to be a bunch of slightly gay looking boys, shouting "Ringo, Ringo"" "We didn't go down that well but we built it up over a few days" "Eventually it was a bit of a success" "But we were used to a little bit more instant success than that" "We got a telegram at the hotel after one of the shows" "It came from Capitol Records" "Congratulations, lads, number 1 in US charts or something" "We all hit the roof." "I remember riding around on Mal Evans's back" "He was happy to bear me." "It was just very high hysterics" "Brian rang me about half past one in the morning:" ""I know you won't mind being woken." I said I wasn't asleep anyway" "He said "I've just heard from America." "We're number 1!"" "Fantastic!" "He said "Do you want to come round?" Not half!" "So we went round and had a great drink up." "No bed that night!" "It was a great feeling because we were booked to go there directly after Paris, so it was handy to have a number 1" "British pop stars haven't made much impact on the US." "How will you fare?" "Well, I can't really say, can I?" "Is it up to me?" "No." "I just hope we go all right" "London Airport 7th February 1964" "I know on the plane over I was thinking "Oh, we won't make it"" "We knew we would wipe them out" "It was like flying into the unknown, we didn't know what to expect" "We were going to America" "It was the first time for everyone, except George" "I remember before landing, it was so exciting" "As the plane flew over New York It felt like some sci-fi movie and a big octopus grabbed the plane and was dragging us down to New York and it was all so exciting." "This was America" "Things we'd dreamt about and all the music we'd loved came from here" "All the music we'd loved came from there so just to be there was exciting but because we'd made this condition of being number 1 before we went it was like going as princes" "Millions of kids at the airport, which nobody expected" "We heard about it mid-air as I recall" "There were journalists on the plane and the pilot radioed ahead" "He said tell the boys there's a big crowd waiting for them" "We never expected anybody" "We didn't expect to sell records here so we were just amazed" "Subtitles:" "Screentext"