"Liverpool" "That's better, Johnny" "The Wild One Released 1954 You know I missed you." "Ever since the club split up I missed you" "We all missed you." "Do you miss him?" "Yeah!" "All the Beetles missed you" "Let's go back and get 'em, eh?" " I'm game" "To the temple." "A man's got to do what he's got to do" "Let's go back, back, back, back, back..." "My mother used to say because I was born the Second World War started" "Richard Starkey Born Liverpool 7th July 1940" "I was with mother until about four, then my father split" "He was a merchant seaman." "It was 1940 and the war and all that" "John Winston Lennon Born Liverpool 9th October 1940" "My mum was a Catholic, dad was a Protestant" "They got married quite late." "I think they had me when they were 40" "James Paul McCartney Born Liverpool 18th June 1942" "At the time I was born my father's job was driving a bus" "I lived in a two-up and two-down, 12 Arnold Grove" "George Harrison Born Liverpool 25th February 1943" "My mum was a nurse" "She was a midwife as well" "My dad was a cotton salesman" "My father and my mother split when I was about four" "I was with mother up to then, then I was brought up by an aunty" "Dad was a... he made cakes so we always had sugar through the war" "She ended up doing a lot of jobs as he left when I was three" "He decided that was enough of that" "She did any job she could get to feed and clothe me" "My mother was from an Irish family called French" "She had lots of brothers and sisters" "My grandmother lived in Albert Grove, which was next to Arnold Grove" "I was terrible at school." "I wasn't there much as I was often sick" "I had peritonitis when I was six and a half - a burst appendix" "They told my mother that I'd be dead three times - but I'm still here" "My dad was an amateur musician who played piano" "I've memories of lying on the floor, hearing him play" "When my parents were younger they listened on an old crystal radio" "John really loved his mother." "I loved her too" "She played the ukelele." "To this day... if I meet grown-ups who play ukeleles, I love them" "Everybody has their party piece in Liverpool" "My mother's was Little Drummer Boy." "She sang it to me" "I'd sing Nobody's Child to her and she'd always cry" "Rock'n'roll meant it was real, everything else was unreal" "It was the only thing to get through to me, at 15, of all the things happening" "You can't imagine a time when rock'n'roll was only one of the musics" "Whatever record was being played, you'd try and listen to it" "You couldn't even get a cup of sugar, let alone a rock'n'roll record" "There was no such thing as an English record" "The first English record that was anything was Move It by Cliff Richard" "Before that there'd been nothing" "You'd listen to whatever was on the radio in those days" "I listened to a lot of country and western - skiffle was coming through" "There were lots of people coming up and one of them was Buddy Holly" "We loved his vocal sound and we loved his guitar playing" "But most of all was the fact that he actually wrote the stuff himself" "That's what turned us on" "I was at art school for five years" "They'd only allow jazz to be played - no rock'n'roll in those days" "We conned them into letting us play rock'n'roll by calling it blues" "As I became a teenager" "I was 12 or 13 when I first heard Fats Domino, I'm in Love Again" "That was the first what I would call rock'n'roll record I ever heard" "Even Bill Haley was around then" "I remember being in school when I was a kid" "Somebody had a picture in one of the musical papers... of Elvis" "It was an advert for Heartbreak Hotel" "I just looked at it and thought, he's just so good looking, just perfect" "When I was 16, Elvis was what was happening" "A guy with long greasy hair wiggling his ass and singing Hound Dog" "That's Alright Mama and those early Sun Records - his great period" "That's him - the guru we've been waiting for - the messiah has arrived" "One of our favourite records was Searchin'by the Coasters" "We heard people like Big Bill Broonzy." "I think he did a tour of England" "I was a big fan of his and Frankie Laine" "All those train songs, Rock Island Line and all that stuff" "Lonnie Donegan" "Suddenly here was a rock'n'roll hero who had glasses" "Buddy Holly and The Crickets" "The first music I can remember hearing as guitar-oriented music was Jimmie Rodgers, "The Singing Brakeman"" "I had no idea about doing music as a way of life... until rock'n'roll hit me and that changed my whole life" "Drums were the only thing I wanted." "I never looked at guitars or anything" "My dad used to be a trumpet player and for my birthday he bought me a trumpet from Rushworth and Drapers' music store in Liverpool" "At 16 I re-established a relationship with my mother for about 4 years" "She taught me music, first the banjo, then I progressed to guitar" "My first song was Ain't That A Shame, an old rock hit, Fats Domino" "When I was 13, 14, I used to be at the back of the class, drawing" "Trying to draw guitars, big cello cut-away guitars with 'F' holes" "Little solid ones with pointy or rounded cut-aways" "I was totally into guitars" "I heard about a kid who had a guitar and it was £3.10s" "Just a little acoustic, round hole guitar" "I got the £3.10s from my mother, a lot of money in those days" "I suddenly figured out I couldn't sing with this thing in my mouth so I went back to the shop and traded it in for a guitar" "That was a Zenith, the first guitar I ever had" "I was about 16" "I bought a thirty-bob bass drum - thirty shillings" "Just a huge one-sided bass drum" "It's a family joke now - "The guitar's OK for a hobby but won't earn you any money"" "We'd travel the whole of Liverpool to see someone who knew a new chord" "I remember once hearing about a bloke who knew B7" "We knew E and A - those are quite easy - but we didn't know B7" "That was the missing link." "The other chord." "The lost chord" "We trooped across Liverpool, changed a couple of buses, found this fella" "He showed us dum, dum dum" " B7" "We learned it from him, went home to our mates and went..." "Got it!" "Paul and I used to just kind of get together, play it a bit" "We were just schoolboys." "There were no groups till a bit later" "In those days we were desperate to get anything" "Whatever film came, you'd try and see it" "The Girl Can't Help it Released 1956" "You went to those movies with Elvis or somebody in them in Liverpool" "Everybody was waiting to see him - I'd be waiting there too" "They'd all scream when he came on the screen" "So we thought, that's a good job!" "When The Girl Can't Help It came along" "Instead of us looking at old black and white movies and thinking" ""There's Clyde McPhatter, there's Fats Domino"" "people we loved, who were being treated quite shabbily suddenly this was in colour and in widescreen" "At the start of Girl Can't Help lt, Tom Ewell comes on and says..." "Widescreen" "Colour!" "Gorgeous, life-like colour by Deluxe" "Sometimes you wonder who's minding the store" "You cut to Jayne Mansfield and that's it - the game's over" "I went to see Rock Around The Clock in the Isle of Man" "My grandparents took me and it was sensational" "They ripped up the cinema and this was good for me to see" "Bill Haley and The Comets" "I went to grammar school with Paul" "We started in the same class, then we went into different streams" "But basically I knew him since I was about eleven" "I didn't really know him like a friend until a number of years later" "I met George at the Liverpool Institute as well" "He was a year younger than Paul and I" "Neil Aspinall Schoolfriend I met George - we used to smoke behind the air-raid shelters" "George and I lived near each other in Liverpool, just a bus stop away" "I'd get on the bus and then the stop afterwards George would get on" "Being close in age, we'd sit together and we'd talk about stuff and that" "In fact he was, I think, about one and a half years younger than me" "A big age difference at that time so I suppose I talked down to him a bit as you do to a kid one and a half years younger than you" "When he's sort of 14 and a half and I'm sort of 16" "Perhaps I talked down to him because I'd known him as a younger kid" "He was always nine months older" "Even now, he's still nine months older" "Paul met me the first day I did Be Bop A Lu La live on stage" "A mutual friend brought him to see my group, The Quarry Men" "I had a mate at school called Ivan Vaughan" "We were born on the same day so we were great mates" "One day he said do you want to come to the Woolton Village Fete?" "We went along one Saturday afternoon to the field where they had the fete" "There was a wagon, and on the back of this a little stage" "On stage were a few lads" "One particular guy I noticed at the front had a checked shirt" "Blondish hair, a bit curly, sideboards, looking pretty cool" "He was playing guitar, not a very good one" "But he was making a good job of it and I remember being impressed" "He was doing a song by the Del Vikings called Come Go With Me" "He obviously didn't know the words" "He was pulling in lyrics from blues songs, so instead of going" ""Come, little darling, come go with me" which is right he'd got "Down down down to the Penitentiary"" "He'd be doing the sort of stuff he'd heard on Big Bill Broonzy records" "I thought, that's clever, he's pretty good." "That was John" "We met and talked after the show and I saw he had talent" "He was playing backstage, doing Twenty Flight Rock by Eddie Cochran" "The thing that impressed him most was I knew all the words" "I was the singer and the leader, I made the decision to have him in the group" "Was it better to have a guy who was better than the people I had, or not?" "That decision was to let Paul in and make the group stronger" "I asked him on our first meeting "Do you want to join the group?"" "I think he said yes the next day" "George came through Paul" ""I've got this friend who's really good, you know"" "He said well yeah, like what, and I said he plays Raunchy perfectly" "We all loved that song so we said well, got to try him out" "We ended up on the top deck of an empty late night bus, just us and we said "Go on, George, get your guitar out, you show him"" "Sure enough - note perfect" " Raunchy." ""You're in"" "The first thing we ever recorded was That'll Be The Day, a Buddy Holly song and one of Paul's, called In Spite of All The Danger" "That record, the first we ever made, is in Liverpool somewhere" "First Recordings 1958" "Everybody hung around at the Jacaranda Club near the art school and near Paul and George's school in the centre of Liverpool" "This was before we really formed a band, just me, Paul and George" "We used to show up for gigs with just three guitars" "The person booking us would say "Where's the drums then?"" "To cover this eventuality we'd say "The rhythm's in the guitars"" "We once tried to do this audition for Carol Levis Discoveries" "Everybody would go on and audition" "Then they'd pick out somebody and go "OK, you, you and you"" "They'd pick out about 20 different acts" "They'd have a clapometer and the winner would go on to the final" "It just kept on going." "We went in for one of those" "We were on the train to Manchester, rehearsing our act" "Only me and George had our guitars." "John must have sold his or bust it" "OK, there's just the two of us with guitars" "As it happened it looked good." "Paul was left-handed" "I was right-handed - still am " "John was in the middle, standing with a hand on each shoulder" ""Think it over, what you just said"" "Me and George" " John did the lead and we were also going to do Rave On" "We did it, he put his arms around us and it was OK." "We didn't win, as usual but I believe that day some unfortunate person in the theatre was relieved of his guitar" "Stuart Sutcliffe Stuart was John's friend from art college." "He was a very good painter" "We were jealous of John's friendship, John being a bit older than us" "He was a little bit, you know..." "You wanted to sit next to him on a bus - he was the older fella" "So when Stuart came in he was taking a bit of that position away from us" "We had to take a little bit of a back seat" "The story was that he sold his painting to a John Moore exhibition" "So the question was what do you do with 75 quid?" "We said "That happens to be the exact amount it takes to buy a Hofner bass"" "That would be a great thing to spend the money on" "He said "No, I'm a painter, I've got to spend it on paints"" "We said "No, Stuart, really" and John and I gave him a persuasive argument that the best thing to do, obviously, was to buy this Hofner bass" "Which he did." "The only trouble was, he couldn't play it" "But it was better to have a bass player who couldn't play than to not have a bass player at all" "Early Recordings Made in Liverpool - 1960" "Ringo was a professional drummer who sang and performed in one of the top groups in Liverpool before we even had a drummer" "Rory and the Hurricanes were the first who wanted to get into rock'n'roll" "We were playing skiffle before that and he had this rock'n'roll blonde hair attitude" "Johnny Guitar was just, for me, Liverpool's Jimi Hendrix at the time" "The one good story about Rory and the Hurricanes, of which I was a member..." "We were playing the Cavern and Johnny Guitar had a radio" "He plugged his guitar into the radio so we could be a bit more rock'n'roll" "They threw us off for being rock'n'roll." "He plugged in the radio - get OFF!" "John thought of the name Beatles and he'll tell you about it now" "I had a vision when I was 12" "I saw a man on a flaming pie and he said "You are Beatles with an A", and we are" "John put this thing in Mersey Beat which was also started by Bill Harry who went to art college with John just saying that this little guy appeared on a flaming pie - you know, in the sky - and said "Let there be Beatles - with an A"" "John got the name Beatles ages ago" "Everybody was thinking of a name and he thought of Beatles" "I was looking for a name like the Crickets, that meant two things and from Crickets I got to Beatles" "When you said it, it was crawly things;" "when you read it, it was beat music" "That's better, Johnny" "You know I missed you." "Ever since the club split up I missed you" "We all missed you." "Do you miss him?" "Yeah!" "All the Beetles missed you" "When we started off we had a manager in Liverpool called Allan Williams" "He was a small bloke, with a high voice, little Welsh accent" "He was a great motivator, he was very good for us at the time" "He eventually got us an audition at one of his clubs, the Blue Angel" "It was for Larry Parnes who had a big stable, so-called, of rock stars in London so this was a big opening to get this audition" "We showed up there" "I think half the groups in Liverpool showed up that day" "Photos were taken - this is us at the audition" "Something for Larry to look at" "We always had to ask Stuart to turn away from the camera" "As he couldn't play that well." "We might be in A and he might be in A flat" "Someone might spot this - we always noticed where people were on the guitars" "So there are a few photos of Stuart with his back to the camera" "That was the reason" "We got the audition" " Larry picked up quite a few Liverpool groups" "Our only disappointment was that all the people in his stable were like..." "Marty Wilde" "They all had very furious names, Billy Fury, somebody Tempest," "Storm, Hurricane - they were all tempestuous names, you know" "There's Ron Whitcherley, 17, known to his fans as Billy Fury" "Guaranteed £1000 in his first year" "Roy Taylor, 18, alias Vince Eager, £5000 by his fifth year" "We thought this would be great, but we ended up with Johnny Gentle" "Slight disappointment in the name department there" "John Askew - or Johnny Gentle - 22, from Merseyside" "Duffy Power, real name Raymond Howard, 17" "All" " Eager, Power, Gentle, Fury - in the lucrative business, as someone said of putting teenage growing pains to music" "Do you re-christen all your boys?" "Larry Parnes Oh yes, I think this is terribly important" "Otherwise they would go on the stage with unsuitable names" "They wanted a more imaginative name than The Beatles" "They came up with Long John Silver and the Beetles and we thought no" "It ended up as Long John and the Silver Beetles" "We became the Silver Beetles for this tour of Scotland" "So we thought, if the name of the group's been changed and he's Long John" "We all changed our names but people thought that John didn't" " John was cool - but he was Long John for that tour." "He was quite happy to be Long John too" "I thought, if he's changing it maybe we all should" "We all fancied it, our first foray into professional entertainment" "Well, that's what you do, isn't it?" "You change your name" "I became Paul Ramon, for some reason" "I thought it was a very exotic French-sounding name" "And I was Carl Harrison" "It doesn't sound like a stage name now, it's just that I loved Carl Perkins" "Stuart became Stuart de Stael" "He liked Nicholas de Stael, an abstract expressionist painter" "Anyway, that was a pretty pathetic tour." "By the end of it we were broke" "We had no money, we were all cold, freezing, and just miserable" "That was it." "We came back to Liverpool and nothing happened really" "I felt really sad - we were like orphans or something" "Our shoes were full of holes, our trousers were a mess..." "Larry Parnes' fella, Johnny Gentle, had this posh suit and stuff" "I remember trying to play Won't You Wear My Ring" "That's what he was doing - one of those Elvis tunes" "And we were crummy, we were really an embarrassment" "We didn't have amplifiers or anything" "And so I would say to the others when we were all depressed thinking the group was going nowhere and this is a shitty deal" "I'd say "Where are we going, fellas?"" "They'd go "To the top, Johnny" in pseudo American voices" "I'd say "Where's that, fellas?" "To the toppermost of the poppermost"" "I'd say "Right", then we'd all cheer up" "Derry and the Seniors got offered a job in London" "Give up your jobs and come to London and you're going with Larry, right?" "They gave up their jobs and then didn't get a gig so they were a bit pissed off" "They said "We're going to London, we'll get Parnsey and beat him up"" "Allan Williams, the club owner who did the audition... probably the first big groupie of Liverpool, drove them to London" "He said bring your instruments, lads, you might get a gig" "So he got them a gig in the Two I's in London" "This fella, Bruno Koschmider, from a club in Hamburg..." "I think it was him, he saw them and booked them to go to Germany" "Later he said he wanted another band - we were probably cheap" "Allan Williams said OK, lads, you can have this job in Germany" "The only problem is he's asked for a 5-piece band" "At that point Paul was the drummer because all the drummers didn't show up" "So that's where I said "OK, I remember this guy..." and we went up to this club" "Pete Best - he had a drum kit for Christmas" "He was known on Merseyside as mean, moody and magnificent" "We had all sorts of different drummers" "Few people owned drum kits." "They're expensive" "And they were usually idiots" "We got Pete Best because we needed a drummer to go to Hamburg" "He came down to the Jacaranda Club" "We did a quick audition, jumped in the van and went to Hamburg" "We ended up in Hamburg very late one night" "There was no one there to meet us, but we could find Hamburg off the map" "But St Pauli district and the Reeperbahn..." "but everyone knew" "We found the street and the club but it was all closed" "We had no hotel or anything and it was now bedtime" "We managed to shake up someone from a neighbouring club" "They opened the club and we slept in the alcoves on the red leather seats" "The second night we moved into the Bambi Kino for 2 or 3 months" "I remember Rory Storm and his group coming with Ringo to see us" "They arrived a bit later and came to see how the groups were living" "They were really shocked" "One of us had a Union Jack over us to keep warm" "Rory and I were staying in one room in the German Seamen's Mission" "That was luxury - absoloute bloody luxury" "Before we got to the club, the Kaiserkeller" "Howie Casey, sax player from Liverpool who also played a lot with Paul McCartney later on" "They were sleeping for a while in the back of the club" "I'll never forget when we arrived they said:" ""This is where you live"" "Just a couple of old settees and Union Jacks for sheets" "We don't want this, we've got suits, we're leaving, blah, blah, blah" "So we went to this life of luxury in the German Seamen's Mission" "Everything else was such a buzz" "In the middle of the naughtiest city in the world at 17 years old" "It was exciting" "And learning about the gangsters, the transvestites" "You know, it was like that - there's the hookers..." "We were just kids let off the leash, straight from Liverpool to Hamburg" "We were used to little Liverpool girls but in Hamburg if you got a girlfriend she's likely to be a stripper" "The only kind of people who were around late at night there" "For someone who'd not really had much sex before, which we hadn't to be suddenly involved with the sort of hard-core striptease artist who obviously knew a thing or two about sex, was quite an eye-opener" "That was also a point of our lives where we found Dexedrine" "Uppers, you know, pills" "The only way we could continue was to be on Preludin, they were called" "We bought them over the counter so didn't think we were doing anything" "But you'd get really wired and go on for days" "So with beer and Preludin, that's how we survived" "We used to just be up there frothing at the mouth, just stomping away" "Those were the days" "In Hamburg, 'cos we had to work 6 or 7 hours a night - on stage, with no rest - the waiters always had these pills called Preludin" "When they saw the musicians falling over with tiredness or drink they'd give you the pill" "You'd take the pill and you'd be talking, you'd sober up" "You'd work until the pill wore off, then you'd have to have another" "I think that's where we found our style" "We developed our style because of this fella who used to say:" ""You've got to make a show for the people." "Mach Schau"" "so we used to Mach Schau and John used to dance round like a gorilla" "We'd all knock our heads together and things like that" "When we met in Germany, they played one club, we played another" "They were just great by then" "I used to like... we'd do 12 hours at a weekend between two bands when we ended up at the same club" "If they had the last set, I'd be semi-drunk, demanding slow songs" "He used to like the sort of blues feel of the late night sessions" "There was hardly anybody there." "I could see what he liked about it" "We were playing a bit more for ourselves by that time of night because there was no one in" "This was all sort of bluesey - B sides and lesser known tracks" "His particular favourite - he always used to request it - was 3.30 Blues" "We made friends with a lot of people" "Our real friends were the ones known now..." "Klaus Voormann" "Jurgen Vollmer and Astrid, who took all the famous photographs of us at that period" "They liked all the rock'n'roll stuff, the quiffed back hairdos... the leather outfits, the shades" "They weren't really rockers or mods, they were something in the middle" "They called themselves 'exies' - existentialists" "They were art students really" "Our best work was never recorded" "We were performers in Liverpool, Hamburg and round the dance halls" "What we generated was fantastic" "I was 17 when we first went out there and went to the Indra Club and then got moved to the Kaiserkeller" "That ended up with us getting the gig to go to the Top Ten Club" "Right before that happened, I got busted for being under age" "They had this situation in Germany I'd never come across before which was a curfew" "After 10 o'clock at night anybody under 18 had to get out" "I was only 17, I was in the band and I started getting worried" "Eventually somebody found out we didn't have any work permits or visas so they started closing in on us" "The Police came one day and they just booted me out" "That was at a critical time because we'd decided - we'd been offered a job to go to this other club" "The Top Ten was the club we were ambitious to play at" "It was a slightly better club, it was on the main Reeperbahn" "As we were leaving, me and Pete Best were packing up - the last to leave" "He found a condom in his luggage" "What we did, just for a laugh, outside in the corrider - concrete, nothing could have caught fire at all - we pinned it up on the wall and for a boyish prank we set fire to it" "So it left a little sort of black rubber stain on the wall" "That was like "Right, we're going, hey hey, on to better things"" "The fella wasn't pleased we were going to the new club anyway because we were taking all our business, all his business" "So he rang the police and we were just walking down the Reeperbahn" "We were put in jail for about 3 hours - first time in our lives" "Bloody hell, a German jail!" "The new club owners where we were going to gave them a bottle of scotch or something and got us out" "Well, Paul and Pete got deported for burning the condom on the wall" "So they were back before me, and John got back about two days later" "I was really happy, thinking, oh great!" "That's the supportive nature you see" "Stuart stayed there 'cos he decided to get verheiratet with Astrid" "We went back when I was 18, we were backing up Tony Sheridan" "At that point this fella came into the club" "They said he's a famous producer and musician, Bert Kaempfert" "His claim to fame was he had a number 1 hit in America" "Not only was he a record producer but he had a hit in America called Wonderland by Night" "It turned out to be a trumpet solo" "He came in and this buzz went around "We've got to be really good" ""We may get a chance to record" - which we did" "He came back and asked us to come in the studio with Sheridan and record" "We were all pleased with ourselves" "But he just wanted us to back up Sheridan" "I remember feeling depressed but we did get to do My Bonnie" "While we were out there, we started to see other groups and started to get a little bit dissatisfied with Pete" "I remember him not turning up for gigs and we kept getting Ringo in" "Ringo Starr, who changed his name before all of us" "He had a beard and was grown up and had a Zephyr Zodiac which was a very big car in those days" "Nobody had this, it was a knock-off probably" "Fell off the back of a showroom" "Ringo kept sitting in with the band and it seemed like this was it" "This happened 3 or 4 times and then that was the end, we were just pals" "We'd have a drink after it and then I'd be back with Rory" "Around this time Stuart and I got a little bit fraught too" "I claim that I was trying to make sure we were musically very good but this did create a couple of rifts" "I could have been more sensitive but who's sensitive at that age" "When we first met him he couldn't play at all - when he first got a bass" "He learned a few tunes - occasionally it was a bit embarrassing" "If it had a lot of changes to it he was... but he knew that too" "That's why he was never really at ease being in the band" "That's why he left after the gig in Hamburg - to go back to art college" "At that point Paul was still playing guitar" "I remember saying "One of us is going to be the bass player"" "I said I'm not doing it and John wasn't doing it either" "He went for it" "He became the bass player so then we were a four-piece band" "In Liverpool we got quite a few bookings - they thought we were German" "They billed us from Hamburg and said "You speak good English"" "We went back to Germany." "We had a bit more money so bought leather pants" "We looked like 4 Gene Vincents, only a bit younger, I think" "Back in Liverpool, all the groups were doing this Shadows stuff" "The Shadows" "That's why we became popular because they couldn't believe it" "There were all these dum de dum de dum... and then suddenly we come on - wild men in leather suits" "I think Pete Best said to them that I'd drive them to the gigs and stuff" "I think I got a pound a night, or a pound a gig" "Five bob off each of them" "They needed transport to get to the Cavern and wherever" "We played the Cavern before we ever went to Hamburg, I believe, in the days when it was a jazz and folk club" "I remember playing there and them handing us notes saying:" ""Stop playing this music, this is a jazz club"" "We were saying "We'd like to do this tune by Leadbelly" ""It's called Long Tall Sally"" "We'd do it..." "and finally they kicked us off" "The Cavern is their home" "Cathy" " A Fan from the Cavern Club It's where they first started and where they've played most" "I've had a couple of requests to do Kansas City so we'd like to do it" "We did well at the Cavern and attracted some big audiences" "And the word got around" "A kid had gone into Brian's record store and had asked for My Bonnie" "He found out that the Beatles were supposed to be a Liverpool band and were playing the Cavern so he came down to check us out" "I remember Bob Wooler, the disc jockey, saying:" ""We have a Mr Epstein who owns NEMS Enterprises in here"" "Everybody was going "Ooh, wow, big, big deal"" "This was quite a new world for me" "I was amazed by this sort of dark, smoky... dank atmosphere with this beat music playing away" "Brian Epstein The Beatles were then just four lads on that rather dimly lit stage somewhat ill-clad" "Their presentation left a little to be desired as far as I was concerned" "I'd been interested in the theatre and acting for a long time but amongst all that, something tremendous came over" "I was immediately struck by their music their beat and sense of humour on stage" "Even when I met them I was struck again by their personal charm" "It was there that really it all started" "Brian had this shop." "And it was good - we used to pick up records" "He wanted to manage us and we weren't going anywhere anyway" "We said you might as well." "He got us jobs, he got us a bit more money then started getting us radio shows and things like that" "Then we got into our suits - he talked us out of the leather suits" "It was a bit old hat anyway, all wearing leather gear and we decided we didn't want to look ridiculous" "Often people would laugh and we didn't want to appear as a gang of idiots" "Brian suggested that we just wore ordinary suits" "It was later put around that I'd betrayed our heavy leather image and I wanted us to get suits but I seem to recall that we all went quite happily" "I didn't drag anyone to the tailors, they all went quite happily" "We gladly switched into suits if we were going to get more money, get some more gigs" "Brian was a beautiful guy" " Brian Epstein" "An intuitive, theatrical guy" "He knew we had something and he presented us well" "I remember we had to drive to London on New Year's Eve and we did a session for Decca, an audition for Decca" "Decca Audition Tape Recorded New Year's Day 1962" "When you hear the tape, it's pretty good" "It's not great but it's certainly good for then" "Dick Rowe, the man who didn't sign us - the head of Decca - said "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein"" "So Brian then had this tape which he hawked around" "I think somebody in the HMV shop on Oxford Street knew George Martin and told Brian to go and play the tape to him and he gave us the audition at Abbey Road" "George hadn't done rock'n'roll and we'd never been in a studio" "So we learnt a lot together" "He had a great musical knowledge and background" "They were fairly irreverent, even in those days, which I loved" "I like a bit of rebel in people and I liked their sense of humour" "After all, that was my main stock-in-trade too" "They liked what I'd been doing with Peter Sellers and the Goons" "George Martin Record Producer I thought they had tremendous charisma" "I knew that that alone would sell them" "We did a reasonable audition but he didn't like our drummer" "I said to Brian Epstein if..." "when we do the next session" "I won't interfere with you and the Beatles but I'll provide the drummer" "We really started to think we needed "the great drummer" in Liverpool" "Historically it may look like we did something nasty to Pete" "It may have been we could have done it better but the thing was - as history also shows - Ringo was the member of the band" "It's just that he didn't enter the film until that particular scene" "It was a Wednesday and Brian called" "I don't remember John calling, although it's in somebody's book" ""Would you join the band?"" "I said "What do you mean?" and he said "Really join the band"" "I said "Sure, yeah, when?" and he said now" "I said "No, I can't do that - we've got these other four guys here" ""We'd got a gig for months and I can't just pull out now"" "So I said "I'll join you Saturday"" "We used to have Saturday off." "That's when they changed the campers" "So I gave Rory until Saturday to bring someone in for Sunday which I thought was giving him a hell of a lot of time, and that was it" "We played the Cavern - there was a lot of fighting and shouting" "Half of them hated me, half of them loved me" "A few people shouted "Ringo never, Pete Best for ever"" "After about half an hour I said "Oh, bugger off", and stepped out..." "The Cavern had three tunnels" "We stepped out of what was the dressing room into this dark tunnel and some guy butted me right in the eye" "That was a bad day - and then I got hit by a bus" "George fought for me" "At this midday session at the Cavern we proudly present the Beatles" "The Cavern Club 22nd August 1962" "We want Pete!" "When Ringo came to the session for the first time nobody told me he was coming" "I'd booked Andy White and told Brian Epstein I was doing this" "I said I just want the three others" "Ringo expected to play and I said, "No, I've been bitten once" ""I don't even know who you are." "We're having Andy White"" "I was devastated." "I came down ready to roll and..."We've got Andy White, the professional drummer"" "But he's apologised several times since, has old George Martin" "But it was devastating and then we did that, which Andy plays on" "Then we did the album, which I play on" "So Andy wasn't doing anything so great" "Well, nothing I couldn't copy when we did the album" "Ringo bears those scars to this day" "He says "You didn't let me play, did you?"" "Their first record, Love Me Do sold 100000 copies" "It came to the charts in two days and everybody thought it was a fiddle because our Manager's stores send in these record returns" "Everybody down south thought he was buying them himself or fiddling the charts - but he wasn't" "It was bought by the kids." "We had a big following" "Who'd had a record?" "Arthur Askey was the last, I think, from Liverpool" "It got to 17 within the following weeks" "I don't recall what happened to it then, it probably just died off but the next time we went to EMI they were really more friendly" ""Oh, hello lads, come in"" "It was quite normal in those days to find material for artists by going to Tin Pan Alley and listening to all the publishers' wares" "That was a regular part of my life." "I'd spend ages looking for songs" "And for the Beatles I was really looking for a hit song" "It didn't matter so long as it suited the group" "Love Me Do was the best one they were able to offer" "I found the kind of song I was looking for - one by Mitch Murray called How Do You Do lt?" "and I was convinced this was a hit song" "It wasn't the most marvellous song I'd ever heard in my life but it had that essential element to appeal to a lot of people and we did record it" " John took the lead" "George said "If you want a number 1 song, this is it"" "We said "Yeah, but we can't go back to Liverpool singing that" ""We cannot be seen with that song"" "So we never issued it" "I gave it to Gerry and the Pacemakers and it did become number 1" "George Martin asked if we'd anything we'd like to do" "We'd got a song called Please Please Me" "John had just written it, a slow Roy Orbison kind of thing" ""Come on, please please me." Big note at the end, just like Orbison" "I'd heard him doing Only The Lonely and I was trying to..."Please Me"" "and I was always intrigued by the words of..." ""Please lend your little ears to my pleas," a Bing Crosby song" "I was always intrigued by the double use of the word 'please'" "And I said, OK." "Let's try your song, let's see if it works" "At the end of the session I was able to say to them:" ""You've got your first number 1." "Great!"" "Bob Wooler got on the stage, telegram in hand: "I've got news for you"" "He looked terrible, we thought something disastrous had happened" ""Please Please Me has reached number 1 in the national charts"" "The lads themselves just stopped and looked at him" "They thought he was joking - he must have been" "Lots of people who didn't know the Beatles started cheering and clapping" "Three rows of girls at the front all started crying" "It was a terrible night" "We knew then, they'll get famous and go away" "They won't belong to us no more" "Subtitles:" "Screentext"