All language subtitles for Anthology 1

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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 lvan 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

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