How I Remember The Beatles

A review in the Culture section of the Sunday Times about the release of their remastered albums reads "Want to know what it was like to have a new record by The Beatles". Well I was fortunate to know, being nearly eighteen when Love Me Do was released as their first EMI single in October 1962. My first memory at that time is of my brother John predicting that this band would be big. I think it was because he played a little harmonica, so he felt some connection to its prominent role on this record.

When the first Beatles album, Please Please Me, was released in March 1963, it was played non stop four months later at my school's outdoor leaving party. But the first LP that I bought was the next release, With The Beatles. That summer I had left home to work as a trainee for George Wimpey in Hammersmith, so my purchase was from a record shop on King Street in November 1963. I still have the LP, although it is pretty much in a sorry state. I played it time and time again every evening when I returned to my digs. It was played at parties and had beer and punch spilt on it on numerous occasions. Who cares when you are nineteen.

I never saw The Beatles live. There was absolutely no point when it was impossible to hear the music for the screams. But the next best thing came with the release of their first movie. Three of my top ten favourite Beatles songs are from the soundtrack of A Hard Days Night, and five from the album. I went to the old London Pavilion the first week after it's premier there in July 1964. It was the closest thing to a concert. The soundtrack had not been released, so it was quite something to hear the new songs performed on a big screen, especially as they reprised these two at the end. I Should Have Known Better stuck in my memory for ever, being the second song in the film when they are on the train from Liverpool (although the station is Marylebone as the photograph below). If I Fell is just as good, especially the harmonies and the change of key. And I Love Her is my other favourite from the soundtrack, whilst two songs on the album are even better: Things We Said Today and You Can't Do That.

The writer of A Hard Days Night was Alun Owen who was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay. He and his family lived a couple of doors down from where we lived on Napier Road in West London in the mid 1950's, and he and his wife were good friends of Mum and Dad. When I left our home in Braintree in 1963 to work in London, they asked me to call in to see Alun and Mary his wife who were then living in Bayswater. If I had known a year later that he had written the screenplay, I might have been able to engineer an invite to the studio.

By the end of 1964 I had saved enough to buy a Grundig tape recorder, so there I was with the 1960's equivalent of illegal downloads, taping Beatles for Sale, Help and Rubber Soul. But it wasn't until the last of these that In My Life and Norwegian Wood captured my imagination in the same way. That must have been why I bought Revolver. It was OK, but for me it did not have the same impact as their earlier recordings, except for Got to Get You into My Life. So Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band went onto tape. I should have bought the LP, I played it so much, particularly A Day in the Life.

I cannot have been the only one who waited with growing excitement for the premier of Magical Mystery Tour on television in December 1967. I have to admit now, but never at the time, that it was a bit of a let down. The next summer I was married and missed out on The Beatles, Yellow Submarine and Abbey Road. In retrospect, I not sure if I really missed out. Nothing stands out like the old stuff, so it is not until the last on their last album Let It Be that Paul takes them back to their roots with Get Back. At least he had not forgotten how to rock.

PS There is one other song that has to be added to my top ten and that is One After 909. It was recorded on 5th March 1963 but it had to wait until 1995 to be heard on Anthology 1. The Beatles also made a later recording on the roof of the Apple HQ at 3 Savile Row in 1969, and it appears on the Let It Be album. John wrote it when he was about seventeen with some help from Paul. What else is there to say.