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28th March 1963. The Beatles and The Corvettes backstage ABC Cinema, London in Square, Exeter, Devonshire (photo)
‘When we [the Corvettes] had our photo taken with them [the Beatles] John Lennon said, ‘Don’t say cheese, say crap.’
(Tony Osborne, the Corvettes about 28 March 1963 in The Beatles 1963: A Year in the Life by Dafydd Rees, 2023)
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08 April 1963
“As there were no glasses backstage they drank their beers from teacups. We had a good chat, talking mostly about music and their favourite artists. They went out of their way to be jovial, obliging and friendly. I asked if I could take a photo of them. ‘Of course,’ they replied. ‘Just a minute,’ said Paul, ‘I must clean my teeth first.’ After a while Paul was ready and John positioned the group for their photo.
‘Right,’ John said. ‘When I say three, we’ll all smile and you take the picture.’ John began counting ‘one, two, THREE’-literally yelling ‘THREE’ and making the other Beatles and myself nearly jump out of skins. I wasn’t able to take the picture, but Paul was the worst casualty. He had still been holding the open tube of toothpaste and when John had shouted, he squeezed the tube and a long length of toothpaste shot down his trouser leg. After much laughter I finally got my photo with Paul keeping his hand over the embarrassing stain on his trousers.” Norman Scott, DJ
Family Trees
Important Note: Fingal, Tadgh, Dafydd, Arthur and Seamus are all now being cared for by their maternal grandparents.
'…My friend Sue and I met in Birmingham and when we were waiting for a bus to go to the show, this girl was there. We said we were going to see the Beatles at the Ritz, and she said, ‘Oh, are you a member?’ and we said, ‘No?’ She said we wouldn’t get in unless we were members or with someone who could sign us in. So, she suggested as she and her friend were members, that if we waited in the queue, she’d go home and get her card, and get ready, and she would sign us in, so that is what we did. We got in because of the girl we met at the bus stop! This was the evening that I held onto Paul’s shoe. We went in, and it was a dance, but most people there were intent on seeing the Beatles, that’s why we were all there. I sat on the stage on the left-hand side, it was just a put-up job, just a foot or so higher than the dance oor. When the Beatles came on, Paul was standing right in front of me. I couldn’t believe my luck! It was a lovely show and I reached out to touch Paul’s foot, which he was tapping away as he did, and I just held it, and he looked at me, and he was smiling at me, and John was looking at him and smiling. I just kept holding his foot, I just loved it, it was lovely, such a thrill.' SUE FLANAGAN, WAITRESS, HALESOWEN, WEST MIDLANDS
(The Beatles 1963: A Year in the Life by Dafydd Rees, 2023)
©Jane Chapman: February 15, 1963 - The Beatles playing The Ritz Ballroom in Kings Heath
I was always interested in finding out what have happens on the photo. What gave them the idea of depict Paul's funeral: why the funeral, why Paul? Well…I have an answer, I suppose
More legendary than most, however, were a band briefly signed to Brian, the Big Three. Other musicians on the scene seemed to regard this band with awe. They were the original power trio, real sonic bruisers who’d built themselves the biggest amplifiers - nicknamed Coffins - that anyone had ever seen.
(Liverpool - Wondrous Place by Paul Du Noyer, 2002)
Epstein made his way to the Cavern club to see the group perform at a lunchtime session on November 9th. He wrote later that he had never seen anything like The Beatles on any stage. <…> "I loved their ad libs and I was fascinated by this, to me, new music with its pounding bass beat and its vast, engulfing sound." <…> The "pounding" bass that Epstein described was due in part to a new addition to The Beatles' equipment line-up. In the early 1960s there was really no such thing as a proper bass amplifier. Most bass players would use the most powerful guitar amplifier that they could get their hands on. But these were not designed for bass guitar, and did not provide the deep, throbbing bass tones that bass guitarists wanted. As The Beatles evolved their sound and Best perfected his "atomic beat" the group were searching for a stronger and more solid bass sound.
The band considered by many to be the loudest and most aggressive in Liverpool was The Big Three. They bad started out as Cass & The Cassanovas, a four-piece until leader and frontman Brian Casser left during the beginning of 1961. The remaining members stayed together to form The Big Three: Johnny Gustafson on bass, guitarist Adrian Barber, and Liverpool's loudest drummer, Johnny Hutchinson, on the skins.
Barber says that when they became a trio there was an instant problem: he and Gustafson weren't loud enough to project over Hutchinson's drumming. Even the relatively punchy Selmer Truvoice amp was not enough. Barber, however, had an interest in electronics from his days in the merchant navy. <…> Barber went out and bought a book about loudspeakers produced by G A Briggs, who owned the British Wharfedale speaker company, and inside he found construction details for various sizes of cabinets. "I decided on one, and Denis Kealing said he could get me a 15-inch speaker," recalls Barber. "I built a set-up for the bass guitar and for the vocal, in a cabinet about five feet tall by about 18 inches square. <…> I used that and mounted it in a metal ammunitions case, so we could carry it around without killing it. Johnny Gustafson used it as his bass amp, and it was very successful. "When we carried it we bad to lower it on its side, because it was long and skinny. The first time we took it down to the Cavern, we struggled down the tiny stairs there. As we carried this black-painted thing across the room it looked just like a coffin - and that's how it got its name: the Coffin. Now, the Cavern was the underground basement of a warehouse, with three vaulted brick-built archways. Over the years water had seeped down and brought calcium deposits with it, which had settled in the ceiling bricks. So when Johnny plucked that first bass note it was like a shower of snow corning down. People went, 'Wow look at that … and listen to that.' So we were really impressed, and I got ambitious at that point." <…> Other bands began to notice the relative sophistication of The Big Three's amplification, especially the bass gear. "Liverpool wasn't a competitive scene, before it got commercial," explains Barber. '"All the bands co-operated with one another and backed each other up. It was a cool scene, and I started to build these things for other people. Paul McCartney asked me to make him a Coffin. It had a single 15-inch speaker in a reflex-ported cabinet, with two chrome handles and wheels on the side."
McCartney started to use a Barber Coffin speaker cabinet during the late part of 1961. <…> McCartney himself recalls, "Adrian made me a great bass amp that he called the Coffin. And, man! Suddenly that was a total other world. That was bass as we know it now. It was like reggae bass: it was just too right there. It was great live." Pete Best too remembers the Coffin. "Neil Aspinall and I used to carry it. Every couple of shows there'd be a flight of stairs which you had to carry this thing up, and it was then we'd wonder why he couldn't have got something smaller. We'd have sweat streaming off us. But the beauty of it was, with all the laughing and joking aside, it did produce a great sound. The first time Paul plugged it in and used it, we just said my god, this is incredible. It added to The Beatles sound."
(Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four's Instruments from Stage to Studio Hardcover by Andy Babiuk, 2010)
So, I guess, Paul is lying on his bass amp that they called the Coffin - and it's the reason of the pantomime on the photo.
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…Jim Hickey, our drummer’s dad, offered to help carry Paul’s speaker cabinet upstairs. He got a shock when he tried to pick it up as it was a custom-made cabinet that had several layers of bricks in the bottom to hold it down and give a better sound. He nearly put his back out! (JOHN BENTLEY, SENIOR PROCUREMENT MANAGER, BRITISH TELECOM, DARWEN, LANCASHIR)
(The Beatles 1963: A Year in the Life by Dafydd Rees, 2023)
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Andy Babiuk in Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four's Instruments from Stage to Studio Hardcover (2010) writes Paul started to use Coffin during the late part of 1961. Seems it could have happened before: Paul writes in his letter to Peter Eckhorn (owner of the Top Ten Club in Hamburg) in October 1961, ' I have a new amplifier for my bass guitar—it is a big as me' (x)
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I saw them many more times after that [their last show at the Cavern, August, 2]. I remember Paul loved my mum. When I went and did interviews, my mum would oen drive me and whenever I interviewed Paul in a hotel or somewhere, my mum would just sit in a corner and have a coffee. So Paul got to know her and he really liked her - she was very glamorous and very warm. When they came back from America, there was that famous scene at the airport. All the press were there and it was live on TV. I brought my mum into the press conference. The Beatles arrived and Paul saw Mum in the corner and came straight over to her and told her everything about what happened in America. I think he still needed a mother gure. They were chatting away and everyone was wondering where Paul was and I remember John saying, ‘He’s with Dawn’s mum.’ So they dragged him back to the press conference. DAWN SLOUGH, JOURNALIST, COBHAM, SURREY
(The Beatles 1963: A Year in the Life by Dafydd Rees, 2023)
After the show [FRIDAY 6 SEPTEMBER, Luton] the group drove back to London, returning to their rooms at the Hotel President. Artist Peter Blake, his wife Jann Haworth and Robert Freeman - who had all seen one of the Luton shows - arrived at the hotel and had coffee and sandwiches, before heading to the Crazy Elephant club with John and Ringo. ‘John had never really spent time in London and wanted to go to the clubs,’ Blake remembered. ‘George was tired and went to bed, so John, Ringo, a friend named Joe Chelson and I went on the town. We drove around in Joe’s old jeep. We went to a club called the Crazy Elephant and asked, ‘Can we come in?’ The man at the door said, ‘Are you members?’ We said no, but they were actually playing a Beatles song. So John said, ‘You’re playing our song. You must let us in.’ The doorman said, ‘I don’t know what that is. I don’t know who you are. You can’t come in.’ Then a voice came from inside the club and said, ‘It’s all right. They’re friends of mine. They can come in.’ We went in and it was Paul, who was already there at the smartest club in town.’ Later, they went to the Flamingo Club at 33-37 Wardour Street . By the time they arrived, the Ronnie Ross Quartet had finished playing, so they went upstairs to the All-Nighter Club to hear Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames play well into the night.
(The Beatles 1963: A Year in the Life by Dafydd Rees, 2023)
TUESDAY 12 MARCH The group continued the tour as a three-piece with John suffering from a heavy cold, returning to the Granada in Bedford, with shows at 7pm and 9.10pm. While on their way, the previous Wednesday’s session of Here We Go was broadcast on the Light Programme, with ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ edited out, at 5pm. During the show, one girl in the audience shouted out for ‘Love Me Do. Paul stepped up to the mic and said, ‘We can’t,’ no doubt because John wasn’t on hand to play the harmonica solo. Paul sang ‘Long Tall Sally’ instead. The Bedford Record & Circular was obviously less impressed, not even mentioning them in their review of the show. It was headlined ‘Chris Montez Knocks Them At The Granada’ and described him as ‘a beat-bouncing bundle of energy’ who ‘took the stage in his grasp’. The only other two acts on the bill to get a mention were the Viscounts and Tommy Roe. Once again, the Bedfordshire Times & Advertiser didn’t see fit to review the show. <…> WEDNESDAY 13 MARCH The group - still a trio - set off on a 208-mile trip to York to the Rialto theatre, where they had appeared only two weeks earlier. They played two shows at 6.40pm and 8.45pm, with tickets selling from 4/6 to 8/6. An ailing John showed up at Abbey Road to overdub his harmonica part on ‘Thank You Girl. Forgetting his instrument, he borrowed engineer Malcolm Davies,’ at the suggestion of Geoff Emerick, who was engineering the session. When he returned it, John told Davies that it ‘tasted like a sack of potatoes. <…> The Evening Press reporter Stacey Brewer wrote that ‘the boys struggled admirably with their hit number ‘Please Please Me’,’ while ‘the rest of their programme was re-jigged for two-part singing’.
TUESDAY 12 NOVEMBER Before setting off for Portsmouth for two shows at the Guildhall, a sickly Paul saw a doctor in London. A spokesman said, ‘Paul has a temperature. He is under strict doctor’s orders, but is being allowed to carry on with the two shows in Portsmouth tonight, provided that he rests for the rest of the day.’ <…> At 3.35pm, the group arrived in a yellow Corporation van at the Guildhall’s front entrance. They made their way to their dressing room by way of the stage. Looking tired, drawn and unshaven, they posed for photos. After the photographers left, they asked for cups of tea. John told the press, ‘We’ve all got flu, and Paul has got gastric flu.’ <…> Local doctor John Langmaid was called to the theatre and shortly thereather press officer Charles Gillet announced the shows had been cancelled. Langmaid billed NEMS £4 4s for his house call. Reading from a prepared statement, Gillet said, ‘Dr J. R. Langmaid has examined Paul. He has a temperature of 101 degrees, which is much higher than when he left London this morning. It is not safe for him to go on. People can write for their money back or keep their tickets for a new Beatles show.’ <…> When Paul went to bed at 7pm, he had a temperature of 102 degrees. <…> '…I was told by my secretary that there had been a phone call from the Guildhall requesting me to go there as soon as possible to see one of the Beatles. When I arrived, I was taken in via a back entrance and thence upstairs to a room where Paul McCartney was lying down on what I think was a settee. The other members of the group were in the same room and I remember John Lennon pacing up and down looking rather anxious. I examined Paul and prescribed some medicine. It was quite clear to me that there was no way that the poor chap would be able to perform that evening, so the show was cancelled - much, as I imagine, to the relief of all of them!' JOHN LANGMAID, DOCTOR, SOUTHSEA, HAMPSHIRE
SUNDAY 17 NOVEMBER Paul was asked how he was feeling, saying, ‘I’m perfectly all right now. All the stories about me cracking up are quite groundless. Honest, I’ve never had a serious illness in my life.’ John interjected, ‘Now everyone is waiting for us to crack up under the strain. I’ll tell you this: when we are breaking down, we’ll make a public announcement so everyone can come and take pictures.’
(The Beatles 1963: A Year in the Life by Dafydd Rees, 2023)
