I would not sit down to listen to the Beatles ever but the history of the band is another thing,I watch the program with interest, and will do so on Friday 12/January.

Second thoughts I would rather sit down to the Beatles,than oasis,

> My recollection of the sixties was that you were
> either a Beatles or Stones fan, not both.

Yes. For a while you had to be for Cliff or for Elvis, then it all switched and you were for Beatles or Stones. And if you were for the Beatles, you had to pick which was your favourite (mine was George). I don't know if it was just something dictated by the way school girls thought or whether the need to choose affected others.

As a young child at primary school in the mid sixties I can remember that friends were gained or lost depending on if you were a Stones or Beatles fan. We would regularly play a game in the playground involving holding hands with other children who were also Beatles fans and trying to get a bigger human chain than those in the Stone's chain. The mix was fairly even which perhaps shows that other bands also had quite an influence in that period.

yes i was an avid fan of cliff until the beatles arrived!

I am most fortunate - I saw The Beatles - both shows at the Gruge Halle, in Essen in Germany - way back in 1966 on 25 June to be exact. It was an unforgettable day. I wound up doing crowd control at the barrier in front of the stage. I later stood at the edge of the stage -= less than 2 metres from the feet of John Lennon. My wife Maureen gatecrashed the press conference and then with the assistance of the manager of Cliff Bennet's Rebel Rousers (supporting act) she had the doorman threatened with 'the Russian front' until he allowed me to also enter the press conference room. We later had to be re-admitted into the main hall, to gain access to the cloakrooms to collect our coats. We watched the second performance from the third row from the stage. In 1968 we were most fortunate to be able to visit John Lennon at his home in Weybridge. Believe you me - there never was - and probably never will be, a group like The Beatles. Oasis, U2, Take That, Westlife, the Rolling Stones, the list is endless but the fact is definite -the shadow of the Beatles will always be big enough to cover them all!!

I remember when I was 15 years old my dad bought me a tape to tape recorder and i used to record live broadcasts of Saturday club with Brian matthew. Occasionally the beatles would be live on the show. From this i deduced that the rolling stones were a better band musically but lennon/mccartney lyrics were unsurpassed

To get a full apreceation of the Beatles music you need to watch a cover band like the Bootleg Beatles perform a full show, or listen to the music on a long evening. You will experience the diversity and quality of the music. Most songs have turned out to be classics and will always be valued for the rest of time. My kids are 16 and 14, like modern bands, but also love the beatles. I think it was all in the mix! The combination of vocals etc, even down to Harrisons guitar playing. They were never as good when they were apart. Still very good but that outstanding sound had gone.

Nick,
Please buy a Beatles album , any . Enjoy 40 minutes of the greatest !!!!

I was 8 years of age when the Beatles burst on to the pop scene. I, like 95% of my generation immediately liked them. They were something completely new. In their Hunter Davis official autobiography someone says that the were told by sycophants they were geniuses so often that they started to act like geniuses and I think that sums them up. They were the original boy band (although they wrote their own music - unlike latter boy bands) but within a couple of years had taken pop music onto another level, they lead the world, what the Beatles did EVERYONE else followed. Remember these lads were only in the public domain as the Beatles for about 7 years but their creative output was phenomenal by ANY standards. Artists that have been around for 40 years have still not overtaken their records - that sums up the impact they had on the world. I still measure all music by their benchmark. I think to myself would this song make it on to a Beatles LP. Yes, there have been plenty that would but not many by the same artist. Lennon and McCartney were obviously massive talents but if I was name my top 10 Beatles songs probably 4 of them would be Harrison compositions. One great songwriter in a band is good, two brilliant, three plainly unfair on the rest of competing bands and the Beatles had 3 brilliant songwriters.

I'm sure lots of people managed quite well without the Beatles, but someone once rightly said that the sixties didn't start till 1963, i.e. when the Beatles started, and how right that person was. For us who were 15 when Please Please Me came out it was immediately obvious that this was somehting really different and superior to the pop music we'd experienced up to then. The Beatles were around from then to the end of the 60s and split up in 1970 - sorry to be pedantic, Jean, but that was the timespan. Of course there were other great bands and the 60s isn't just the Beatles,but the Beatles along with Dylan (in a completely different way), broke the mould. Today's culture is what it is for better or worse, to a siginifcant extent, because of what the Beatles started. My teenage daughters love the Beatles (and Dylan). If you're ever in Liverpool the National Trust now owns the houses where John and Paul grew up. The days of our glory frozen in time. The programme was nostalgic for us who lived the sixties, but it really did miss out on the wonderful moment when the Beatles arrived back in Heathrow from their first American tour. They interrupted Grandstand (the main sports programme of the day) to interview them, an unheard of event. What the programme didn't fully explain was until then almost no British acts had ever got into the American charts - whereas the Beatles at one point had all the top five places in the chart. The British invasion followed and has continued.

Hi
I too was at Wimbledon Palais in the late Sixties with my friend and we were lucky enough to get right at the front - pushed up against the cage so we managed to hear the singing. As long as we faced front that is as the noise behind us was something else. We were 15/16 and in our enthusiasm to get to the front my friend collided with a policeman knocking his helmet off. The gig was an unforgettable experience. The Sixties were a great time to be alive and the music scene was totally varied, Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, Motown and as such there was something for everyone.

I was at the Wimbledon Palais gig. The screaming was so loud you could hardly hear them and the mesh of the cage was so dense seeing wasn't much better. But quite early on the girl in front of me took off her knickers and threw them at the stage. I got a bit distracted after that. Maybew that was Ann. Anyway I have been grateful to the boys ever since.

Mr Farren,
In this post and in your email Newsletter you seem concerned that the Beatles maybe isn't the sort of subject that Timewatch should be covering. Yes it is! As someone who was a teenager in the 60s I'm very much looking forward to this programme; my children (obviously too young to have been there the first time around) also (to my continuing surprise) like the Beatles, and hopefully will understand something of the extraordinary phenomenon that they were. More generally, I value very highly the range and variety of an umbrella such as Timewatch; I don't watch every programme (and wouldn't expect to), but confidently expect to find lots more equally in tune with my (fairly varied) interests.

I remember at school in the mid-1960s having a stand-in history teacher one week, and he started the lesson by saying 'They say that History is Now: write me an essay about the Berlin Wall'. (Possibly a cop-out on his part, but he did at least mark them!) I've just been re-reading the great '1066 and All That'; as I'm sure you remember, it ends after World War 1 with the statement that '...history came to a full stop'. Sellar and Yeatman knew perfectly well, of course, that it never does; and I feel that your concern about when it starts is also misplaced - your brief should not be arbitrarily limited by such considerations. Keep up the good work!

IanD

I saw the Beatles at the age of 11 the night after JFK was assassinated. I think that is classed as history so I can't see why the phenomenon that the Beatles were cannot also be called history

Yes of course it's history and wonderful it is too.
I was born in 1971 and so missed the whole Beatles thing. My parents were not Beatles fans. I had to find the Beatles myself. So programmes like yours are great, they help me to understand why they stop touring, why they were so ground breaking, etc.
My children enjoy listening to The Beatles now, they are 7 and 3 so Mr Epstein was right wasn't he.

Yes of course its history, don't listen to those snobs! Pre-sixties the UK was predominately a very stuffy uptight country, and youth were suppressed (does anybody remember expressions like: 'don't cheek your elders', 'speak when your spoken to', 'children should seen and not heard'? That's what the young had to endure. The Beatles played a large part in breaking that down, how? Well undeniable talent, charm and personality. Even the most conservative old duffer would find himself humming along to All My Loving or chuckling at their cheeky Liverpool humour. But here's the significant bit not only were they young they were untrained! They hadn't served their time. They couldn't read or write music but still managed to knock out better tunes than someone who had spent 5 years at music academy. So, for the first time properly youth had merit, it had skill and it was doing it not after a 5 year apprenticeship bowing and scraping to their so called betters, but with vitality, energy and raw talent. Now that is social history!

Editor

Yes it counts as history, and worthy of qualilty examination from a programme with high standards like Timewatch. The Beatles represented and stimulated a new global phenomenon identified by the programme makers, the emergence of youth culture. The Beatles broke so much new ground, they progressed as much in eight years as pop music has done since. They were democratic in writing songs for themselves. They introduced 'new' chords to the Americans. They are among the most influential musical artists of the twentieth century. The programme could have gone further, demonstrating the Beatles role in pushing the English language to the forefront all around the world.

> Can't say I disagree with you. Do watch the
> programme, and see if it offers any new insights.
>
> I'm personally very interested in whether people feel
> it is
> a) proper history - lots of the newspaper previews
> seem shocked that something that happened 40 years
> ago is "history".
> b) what the Timewatch audience wants to watch.
>
> JF
> Editor Timewatch

For me history is a time before I was born, what ever the subject. My personal cut off date is WWII, although I was born a couple of years after it finished. History is a voyage of discover for me and not a walk down memory lane. That is why times that I lived through are not so interesting and I can understand to some extent the comments about 40 years ago not being history.
As a member of the Timewatch audience I would watch topics that are presented in a new way and highlight ground not previously covered.

Regards
Jean Cheshire

Thank you for the excellent programme JF et al. Yes, I believe it most certainly belongs in the eclectic mix of your programmes. To examine just one aspect of the historical significance of the Beatles, it could be in their influence upon the Russian president when he was a young man, surreptitiously listening along with his cohort generation to the Beatles music on the western radio airwaves.
Andrew, aged 10 in '63

Yes,all that screaming!!No wonder John yelled"Shirrup you lot".It must have been absolutely awful for them but oh so lovely for all of us who were so fortunate to be there.Had no idea we were part of History, in fact their appearance at the Southampton Gaumont on 13th Dec. 1963 for which I was lucky enough to buy tickets was, I think, the last night of that tour.The Beatles were wonderful, I was so glad I caught the "Milk train" to join the ticket queue! It definitely was worth it but I think my boyfriend was not so sure-----he was terribly embarassed to be surrounded by histerical girls all screaming that John-Paul-George_Ringo had only eyes for them! Not knowing at the time of John's myopia I was convinced he was singing "Twist & Shout" straight towards me at the front of the Circle! Optimism of youth.It seems such a short time ago, certainly not 43 years.Loved them from the moment I heard "Love Me Do"-----it was so FRESH & DIFFERENT. My sons are so impressed that "I WAS THERE".

The Beatles first tour was in Jan/Feb 63 with Danny Williams and Helen Shapiro. Then in March 63 with Tommy Roe and Chris Montez. I know, I was there!

Sandra:

I can't believe the stuff I'm hearing on this forum - your story sounds like something straight out of a fanfiction! But it's so wonderful that there are people around from whom I can hear these things; as a teenage writer and shamefully obsessed Beatles fan, there's nothing that stirs up the imagination quite like it.

And funnily enough, I paste pictures of the Beatles on the inside of my locker. And my favourite was always George Harrison too. :)

I AGREE WITH TONY PROSSERS COMMENTS,EXCEPT THAT I WOULD LIKE TO ADD PRINCE TO THAT OF PAUL SIMON, AS A MODERN DAY GENIUS

I was lucky enough to be taken to the Beatles Christmas show at the Hammersmith Odeon. My parents took the whole family, though I think my sisters were too young at the time to remember it now. It was undoubtedly very noisy, but we could hear quite a bit of the music and the atmosphere was something none of us had experienced before.

I belonged to the fan club for years, collected the bubble gum cards, subscribed to the magazine, persuaded family to buy the LPs as gifts for self and sisters ... I can't listen to the music now without such strong memories of happy childhood that I probably can't judge it objectively. To me most of it still sounds good, the bits that were daft then are daft now and some is really splendid.

Alan,
The Beatles are and always will be the best band this world will ever see.
Cheers
Colin

> I saw the Beatles at the City Hall Newcastle Upon
> Tyne on 23rd November 1963. They were very
> professional even then, perhaps reflecting their
> experiences gained in Hamburg. The problem was being
> able to hear them above the din made by screaming
> females.
> The Beatles were and still are the greatest ever,
> closely followed by the Stones. If only music was as
> good to listen to to-day.

I saw the Beatles perform live at the ABC Regal Great Yarmouth approx. 1964 - it was not that good as I remember - the screaming/howling girls and women drowned out any possbility of listening to their music. The only number I really heard was 'Twist & shout' which John had to belt-out so hard he virtually lost his voice. However an experience to remember, just a pity they could not be heard for the talented band they were. The Kinks were on the same bill and came over much better.

I too was at that concert, and was probably screaming a bit as well. I can still picture them singing Twist And Shout and All My Loving from their 2nd album that I'd been given the day before. The ticket cost 5/- or 25p which is almost unbelieveable.

I always remember the date as it was the day after the assassination of JFK.

I was lucky enough to see them on their next UK tour at the same place. The screaming had almost stopped by.