Love Me Do: The Beatles '62

# MUSIC: "Love Me Do" by The Beatles

50 years ago, something remarkable happened.

Four young men from Liverpool released a record that changed everything.

# Love, love me do

# You know I love you... #

I was immediately struck by their music.

Their beat and their sense of humour onstage.

We never knew that music was going to change

the world's idea on what kids could do.

It's similar to when you hear the first and the great songs by anybody.

It's like hearing Heartbreak Hotel. Elvis's Heartbreak Hotel.

I mean, it's a moment you know is great.

1962 was definitely great for some

and a brush with fame for others.

It was John, Paul, George and Andy.

Me. Not Ringo.

This is the story of that momentous year.

The year where America and Russia played a game of global poker with nuclear weapons

and the world seemed minutes away from World War III.

We all stood looking towards the west

to see if there was going to be

some kind of major orange explosion in the sky or something.

A year when a new generation had something to say

and Liverpool hummed to the beat of 300 pop groups

as the city became the centre of the pop universe.

# Love me do. #

1962 changed my life completely.

One minute, I'm working as a secretary

in a general office just around the corner,

next minute, I'm in the hub of Beatlemania.

If you went abroad and spoke with a Liverpool accent,

you were treated like God.

That was how '62 was a momentous year in Liverpool

and elevated and changed so many people's lives.

It was absolutely incredible.

For the Beatles, it was a year of keeping secrets.

A year of intrigue, tragedy,

betrayal and ruthless ambition.

Tonight, we'll be finding out what happened, why it happened

and why we should all be thankful for 1962.

# Love me do

# Oh, oh, love me do. #

HARMONICA RECITAL

It's The Beatles!

MUSIC: "Some Other Guy" by The Beatles

# Some other guy, now

# Is taking my love away from me Oh, now

# Some other guy, now

# Is taking away my sweet desire Oh, now

# Some other guy, now

# I just don't wanna hold my hand Oh, now

# I'm the lonely one... #

This is the only surviving film of The Beatles in the Cavern.

It's August 1962 and one of Ringo's earliest appearances

with John, Paul and George.

The kings are in their castle and they're going down a storm.

In a few weeks, life for The Beatles will change forever.

But for the moment, the future is uncertain.

# Oh, now I'm the lonely one As lonely as I can feel, all right. #

To keep spirits up, they have their own catchphrase.

John Lennon will ask, "Where are we going, boys?"

And the band will reply, "To the toppermost of the poppermost, Johnnie."

The toppermost is still some way off.

So for the moment, The Cavern will have to do.

# Some other guy is making me very, very mad, oh, now

# Some other guy, now

# Is taking apart all of my past Oh, now

# Some other guy, now

# She was the first girl I ever had

# Oh, now, I'm the lonely one

# As lonely as I can feel

# Oh-ho-ho-ho

# I'm a-talking to you right now. #

HORN SOUNDS

# Moon river

# Wider than a mile

# I'm crossing you in style some day. #

Moon River was the number one song as 1962 dawned

and the New Year brought hope for many in Liverpool.

The days of the frugal '50s seemed at last to be long gone.

Beer was ten pence a pint, bread five pence a loaf.

The average wage was £800 a year.

There was much to look forward to.

None more so than The Beatles, who found themselves in London on New Year's Day,

auditioning for a recording contract with Decca Records.

# Hello, little girl

# Hello, little girl. #

The Beatles had high hopes,

but a hard day's night drinking in the new year had taken its toll.

The session did not go well.

It was a hangover to remember for drummer Pete Best,

who's just been voted the fans' favourite Beatle.

Brian Epstein read the riot act to us before we went down.

"Be good little boys. You mustn't be out after 10 o'clock."

And there we were in the middle of Trafalgar Square,

drunk as skunks enjoying New Year's Day.

Or the advent of New Year's Day.

And, of course, when we actually got to the Decca studios the next day,

we were late. Seems to be our history being late.

Brian, of course, was there before us and he was absolutely livid.

He tore a strip off us left, right and centre.

John just basically turned around and said,

"Brian, shut up. We're here for the audition."

All the bright hopes for the new year were overshadowed

as America and Russia went head-to-head in nuclear bomb testing.

The Cold War was entering an ice age.

It would become a global crisis later in the year.

On the dance floors, nobody seemed to care.

A new dance craze had everyone in a twist.

RECORDING: 'From Mayfair to Marseille, from Missouri to Manchester,

'the Twist has set the world's feet a-tapping.

'Everyone everywhere has danced to the beat that's topped the pops

'and inspired twist skirts, twist shirts and even twist haircuts.

'North London barber Tom Ahmed

'has translated this ding-dong dance into hair.

'A hairstyle which soon became a share style

'when the girls liked the look of their boyfriends' sleek locks.

'Once a male preserve, togetherness is now the order of the day.'

# Sweet dream, baby... #

In Liverpool, the place to buy records was at NEMS.

North End Music Stores, owned by the Epstein family

and run by Brian Epstein.

The store boasted they'd find any record you asked for.

One request for a German single, My Bonnie by Tony Sheridan,

backed by a group called The Beatles,

led Epstein to go and see them at the nearby Cavern Club.

He was so impressed, he offered to manage them.

They agreed a deal that gave him

25% of their earnings for the next five years.

In return, he vowed to get them a record deal in 1962

and tells everyone he meets they'll be bigger than Elvis.

The Beatles were then just four lads on that rather dimly-lit stage,

somewhat ill clad

and the presentation left a little to be desired,

as far as I was concerned

because I've been interested in the theatre and acting for a long time.

But amongst all that,

something tremendous came over.

And I was immediately struck by their music,

their beat and their sense of humour, actually, onstage.

And even afterwards when I met them,

I was struck again by their personal charm.

And it was there that really, it all started.

But Epstein was a troubled man.

Outwardly, he was the genial new manager of The Beatles.

But he shared with them a secret.

He was homosexual and ran the risk of being arrested

and facing a jail sentence.

For in 1962, it was against the law to have sex with another man.

Epstein risked everything.

The more he worked with The Beatles,

the more his secret life came under the spotlight.

He had already been badly beaten up and blackmailed.

There was one particular night that he'd spent in my company.

And we'd been out to dinner and we had a very nice night.

And I had a very nice apartment on Princes Road at the time.

But then he decides to go his own...

"Good night. See you."

And he went out

and er...met somebody who...

He was quite, um...I would say quite vulnerable, really.

If somebody said they liked him or made a fuss of him,

he'd be pleased with that.

But he would open himself up to the wrong type of people.

Anyway, eventually, he came back to me that same night.

When he left me he had a beautiful, white Peter England,

that was his favourite shirt. He came back to me and it was red.

As red as could be. He had been knocked about.

He would enjoy people who are rough. He liked their company.

Epstein tried to keep his secret life away from The Beatles

but there was one occasion

when he made his feelings known to Pete Best on a trip to Blackpool.

John and Cyndi were in the back seat, I was in the front.

We'd had a couple of pints and we could see the tower of Blackpool in the distance

and Brian turned over and very casually turned round

and said, "How would you enjoy spending the night with me in Blackpool?"

And it was said in such a tone

it wasn't just a case of having a couple of drinks

and I basically turned round and said,

"You're picking on the wrong kid, Brian. I'm not that way inclined."

He apologised. John and Cyndi were in the car.

They just sort of looked when we got out and they turned round and said,

"Did we hear what we thought we heard?" and I went, "Yeah."

And John just sort of went...

And nothing more was said.

I didn't go around with a great big placard

saying "Brian's propositioned me!" It was like,

it's happened, let's push it under the carpet

and that's the way we were treating it.

-# Do you love me

-I can really move

-# Do you love me?

-I'm in the groove

-# Now, do you love me?

-Do you love me? #

This is one of the most famous streets

in the history of popular music.

People come from all over the world to look

and to listen to get their photograph taken.

50 years ago though

only a select few in Liverpool knew that this was the place to be.

-# I can mash-potato

-I can mash-potato

-# And I can do the twist

-I can do the twist... #

Not much to look at upstairs but downstairs

what Brian Epstein called a Cellarful Of Noise -

dark, dingy, hot, sweaty -

everything a rock'n'roll club should be.

MUSIC: "Do You Love Me?" by The Contours

I think the Cavern was extremely important

to the groups in Liverpool.

One of the reasons was they had somewhere to practise

after the lunchtime sessions,

plus they could play as loud as they could cos it's a cellar,

and where it was associated it didn't affect anybody, the noise.

But there was also the atmosphere in the Cavern itself

and I suppose you know about the Cavern smell?

People said it was a horrible smell but I actually liked it.

It was a mixture of, as I say, body sweat, cleaning fluids...

But also we had the fruit market opposite

so you got the smell of fruit mixed in.

'Once more, Colonel John Glenn was all set to journey into space.

'He showed no signs of tension despite previous frustrations and delays.'

While Liverpool had its underground heroes, over in America

new, cleaner-cut versions were making the dream of space exploration a reality.

'This time, conditions were perfect. The launching itself without fault.

'All went well with the giant Atlas Rocket

'and at 17,545 mph Colonel Glenn went into orbit.

THEY CHANT: We want work! We want work!

But back in Liverpool,

the city was in the grip of one of its worst unemployment crises.

30,000 men were out of work on Merseyside.

That's 33 men for every job vacancy.

More than double the national average.

It was this lack of jobs, especially for young people,

that helped create so many groups in the city.

If you were young in 1962,

music was the best escape route even if you were still at school.

I saw the Beatles

halfway through January that year

and I left school a couple of days later

because I knew what I wanted to do.

I started as a 15-year-old schoolboy,

only just 15 by the way,

and ended it playing in one of the biggest groups in Liverpool.

Also playing on the same bill two or three times week as The Beatles

at the Cavern and various gigs around Liverpool.

In Liverpool around that time, we had lots of clubs,

youth clubs, and in the youth clubs they had boxing, table tennis

and whatever, football and music.

So you either boxed or you played music

and we all had sense and we played music.

I boxed for a few years and that was enough for me.

So we thought, right, let's stick to the guitars,

leave the boxing to the big boys.

So we'd just form bands,

and there was hundreds of bands in Liverpool. Great rivalry.

We were great rivals with the Beatles onstage.

Offstage, best of mates.

John was my best pal but onstage - "Let's be better than them!"

There must be about 300 or so rock'n'roll groups in Liverpool.

You've only got to mention Liverpool

and all the fans start screaming and going wild. It's glamour!

But when you weigh it up it's rather ironic to think

that there's about twice as many people on the dole here as anywhere else in the country.

It is a good thing, the fact that they are on the dole,

as far as they can spend all day practising,

whereas, if they had a normal job, they wouldn't be able to do that at all.

Oh, in fact one chap used to play with us -

he was on and off the dole for about five years in all.

But, seriously, there's loads of vitality

and talent ready to break out of Liverpool at any time at all.

MUSIC: "He's A Rebel" by The Crystals

The Beatles exploded with energy.

Trips to Hamburg where they were playing eight hours a night non-stop

had turned them into savage young Beatles,

rampant, ready to rock and shock, dressed from head to toe in leather.

# Cos he's not just one of the crowd... #

We bought leather pants and we looked like four Gene Vincents,

only a bit younger, I think.

And that was it - we just kept those,

the leather gear, till Brian came along.

It was the first thing that Epstein changed.

He put them in suits.

It was a bit sort of old hat anyway, all wearing leather gear,

and we decided we didn't want to look ridiculous,

just going on because, more often than not,

too many people would laugh. It was just stupid.

We didn't want to appear as a gang of idiots

and Brian suggested we just sort of wore ordinary suits.

So we just got what we thought were quite good suits

and just got rid of the leather gear.

-Can I talk to you about Brian Epstein?

-Oh, certainly, yes.

-What does he mean to you as a manager?

-Brian? Oh, money!

No, seriously though, he has done a lot for us.

He tells us all kinds what to do.

He made us that were suits and look better and everything.

But even in our private lives he plays a hell of a lot.

When we met Brian,

Brian would say to us, "Slow down when you're talking.

"I don't know what you're saying." Cos we were Scouse.

HE SPEAKS IN IMPENETRABLE SCOUSE ACCENT

"Whoa," he'd say, "If you become famous,

"how can you go and talk like that on the radio or television?

"Slow down, take it easy." And we thought, "All right."

And he said, "If you go out, wear a suit.

"Don't wear your jeans and an old t-shirt, wear a suit."

Decca Records weren't impressed by The Beatles in suits or leather.

They turned down the chance to sign the group.

The lines of rejection are recorded forever in infamy.

They told Epstein...

The news threw Epstein into the depths of despair.

He was the one who felt the rejection more than anyone else

because he was the new kid on the block, in a way, if we could put it that way.

He was the new manager, big hopes, major record company, Decca,

and more or less thinking to his own sweet self, this one's in the bag.

We turned round and told Brian,

"We lost that one. It doesn't change the way we perform.

"In fact, it makes us a little bit more determined.

"But it is also going to make YOU more determined as well.

"YOU'VE got to get over the rejection."

I think that was the message that we put out.

Still reeling from the Decca rejection,

The Beatles were shocked to discover their friend and former Beatle, Stuart Sutcliffe,

had died from a brain haemorrhage in Hamburg.

Sutcliffe was the king of cool.

The boy with the James Dean looks, who dressed in black,

and who John Lennon said gave The Beatles their style.

He was also a talented young artist

and John Lennon's closest friend at art school.

He'd left the group the previous year

and gone back to studying art while they were in Hamburg.

That's all he ever wanted to be.

He never ever had an ambition to be anything else.

When parents ask children,

"What are you going to be when you grow up?"

He'd always say, "I want to paint." And he did.

For Stuart, leaving The Beatles was a difficult choice.

It was over the months that he realised

that he really couldn't manage both.

There weren't enough hours in the day.

I think he was terribly upset and worried about telling John.

Rightly.

John felt the loss of Stuart more than the other Beatles.

I think he felt quite betrayed.

And, in some ways, he had a right to feel,

you know, he'd done a lot to ensure that Stuart was with him,

and part of his passion and what a passion he had.

So he was generous with his passion

and Stuart was generous with his with John and I do believe

he felt that Stuart took that away from him.

Which to some extent he did.

Sir Peter Blake, the leading light behind British pop art,

was a close friend of The Beatles for many years.

He designed the front cover of the Sgt Pepper album and would later

paint this portrait of The Beatles from photographs taken in 1962.

Sir Peter has close links with Liverpool.

In 1961, he won the prestigious John Moores Young Artist Of The Year award.

He believes Sutcliffe was a rare talent.

It was something John Lennon would always champion.

Oddly enough, the very first thing

that John Lennon said to me when we first met,

for some reason the John Moores came up

and the fact that I'd won the junior prize, and he said,

"You should never have got that, Stuart should have got that."

And he meant it. So his first... He was always kind of abrasive

but his very first statement was that -

"Stuart Sutcliffe should have won that junior prize, not you."

In a grumpy way.

You don't get as many ferries across the Mersey anymore.

You don't get much craft of any kind really.

But back in 1962

Liverpool was one of the world's major seaports.

The docks would've stretched for miles along here

and craft of every kind would pour in from all over the globe bringing cargo of every kind

including one that made Liverpool pop capital of the world.

Many of the ships were coming from New York.

For those in Liverpool, America was the land of milk and honey.

And records. Chunks of vinyl you couldn't get anywhere else.

And the boys on the boats were bringing them home.

They'd come from the States with records

and there was always one person from every family who was in the merchant navy going back and forward

and they'd bring the records in with them.

The first one I heard which changed my life was Elvis Presley

singing Hound Dog and Heartbreak Hotel.

And I had a skiffle band,

and when I heard it and heard the piano in it,

I thought, I want a piano in the band.

So we got a piano in our band

and we were the first band in Liverpool with a piano.

Thanks to Elvis and thanks to all the people bringing the records in

and that was very important.

MUSIC: "Good Golly Miss Molly" by Little Richard

They used to bring furniture back, kitchen furniture in particular,

because we were refurbishing our homes

and the American kitchen table and four chairs was Formica

which we didn't have up to then.

They were bringing those home.

And various other things. Boxes of nylons.

But my brother preferred to bring me in particular

the records that I wanted.

# Good golly, Miss Molly

# Sure like to ball

# When you're rocking and a'rolling... #

These records were coming in on the boats

so then they'd get circulated around the music community in Liverpool,

kids at home would be learning the lyrics.

You'd put the needle on the edge of the record

and you'd play it through, somebody would be jotting down the lyrics

and get as far as you could

and then wind the single back on the turntable again,

let it go, jot down the next set of lyrics.

That's how a lot of the lyrics were learned,

cos kids couldn't buy sheet music necessarily.

It perpetuated, it was fascinating because it perpetuated.

If you were listening to, I don't know, an old Bobby Darin single or something

and he mispronounced one of the words

as everybody was writing it down,

that missed lyric would then perpetuate into the English version.

-So, it was, you know...

-HE LAUGHS

All of this demonstrates the innocence of the time really.

MUSIC: "Town Without Pity" by Gene Pitney

Liverpool still wore the proud face of Victorian prosperity

but its body was broken.

It had the worst housing problems in Britain.

80,000 homes were regarded as not fit to live in -

that's slums to you and me,

and it brought with it its own problems.

About 15% of the children live in small houses shortly due for demolition.

Not so long ago, a little boy came to school in great distress

because his pet dog had been killed

by a rat at the bottom of his bed that morning.

Also, they have very little background knowledge.

We try to take them out to parks and farms.

This week, some of them

saw the cow for the very first time in their lives.

There'd been ambitious plans since the war to rehouse people

from the city centre in new suburban housing estates.

Most houses, though, still had an outside toilet,

no fridges, no central heating.

# Many problems... #

We still had the dolly peg in the tub and she'd do the washing

and she'd say, "Right, Gerry, your turn." Never called me Gerry.

"Right, Gerard, dolly." "All right, Mam, dolly."

So I'd get there...for an hour.

After an hour you've got muscles...

That's why Liverpool women were hard cases.

They had big muscles with dollying, going down the wash house.

But that was life, you didn't think of it being wrong.

The houses where we lived were slums? They weren't slums at all.

The steps were spotless, the brasses were clean, the house was great.

And they'd say, "Where we live, we can leave our doors open."

And we said, "Yeah, because there's nothing to steal."

This is the kitchen of a fairly typical Liverpudlian council house,

built just after the Second World War.

So there's no microwave or dishwasher obviously

but there's a twin tub - very smart - Belfast sink.

It's a good example of the social housing of the day.

But that's not the only reason the National Trust bought it.

They bought it because this is the house Paul McCartney grew up in.

Paul lived here with brother Mike in 1962.

Paul would write songs while Mike would take photographs.

So this is where, in some ways, you could say the Beatles story really begins.

In the garden of Forthlin Road where, it's said during 1958, Paul McCartney,

playing truant from school wrote the bulk of what would become

Love Me Do with a little addition of a middle eight by one John Lennon.

But neither he, nor John,

nor anyone could have known what that little song would lead to.

For years, legend has had it that Love Me Do was written about Iris Fenton.

Iris was the envy of all her friends in 1962.

She was 17 and a dancer.

Better still, she was dating Paul McCartney.

It wasn't until the end of '61

that I think I started to notice him as a fella, sort of thing.

Then we went out for quite a long time, until '63.

But, in saying we went out, I wasn't always in Liverpool,

he was often in Hamburg.

There were letters he used to write all the time and everything

and it was really good fun.

Initially, we would go out on a Tuesday to the pictures

and sometimes he would pay and sometimes I would pay.

It was all so very different. We would get the bus then.

But I was with him when he got his first car.

So it all sort of grew from there.

Some people have asked me about Love Me Do

and whether it was written about me. It wasn't.

It was written before I was going out with him

and it might have been written about his girlfriend before

but it was definitely not written about me.

Iris was sister of Rory Storm.

Rory and his group The Hurricanes were one of The Beatles' closest rivals.

They had a drummer called Richard Starkey - Ringo to you and me.

And the bands would meet up after sessions at the Cavern.

Of a night, whatever groups had been on at the Cavern,

they all used to come back to our house.

It was called Stormsville.

They called me mum and dad Ma and Pa Storm.

Well, the Beatles used to call me dad the Crusher

and they called me mum Violent Vi.

I've got no idea why! But everybody used to come back to our house.

It was...

Mum used to make chip butties or cheese barm cakes

and pots and pots of tea.

And we just used to laugh all night and people would be strumming guitars

and me dad would be in bed shouting, "Who's using my electricity?"

And next door would bang on the wall, but it was absolutely fantastic.

Anyone who went to Stormsville, ask them

and they'll say there wasn't a house like it.

A crime show based at Kirkby, near Liverpool,

had the nation enthralled, and a new catchphrase was born.

-Z-Victor 1 to BD.

-Go ahead, Z-Victor 1.

The crime series reflected the key change in police policy

that many now regret - moving away from bobbies on the beat

into what became known as panda cars.

It was recorded live each week and offered

young actors like Brian Blessed and Judi Dench their TV debuts.

-What's your name?

-Judy Garland.

-Oh, aye?

-Shall I sing a song, like, prove it?

-Look, stop messing about, just...

-Hey!

-# Ever since this world began... #

-Hey, shut it.

-Well, you're not long on manners, are you?

-What's your name?

-Marlon Brando.

-Oh, come on.

-Hey, no!

-We haven't got time to waste playing games with the likes of you.

-Oh.

# Oh, yes, wait a minute, Mr Postman... #

The month of May brought the best of news in a telegram for the Beatles.

Epstein's hard work had paid off.

EMI Records offered a recording deal on their small Parlophone label,

working with a young producer called George Martin.

He asked them to record a demo session of their songs

to help choose the debut single.

We had the recording session.

These were basically to let... as it turned out,

George Martin, Ron Richards and Norm Smith, that was the crew.

Er, let them know, you know,

these were the songs we were possibly considering.

Let them hear. And in a way it was, er, George Martin's decision.

I mean, he opted for Love Me Do, with the B-side being PS I Love You.

And that was the first release, the A and the B-side.

As August began, there was sad news from America.

Marilyn Monroe, the golden girl of Hollywood,

leaves behind a glittering and tragic legend.

Presentation to the Queen of England was but one climax

in a life that began drearily as an unwanted child

and ended in a lonely self-inflicted death 36 years later.

50 years on, the circumstances of Marilyn's death are still shrouded in controversy.

The Beatles share a similar mystery,

a whodunnit that still has no real answer - the sacking of Pete Best.

The plot thickens because we now know that George Martin

was unhappy with Best's style of drumming on the demo session.

He told Epstein he would probably use a session drummer

when they came to record.

But nobody was telling Best.

Lennon and McCartney shared a ruthless ambition to succeed.

If there was a doubt about Pete's drumming ability, then he was out.

And out he went.

Brian Epstein reveals in his book A Cellarful Of Noise,

"One night the three of them approached me and said, 'We want Pete out and Ringo in.'

"I decided that if the group were to remain happy Pete Best must go."

Epstein summoned Best to a meeting.

And I went in happy as Larry. You know.

The last thing in me mind

was that I was going to get kicked out the Beatles.

And when I walked in...erm...

Brian was very agitated, flustered,

he wasn't his normal cool, calm, placid self.

And he...mumbled

and basically talked round the subject for a couple of minutes.

And then he turned round and said,

"Pete, I really don't know how to turn round and tell you this.

"The boys want you out."

And I think the key word was, "It's already been arranged that

"Ringo will join the band... erm...on Saturday."

And that was the bombshell. To me it was like disbelief.

It was like, "Hang on a moment, I'll wake up in a minute

"and this is all gone."

Stuck for words, the bombshell had happened,

I turned round and told Brian, "What's the reason for it?"

You know, and he turned round and said, "They feel that Ringo's a better drummer."

Which at that stage didn't make sense, because I had

the reputation of being one of the best drummers in Liverpool.

It's fine if people think about me as, you know, the poor guy. That's their impression.

You know, poor emotions, I can see where it's coming from.

You know, "You should have been part of the biggest thing in showbusiness."

What they fail to forget is that, yeah, I mean,

I have a lot of pride and, you know, hold my head up high,

the fact that, yes, I did a lot for that band initially.

You know, I had two years with them. Maybe I would have had more.

Karma turned round and said it wasn't meant to be.

You know, but whatever I achieved

and whatever I achieved afterwards and since then

I've always been proud of the fact.

And it's always nice to have been associated with the number-one band in the world.

You know. Regardless of how people feel, they can't take that honour away from me.

The drama of the Best sacking was overshadowed by world events.

In August, Russia places nuclear missiles on Cuba.

They're pointing one way - at the USA.

For a few weeks, it seemed the world was on the brink of a nuclear war between the superpowers.

-NEWSREEL:

-At the White House, making the announcement to the waiting world,

Mr Kennedy said that only a few days before Foreign Minister Gromyko

falsely assured him that Russia had put no rockets on Cuba.

Photographic proof to the contrary was soon in the President's hands.

It was going to happen at three o'clock one afternoon,

they were going to drop the bomb or...there was going to be

some kind of, you know, major global event, and I remember...

we had a rugger match... HE LAUGHS

..that day...

and the teams, we ran out onto the pitch

and we all stood looking towards the west

to see if there was going to be some kind of major sort of orange explosion in the sky or something.

So we were very aware of it, cos CND,

the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, were so active in those days,

and in Northampton, where I lived, there were a lot of demonstrations

in the centre of town, so, yeah, we were very aware of it.

I was in Hamburg when that happened.

I remember that very strongly, cos we all had a bit...do-do...

World War Three here we come. And we were there with our band.

And Kingsize Taylor had just left.

But his roadie, John Fanning, had stayed to work in the Star Club

and he had his bags packed ready to come home!

He said, "Oh, no, I'm going." We said, "Nah, stay."

We said, "Well, by 12 o'clock tonight we'll know, one way or the other."

We said, "Right. Two more bottles of whisky, please,"

and we just carried on drinking!

So, if World War Three would have happened, we wouldn't have known!

-NEWSREEL:

-American warships blockaded Cuba and Russia took the missiles away.

The Kremlin bluff was called

and, for that, 1962 hailed President Kennedy as Man of the Year.

Now, some people say you can trace the moment when the '60s began to swing back to August '62.

Birth-control pills are finally available for widespread use in Britain.

It will be the start of a sexual revolution that empowered women for the first time.

Ironically, John Lennon's girlfriend Cynthia Powell was pregnant.

They secretly marry in what John called his shotgun wedding.

There must have been something in the water in 1962

because it was a record-breaking year for pregnancies.

484,000 births were recorded.

It was the biggest baby boom since the war.

A third of all births were delivered at home.

In 1962, to have an illegitimate child was socially

one of the worst things that could happen to a young woman.

Well, in those days, you know, if you look at the records, I think,

there was...quite a few girls who were having babies out of wedlock,

as it was called in...well, it's still called that, obviously.

But, erm... And it was all kept quiet and a lot of those babies, erm...

you know, er, they...they didn't keep, you know.

Er...I know personally of three of four...babies,

and roughly that period as well, actually, '62, '63.

Erm, so obviously it was sinful,

looked upon as sinful to have a baby out of wedlock.

And, as John says, he did the right thing marrying Cynthia.

When...John and Cynthia married it was a bit of a shotgun wedding,

which...

Yeah, some people were surprised, but...I suppose at the time

in Liverpool there was quite a few shotgun weddings then.

And...I think everybody just wished them luck and love

and everything else, and it...wasn't a big deal.

We were far more progressive in Liverpool

than the rest of the world, you see.

Epstein brought the Beatles' communication shutters down in a bid to keep John's marriage secret.

Elsewhere, it was good to talk,

as a new television satellite brought the world a little closer.

MUSIC: "Telstar" by the Tornados

-NEWSREEL:

-At the controls, the Post Office engineers directed the aerial

in line with a signal from Telstar

more than 2,000 miles out over the Atlantic.

Captain Booth and his team were happy men.

A few more Telstars in orbit

and we could have all-round-the-clock world TV.

I still remember now the old sort of hazy black-and-white pictures of...

with Raymond Baxter, erm.... standing by the screen

hoping to get some kind of signal from the satellite,

which hazily, eventually, did come through.

You know, so this was an absolutely massive event, you know,

a satellite arcing round the Earth sending pictures back.

You know, this was revolutionary stuff.

And of course...Telstar provided a massive hit.

You know, the Tornados, Joe Meek.

It was a brilliant record and it was the first single by a British band

ever to top the American charts.

That was in '62.

Just three weeks after Pete Best's sacking, the Beatles,

with new drummer Ringo, went into Abbey Road Studios on September 4th

to record with George Martin.

It should have been their moment of triumph. It wasn't.

To find out why, we travelled to a small town near New York.

Andy White lives here now.

He's 82, and was one of the world's top session drummers

back in the 1960s.

Ironically, George Martin wasn't happy with Ringo's drumming either,

so a week later, on September 11th,

the call went out to Andy to bring his drums to Abbey Road.

Well, the strange thing was that...

it wasn't George Martin who booked me.

It was a guy called Ron Richards. And, er...

..what happened was that George couldn't make this session,

George Martin.

He couldn't get there till the end, so he had Ron Richards...handle it.

See?

And meanwhile they'd had, er...Pete Best do...

you know, have a go at the songs,

and then Ringo, and they didn't...

..exactly know what was wrong, you know, but it just didn't feel right.

When he walked in, he says Ringo was standing there like a spare part.

Someone gave him a tambourine to play while Andy took over on drums.

It was OK. He didn't really say anything. You know.

In fact, I hardly spoke to him.

I said hello when we were introduced and that was about it.

First of all, they weren't working from music.

The stuff had been done, the music had been done by Paul and John.

So they were the main characters in the recording studio, for me.

Because they knew what they wanted.

You know, what sort of beat they wanted.

And, er...what I was trying to do with the bass drum

was follow Paul's pattern,

the same pattern on the bass drum, you know, to enhance it.

The technology of the recording process

was so different in those days.

I mean, you were basically going from floor to tape, mixed,

that was it.

You know, through perhaps a maximum of a four-track recording desk.

So you were basically recording a live performance in the studio. That was it.

And maybe you could put a bit of overdubbing on one of the channels

for an extra vocal or whatever it was,

but basically, therefore, the band is coming in, they're setting up,

they're playing live and you're recording that moment.

And, OK, so that take didn't...quite work,

so the band just played the song through again and you'd record that.

And then that didn't quite, so they'd play it through again.

So you've got a whole number of different takes,

but they're complete, and then you choose which is the best one,

so, er, you know, you could do a single...

You'd expect to do three or four sides in three or four hours,

because that was it, you know.

You'd set up, the band would play,

the song lasted two-and-a-half minutes, you'd record it.

If the tape was great, "Right, do the B side,

"PS I Love You," "OK, here we go, one, two, three, four, boomph!"

You do that and that's how recordings were made in those days.

The first one we did was, er... Love Me Do.

And then we did PS I Love You and we did a version of, erm,

Please Please Me.

So I did three titles that day...

..in three hours.

Andy's brief brush with fame was rewarded

with a payment of five pounds for the session

and ten shillings to cover bringing his drums in.

The difference between the early Pete Best demo version

and Andy's Love Me Do is quite distinct.

It's amazing when you compare the two versions of Love Me Do

because the single that was actually released is pretty meaty.

It's got a lot of punch to it,

but the original version doesn't really have that if you listen to this for a second.

SLOW INTRO TO "Love Me Do"

OK, this was the way that it was originally done...

..and it sounds OK, you know, it's, er...

but it doesn't sound special, I don't think, in any way.

# Love, love me do... #

It's all pretty flat and OK...

if I just stop that for a second

and now listen to the version that was actually released as a single.

JAUNTY INTRO TO "Love Me Do"

Instantly, you know, it's got more punch,

it's got more bottom ends, it's got more drive,

and then when the lyrics... when the vocals come in, it's more conviction..

# Love, love me do... #

See, they mean it now.

# You know I love you... #

So...you wouldn't think, would you,

that there'd be that huge difference, but there is?

# Love me do... Whoa-oa, love me do... #

I heard them playing it and I thought it was crap.

I said, "I don't like that song."

And then they said, "Well, it's going to be our first record."

I said, "Oh, you can do better than that.

For me, at the time, it just didn't stand out as a great song and...

I don't know, to this day, I still don't particularly like the song.

I remember buying it.

I didn't have a record player

but I wanted it to get in the charts.

I think the whole of Liverpool bought Love Me Do,

but I actually preferred the B side,

because I used to like them playing...

I remember them playing that a lot,

PS I Love You, and I liked that and I couldn't understand

why that wasn't on the A side.

It got into the charts, I think, at 17,

and we were all very pleased about that.

And they were offered How Do You Do It?

They didn't want it, so we took it and it got to Number One,

so they weren't too happy about that,

and the next record, Please Please Me,

was the best one I think they've ever made.

Great song, which, of course, went to Number One. Fabulous song.

George Martin ended up with three versions of Love Me Do -

Pete's, Ringo's and Andy's.

The Ringo version made the charts here

but Martin preferred Andy's track

and it was later released abroad and went to Number One in America.

Andy also plays on the B side, PS I Love You,

and he now claims he was actually the drummer on one

of the Beatles' biggest hits, Please Please me.

From the drum sound, I can tell that it's...that I was on it, you know...

..because it was a vastly different sound to Ringo's drum set at that time.

This is before he got the Ludwig kit.

Each drummer gets an individual sound, er...first of all

by the way they tune the drums and then by the way they play the drums.

So that's what I recognise, the sound of the drums

and the way that it was played.

It's one of the more intriguing Beatle mysteries - for Ringo,

there would be a lifetime of fame, for Andy, years of obscurity.

But for a moment in 1962, he can look back and say...

It was John, Paul, George and Andy - me -

not Ringo.

The irony is not lost on Pete Best.

It was a little bit like I was imagining to myself

and I had a bright grin on my face when I heard about it.

I can imagine Ritchie going down there and Ringo,

sort of like, "I'm the new drummer, right, listen to me.

"I'm going to knock Pete into a cocked hat." Same thing happened to him.

Right? It was very much a case of

"Hear you, don't like what I'm hearing,

"so I'm going to get Andy White anyway."

And, of course, when it came back

and it became public knowledge that Andy had actually recorded on Love Me Do and PS I Love You

and on quite a few other little bits and pieces

it was a little bit like, "Well, as far as I'm concerned, serves you right."

You know. Er...

It was a little bit like, well, thank you for small mercies.

This is the living room where Paul would have listened to

his dad Jim McCartney's collection of records

by the likes of David Whitfield and Mario Lanza and Mantovani.

And in 1962 he added proudly to that collection with one of his own.

Love Me Do by the Beatles, Parlophone Records, R4949.

And after all the tears and heartache and intrigue,

Brian Epstein was not going to let this not be a hit.

# Love, love me do

# You know I love you

# I'll always be true

# So please

# Love me do

# Whoa, love me do... #

Rumours have always circulated that Brian Epstein rigged the charts

to ensure the Beatles had a hit record.

The best thing was, it came to the charts in two days.

And everybody thought it was a fiddle

because our manager's stores send in...these, what is it, record things?

-Returns.

-Returns.

And everybody down south thought, "Oh, he's buying them himself or he's just fiddling the charts," you know.

But he wasn't.

You could buy a certain amount of records

and know that that's the chance it got to get in the charts.

Well, Brian had a golden opportunity because he had friends

in the business who was buying and selling records at the same time.

And he knew the shops to put them in.

And he went and he bought ten thousand copies of, er, Love Me Do.

And that was in his storeroom in, er, Whitechapel,

because I've seen them, they were there, ten thousand copies.

I said, "My God, Brian, what are you going to do with those?" He said, "Don't worry, they'll sell.

"When we get them in the charts they'll be in demand."

And, er... He was very...

He was so enthusiastic about the Beatles that,

you know...he knew in his head that, er, they were going to be big.

I remember Brian Epstein,

because he was more or less managing us at the same time, er...

and he found out that we were, you know, on tour, he'd look at our gigs.

Oh, we're playing Sheffield or we're playing Manchester.

Erm...

"Well, OK, will you just go into this record shop and buy a few copies?

"Don't all go in at the same time, you know." Which we did.

So I like to think that we did help the Beatles, er, get to number 17.

If he did that with all his bands, the Dakotas,

Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Big Three, the Fourmost, Cilla...

You know, they must have been buying 'em.

Brian was very shrewd and he... he helped by being such a gentleman.

Everybody loved Brian, the style he had,

so if he spent ten grand, God bless him, it worked.

I don't know how much he spent on me but I got three number ones.

Thank you, Brian! God bless you, son.

For Brian, the means certainly justified the end result.

Love Me Do made a brief appearance at number 17 in the charts.

It dropped out after a couple of weeks

but it was a crucial breakthrough.

It gave the Beatles the credibility they needed.

I think, you know, to put into context its importance, if you like,

you have to kind of then wind the clock forward by 16 months or so,

to February 1964, when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Now, bearing in mind that prior to that America hadn't really

been that aware of the Beatles.

And then suddenly they exploded into the States in that way.

And all the records they'd put out so far then burst into the charts together.

So the Beatles had the whole of the top five of the Billboard charts by about May that year,

they had 14 singles in the Billboard Hot 100,

and among those records Love Me Do went to number one.

MUSIC: "Please Please Me" by the Beatles

# Last night I said these words to my girl

# I know you never even tried, girl... #

So how should we remember 1962?

Perhaps it's best to hear from those who were there.

'62 was a year of highs and lows. You know.

Erm...but a year which still sticks in my memory. You know.

It's 50 years ago, even though it doesn't seem it.

It never does.

But, yeah, it was a year full of high aspirations, dreams,

dreams were shattered and you rebuilt new dreams.

I'm just so glad I was a teenager in the '60s, in 1962,

the start of everything.

I think that was the best era to be a teenager.

I wouldn't like to be a teenager now, or any other decade.

I mean, it was just so exciting, the '60s. It opened everything.

Especially for girls.

My thoughts on '62. It was certainly a year that changed my life.

It changed a lot of people's lives in Liverpool,

and indeed the world, because of what happened in Liverpool in 1962.

People say, "Ah, do you remember the '60s? Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll."

Well, cos Rory was me brother I only remember the rock'n'roll, sadly.

Cos he went everywhere with me!

But it was a great time, and we didn't know that we were

going to be such a big part of history. Nobody knew.

We...we were all just people just growing and...and starting to find

a freedom that youth hadn't had for...for ever.

It's all a bit of history now, an ordinary year that became

a little bit extraordinary and started a wonderful legacy.

Beatlemania was here to stay.

Will we still be talking about them in another 50 years? I think so.

But even the Beatles can't have known what they were starting

back in Liverpool in 1962 or how long it would last,

as they took us all on a journey to the toppermost of the poppermost.

The people demand that you think, how long are you going to last?

Well, you can't say.

You can be big-headed and say, "Yeah, we're going to last ten years,"

but as soon as you've said that you think, we're lucky if we last three months.

Well, obviously we can't keep playing the same sort of music until we're about 40

Old men playing From Me To You, nobody's going to want to know, about that sort of thing.

So, you know, we've thought about it

and probably the thing that John and I will do will be write songs,

as we have been doing as a sort of sideline now.

We'll probably develop that a bit more...we hope.

Who knows, at 40 we may not know how to write songs any more.

I hope to have enough money to go into a business of my own

by the time we...erm...

..do flop. LAUGHTER

And, erm... I mean, we don't know, it may be next week,

it may be two or three years, but I think we'll be in the business,

either up there or down there, for at least another four years.

I've always fancied having a ladies' hairdressing salon, you know,

a string of them in fact.

And trot round in me stripes and me tails, you know, "Would you like a cup of tea, madam?"

MUSIC: "Love Me Do" by the Beatles

# Love, love me do

# You know I love you

# I'll always be true

# So please

# Love me do

# Whoa, love me do

# Yeah, love me do

# Whoa, love me do... #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd