Beatles News

Sam Wright looks back at the Lancashire music maker who turned down The Beatles

“Just a bunch of youngsters, banging away on guitars, hoping to get somewhere.”

One Oscar, 10 Grammys and more than 1bn album sales later, Derek Marsh may have revised his first impression of The Beatles.

At the height of the post-war entertainment boom, Marsh and his record label, Deroy Studios, existed as a minor Mecca for ageing crooners and ambitious upstarts in the mid-20th Century.

It all began in 1947, when a young Derek Marsh ended his days with the RAF by handling Voice of the Forces, a small, war time recording service in India. Air force personnel, unable to get home for a family occasion or special celebration, would transmit their respective greetings and messages on six-inch records courtesy of both the War Department and Marsh’s technical expertise.

The service coupled primitive recording equipment with fervent enthusiasm, becoming a forces’ favourite in the process. With this post war gratuity, and passion for contemporary music, Marsh returned to his family’s private hotel in Riding Street, Southport, infused by the spirit of invention he had kindled in details

WHENEVER Lady Catherine Mancham hears The Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand, she thinks of Paul McCartney — with good reason.

He once held her hand in a suite at Melbourne’s Southern Cross Hotel.

Back then, Lady Mancham was Catherine Olsen, a young reporter with The Sun, and she had talked her way into a private audience with the Fab Four at the height of Beatlemania, just hours after they touched down in Melbourne on June 14, 1964 for a series of concerts at Festival Hall as part of their world tour.

Like any great reporter, she came to work on her day off on the off chance she might get the story of the day.

“I think we were all fans of The Beatles. I wasn’t a crazy fan of The Beatles but I thought that they were great, and I wanted to get the story because I was a keen young journalist and I thought it would be a feather in my cap,” Lady Mancham said.

“So I just hung around, met the manager and he got me inside the hotel. He plied me with drinks, he drank a lot himself, but I tipped my drinks into the pot plant and eventually I said, “’Right, where are The Beatles’, and he took me up there.”

More than 50 years la details

In 1963, The Beatles began a festive residency of Finsbury Park. We found it was an era when all the best bands played in Seven Sisters Road.

Every town or city where The Beatles played one of their early shows likes to claim the same thing: “Beatlemania started here.” There is Liverpool and Hamburg, of course. Hell, even some people in Romford claim Beatlemania started there after a couple of shows in 1963. In that case, we might as well add Finsbury Park to the list.

This week 53 years ago, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr began “The Beatles Christmas Show” – their residency of Finsbury Park Astoria in Seven Sisters Road.

Rick Burton, an expert on the theatre’s history, insists: “That was the start of Beatlemania. The shows were from Christmas Eve 1963 until January 11, but sold out instantly.

“The audience screamed when they walked out, and didn’t stop screaming. George Harrison said they were the best shows they ever did, and said Finsbury Park Astoria had the best audience.” The Beatles had only released two albums by this point, which meant they were not above doing silly sketches (described by one onlooker as “so bad&rd details

We’re closing 2016 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 9: James Woodall on celebrating the musical contribution made by the forgotten Beatle: Ringo Starr

‘He was the most influential Beatle,’ Yoko Ono recently claimed. When Paul and John first spotted him out in Hamburg, in his suit and beard, sitting ‘drinking bourbon and seven’, they were amazed. ‘This was, like, a grown-up musician,’ thought Paul. One night Ringo sat in for their drummer Pete Best. ‘I remember the moment,’ said Paul, ‘standing there and looking at John and then looking at George, and the look on our faces was like …what is this? And that was the moment, that was the beginning, really, of the Beatles.’

I think Ringo Starr was a genius. The world seems to be coming around to the idea. Two months ago, he was finally accepted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — the last Beatle to be inducted. About time too. On 7 July he turns 75.

Some might now plead, enough. Ringo should surely just be celebrated for being Ringo: daffy, doleful, odd. Ousting for good in mid-1962 the gloweringly sexy, Mersey-fan-adored Best, Ringo chanced details

This wasn’t the first time we’d shared a bill with the Beatles. A few years earlier, they were our warm-up band, when we headlined the Cavern in Liverpool. We really admired them.

I was the trombonist in the Mike Cotton Sound, a footnote to the 1960s music scene. On this occasion, we were their support band; we are pictured here at the press call for Another Beatles Christmas Show, a follow-up to their successful production a year earlier.

The show opened on Christmas Eve and ran until 16 January, and consisted of variety performances, with sketches and comedy that seemed anachronistic even then. Produced by a friend of Brian Epstein, it was lavish, with cascading waterfalls that flooded the stage. We started the night on a revolving podium and the leads kept getting tangled up. Jimmy Savile was compere; none of us liked him. He was an awful show-off.

At the press call, John Lennon knew all the photographers and journalists, and called out to them: “How do, Daily Express? How’s it going, Sunday Times?” So we called out, too, reflecting our lowly status: “Hello there, Willesden Chronicle!”

I’m standing next to the singer Elkie Brooks, apparently with details

As has already become clear during Wonder Week, Stevie Wonder is pretty much better than all other pop musicians at all the stuff that pop musicians do. Concept albums? Stevie did ‘em the best. Funky jams and schmaltzy love songs? Yeah, he nailed ‘em both. Oh, you thought it’d be fun to dabble in drumming? Self-taught Stevie only became, like, the best drummer on Earth.

And, of course, everyone covers the Beatles. Everyone. But it’s notoriously hard to cover the Fab Four, because they tended to perform definitive, unimprovable versions of their own tunes. The only exception? Stevie Wonder and his cover of “We Can Work It Out,” not only the best Beatles cover of all time but the only one that is definitively better than the Beatles’ original.

Like many Motown artists, Stevie Wonder was a Beatles fan—of sorts. “Stevie loved the Beatles, mostly Lennon and McCartney for their writing,” Wonder’s childhood best friend John Glover says in Mark Ribowsky’s Stevie biography Signed, Sealed, and Delivered. “That was where he saw their genius, not their performing—in fact, he didn’t think they performed some of their songs as well as he details

Sir Paul McCartney and wife Nancy Shevell supported his son-in-law on Monday in New York City. The 74-year-old rock legend and Nancy, 57, attended a screening of the upcoming British romantic drama This Beautiful Fantastic written and directed by Simon Aboud. Simon and Paul's daughter Mary McCartney, 47, married in June 2010.

The Beatles singer and songwriter kept it casual with a white shirt under black denim jacket and black trousers for the event at Park Hyatt. Nancy went with the casual chic look in a long-sleeved white blouse with gold trim. 

Simon, 51, looked sharp in a crisp white shirt, black jacket and black trousers. Paul earlier this year joined daughter Mary and her sister Stella, 45, for a screening of the film in London. The BAFTA screening in February also drew Noel Gallagher, Chrissie Hynde and former Dr Who star Andrew Scott. 

This Beautiful Fantastic was written and directed by Simon and is due out in the US in early 2017. The British romantic drama follows a young woman Bella Brown, played by Downton Abbey star Jessica Brown Findlay, who dreams of writing children's books. She lives next to a curmudgeonly old widower Alfie Stephenson, played by Tom Wilkinson, and they strike details

George, John, Paul, Ringo: they’ve all made solo albums, now. Listening to them all, all through, it’s difficult to believe that they were made by four men who once formed a band together. I hear no important points of connection.

I guess this is partly because each bottled up his personal ideas during the Beatles’ latter, bad days; and now the cork is out. I think there’s another reason, too. A couple of years back, reviewing the white album, I suggested that the magnetism of the Beatles could be seen in terms of the temperament of each man corresponding with the four elements (Harrison, fire; Starr, earth; Lennon, water; McCartney, air), and also the four humours. So that, working together, they could work for any listener, whatever his nature and mood. It would follow that, separate, their temperament would clearly be very different each from the others.

This notion works, for their solo albums. Take Ringo: he’s not bothered with a need to express any views of his own. Sentimental Journey (Apple PCS 7101), produced by George Martin, was a bread gig; quickie standards arranged by faces like Les Reed, Quincy Jones, John Dankworth, and Maurice Gibb. Beaucoups of Blues (Apple PAS 100 details

IT WAS 50 years ago today ... when an 18-year-old Richard Lush was learning his craft as a sound engineer and working on the iconic Beatles album, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Having started off his career mixing small sections of records such as Rubber Soul and Revolver, little did he know he was about to be become the chief sound engineer at Abbey Road Studios in London on an album, which not only came to define the 1960s, but is now arguably considered one of the greatest records of all time.

Mr Lush, who has called Sydney home since the 1970s, and fellow engineer Geoff Emerick, who now resides in Los Angeles, will take part in a 50th anniversary retrospective, discussing the legendary Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album at a Q & A event in Melbourne in February.

Mr Lush, who spoke exclusively to Leader, said the first song he worked on was A Day In The Life, which at the time was considered an ambitious recording.

“I heard it in basic mode, just some rhythm guitar, piano, then Paul dropped in the ‘woke up, got out of bed’ part in the middle, then the orchestra and the big chord at the end was done separately,” he said. “When it was details

A painting of Sir Paul McCartney by a Liverpool Beatles fan was given the thumbs up by the music legend himself.

Sir Paul, pictured below, shared the colourful piece by talented Kevin Allen on his social media pages as part of his regular “Friday fan art” feature.

The image – which uses bold shades of purple, yellow, blue and pink to make up the music legend’s face – has so far been liked a staggering 36,000 times on Instagram and 14,000 times on Facebook.

Fans have heaped praise on Kevin’s work, with one calling it “a fantastic psychedelic painting” and another hailing his “fantastic imagination”. Kevin’s sister Maria Dillon, 56, from Aigburth, submitted the photo on Twitter as a surprise – and said she was delighted Sir Paul had picked it out of the thousands submitted every week.

She told the ECHO: “Kevin has always drawn and he does all kinds of different drawings. I was looking at his pictures on my phone and I thought it was really amazing. “I said to my daughter, ‘Send that to Paul McCartney’ but she said ‘Mum he won’t even see it’. “I went ‘Well he might’, so details

Jacques Volcouve was a schoolboy fan of Jimi Hendrix in 1967 when his brother’s friend lent him a new album by a British band and urged him to listen to it.

The album was the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Volcouve loved it. It was the start of a 50-year obsession that has made the Frenchman one of the world’s greatest living experts on the Fab Four.

“The Beatlemania bug bit me and I was never cured of it,” Volcouve told the Observer. “I listened to the album and I thought the music was incredible. From then on, I wanted everything to do with the Beatles: records; newspaper clips, posters, memorabilia … everything.”

In March, Volcouve, now in his 60s, will see his collection of 15,000 records, signed books, posters, autographs, figurines and memorabilia go on sale at the prestigious Drouot auction house in Paris.

To mark the occasion, the French tribute band We Love You Paul has been invited to play during the pre-sale exhibition of the thousands of lots. For Volcouve, the sale will be a bittersweet occasion. He hopes that parting with what has turned out to be his life’s work will raise enough money to keep him in a details

Along with the centenaries of two Russian revolutions, next year will also mark the 50th anniversary of a rather more benign event that, even so, marked the overthrow of an old order. It was the release of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which had been in planning since before Christmas 1966 and burst onto the streets in June 1967.

Was that another “Ten Days that Shook the World”? Well, I can’t comment, because I was barely out of a pram at the time. But I’ll take the word of Rolling Stone critic and professor Langdon Winner, who later wrote: “The closest Western Civilisation has come to unity since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the week the Sgt Pepper album was released”.

There has, it is true, been some revisionism about the album (and about the Congress of Vienna) in the years since. It seems to have fallen slightly out of fashion, even among the group’s aficionados. To rephrase Hermann Goering, when the subject of the Beatles’ revolutionary effect on culture arises, many fans reach for their Revolver (1966) as the more important record.

Revolutionary For some John Lennon snobs, Sgt. Pepper is over-flavoured with Paul details

In its ongoing mission to support meaningful causes through the arts, The Jerry Garcia Foundation will host a Holiday Concert at the Harmonia Yoga Arts Studio on December 16th to benefit WhyHunger.

Inspired by John Lennon and his song, “Imagine,” the “Imagine There’s No Hunger” campaign endeavors to turn the dream of a world without hunger into a reality.

The Jerry Garcia Foundation is donating a collection of Jerry Garcia’s visual art to the WhyHunger organization. Select pieces will be on exhibit at Harmonia on the night of the concert as well. All proceeds generated from the concert and fine art will support the WhyHunger mission.

In addition, well-known rock poster artist, Stanley Mouse, has created a poster for the holiday benefit. Mouse has produced art for both the Beatles and the Grateful Dead.

The concert will be presented at Harmonia, located in the former Sausalito Record Plant recording studio. The Record Plant is legendary in the music world and the building has been minimally renovated to preserve its historic integrity. Countless luminaries have graced the studio’s doors. In October 1972, John and Yoko Ono attended the Record Plant’s details

Paul McCartney will reissue his 1989 album, Flowers In the Dirt, with a slew of rare demos with Elvis Costello and never-before-seen video footage March 24th via MPL/Capitol/UMe. The release will be the 10th installment in McCartney's archive collection, available in three different formats: A three CD/1 DVD set, a two CD set and a double vinyl LP.

All three editions will include a remastered version of the album and a set of McCartney and Costello's original and previously unreleased demos. Those include early versions of the four songs Costello contributed to Flowers In the Dirt ("My Brave Face," "You Want Her Too," "Don't Be Careless Love" and "That Day is Done"), plus "The Lovers That Never Were," which ended up on McCartney's follow-up Off the Ground, and "Playboy to a Man" and "So Like Candy," which appeared on Costello's 1991 LP Mighty Like a Rose. The other two demos, "Twenty Fine Fingers" and "Tommy's Coming Home," have been bootlegged, but never officially released.

The three CD/1 DVD set of Flowers In the Dirt will also come with an extra set of demos from 1988, as well as a download that includes b-sides, song remixes, single edits and three unheard cassette demos, "Don't Want to Confess," "Shallow G details

A BEATLES fanclub magazine unwittingly donated to a charity shop in a box of records has sold for almost £6,500 because it was autographed by the Fab Four.

The unlucky owner did not realise the valuable programme was inside the box before they went to an RSPCA shop in Somerset to hand it over. When staff sifted through the old vinyl records they plucked out the Beatles magazine that had a colour photo of a John, Paul, George and Ringo on the front cover. Crucially, the item had been signed by all four members of the group in Biro at the same time, probably after one of their concerts in the early 1960s.

An RSPCA volunteer took it to Lawrences auctioneers of Crewkerne, Somerset, to see whether the autographs might have been faked. After careful examination by two Beatles' aficionados the item was declared genuine and was offered up for sale, with the proceeds going to the RSPCA. It had a pre-sale estimate of £1,000 but was bought by a known Beatles collector for £6,470.

Simon Jones, of Lawrences, said: "It was an amazing find by the staff at the charity shop who showed great diligence. "The magazine could easily have gone on to be sold to a customer for just a couple of pounds.

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