This is The Beatles' most overlooked album. It's also the one that changed everything

On Boxing Day 1964, Another Beatles Christmas Show opened at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. The idea was ostensibly to repeat the previous year’s highly successful formula, with a cast of contemporaries including The Yardbirds, Freddie and the Dreamers, Sounds Incorporated and Elkie Brooks.

The Fab Four appeared throughout the show in various sketches, such as one in which they played Antarctic explorers on a quest to find the Abominable Snowman.

The fans came in their thousands, screaming from start to finish, and while the show finished with an 11-song set from The Beatles, they were very much wearying of such engagements.  The Beatles perform a sketch dressed in 'Eskimo' costumes at 'Another Beatles Christmas Show' at Hammersmith Odeon in London on 24th December 1964

Since they first became national figures in early 1963, they had joined in with the staples of the British light entertainment industry, from these Christmas shows, which echoed the UK’s tradition of pantomime, to performing skits on popular TV programmes like The Morecombe & Wise Show, mixing comedy with music.

But as this Christmas run dragged on, they grew to hate the pantomime pieces so much that they never played the traditional British entertainment game ever again. From here on, things would be different.

Source: classical-music.com/Paul McGuinness

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