one of my favorite beatles-related things ever (2 february 1963) if anyone cares
(note: found in ‘the mammoth book of the beatles’. titled ‘why the beatles create all that frenzy’ by maureen cleave)
"The Beatles are the darlings of Merseyside. The little girls of Merseyside are so fiercely possessive about their Beatles that they forced Granada to put them on television, and they wouldn’t buy their first record in case they should become famous and go away to London and leave them.
Fortunately others did buy it, and now they are buying the second one, “Please Please Me”, at the rate of 50,000 a week. They are a vocal-instrumental group, three guitars and drums, and they don’t sound a bit like The Shadows, or anybody else for that matter.
But I think it’s their looks that really get people going, that start the girls queuing outside the Liverpool Grafton at 5.30 for 8pm. Their average age is twenty and they have what their manager likes to call “exceptional taste in clothes”. They look scruffy, but scruffy on purpose.
They wear bell-bottom suits of a rich Burgundy colour with black velvet collars. Boots of course. Shoes seem to have died out altogether. Their shirts are pink and their hairstyles are French. Liverpool lads of twelve and upwards now have small bouffant Beatle heads with their fringe brushed forwards.
On stage, there’s none of this humble bowing of the head, or self-effacing trips over the microphone leads. They stand there, bursting with self-confidence and professional polish — as well they might, for they have been at this game since 1958. They know exactly what they can get away with, and their inter-song patter is in the Max Miller-music hall tradition, with slightly bawdy schoolboy overtones.
John Lennon has an upper lip which is brutal in a devastating way. George Harrison is handsome, whimsical and untidy. Paul McCartney has a round baby face, while Ringo Starr is ugly but cute. (He’s called Ringo because he wears two on each hand.)
“Their physical appearance,” said my friend, who is a Liverpool housewife, “inspires frenzy. They look beat-up and depraved in the nicest possible way.”
They are very friendly and charming. They like each other and everybody else, and are seen around a good deal. They also write their own songs.
They are considered intelligent, three of them went to grammar school, and John Lennon had more education at the Liverpool College of Art.
“It helps being intelligent, I suppose,” he said, “though, mind you, I’ve met people in this business who aren’t as thick as they look. On second thoughts, I’d rather be thick and rich than bright and otherwise. We all want to get rich so we can retire. We don’t want to go straight or get to be all-round entertainers. We’d like to have a bash at acting; not that we can do it but we’d like to see ourselve up there. People try to pin labels on us. Now they say we’re rhythm and blues, but ever since I read two years ago that calypso was taking England by storm, I’ve never believed a word I read. For us, this is just good fun. We don’t really bother about what we do on the stage, or on television for that matter. We practise what we call ‘grinnings at nothings’. One-two-three, and we all grin at nothing. When we go on tour with Helen Shapiro next week, I don’t know how we’ll manage. I thought I might lie down on the floor, like Al Jolson.”
Paul McCartney said John was self-confident because he was too blind to see all the nasty little faces in the audience not enjoying it.
“He can’t see a thing,” said Paul. “Can’t tell how they’re taking it. He develops these catch-phrases. You know what his latest one is? ‘Thank you folks, you’re too kind.’ Imagine that — ‘Thank you folks, you’re too kind,’ twenty times over. After a bit, the audience joins in. It drives us daft and we get him to change it.”
“Actually, John has a great laugh about being blind. Our humour is based on anything other people don’t laugh at — death, for instance, or disease. It sounds dreadful if you write it down, but it’s the cruel stuff, the cruellies, that make us laugh. Not that we’re unkind, or anything. We’re just silly.”
You can dance to The Beatles, but my Liverpool housewife says most people prefer to listen.
“They like to sit and throb,” she said, “or stand and throb, and the walls stream with sweat. It’s lovely.”
It takes you back, doesn’t it? To the early days of rock ‘n’ roll."
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