Beatles author and music industry veteran DAVID STARK will be talking about his recent book “It’s All Too Much – Adventures of a Teenage Beatles Fan in the ’60s and Beyond” with Mike Nicholls, author of “My Life With Rock ‘N’ Roll People.” Plus live music including a few Beatles songs by acclaimed singer/songwriter Susan Black. The event will also be in tribute to publicist Judy Totton who sadly passed away this week. She secured many BBC local radio interviews and press write-ups for David’s book during the past year.
Yellow Submarine
IT’S ALL TOO MUCH is the unique memoir by music industry veteran David Stark, who grew up in north London during the 1960s as a dedicated Beatles fan and was lucky enough to meet his musical heroes on various memorable occasions. From gate-crashing the Yellow Submarine film premiere in 1968 (aged just fifteen) and ending up sitting directly behind the group, to meeting all of them individually in some extraordinary circumstances, David has some highly entertaining stories about his many Beatles encounters which have never been told before.
Apology from Beatles & Co
The evening will also include David recalling how he won free tickets the Beatles’ live TV show in late 1968/early 1969 which never happened as they played on the rooftop of Apple instead. However, as listings for Time Out magazine of November 1968 prove, the group had actually pencilled in three nights at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm between Dec 14-21st 1968. As David recalls, “that would have been a quite incredible event to attend. Instead, I ended up with a consolation prize of an advance copy of ‘Abbey Road’ plus a letter of apology from Beatles & Co. signed by Peter Brown and Ringo.”
All this and much more will be discussed on the night, plus David will be bringing various items of Beatles memorabilia with him.
TICKETS £13.00 (General admission) or £10 (Concessions).
Call Leonie at Pentameters to reserve places on 020 7435 3648 and pay on the night OR use the link below (+ booking fee).
It’s All Too Much is the unique memoir by music industry veteran David Stark, who grew up in north London during the 1960s as a dedicated Beatles fan and was lucky enough to meet his musical heroes on various memorable occasions. From gate-crashing the Yellow Submarine film premiere in 1968 (aged just fifteen) and ending up sitting directly behind the group, to meeting all of them individually in some extraordinary circumstances, David has some highly entertaining stories about his many Beatles encounters which have never been told before.
Brian Epstein in NEMS, where Raymond Jones asked for “My Bonnie”
Raymond Jones
RAYMOND ‘SPIKE’ JONES, having learned from his dad the best place to fish was wherever the fish are, pinned up a postcard on the upstairs notice board at Hessy’s Music Store. The place was as busy as ever, so his advertisement offering his services to any group looking for a rhythm guitarist or anyone interested in forming a group was sure to be seen by masses of people. He stepped back and nodded. The drawing he’d done of his Rosetti Solid 7 guitar wasn’t half-bad. The different shades of red coloured pencil he’d used to add texture and depth to the body of the guitar made the postcard really stand out.
“At least my time at the Art College wasn’t a complete waste,” he muttered under his breath. Then he turned and shouted, “Hey, thanks there, Jim.” And back, above all the noise, came Jim Gretty’s fluting tenor, “That’s all right lad, anything to help a fellow musician.”
Still smiling, he stood on the corner of Stanley Street and surveyed the mob of Saturday shoppers, then glanced up at the clock outside the Kardomah and saw it was almost three o’clock. He had twenty minutes before his bus was due and he looked at the few coins he had in his pocket, then across the street at NEMS.
Mersey Beat
Raymond Jones hadn’t got the new edition of Mersey Beat, yet. So he could read it on the bus home. That decided, he played matador with the traffic on Whitechapel and was just about to enter the store, when a smartly dressed young man strode out of the shop as if he owned the place. Spike took a quick step back and for the very briefest of moments the man looked at him intently with a quizzical smile on his face. “Do excuse me,” he said, “I’m late for an appointment.”
Then he disappeared in a cloud of after-shave. “Don’t mention it,” Spike muttered in his wake and made his way downstairs to the store’s jazz and popular-music record department in the basement. As usual the place was packed and knowing he didn’t have too much time he quickly went and stood in line and waited for a sales assistant to be free.
The girl at the record counter looked at him. “Yes, sir,” she said pleasantly. “What can we do to help you?” She tried to act just as she’d been schooled by Mr Brian, himself, and not be put off by the young man’s scruffy leather jacket and jeans. “Everybody,” she remembered, Mr Brian saying, “is an important potential customer and should always be treated as such. We must never, ever send anyone away empty-handed, if we can possibly help it. Satisfaction is all. That’s the NEMS way.”
The Beatles
“Er, have you got a record by The Beatles?” Spike asked. “Only, I heard Bob Wooler, the DJ, play it at Hambleton Hall, last Sunday and again at the Cav, Thursday lunchtime. He said it was from Germany. And I was wondering, if you’ve got it, can I have a listen, please?”
“My Bonnie”
“It’s called ‘My Bonnie’,” she said, smiling. “But, no, we don’t have it in stock, although you must be the eighth or ninth person today to come in and ask for it. Is it any good, like? Only, I haven’t heard it myself. But they’re fab, aren’t they, The Beatles?”
“Yeah, there’s no one can touch them, if you ask me.”
She pointed to the big poster for ‘Operation Big Beat’ pinned up on a nearby wall. “We’ve got tickets for that event, on sale, if you like?”
“No, thanks, very much. I’ve sort of got mine, already, like.”
In the true NEMS manner, she persisted. “Well, er, would you like me to order the record for you, then?”
“No, that’s okay, I only wanted a quick listen, but, er, I will take a Mersey Beat.” She handed him a copy from the top of the pile sitting on the counter and he handed her a threepenny bit. She smiled and he smiled back. “But, look, thanks for offering,” he said. Then he left.
A slim dark-haired young man in a smart suit came up and stood next to the young girl. “And what did scruffy want, Rita?”
“It was someone else asking for that new record by The Beatles, Mr Alistair. But he didn’t want to order it. He only wanted to have a listen.”
CODA| SOMETIME LATER
‘What’s this all about, Mr Epstein, sir?”
“Er Spike…?”
“My name’s Raymond, Raymond Jones.”
A shadow crossed over Brian Epstein’s face as he thought of the awful night, in Hamburg. He suppressed a shiver. “The thing is, Raymond, I…I really can’t thank you enough for what you did.”
“I didn’t do anything, Mr Epstein. Really, I didn’t.”
“But I was there, Raymond. I saw what happened with my own eyes. You kept it all from ending before it had ever really begun.”
“I’m sorry…I don’t follow.”
Bigger Than Elvis
“They’re going to be bigger than Elvis. The Beatles…John’s group…one day they’re going to be even bigger than Elvis Presley. I know it, Raymond. I see it so clearly. They have the talent…the¼”
Spike was on firmer ground here. “Yeah, they’re great, no one to touch them. But there’s hundreds of groups all round Merseyside…all of them dead set on beating The Beatles in the next Mersey Beat Popularity Poll.”
Charisma
“Yes, I write a column for Mersey Beat and know the editor, personally. And I’m very well aware of all the talent in Liverpool. It’s just that The Beatles are different. They’re special. They have something even more important than talent. They have charisma. One can’t take one’s eyes off of them. And as The Beatles become more and more famous, I want to ensure you’re a part of their story…forever.”
“I’m sorry, Mr Epstein, I still don’t follow.”
“I want to make you part of the legend, Raymond. One day I’ll tell the whole story. Write a book so people will know what really happened. And I’ll say you were there at the very beginning and that it was all down to you that I went out and discovered The Beatles.”
The Chants with The Beatles at Liverpool Town Hall on 10th July 1964
THE BEATLES BACK THE CHANTS/ SHADES AT THE CAVERN
Having been invited down to The Cavern by John and Paul, the Chants went to Mathew Street. They couldn’t get in to The Cavern!
“We went down there the following day and they wouldn’t let us in while they (The Beatles) were on,” said Joe Ankrah from the group. “Five black guys, standing outside The Cavern, which would have looked suspicious. So after they’d finished and everyone was coming out, they said we could come in then. The saving grace for us was that as we walked in, Paul remembered my name and said; ‘Joe, how are you?’ I told him I’d brought the band, and he was great. It was a really nice atmosphere.
“It was dark, the stage was lit and people were clearing up around us. He asked us to sing, so we started to sing ‘Duke Of Earl’. They were absolutely knocked dead, which was a buzz for us, because we’d been doing all of this rehearsing for twelve months and getting everything sharp without performing anywhere. It was refreshing to see people responding to what we were doing.
GO AND GET BRIAN EPSTEIN!
“Bob Wooler, the Cavern compere, was there and he heard us and said; ‘I must go and get Brian. So he ran down Mathew Street to NEMS to see Eppy, and then came back to us. Brian can’t come down now, but tell the boys not to speak to anyone or sign anything, and we were just bemused. The Beatles picked up their instruments and started playing. We were just happy to be playing with a band, as we were used to just singing together. I would start us off with the pitch and away we’d go.”
There was, however, one problem, and that was Brian Epstein. When Epstein arrived at The Cavern that night, he hadn’t realised that The Shades didn’t have musicians and objected to The Beatles providing the backing. However, after intervention from John and Paul, he was overruled and The Beatles backed The Shades.
JOHN AND PAUL INTRODUCED US
The Shades, who became The Chants, at The Cavern
“We found ourselves appearing at The Cavern that night and we turned up with these smart black shirts and suits. John or Paul said, ‘I’d like to introduce you all to some friends of ours, The Shades’, and then we walked on, wearing our dark glasses, our shades, being cool, all dressed in black, and we started singing. The place was in an uproar. We only had two microphones, with the lead singer on one, and the other four gathered around the second microphone, and doing our thing, and it was great. That’s where it all started.”
The Shades performed four songs that night: “Duke of Earl”, “A Thousand Stars”, “16 Candles” and “Come Go With Me”.
PAUL MCCARTNEY PLAYED PIANO
“I can remember going up to the Blue Angel after The Cavern”, Joe said, “and we did a few numbers with Paul playing the piano for us for Allan Williams.”
“After appearing with The Beatles, I signed with Eppy on behalf of the band, which didn’t mean much really, as we were under 21. But at least if people asked us to do anything, we could say no, because we were under contract.
PLAYED WITH THE BEATLES
“We played with The Beatles then a couple more times–once at The Majestic Ballroom in Birkenhead on 15 October ‘62, and then La Scala in Runcorn on 16 October ‘62, which I remember because we went over the bridge to this little cinema. Then we played another couple of times with them.
“Lots of our friends were starting up groups, but we were ahead of them, and had worked so hard on our stage presence. We were rough, but I had to tell the others that we can’t be swearing on stage, and getting into arguments with them, but we had to watch what we said, how we said it. We once had a complaint from a member of the audience at the Playboy Club in London because one of us was sweating, and another one had different coloured socks than the others!”
INSPIRATION?
There weren’t many black groups around in the UK at the time, so where did they get their inspiration? Joe explained: “I watched a group called the Deep River Boys, who did all the moves on stage, dancing around the microphone and maybe a little more cabaret than us. We were a bit snobby about cabaret because we didn’t want to do that. However, artists like Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, or the original Drifters, were a great inspiration to us. Furthermore, I would say all the black American vocal groups like The Marcels, the Del-Vikings, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin and so many more. They were all fantastic.”
The Chants with The Beatles at Liverpool Town Hall on 10th July 1964
With their career under the guidance of Brian Epstein, they should have had success, but it wasn’t to be. “We didn’t do much with Epstein really, because he was busy with The Beatles, Gerry and Cilla,” said Joe. They didn’t see them again until after they had come back from America in 1964, because they had this civic reception at the Town Hall. We were invited, and we were the only other band there. I’ve got the picture from the day to prove it, but the photo has never really been seen, maybe because it had black guys in it. It is hard to believe that it was happening back then, but we just accepted that was the way it was.
JUKE BOX JURY
The Beatles taped the episode of Juke BoxJury at the Empire Theatre between 2.30pm and 3.15pm on December 7, 1963. Juke Box Jury was a popular show hosted by David Jacobs in which panellists voted on whether forthcoming singles would be hits or misses. In the audience were members of The Beatles’ Northern Area Fan Club members. Juke Box Jury was broadcast later that evening between 6.05pm and 6.35pm, and was watched by an estimated 23 million people.
The first song to be judged was “I Could Write A Book” by The Chants, and this is how The Beatles rated it:
George: “It’s great. Enough plugs and they’ve got a hit.”
David Jacobs: “Are they being too generous?”
THE BEATLES VOTED IT A HIT
The Beatles unanimously voted the single a hit, but sadly, despite their support, it failed to achieve chart status. None of the group’s other records fared any better: their debut single, “I Don’t Care”, released in September 1963; “She’s Mine”, released in June 1964; and their last single with Pye, “Sweet Was The Wine”, from September 1964. Commenting on their period with Pye Records, Eddie Amoo commented, “They had no idea what to do with a black doo wop group. They just had no idea.”
The group never found record success despite further releases with Fontana, Page One, Decca and RCA. They toured with box office stars like Helen Shapiro, Bobby Rydell and The Searchers and went to Hamburg and played at the famous Star Club, where they were very popular. “All we had to do,” recalled Joe, “was play two sets of twenty minutes, whereas the other groups were playing three or four hours each night. We had a great time there and Manfred Weissleder was very good to us.”
THE REAL THING
The Real Thing
After they disbanded in 1975, Joey and Edmund Ankrah formed another group, OFANCHI, and enjoyed a degree of success on the television show New Faces. Eddie Amoo joined the Liverpool soul band The Real Thing, whose lineup included his brother Chris Amoo. They found UK chart success in June 1976 with “You To Me Are Everything”, which reached number 1 in the UK and number 28 on Billboard’s R&B Singles chart. Their follow-up UK hit, “Can’t Get By Without You”, reached number 2. They released a number of successful albums, including one named after the Toxteth area of Liverpool, their home turf.
The Chants were a fantastic group who should have made it big, especially with the help of The Beatles. Look them up on YouTube and listen to them. Fantastic!
They are among the “Fab 104” people who featured in my second book, “The Fab one hundred and Four: The Evolution of The Beatles”.
David Bedford
GET YOUR COPY OF THE FAB ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR NOW
The Fab One Hundred and Four: The Evolution of The Beatles
The Fab one hundred and Four: The Evolution of The Beatles tells how the four Quarrymen became the Fab Four of John, Paul, George and Ringo.
£49.00Original price was: £49.00.£20.00Current price is: £20.00.
I bought the LP in the early 1970s, the first CD on the day it was released in 1987, Let it Be …Naked in 2003, and the remastered CD in 2009. And now the Super Deluxe version is available on my streaming service. Every time you listen to a newly released version of Let it Be, it is like you hear it for the first time. And the amazing thing with the Beatles is that their music is fully up to that challenge. Every time you hear new things and understand their music a little better.
The Beatles “Let It Be Naked”
For You Blue
This time I was struck by the 2021 mix of the George Harrison song For You Blue. Of course it is a beautiful melody, the acoustic guitar playing by George is creative, and skilful and the drumming by Ringo low-key. What I did not realise before is that this is the only Beatles song where you can hear John play the steel guitar. And then Paul on the piano. What is he doing there? It is totally intuitive. Not something you have ever heard before.
The Secret of The Beatles Music
In The Secret of Their Music, the main chapter of my book The Beatles Era, A Quest for the Secret of The Beatles, I pay a lot of attention to their piano playing. Unfortunately the passage it too long to include here. Many other aspects of their music are discussed in that chapter and do believe that I have unravelled quite a bit of the secret of their music. New releases like Let it Be (Super Deluxe) make it clear, however, that the quest continues.
Leslie Cavendish, hairdresser to The Beatles and many more stars of the 1960s, caused a storm in 1969 when he revealed that John Lennon was worried about going bald. Of course, the story hit the headlines and suddenly everyone wanted to talk to Leslie about it.
Lennon Could Go Bald
Every publication wanted to tell the story of how one of The Beatles, the biggest names on the planet, was worried about their crowning glory, the famous “mop-top”, could be losing that crown.
John Lennon likely to go bald
Leslie’s Book
The Cutting Edge (Paperback)
The Beatles’ hair changed the world. As their increasingly wild, untamed manes grew, to the horror of parents everywhere, they set off a cultural revolution as the most tangible symbol of the Sixties’ psychedelic dream of peace, love and playful rebellion. In the midst of this epochal change was Leslie Cavendish, hairdresser to the Beatles and some of the greatest stars of the music and entertainment industry.
Jimmie Nicol, a Ringo “lookalike”, John, Paul and George in Adelaide
Adelaide can rightly claim to have honoured—and even enriched—Lennon’s life at times. For instance, Adelaide astronaut Andy Thomas used to enjoy listening to Sgt. Pepper’s in space. And in 1964, the Beatles had the biggest reception of their career, with 300 000 fans screeching like corellas along Anzac Highway to the Adelaide Town Hall.
Lennon described the Adelaide crowd as bigger than New York.
George Harrison and Paul McCartney both returned to Adelaide more than once in later years. Although tonsillitis prevented Ringo Starr from making it to Adelaide in ’64 (and made Jimmy Nicol an instant Beatle), Starr finally found his way here in 2013.
Lennon never revisited Adelaide, but Adelaide kept visiting Lennon.
Adelaide cameraman John Howard filmed the Beatles in Adelaide and also co-filmed the Beatles song ‘Revolution’ in London’s Twickenham Studios in 1968. During a break, Lennon approached Howard. They discussed Adelaide and Lennon said: “Jesus. I’ve never seen so many bloody people in my entire life.”
One of those bloody people, in the crowd at Adelaide Town Hall, was Chantal Contouri. The future international film and TV star found herself suspended from Adelaide High for escaping school to see the Beatles. Unfortunately for her, a front-page story in The Advertiser had quoted Contouri as saying “my school is a prison”.
Fast forward to London, 1969. Contouri was working as a waitress at the exclusive Revolution Club. She rubbed shoulders (and her pink suede boots) with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Raquel Welch and bands of brothers famous and infamous, from the Bee Gees to the Krays.
At the Revolution Club, Contouri became friendly with Lennon, who called her by her nickname, Chunky. He was unfailingly nice and polite and always said “thank you” to her.
Contouri arranged for a nervous Molly Meldrum to enter the club and meet Lennon for the first time. Meldrum proceeded to fall over and spill a drink on John and himself. Says Contouri: “John just laughed and then invited him to sit down.” A good friendship was born, thanks to an Adelaidean midwife.
A fellow Adelaide youth who saw Lennon in Adelaide and then London was Jim Keays, the charismatic frontman from Masters Apprentices. In ’64, Keays watched the Beatles travel in their open-top car along Anzac Highway. He froze when Lennon looked straight at him.
In 1970, Lennon made Keays freeze again. Keays was recording an album with the Masters at Abbey Road at the same time Lennon was recording his first solo album. Keays was left speechless when Lennon stood alongside him to pee at the Abbey Road urinal. “Because it was John Lennon, I couldn’t utter a syllable, and I went ‘Aaah, aah, waah, waah!’ And he finished his wee and walked out.”
Another time, Keays sneaked into Abbey Road’s Studio Two, where the Beatles recorded. He thought everyone was at lunch. To his surprise, Lennon was alone in the studio, so Keays hid behind some speakers and watched. “Lennon was fiddling around with a song, and he was singing, ‘A working-class hero is something to be.’ I thought, ‘Ah, that sounds good.’”
In a strangely similar pattern, Glenn Shorrock, lead singer with the Twilights and Little River Band, also experienced the Beatlemania on Anzac Highway. He then heard the Beatles record ‘Penny Lane’ at Abbey Road in 1967.
Shorrock, whose songs were ultimately produced by Beatles producer Sir George Martin, would later switch roles when Lennon listened to Shorrock’s music.
Enter May Pang. Lennon’s lover from 1973 to 1975 during his so-called lost weekend, Pang claims that she and Lennon continued to have secret trysts after Lennon and Ono re-united.
Jim Keays recreating his bathroom encounter with John Lennon. Photo: Michael X. Savvas
“In 1978,” says Pang, “John called me and asked me to come by for a visit. He told me there was a song on the radio that stuck in his head because it reminded him of us. He couldn’t remember the words, but he did know the tune and hummed it to me. That tune was ‘Reminiscing’ by [Adelaide’s] Little River Band, which surprised him. That became an ‘our song’ for us, and as it turned out, the last. Today, every time I hear the song, I know ‘Dr Winston O’Boogie’ is around.”
John Lennon’s son Julian is also convinced his father has shown him he’s still around. John had told him that after he died, he would reveal his presence through a white feather.
When Julian Lennon came to Adelaide in 1998, Aboriginal elders of South Australia’s Mirning people met him at Glenelg’s Grand Hotel. They presented Julian with a white feather (unaware of John’s statement about this). Julian felt John was watching over him, and as result, started his White Feather Foundation.
Perhaps John Lennon had revisited the site of his band’s greatest reception after all.
Michael X. Savvas is co-author (with daughter Olivia Savvas) of One Dream Ago: The Beatles’ South Australian Connections (Single X Publications, 2010).
Get Your Copy of Michael and Olivia’s Book
One Dream Ago
In 1964, The Beatles had their biggest reception ever, with 300 000 people lining the streets of Adelaide to see the band (minus Ringo). Adelaide and South Australia also had other (sometimes surprising) connections to The Beatles, many of which have never been written about before this book. One Dream Ago‘s striking cover artwork was created by Klaus Voormann.
