Seeing but not quite hearing The Beatles in Hammersmith, 1964

Recently, on a first trip back to my native city, London, since before the pandemic, my sister brought down from her attic an ancient stack of my vinyl albums that had been sitting there since the sale of our late mother’s house many years ago, by which time I’d already relocated to Dublin.

I realised that, rather neatly from a popstorical perspective, what was left of my boyhood record collection began with The Beatles’s first album, Please Please Me, and ended with The Sex Pistols’s Never Mind the Bollocks. Seeing these reminded me that I could’ve claimed to have seen both of these bands live, had it not been for a chest infection that stopped me going to the Pistols’s notorious illicit word-of-mouth gig at Islington’s Screen on the Green in 1977 (It was Sid Vicious’s first appearance with the band). As a friend of mine put it at the time, amazed by my solicitousness for my own health: “I’d rather die after seeing them than survive without.”

As for The Beatles, however, I was there, albeit as a rather bamboozled seven-year-old. My dad, an early adopter of swinging London ways, had generously ensured that both my older sister and I had all the group’s earliest singles and albums and had then, one day towards Christmas 1964, produced tickets for the three of us to go to one of their shows at Hammersmith Odeon.

I still remember, for example, that among Ringo's dislikes was onions

By this time, my 12-year-old sister was already a fanatical Beatlemaniac. She had assembled thick scrapbooks of Moptop photos and articles, along with her own drawings of them. Her favourite was Paul, of course. Special-offer Fab Four booklets from Princess magazine also dropped regularly through the letterbox, and, sitting below her on the stairs, in fear of a flick round the ear if I got my answers wrong, I would be tested on the important revelations they contained. I still remember, for example, that among Ringo’s dislikes was onions.

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Later, as a teenager, she was able to chalk up 14 viewings at various cinemas of the first Beatles film, A Hard Day’s Night, and also, fabulously, a sighting of John and George in a Kensington High Street café, where she brushed against the shoulder of one of them.

Screaming

The first thing I remember about the gig itself was the cold of the evening as we waited, and waited and waited, to be ushered from under the burgeoning new flyover into the theatre.

The audience, milling around in the icy wind, was made up almost entirely of manic teenage girls. My dad and I shared a pensive look as the crowd suddenly started barging its way through the opened doors.

In the auditorium, we were high up in the gallery and it was hard for me to see anything on stage as everyone was standing up, including my sister in her John Lennon cap. During the support acts, including some bunch of nonentities called The Yardbirds (lead guitarist Eric Clapton), the main excitement seemed to be rumours of glimpses of a Beatle in the wings, leading to sudden spasms of screaming.

And then there was just noise. I was briefly able to see the four figures as they rushed on to the stage

Twist and Shout

Next up were the brave troupers Freddie and the Dreamers, whose main contribution was a routine where the diminutive singer, Freddie Garrity, was placed behind a very high microphone and had to keep jumping up to it to sing, whereupon his trousers would fall down, revealing a pair of polka-dot shorts.

This was repeated a few times until the very tall guitarist adjusted the mic for him so that he could sing their hit You Were Made for Me.

And then there was just noise. I was briefly able to see the four figures as they rushed on to the stage, but then the tide of screaming knocked me down and I had to sit for most of the rest of the evening, trying ineffectually to watch through a mass of flailing limbs. It was difficult to make out most of the songs until the very one last one, when John Lennon stepped forward and tore into Twist and Shout, magnificently.

Outside, and pretty stunned, we again hung about for ages, in the hope of sightings or autographs. I remember staring through a basement window of the theatre at a Ludwig drum kit which somebody said was Ringo’s very own. Then we queued up to buy a poster of the band waving from the steps of an aircraft, which we rolled up and took home.

I hear that Paul McCartney, in collaboration with the poet Paul Muldoon, has recently published a book about writing The Beatles songs, called The Lyrics. I must have a look sometime. I certainly didn’t hear them that evening in 1964.