The
Beatles at The Astoria Ballroom, Oldham
In early 1963 The Beatles were
starting to becoming popular outside Merseyside. After many failed trips to
London their manager Brian Epstein had acquired a record deal with EMI. On
Monday 11th February they were in London and recorded ten of the
songs that would appear on their debut album Please Please
Me. The following day they travelled two hundred miles north to Oldham for
a performance at the Astoria Ballroom in the centre of town. Here I am outside
what remains of it.
This building has probably gone now. As you can
see there's a yawning hole in the end of the place (it’s going to
be....yawn....what else...yet an apartment block.)
It wasn’t their best concert. John could hardly
sing. He'd nearly destroyed his voice singing Twist And Shout many times
for the studio album and he was suffering from a heavy cold. Paul and George
took on most of the singing. Screams from the audience helped drown out any
deficiencies.
They only appeared here once before a packed
house of 1,842 people. It had been a cinema but closed in 1961 and was
subsequently used variously as a concert hall, bowling alley and then
nightclub. Many other bands appeared here who were on the way up - Jimi Hendrix, Procol Harum, The Searchers, The Kinks (the list is too long.) Two
weeks after this concert George Harrison turned 20. He never had to find a job.
I'll drive by the place again in a year or two
and bore you with some updated photos. I wondered what happened the wood stage
- some floors ripped out of ex-Beatles venues have been sold as memorabilia. I
felt like stealing some bricks from the building but I had graves to find and
needed to leave. I did a salute and left.
An artist's
impression of the apartment block due to be built...
