Tennis rackets became guitars, biscuit tins became drums (except no one really wanted to be Ringo) and the girls next door became groupies as we mimed to John, Paul, George and Ringo's unprecedented string of number one hits. In the playground there were mock battles between Beatles fans, Searchers supporters and those deluded few who thought the Dave Clark Five were going to take over the world. We were still all wearing short trousers - even in winter. They seemed such innocent and exciting times.... Years later, Beatles For Sale was the de rigeur LP (and then CD) of choice to be played during the annual decorating of the Christmas tree, and so the Beatles became not just part of my DNA but indelibly part of my daughters' as well... and Revolver remains my favorite album of all time. Today's poem is one that I've just written as part of a project for Blackpool's Imperial Hotel, about some of its most famous guests and this being Christmas week, what better time to give it an airing?
Meet The Beatles Beatlemania was born in Blackpool back in the summer of sixty-three. The fab four rocked the town by the sea no fewer than eight times in that giddy year, playing Queens Theatre, the Opera House and ABC from balmy July to sultry September, each show a performance to remember. None more so than their first appearance at the Queens - nee Feldman’s - on Bank Hey Street [now a cut-price department store] when four thousand frenzied but ticketless fans besieged and surrounded the sold-out venue, completely blocking all of its doors so that the mops had to be smuggled in across rooftops – the first of many a Hard Day’s Night.
On stage their fringes shook in crazy joy, their music, soundtrack of our unshackling, hardly heard above the noise of screaming girls in pheromone flow. It was mayhem of the most wondrous kind…
…and later in Imperial pomp the boys sipped scotch and coke to unwind, cloistered in their hotel suite figuring the chords to I Feel Fine.
But the Fab Four did so much more than light up Blackpool – they were about to turn on a generation! From Love Me Do to Love You To, the Beatles soon commanded every station. A cultural phenomenon unparalleled in modern times, these four young men enthralled a nation eager to escape our post-war blues. They switched the points - and in doing so allowed us to forgo destination Squaresville in favour of a Magical Mystery Tour.
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