The Beatles Story Part One - and Vanquish

The Beatles Story Part One – and Vanquish

Written by Bob Simpson in Sunday Replay👁 7,509

Sunday 7 October 2012, 5.45pm

I was delighted to be joined in the studio today by up and coming girl band Vanquish. More on that later but first part one of the Beatles Story…

The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show

50 years ago this month The Beatles issued their first successful single “Love Me Do” During October on Sunday Replay I’m going to pay tribute to the band that changed music forever and made their way into the hearts of the nation.
Love Me Do.
In March 1957, John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a skiffle group with several friends from Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to the Quarrymen Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he and Lennon met that July. In February 1958 McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the group. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, who was impressed by his playing but initially thought him too young for the band. After a month of persistence, Harrison joined as lead guitarist.

That’ll be The Day
By January 1959 Lennon’s Quarry Bank friends had left the group. The three guitarists, billing themselves at least three times as Johnny and the Moondogs, were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. Lennon’s art school friend Stu Sutcliffe, who had recently sold one of his paintings and purchased a bass guitar, joined in January 1960. They became the Silver Beetles, before undertaking a brief tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop singer and fellow Liverpudlian Johnny Gentle. By early July they changed their name to the Silver Beatles, and by the middle of August they changed it to the Beatles.

Released in early October, “Love Me Do” peaked at number seventeen on the Record Retailer chart. The Beatles’ television début came later that month with a live performance on the regional news programme People and Places. A studio session in late November yielded another recording of “Please Please Me”, of which Martin accurately predicted, “You’ve just made your first No.1.”
Please Please Me
In December 1962, the band concluded their fifth and final Hamburg stint. By 1963, Lennon and McCartney had established a songwriting partnership, and as the band’s success grew, their dominant collaboration limited Harrison’s opportunities as a lead vocalist. Ten songs were recorded for Please Please Me, released in March 1963, supplemented by the four tracks already released on their two singles.
From Me To You
“From Me to You”, came out in April 1963 and was also a chart-topping hit, starting an almost unbroken string of seventeen British number one singles for the band, including all but one of the eighteen they released over the next six years. Released in August, the band’s fourth single, “She Loves You”, achieved the fastest sales of any record in the UK up to that time, selling three-quarters of a million copies in under four weeks. It became their first single to sell a million copies, and remained the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1978 when it was surpassed by “Mull of Kintyre”, by McCartney’s post-Beatles band, Wings.
She Loves You
Their popularity brought increasing press attention, to which the band members responded with an irreverent and comical attitude that defied what was expected of pop musicians at the time, inspiring even more interest.
The band toured the UK three times in the first half of 1963
On 24 October The Beatles Performed live for Sveriges Radio in Stockholm Sweden, We heard Four tracks from that performance.
I Saw Her Standing There
Money
You Really Got a Hold on Me
Roll Over Beethoven
Upon their return to the UK on the 31st, they were greeted in heavy rain at Heathrow Airport by “several hundred screaming fans”, and fifty to a hundred journalists and photographers as well as representatives from the BBC
I Want To Hold Your Hand
On 2nd December 1963 The Beatles travelled to ATV studios in Borehamwood and appeared on The Morecambe and Wise Show
When Ed Sullivan’s plane was forced to circle London’s Heathrow Airport in the middle of the night in order to permit something called The Beatles to land first so that they could be transported safely through thousands of their screaming fans, he decided then and there to sign them for his television show.
All My Loving (Ed Sulivan)
A day later their first US concert saw Beatlemania erupt at Washington Coliseum.
A Hard Day’s Night
Directed by Richard Lester, A Hard Day’s Night involved the band for six weeks in March–April 1964 as they played themselves in a mock-documentary. The film premiered in London and New York in July and August, respectively, and was an international success, with some critics drawing comparison with the Marx Brothers. The Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart during the week of 4 April, including the top five.
Can’t Buy Me Love (From Anthology)
The Beatles toured internationally in June and July. Staging thirty-seven shows over twenty-seven days in Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. In August they returned to the US, with a thirty-concert tour of twenty-three cities.
You Can’t Do That From Anthology
Tune in next week for part two – which will take us through to the end of 1965 in the Beatles story – on Sunday Replay sponsored by Kirbys Coaches here on Phoenix FM.

Then it was the turn of Vanquish –

Me and the Fabulous Vanquish Girls

Vanquish are Holly, Lizzy and Rianna and new member Kayleigh: a fun-loving, bubbly set of girls ready to storm the UK with their dance-pop music! Out to raise not only a smile but also havoc on the dancefloor, Vanquish are a fresh new girl-band for 2012.