The Beatles- My Mums First Concert.

I did a bit of shopping with my mum today. We were sitting in a café drinking lattes and eating blueberry muffins. There was a poster on the wall, advertising a band that were playing at a local bar in a few weeks’ time. I then asked her a pretty good question and was surprised by her response!

It went something like this:

“So mum, have you seen any live bands?” I asked.

“I’ve seen plenty over the years, but the one that sticks in my mind was the time me and my friend queued up through the night when we were fourteen for tickets to see the Beatles,” she said.

“uhff-pkhh!…wuh?” I replied, choking on my cake.

Anyway, she continued with an animated description of when, in 1963 (it was March 31 – I looked it up), she and her friend went to see The Beatles live at the De Montfort Hall, in Leicester. It was a freezing cold night, apparently, and although her mother wasn’t overjoyed with her queuing up for those tickets because of her age, such things weren’t unusual. It was a different age back then. It was in the early sixties when they had first came onto the music scene, with songs like ‘Love Me Do’, ‘Twist and Shout’ and ‘Please, Please Me’.

She said that the reason that they seemed so different was because they had long hair. At that time, men had a ‘short back and sides’, but the Beatles were very different.

My mum’s favourite was the guitarist, George Harrison. They were sitting on the left side of the balcony and she was a little upset because Paul McCartney was directly opposite them instead of George. She explained that there were hundreds of girls in the audience, screaming with excitement, and the band could hardly be heard. Their speaker ‘cabinets’ were very small and could not compete with the din. She said it was an unforgettable experience and remembers it still in great detail.

She has also seen Cilla Black, The Hollies, The New Seekers, Englebert Humperdink and other singers that were popular in the swinging sixties.

She gets about a bit, does my mum… 🙂