The Fab Four (Minus One) Play the Princess and the Old Tin Shed

Posted on by Wolfgang Childerglas
Memorabilia, Music history, Performing arts, Popular Culture
The Beatles flying from London to Hong Kong

1964 was the year the Beatles made their first world tour. The year they transformed from a UK/West German phenomenon to a global sensation. It was, to obviously understate it, a very busy year for the band. Two of the very many international places the Liverpool lads performed at that hyper-hectic year were Hong Kong and Sydney. The venues in both locations played by the Four Moptops—as is the case with many of the venues they played—no longer exist.

The Beatles without drummer Ringo Starr⌧ touched down at Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong in early June of ‘64 and booked into a suite recently vacated by the President of Indonesia in the President Hotel in Kowloon. The band only stayed in the British crown colony for a couple of days while they played two concerts at the Princess Theatre (130 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui) on the 9th June…long enough though for Beatle Paul and road manager Neil Aspinall get themselves bespoke tailored suits made up in 24 hours.

Note concert date, incorrectly printed as 10-06-64 (Source. ha.com)

The Princess Theatre (above), built in the early Fifties, was better known for screening first-run flicks than teen-hysterics pop concerts. On the bill supporting the Beatles was a New Zealand group, the Māori Hi-Five. Instrumental backing for the headline performers was provided by Sounds Incorporated. The concerts were surprisingly not a sell-out, basically because tickets were priced exorbitantly high, the equivalence of a full week’s wage for the average Hong Kong worker (the best seats fetched HK$75).

The Beatles didn’t find the smallish, old-fashioned venue very vibe conducive and McCartney remarked that the band’s performance at the Princess was pretty flat accordingly. The full complement of Beatles came back to Hong Kong in 1966 on their Far East tour, but only for a stopover on route to the Philippines where the performers and their handlers ran into trouble with a capital T❈❈.

Ownership of the Princess Theatre changed hands in 1970 and the building with theatre seating for 1,722 was demolished in 1973 to make way for a new hotel.

Early boxing bout at the Old Tin Shed (Source: Nat. Lib. of Aust.)

Next destination after Hong Kong for the Beatles was Sydney Airport for a three-week tour of Australia and New Zealand. Sydney’s allotment was six concerts over three nights (18–20 June) at Sydney Stadium in Rushcutters Bay, a venue affectionately known as the “Old Tin Shed”, and hitherto the arrival of Beatlemania probably better known as a boxing stadium. At that time the Stadium was the city’s only large-capacity concert venue. Again, as they did in Hong Kong, the Beatles bedded down close to the concert venue, at the Sheraton Hotel, Potts Point.

Supporting the Beatles on that tour were several local (trans-Tasman) artists including Johnny Chester, Johnny Devlin and The Phantoms, along with Sounds Incorporated who had made the trip from Hong Kong with the Beatles.

Jimmy N, all alone at Melbourne Airport, end of the fairytale

By now Ringo sans tonsils had rejoined the quartet in time for Sydney and Jimmy (or Jimmie) Nichol was unceremoniously cast off and sent home, abruptly closing the door shut on his 15 minutes of fame…it was all downhill in the music caper from there for the Ringo stand-in, less than a year later poor Jimmy was forced to declare himself bankrupt.

Source: ha.com

After some initial hesitancy from audiences the Sydney Stadium concerts were all massive sell-outs with frenzied young women the most conspicuously vocal of fan attendees. Seeing the band in Sydney seemed comparatively more affordable than in Hong Kong, Tickets started at 15s & 6d, ranging up to £1, 17s & 6d.

Boxing matches and rock ‘n roll concerts at Rushcutters Bay are long a thing of the past. In 1970 the six decades old-stadium on the corner of Nield Avenue and New South Head Road closed and was demolished in 1973 to make way for the construction of the Eastern Suburbs Railway.

Staid NZ says “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!” (Source: nzherald.co.nz)

After Sydney the Beatles headed across the Tasman, taking most of their Australian support acts with them, to shake up the hitherto seemingly hebetudinous youth culture in New Zealand. Just like in Australia, mass turnouts of fans posed the same crowd control problems for Kiwi authorities and level of teen-generated frenzy at the concerts in the four main NZ cities made for deja vu.

๛๛๛๛๛๛๛

⌧ stuck back in a London hospital with tonsil trouble and substituted by previously unknown drummer Jimmy Nichol

❈❈ see earlier blog on this site ‘Beatles Not For Sale: Public Enemy # 1 in the Philippines’, March 2022

Bibliography
‘The Beatles arrive in Hong Kong’, The Beatles Bible, www.beatlesbible.com
‘Beatle Place: Hong Kong, Princess Theatre‘, FAB4tracks, www.fab4tracks.home.blog
‘Meet Jimmy Nicol, the forgotten Beatle, stand-in drummer for Ringo’, Craig Cook, The Advertiser, 11-Jun-2014, www.adelaide now.com.au

Double Dennis, Double Menace – a Transatlantic Comic Strip Serendipity

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Cinema, Creative Writing, Performing arts, Popular Culture
Jay North as Dennis in the American TV series

Anyone brought up on a diet of American comics or television since the 1960s would have come across that ultimate icon of juvenile mischief, “Dennis Mitchell”, better known as Dennis the Menace. Fictional Dennis from “Middletown” USA imprinted himself on the public consciousness first as a character in cartoons and comic books from the early Fifties, later as the subject of a popular American TV series (1959-1962), and then as a movie in 1993{a}.

Source: Pinterest

But if you happen to live on the opposite side of the Atlantic and are a similar consumer of comic strip popular culture then you are probably going to be more familiar with another and rather different “Dennis the Menace”. To generation after generation of Britons Dennis the Menace is not American, but a beloved, homegrown comic character who emerged out of a classic Scottish-based comic weekly The Beano in the 1950s.

The coincidence of two identically named sub-adult comic book characters evolving separately and independently has an even more remarkable, almost unbelievable, parallel. The two Dennises debuted as comic strip characters on either side of the Atlantic on the exact same day, 12th March 1951. Which “Dennis“ was conceived first by his respective creator cannot be known, but the two Eureka moments were certainly distinctively different.

Ketcham (1953), not dissimilar to Dennis Mitchell’s father in appearance

Genesis story of Dennis I and II
George Moonie (Britain) and Hank Ketcham (US) were the creators of their respective “Dennises”. For The Beano editor Moonie the idea and the name came to him when he heard the chorus of a music hall song…”I’m Dennis the Menace from Venice” and the name stuck. In American Hank Ketcham’s case his wife was the catalyst when she complained to the cartoonist about their four-year-old son Dennis‘ errant behaviour, describing him as “a menace”.

Source: Beano Studios

Both the British Dennis and the American Dennis have a talent for creating mayhem in the neighbourhood. Physically though they bear little resemblance to each other. Ketcham’s Dennis is a yellow-haired four (or five)-year-old, cherub-like boy with freckles, perpetually garbed in red overalls, whereas the British Dennis–as drawn by cartoon artist David Law—is a ten-year-old tearaway with a thatch of black spiky hair, shown always wearing his trademark red and black striped jumper.

Just William

Personality-wise the two Dennises are also quite a bit different. American Dennis’ mischievous ways annoy the hell out of adults, especially the Wilson’s’ long-suffering next door neighbour Mr (George) Wilson, but this Dennis is affable and basically a well-intentioned if compulsive-obsessive little boy. British Dennis on the other hand is real juvenile delinquent material, his full-on troublemaking antics mark him out as an unreformed and unrepentant bad boy, a hooligan in the making. Dennis can be seen as part of an Anglo tradition of naughty boys in kid’s lit connecting with the likes of famous fictional schoolboy Just William and Horrid Henry , [‘Dennis at 60’, BBC, 07-Mar-2011, www.bbc.com]

Sidekicks
British Dennis’ “besties” are Curly and Pie-Face (fellow “menaces”) but also prominent in the story is Dennis’ girl cousin Hermione Makepeace AKA Minnie the Minx, a rival to Dennis in the carnage creation stakes with a reputation as Beanotown’s “wildest tomboy”. Dennis Mitchell’s friends are the rather nondescript and naively loyal Joey and the feisty Margaret Wade who’s more of a frenemy and occasional nemesis to “The Menace”.

Canine deuteragonists
Boy’s best friend…both Dennises have a dog companion although Moonie/Law’s Dennis’ dog Gnasher—an Abyssinian Wire-haired Tripe Hound with black spiky hair to match its owner—didn’t get to make an appearance in the strips until Issue 1362 in 1968. Dennis Mitchell’s dog Ruff is a dog of a very different proportion, a Briad (a large French sheepdog{b})

Postscript: Bringing Dennis into line with the modern world
The arrival of the UK’s Dennis the Menace strip was a godsend to The Beano, boosting the comic mag’s flagging sales at the time. Today it is still The Beano‘s star vehicle{c} although the editors have had to tone down Dennis and some of his rougher edges. The 21st century Dennis the Menace is less anti-social, his more unsavoury traits such as bullying have been eradicated to conform to modern sensitivities [‘Beano hero: Dennis the Menace turns 70’, Alison Flood, The Guardian, 17-Mar-2021, www.theguardian.com]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
{a} not to neglect several other iterations of Menace-Dennis in TV movies including at least one animation feature
{b} a Briad on the screen at least, in the comic strips Ruff’s breed is not clarified
{c} the British Dennis has also made it onto the TV screen but to a more modest extent than his American counterpart

Manufacturing Beatlephobia in the Holy Land: Beware the Rhythm Beatles – Corruptors of Israeli Youth!

Posted on by Wolfgang Childerglas
Memorabilia, Music history, Performing arts, Popular Culture
▪ ▪ ▪ The phantom 1965 concert

▪ ▪ ▪

This is a story about how Israel missed a golden opportunity to get the Beatles, then on the cusp of greatness, to perform live before Israeli audiences. The “Fab Four” were supposed to tour the country in 1965, concert tickets were even printed for what became a non-event. At the time the official account of why the Israeli government didn’t let the concert tour proceed was the fear of the deleterious effects that the Liverpool band were likely to have on the local youngsters. Citing the teen frenzy created by Cliff Richard’s 1963 concert hullabaloo in Israel, the authorities deny entry to the ‘Rhythm’ Beatles (as they were called in Hebrew) less they ”corrupt the minds of Israeli youth”. A follow-up investigation by a Knesset finance committee finds that “the band has no artistic merit” and reinforces the assertion that they were liable to “cause hysteria and mass disorder among young people” (Resolution 701). The local conservative press echoes the ’outrage’, describing the band’s music in hyperbolic vein as “yeah-yeah–yeah howls which are capable of striking dead a real beetle”.

▪ ▪ ▪ Cliff Richard: not wholesome enough for Israel?

▪ ▪ ▪
Thus the Beatles’ fans in the Jewish state never got to see the biggest band on the globe play live⍟. No doubt the desire of Israeli politicians to keep out the ‘pernicious’ influences of “sex, alcohol and rock‘n’roll” in the early 1960s was part of the thinking, however evidence emerged during the Aughts demonstrating that the (official) narratives presented in 1964/1965 were in fact apocryphal. A 2007 Israeli musical documentary Waiting for Godik by Ari Davidovich and subsequent investigations by Israel historians Yoav Kutner and Alon Gan unearths more personal considerations guiding the decision.

▪ ▪ ▪ Giora Godik, Theatrical promoter (Source: Lama Films)

▪ ▪ ▪
The true story—apparently—starts in 1962 with the mother of the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein✥, she apparently makes an offer to Israeli music promoter Giora Godik for the not-quite-yet famous Liverpool band to perform in Israel. Godik rejects the offer and instead invites the better known-internationally Cliff Richard to do a concert the following year. Fast forward two years and Godik’s rival Israeli promoter Yaakov Uri trumps him by securing the rights to a Beatles’ concert in the country. To get back at Uri for being “one-upped”, Godik successfully lobbies the Israeli authorities to veto promoters from taking out foreign currency (thereby making the whole undertaking financially unsustainable)…Godik persuades the bureaucrats by apparently playing up the bad publicity engendered from the Cliff Richard concert. A dispute between rival Jewish music promoters – and neither of them got the Beatles!

▪ ▪ ▪
The four “Mop Tops”, 1965 with medals

▪ ▪ ▪

End-note: In 2008 the state of Israel issued an official apology to the Beatles via a letter to the surviving sister of John Lennon for the 1965 snub, citing lack of budget and the contemporary concerns of some members of the Knesset⌖ as the reason for pulling the tour.

McCartney sparking a mini-Beatlemania revival in Tel Aviv (Source: abc.com.au)

▪ ▪ ▪

__________________________
⍟ though they did finally get to see one-fourth of the band, Paul McCartney, perform there solo in 2008, triggering a new, short-lived wave of Beatlemania in Israel

✥ an Ashkenazi Jew

⌖ at the time of the incident some insiders within the country pointed the finger at Israel’s matronly prime minister Golda Meir

༺ ༺ ༺

Articles and sites consulted


‘The Beatles and Israel’, The Beatles Bible, Updated 16-Mar-2018, www.beatlesbible.com)

‘Truth after 42 years: Beatles banned for fear of influence on youth’, Toni O’Loughlin, The Guardian, 22-Sep-2008, www.amp.theguardian.com)

‘A Beatle (finally) coming to Israel’, Matti Friedman, The Inquirer, Aug 28-Aug-2008, www.theinquirer.com

Red-Light Reeperbahn 1960-1962: Prep School for the Baby Beatles

Posted on by Wolfgang Childerglas
Biographical, Memorabilia, Music history, Performing arts, Popular Culture

When the Beatles at the top of their fame reflected back on their climb to the summit of pop/rock music, they didn’t understate the early contribution to their success of exceedingly long periods of time spent playing in seedy, red-light night spots in Hamburg, West Germany. John Lennon summed up the immeasurable value of the Hamburg gigs phase to the early Beatles’ development, quipping to a journalist that though he was “born in Liverpool, (he) grew up in Hamburg”. George Harrison echoed John’s sentiments, saying that the band “didn’t have a clue” before the German experience, “Hamburg was really like our apprenticeship, learning how to play in front of people”. Paul McCartney concurred that playing to inebriated and often hostile German sailors “galvanised the band into a musical form”. The boys’ repertoire expanded by necessity, forced to learn countless new songs so as to fill in the marathon eight-hours sets in the Reeperbahn precinct clubs (“George Harrison Said The Beatles ‘Didn’t Have a Clue’ Before They Went to Hamburg, Germany”, Hannah Wigandt, Showbiz CheatSheet, 08-Dec-2021, www.cheatsheet.com ).

⌂ ʰᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᵖʰᵒᵗᵒ﹕ ᵍᵉᵗᵗʸ ⁱᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾

Just before departing for their first stint in Hamburg in 1960, the Beatles (still calling themselves the Silver Beatles) needing a regular drummer to fulfil their contractural obligations took on ex-Blackjacks drummer Pete Best (hired by the band’s manager of sorts Allan Williams). Williams’ business associate Harold Adolphus Phillips (who promoted the band during its Silver Beetles days and occasionally performed himself as “Lord Woodbine”) drove the now five-piece group to Germany.

⌂ ˢᵉᶜᵒⁿᵈ ᶠᶦᵈᵈˡᵉ ᵗᵒ ᴿᵒʳʸ ˢᵗᵒʳᵐ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᴴᵘʳʳᶦᶜᵃⁿᵉˢ ⁽ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᵇᵉᵃᵗˡᵉˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ.ᶜᵒᵐ⁾

The band first played at the Indra Club in August 1960 (while sleeping rough in “pigsty” accommodation behind the screen of the nearby Bambi Kino). Later in the year they moved from the Indra down the street to the larger Kaiserkeller, performing late-night to sailors and sex workers, and the more appreciative art students. Both nightclubs were owned by Bruno Koschmider who was paying each of the five Beatles the princely sum of £2.50 a night to perform (although they did score an accommodation upgrade to actual hotels)🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿.

⌂ ᴷˡᵃᵘˢ, ᴬˢᵗʳᶦᵈ & ˢᵗᵘ, ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᴾʰᵒᵗᵒ: ᴳᵉᵗᵗʸ ᴵᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾

While they were doing their night sets at the Kaiserkeller, John, Paul and George met Ringo (Starr), also working the club with the (then) more highly regarded Hurricanes band. The Kaiserkeller was also where the boys met Astrid Kirchherr, a Hamburg local who was to have a profound influence on the band’s look …from Astrid they got their signature “mop-top” style haircut. In Hamburg the Beatles wore black leather jackets and cowboy boots, but Astrid’s influence has an effect here too with the rounded collarless jacket she made for Stu Sutcliffe🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 which became a prototype of the famous 1963 collarless suits worn by the Beatles🇮🇹. Astrid’s Hamburg art college student friends Klaus Voorman and Jürgen Vollmer also formed lasting associations with the Beatles from the Kaiserkeller days (especially artist and session musician Voorman who designed art covers for Beatles’ albums and played bass on post-breakup Beatles’ individual records).

⌂ ᵀᵒᵖ ᵀᵉⁿ ᶜˡᵘᵇ . ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴷ & ᴷ ᴴᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ

The following year, while still contracted to Koschmider, the boys were enticed by Peter Eckhorn (Koschmider’s Reeperbahn rival) into defecting to the Top Ten Club on the offer of better money and conditions. Koschmider found out and it’s likely that it was he who turned the underage Harrison in to the police, leading to George’s deportation. When Paul and Pete went back to the Kaiserkeller to get their equipment a fire lit by them caused minor damage to the club. The seriously “pissed-off” Koschmider had McCartney and Best arrested for arson and they too were deported back to England…Lennon eventually followed them back to Liverpool, bringing the Beatles’ engagement at the Top Ten Club in 1961 to an abrupt close.

The Beatles’ residency at the Top Ten did result in a breakthrough of sorts in their career thus far, albeit a low-key one at the time…the boys managed to cut their very first record – backing singer Tony Sheridan (who was also on the Hamburg club circuit at the same time) on a German 45 for the Polydor label. The recording “My Bonnie” at Ernst-Merck-Halle listed the Beatles on the label as the “Beat Brothers”🇦🇺 (‘Tony Sheridan’, The Beatles Bible, Upd. 15-May-2017, www.beatlesbible.com).

⌂ ˢᵗᵃʳ⁻ᶜˡᵘᵇ

The following year they were back however, this time performing at the Star-Club, operated by Manfred Weissleder and Horst Fascher🇩🇪. By now the band members’ nightly fee had been upped to £67 each. They did three stints at the Star in 1962—the last two with Ringo in the drummer’s seat for the first time—undertaken reluctantly as the band had already released their first UK single on Parlophone and were champing at the bit to get on with consolidating their burgeoning recording career in the UK. The last live performance by the soon-to-be “Fab Four” in Germany was on New Years Eve 1962.

⌂ ᴷᵃᶦˢᵉʳᵏᵉˡˡᵉʳ. ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴮᵉᵃᵗˡᵉˢ ᴮᶦᵇˡᵉ!
⌂ ᴴᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ ᴮᵉᵃᵗˡᵉˢ ʷᶦᵗʰ ᴳᵉⁿᵉ ⱽᶦⁿᶜᵉⁿᵗ ⁽ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴾᶦⁿᵗᵉʳᵉˢᵗ⁾

The tyro Liverpudlian band’s musical education in the north coast German city got a terrific leg-up from getting up close and personal with legendary US rock ‘n roll performers—such as Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis—also working the same St Pauli clubs at the time…Little Richard later recounted helping to hone Paul’s vocal style backstage while the Beatles were opening for the pioneering American rock performer at the Star.

The Beatles’ gig venues in Hamburg, 1960-62
Indra Club, Große Freiheit 64, St Pauli. 48 nights, August—October 1960 (37-hr week)
Kaiserkeller, Große Freiheit 36, St Pauli. 56 nights, October—November 1960
Top Ten Club, Reeperbahn 136, St Pauli. 92 nights,April—July 1961 (51-hr week)
Star-Club, Große Freiheit 39, St Pauli. April—May, November, December, 1962

The intense schedule imposed by the Hamburg club management, forcing the Beatles to play live for hours on end (with the aid of copious amounts of booze and a regular diet of ‘uppers’)🏁 formed the band into a tight musical outfit. This and the band’s increasingly fetzig (“wild”) and unpredictable stage antics and the decibel-shattering volume and raw energy of their playing earned them a loyal following in Hamburg (‘Breaking the Illusion: Hamburg and The Beatles’ Gritty Roots’, Riley Fitzgerald, Happy, 13-Oct-2021, www.happy mag.tv). And when they came back to Merseyside at the very beginning of 1963, the Beatles (–Pete/ +Ringo) didn’t come back as nobodies, Hamburg gave them an international reputation to trade on in the future.

Postscript: Return to their roots
The Beatles returned to Hamburg one more time, this time as the hottest musical act on the planet. In 1966 at ‘Beatlemania’s” high-water mark, the group played two nights in Hamburg, not at any of the old haunts they had played as young scruffs but at the more respectable Ernst-Merck-Halle. This was part of the German leg (tagged the “Bravo-Beatles-Blitztournee“) of the band’s ‘66 world tour, which also included concerts in Munich and Essen.

↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝ ↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 their booking agent Allan Williams was getting three times what the musicians were!

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Sutcliffe left the group and became engaged to Kirchherr in 1961 before his premature death the following year

🇮🇹 based partly on Pierre Cardin’s design

🇦🇺 it was a customer request in the Liverpool NEMS music store for ‘My Bonnie’ that first alerted Brian Epstein to the existence of the Beatles

🇩🇪 Fascher, a West German amateur boxing champion, doubled as the Beatles’ bodyguard

🏁 “800 hours in the rehearsal room” McCartney called it