When the Beatles came to town: why 1963 was a "lightning year" for Bournemouth

1963 saw music, fashion and the world changing at a dizzying pace. Bournemouth felt those changes as keenly as anywhere – and the town played a surprising role in some of the seismic events of that time.

Jon Kremer’s book Bournemouth A Go! Go! is a memoir of the town’s pop scene throughout the 1960s and beyond. But it is that one year, half a century ago, that Jon seizes upon as the period of greatest change.

Nowhere was that transformation more evident than in the unstoppable rise of the Beatles.

“It seemed as if the year began with a plea from the Beatles to Please Please Them and by the end of the year, the nation wanted to hold their hand,” says Jon.

Jon’s own life had taken a fateful turn the previous September, when he was working in his dad’s music shop in Moordown.

A 17-year-old Wimborne lad named Alistair Stewart went into the shop to ask about a guitar reverb unit. The two struck up a friendship that has lasted ever since – though Alistair is better known today as Al Stewart, the singer-songwriter behind Year of the Cat.

The early 1960s had seen the future of rock and roll looking uncertain, with Elvis in the army, Buddy Holly dead and Jerry Lee Lewis disgraced by his marriage to his 13-year-old cousin.

“Rock and roll had come and gone,” said Jon.

“But it hadn’t gone. It was waiting for John Lennon and his friends to bring it back again.”

Early in 1963, a club opened in Bournemouth that was the town’s nearest equivalent of Liverpool’s Cavern – Le Disque a Go Go, underneath a greengrocer’s at 9 Holdenhurst Road.

The first act it booked was Manfred Mann, known then as the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers. They became regulars in Bournemouth until chart success took them away.

Al was working in Beales while playing guitar with a band called the Trappers. The group soon accepted a stint as backing group at the Pavilion for a local business studies student who was keen to become a pop star. His name was Tony Blackburn.

The Pavilion was putting on regular events like Big Beat Night and Band Box Ball, with bands including Zoot Money’s the Sands Combo, who were joined one night by a 19-year-old local guitarist named Andy Summers – later to be one-third of the Police.

Jon and Al were regulars at the El Cabala coffee bar on Old Christchurch Road, and society seemed to be changing around them. With national service ending and incomes rising, teenagers were an economic force to be reckoned with. Designers were targeting clothes at them and music promoters were putting on bigger tours.

On August 19, the Beatles began a six night engagement at the Gaumont cinema in Westover Road, giving two shows a night. Also on the Bill were Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, Tommy Quickly, Gary and Lee and the Sons of Piltdown Men.

Towards the end of a rousing performance that first night, Paul McCartney told the audience: “Now we’d like to do a new song – it’s released on Friday.”

It was called She Loves You and it entered the charts at number one.

“Quite possibly, the first ever live performance of She Loves You was in Bournemouth,” said Jon.

“When they happened to be in Bournemouth the week She Loves You was released, many people thought that was then Beatlemania started,” said Jon.

“It really had been building steadily for a year. By the time they got to Bournemouth, wherever they appeared live, they sold out and girls were screaming.”

Later that evening, Jon and Al managed to bluff their way backstage, claiming to be from the Rickenbacker guitar company, and have a conversation with John Lennon.

That October, Bournemouth saw a show which Jon calls “one of the era’s outstanding Pop Package tours”, featuring the Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley, Little Richard and a rising London band named the Rolling Stones.

And there was more excitement in November, when the Beatles returned to play the Winter Gardens. US television crews came with them to film the crowd’s wild reactions, paving the way for the Beatles’ triumphant appearance on Ed Sullivan Show three months later. Jon remained at the centre of Bournemouth’s pop scene for many years, running Bus Stop Records in Westbourne from 1967 to 2009.

He says 1963 was a heady time to live in the town.

“The bath chairs image from the 1920s and 30s was still all-pervasive – but it was far from accurate.”

Bournemouth A Go! Go! by Jon Kremer costs £19.95 from Natula Publications, or £3.96 as a Kindle ebook.

The world would never be the same after the events of 1963

On March 21, war minister John Profumo lied to the House of Commons when he denied having an affair with good-time girl Christine Keeler. The episode would later end his career and was seen as the beginning of the end for 13 years of Conservative government.

That spring, Christine Keeler and showgirl Mandy Rice-Davies rented a flat in Talbot Woods to lie low. They were regulars at the Swiss restaurant and El Cabala coffee bar in Bournemouth town centre.

On August 8, 15 men held up a mail train in Buckinghamshire and got away with £2.6million.

It became known as the Great Train Robbery.

The first arrests were made days later in Bournemouth.

Detective Constable Charlie Case and Detective Sergeant Stan Davies arrested Roger Cordrey and William Boal in Tweedale Road, Muscliff.

Mr Case told the Echo this year: “They were detained and in the back of the vehicle were suitcases and hold-alls stuffed with bank notes, including lots of 10-bob ones.”

On August 23, the Beatles released She Loves You – four days after playing it to audiences in Bournemouth. It entered the charts at number one and remained the UK’s biggest selling single until 1977.

In November, the band charmed the nation at the Royal Variety Performance, before embarking on another nationwide tour that brought them to Bournemouth’s Winter Gardens.

The world was shocked when President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22.

Diane Smith, from Boscombe, was working at the Madison Hotel in Washington DC at the time.

“Everybody was in tears. It was horrendous,” she told the Echo this year.

Geoff Glover, above right,from Ferndown, was a member of the Military Band of the Black Watch, who had played for the President on the White House lawn nine days earlier.

“We feel part of history,” he told the Echo this year.

On November 23, the BBC broadcast the first episode of the world’s longest-running science fiction TV series, Doctor Who.

Stuart Fell, above, of Barton-on-Sea, was in it several times, including a number of stints as a Cyberman.

“The extras didn’t used to like falling down in the costumes… they used to get me to double the Cybermen dying,” he told the Echo recently.