How did you become a Beatle fan (part two)

Come the weekend I was like a cat on a hot tin roof. I couldn’t wait to attend this Beatle convention. Better still it was, relatively, just up the road. I met up with the girl I was telling you about, caught the train and headed up to the venue which was a hotel right next to a mainline railway station. The venue was perfect, full of hustle and bustle and more importantly crowded out with hundreds of Beatle fans. The atmosphere was palpable. As I wondered up the staircase toward the venue, I could hear various Beatle records in the background. The convention had a couple of large rooms at its disposal with one for guest speakers, film screen and audience whilst the other was for the flea market and dealers. I bought a programme at the front door and had a look at what was going on. There would be a showing of the films, some documentaries and concerts. Remember, this was of course in the days before even video was widespread, so although it doesn’t sound like a great day’s entertainment now, I couldn’t wait to get started. Later on in the day there would be a prize winning Beatle expert competition followed by a performance by a live band! Now being a young musician you can imagine what might be going through my head. I wondered what they’d play and if they were going to be any good. I can also remember thinking I’ll never fit all of this in.

As the day passed I wondered around this place just astonished at the kind of things I was seeing. This was the first time I saw the Shea Stadium concert. There they were up on this huge projection screen looking as cool as. The sound was coming from a large PA and it was pretty loud. You know, when I think back on that it brings a warm glow back to the heart…there I was in this room full of strangers, all of them Beatle fans watching Shea on a big screen with big sound and everyone was having a ball. Cheering and clapping like they were actually at the concert. Great stuff! When the films were taking a break, I wondered through to the flea market and again, eyes popping I just couldn’t believe what was available. All manner of bootleg records, tapes and even video - albeit very expensive. I was just a youngster at the time, so I didn’t have a massive amount of money, but I can remember getting a couple of original singles, a poster or two and a bootleg tape which had some studio outtakes on it. These were just too much! It was a case of; so that’s what happened after the fade then!
I had had a great time during this day. I had made a couple of new friends, watched a few films and bought a prized bootleg tape. Could it get much better than this? It was just about to!
There was a break around five o’clock to grab a quick bite. Whilst I was doing this I overheard a couple of people saying that the band that were coming on were just one of the best they’d ever heard. This got me thinking – more on that later. I buried my head in the programme to look for further details on the band. They were from Liverpool – so that was a good start!
As they walked on stage, I thought they looked kinda cool. It turned out that they were cool as they opened with Soldier of Love and then proceeded to play a whole set of rare BBC and Hamburg material. They were just stunning. I sat mesmerised at how good they were. I was in a band at this point but these guys were several leagues above anything I was involved in. That not only had something to do with the fact that they were competent as a group but also the songs they were playing. Songs I’d heard on the BBC just coming to life right in front of me. In short it blew me away. As I sat there, I thought how cool is that? The band in question were Beatle convention legends. They were Mojo Filter and they were brilliant. They just made the music come to life. Their performance painted a vivid picture to me as to just how good these songs must’ve sounded when the Beatles played them. Later, one of the members of that band became part of Cavern, whilst another became a member of The Bootleg Beatles. This gives you an indication of their pedigree. By the time I left that gig, I knew somehow that playing music would be part of my life for the rest of it. At that point I was just treading water and learning the craft. Watching Mojo Filter had a profound affect on me, and one that has stayed with me since. A strong level of performance and one which to aspire to. Later in my life I would play some of those songs live in Liverpool to a crowd of Beatle maniacs and I enjoyed it immensely. However, my band just didn’t touch what those guys did and I’m quite happy to admit that.
As I’ve said in previous columns, the Festivals of today somehow miss the point, though it’s perhaps not entirely their fault. It's a different world now. The conventions I attended had some mystery about them, a sense that you had to somehow “work” at them to find things. People didn’t have the internet, YouTube, Ebay, playstations and x boxes, video, DVD and CD. So when you’d go to one of these gatherings you got a rare chance to see and hear things that were not commonplace. Whilst it’s great to get your hands on all the things you read about in the great Beatle bibles available I can’t help but think it’s taken the voyage of the discovery out of it in many ways. I’m torn as to which I prefer. If you were to have just discovered the Beatles today you could probably complete a collection in a matter of weeks and months as opposed to the organic version I and many like me uncovered.

I’m afraid those days are gone my friend.

How did you become a Beatle fan? (Part One)

I can’t remember not liking The Beatles. I’ve been into the band for so long it’s like my memory doesn’t go back that far. I can remember seeing them listed on the chart run down on the UK show Top Of The Pops (must’ve been) around 1970 I guess and the reason I remember is because I thought it was a strange name for a group! From the mid 1970’s I really got into it when the BBC ran a season of the films. Again I can remember thinking, I’ve heard all of this great music somewhere? I couldn’t place it and I don’t suppose it really matters, the point is, that the feeling I was getting was that it was somehow “part” of me and that it always had been. Quite a strange feeling, even when I examine that thought now. So anyway, truly infected by the mania, I spent any pocket money I had trying to buy as many Beatle records and products as possible. This is probably similar to how a lot of people, (particularly second generation) get into the band. Somehow, it just sneaks up on you and then you can’t remember not being into them. One of the products I discovered by accident was the Beatle Monthly. For a youngster in the UK to discover reprints of a Beatle fan magazine with updated news section during the height of punk was a revelation to me. I started to get these magazines every month and began to pick up on some of the developments happening in Beatle land. One such important development was the reintroduction of the BBC archive. I can remember reading about it thinking, I don’t know that one, that one or that one…mmm? I wonder what that sounds like? In short it looked like an Aladdin’s cave to me. Couldn’t wait to hear it! Come the big day when the broadcast was due, I sat there with my C120 cassette tape at the ready to record these gems. I won’t go into what I thought of them because the point was that this was the single moment when I realised how BIG a subject, musically, The Beatles were and that there was so much more than just the albums available in the shops. This was the material I wanted to hear. Sure, I loved everything you could hear from the released material, but this was different. There was something about this stuff that I loved. The songs and the banter – fantastic!
As a Beatle fan during this time-frame (post 1981) there was a distinct lack of activity. You had to be a bit of a miner to find new stuff or anything of interest unless of course it came up and bit you on the nose!
So there I was, at a rehearsal with my band, when a visitor came in. One of the guy’s had invited this girl to come see us rehearse. I couldn’t help noticing she was wearing a tiny Beatle badge (as you would from fifty paces!) and asked her if she liked the band…she said she loved them and further that she was going to a convention at the weekend. Further, it was fairly local (and easily within reach). I was quite frankly gobsmacked! How on earth did my Beatle radar miss that one?
“Was I going?” she asked. I answered that I didn’t have a ticket. “I’ve got a spare ticket, would you like it?”. Well, I almost bit her hand off for it. Money exchanged, I was going to my first Beatle gathering. How cool was that?
Now after being the “lone” Beatle fan everywhere I went, this was a truly exciting prospect and I just couldn’t wait – bring it on!



In part two, I’ll tell you what happened next and how it changed the course of my life.