Friday, 18 April 2014
The Sixties … My best memory
When
I started writing YESTERDAY, my new novel set in the 1960s, the memories of my
own teenage years during that era
quickly came flooding back to me. Memories of ordinary things, like listening
to the first few records I’d bought with my pocket money, and going out to
coffee bars with my friends.
But without a doubt, my best memory from the Sixties has to be the first
time I saw the Beatles playing live, in Romford. It was during the summer of
1963 (and in fact I’ve allowed the heroine of YESTERDAY, Cathy, to share the
same experience in the book!).
In those days, of course, pop
music concerts were held in local cinemas rather than vast stadiums – and there
was no internet or mobile phones for buying concert tickets. You could order
them by post, but to be sure of getting good tickets, you’d go to the cinema on
the day they were being released, and queue up before the ticket office opened.
Some people actually queued all night, in sleeping bags on the pavement with
thermos flasks of tea – but my friends and I were only fourteen and our parents
would never have allowed it! Still, we got the earliest bus possible into town
and were pretty near the front of the queue, hours before the tickets went on
sale. As a result our seats were only a few rows back from the front of the
cinema. So close! We were almost incoherent with excitement during the
following weeks, waiting for the date of the concert to come around.
Supporting the Beatles on that tour were Gerry and the Pacemakers, and
Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas – both Merseyside group like the Beatles, who
were doing well in the charts too. In fact, at the time of the Romford concert,
those three groups were occupying the top three positions in the UK Top Ten.
The excitement in the Odeon was almost tangible as my friends and I took our
seats. The two supporting acts were brilliant – but when the Beatles came on
stage, the whole place erupted!
It’s been said that there had never been anything like it before – girls
screaming themselves hoarse, fainting and having hysterics – this was the start
of ‘Beatlemania’, and it was bedlam. By the time the Beatles were touring the
USA the following year and had become worldwide superstars, the situation was
completely out of control – partly because the venues were so huge, the
audiences enormous. But in 1963 in Romford, despite the screaming, we could
still hear them perform our favourite songs – Love Me Do, Please Please Me, and their new record, From Me To You.
Most Beatles’ fans had a favourite, and mine was Paul. I considered
myself a little bit ahead of my friends, in that I was already a member of the
Beatles’ fan club, and from their information pack I knew just about everything
about my idol, including his birthday. It happened to be the same week as the
concert, and of course, I’d sent him
a birthday card, care of the fan club. When Paul made an announcement, between
two numbers, that he wanted to thank the fans who’d sent cards for his
birthday, I felt sure he was speaking directly to me!
Nobody went straight home after the concert. We hung around in a crowd
outside, hoping for a glimpse of ‘the boys’ leaving the cinema. After a while, my
friends and I were considering leaving, in case we got into trouble for staying
out late – when a fairly ordinary-looking green car suddenly came out from the
side of the cinema at speed – with those distinctive mop-head haircuts very
evident inside! I sometimes wonder now whether we imagined it. Could that really have been Paul McCartney actually
at the wheel of the car, with the other Beatles as his passengers? That’s what
everybody believed they saw, anyway – and when the car had to pause before
turning onto the main road, we all surged forward, carried by the crowd. I reached
out – and touched the car. And I was certain: it was Paul’s face looking out of that window.
‘I touched his car!’ I crooned all the way home on the bus, to the
irritation of my friends, (who were probably jealous!). For a day or two, I was
a minor celebrity at school. Other girls wanted me to recount, over and over,
how Paul had thanked me (yes – me! Never mind all the others!) for the birthday
card, and how close I’d got to him when I touched the car.
I saw the Beatles perform live again at Hammersmith Odeon in December
1964, and bought all their records for several years after that. But I never
forgot the excitement of the gig at Romford. I’m glad I had the experience of
seeing them – the group who changed British pop music for ever – in the
comparatively intimate location of my local cinema. It was a happy experience for
Cathy, in YESTERDAY, too – before everything started to go wrong for her. But
I’ll leave you to read about that for yourselves!
YESTERDAY by Sheila Norton is available as a Kindle e-book
from Amazon from 17 April 2014, price £1.99.
Sheila lives near Chelmsford,
Essex, and has been a full-time author since retiring from her previous work as
a medical secretary.
She has been writing all her life,
her first publications being short stories for children. After twice winning
first prize in the Writers’ News short story competitions in the 1990s, her
stories were regularly published in women’s magazines.
Her first novel, The Trouble With Ally was published in
2003, and she went on to have a further seven books published, including three
under the pseudonym of Olivia Ryan, before beginning to self-publish her novels
on Amazon.
Her latest book YESTERDAY is a
novel set in the 1960s, being published in 2014 to coincide with the 50th
anniversary of the ‘Mods and Rockers’ riots in 1964, which form the background
of the book.
For more information please go to
www.sheilanorton.co.uk.
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Thanks for hosting me! I enjoyed writing this piece for your blog.