Furore #28: The Beatles in 1963

 "It's certainly a thrill."

Regular readers of this blog will know that one of my all-time favourite Beatles’ books is The Beatles’ London, A Guide to 467 Beatle Sites by Piet Schreuders, Mark Lewisohn and Adam Smith. It has inspired me and similar minded friends to walk (on feet) something like forty miles around the streets of the capital photographing places with a Beatles’ connection, and prompted me to start There Are Places I Remember – The Beatles’ Liverpool Locations as I made clear in my very first blog way back in 2009.

 

From day one, I’ve loved the research aspect of this hobby, finding new places with a proven Beatles’ connection and photographing them, but writing about my discoveries has always the difficult part. I left school in 1986 and had not had cause to write anything of substance unrelated to my employment until I started the blog. I think I’ve improved over the last 15 years to a point where I’ve developed a style of my own, such as it is, but I’m still not entirely convinced I have it in me to write an entire book, although those who know me have encouraged me to do so for several years.  

 

Of course, some of my blogs have been more successful than others and I’m particularly proud of being the first to pinpoint the newsagents where Paul worked at the time he first met John, of proving where Paul's (not Mike's) photograph of a teenage George Harrison carrying flippers was taken, for identifying the only known photos of the Beatles at Litherland Town Hall, and for making chronological sense of the extant childhood photographs of John Lennon, which in turn inspired me to do something similar with all the photographs of the Beatles taken in 1961.  

 

It might have been one of these aforementioned blogs, or a different one entirely, or something completely unrelated, that first brought me to the attention of Piet Schreuders a few years ago.  As well as being co-author of The Beatles’ London, Piet also publishes Furore magazine, which occasionally has a Beatles’ special. He was kind enough to post them to me. I can’t recommend these issues highly enough as the articles are among some of the most interesting I’ve ever read, particularly those that take an in depth look at some of the locations for famous Beatles’ photographic shoots and provide then and now comparison photos - exactly what I try to do here.

 

You can imagine then how flattered I was when one of the people whose work has been such an inspiration to me first sent me an obscure Beatles' photo, and asked me to try and establish where it was taken, and he’s done it with other photos since.

 

Piet has now issued another Beatles special of his Furore magazine. The centre-piece of  issue #28 is an interview with Maureen O’Grady, a teen reporter from Boyfriend magazine, in an article which chronicles the advent of pop magazines in the British press in 1963, illustrated with memorabilia from her archives including some previously unseen photos. Very sadly, the author of the article, Andre Barreau, who many of you might know played the part of George Harrison in the Bootleg Beatles from 1980 until 2017 passed away in August 2023 before his contribution could be published. His friend Mark Lewisohn has contributed a eulogy, noting how Andre invented the work ‘locationist’ to describe the sort of person who goes around taking then and now photographs of Beatles’ locations.  I finally have a job title!

 

In this new issue, you will find an article about Beatles autopen autographs by Roger Stormo of the Daily Beatle Blog, ‘Abbey Road Trivia’ by Greg Armstrong who writes about the stamped dots on the wall pictured on the back cover of the album with some remarkable photographs of the same wall taken by Laurie Gay Linvill in 1970. Andre Barreau also contributes a piece on the location of Fiona Adam’s famous ‘Twist And Shout’ EP photograph correcting the earlier identification for it in The Beatles’ London in the process, while Piet looks at the ‘Beatles Ashram’ in Rishikesh and tries to pinpoint precisely what was where at the time they visited.

 

Last but hopefully not least, it’s an absolute thrill to confirm that this new issue of Furore also includes an article written by me, my first published work in print.  Piet invited me to contribute a piece about the efforts that are sometimes required when trying to identify where a particular photograph was taken, in this case the one that appears on the front cover of the magazine. I spent many long nights studying early 1963 photographs of the Beatles, particularly George and his atrocious fringe, but did I solve the mystery?  You'll have to buy the magazine to find out!  

 

Furore #28 can be ordered from FuroreMagazine.com

 

* Thanks to Piet Schreuders and Mark Lewisohn for their encouragement.