Liverpool
Corporation Passenger Transport (LCPT) Social Club
Finch
Lane / East Prescot Road
Dovecot,
Huyton
Liverpool
They
say that sometimes you can wait ages for a bus and then three come at once. Now
it seems this can also apply to pictures of the social club for the men driving
these buses, for no sooner have I finished my post about the Quarry Men's
appearance at the Finch Lane Social Club than I find the letter and photos
below.
A
letter from Louise Harrison to a fan and two photographs of her with Harold at
the LCPT (Click to enlarge) - Thanks to The Beatles Shop for permission.
Bus
driver Harold Harrison and his wife Louise ran ballroom dancing classes at the
Finch Lane Liverpool Corporation Passenger Transport Social Club, and appear to
have done so until they left Liverpool and moved to Warrington.
As I
wrote in my Mackets Lane post, Louise Harrison was an avid correspondent and
of the Beatles' parents she seems to
have taken the most time to respond to requests from fans for autographs,
pieces of George etc.
The
above letter was submitted as a lot in the annual auction held each August by
The Beatles Shop. An acquaintance of Louise at the social club, perhaps one of her
dance pupils, had asked her to get an autograph for his son Paul. I'm sure he
was not alone in his request.
Louise
was happy to oblige, enclosing a signed photograph. It's clear from her
comments that as things started to happen for the group, she saw less and less
of her son (which begs the question - were the autographs she enclosed the real
deal or faked signatures?).
As
Louise indicates, George had been away for some time. On 9 March 1963 the
Beatles began a tour at the Granada Cinema in East Ham, supporting the American
Stars Tommy Roe and Chris Montez. This tour started only six days after the
conclusion of the previous one - their first ever nationwide tour - with Helen
Shapiro, voted the Best British Female Singer in 1961 and 1962 as the headliner.
Starting
out relatively low key, as the tour progressed it became obvious that it was
the Beatles the audience had come to see and by the time it ended the group had
been elevated on the bill from playing the opening spot to appearing as the final
act in the first half.
Things
happened even more quickly on the Tommy Roe / Chris Montez tour. On the first
house of the first night the headliners were superseded by the Beatles, the
first time an American act had been overtaken by a British group. When this tour concluded on 31 March at
Leicester De Monfort Hall things had started moving so quickly for the Beatles
that any hopes Louise had of spending some time at home with George were
dashed.
The
programme for the Helen Shapiro tour included this short biog of the group
The
Beatles' second single "Please, Please Me" reached the number one
spot in the NME charts during the Shapiro tour and two days after that finished
they were back in Abbey Road studios recording their third, "From Me To
You". Released on 11 April the record leaped into the charts nine days
later, reaching the number one spot on 4 May, a position it would retain for
seven weeks. Such was the demand for the group now that their days off were
becoming few and far between.
On the
day Louise wrote her letter the Beatles were in a BBC recording studio in
London taping a radio session for the Light Programme "Easy Beat" in
front of a audience of enthusiastic teenagers. They'd spent Monday 1 April
taping two editions of the Light Programme "Side By Side" and would
record a third that Thursday.
The
resident act on "Side By Side" was the Karl Denver trio. Following
the Thursday session, Denver's guitarist Kevin Neill filmed the Beatles outside
the BBC Paris Studio on Regent Street.
As
predicted in Louise's letter, the group did finally get some time off at the
end of the month, Paul, George and Ringo flying to Santa Cruz in the Canary
Islands on 28 April for 12 days (not weeks!) whilst John and Brian Epstein flew
to Spain.....
How lovely this is .
ReplyDelete