Valuable work experience

A Father's Day Tale

You might not know what you'll get from work experience until long after the event.

When I was fairly young my Dad told me that, as a student, he'd done the lighting for The Beatles at a gig in Bradford. Apparently in those days (the early 60s) venues would quite often have their own team doing the behind the scenes support; essentially bands just turned up and played. I thought it was quite a cool thing to have done but didn’t really think much more about it

When Dad died three years ago there was the inevitable sorting of his “stuff”. In amongst his papers was a menu from a dinner with some autographs on it. We looked at them very quickly at the time and knew that there were some Beatles signatures but, with everything else going on, they quickly went back in a drawer.

Inspired by a Beatles related anecdote I heard on Radio 4 recently I prompted Mum to dig the autographs out again. A quick rummage and the menu card was found. There are five signatures on the card. Do we have a full house and a plus one? Sadly not. It's John, Paul, Ringo, Billy J Kramer and, erm, cue awkward shuffling of feet, Rolf Harris.

I really wanted to know more and this is the kind of occasion Google is your friend. How many times can The Beatles have played Bradford? The answer, it turns out, is three. All three were at what was then called the Gaumont Cinema, later the Odeon. They played once in February 1963, once in December 1963 and finally in October 1964.

It was very easy to narrow down the date of the autographs with Billy J Kramer and that Aussie chap in the mix. Additionally the menu card for the dinner has a date printed on it, 19th December 1963. This would have been fairly early in Dad’s second year at what was then Bradford Institute of Technology (it became a University in 1966) studying Optometry.

The Beatles played the Gaumont with a line up of The Barron Knights, Tommy Quickly, The Fourmost, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, Cilla Black, and that bearded fellow on December 21st 1963. I guess the menu card must still have been in a jacket pocket and was the first piece of paper that came to hand. We know not where George might have been hiding.

The Beatles performed nine songs: ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, ‘All My Loving’, ‘This Boy’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘Till There Was You’, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ and ‘Twist And Shout’. The concert was a warm up for their run of Christmas shows at the Astoria, Finsbury Park.

Dad had told Mum that, prior to the night when he got the autographs, he’d also done an earlier gig for The Beatles in Bradford. This takes us back to the 2nd February 1963 concert. It turns out (thanks again Google) that this was the first venue on the Fab Four’s debut UK tour. They were at the bottom of the bill with Helen Shapiro headlining.

Dad was a seventeen year old somewhere in the Gaumont helping with the lighting.