Fact #187853
When:
Short story:
The Beatles play at The Plaza, Old Hill, and The Plaza, Handsworth, both in Birmingham, England, UK, Europe.Full article:
Johnnie Walker (audience) : I fell in love with a girl called Jenny, and The Beatles were the soundtrack to our romance. For our birthdays and Christmas we'd buy each other Beatles' singles, and then one memorable night we went to see them at the Plaza Ballroom in Rookery Road, Handsworth in Birmingham. It was just one of the best nights of my life. I would have been about 18.
There was a legendary woman in Birmingham, Mrs Regan who promoted gigs in two ballrooms. One was King's Heath and the other was Handsworth. Bands would go to one ballroom, do forty-five minutes, and then go to the other and do another forty-five minutes.
Roger Bromley (lead guitarist, Dane Tempest and the Atoms) : They had been top of the charts with Please, Please Me and From Me To You but it was their excitement which really impressed me. When they first started playing it was as if the whole place came alive. People came up from the bars and the place was packed within a few seconds.
Johnnie Walker : That really inspired me, to see these four ordinary-looking blokes sweep into this ballroom, create such excitement and mayhem and turn the girls on to such an amazing level, and then they were off again. I wanted to be with them, to be in the band, go to the next gig, the next town.
At the very end of the gig, it had been screaming and dancing and sweat dripping off the walls all night, and the crazy thing was that there was no access to the dressing rooms from the stage, which was only about a foot off the ballroom floor. There was a side door on the ballroom floor.
I remember John bust a string and George said, 'John's bust a string,' and they passed his guitar over, this was before the days when you'd have half a dozen guitars on the stage, and everybody was trying to grab it. They finished with Long Tall Sally, McCartney doing this screaming falsetto with his hair shaking all over the place and then they went off. The moment the girls realized they were leaving they all rushed to the front, including my Jenny, to try to stop them. I remember being stung with great pangs of jealousy that I was going to lose my girlfriend to The Beatles.
Roger Bromley : To me the real importance of The Beatles was that their sound set a standard that every group in the country sought to reach. Their sound was what we all tried to capture. They transferred the market place from America to this country and gave musicians like us a new and dynamic confidence which we had never had before.
(Source : not known)
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There was a legendary woman in Birmingham, Mrs Regan who promoted gigs in two ballrooms. One was King's Heath and the other was Handsworth. Bands would go to one ballroom, do forty-five minutes, and then go to the other and do another forty-five minutes.
Roger Bromley (lead guitarist, Dane Tempest and the Atoms) : They had been top of the charts with Please, Please Me and From Me To You but it was their excitement which really impressed me. When they first started playing it was as if the whole place came alive. People came up from the bars and the place was packed within a few seconds.
Johnnie Walker : That really inspired me, to see these four ordinary-looking blokes sweep into this ballroom, create such excitement and mayhem and turn the girls on to such an amazing level, and then they were off again. I wanted to be with them, to be in the band, go to the next gig, the next town.
At the very end of the gig, it had been screaming and dancing and sweat dripping off the walls all night, and the crazy thing was that there was no access to the dressing rooms from the stage, which was only about a foot off the ballroom floor. There was a side door on the ballroom floor.
I remember John bust a string and George said, 'John's bust a string,' and they passed his guitar over, this was before the days when you'd have half a dozen guitars on the stage, and everybody was trying to grab it. They finished with Long Tall Sally, McCartney doing this screaming falsetto with his hair shaking all over the place and then they went off. The moment the girls realized they were leaving they all rushed to the front, including my Jenny, to try to stop them. I remember being stung with great pangs of jealousy that I was going to lose my girlfriend to The Beatles.
Roger Bromley : To me the real importance of The Beatles was that their sound set a standard that every group in the country sought to reach. Their sound was what we all tried to capture. They transferred the market place from America to this country and gave musicians like us a new and dynamic confidence which we had never had before.
(Source : not known)