Beatles worst Gig??

57Deluxe

The Beatles... how many gigs you done like this??

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/originals/7b/eb/e1/7bebe1f1c67e55d6cab205b719b4e177.jpg

Danny1969

Heh heh I've done quite a few with less people than that. 

Cirrus

A mock funeral eh? Maybe a practice for the real secret one a few years later?

Cirrus

Danny1969 said:

Heh heh I've done quite a few with less people than that. 

Those are called RECORDING SESSIONS, mate - they're not supposed to have a crowd.  ) #-o

EricTheWeary

They played a club in West Bromwich which is now the site of the office block where I work.
So, in some senses, I have played with the Beatles.

Lixarto

EricTheWeary said:

They played a club in West Bromwich which is now the site of the office block where I work.
So, in some senses, I have played with the Beatles.

I have been onstage at Middlesbrough Town Hall where the Beatles played. And many other bands, including the first Rolling Stones show outside of London.

EricTheWeary

Lixarto said:

EricTheWeary said:

They played a club in West Bromwich which is now the site of the office block where I work.
So, in some senses, I have played with the Beatles.

I have been onstage at Middlesbrough Town Hall where the Beatles played. And many other bands, including the first Rolling Stones show outside of London.

I bet you haven't been on TheFB whilst drinking coffee and not getting on with your work in those places though...

ICBM

I think The Beatles themselves thought their worst gig was Shea Stadium. They couldn't hear anything on stage above the deafening screaming noise from the fans, and at one point Lennon was reduced to clowning about on his piano, paying no attention to what he was playing at all. I think Ringo had some sort of problem with his kit as well, but didn't bother to stop to fix it because no-one would have been able to tell.

Most of the footage that exists of it has the music overdubbed on afterwards from other performances, you can see it's not sync'ed.

IvisonGuitars

They played the Bridge Hotel in Tenbury Wells just as they were getting big, they had driven overnight to come from filming From Me to You on Ready Steady Go, it was a gig that was booked before they took off and it was in the diary so Brian Epstein honoured it.

ICBM

miserneil said:

They played the Bridge Hotel in Tenbury Wells just as they were getting big, they had driven overnight to come from filming From Me to You on Ready Steady Go, it was a gig that was booked before they took off and it was in the diary so Brian Epstein honoured it.

I grew up less than ten miles from there and never knew about that! Although it was five years before I moved there (at the age of one) anyway, so I didn't exactly 'miss it' .

impmann

The worst I ever played... was to an empty pub save for the barmaid and my wife, who was sat at the bar. 

After three songs, I suggested to the barmaid that she gives us our petrol money and we could all piss off home. Which is exactly what happened...

Jalapeno

Cleared a pub too many times

To be fair, usually a Monday night, Darts team away match, no food - so there were only 3-4 people in the first place, nursing their pre-dinner pints

Grunfeld

impmann said:

The worst I ever played... was to an empty pub save for the barmaid and my wife, who was sat at the bar. 

After three songs, I suggested to the barmaid that she gives us our petrol money and we could all piss off home. Which is exactly what happened...

It was a night like that in a half-derelict pub around the back of Kings Cross in London, (except it was a bloke slumped on the bar rather than your missus, (and I think he had a dog))... and in 18 months the band had earned £9 between the four of us... and that was the night I decided that I probably wasn't gonna make it in an originals band, ever.  And playing in a covers band then seemed obvious.

koneguitarist

Played many a gig where there were more of us on stage than in audience, and that was as a duo!

benecol

McCartney claimed in a Culture Show interview a couple of years ago that the worst gig they ever played was in my hometown, Stroud: the Teds threw sharpened coins at them, and short on funds, they picked them up afterwards.

MY MUM WAS THERE, FACT FANS.

BONUSFACT: she saw the Beatles and the Stones in their heyday, and reckons the Kinks knocked them both into a cocked hat.

monquixote

I once did a gig where a landlady had decided it might bring more punters in on a night when the pub was usually dead if they had a band on, but hadn't thought to publicise it in any way so when we got there the pub was completely empty. 

We said she had to pay us regardless so she said we had to play so we played to a completely empty room. Whenever she left the room we sat on our amps and drank beer while playing then stood up when she came back in

In the vein of @benecol my mum used to go and watch The Who when they were still called The High Numbers.

DesVegas

It got to a point in Atari Youth Club where it was a standard 'paid rehearsal' with one person dancing and maybe 10 other people in the pub. Man doesn't need a maid, man needs a promoter.

57Deluxe

/\ what I'd give to go to an Atari club now... I love my STf

Alnico

My Family are from Liverpool.

My Dad used to get billed alongside the Beatles in the early 60's before the record deals and the fame. He played The Cavern alongside them as well as various dance halls and even 'The Star Club' in Hamburg. He said they all regularly played to scant audiences due to poor publicity and sometimes 3 bands would arrive to find no advertising had been done at all but they played anyway because they were all so broke they couldn't afford not to get paid for it.

Apparently my Dad often played with less than 6 strings, hoping another wouldn't snap before the end of the gig because he couldn't afford new ones. He played a Guild Thunderbird S-200.

My Dad was Mike Johnston, Guitarist with 'Roy and The Dions'.

Maybe one of his bandmates named 'Stan Alexander' is out there somewhere and remembers him ?

Danny1969

@Alnico

I think yout dad would enjoy Mark Lewisohn's book "All these years - Tune into the Beatles"

Link Here 

Pretty much the whole huge  book is dedicated to the early days, those early venues and other bands and musicians 

Your dad might well be mentioned in it 

Back in those days your guitar and amp  could cost a years salary and bands often shared amps, taking tha bus cos they couldn't afford a car 

Alnico

Danny1969 said:

@Alnico

I think yout dad would enjoy Mark Lewisohn's book "All these years - Tune into the Beatles"

Link Here 

Pretty much the whole huge  book is dedicated to the early days, those early venues and other bands and musicians 

Your dad might well be mentioned in it 

Back in those days your guitar and amp  could cost a years salary and bands often shared amps, taking tha bus cos they couldn't afford a car 

@Danny1969

Thank you very much.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to get him that book for Christmas and sit and look through it with him watching him remember his heyday..........

Unfortunately i lost my best friend in 2001 and all i can do is honour what he was, but what i will do is get that book this Christmas and enjoy it on his behalf. I usually still buy him something for Christmas and unwrap it myself as i've always felt like he's sat right next to me most of the time.

It's his anniversary in 3 days time (4th Dec) and i'm still trying to come to terms with it 13 years later. Finding some mention of him somewhere would be nice so i will look for that book.

Thank you very much for mentioning it. Sincerely.