Thursday, December 3, 2015

The Final UK tour -- 50 years ago



It was 50 years ago today that the Beatles started the last tour of the UK in their history.    No one knew it at the time, but the 10 day tour, which included 9 venues  in 8 cities would be the last time the Fab 4 would travel around the UK performing for fans.   

Sadly, this is the true "mystery tour" of the Beatles career.    It isn't easy to find photographs, information or even stories of fans that attended these shows.    Video or audio footage, not even a snippet or two, have ever popped up.   Dedicated fans have tried their best to piece together what they could about this brief tour through old articles found in magazines and newspapers.    I can't wait to read about this tour in Mark Lewishon's next book---hopefully he can sold the mystery!

Here is what we do know for sure:  The Beatles performed 11 songs--  I feel Fine, She's a Woman, If I needed someone, Act Naturally, Nowhere Man, Baby's in Black, Help!, We Can Work it out (with John on keyboard), Yesterday (with Paul on keyboard---see photo!), Day Tripper, and I'm down (again with John on keyboard).      


John and Paul play pool with one of the Moody Blues

We also know that Paul met Denny Laine during this tour, as the Moody Blues were one of the opening acts (along with The Paramonts, The Marionettes, The Koobas, Beryl Marsden, and Steve Aldo).


So for the next few days I will be posting the best I can about the forgotten UK tour of December 1965.
Strangely the tour program of of the cartoon Beatles, which wasn't shown in the UK.   And the program included a pull out poster.   (very cool).


6 comments:

  1. That's actually Mike Pinder (original keyboardist for the Moody Blues and a founding member of the group) playing pool with John and Paul. He left the Moodies in 1978. I've been a Moody Blues fan since 1967 when the post-Denny Laine era began and Justin Hayward and John Lodge joined the group and changed the group's sound to orchestral rock. Never was a fan when Denny was with them and first saw them in concert in 1973. It's a huge pet peeve with me that they've never been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ridiculous. Shame on the Hall and the voters!

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    1. I feel the same way about the Moodies!!!! And I love Mike Pinder, he wrote some of my favorite Moody Blues songs! ("Best Way To Travel", "Om", "Have You Heard", "Out And In", "So Deep Within You", "Melancholy Man", etc....)

      I haven't been here in two days, I forgot....the UK '65 tour! What a great way to end OUR year!!!! I love it when you do these, Sara, what a service you are doing!!!!!!

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    2. I never realized they did "We Can Work It Out" live!!!!!! What a bummer there's no tapes of that! Paul doing "Yesterday" on organ, too!

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    3. The Moody Blues had too many personnel changes throughout their career, much like Paul Revere and the Raiders and The Turtles.

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  2. As for stories from this tour, seeing the photo above of the Beatles playing pool with the Moody Blues reminded me of something I read many, many years ago in I believe, a book about the Beatles by an author named Julius Fast. He said that instead of a hotel the musicians ended up staying at a country club where they found a pool table. But instead of playing pool ( they either didn't know how to play pool or they didn't feel like playing regular pool) they decided to play this game where they raced each other to see who could slide the balls into the pockets the fastest. The idea was to hit the balls using the sides of the pool sticks instead of the point. And sure enough you can see in the picture that they are hitting the balls with the sides of their sticks and it looks like John and Mike are competing over the same ball. When it was time to leave John said to Brian, "Brian we must always stay at country clubs from now on instead of hotels".

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    1. Girl! That's fantastic info! Now that I look at the picture, that's exactly what they're doing!

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