A “complete disaster” of a debut in the south of England came about for The Beatles when Paul McCartney and John Lennon started “playing the wrong chords”.
George Harrison and Pete Best joined the pair, and though only eighteen people saw their debut performance down south, it was hardly one for the history books. While this first time of what we now know as The Beatles should have been a legendary occasion, it was a period where the band were still working out their stage presence. Rough around the edges is what they were, to put it nicely. But it wasn’t the playing that was the problem, but an apparent lack of interest in the performance from McCartney and Harrison. Lennon was no better, according to the at-the-time drummer Best.
But an early performance in Aldershot was brought on partly by a friend of the band, who believed the best way to spread word of the group’s work would be to drive them around the country and into new territories. It was a bit of a misfire from Jack Leach, the man with the plan, who drove the band to a town thirty-seven miles away from London.
Even an attempt to advertise the gig in the local paper fell through, according to Far Out Magazine. The group had apparently tried and failed to get an advertisement in the paper, though it was dropped. Had the band gotten more people through the doors, it could have been an even bigger disaster.
Best recalled: “Halfway through one number, George and Paul put on their overcoats and took to the floor to dance a foxtrot together, while the rest of us struggled along, making enough music for them and the handful of spectators.
“We clowned our way through the whole of the second half. John and Paul deliberately played wrong chords and notes and added words to the songs that were never in the original lyrics.” Why one half of the Fab Four began playing the wrong notes is not known, as Best did not explain any further.
But the set was filled with covers of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, and left the few attendees wondering what they had just witnessed. Organiser Sam Leach would suggest the occasion of The Beatles appearing in Aldershot for their first-ever performance is more an event than what the band actually played.
He said: “I often wonder what happens when those youngsters now talk about the night the Beatles came to Aldershot and hardly anyone turned up to see them. I can just hear it. ‘Oh, there we were, all 18 of us, watching the Beatles on stage… and they did an encore.”
The Beatles would, inevitably, improve from here, and went on to an extraordinary tour of the United States just a few years after this performance. They would sell out Shea Stadium, and played just once more together after the Beatlemania phase.
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