Beatles
The Beatles Connection
On Thursday 11th April 1963, four Liverpool lads performed in front of 300 screaming teenagers at the Co-op Hall,
Co Op Hall
Long Street, Middleton. The Beatles had hit town
Beatles Tickets
no-one in the packed hall
could have known that "From Me To You", their new single released that day, would be the first of seventeen consecutive number one hits over the next decade.
This was one of several connections the Beatles would have with the borough. On January 31,1967 the Beatles went to Knole Park near Sevenoaks in Kent to make a promotional film for the song "Strawberry Fields Forever". In a small antique shop, John Lennon bought a Victorian circus poster that had caught his eye and captured his imagination. The poster would become the inspiration for one of the Beatles most memorable songs "For The Benefit Of Mr Kite" on the Sgt. Peppers Album. The circus poster was printed to promote Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal on Rochdale's Town Meadows on the evening of February 14th 1843. Lennon very cleverly based the song on the names of the acts and their particular skills as described on the poster.
Benefit Poster
In 1966 George Martin and Paul McCartney were asked to write the score for a new Boulting Brothers film called The Family Way, starring John and Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett. The film was shot in Rochdale using as location Sparth Bottoms, a stone's throw from here. "Love in the Open Air" won Martin and McCartney the Ivor Novello Award for best film song of that year.
John lennon Mr Kite
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