I don't know when our last case of rickets was in Wigan, but I know that factory chimneys haven't belched smoke for about two and a half decades. I can understand why the image endures though; it's a great deal more poetic and evocative a visual cue than, say, the car park of a software company or the reception area of a leisure centre or any of the other ways Northerners are more likely to be gainfully employed these days. The only way blokes come home sooty-faced from work these days is if the toner cartridge had leaked while they were printing out their presentations on stock control innovation or the future of portable air conditioning.
If these conceptions of my home town are wrong then, what is Wigan truly famous for? Rugby for one. Even though our utter, unquestioned dominance in the sport has ended, all Wiganers secretly believe that we are really just indulgently letting the other teams win for a while in order to make it more interesting. When I say rugby of course I mean rugby league, not the other sort wherein wheezing off-duty policeman, solicitors and dentists bite each other's noses off, watched by retired headmasters in driving gloves. A friend of mine once said, perceptively, that rugby union has but one saving grace, namely that it's always nice to see coppers getting knocked about a bit on their day off.
Rugby then ... and pies. Wiganers are known to the rest of Lancashire as 'pie eaters' for their prodigious enthusiasm for this noble foodstuff. Lobster thermidor, kangaroo, lychee, truffle; there is no foodstuff so unusual or arcane that Wiganers will not attempt to encase it in a crust and eat it at a bus stop. Here's a local joke: a sophisticated man of the world, possibly from Chorley or Bolton, is attempting to entice his Wiganer workmate to the pub at lunchtime.
'They've got a lunchtime special on; a pie, a pint and a woman, eighty pence. Eighty pence!'
'Ah,' replies the Wiganer, eyes narrowed in suspicion. 'Whose pies are they, though?'
So, to recap, pies, the pier, the rugby – and, of course, soul music of which more in due course. Back in 1964 though, Beatlemania, a kind of collective insanity affecting toddler, showgirl, duchess and politician alike, had Britain in its vicelike grip. Returning from Paris, they barely had time to work out a new press-conference routine of witty, oblique, self-effacing bon mots before jetting to New York for more TV and concert appearances. Two weeks later, they were back home to shoot their first major motion picture, A Hard Day's Night. In between they nipped into Abbey Road and recorded 'You Can't Do That', the B-side of 'Can't Buy Me Love', in four takes. Then they had lunch, smoked a quick duty-free Chesterfield or Lark and came back and did 'And I Love Her' before teatime. On a daily basis, breezily, and with the minimum of fuss, The Beatles were changing the world like most people change their socks.
Life as a toddler in Wigan was much quieter than life on the road with The Beatles, I would imagine. But ever since hearing 'Can't Buy Me Love', I was with them in spirit. Moreover, our two worlds were about to collide. Hot on the heels of 'Can't Buy Me Love', the title song of A Hard Day's Night was Number 1 through most of August while The Beatles toured the States again, having already visited Australia and New Zealand in the early summer. Then on their return, they announced a 36-date tour of the UK and right there, in black and white in the itinerary, in the very first week, between Birmingham and Manchester, was an appearance at the ABC cinema, Wigan, 13 October 1964.
It was to prove a momentous week for all kinds of reasons. The back pages were full of the Tokyo Olympics and long jumper Mary Rand taking gold for Britain cheered on by millions in front of grainy monochrome TV sets. The front pages were dominated by the General Election and Harold Wilson's attempt to put an end to what Labour were calling '13 years of Tory misrule'. Nowhere was this more eagerly awaited than in Wigan, a town where, as was often said, 'they'd vote for a pig in a red rosette'. And then probably put it in a pie.
But Harold Wilson, a lugubrious pipe smoker in a flasher's mac, was no impish moptop. Young Wigan was understandably more excited about the forthcoming visit of the most famous, sexy, glamorous guys on the planet. They were coming down from Olympus, or the Olympic Theatre, Paris, at least, trailing clouds of glory, to our town, to our cinema, the ABC or 'the Ritz' as the townsfolk knew it, where excitement was usually confined to the back row or the Saturday morning 'minors' when tiny kids would throw penny chews at each other and smoke illicit Park Drive oblivious to the antique Flash Gordon serial on the screen. I was only three but I was still going to be there.
Naturally, I have many reasons to be grateful to my mother but none more so than taking me to see The Beatles. Down the years, I've relished that moment in pub conversation when someone says 'OK, what was the first band you ever saw live?' and after others have chipped in with Haircut 100, Carcass or the Icicle Works, I sip thoughtfully at my beer and say, 'Oh, Focus at the Southport Theatre, 1974 . . . unless you count The Beatles of course.'
And who doesn't count The Beatles? The most important pop group ever, perhaps the most important cultural force of the twentieth century, harbingers of global change. And I saw them. Thanks, Mum.
My memories of the show are a little vague. I'd only been walking upright for a year and my vocabulary at the time wouldn't have stretched to 'amplifier' let alone 'Aeolian cadences'. So in order to evoke the experience for you, dear reader, I thought I should really interview my mum on the subject. What follows is an interview with her in the Q & A format beloved of well-established music journalists since (a) it affords direct access to the subject unmediated by the writer's implicit or explicit bias or subconscious shaping or editing; and (b) because it's a piece of piss. Here it is, conducted by phone in September 2002 and presented here pretty much in full:
Q: Was it big news when The Beatles came to town?
A: I'll say!
Q: How exactly?
A: It was in the papers and everything.
Q: Were you a Beatles fan?
A: Oh yes. Well, actually I preferred Cliff. But The Beatles were, you know, very good.
Q: How did you find out about the show?
A: Erm, it must have been in the papers.
Q: Was there a support act?
A: Pardon?
Q: Was there another group or singer on as well?
A: Oh, I'd have thought so. Can't remember who though.
Q: And what did they play, The Beatles?
A: Oh, you know, all the hits. Beatles stuff.
Q: And what about the crowd. Was there screaming?
A: Screaming! God, you couldn't hear yourself think. You loved it. We had you stood up on the back of the seat in front of you, dancing.
Q: So how did we get the tickets?
A: Ah, right, well. I was working part-time at Eckersley's Mill in the afternoons so we were able to go along in the morning. You had to queue up. It was chilly and actually very foggy, early autumn. Me and you, your Auntie Kathleen and her neighbour's little girl. The queue stretched all the way down Station Road and it was very cold as I say and just opposite the ABC there was a little cafe. Always open. People used to call in when they came out after the pictures. So the people waiting for Beatles tickets started to go across for a coffee to pass the time in this enormous queue. You'd save the place of the person behind you and they'd go off and get a drink and a warm and then when they came back, they'd do the same for you. I remember what you had – a milky coffee and a piece of toast, and they let you use the toilet. And then after The Beatles show had finished, we went to that chippie by your nana's, the one behind Madge Makin's pub.
So to recap: I went to see the most important pop group ever. And I know pretty much bugger all about it; songs played, support act, notable moments, solos, banter, choreography, etc. Nowt. But we do know, thanks to my mum, a great deal about the weather conditions, our own circumstances, what refreshments were consumed prior to the show and where we ate afterwards. Obviously I was destined to be a music journalist. It runs in the family.
Even I, a man who learned his journalistic trade on what is laughingly called the music press, and w
here turning up at the right venue with a working pen counts as hard-nosed reportage, couldn't have let it drop so easily. I had to do a little legwork at least. I'm feeling quite pleased with myself actually.
As was customary, The Beatles performed two shows that autumn evening, one at 6.20 and one at 8.35. I'd have thought we'd have been at the earlier one although – quelle surprise – my mum can't remember. The show was a package of sorts, featuring several other Epstein charges, namely The Rustiks, Tommy Quickly and Michael Haslam and Sounds Incorporated – later to feature on Beatle tracks like 'Got To Get You Into My Life' – plus Mary Wells, whose 'My Guy' still reappears in the charts at distant though predictable intervals like Halley's comet. The compere was one Bob Bain and the Beatle set list comprised a brace of crowd-pleasing covers ('Twist And Shout', 'Money', 'Long Tall Sally') and a slick selection of their new material: "Things We Said Today', 'I'm Happy Just To Dance With You', 'I Should Have Known Better', 'If I Fell', 'I Wanna Be Your Man', their most recent chart-topper 'A Hard Day's Night' and, yes, three numbers in, my personal favourite 'Can't Buy Me Love'. Who knows? Perhaps I turned to my Auntie Kathleen and pointed out the light acoustic rhythm and bluffly asexual lyric. More likely though, I asked if we could get some chips on the way home. One thing is sure, the show must have moved along at a fair lick. Ten tunes by the Fab Four, a compere and five other performers. No wonder they called him Tommy Quickly. He must have been going like the clappers, predating those four-second Napalm Death songs by decades. I hope they weren't paying him by the hour.
Though he had the whole bill pretty much in his pocket, Epstein wasn't there that famous night in Wigan. He was in London recording readings from his A Cellarful of Noise book with George Martin. He did find time though to send a telegram to Harold Wilson on the eve of the General Election: 'Hope your group is as much a success.' They certainly were, and in Anthony Wedgwood Benn, Wilson had his own John Lennon, charismatic, awkward, prone to insane political affiliations.
So Britain had a new government, and what's more one that didn't look like their natural apparel was plus fours and a shooting stick, and there's a new mood abroad. The nation is ranning a temperature, with Beatlemania pushing up the feverish hormonal high. The kids are frugging and watusi-ing like demons to Tommy Quickly. The Sixties, I suppose, are beginning to swing, although, like Ringo, it took the North a long time to wash the grease out of its hair. To my three-year-old eyes, adult men still looked more like Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning than George Harrison, endlessly combing back lustrous, oily hanks of hair, and they were more likely to be seen clutching a pint of mild than a Scotch and Coke.
Morrissey is a few years my senior but generationally I guess we are cut from the same cloth. The milieu he mournfully celebrates – the cobblestones and rain-bleary streets, factories, football, funfairs, canals and chippies – have always resonated with me.
Child of the Sixties has come to mean a pony-tailed Grateful Dead fan or an aromatherapist from Hebden Bridge; Anita Roddick, Rosie Boycott, Tariq Ali, Tony Blair even. But I dispute this. They weren't children of the Sixties, they were teenagers, students, twenty-somethings of the Sixties. I, let me tell you, was a genuine child of the Sixties. A toddler of the Sixties. Their battle cry was 'Never trust anyone over thirty.' Ours was 'Never trust anyone over six', closely followed by 'Don't swallow your Bazooka Joe chewing gum or it will curl round your intestines and kill you.' My generation were not going to Marrakesh in a Dormobile. We were going to Cubs. Watching Stingray. Taking our first communion. Going to see The Beatles with our mums and having some chips on the way home.
If you remember the Sixties, 'they' say, you weren't really there. And for once, 'they' are absolutely right. I was there, and I hardly remember a thing.
Pies and Prejudice Page 36