Memories of Smethwick

The Beatles at Thimblemill 

Thimblemill Road Baths opened for swimming in 1933. In common with many other baths it also doubled as a concert venue in the winter months when the pool was covered over. Countless singers and bands played there, many local acts and also many on their way up the ladder of success. It became quite a major venue for those too big for the pub circuit and not quite big enough for the likes of Birmingham Hippodrome or Odeon.  Amongst the many famous acts who played there were The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, The Small Faces and… The Beatles.

Of those it is The Beatles who are best remembered although comparatively little is known about their appearance there. There are no photographs or reports to go on; the Telephone coverage consisted only of an advert for their forthcoming appearance as part of their Monday night “Teenage Spectaculars”. Vince Eager (born as the slightly less memorable Roy Taylor) was the headliner on the opening night of the winter season, with The Beatles following on 19^th November 1962.

Just to put the night in context, 1962 had been the biggest year so far for The Beatles. Ringo Starr had replaced Pete Best on drums on 18^th August and then 5^th October had seen the release of their first single “Love Me Do” (principally written by Paul McCartney back in 1958 while playing truant from school) . The single only made number 17 on the BBC chart but it got a lot of airplay and attention. The Beatles new status as “hit parade” artistes saw them booking more concerts outside their native Liverpool. The Telephone advert says they were just back from a German tour, in fact a residency at Hamburg with Little Richard, which, along with having a hit record in “Love Me Do”, all contributed to them being a “must-see” act at Thimblemill.

The afternoon of the 19^th saw them playing in Liverpool at the legendary Cavern Club before the 85 mile dash south to the Midlands for two evening shows – one at the Adelphi Ballroom, West Bromwich and the other at Thimblemill. How the Beatles managed to play three sets in one day was due to several factors. This was the era of package tours and concerts which meant several acts could be on the bill at a concert. Added to this there were no real soundchecks or PA systems. The Beatles would have plugged into their own individual backline amplifiers with perhaps one microphone picking up Ringo’s kit. Assuming these and the vocal microphones all worked that was about it for sound balancing and no other amplification on top of that. Very simple and easy to set up and mostly would not break down. As Beatlemania took off it meant the band became largely inaudible; it would have taken the huge speaker stacks you see at concerts today to overcome the screaming, but that was still a few years away. So it was mostly a question of turn up, change, plug in and play. When they did play it was only for between 20 and 25 minutes and this gave them the flexibility with the other considerations to play three sets in one day. Evening shows would be staggered so as they were onstage in say West Bromwich, the other acts would be finishing off in Smethwick and then it would be a mad dash to arrive in time to go on to finish there.

If you had been there what would they have played? “Love Me Do” and “Twist And Shout” (as popularised by the Isley Brothers)  are both certainties. Another likely one is “A Taste Of Honey” which was on the forthcoming “Please Please Me” album (released 22^nd March 1963) and had been in their set for a while. Also an ever present was “I Saw Her Standing There”, a Lennon/McCartney song that sounds for all the world like a classic rock ‘n’ roll song from the past -  but wasn’t!  The rest of the set would have been drawn from that album, along with some of those rock ‘n’ roll standards they had cut their teeth on live in Liverpool and Germany. During the week before Smethwick they were busy writing posed for new studio portraits, the Beatles now evolving fast into the “moptops in suits” look, and there are also some surviving shots from an un-named concert elsewhere on the tour.

These pictures show exactly how they would have looked onstage at Thimblemill. Six days later they went back into Abbey Road Studios and recorded their second single, “Please Please Me” and with it The Beatles took off, sadly never to return to Smethwick.