91热爆

by Bob Stanley

Brian Matthew with the Beatles during a rehearsal for Saturday Club in 1963

My only regret there is that I didn't have more to do with George who I thought was a lovely guy, absolutely lovely...

Brian Matthew

Maybe it's something to do with the Live At The 91热爆 albums, released twenty years ago - or maybe it's just because they just left a huge impression on anyone who heard the shows - but The Beatles will always be strongly linked to Brian Matthew and Saturday Club. "Because it was a live show fundamentally, we did Saturday Club in Broadcasting House" recalls Brian over coffee and chocolate biscuits. "That was where I first met the Beatles. (The show's producer) Bernie Andrews had got them in to do a live performance. Brian Epstein was sitting in the studio with them, and I'd never met any of them before. What a funny way to meet the Beatles - introducing them on air!"

This was in January 1963, when their only chart success to date had been Love Me Do, which had been a no.17 hit late the previous year. The Beatles sang Little Eva's recent US hit Keep Your Hands Off My Baby on their first Saturday Club appearance, which they never otherwise recorded. However they would have been on to promote their new single, Please Please Me, which famously reached number one on every chart of the day except the Record Retailer chart, used in the Guinness books, where it was held at no.2 by Frank Ifield's Wayward Wind. Number one or number two, the Beatles quickly became a national phenomenon, and Brian Matthew was along for the ride, whether he wanted to be or not.

"Seeing that develop was extraordinary. Later that year I was also introducing Thank Your Lucky Stars on television, by which time they were enormous. We had to have a police escort to bring them in to the studio. I had to meet them at a hotel I knew eight miles out of Birmingham. When we arrived at the studio, you couldn't breathe for the kids outside waiting for them. They were climbing up the walls, trying to get in the doors, fantastic. Very scary. A great thrill, though."

"The Beatles were very extrovert - my only regret there is that I didn't have more to do with George who I thought was a lovely guy, absolutely lovely. I saw the documentary his wife made, and I was practically in tears thinking 'what an opportunity I missed there'. Only because he was obviously somebody that you really ought to know. Extremely talented too. Well, they all were! I'll make an exception for Ringo, he didn't pretend to be particularly talented."