The Beatles : Roxburgh Hall, Stowe School, Buckinghamshire, Britain, 4/4/1963

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The Beatles : 

Roxburgh Hall, 

Stowe School, 

Buckinghamshire, Britain,

 4/4/1963

NOTES :

 One of The Beatles’

 more unusual

 live engagements, 

certainly for 1963:

 a performance at

Stowe School in Buckinghamshire.

Stowe School 

was a prestigious

 all-boys public school. 

The event came about after 

one of the pupils, 

David Moores 

from Liverpool,

 contacted Brian Epstein

 to see if The Beatles

 would consider performing. 

Epstein was impressed enough 

with Moores’ approach that

 he agreed to the booking.

The performance in the school’s 

Roxburgh Hall

 was unusual for another reason: 

the boys sat in 

neat rows watching

 the performance, 

without a

 single scream to be heard.

The earliest known

 full recording of 

The Beatles 

playing a live concert

 in the UK,

 at the point they were 

becoming the 

biggest band in the nation, 

has been revealed by

 BBC Radio 4’s 

Front Row, 

almost exactly 

60 years 

after it was made.

The hour-long 

quarter-inch tape recording 

was made by

 15-year-old

 John Bloomfield

 at Stowe boarding school 

in Buckinghamshire on

  April 4th 1963 

when the band played

 a concert at

 the school’s theatre.

They had been booked by 

fellow pupil

 David Moores, 

who had written to

 manager

 Brian Epstein.

Epstein, 

perhaps recognising

 the connection to an

 important Liverpool family 

the Moores family

 owned the Littlewoods 

football pools 

and retail business 

 agreed to the booking

 for a fee of £100,

 and Moores

 raised the funds by 

selling tickets

 to schoolmates.

Bloomfield was a

 self-confessed tech geek

 keen to try out a

 new reel-to-reel tape recorder.

 Now in his 70s, 

he revealed the 

existence of the tape 

It was a unique Beatles gig,

 performed in front of an 

almost entirely male audience.

 And crucially, 

despite loud cheers 

and some screaming, 

the tape is not drowned out

 by the audience reaction.

It captures the appeal of 

The Beatles’ 

tightly-honed live act, 

with a mixture of their 

club repertoire of 

R&B covers

 and the start of the 

Lennon/McCartney

 songwriting partnership, 

with tracks off their 

debut album 

Please Please Me, 

which had been

 released barely

 two weeks earlier, 

on

  March 22nd

They kicked off with the album’s 

opening track

 I Saw Her Standing There 

and then segued into 

Chuck Berry’s 

Too Much Monkey Business.

Speaking about its significance, 

Lewisohn said: 

“The opportunity that

 this tape presents, 

which is completely 

out of the blue, 

is fantastic because

 we hear them just on the cusp

 of the breakthrough into 

complete world fame.

 And at that point,

 all audience recordings 

become blanketed in screams.

“So here is an opportunity

 to hear them in the UK, 

in an environment where

 they could be heard 

and where the tape

 actually does

 capture them properly, 

at a time when they

 can have banter with 

the audience as well.

“I think it’s an incredibly

 important recording, 

and I hope something good

 and constructive and 

creative eventually

 happens to it.

“I didn’t even know this

 tape existed until

 you told me about it, 

and I think I had to

 pick myself up off the floor.”

The band arrived late

 from a recording at the

 BBC Paris Studios and, 

used to playing 

two half-hour sets, 

rattled through more than

 22 songs in an hour.

Remarkably,

 they are heard taking requests

 from the schoolboys, 

who shouted out the 

names of songs

 that had been released

 just two weeks earlier.

 The banter between the band

 and audience reveals

 John Lennon doing

 joke voices, 

the huge popularity of

 Ringo Starr, 

and the fact that 

George Harrison 

had lost his voice 

and was unable to sing.

In 2020, 

when the school

 put up a blue plaque 

to celebrate the Beatles’ visit, 

Sir Paul McCartney

 recalled how shocked

 they’d been.

 “Good old working class boys

 like us had never visited 

an establishment like Stowe 

and we were shocked 

to see the stark

 living conditions",

TRACKLIST

(With Banner)

I Saw Her Standing There

Too Much Monkey Business

talk

Love Me Do

talk

Some Other Guy

talk

Misery

talk

I Just Don't Understand

talk

A Shot of Rhythm and Blues

talk

Boys

talk

Matchbox

talk

From Me to You

talk

Thank You Girl

talk

Memphis, Tennessee

talk

A Taste of Honey

talk

Twist and Shout

talk

Anna [Go to Him]

talk

Please Please Me

talk

The Hippy Hippy Shake

talk

I'm Talking about You

talk

Ask Me Why

talk

Till There Was You

talk

I Saw Her Standing There [Edit]

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