"LOOK WHO IT IS" *HELEN SHAPIRO* / "SHE LOVES YOU" *THE BEATLES*
"READY ! STEADY! GO! 4th October 1963.
Three verses - four Beatles - what to do!?
Apparently there was a coin toss and Paulie missed out :(
Try to see if you can see him in the audience.
(BTW : I'm the weird girl situated by Ringo ogling throughout she Loves You!)
Back-Beat: In February 2nd 1963 The Beatles were an opening band!
They were about to set out on what would become a grueling year of touring, and, on their first tour, they were listed dead-last on a six-band bill. The headliner was the far more popular Helen Shapiro, who was only 16 or 17 years old.
Response to their early shows was often tepid, eager for whatever exposure they could get "Someone saying he was called Brian Epstein was ringing from Liverpool," promoter Arthur Howes later recalled. "" Howes remembers them as just "another group with a funny name," but he booked them with the simple hope of turning a profit.
During the long bus rides, Lennon & McCartney would move to the back of the bus to work on new songs, often in hopes of selling those songs to Shapiro and others.
Ringo still recalls that they were happy to be there. "," Starr said. "She had the telly in her dressing room and we didn't have one. We had to ask her if we could watch hers. We weren't getting packed houses, but we were on the boards, man."
You can get a sense of what the tour was like from this 1963 clip from Ready, Steady, Go! The clip is from October 8 months later, it's still Shapiro who takes center stage for the performance, as she serenades Lennon, Starr, and Harrison in turn. Paul apparently but can be spotted in the background. The Beatles display a characteristically mischievous sense of humor.
When the Beatles finally hit No. 1 with "Please Please Me" in the middle of the tour, things began to change. Soon they were getting as much applause as the headliner—and this created some tension.
"All the people coming to the show were just waiting for The Beatles" Harrison later remembered. "It was embarrassing as she was a very nice person." This is characteristic of the Beatles' relationship with Shapiro. They liked her, and she even had a crush on John (who was secretly a married man), but he dismissed her music as "mush"
Shapiro in 1979 backstage on Broadway