SOMETHING WAS about to happen, for sure… something was in the autumnal air that Friday in October and somehow, from somewhere, a change was coming.
The signs were around for anyone who could spot them, like the sharp young businessman and would-be showbiz impresario Brian Epstein, for instance, who was on a call that afternoon negotiating the appearance fee for a promising pop act he had signed up to manage.
He was asking £50 for The Beatles to play a session at a Sheffield dance hall.
A week later, the price would be £100.
Popular demand, Epstein shrewdly calculated, was about to outstrip supply. As of today, his boys were recording artistes
October 5, 1962… this was the day, if Epstein calculated correctly, when the Sixties would truly begin swinging.
The Beatles’ first single, Love Me Do, was released, the modest beginning of events that would eventually spread around the world, the early rumbling of a cultural earthquake.
Coincidentally, in the cinemas James Bond was also making his debut that day in Dr No, all adding to the tantalising promise of a future – vibrant, exotic and exciting – that was coming soon.
So it wasn’t only that The Beatles were different or special. Of course they were.
But more than that, the
