 |
| Blair Hall on Walton Road |
Blair Hall was situated on the second floor of the Co-operative building on Walton Road, Liverpool with the entrance at the side of the building on Christopher Street with several flights of stairs leading to the ballroom. The basement housed a furniture store and pharmacy, the ground floor sold groceries and soft furnishings, and the first floor was first floor was for Co-op offices and banking services. It was another Co-op building, like Holyoake Hall, that was rented by Wally Hill's company 'Peak Promotions', which ran jive events at four northern England venues: Blair Hall, Holyoake Hall in Wavertree, the David Lewis Club in Great George Place, and the Columba Hall in Widnes. The Beatles played at all these venues apart from Columba Hall.
 |
| The Beatles performing at Blair Hall |
'The Beatles' first performance at Blair Hall was on the 5th of February 1961 when Pete Best found out to his cost that the stage floor sloped forward. Luckily for Pete, Harry Prytherch, the drummer of 'The Remo Four' was used to this and remembers, "He set up his drum kit - and Pete was very very heavy on his bass drum which, to me, was a lot of the Beatles sound in those early days. The really heavy sound was coming from Pete's bass drum and it started sliding on the stage so I immediately ran round the back and got some string out of my case, which I always carried round with me, specially for Blair Hall. We tied it round Pete's bass drum ands then we tied it round his seat - and that stopped his bass drum from sliding on the stage, no matter how hard he hit it." Not all of the Remo Four were immediately overwhelmed. Formerly a Liverpool Institute classmate of Paul McCartney, and now the Remo's bass player, Don Andrew's vivid first impression of the Beatles was that they were dirty and "made a horrible deafening row!"
The Beatles played there on a further four occasions on the 16th, 23rd, 29th and 30th of July in the same year. However their final appearance is questionable as on the 29th of July they had turned up late, possibly due to an argument over the fact they were being paid only £12 there and £15 at Holyoake Hall and weren't happy at this discrepancy. When Wally Hill demanded they play on longer than agreed, because of their late arrival, an argument ensued and they walked out with the threat from Wally that they'd never work in Liverpool again if they didn't turn up the following night. Neil Aspinall did turn up with Pete Best and Paul McCartney but John and George had decided to go to the pictures instead! They left the Hall quickly knowing they were in trouble, especially with the army of 'bouncers' Wally had in attendance at all of his gigs.
 |
| Wally Hill, 2nd from right front row with his 'Bouncers' |
Wally Hill would employ over a dozen bouncers for the hall that held only 400 people and he admitted that it sounded excessive but stressed that it was a necessity because "when we had a riot and we had a few riots in our time, you needed them, you are protecting yourselves and not just the dance hall. They took Blair Hall to pieces (but) luckily by different methods we managed to hush it as otherwise we would have been thrown out. The odd knife was thrown... there were branches off trees and milk bottles but you get acclimatised to it and it becomes a way of life..... except for a few occasions we were in the strongest army."
No comments:
Post a Comment