Monday 4 November 1963 | Live performance and television recording | London | By Beatles Fabdom
On 4 November 1963, The Beatles appeared at the Royal Variety Performance at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr performed four songs in front of an audience that included Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.
The evening is remembered above all for Lennon’s introduction to the final song, Twist And Shout. His request for the audience in the cheaper seats to clap, while the others rattled their jewellery, brought the band’s humour into one of Britain’s most formal entertainment settings.
The appearance took place during their autumn British tour, the night after their concerts at the Odeon Cinema in Leeds. It was recorded for television and shown on ITV on 10 November, rather than broadcast live on the night.
| Performance date | Monday 4 November 1963 |
|---|---|
| Event | Royal Variety Performance, also widely called the Royal Command Performance in Beatles accounts |
| Venue | Prince of Wales Theatre |
| Location | Coventry Street, London |
| Royal guests | Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret |
| The Beatles | John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr |
| Set | From Me To You; She Loves You; Till There Was You; Twist And Shout |
| Advertised event start | 8.30pm, with doors opening at 7.30pm |
| Television broadcast | ITV, Sunday 10 November 1963 |
| Beneficiary named on the invitation | The Variety Artistes’ Benevolent Fund |
The Beatles at the Prince of Wales Theatre
By November 1963, The Beatles were already major British stars. From Me To You and She Loves You had established their success as hitmakers, and their appearances on national television had carried them far beyond the Liverpool and Hamburg club circuit.
The Royal Variety Performance placed them within a much broader entertainment programme. Instead of a bill made up only of contemporary pop groups, the event brought together singers, comedians, dancers, actors and speciality performers.
The venue was the Prince of Wales Theatre on Coventry Street, near Leicester Square. It should not be confused with the London Palladium, where The Beatles had appeared on television the previous month. These were separate occasions at different London theatres.
The Royal Variety Charity’s archive credits Bernard Delfont as executive producer, Robert Nesbitt as producer and Harold Collins as musical director of the 1963 show. The event supported the Variety Artistes’ Benevolent Fund, the name printed on the supplied invitation.
Setlist: the four songs in performance order
- From Me To You
- She Loves You
- Till There Was You
- Twist And Shout
The sequence combined two Lennon–McCartney hits, a ballad from musical theatre and a rock-and-roll finale. It displayed the range of a band whose live repertoire was broader than its original singles alone.
From Me To You
The Beatles began with From Me To You. The opening was already under way as the curtains rose, giving the appearance an immediate musical start rather than an extended spoken introduction.
After the song, Lennon and McCartney moved their microphone stands towards the front of the stage. The shift brought them closer to the audience for the next part of their short set.
She Loves You
She Loves You followed, bringing one of the most recognisable songs of the year to the Royal Variety audience. At its conclusion, the group bowed together.
The bowing was part of the performance’s visual humour as well as its theatre etiquette. In a recollection reproduced on The Beatles’ official website, Harrison remembered Lennon exaggerating the bows because the group disliked their conventional show-business associations.
Till There Was You
McCartney introduced Till There Was You with a joke about Sophie Tucker being their favourite American group. The song itself was written by Meredith Willson for The Music Man and provided a quieter contrast to the two opening singles.
The Beatles’ studio version would appear on With The Beatles later that month. Its presence here shows that their Royal Variety set was not simply a run through their latest chart records: the ballad had a clear place alongside the original songs and the closing rock-and-roll number.
Twist And Shout
Before the final song, the microphone stands returned to their earlier positions and Lennon addressed the audience. The line that followed became inseparable from this particular performance.
John Lennon’s “rattle your jewellery” introduction
“For our last number I’d like to ask your help. The people in the cheaper seats clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewellery.”
John Lennon, introducing Twist And Shout, 4 November 1963. The wording is reproduced on The Beatles’ official account of the appearance.
Lennon delivered the remark with a grin and followed it with a bow before the band launched into Twist And Shout. The contrast between the formal setting and the directness of the joke helped make it one of the best-known spoken moments of The Beatles’ early career.
The important detail is who was present. The royal audience included the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. It was not a performance before Queen Elizabeth II, and the encounter should not be confused with The Beatles receiving their MBEs at Buckingham Palace in 1965.
The remark was an introduction to the fourth and final song, not an interruption during the set or a comment made when meeting the royal guests afterwards.
Meeting the Queen Mother after the performance
After their stage appearance, The Beatles were presented to the Queen Mother. The supplied photograph captures the meeting, with the four musicians in dark suits and the Queen Mother wearing a tiara and holding a bouquet.
The image records a different part of the evening from the performance itself. It complements the surviving stage footage by showing the formal presentation after the music and Lennon’s famous introduction.
The invitation: doors, dress code and the evening’s purpose
The invitation identifies the venue as the Prince of Wales Theatre, Coventry Street, London W.1, and gives the date as Monday 4 November 1963. It names Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and states that the show was in aid of the Variety Artistes’ Benevolent Fund.
Doors were advertised to open at 7.30pm, with patrons requested to be seated by 8.15pm and the programme commencing at 8.30pm. These are times for the evening as a whole, not The Beatles’ exact stage time.
The card requests evening dress and lists a stalls price of three guineas. Its formal presentation provides a useful counterpart to the informality of Lennon’s stage remark: the same evening combined established theatre ceremony with the humour of a young Liverpool group.
A variety bill, not a Beatles-only concert
The Royal Variety Charity’s archive lists a wide range of performers, including Marlene Dietrich with Burt Bacharach, Joe Loss and his orchestra, Charlie Drake, the Clark Brothers, Dickie Henderson, and Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett as Steptoe and Son.
The programme also included stage performers and musical-theatre companies. This mixed bill explains why The Beatles presented a compact four-song selection rather than the longer sequence associated with a headline concert.
Brambell’s presence offers another connection to The Beatles’ subsequent film career: he would play Paul’s grandfather in A Hard Day’s Night the following year. The Royal Variety bill placed the musicians and the actor at the same major entertainment event before that screen collaboration.
Television broadcast: 10 November 1963
The Royal Variety Performance took place on 4 November, but the ITV broadcast followed on Sunday 10 November 1963. Keeping the two dates separate matters: this was a recorded theatre performance, not a live transmission on the Monday evening.
The Royal Variety Charity gives an audience of 21.2 million for the broadcast. The televised show extended the reach of the theatre appearance to viewers across Britain, including those who could not have attended the event in person.
For day-by-day Beatles history, 4 November is the performance and recording date. The later broadcast belongs to 10 November and brought the same musical set and stage humour to a much larger audience.
Watch the performance through the Royal Variety Charity’s official 1963 archive, which includes the four-song sequence.
The Royal Variety recordings on Anthology 1
Three performances from the evening were subsequently included on Anthology 1: She Loves You, Till There Was You and Twist And Shout. Those selections preserve both the musical performance and the setting in which the band’s humour became part of the historical record.
From Me To You opened the original four-song set, but it is not one of those three Royal Variety selections on Anthology 1. The complete concert set and the later album selection should therefore be distinguished.
Between Leeds and the autumn tour
The Beatles had performed in Leeds on Sunday 3 November, then travelled into the London theatre setting for the Royal Variety appearance on Monday. Their autumn tour programme resumed in Slough on 5 November.
The Royal Variety engagement was a distinct booking within that busy period, not another ordinary stop on the same package bill. Our Leeds concert article includes the full autumn tour itinerary and places the previous evening in that wider schedule.
The contrast with the preceding years is striking in the diary itself: 4 November 1960 at the Kaiserkeller, 4 November 1961 at the Cavern, and 4 November 1962 at the Star-Club all preceded this London appearance before royal guests.
Prince of Wales Theatre location map
The venue is the Prince of Wales Theatre, Coventry Street, London W1D 6AS, England. The theatre’s current operator confirms this address. The invitation uses the contemporary London W.1 postal district; the postcode above is the present-day address for locating the venue.
Open the Prince of Wales Theatre in Google Maps.
Explore the With The Beatles era
Till There Was You connects the Royal Variety set with With The Beatles, the album released later in November 1963. Our album-era designs provide a related way to explore the band’s music and imagery from that period; they are not Royal Variety Performance souvenirs.
Frequently asked questions
When did The Beatles play the Royal Variety Performance?
They performed on Monday 4 November 1963 at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London.
What songs did they perform?
They played From Me To You, She Loves You, Till There Was You and Twist And Shout, in that order.
What did John Lennon say about jewellery?
Before Twist And Shout, he asked the people in the cheaper seats to clap their hands and the rest of the audience to rattle their jewellery.
Was Queen Elizabeth II in the audience?
The royal guests were Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, not Queen Elizabeth II.
Was the show broadcast live on 4 November?
No. The performance was recorded and shown on ITV on Sunday 10 November 1963.
Which Royal Variety songs appear on Anthology 1?
She Loves You, Till There Was You and Twist And Shout from this performance appear on Anthology 1.
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