The Beatles’ Monty Lister Interview: Full Transcript – 27 October 1962

27 October 1962 | Hulme Hall, Port Sunlight | Radio Clatterbridge

This is a text transcription of the interview recorded by Monty Lister and the Radio Clatterbridge team before the Beatles’ Hulme Hall concert on 27 October 1962. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr discuss their instruments, Hamburg, Liverpool, songwriting, television and their new single, Love Me Do.

Read the accompanying history of the Beatles’ earliest surviving recorded interview for the background, recording-date distinction and later Anthology connection.

About this transcript

Section headings have been added for navigation. One short phrase in the Hamburg question is unclear in the supplied copy and marked [unclear]. The speakers’ recollections and claims are reproduced as part of the historical interview, not as independently verified statements. The interview was recorded on 27 October 1962; a transmission date should not be confused with that recording date.

Interviewers: Monty Lister, Malcolm Threadgill and Peter Smethurst. Visit Radio Clatterbridge’s Beatles archive for the station’s account and recording.

Introductions: John, Paul, George and Ringo

Monty Lister: Well it’s a very great pleasure for us this evening to say hello to a most exciting Merseyside group, The Beatles. Now I know their names, and I’m going to try and put faces to them. Now, you’re John Lennon, aren’t you?

John: Yes, that’s right.

Monty: What do you do in the group, John?

John: I play harmonica, rhythm guitar, and vocal. That’s what they call it.

Monty: Harmonica, rhythm guitar, and vocal. Then, there’s Paul McCartney. That’s you?

Paul: Yeah, that’s me. Yeah.

Monty: And what do you do?

Paul: Play bass guitar and uh, sing? I think! That’s what they say.

Monty: That’s quite apart from being vocal?

Paul: Well... yes, yes.

Monty: Then there’s George Harrison.

George: How do you do?

Monty: How do you do? What’s your job?

George: Uh, lead guitar and sort of singing.

Monty: By playing lead guitar, does that mean that you’re sort of leader of the group or are you...?

George: No, no. Just... well you see, the other guitar is the rhythm. Ching, ching, ching, you see.

Paul: He’s solo guitar, you see. John is, in fact, the leader of the group.

Monty: I don’t know whether we caught that or not, but I hope it went in. And over in the background, here, and also in the background of the group and making a lot of noise is Ringo Starr.

Ringo: Hello.

Monty: You’re new to the group, aren’t you Ringo?

Ringo: Yes, um, nine weeks now.

Monty: Were you in on the act when the recording was made of Love Me Do?

Ringo: Yes, I’m on the record. I’m on the disc.

(Giggles)

Ringo: (Comic voice) It’s down on record, you know?

Monty: Now, um...

Ringo: I’m the drummer!

Monty: What’s that offensive weapon you’ve got there? Those are your drumsticks?

Ringo: Well, it’s um... just a pair of sticks I found. I just bought ’em, you know, ’cause we’re going away. And I’ve put my name on. And it’s good, you know.

Hamburg and the group’s Liverpool backgrounds

Monty: When you say you’re going away, that leads us on to another question now. Where are you going?

Ringo: Germany. Hamburg. For two weeks.

Monty: You have standing and great engagements over there, haven’t you?

Ringo: Well, the boys have been there quite a lot, you know. And I’ve been there with other groups, but this is the first time I’ve been there with The Beatles.

Monty: Well Paul, you tell us: how do you get [unclear] in Germany?

Paul: Well, it was all through an old agent.

(Laughter)

Paul: We first went there for a fellow who used to manage us, and Mr Allan Williams of the Jacaranda club in Liverpool. And he found the engagements so we sort of went there, and then went under our own...

John: Steam.

Paul: Steam... (Laughs)

John: ...as they say.

Paul: As they say, afterwards, you know. And we’ve just been going backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards.

Monty: You’re not busy at all?

Paul: Well yes, actually. Yes. It’s me left leg, you know, the war.

(Laughter)

Monty: George, were you brought up in Liverpool?

George: Yes. So far, yes.

Monty: Whereabouts?

George: Well, born in Wavertree, and bred in Wavertree and Speke, where the aeroplanes are, you know.

Monty: Are you all Liverpool types then?

Ringo: Yes.

John: Uh... types, yes.

Paul: Oh yeah.

Ringo: Liverpool typed Paul, there.

Monty: Now, I’m told that you were actually in the same form as young Ron Wycherley...

Ringo: Ronald. Yes.

Monty: ...now Billy Fury.

Ringo: In St Silas.

Monty: In which?

Ringo: St Silas.

John: Really?

Ringo: It wasn’t Dingle Vale like you said in the Musical Express.

Paul: No, that was wrong. St Silas school.

Malcolm Threadgill asks about the German recordings

Monty: Now I’d like to introduce a young disc jockey who helps us out with programmes at Cleaver and Clatterbridge Hospitals. His name is Malcolm Threadgill, he’s 16 years old, and I’m sure he’d like to ask some questions from the teenage point of view.

Malcolm Threadgill: Yes, thank you. I understand you’ve made other recordings before on a German label...

Paul: Yeah.

Malcolm: What ones were they?

Paul: Well, we didn’t make... First of all we made a recording with a fellow called Tony Sheridan. We were working in a club called the Top Ten Club in Hamburg. And we made a recording with him called ‘My Bonnie’, which got to number five in the German hit parade.

John: Achtung!

Paul: But it didn’t do a thing over here, you know. It wasn’t a very good record, but the Germans must have liked it a bit, you know. And we did an instrumental which was released in France on an EP of Tony Sheridan’s, which George and John wrote themselves. That wasn’t released here. It got one copy. That’s all, you know. It didn’t do anything.

Love Me Do, songwriting and the next record

Malcolm: You composed ‘PS I Love You’ and ‘Love Me Do’ yourself, didn’t you? Who does the composing between you?

Paul: Well, it’s John and I. We write the songs between us. It’s, you know, we’ve sort of signed contracts and things to say, that now if we...

John: It’s equal shares.

Paul: Yeah, equal shares and royalties and things, so that really we just both write most of the stuff. George did write this instrumental, as we say. But mainly it’s John and I. We’ve written over about a hundred songs but we don’t use half of them, you know. We just happened to sort of rearrange Love Me Do and played it to the recording people, and PS I Love You, and uh, they seemed to quite like it. So that’s what we recorded.

Monty: And that was Paul McCartney telling you all about it.

Malcolm: Is there any more of your own compositions you intend to record?

John: Well, we did record another song of our own when we were down there, but it wasn’t finished enough. So, you know, we’ll take it back next time and see how they like it then.

(Long pause)

John: Well... that’s all from my end!

(Laughter)

Port Sunlight, Rock Ferry and local connections

Monty: Well thank you for asking the questions, Malcolm. Now, in closing, I would like to just ask you, and we’re recording this at Hulme Hall in Port Sunlight: Did any of you come over this side before you became famous, as it were? Do you know this district?

Paul: Well, we played here, uh... I don’t know what you mean by famous, you know.

(Laughter)

Paul: If being famous is being in the hit parade, we’ve been over here, we were here about two months ago. Been here twice, haven’t we?

John: I’ve got relations here. Rock Ferry.

Monty: Have you?

John: Yes. Oh, all sides of the water, you know.

Paul: Yeah, I’ve got a relation in Claughton Village, Upton Road.

(Laughter)

Monty: I wish I had.

George: I know a man in Chester!

(Laughter)

Peter Smethurst asks about television

Monty: Now, that’s a very dangerous thing to say. There’s a mental home there, mate. Peter Smethurst is here as well, and he looks as though he’s bursting to say a question.

Peter Smethurst: Yeah well, there is just one question I’d like to ask. I’m sure it’s the question everyone’s asking. I’d like your impressions on your first appearance on television.

Paul: Well, strangely enough, we thought we were gonna be dead nervous. And everyone said, ‘You suddenly, when you see the cameras, you realize that there are two million people watching’, because there were two million watching that People And Places that we did, we heard afterwards. But, you know, strangely enough, it didn’t come to us. We didn’t think at all about that. And it was much easier doing the television than it was doing the radio, it’s still nerve wracking, but it was a bit easier than doing radio because there was a full audience for the radio broadcast.

Monty: Do you find it nerve wracking doing this now?

(Laughter)

Paul: (Jokingly) Yeah, yeah.

A record request for the hospital listeners

Monty: Anyway, we hope we’ve got a full audience in both hospitals, Clatterbridge and Cleaver. And over at Cleaver Hospital, a certain record on Parlophone, the top side has been requested for Eileen in Robert Cart Ward from Maddy. And, strangely enough, for Maddy from Eileen in the same ward. So perhaps the Beatles themselves would like to tell them what it’s going to be?

Paul: Yeah. Well, I think it’s gonna be Love Me Do.

John: Parlophone R4949.

(Laughter)

Paul: Love Me Do.

Monty: And I’m sure, for them, the answer is PS I love you!

Paul: Yeah.

Return to the full history of the Monty Lister interview · The Beatles record Here We Go, 25 October 1962 · Explore On This Day in Beatles History