The Beatles’ first radio interview

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 in on the act 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.

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.