The Beatles live: Majestic Ballroom, Newcastle

The Beatles’ second and final concert at Newcastle’s Majestic Ballroom took place on 26 June 1963. They had previously appeared at the venue on 28 January 1963.

This was the group’s final appearance in a ballroom run by Top Rank, although they continued to perform in cinemas and theatres operated by the company.

Before the show, in a room at the Turk’s Hotel in Newcastle, John Lennon and Paul McCartney began writing their next single, ‘She Loves You’.

John and I wrote ‘She Loves You’ together. There was a Bobby Rydell song [‘Forget Him’] out at the time and, as often happens, you think of one song when you write another.

We were in a van up in Newcastle. I’d planned an ‘answering song’ where a couple of us would sing ‘She loves you…’ and the other one answers, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ We decided that that was a crummy idea as it was, but at least we then had the idea for a song called ‘She Loves You’. So we sat in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it.

They wrote while facing each other on twin beds in their shared hotel room.

We must have had a few hours before the show so we said, ‘Oh, great! Let’s have a ciggy and write a song!’ So that’s how we began ‘She Loves You’. I remember for some reason thinking of Bobby Rydell; he must have had a hit that we were interested in. I remember thinking of him and sitting on the bed in this hotel somewhere with John in the afternoon daylight.

‘She Loves You’ was completed the following day at McCartney’s family home, 20 Forthlin Road, Liverpool.