\n The Beatles, the defining band of 20th century pop music, played at the now-demolished Astoria Ballroom on King Street early on in their career on February 12, 1963.\n<\/p>\n
\n Oldham Council recently shared photos of the famous event, along with some information about it.\n<\/p>\n
\n The post read: \u201cWhat makes it even more interesting is that the night before, The Beatles had been in the studio recording much of their debut album, Please Please Me. Despite suffering with a bad cold and straining his voice during the recording of Twist And Shout, John Lennon still took to the stage in Oldham the following evening.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cAt the time, nobody could have known what was about to happen. Within months, Beatlemania would take hold across Britain before spreading around the world.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cOldham may have only played a small part in their story, but it was still one of the places that welcomed the band on their journey from packed dance halls to global superstardom.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Residents have been sharing their memories of the Beatles concert in Oldham (Image: Oldham Council)\n<\/p>\n
\n While the venue of this legendary gig is no more, the memories of the fans who were there that night remain.\n<\/p>\n
\n The post has attracted almost 100 comments from residents, sharing their recollections of the evening.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sandra Mason said: \u201cI went to the Astoria that day with my friend Susan Chadwick. What a fab night it was. We were only 14 and queued for ages and were lucky to get in. Not sure what the age limits were at the time but no one questioned us. Great memories.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Hazel Archer didn’t quite make the gig, but still got a glimpse of them. She said: \u201cI was there in this massive queue. I fainted and was carried over the heads of everyone apparently.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cAnyway, I didn\u2019t feel good and decided to walk home down Manchester Road when a van pulled up to me near the fire station asking for directions to the Astoria. Guess who \u2013 only the Beatles. I nearly fainted again.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The Fab Four played in Oldham just before the start of Beatlemania (Image: Oldham Council)\n<\/p>\n
\n Julie Carol Gaskell said: \u201cI was there and lucky. Together with my friend we had a fab night, went home with sore throats. My dad saw a glimpse of it on the news and was not impressed. Bought him a Vera Lynn record to shut him up.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Jean Springett said: \u201cIt was so exciting. The DJ kept fooling us and putting their records on so we all kept screaming every time thinking they were coming on. Lovely memories.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Some people were not as fortunate.\n<\/p>\n
\n Pete Scanlon said: \u201cI was 16 and queued up but never got in as a gang of lads swarmed out of the Star Inn and hustled their way in. Perhaps a good thing as the screaming drowned out the music, so I was told.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Beatles, the defining band of 20th century pop music, played at the now-demolished Astoria Ballroom on King…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-663899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}