Lucky Boys Get the Beatles Cheap

Friday, April 5, 2013

Beatles Radio.com/blog 50 years Ago today Everyday:

By April 1963, the Beatles were veterans of the live stage. After hundreds of shows in Hamburgand at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, they were touring England in support of their first album. Everywhere they went, they had teenage girls squealing over their first No. 1 single, “Please Please Me.” All of which made it a little odd when, on April 4, 1963, the Beatles’ made their next tour stop at a small all-boys boarding school.

More unusual still is who booked the show at the Stowe School, a private school of just a few hundred boys: one of its students, David Moores. Moores, who had grown up around Liverpool, wanted to see his hometown band. So, in January 1963, he wrote to Brian Epstein. This set in motion a series of fairly formal letters of negotiation between Epstein and Moores, ending in their mutual agreement, in a signed contract, that the Beatles would play the school for their more or less standard fee of 100 quid.