The Beatles in Rhyl!

Tomorrow will mark the fiftieth anniversary of an early gig played by the Beatles. Hard to believe now, the Beatles were still playing the circuit in 1963 after their explosion on to the pop scene a year earlier. They played the Ritz Ballroom and I don't doubt there will be many locally old enough to remember going to see them. Life often comes down to timing and simply being in the right place at the right time. Five years later, their fame was so huge that the Ritz Ballroom would have been unthinkable. In fact, they played their last live concert in the Shea Stadium in 1965. This is astonishing when you consider that their legendary recording career still had five years to run.

It must have been an amazing experience for those lucky enough to be there. Seeing a young talented group before fame has got too big is a rare privilege. The talent and desire is all there and such atmospheres are beyond compare. You are aware that you have just witnessed something special.

By coincidence, it was five years to the day after that Rhyl gig that the actress Jane Asher announced that her engagement to Paul McCartney was over. She did so on a live TV broadcast while McCartney apparently watched on TV in his room. There can be few more cruel ways of announcing a split. We have much to thank her for though because she inspired a cluster of great songs. "All my loving", "And I love her" and "With love from me to you" were all written with Jane Asher in mind. It is always difficult to name your favourite Beatles song but "And I love her" is a song of rare genius showing McCartney at his most inspired. Like "Yesterday", it invokes all sorts of emotions as you live through the journey of the song. I think the most amazing aspect of "And I love her" is that he is allowing us in to a very intimate discourse between two young lovers. It is a special gift to be able and willing to do this.

I'd like to think that if another talented foursome was starting out in the music business, I might expect to see them cutting their teeth in Rhyl. Sadly, Rhyl is not the thriving tourist town it was in the sixties. The intervening years have not been kind and the Rhyl of today is summed up by the pseudo derelict state of its sea front. That said, Rhyl is a symptom of the trend which has seen successive generations flock to the airports in search of summer sun. Many other British seaside towns have been dealt similar fates over the years. I hope therefore that the hot weather which we are now enjoying will persuade a new generation that Rhyl and towns like it still have much to offer for the British holidaymaker. Whatever the future holds for Rhyl, nobody can alter the history books. The Beatles really did play there fifty years ago and the rest, as they say, is history.