1963 | The Beatles

"They did some funny gigs. I remember the worst show was when they played Crewe. There were only five people there. There were more of us than there were of the audience, but they still went on stage twice, and the five people stayed. When we went back there a month later, there were 700 people. (Probably including the original five.)" - Neil Aspinall

“It was never an overnight success. It started in pubs; we went on to talent contests and then to working men’s clubs. We played Hamburg clubs, and then we started to play town halls and night clubs, and then ballrooms. There could be as many as 2000 people in a ballroom, so if you did a gig there the word really got round. Next up from that was theatres, and Brian took us through all these steps. When we began to headline bills on theatres, we felt we had really arrived. The next ladder to climb was radio. It was a gentle thing; we had conquered the clubs - we’d conquered the Indra, we’d conquered the Cavern - and we had gradually became quite known, so it was, ‘Well, what’s left? Radio!’” - Paul