The Beatles Were a Soho Band - Part 2
The continuing journey through their creative home
Part One of our journey took us back to 16 August 1960, and The Beatles’ first visit to Soho. In this instalment, we go even further back — to April 1960 — and a phone call from the Soho office of Larry Parnes that kick-started their professional career. We trace their first London performance and explore the immediate aftermath of their breakthrough hit in 1962.
Parnes, Shillings and Pence
245 Oxford Street is the building on the northeast corner of Oxford Street and Argyll Street, built as an entrance for Oxford Circus tube station in 1900. It’s an architectural gem of a building, and is Grade II listed. But two floors above the constant flow of commuters and tourists is where Larry Parnes had his office. This Svengali of British rock and roll was behind the first wave of UK chart toppers such as Tommy Steele, Billy Fury and Marty Wilde.
From an East London Jewish rag trade family, Parnes had no interest in music until by chance he found himself in The Stork Club, just behind Piccadilly Circus, one evening in August 1956. Watching teenage Tommy Hicks perform, Parnes immediately realised there was money to be made in this embryonic rock and roll — and nobody else was making it.
His new office was where he signed up Hicks to a business model that was repeated over the years, and served him extremely well until the guitar group revolution of the early sixties swept it all away. The model was a simple one — take a good looking working class boy with a hunger for fame and a natural charisma, give him a new persona, find songs in Denmark Street that matched the persona, sign him to a record label and count the money rolling in. The 2i’s was his favoured venue for talent hunting. His signings had a choice — pay Parnes an eye-watering 40% management fee, or take a guaranteed weekly salary of around £25 — roughly double what they’d earn working in a factory.
Tommy Hicks became Tommy Steele, Reg Smith was rebranded as Marty Wilde, Clive Powell as Georgie Fame, Ron Wycherley found fame as Billy Fury, alongside others who had their moment in the charts with a new Parnes name. It was only Joe Brown that successfully held out against becoming Elmer Twitch.
Eventually Parnes, along with Tommy Steele, shifted his business interests out of pop and into theatre land. Marty Wilde pursued a successful career as a manager (mainly for his daughter Kim Wilde) while Georgie Fame remains a successful performer to this day.
For every Steele, Wilde, Fame and Fury there were many others whose careers either never took off or fizzled out shortly after they started. The future welfare and careers of these young talents were not part of the equation, regardless of whether the Parnes formula worked. The main legacy of Parnes’ Pop was the demonstration that Brits could have hits. The other legacy was his role in giving a big break to the musical act that made his formula totally redundant.
In April 1960 Parnes made a phone call from this office to Allan Williams up in Liverpool to book one of his acts to be a backing group for his latest signing — Johnny Gentle. The deal was for a one week tour of pubs and mechanics’ institutes in the north east of Scotland. The tour would test whether Gentle could command an audience, and all he was looking for in the backing group was basic musical competence.
Williams worked down his list of artists. Cass and the Cassanovas were booked for other clubs, Gerry and the Pacemakers couldn’t get time off work to travel and Derry & The Seniors were otherwise engaged. And so it was in May that the last name on his list - The Silver Beetles — John, Paul, George, Stu and Tommy — embarked on their first ever professional tour. As a result, Paul missed out on sitting his A-level art exam and drummer Tommy Moore got into trouble from the Garston Bottle Company where he was employed as a forklift truck driver.
It was also to this very same office that John Lennon made an urgent phone call asking “where’s our bloody money Larry?” when they had to do a runner from a hotel in Forres due to lack of funds. He wasn’t called Mr Parnes, Shillings & Pence for nothing. It was on this short tour of Scotland that the teenage Silver Beetles decided on a new name. That week, somewhere on the road between Inverness and Fraserburgh they became The Beatles.
Their first London performance (probably)
1961 was the year that The Beatles really mastered their craft. Nearly every day, they performed—sometimes at two or even three venues in a single day. That summer, they took up a grueling three-month residency at Hamburg’s Top Ten Club, playing seven- or eight-hour sets each night and racking up a staggering 503 hours on stage. Returning to Liverpool, they became a fixture at the Cavern Club, performing lunchtime and evening shows. Their repertoire at the time was an eclectic mix: rock and roll, R&B, show tunes, standards, folk, skiffle, comedy songs and a handful of early originals. A year of relentless gigging had forged them into a dynamic, versatile live band—one that knew exactly how to work a crowd.
Their first performance in the south of England, however, was a different story. On 9 December 1961, The Beatles played in Aldershot to an audience of just eighteen people. With nowhere to stay afterward, they drove to London, arriving in Soho around 1 a.m. What happened next remains the subject of debate.
Mark Lewisohn’s comprehensive account of their early years suggests that a couple of the group members may have played at an all nighter on Wardour Street. Other accounts claim they ended up at the Blue Gardenia Club, said to be located on Wardour Mews and run by Harry Bidney, the gay leader of an anti-fascist group. According to these stories, the club—and the street itself—was a gathering place for gay men, local sex workers, and gangsters. Other sources (which seem more likely) place the club at 20 St Anne’s Court, run by Brian Cassar, former frontman of Cass and the Cassanovas. What’s certain is that it was an all-night drinking spot, popular with musicians.
So why the confusion about the location? The early 1960s were an era when homosexuality was still illegal, and strict alcohol licensing laws forced many clubs to operate off the books. Soho was full of short-lived, unregistered venues that left little historical trace, existing in the shadows and beyond official records. Also, it appears that everyone was half cut and nobody’s memory was particularly reliable.
What is likely, however, is that at around 2 a.m. on 10 December 1961, in the basement of number 20 on that narrow alleyway between Dean Street and Wardour Street, The Beatles played their first London gig. Some reports suggest other musicians joined in—possibly Georgie Fame—while others question whether all four Beatles took part. Their driver, Terry McCann, later recalled:
“We had a great time. People said that George Harrison didn’t join in, but I seem to recall he did because someone noted, ‘That’s a fine guitar player you’ve got there,’ and that would have been George. Anyway, they really enjoyed it and stayed until about 3 a.m. or so, then it was straight into the van and the drive back to Liverpool.”
This is the only film that exists of them performing around this time - from a club performance in Liverpool during February 1962. Later that year they were back in Soho. This time with their first hit.
Riding through the glen
Born to Polish Jewish immigrants, Dick James began his music career as a singer, achieving modest success with the theme tune to the TV show Robin Hood. The song—“Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen…”—became a hit, despite the fact that Nottinghamshire isn’t exactly known for its glens. Whatever it lacked in topographical accuracy, it more than made up for in launching James' career, one that would leave a lasting mark on the music industry.
When his singing career waned, James transitioned into music publishing, setting up offices on the second floor of 132 Charing Cross Road, at the corner of Denmark Street—the heart of London’s Tin Pan Alley, the epicenter of British music publishing. By the autumn of 1962, The Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, paid him a visit. Love Me Do, the band’s first EMI release, had just become a minor hit, and Epstein was still navigating the complexities of the music business.
At the time, Epstein was managing nearly every aspect of The Beatles' career himself—handling bookings, promotions, and negotiations—while still running his family's NEMS music store in Liverpool. He needed a reliable base in London, somewhere he could work without constantly traveling back and forth.
James, known for his sharp business instincts, saw potential in Epstein’s young Liverpool band and offered him space in his office. It was here, in the rooms above Denmark Street, that John Lennon and Paul McCartney signed a contract establishing Northern Songs, with James as their publisher. Though they were minority shareholders, the deal would ultimately cost them control of their own songs.
Throughout the 1960s, The Beatles' success helped propel Dick James Music to new heights. In 1969, he launched DJM Records, signing artists such as comedian Jasper Carrott and an unknown singer-songwriter named Elton John—who, under James’ guidance, would become one of the biggest stars in music history.
The Fab Four are born
A blue plaque on 15 Poland Street marks the building where the poet Shelley lived in 1811. One hundred and fifty-one years later, in 1962, Tony Calder Enterprises occupied the top floor. Calder, an eighteen-year-old DJ, had recently left his job in Decca Records' press department to become an independent publicist and promoter.
That September, just weeks before Love Me Do was set for release, Brian Epstein enlisted Tony Barrow to produce a press kit and coordinate a publicity campaign. Barrow, who would later work for The Beatles from 1963 to 1968, was still employed by Decca at the time. To avoid detection by his bosses, he funneled the project through Calder’s office. Barrow’s press kit coined the phrase the Fab Four.
As a DJ, Calder went a step further, ensuring that every Mecca and Top Rank ballroom received copies of the single—something record companies typically overlooked in their publicity efforts. By the time Love Me Do hit the shelves, thousands of dancers in London had already been moving to its rhythm, helping to turn it into a hit. It was on Poland Street that the mythology of the Fab Four begins to take shape.
On the brink of change
Britain in 1962 was a nation on the very edge of transformation. Caught between the legacy of post-war austerity and the stirrings of a more consumer-driven and culturally dynamic society, the country was still shaped by deference and class division. Many people — particularly women, working-class families, and people of colour — continued to face deeply entrenched inequalities.
Popular culture at the time remained largely conservative. The music charts were dominated by crooners, skiffle groups, and novelty acts. Yet, as historian Peter Ackroyd observed, “boredom can awaken the sleepiest creative urge” — and in the basement clubs of Soho, Liverpool, Manchester, and beyond, new sounds were emerging. Inspired by American rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and early soul, a more rebellious, electrified energy was beginning to surface.
In the autumn of 1962, as The Beatles recorded what would become their first number one hit and music publisher Dick James pitched the idea of Northern Songs to the band, the world was holding its breath during the Cuban Missile Crisis. These were turbulent times. Beneath the surface, the conditions for a cultural revolution were taking shape — and The Beatles would become the lightning rod for that change.
Next…
1963 is when everything changed — when The Beatles redefined popular culture and helped put the swing into London. In our next post, we continue our journey through Soho, focusing on key locations in the band’s early history.
This series of posts offers a musical journey through Soho with The Beatles, told chronologically. The final instalment will include a map and a specially curated playlist.
We're also planning a guided walking tour, The Beatles in Soho, to complement this series — part of our wider collection of musical Soho walks. If you're interested, let us know!
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I had to Google Derry and The Seniors as it sounded like such a bad name. And I discovered Freddie Starr was part of the group not his real name of course.
Another great read.
These are such interesting articles. To be young in 60s Soho must have been very heaven! I'd love to join a Beatles In Soho walk.