Beatles Australia Archives - The Beatles Bookstore

The Beatles in Australia? Hamburg has often been credited as the birth of the Beatles as it was the place where they honed their musicianship there with long 7 or 8-hour sets. Fans in the UK and Liverpool specifically, would probably object to that description because the hysteria surrounding Beatlemania occurred when the Beatles returned to their native England after their Hamburg stint. It was after the Beatles had returned to the UK that their songwriting skills also began to flourish. Most Beatles scholars would state that once the Beatles came to America, they conquered the world.

However, the Australians will point out proudly that the largest Beatles crowd and reception to view them during 1964, was not in any of those countries. The biggest crowd to attempt to see the Beatles was in Australia and this book published in Australia is a historical photo essay of the Beatles’ 1964 trip to that country. It is estimated that more than 300,000 fans came to welcome the band In Adelaide, which was the largest crowd seeing them in their touring career.

The Beatles must have been in shock for such a large crowd to view them along a 10-mile route that day. Another reason the book holds a special place in my collection is that the drummer pictured on the cover is not Ringo Starr, it is Jimmie Nicol, who substituted for Ringo while he was ill for 13 days during the Beatles playing in the Netherlands and in Australia. Ringo was to rejoin the Beatles in Melbourne, Australia in June of 1964.

The book was put together by noted Beatles photo collector Mark Hayward and the photos in the book are fantastic. New Holland Publishers Pty, Limited-2005.

The book is occasionally featured on Ebay and on the book search service at Abe books.

A sad newspaper article which details what happened to Jimmie Nicol” a man that had seen the mountaintop but only for a very short time. “Fame” can certainly be fleeting. Author Jim Berkenstadt has written a superb book about the Jimmie Nicol story and that book is pictured below

Paul Harris wrote this story for the Daily Mail.