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Johnny Gentle

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Johnny Gentle and The Beatles - First Ever Tour Kindle Edition

by John Askew (Author), Ian Forsyth (Author), Gavin Askew (Editor) Format: Kindle Edition

14	Customers reported quality issues in this eBook. This eBook has: Typos. The publisher has been notified to correct these issues. Quality issues reported

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In May 1960, Johnny Gentle a pop star from the same agency as Billy Fury and Marty Wilde was sent up to North East Scotland by his manager Larry Parnes to do a one week tour of dance halls. To back him, Parnes had hired five youngsters from Liverpool who had very little experience but buckets of enthusiasm. The hireling musicians were called The Beatles and this book is about that tour.
The Beatles became the most famous, most adored, most copied and most quoted Rock band in the history of music. But in May 1960 they were almost fired on the first night of their tour.
Only two people alive can tell the story of that Scottish tour - now one of them has in a truly entertaining way.

You won't be able to put down your Kindle until you have read the last page!

Print length

84 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

March 2, 1998
File size

286 KB
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B007L0JKEY
Publisher ‏ : ‎ ; 1st edition (March 2, 1998)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 2, 1998
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 286 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 84 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,373,213 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,774 in Two-Hour Biography & Memoir Short Reads
- #8,191 in Historical Biographies (Kindle Store)
- #31,725 in Historical Biographies (Books)

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Frev

Johnny Gentle and The Early Beatles

Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2023

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Excellent book about Liverpool Pop starJohnny Gentle's Scottish tour with a young Rock band The Beatles backing him up. A fascinating and fun read about the Beatles pre-fame days. A must read for Beatles fans.

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DDS

Would make a great soundtrack!

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2017

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Nice little trip down memory lane. Interesting song names mentioned from the era. Lots of type o's if that would bother you.

One person found this helpful

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S Riaz

Johnny Gentle and the Beatles

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2012

This book was first published in 1998 and has long been out of print - with copies selling for well over a hundred dollars, so it is great to see this in kindle format.

When John Askew, AKA Johnny Gentle, joined the Larry Parnes stable he was hopeful of a great career - making records, appearing on television and radio shows and in magazines. In 1960 he was told he was booked for a tour of Scottish dance halls, to be backed by a Liverpool group who he met about one hour before he was due to go on stage. In the Anthology, George remembers the tour as being unsuccessful - the band with rubbish equipment, their shoes and clothes falling apart and no money. Gentle kindly recalls they were as good as any group who had backed him before - "with that extra sparkle!" This is a very affectionate look back, no dirt dished here, but it is an interesting read and as Johnny Gentle was the only person to have toured with the Beatles as his backing band it is an important recollection of that first ever Beatles tour.

They were, at that point, the Silver Beetles - changing name quite regularly during those early days. The band members even changed their names for the tour - George to the unadventurous Carl Harrison and Paul to Paul Ramon (inspiration for the later name of the band The Ramones). It was a line up of John, Paul, George, Stuart Sutcliffe and that ever present drummer problem - resulting in the short lived drumming career of Tommy Moore, a slightly older man who had a job in a bottle factory but was happy (at first) to come along for the ride. However, Tommy Moore was not at the audition, held at one of Allan Williams venues, by Larry Parnes at which virtually every band in Liverpool attended hoping for the chance to back one of his stars. This is covered very well in Williams own book The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away , which is a fun, if not entirely unromanticised read, and it would be wonderful to see that re-released on kindle too.

Johnny Gentle recalls that early tour, in May 1960, when the young hopefuls peppered him with questions about how to hit the big time. He also remembers being slightly surprised at John Lennon being very unimpressed by his deal with Parnes (£15 per week) and the fact that the unknown offered to help him with a song he was writing at the time, as "the chorus did not sound right." Little did he imagine that he was being given guidance by one of the two future most successful composers of all time, both of which he was sharing a van with! Although Gentle does mention some unpleasantness - John and Paul's digging at Stuart, John dragging an injured Tommy Moore back to the stage after an accident, his sarcasm and wit aimed at the drummer - whose job at the bottle works was looking increasingly attractive - this is overall a very kind view of those days. The fact that the band had so little money they were reduced to sleeping in the van did not really impact on Gentle - and you suspect they were careful not to let complaints be heard by the star act, who might repeat them to Larry Parnes and scupper any chance of future work. In fact, Johnny Gentle claims he thought the band "stunning" and suggested to Parnes he sign them. Parnes did not like groups though and would not be the first to regret passing up the greatest group of all time.

Overall this is a very interesting read for Beatlefans, although not perhaps for the casual fan, as it is about a very specific part of their history. Great to see it in an affordable format for fans though and I am sure they, like me, will be delighted to see it has been released in this way.

2 people found this helpful

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Fred

Johnny

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 23, 2020

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This book is very informative, give you a insight to the younger beatles.

One person found this helpful

Mr Cole

To anyone who dislikes poor spelling/punctuation/grammar/syntax - please keep some painkillers by your side ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 19, 2018

Verified Purchase

Johnny Gentle writes fondly of his week spent touring Scotland with the group that would become The Beatles (at the time they were still veering between The Sillver Beetles and various other names). However, as the tour was only a week, there are few stories to recount and the book is therefore slim, at around 100 or so pages, and padded out with background information on other groups and performers and a (rather superfluous,givem how famous the Beatles are) 'where are they now' sectlon. The most poignant anecdote actually has little to do with the Beatles, being about the car crash that killed Eddie Cochran.

So, a slight read, and fans will learn very little they don't already know. Also, reader beware: the book has been produced by a small publisher and not edited. Consequently, it is riddled with spelliing mistakes, grammatical errors, broken lines, and a complete lack of sentence structure. This book is supposed to have been co-authored by a writer, but you really wouldn't know it (or would'nt, as the book would say) - it desperately needed a proper edit. To anyone who dislikes poor spelling/punctuation/grammar/syntax - please keep some painkillers by your side when you read this!

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