On 10 May 1960, The Silver Beatles auditioned for Larry Parnes. They would end up being hired as a b

On 10 May 1960, The Silver Beatles auditioned for Larry Parnes. They would end up being hired as a backing band for Johnny Gentle on a tour of Scotland. (Tommy Moore, the band’s drummer at the time, showed up late, so Johnny Hutchinson — of Cass and the Cassanovas — filled in for a few songs). Photos by Cheniston Roland.

TheScotland tour, post 1 of 2.

“It was a bit of a shambles. Larry Parnes didn’t stand up saying that we were great or anything like that. It felt pretty dismal. But a few days later we got the call to go out with Johnny Gentle. They were probably thinking, ‘Oh well, they’re mugs. We’ll send a band that doesn’t need paying.’” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology

“I remember asking my big brother [Harry], ‘Would you pack in work and have a go at this if you were me?’ He said, ‘You might as well — you never know what might happen. And if it doesn’t work out you’re not going to lose anything.’ So I packed in my job [as an apprentice electrician at Blackler’s in Liverpool], and joined the band full time and from then on, nine-to-five never came back into my thinking.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology

“That was our first professional gig: on a tour of dance halls miles up in the North of Scotland, around Inverness. We felt, ‘Yipee, we’ve got a gig!’ Then we realized that we were playing to nobody in little halls, until the pubs cleared out when about five Scottish Teds would come in and look at us. That was all. Nothing happened. We didn’t really know anything. It was sad, because we were like orphans. Our shoes were full of holes and our trousers were a mess, while Johnny Gentle had a posh suit. I remember trying to play to ‘Won’t you wear my ring around your neck?’ — he was doing Elvis’s ‘Teddy Bear’ — and we were crummy. The band was horrible, an embarrassment. We didn’t have amplifiers or anything. What little pay we did get we used to take care of the hotels. And we all slept in the van. We would argue about space. There weren’t enough seats in the van, and somebody had to sit on the inside of the mudguard on the back wheel. Usually Stu.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology(x)