How The Beatles found Ringo Starr at a Lincolnshire Butlin's
A Lincolnshire holiday camp played a little-known but crucial part in the birth of The Beatles.
A young, bearded Ringo Starr was playing drums with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes at the Butlins in Skegness in the summer 1962 when Paul McCartney and John Lennon arrived to try and recruit him to the band. Bobby Thomson, who was bassist in the Hurricanes, recalls the duo arriving early one morning after driving all night from Liverpool. "I think that was the whole idea, to invite him to join the Beatles," he said.
"Because I was with Ringo they didn't come out with it. They could have, it wouldn't have bothered me." He said that a few weeks later in mid August the band were having breakfast when an announcement over the speaker system asked Starr to report to reception.
He asked Thomson to come with him and the pair arrived to find a phone call from Beatles manager Brian Epstein asking if Starr would like to join the group. Keystone via Getty Images Black and white photograph of the five members of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes with the group wearing matching dark suits Bobby Thomson stands on the far left and Ringo Starr is far rightKeystone via Getty Images
Bobby Thompson (second left) played bass for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes alongside a young Ringo Starr (far right)
Starr later recalled the conversation in an interview. "The boys would like you to join The Beatles. What do you say?
"I said, 'no, I'd love to, when?' And he said, 'oh, tonight'. I said, 'I can't', this was Wednesday, 'I can't come tonight. I'm in a band, I'll come Saturday'."
Thomson said that during the call with Epstein the drummer was told to lose his facial hair.
"He didn't want to shave his beard off," Thomson said laughing.
"So the beard came off and he got the haircut to match."
Madeline Morrison, who worked as a Redcoat at the Clacton camp, said people were surprised when the rumours of Starr joining The Beatles soon started to spread throughout Butlin's.
"Rory Storm was a big, big name," she said.
"I've got playbills where Rory Storm and the Hurricanes were above The Beatles."
She added people said he had been taken to the hairdresser: "He's got the Beatle haircut, he's joining them.
"You know, all this sort of stuff would jump round all the camps because we were all villages."
Source: bbc.com/Karl Bird
