Following a one-day break, the Roy Orbison tour resumed on this day with a concert at the Gaumont Cinema, Ipswich, Suffolk.
Roy Orbison was the billed headliner on this occasion, although audience demand meant that The Beatles were the last to perform. The other acts on the bill were Gerry and the Pacemakers, David Macbeth, Louise Cordet, Tony Marsh, Terry Young Six, Erkey Grant and Ian Crawford.
The Beatles performed seven songs: Some Other Guy, Do You Want To Know A Secret, Love Me Do, From Me To You, Please Please Me, I Saw Her Standing There and Twist And Shout.
It was The Beatles' first concert at the venue. They returned there a second time on 31 October 1964, although by that time they had progress to become the headline act.
I went to see the Beatles at Ipswich Gaumont in 1963 as a schoolgirl - I booked tickets two weeks after the box office opened and amazingly got second row seats in the stalls!
Roy Orbison was great and Louise Cordet was very good; I remember she had a hit with a song called I'm Just a Baby. The Beatles were gorgeous. There was no hysteria and no huge crowds that I can remember. In fact, in contrast to the gig at the Odeon in Romford about a month later, it was pretty low-key.
A whole lot of us schoolgirls booked a coach from Colchester to Great Yarmouth to see the Beatles a few weeks later but they did not appear. Gerry and the Pacemakers topped the bill I think. A bit of a disappointment when it should have been the Beatles. Absolutely everyone at school was talking about the Beatles.
I had cousins behind the iron curtain and they were Beatles fans and wanted to know more about them. I was a member of their fan club, run by Bettina Rose in Liverpool in those days, and had that feeling that they were 'my' group. Round about this time I became conscious that they were a world-wide phenomenon...
Hi MT. I'd like to talk to you about your memories for a book I'm writing about the Beatles six UK tours. You can find contact details through my website at http://www.martincreasy.co.uk