Danny Betesh has run his own highly successful concert promotion company, Kennedy Street Enterprises, for several years. When he was first setting up his business, he was involved with a number of well-known Sixties bands, including Herman’s Hermits and Freddie and the Dreamers, and was also the promoter of the Beatles’ first headline UK tour in 1963. He shares his memories of that time below:
“I got involved in the music business by accident. I was studying to be an accountant in those days, but I was interested in music and started putting on one or two little gigs in ballrooms with groups like Freddie and the Dreamers, who subsequently asked me to become their agent and book gigs for them. That’s really how I emerged into the business. In the early years, although we did do some promoting, because we were Freddie and the Dreamers’ agents, a lot of those early/mid-Sixties bands from Manchester, such as Wayne Fontana and Herman’s Hermits, also came to us.
“So I was booking the bands in Manchester and [Beatles manager] Brian Epstein was doing a similar thing in Liverpool, and we started exchanging; I would bring his Liverpool groups over to Manchester and he would take my Manchester groups over to Liverpool. I started working the Beatles locally around the Manchester area with him and that led to me actually doing a full-blown theatre tour with them. When we started talking about it, although they were beginning to break, Brian was a bit reluctant to let the Beatles top the bill at that stage and he said, ‘Let’s try to get a big American act as the headliner.’ His first choice was Duane Eddy, who we couldn’t get, and we ended up with Roy Orbison, but by the time the tour was due to come round, the Beatles had broken so, so big, they actually became the headliner after all. Roy Orbison became the special guest star and Gerry and the Pacemakers were also on the bill.
“At that time, the Beatles were new and exciting and very fresh. The business became very serious after that, but at that stage, you’d do your shows and party afterwards. It was much more lighthearted in those days, but the excitement for that tour was unbelievable. Tickets would go on sale on a Saturday morning, and predominantly be sold over the counter at the venues; I don’t think credit cards were in force then and of course, the Internet was many, many years later. For this particular tour, the queues for tickets would go 300 or 400 yards round the block and with tickets going on sale at 10 o’clock, it would take the theatres all day to clear them.”
Did you see the Beatles perform live in the Sixties? Which were your favourite venues for seeing bands?
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