I WANNA HELP YOUR BAND!

We all know the story of The Beatles... but how about the legions of largely unsung heroes who made them what they were? Veteran broadcaster Stuart Maconie's fascinating new book reveals more than 100 people intimately entwined in the Fabs' incredible success

- By Dominic Bliss

WHEN Stuart Maconie was a toddler, his mother took him to see the Beatles perform at the ABC cinema in Wigan. It was October 1964, two days before Harold Wilson narrowly won the general election and the beginning of John, Paul, George and Ringo’s meteoric rise to global stardom. “I have a vague, blurry, impressionistic sense of four guys in black ‘suits and the noise of screaming,” the writer and broadcaster tells the Daily Express. “But maybe I’ve embroidered that, having been told the tale down the years.”

He was only four years old to be fair but, nonetheless, for Maconie, now 63, it was the start of a deep relationship with Britain’s most famous band that has endured to this day.

Over the intervening years, this affable Lancastrian has championed myriad styles of music from soul and alternative rock to classical and avant-garde. He has written for multiple music magazines and national newspapers, including this one, and has been a presenter and DJ for BBC Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Live and 6 Music. Phew!

But throughout it all, the Beatles have been a reassuring constant in his life.

Like many children of the Sixties, Maconie grew up with the Fab Four as the aural backdrop to his youth. Born in the Merseyside town of Whiston (then Lancashire) in 1961, he was brought up in Wigan.

He says of the Beatles: “I guess I’m roughly contemporary with them. I was born the week they first went to Hamburg. I saw them aged four. They were the soundtrack to my childhood. I was only a child but I was very aware of them being around. They are woven into the warp and weft of our nation’s story.”

Maconie insists he admires all four Fabs. “But, just like the girls who screamed at them in the Cavern, you have to have a favourite,” he admits.