Another Beatles Christmas Show • Rehearsals • Day 1

“Another Beatles Christmas Show” ran from December 24, 1964, to January 16, 1965. Rather than a traditional concert, the production took the form of a holiday-season variety show, blending short comedy sketches (with the Beatles acting in humorous vignettes), with performances by other artists from Brian Epstein’s management roster. Each performance concluded with a short live set by The Beatles.

As with the 1963 Christmas shows, the production was overseen by Joe Collins and directed by Peter Yolland.

In the days leading up to the premiere, The Beatles and the supporting acts — Freddie and the Dreamers, Elkie Brooks, The Yardbirds (featuring a young Eric Clapton), Sounds Incorporated (an instrumental group and frequent Beatles tourmates), comedian Mike Haslam, and compère Jimmy Savile — held three days of rehearsals at the Hammersmith Odeon.

This day marked the first of those rehearsal sessions.

Like their first Xmas show, the second was devised and produced by Peter Yolland, who was very upset when he found out that he only had three days to rehearse the Beatles and put the whole production together. In fact the boys couldn’t have started much earlier because Ringo was recuperating after an operation to remove his tonsils and George did not fly home from a holiday in Nassau until December 19th. Recalling how most of the Beatles dialogue had been drowned out by the yelling of the fans throughout the previous Christmas show, Yolland proposed to use projected sub-titles to make the dialogue in this year’s sketches visible if not audible. John told Brian Epstein he thought it was “a daft idea”.

From The Beatles Monthly Book – December 1999

At the end of 1964, to round off the second amazing year of Beatlemania, Brian suggested we should jointly produce another Beatles Christmas show, to run from 24 December to 16 January 1965 at a very big cinema, the Odeon, Hammersmith, in West London.

We engaged two comperes, Jimmy Savile and Ray Fell, and the support bill, again all musical acts, included the Manchester group Freddie and the Dreamers, Sounds Incorporated, the Mike Cotton Sound, and a blues-oriented band, the Yardbirds, who had a particularly talented guitarist, a 20-year-old lad from Ripley, Surrey called Eric Clapton. The obligatory girl on the bill was a bluesy singer, Elkie Brooks, a baker’s daughter from Manchester. Elkie, like Cilla the previous year, was someone whose star potential Brian spotted early in her career.

Joe Collins – From “Touch of Collins: Story of a Show Business Dynasty” by Joe Collins, 1987

Hammersmith Odeon

This was the 1st concert played at Hammersmith Odeon.

A total of 51 concerts have been played there • 1964 • Dec 21• Dec 22 • Dec 23 • Dec 24 7:30pm • Dec 26 6:15pm • Dec 26 8:45pm • Dec 28 6:15pm • Dec 28 8:45pm • Dec 29 6:15pm • Dec 29 8:45pm • Dec 30 6:15pm • Dec 30 8:45pm • Dec 31 6:15pm • Dec 31 8:45pm • 1965 • Jan 1 6:15pm • Jan 1 8:45pm • Jan 2 6:15pm • Jan 2 8:45pm • Jan 4 6:15pm • Jan 4 8:45pm • Jan 5 6:15pm • Jan 5 8:45pm • Jan 6 6:15pm • Jan 6 8:45pm • Jan 7 6:15pm • Jan 7 8:45pm • Jan 8 6:15pm • Jan 8 8:45pm • Jan 9 6:15pm • Jan 9 8:45pm • Jan 11 6:15pm • Jan 11 8:45pm • Jan 12 6:15pm • Jan 12 8:45pm • Jan 13 6:15pm • Jan 13 8:45pm • Jan 14 6:15pm • Jan 14 8:45pm • Jan 15 6:15pm • Jan 15 8:45pm • Jan 16 6:15pm • Jan 16 8:45pm • Dec 10 6:45pm show • Dec 10 9pm show • 1973 • May 25 • May 26 • May 27 • 1975 • Sep 17 • Sep 18 • 1979 • Sep 14 • Dec 29