Hello and welcome to Nothing is Real, a podcast about the Beatles.

Everybody thinks they know the Beatles, but how much do we really know?

My name is Jason Carty.

And we're live on tape from Dublin. This time we are going to talk about My name's Jason Carty. My name's Stephen Corkroft.

And we're live on tape from Dublin.

This time we are going to talk about the Beatles at Christmas.

And this is going to be part one of a two-part episode.

And how we're going to do this is we're going to look at every Christmas in the 1960s from 1960 to 69

and look at a little snapshot of how the Beatles were at each Christmas

to kind of have a look at how their career progressed across the decade.

What we're going to do is we're going to wind back to the pre-fame days and we're going to go back

to December 1960 and we're going to start right there and see what the Beatles were up to.

And the interesting thing about 1960 is that's the year where they first go to Hamburg and they, you know, this is the year where they become like the hot live band. So, you know, in May of 1960, they go off and tour with Johnny Gentle. Then in August, they get the opportunity very quickly to go to Hamburg. So they hire up Pete Best, they go off to Hamburg,

and they're in Hamburg from 17th of August till the end of November 1960. And so when we get to December 1960, we're in the post-flush of their first round at Hamburg. And yet, and Lewison describes

this very well in his book, there's kind of almost an air of despondency. Like they think that that was the pinnacle, that that's it, that it's over.

Yeah, I think by the end of December, there is this real sense of a pivotal moment.

Are they going to continue?

Will they be able to pick up after coming back from Hamburg?

Or is this really effectively the end of the band?

And it's a very interesting period in that immediate run-up to December.

And you can see that that really is the key point.

Yeah, where they have to make a decision about what they're going to do.

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