JFK shot dead and Beatles spark mayhem
BY any standards, 1963 was an eventful year.
Here in the region 55 years ago, the full force of Beatlemania was felt head-on with the Fab Four appearing in concert in Newcastle, Stockton, and Sunderland.
Everywhere they went on their sprawling Autumn UK tour, they were met by huge, hysterical crowds.
The Newcastle City Hall show was reviewed in our sister paper, the Evening Chronicle. The reporter declared: “The concert hall reverberated to the rhythmic stamp of more than 2,000 pairs of feet and the decibel levels rose well beyond tolerance level as 2,000 teenagers screamed themselves hoarse and effectively destroyed any chance of hearing the very sounds they had queued for hours and paid good money to listen to.
“Solid phalanxes of gyrating bodies and imploring, outstretched arms blotted out the view of the stage and the sweating shouting performers...”
Audiences in Newcastle on November 23 would, no doubt, have still been digesting the previous day’s grim news.
The young, charismatic American president John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.
The seemingly lone-wolf gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old former marine, was himself shot dead live on TV two days later by a smalltime mobster called Jack Ruby. For folk back then, it felt the world was spinning out of control.
In Britain, 1963 was also the year of the Profumo scandal, the Great Train Robbery, and the Beeching railway cuts, while in the United States, Martin Luther King made his famous, impassioned ‘I Have A Dream’ speech as the nation was convulsed by racial tensions.
Our selection of photographs from the archive of the Sunday Sun gives a taste of life in our region 55 years ago.
We see newly-built multi- storey flats Newcastle West End; Readhead’s shipyard in South Shields hard at work at a time heavy industry was still going strong; Newcastle trolley buses at the end of the line (they would finally be phased out in 1966); both steam and electric trains at Newcastle Central Station; a typical North East terraced street, the Victorian-built Pine Street in Gateshead; and the Kaye Sisters performing at Newcastle’s newly-opened La Dolce Vita nightclub. We also see an FA Cup match in progress at snow-bound Roker Park, Sunderland, as Britain froze during one of the worst winters on record.
Meanwhile, in day-to-day 1963, the first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast, while other TV favourites included The Avengers and The Dick Van Dyke Show; big hits at the cinema included Mutiny on the Bounty, The Longest Day, and Cleopatra; and, if The Beatles reigned, other big pop acts included The Ronettes, Cliff Richard, Lesley Gore and, unmistakably, the Singing Nun! Front: View of the Castle Keep and Moot Hall, Newcastle, from the Swing Bridge, 1963 (TWAM)
Above, the Kaye Sisters performing at the newlyopened La Dolce Vita nightclub, Newcastle, in 1963; left, world heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston sparring at St James’ Hall, Newcastle,1963