We were Johnny Gentle’s backing band. No one in the audience knew who we were... but no one knew who Johnny Gentle was – Paul Mccartney on hitting the stage in Alloa Town Hall
Looking out at 13,000 ecstatic fans filling one of Scotland’s most iconic music venues, Sir Paul Mccartney couldn’t help thinking: “It’s a long way from Alloa Town Hall.”
His gig at the Hydro, in Glasgow 10 days ago will be long remembered by those lucky enough to get a ticket.
But the star was thinking of another gig, a concert 58 years before and the first time his band The Silver Beetles played north of the border.
It was May 20, 1960, when Mccartney, who had travelled north with John Lennon and George Harrison, hit the stage in Alloa.
The trio split their £60 fee with two mates – bassist Stuart Sutcliffe and drummer Tommy Moore – as they took on the job of backing band for Liverpool heartthrob singer, Johnny Gentle.
Mccartney, then an aspiring 17-year-old musician, had to get permission from his father to travel to Scotland because he was supposed to be at home studying for his exams.
Backstage at the Hydro, in his only Scottish interview, he revealed it was the show in Alloa which ignited his lifelong love of Scotland.
Macca said: “We’d never really travelled anywhere. We’d pretty much always been in Liverpool, maybe only ever taking a little train trip to Southport, half an hour away.
“So coming up to Scotland was like travelling to a foreign country.
“It was very primitive. We were playing little village halls back then. But it was OK because we were primitive – we didn’t have any equipment apart from guitars and a couple of amps.
“The audiences didn’t know who we were, nobody did. We were just Johnny Gentle’s backing band. They didn’t even know who he was.
“But it was good fun meeting the fans, and as we’d never done it before, we were thrilled that anyone wanted to treat us like we were stars.”
For the seven-date tour – which included gigs in Inverness, Fraserburgh and Nairn – two of the band even changed their names to make them sound more glamorous.
George was known as Carl Harrison, as a tribute to his hero, US rocker Carl Perkins, while Paul adopted a more exotic sounding alter ego.
“I remember some Scottish girl saying: ‘ What’s your name?’ And I said Paul... Paul Ramon,” he recalled.
“She replied: ‘Ooh, that sounds very good’. It was exciting to change your name and made us look like great London showbiz guys.”
But The Silver Beetles nearly came a cropper when their battered old van, driven by Johnny Gentle, was involved in a collision near Banff.
Even so, the tour proved pivotal in the early musical development of the group soon to be dubbed The Fab Four, when Ringo Starr joined two years later.
In an archive interview, Lennon said:“that tour was the first time we had actually seen what it was like to be on the road. There’s no doubt Scotland gave us a taste for whatever it was we were looking for. It was a turning point.”
During his Hydro gig, Mccartney showcased songs from his great new album, Egypt Station – and played Beatles’ hits plus songs by Wings and his chart-topping solo albums.
At 76, he shows no signs of slowing up, with a lengthy tour of America scheduled for 2019.
Mccartney is constantly writing new songs, but after more than 50 years of success, what has he still got to prove?
He said: “I don’t think it’s a question of proving anything. We got into music not to prove something, just to have fun and because we loved it so much.
“And, it was a job. Either that or we’d all have had to get work in factories. I was heading towards being a junior teacher.
“So it was always just for the love of it and to get a bit of money to survive.
“I still love writing a song. It’s a thrill to have a guitar, start strumming it and if something comes out, great.
“And you always want it to be the best thing you’ve ever written. In my case, that’s probably unlikely because I’ve