IT WAS every teenager’s dream date – a private two-hour concert by the hottest new band around.
The year was 1963. The venue was the ABC cinema in Huddersfield. And the band was...The Beatles!
Paul Berriff was a 16-year-old aspiring photographer when he decided to practice his skills at pop concerts around Yorkshire.
There was an up-and-coming band called The Beatles and Paul followed them around the county.
He took pictures of them in Leeds and Doncaster but it was in Huddersfield where he had his most memorable experience.
Paul had taken his girlfriend June with him to the ABC on November 29 - and ended up having a private audience as The Beatles performed their brand new single I Want to Hold Your Hand live for the first time.
Paul said: “I usually got to the theatres around 5pm but this day we got there at 3pm.
“It was quiet so we went to sit in the auditorium to kill time .
“We’d been there for half-an-hour when the stage lights came on and, surprisingly, The Beatles walked on and started setting up their amplifiers.
“They had just launched I Want to Hold Your Hand and had never played it live before.
“They started singing it and June and I sat enthralled as they practised what became one of their biggest selling singles. It was amazing, just like having our own private concert.”
After the warm-up session Paul got chatting to the Fab Four and snapped the band with their feet up on the ABC seats!
Paul said Paul McCartney was always the band’s PR man.
“By the time of the Huddersfield concert I had met them twice before in Leeds and Doncaster so Paul remembered me and asked how I was getting on with my photography and we had a long chat. He realised the value of the media.
“As I recall he was eyeing up my girlfriend and seemed more interested in her than me!”
Despite the date from heaven, Paul and June’s relationship only lasted another few months and the couple lost touch.
Around the same time Paul also photographed other top stars including the Rolling Stones, The Hollies, Roy Orbison and Gerry and the Pacemakers.
He landed a job with a newspaper and the negatives of the pictures he took were put away in a box.
Click on the link below to view a gallery of The Beatles in Yorkshire including the Huddersfield gig
Some 18 months ago – almost half-a-century later – the pictures were re-discovered and have gone on show to the public.
Later this month the 38 Beatles photographs, including seven taken in Huddersfield, will go on display in Yorkshire for the first time.
Paul’s career took off and he spent many years as a TV news cameraman for the BBC, winning a BAFTA for a documentary about the Piper Alpha oil platform disaster in 1988. Now 65, he is a producer and documentary maker.
Paul had long forgotten about the photographs but, fortunately, had not thrown away the box of negatives.
“We had moved house four or five times, including spending seven years in America, but the box always came with us,” he said.
“At one point we moved into a cottage and the box was stored under tarpaulin outside.”
Paul, who now lives in Bedale, North Yorkshire, salvaged the dusty box from the attic and was amazed at what he found.
He showed them to an expert from The Beatles Story exhibition in Liverpool who pronounced them the best quality images from that period.
The pictures went on show at The Beatles Story and a second exhibition has gone around the world.
The pictures will come to the Wensleydale Galleries in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, from October 21 to November 18.
Married Paul, who has two children and two grandchildren, said he had been delighted at the reaction to the photographs and added: “I have had an amazing career and was at 9/11 filming under the Twin Towers when they came down.
“But despite all that it seems I have become famous for something I did when I was 16!”
The pictures are also valuable and Paul is selling large limited edition prints for up to £2,000 each.
The Beatles Hidden Gallery is at the Wensleydale Galleries, Unit 1, Herriot Court, Leyburn Business Park, Harmby Road, Leyburn, DL8 5QA.
For a sneak preview see www.wensleydalegalleries.co.uk.
