Customer Reviews

5 reviews

• R Franklin

  Great concept ,fact weaving with fiction .Tenbury is a sleepy market town and the sense that it was at the epicentre of pop culture as the Fab 4 honoured their booking at the Riverside Dance Club even for a night is a great premise for a book.

• Magneto

  ‘Before Abbey Road’ is a delightful evocation of one extraordinary day in April in Tenbury Wells. It captures the mood of the place, and the time, wonderfully, and sets the event - the Beatles playing the Riverside Dancing Club in ‘63 - nicely in the context of the wider geography, and the winds of change blowing around at that time. The author also skilfully weaves in glimpses of his own story as a twelve year old living in rural Worcestershire, and his early realisation through music, of just how thrilling, and different, the world can be. It is clear that his love of Tenbury Wells, and the excitement he gets from popular music and culture are still very much alive within him. A good read!

• Paul Lewis

  Before Abbey Road - there was Teme Street by A. C. Lowe
  
  This great little book tells the story of a day and a week in 1963 when the Beatles arrived in an almost unheard of small rural town on the Worcestershire/Shropshire borders called Tenbury Wells. They had agreed to honour a £100 legal contract to play for an hour at the Bridge Hotel Riverside Dancing Club. In the week that followed they played at the Royal Albert Hall and the Empire Pool Wembley and thereafter it was world domination of the music industry.
  
  The author, now in his 70s, recalls the excitement and events as a 12 year old boy, but also provides a unique snapshot of the town and its history with its hops and orchards and rural way of life but also adds context by referencing world and domestic events dominating the headlines at the time; (JFK and the Cuban missile crises; the scandal of the Profumo affair; the Beatles arriving in the thaw of the coldest winter of the 20th century; offshore pirate radio stations operating and protest singers such as Bob Dylan emerging from the shadows to remind us all how the times they were a changin’)
  
  The author sets the scene beautifully with a “Heartbeat” account of the vehicles and shops of that era, with each household aspiring to own a Dansette record player and a new fangled television set. He provides great insight into 1960s rural family life and his composite fictional characters could almost be real as they and the author provide a fascinating anecdotal account recalling the day the Beatles arrived, performed and departed from this small town,
  
  The book is very well researched and the author has acquired an unquestionable detailed knowledge of the emerging music scene of that decade.
  
  In the final pages the author reflects on how this almost unknown event changed his life forever in a ‘butterfly effect’ moment in time.
  
  A great read.
  
  Paul Lewis
  

• Mori Glaser

  Reading Before Abbey Road took me back to those times when something was beginning that we wanted and needed to happen. The author's memories unfold alongside national events that formed the background to all our stories, drawing the reader in. The vivid and consistent voice frames the start of an era that really did change the world. It didn't matter if you saw the Beatles (as I did at the Liverpool Empire) or if you were at the Isle of Wight (which I missed) - wanting to be there meant you were part of it one way or another. This book took me back.

• Lorna McDermott

  Absolutely loved this book and didn't want it to end. So well written and had an informative insight into life in Tenbury Wells and the UK in 1963. The injustice felt by a young boy was brought colorfully to light through Andrew Lowe's words. Excellent, I loved it, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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