A pre-Beatles Ringo Starr program for a British holiday camp from 1962 when his group Rory Storm and the Hurricanes was playing there is up for auction on eBay.
Pete Nash of the British Beatles Fan Club told Beatles Examiner the program for Butlin's Holiday Camp is from the week of July 21, 1962. Ringo Starr was the drummer for Rory Storm's group as they were playing the 1962 summer season at Butlin's in Skegness in the UK.
- See a selection of photos of the program in the slideshow at left.
Nash told us the program shows 11 performances by Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, all taking place in the Rock and Twist Ballroom. Included is a photo of Starr with the group on page 34. He says it is believed this is one of the earliest and rarest Beatles related programs in existence.
It was during the Hurricanes' residency at Butlins that John Lennon and Paul McCartney drove from Liverpool to Skegness on Aug. 15, 1962, to ask Ringo to join the Beatles, says Nash. He says Ringo had already agreed to join Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes in Hamburg for £20 a week, but Lennon and McCartney offered him £25 a week, which he accepted.
Nash says Lennon and McCartney had suggested Rory Storm swap drummers with the Beatles and have Pete Best replace Ringo, but Best turned the idea down.
Rory Storm, "was very annoyed when Ringo left and he complained to me," wrote Brian Epstein in his autobiography "A Cellarful of Noise. "I apologised and Rory, with immense good humour said 'Okay. Forget it. The best of luck to the lot of you'," Epstein says in the book.
Nash notes the program "is in VG Condition, with a very light crease running down the middle. However there is one page missing. Page 27 has been pulled from the programme because that page featured a full-page map of the Skegness camp ground (there was no reference to Rory Storm's group on this page)."
There is no reserve on the auction, which runs through Feb. 19.
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