Podcast appearances and mentions of kim bennett

Kim BennettFounder/CEOAtlasGuruKim Bennett is a passionate leader with a mission to revolutionize travel planning through building an AI itinerary to Advisor. She launched AtlasGuru to empower travelers with honest information, sourced from a global community and uses OpenAI's ChatGPT technology to personalize trip planning using human-curated itineraries from the platform.Before AtlasGuru, Kim had over 15 years of experience in senior marketing roles for renowned companies like Condé Nast, Martha Stewart, Amazon, and Nordstrom.summaryIn this episode of the Big World Made Small podcast, host Jason Elkins interviews Kim Bennett, founder and CEO of AtlasGuru, a modern travel company that leverages travelers' stories to create AI-generated itineraries. Kim shares her journey from a corporate marketing background to launching AtlasGuru, discussing the challenges faced during the COVID pandemic and the integration of AI in travel planning. The conversation explores the motivations behind sharing travel experiences, the importance of partnerships with travel advisors, and the evolving role of technology in personalizing travel. Kim emphasizes the significance of storytelling in travel and the need for a human touch in the digital age.takeawaysAtlasGuru combines travelers' stories with AI to create itineraries.Kim's love for travel began with a desire to explore beyond her hometown.Launching a travel business during COVID presented unique challenges.AI enhances the travel planning experience by providing personalized itineraries.Travelers are motivated to share their experiences for storytelling and connection.Partnerships with travel advisors enhance the AtlasGuru experience.Understanding traveler demographics helps tailor services effectively.AI can assist in personalizing travel while maintaining a human element.Balancing personal relationships with a passion for travel can be challenging.The future of travel planning will increasingly rely on technology and storytelling. Learn more about Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Marketing and join our private community to get episode updates, special access to our guests, and exclusive adventure travel offers on our website.

Kim Bennett, CEO of Atlasguru.com joins to share a range of powerful insights relevant to those who aim to build a strengths-based career. Kim shares her journey from a comfortable corporate job in digital marketing to becoming an entrepreneur. We discuss the long road to entrepreneurship, the challenges of leaving a secure position, and the rewarding experiences of leading a strengths-focused, tech-driven business. Kim emphasizes the importance of understanding and leveraging one's strengths to make impactful career choices.We also delve into the value of tools like the Strengths Finder, the power of clarity, momentum, and accountability, and how brave decisions can shape a fulfilling career. Plus, Kim reveals her remarkable brave role model – Martha Stewart – and the profound influence Martha has had on her professional path.Learn more about Atlasguru.com Connect with Kim Bennett, CEO of Atlasguru.comTo submit your question for me to answer on an upcoming episode, send me an email at Nicole@TrickSteinbach.comYou can be a woman in tech and enjoy your career. When you build the skill of bravery, you will stress less, work less, and then earn more. Check out the following resources designed to help you thrive in your career: Check out my websiteJoin my mailing list for more insights, opportunities, and inspirationConnection with me on LinkedIn

Subscription legal services are the future, folks, so let's ride the new wave! The billable hour has become increasingly despised, but how do you make the switch to a subscription-based, recurring revenue law firm? In a live conversation at ABA TECHSHOW, Gyi chatted with Kim Bennett and Blaine Korte about how to leave the billable hour behind and create processes and automations that keep your ideal client's journey in mind and make your law firm more profitable.  Kim Bennett is CEO and co-founder at Fidu Legal. Blaine Korte is CTO and co-founder at Fidu Legal.

Subscription legal services are the future, folks, so let's ride the new wave! The billable hour has become increasingly despised, but how do you make the switch to a subscription-based, recurring revenue law firm? In a live conversation at ABA TECHSHOW, Gyi chatted with Kim Bennett and Blaine Korte about how to leave the billable hour behind and create processes and automations that keep your ideal client's journey in mind and make your law firm more profitable.  Kim Bennett is CEO and co-founder at Fidu Legal. Blaine Korte is CTO and co-founder at Fidu Legal.

In this special series focused on legal case management software, host Emery Wager explores various case management companies to help firms make informed decisions. In this episode, we welcome Kim Bennett back to the Financially Legal Podcast. Kim, the Cofounder of Fidu, shares insights into the innovative subscription legal services management platform that is reshaping the relationship between lawyers and clients. To receive a free legal case management software consult and to view a database of legal case management software, visit our case management center.

So excited to talk to my friend, Kim Bennett of Stablemate Massage for this episode! Kim launched the Canine Bodywork Membership to help all of us be able to work on our own dogs! Learn about Kim and what she hopes to teach us, PLUS get a good answer on when to use cold and when to use hot! (If you know, you know!) Go to Kim's FB page to learn more: https://www.facebook.com/stablematemassagellc/ Or email Kim: chocolatehorse13@gmail.com Really like this episode? Say thanks with a coffee or slice of pizza! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theqcoach Don't forget, if you want more support, check out the Q-membership! Q-Membership: https://www.theqcoach.com/q-membership Want some cute Q-Merch? Check this out: https://www.teepublic.com/user/the-q-coach Want more? Get free tips: https://www.theqcoach.com/fb-sign-up-page

Do you understand what legal consumers actually want? What level of service they need? What potential clients are afraid of? What can we, as attorneys, learn from other non-legal industries?  Our guest this week is Kim Bennett. Kim is the founder of K Bennett Law LLC, a boutique subscription legal services law firm that helps small businesses protect their brands and grow profitable and sustainable 7-figure organizations. We discuss how to get out of the lawyer mindset and look at your practice from the outside. We have a lot to learn from other industries, and the potential for growth is tremendous. We discuss how the legal industry is stuck in a mode where we act as a scolding parent to our confused and petulant clients, instead of anticipating their needs and understanding their concerns.  We need to find ways to focus on what the clients are actually looking for and meeting clients where they are, and let that transform our approach to legal services.  Find Kim at https://www.kbennettlaw.com, Atlanta Legal Tech, https://www.fidulegal.com/ or on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kybennett/) or Twitter (http://twitter.com/kbennettlaw). ----- FiveStarCounsel.com Get our FREE client service whitepaper! Join the Five Star Counsellors FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1575616019297055 Here's a link for you to get 20% off your first year of using TextExpander! - https://fivestarcounsel.com/textexpander

Kim Bennett, Chief Legal Officer and brand strategist at Women Who Code, and Temitope Adediran, software engineer at Women Who Code, are celebrating Women Who Code turning 10 and Black History Month. They discuss their individual, unique paths into tech and how virtual working is changing the industry.

As we are still celebrating the magic of the New Year, we wanted to bring two of the most inspiring people in the Sola family to talk about setting intentions and goals for 2022. Kim Bennett and Steven Wren have offered hope and relentless positivity to our community when we needed it most… and we couldn't think of anyone more fitting to help us ring in the New Year on The Sola Stories Podcast than these two! Setting intentions is all about putting your energy into what you want. When you can find or create some clarity around what you want, you invite your heart and your mind to focus and support you in getting closer to what you truly desire – in life or in your business. This time of year is a chance to start fresh, dream just a little bit bigger, and imagine with intention. Press play on this episode to join the conversation with Kim and Steve, and discover how to take achievable action steps to reach your goals and fulfill your 2022 intentions! In This Episode [2:54] - Kim shares how 2021 impacted her and how wearing the salon owner hat changed her maturity. [4:29] - It is important to embrace change and recognize things as a new normal. [5:16] - For Steve, 2021 made him realize how important the client/barber relationship really is and the need to create a safe space for people. [7:05] - You can set intentions, goals, and resolutions at any point in the year. Making them small is key to success. [8:01] - Kim and Steve share their intentions for 2021 and how they differed from 2020. [11:49] - Sometimes we set a goal, but then don't think about the small actions that will help you achieve them. How can you make the actionable steps a habit? [13:09] - Kim describes new opportunities that came her way in 2021 that she is excited to develop further in the new year. [16:00] - Steve also had new opportunities in 2021 and explains how his desire to impact his community and working with Sola helped him cast a larger net. [19:01] - The ability to present virtually has made the world smaller. This has created new opportunities, education, and relationships more accessible. [20:07] - When setting up goals and intentions for a new year, Steve breaks his year up into personal and business and into quarters. [21:40] - Kim shares what she is looking forward to the most in 2022. [23:37] - For 2022, Kim isn't concerned about change anymore.  [24:58] - Don't be afraid to fail. The fear of failure holds you back from trying new things. [27:04] - Kim explains how she sets business goals and her previous fear of raising prices. [30:14] - The webinar that Kim hosted is available through the Sola Pro app. [33:40] - Steve describes his goals for 2022 through the lens of a business owner. [36:26] - It is recommended to incorporate times of rest into your goals. [39:01] - A goal without a plan is just a wish. You have to have an action plan. [42:30] - Steve separates his goals into categories and has action steps for every single day to help reach them. [44:23] - Steve's word for 2022 is evolution and Kim's is influence. [46:46] - Take the time to reflect on the past year before you look at your goals for the future in depth. Links and Resources Sola Salon Studios' Instagram Page Sola Salons Studios – Website Kimi_Kisses on Instagram Kimi_Kisses on TikTok MrWrenCuts on Instagram Mr. Wren Cuts on Facebook

Today We Talk About REALLY BIG RANCHES in Montana Selling For Record Prices. Who is Buying Up Ranchland? Why? and Will The Party Continue?The first thing you need to know about Montana is it's a "No Disclosure" state. That means there is no public record of what the big real estate parcels are selling for. The only way to get that information is to know someone in the business, somebody like Kim Bennett who has created her own personal database over the last 30 years of appraisals and sales. That is why this is such a special show. We have two of the insiders of the Montana real estate industry, the only way to learn about transactions and trends in this up-and-coming real estate market. Our second guest is Keith Gertsen, head of the U.S. Hedge Fund Practice at Citibank who can speak to the trend as a  ranch owner and investor. The second thing you need to know is THIS BOOM FEELS DIFFERENT. Montana has been discovered before. The first time was in 1991 when we were introduced to Montana in the movie "A River Runs Through It" and the second time in 1998 with The Horse Whisperer. There was a bit of a run up in prices in 2007 before the financial crisis, but when COVID hit people from all 50 States arrived, inventory fell and prices Rose. Kim Bennett has been appraising farms, ranches, and rural recreational properties in Montana and Wyoming for over 30 years and she has been selling rural properties in Montana for the past 20 years. Keith Gertsen, ranch owner and investor, currently working on the acquisition of a 26,000 acre cattle and recreational ranch. He started his career as a Wall Street trader and investor, but his interest in beef cattle and breeding coupled with his love of the outdoors and hunting and fishing took him West. Over the last two decades he's bought and sold over 50 large parcels of ranch land starting with a 20,000 acre property in North Dakota before buying his current ranch interests in Montana. He's currently working on the acquisition of a 26,000 acre cattle and recreational ranch in central Montana. He and Kim are working on that assemblage now. We talk to Kim and Keith about:- What is considered a ranch? Is there a minimum size?- Does it have to function to be considered a "ranch"?- Who is buying up ranch land and how is that changing?- How does the market think about cattle per acre, grass quality, mineral rights, water rights, accessibility to an airport or highway or train, and even valuing dinosaur bones?- How has ranch land appreciated over time? (spoiler alert, 8.8% avg over the last 20 years)- How has COVID affected the market for rural spaces now that more people are able to work remotely?Finally, why are we talking about Montana ranches on a show that has been about New York City real estate and the surrounding suburbs? If you haven't seen Montana license plates in the Hamptons, in Greenwich, and in Palm Beach then you aren't paying attention. Montana is the new Nantucket, and we want to understand why? Is this a fad, or is Montana the newest suburb of New York? Subscribe now: http://bit.ly/399yevLRoberto Cabrera - With 20 years of experience, I have been recognized throughout the industry for achieving outstanding results: Ranked nationally by REAL Trends as one of "America's Best Real Estate Agents” for avg. sales price of $4.350M. Sold a single family Townhouse faster than any other on the Upper West Side over $10M. I live with my wife and daughter on the Upper West Side, the neighborhood I have called home for the past 23 years. John Engel - John Engel is a consistently top-producing agent in Fairfield County, Connecticut. John recently won the 2019 Realtor of the Year Award in New Canaan where he has been the Chairman of the Town Council for the last 9 years. He currently lives in New Canaan with his wife Melissa and four children. 

Today, let's break through the darkness that has descended upon our days since the end of Daylight Savings Time with some inspiration and motivation to get outside and PLAY from Jen Hazard, author of The Maine Play Book. When Jen first transplanted to Maine and had a young family, she started a blog to track and share all the fun adventures she went on with her kids. Fast forward a decade or so, and her kick-butt women's writing group convinced her to share all that amazing content with the rest of humanity by curating it all into a super-duper easy to use guidebook, filled with creative ideas for day trips, activities, food stops, you name it, all over Maine.The Maine Play Book is in its second printing already, and since we're about to dive into the thick of holiday gift giving season, I think it's the perfect time to introduce you to this amazing local author so that we can keep the positive momentum going. I also see myself Santa-ing a few of these guides into stockings this year, everyone I know could use a reminder to get out there for some post-pandemic fun!Be on the lookout for more from Jen Hazard at JenHazard.com, and by following @JenHazardMaine on Instagram. And of course, pick up a copy (or 10!) of The Maine Play Book through Islandport Press, your local independent bookseller, or even Amazon if you must.Links from today's episode:Jen Hazard on The 207 with Peggy KeyserGreen Acres (NJ)Southern Maine Paddling - authors Kim Bennett and Sandy Moore on Guides Gone WildIf You Give a Girl a Bike - author Hayley Diep on Guides Gone WildDahlov IpcarKate ChristensenTeens to Trails - TtT Executive Director Alicia Heyburn on Guides Gone WildThompson's Point (Portland, ME)Portland Children's MuseumBissell BrothersRosemont Market

If offering retail is not a part of your salon business, there's a chance you're leaving some money on the table. But when it comes to stocking your backbar, there's a lot to consider – including partnering with the right brands that fit the culture of your salon. Tune in to this episode where we chat with Hunter Donia, Ashley Lantz and Kim Bennett to discuss all things stocking your studio with retail and backbar. Find out how to select a brand that meets the needs of your brand and your target market, as well as how to make retail a part of your amazing customer experience. They also share ways to become more confident when offering your clients retail, tips for staying organized, and so much more.  So, the question is: Are you ready to streamline your backbar ordering systems and rock the retail game? In This Episode [0:24] – Stocking your studio with retail and backbar. [2:30] – Why partnerships are very important. [3:58] – Color, Hunter argues, is the pinnacle of the hair salon industry. [5:39] – Shoutout to Kim Bennett and how products are a huge part of her salon experience! [7:30] – Kim agrees with Hunter's point about marketing with a brand. [9:30] – Why it's so important to choose a brand that will support you. [11:38] – Kim advises salon owners to have a separate financial account for retail. [14:13] – Ashley discusses her brand partnership. [16:13] – How Hunter brought his brand into his Sola studio and the importance of his core values. [18:39] – Salon owners are salespeople. [21:03] – Efficiency and ordering when stocking your retail and backbar. [22:19] – How to make sure that what you bring in doesn't collect dust. [25:13] – BeautyHive has a nifty feature that makes it easy to reorder! [26:11] – Hunter's take on organizing your stock. [28:13] – Retail customers can be just as valuable as service customers. [30:40] – Do you value a brand having an affiliate code program? [32:59] – Bookkeeping and keeping track of your numbers is very important. [35:22] – Kim redirects the conversation back to restocking. [38:14] – Whether or not Kim sells a lot online. [40:07] – Kim discusses her color backbar. [42:18] – It's smart to keep notes about your clients on SolaGenius. [43:45] – The importance of the guest experience. [45:58] – Kim's experience during COVID. [47:58] – Jennie's customer perspective. [50:58] – Salon owners should assume that the client knows nothing about their hair. [51:45] – Angela's customer perspective. [53:50] – Hairstylists are the authority of what they do.   Links and Resources Sola Salon Studios' Instagram Page Sola Salons Studios – Website Sola Blog SolaGenius BeautyHive - Website The Sola Sessions: Reimagined Clubhouse @hairbyhunty on Clubhouse

In business, your Blind Spots hold you back from achieving success on your terms. Hear business experts and decision-makers speak about blind spots they have seen and how they held the business back. If it applies to you, find out how to identify and push through. Our guest on this episode, Kim Bennett. Thank you for listening to one of our episodes of the Business Blind Spots Exposed Podcast. FOLLOW: WEBSITE: https://caarmo.com LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/5000945 LINKEDIN Vinay Raman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vraman/ Catch up with some of the best Business Blind Spots Exposed Podcast episodes—head to www.connectfleets.com to listen our podcast library.

So far this season, we've introduced the concept of client-centered legal practice, explored why lawyers tend to be so resistant to change, and looked at what's broken within our legal system. On this episode, we'll compare the broken model of legal service delivery—the "lawyer-centered" model—with the client-centered model, which is advantageous for both your clients and your firm.Featuring interviews with three practicing attorneys who are all innovating in their fields, this episode covers: The core differences between the lawyer-centered and client-centered models of legal service delivery The disadvantages of the lawyer-centered model The advantages of the client-centered model The effects that these different models have on lawyers and clients What it's like to operate a client-centered law firm, in practice Episode Four's guests include Kim Bennett, Founder of K Bennett Law LLC; Erin Levine, CEO & Founder of Hello Divorce and Managing Attorney at Levine Family Law Group; and Justin Osborn, Partner at Osborn Gambale Beckley & Budd PLLC. Listen in for their perspectives!Our Guests:Kimberly BennettKimberly Y. Bennett, Esq., is the Founder of K Bennett Law LLC, a boutique subscription legal services law firm that helps small businesses protect their brands and grow profitable and sustainable seven-figure organizations. Kim defines herself as an innovator, entrepreneur, legal industry disruptor, and a business coach—who happens to be a lawyer. In addition to growing and managing her firm, Kim coaches women building modern businesses, speaks on legal topics, teaches workshops for new entrepreneurs, and is a co-organizer of two legal tech communities: Atlanta Legal Tech and Atlanta Legal Hackers. Kim's mission is to help foster a permanent shift in the way law firms deliver legal services to clients. You can follow her on Twitter at @kbennettlawErin LevineErin Levine, Esq. is CEO and Founder of Hello Divorce, a do-it-yourself divorce navigator startup, and she is Managing Attorney at Levine Family Law Group, a full-service family law firm in Oakland, CA. Erin is working to democratize divorce by ensuring that “every American who wants a divorce has access to affordable, accessible and ethical legal assistance.” Erin has won numerous awards during her career, including the 2020 James I. Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering, the 2019 ABA “Women in LegalTech” and Fastcase 50 Honoree awards, and the 2019 Reisman Award for Legal Innovation. You can follow Erin on Twitter at @hello_divorceJustin OsbornJustin Osborn is a founding member of Counsel Carolina (Osborn Gambale Beckley & Budd PLLC), whose personal advocacy for fairness and progressive social policies led to the firm's RV-based mobile services program. A former insurance adjuster and insurance defense lawyer, Justin now represents clients against the same corporate and insurance interests he once defended. A proud tribal citizen of the Cherokee Nation and one of the first in his family to obtain a college degree, Justin has rededicated his career to making legal services more equitable and universally accessible. You can follow Justin on Twitter at @justin_osborn

With Season Two of Matters focusing on client-centered legal practice, it makes sense to start with the question: Why is client-centric legal practice important?In this first episode, our hosts speak with four experts—a practicing lawyer, a legal consultant and writer, a data scientist, and a legal professor—to provide a macro-level view of client-centered lawyering, examine why it's vital to the future of legal service delivery, and give you a glimpse of what to expect on this season of the show.Specific discussion points include: What “client-centered” means in a legal services context Why client-centric practice is a revolutionary concept in legal Why so many law firms are hesitant to put client-centered practices into place How the “client experience is king” model is reshaping other industries—as well as legal How the legal industry has evolved over time with regards to technology—and where it may go in the future Joining Jack and Nefra are guests Kim Bennett, Jordan Furlong, Nika Kabiri, and Bill Henderson. Don't miss what they have to say!Our Guests:Kim BennettKimberly Y. Bennett, Esq., is the Founder of K Bennett Law LLC, a boutique subscription legal services law firm that helps small businesses protect their brands and grow profitable and sustainable seven-figure organizations. Kim defines herself as an innovator, entrepreneur, legal industry disruptor, and a business coach—who happens to be a lawyer. In addition to growing and managing her firm, Kim coaches women building modern businesses, speaks on legal topics, teaches workshops for new entrepreneurs, and is a co-organizer of two legal tech communities: Atlanta Legal Tech and Atlanta Legal Hackers. You can follow Kim on Twitter at @kbennettlaw Jordan FurlongJordan Furlong is a legal industry analyst and consultant based in Ottawa, Canada. In addition to being an author and the founder of the award-winning Law21 blog, Jordan is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management, and Past Chair of the College's InnovAction Awards. He's the Strategic Advisor in Residence at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, and he serves as co-chair of the Board of Directors for its Institute for Law Practice Management and Innovation. He's also taught or guest-lectured in courses at Suffolk Law, Queen's Law, and Osgoode Hall Law School that focus on preparing students to provide legal services deep into the 21st century. You can follow Jordan on Twitter at @jordan_law21 Nika KabiriNika Kabiri has spent 20+ years studying how people make decisions in a variety of contexts. She has a JD from the University of Texas, a PhD in Sociology from the University of Washington, and currently teaches Decision Science at the University of Washington. Nika has worked with businesses of all sizes, including Amazon, Microsoft, VMware, Sony, Oakley, PepsiCo, General Mills, Anheuser-Busch InBev, the Seattle Seahawks, Zillow, Expedia, Smartsheet—and Clio. She is also an Advisor at Madrona Venture Labs, where she helps startups get their footing. You can follow Nika on Twitter at @nikakabiriBill HendersonBill Henderson joined the Indiana University Maurer School of Law faculty in 2003 following a visiting appointment at Chicago-Kent College of Law and a judicial clerkship for Judge Richard Cudahy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Drawing upon more than a decade of research, Bill is a sought-after commentator on the changing legal marketplace and has accumulated numerous awards. In the last five years, he has been named one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal, the Most Influential Person in Legal Education by National Jurist Magazine, and one of the inaugural group of “Legal Rebels” profiled by the ABA Journal. You can follow Bill on Twitter at @wihender

After the challenges 2020 brought us, we are desperate to reconnect with our community and have our community reconnect with each other - and that's exactly what The Sola Sessions Reconnected is all about. Sola’s first virtual education event will be co-hosted by Kim Bennett (@kimi_kisses) and Steven Wren (@mrwrencuts), and our dynamic co-hosting duo has teamed up on this episode to share what they are most looking forward to. While many of us miss traveling and experiencing in-person events with other salon professionals, there are a lot of benefits to a virtual event, like being able to attend from the comfort of your own home or the very affordable event ticket (even more affordable if you're a Sola professional).  One of the many other great things about our event is it’s inclusivity. In the past, all Sola Sessions have been exclusive to the Sola community. But for The Sola Sessions Reconnected, we are opening it up to reconnect with the entire beauty industry. And with three stages, 20+ classes and 18 hours of education, there is sure to be inspiration and education for everyone, no matter your specialty or where you are in your career. Not sure how you’ll manage watching all of that content in one sitting? We’ve got you covered! Ticket holders will be available to watch every class on-demand through the end of 2021. We tend to connect and learn the most from people who are like us, and that's exactly why this opportunity to reconnect is so important, especially now. So we hope that you will join us for The Sola Sessions Reconnected on Monday, May 17th. Tickets are on sale now for only $59, and Sola professionals receive exclusive pricing of only $29. Trust us, you do not want to miss it! Time Stamps [0:23] – Kim Bennett and Steven Wren greet us and each other, explaining that they will be hosting the upcoming virtual event, The Sola Sessions Reconnected. [3:01] – Kim comments on how difficult it is to not be able to travel to live events because of the pandemic, but also points to some of the pros of virtual events. [3:41] – Steven offers his own insight about what having virtual events has been like for him and how events will probably look in the future. [4:29] – Kim argues that education is likely heading toward a hybrid model of being both live and virtual. [6:19] – Kim compares the opportunity to virtually connect to having bought her favorite band's CD when she was younger and learning all of the songs but then lining up to see them in concert when they come to your city. [8:02] – Steven reflects on the fact that being virtual hosts will be firsts for both of them. [9:47] – Steven reveals what about the event he is most excited about. [10:51] – Kim enthuses over the conveniences of the event being virtual, such as how more people will be able to attend since they don't have to travel. [12:31] – Kim discusses the importance of finding people who are similar to you, as those are the types of people with whom we tend to build connections and learn from. [13:22] – We learn the layout of The Sola Sessions Reconnected, such as how there will be three different stages. [16:02] – Steven and Kim discuss the importance of community and inclusion with events such as The Sola Sessions Reconnected. [18:28] – Kim advises us to attend the event in order to grow and reconnect, adding that it will be a learning experience for her and Steven as well. [20:54] – Steven asserts that the salon industry is a people industry, not just a service. [23:21] – Kim reveals that she loves education and being a student because she loves to learn. [24:29] – Steven provides his own insight on how he views education, making the case that education allows for potential to be unlocked. [25:15] – Kim points out that discomfort comes with the territory of growth, that you have to be willing to go outside of your comfort zone. [26:50] – Kim presents us with the possibility that a virtual event, even more than a live event, gives people the opportunity to voice themselves. Links and Resources The Sola Sessions Reconnected – Buy Ticket @solasalons Instagram www.solasalons.com  

Staying educated, connected and inspired is key to creating a thriving career. That's why we created the Sola Sessions, which features the industry’s top business, marketing, and artistic educators who help independent salon owners live the salon life of their dreams. On Monday, May 17th we are bringing the Sola Sessions to you for a virtual event! For the first time ever, we are inviting all beauty professionals to experience the Sola Sessions. Tickets are $59 for General Admission, and Sola professionals can receive an exclusive discount of just $29 per ticket.  Sola pros, check your email or your Sola Pro app for your exclusive discount code. Get your ticket here:  https://events.bizzabo.com/solasessions Reconnect with us and stay educated with the biggest and best brands in the industry — all from the comfort of your own home. [0:23] – 10 reasons to experience The Sola Sessions Reconnected, a virtual education event for beauty professionals on May 17th. [1:32] – Reason #1: Our two inspiring keynote presenters, Tim Storey and Britt Seva. [2:57] – Reason #2: 18+ hours of education from the industry's best minds and biggest brands. [3:20] – Reason #3: You can choose between 3 tracks of education - business, marketing, inspiration, artistic, or an alternative services track. No matter your specialty, and no matter your interest, we've got you covered. [3:47] – Reason #4: Since this Sessions is coming to you, you only have to worry about our super affordable event ticket price. No travel, no hotel, no problem! [4:22] – Reason #5: All sections will be recorded and available to watch until the end of 2021, so you can revisit and rewatch to your heart's content. [4:44] – Reason #6: Attendees will receive a virtual SWAG bag.  [5:14] – Reason #7: Connect with your favorite brands in the virtual expo hall. [5:30] – Reason #8: You’ll have the opportunity to not only connect with other independent salon owners, but you'll also gain real-time access to live Q&A with some of the biggest names in the industry. [5:55] – Reason #9: You won’t want to miss our event MCs, Kim Bennett (aka Kimi Kisses) and Steven Wren. [6:37] – Reason #10: “We need community, it gives us a place to belong. Community pulls out the creativity in us. It infuses us with strength and makes us into better people.” [7:30] – Tickets on sale now! Get your ticket here.   Links and Resources The Sola Sessions Reconnected  @solasalons www.solasalonstudios.com

Oftentimes on the podcast, I talk about the changes that are happening in the industry and particularly the ever-evolving business models.  In the United States, the Salon Suite or Studio as some prefer to call it has had a massive impact on hairdressing and how hairdressers work and that model is influencing salons in many countries. The biggest operator of salon suites is Sola Salon Suites and their very first suite operator was Kim Bennet and so it’s a real pleasure to have Kim as my guest today and get a really good insight into how having a salon suite works from someone who has been doing it for 17 years.  In today’s podcast we discuss: The salon suite business model Who is and isn’t suited to opening a salon suite/studio of their own What are the advantages and disadvantages  And lots more!   In This Episode: [01:45] Welcome to the show, Kim! [02:25] Kim shares her background. [03:21] Kim speaks about how she got started with Sola Salon Studios. [05:18] Did the salon suite model exist when you first got started? [07:41] Kim discusses the founders of Sola Salon Studios. [10:04] Kim shares the Sola business model. [11:00] Antony talks about why the salon suite model isn't for him. [13:19] Kim shares why the salon suite works for her. [16:33] Kim discusses wanting to give her clients a better experience, and to do that, she wanted the studio model. [19:46] Kim speaks about evolving over the years and how her business evolved with her. [22:59] Were there any challenges that stood out to you since you were new to the salon suite model? [26:34] Kim shares how Sola stylists handle their guest's arrivals because they don't have receptionists. [29:18] Kim discusses the matrix on how many studio suite stylists decided they didn't like the business model. [31:16] In Kim's experience, when she saw people leave Sola, they were usually becoming salon owners. [34:03] Listen as Kim speaks about who might not be a great studio suite owner. [37:31] Kim says that competition between suites around pricing isn't something that happens at Sola. [39:57] Do you get walk-ins with the studio suite model? [41:10] Kim talks about what she misses about the traditional salon model. [43:38] Kim discusses what clients have told her about missing the traditional salon experience. [45:55] When it comes to retail, some don't want the hassle of it, and others see the benefits and profits from selling products. [48:03] What is the average cost of a studio suite? [53:07] The most important business model is the one that works best for you. [57:10] Kim says that social media is huge in the salon suite entrepreneurial mindset. [1:01:20] Kim discusses the age-old challenge of stylists taking their clients with them when they leave. [1:04:16] Who is training the new generation of hairstylists? [1:06:59] Thank you so much for being on the show!   Links and Resources Grow My Salon Business    Kim Bennett Kim Bennett Studios @kimi_kisses Instagram | Facebook

Live Stream of Sunday Morning Service on March 14, 2021.  Special music, "Need You Now" from Kim Bennett and Cathy Gilbert.

When salons first shut down at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we immediately turned to our friends at Barbicide to educate our community on how to safely return to their salon as soon as governments allowed. Barbicide’s National Director of Education, Leslie Roste, and Sola’s Kim Bennett co-hosted a webinar on sanitation best practices, and we worked alongside the Barbicide team to create a customized Back-to-Work Plan to help our independent salon owners reopen #SolaStrong. We are grateful for our ongoing partnership with Barbicide and are thrilled to welcome Leslie back to the Sola community on the Sola Stories Podcast!    Listen, as Leslie and Kim chat about setting up sanitation systems that will make your salon safety efficient and effective as you continue to navigate the pandemic and beyond. Curious on what systems should you keep and what should you leave behind? Tune in to hear Leslie and Kim answer all your burning questions and more!   Leslie also shares dialogue you can use with your clients when discussing sanitation and how to show, not just tell, them you care about their health and safety. As Leslie says, you are a service first and a luxury second.    Leslie also reminds us that you can't take care of others if you neglect taking care of yourself. Whether it’s using the 10 minutes you have while sanitizing your tools in between clients to get a drink of water, step outside to take a mask break, or simply sit down and ground yourself, taking care of yourself should be as much of a priority as taking care of your clients.   In This Episode [01:24] Welcome to the show, Leslie! [03:55] Kim gives her perspective when going through the first shutdown. [05:36] Leslie speaks about some systems to put in place in your studio for your and your client's safety. [08:09] Messaging that you are trying to do the right thing and then follow through. [11:03] To set up your systems, go to the Covid-19 Resource Center or check out our webinars. [11:46] Leslie discusses having new dialogue around the pandemic with your clients. [13:34] Remember, you are a service first and luxury second. [16:31] Kim speaks about her Barbicide recertifications. [18:16] When you go home each night, you should feel confident you aren't taking the virus home to your family. [20:14] Leslie shares that she got COVID, and so did her husband. Doing everything right just means you are safer, not 100% safe. [21:35] Leslie discusses what happens when she talks to states to keep licensure in place. [23:16] On the “2021...Now What” webinar Leslie did for Sola, she gave a checklist to make sure you are taking care of yourself. [25:28] It takes 10 mins for your disinfectant to work, so take that 10 mins and center yourself. [27:01] When you wear a mask, it's harder to remember to drink as much water as you should. [29:11] Leslie believes that you should do what works best for you regarding efficiency with infection control. [30:59] Labeling things is a great way to let people know that you have a sanitization process. [33:42] It's the little things that say ‘I care about you.’  [36:40] Kim discusses the amazing partnership the Sola Pro app has with Barbicide. [39:02] Leslie speaks about the new certification Barbicide is doing for 2021. [41:13] Thank you for being on the show!   Stay Connected Sola Salon Studios Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram Connect with Kim @kimi_kisses   Connect with Leslie Roste Barbicide Email YouTube | Facebook 

Special guest lawyer and membership/brand strategy advisor Kim Bennett takes time out of her busy schedule tell you why shifting from hourly to subscription billing is vital, the most important things you need to know before kickstarting your membership or subscription box, and casually drops a million dollar business idea. This is a must listen to episode so grab a cup of tea and your earbuds! www.Kimberlybennett.comwww.kbennettlaw.com

It’s been a year of unexpected challenges, but also a year of tremendous opportunity for those who have taken the time to learn and grow through it all. For our last episode of 2020, the team behind the Sola Stories Podcast wanted to connect to reflect on the lessons this monumental, transformative year has taught us.    Listen as Jennie, Kim and Angela share how they pivoted during 2020, both professionally and personally, the lessons they learned about relinquishing control, and how they’ve overcome the hardest moments of this pandemic. They talk about the changes they have gone through over the year and what they are looking forward to carrying with them into 2021.   After the conversation is over, keep listening to hear some amazing reviews the Sola Stories podcast has received over the last year. Remember, if you like what you’ve been hearing, please leave a review and you may hear yours read on a future episode of Sola Stories!   In This Episode [01:34] Jennie Wolff, Kim Bennett and Angela Ribbler - thank you for joining us all as we wrap up this year with reflections and lessons.  [03:32] Kim shares how she has had to pivot this year. [06:20] Angela speaks about the ways she has learned to pivot during the pandemic. [09:13] Jennie chats about some pivots she has had to make in her personal life. [10:33] Angela talks about how planning didn’t work this last year, but things turned out great anyway. [11:41] Kim discusses how she handled the changes on a personal level as a single mother. [14:50] What lessons about relinquishing control have you learned that you will take into 2021 with you? [17:57] Angela shares the biggest thing she has learned about relinquishing control. [19:55] Jennie speaks about waiting to have a baby for the perfect time and what she learned this year. [22:08] Kim chats about what was hardest for her during the pandemic. [24:43] Angela shares the hardest part of 2020 was for her. [27:13] Jennie has taken 2020 to learn to find stillness in her life. [28:08] Kim discusses having the opportunity to move into her new house. [32:14] Angela speaks about her new puppy she got in 2020. [34:27] Kim, have you learned anything about being more present this year? [37:53] Angela learned that her worth isn’t based on productivity. [39:56] Jennie shares what she has learned about self-worth this year. [41:56] Angela talks about all the projects she gives herself to fill her time instead of enjoying the stillness. [44:42] Kim discusses how the Sola community has helped her in the last year. [47:32] Kim says that the entire community became visionaries together during the pandemic. [49:12] Angela, how did you lean on the community and gain strength through them during 2020? [55:32] Happy New Year from everyone at Sola! [56:10] Listen as they share some amazing reviews the podcast has received.     Stay Connected Sola Salon Studios Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram Connect with Angela @angelaribbler Connect with Kim @kimi_kisses   Connect with Jennie  @jenniethewolff  

“I’m just going to figure it out and live the life I want.”  --Kim Bennett How do you choose the kind of life you want and then design how you’re going to live it?  Where do we even begin to answer that? Kim Bennett and I address both simultaneously in this episode. Our answer: examining our personal failures. In life, we have to fail in order to know what we want, what we’re good at, and what we need to design our own lives -- and do it with intention.  What we tackle in this episode: How to turn setbacks & failures into opportunities   How to design your career around the life you want to live When to know you have succeeded How to embrace daily setbacks and mistakes ---- Grab your free video course!  The Money Maker Mindset: 4 Strategies to Focus Your Mind to Make More Money https://HelenNgo.com/FreeCourse

This week there are two episiodes of the podcast going up, both of them longer than normal. This one, episode one hundred, is the hundredth-episode special and is an hour and a half long. It looks at the early career of the Beatles, and at the three recordings of "Love Me Do". Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Misirlou" by Dick Dale and the Deltones. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources No Mixclouds this week, as both episodes have far too many songs by one artist. The mixclouds will be back with episode 101. While there are many books on the Beatles, and I have read dozens of them, only one needs to be mentioned as a reference for this episode (others will be used for others). All These Years Vol 1: Tune In by Mark Lewisohn is simply the *only* book worth reading on the Beatles' career up to the end of 1962. It is the most detailed, most accurate, biography imaginable, and the gold standard by which all other biographies of musicians should be measured. I only wish volumes two and three were available already so I could not expect my future episodes on the Beatles to be obsolete when they do come out. There are two versions of the book -- a nine-hundred page mass-market version and a 1700-page expanded edition. I recommend the latter. The information in this podcast is almost all from Lewisohn's book, but I must emphasise that the opinions are mine, and so are any errors -- Lewisohn's book only has one error that I'm aware of (a joke attributed to the comedian Jasper Carrott in a footnote that has since been traced to an earlier radio show). I am only mortal, and so have doubtless misunderstood or oversimplified things and introduced errors where he had none.   The single version of "Love Me Do" can be found on Past Masters, a 2-CD compilation of the Beatles' non-album tracks that includes the majority of their singles and B-sides. The version with Andy White playing on can be found on Please Please Me. The version with Pete Best, and many of the other early tracks used here, is on Anthology 1.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Errata I pronounce the name of Lewisohn's book as "All Those Years" instead of "All These Years". I say " The Jets hadn't liked playing at Williams' club" at one point. I meant "at Koschmider's club"   Transcript   The Beatles came closer than most people realise to never making a record. Until the publication of Mark Lewisohn's seminal biography All These Years vol 1: Tune In, in 2013 everyone thought they knew the true story -- John met Paul at Woolton Village Fete in 1957, and Paul joined the Quarrymen, who later became the Beatles. They played Hamburg and made a demo, and after the Beatles' demo was turned down by Decca, their manager Brian Epstein shopped it around every record label without success, until finally George Martin heard the potential in it and signed them to Parlophone, a label which was otherwise known for comedy records. Martin was, luckily, the one producer in the whole of the UK who could appreciate the Beatles' music, and he signed them up, and the rest was history. The problem is, as Lewisohn showed, that's not what happened. Today I'm going to tell, as best I can the story of how the Beatles actually became the band that they became, and how they got signed to EMI records. I'm going to tell you the story of "Love Me Do": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love Me Do (single version)"] As I mentioned at the beginning, this episode owes a *huge* debt to Mark Lewisohn's book. I like to acknowledge my sources, anyway, but I've actually had difficulty with this episode because Lewisohn's book is *so* detailed, *so* full, and written *so* well that much of the effort in writing this episode came from paring down the information, rather than finding more, and from reworking things so I was not just paraphrasing bits of his writing. Normally I rely on many sources, and integrate the material myself, but Lewisohn has done all that work far better than any other biographer of any other musician. Were the Beatles not such an important part of music history, I would just skip this episode because there is nothing for me to add. As it is, I *obviously* have to cover this, but I almost feel like I'm cheating in doing so. If you find this episode interesting at all, please do yourself a favour and buy that book.  This episode is going to be a long one -- much longer than normal. I won't know the precise length until after I've recorded and edited it, of course, but I'm guessing it's going to be about ninety minutes. This is the hundredth episode, the end of the second year of the podcast, the end of the second book based on the podcast, and the introduction of the single most important band in the whole story, so I'm going to stretch out a bit. I should also mention that there are a couple of discussions of sudden, traumatic, deaths in this episode. With all that said, settle in, this is going to take a while. Every British act we've looked at so far -- and many of those we're going to look at in the next year or two -- was based in London. Either they grew up there, or they moved there before their musical career really took off. The Beatles, during the time we're covering in this episode, were based in Liverpool. While they did eventually move to London, it wasn't until after they'd started having hits. And what listeners from outside the UK might not realise is what that means in terms of attitudes and perceptions. Liverpool is a large city -- it currently has a population of around half a million, and the wider Liverpool metropolitan area is closer to two million -- but like all British cities other than London, it was regarded largely as a joke in the British media, and so in return the people of Liverpool had a healthy contempt for London. To give Americans some idea of how London dominates in Britain, and thus how it's thought of outside London, imagine that New York, Washington DC, and Los Angeles were all the same city -- that the financial, media, and political centres of the country were all the same place. Now further imagine that Silicon Valley and all the Ivy League universities were half an hour's drive from that city. Now, imagine how much worse the attitudes that that city would have about so-called "flyover states" would be, and imagine in return how people in large Midwestern cities like Detroit or Chicago would think about that big city.  In this analogy, Liverpool is Detroit, and like Detroit, it was very poor and had produced a few famous musicians, most notably Billy Fury, who was from an impoverished area of Liverpool called the Dingle: [Excerpt: Billy Fury, "Halfway to Paradise"] But Fury had, of course, moved to London to have his career. That's what you did. But in general, Liverpool, if people in London thought of it at all, was thought of as a provincial backwater full of poor people, many of them Irish, and all of them talking with a ridiculous accent. Liverpool was ignored by London, and that meant that things could develop there out of sight. The story of the Beatles starts in the 1950s, with two young men in their mid-teens. John Winston Lennon was born in 1940, and had had a rather troubled childhood. His father had been a merchant seaman who had been away in the war, and his parents' relationship had deteriorated for that and other reasons. As a result, Lennon had barely known his father, and when his mother met another man, Lennon's aunt, Mary Smith, who he always called Mimi, had taken him in, believing that his mother "living in sin" would be a bad influence on the young boy. The Smith family were the kind of lower middle class family that seemed extremely rich to the impoverished families in Liverpool, but were not well off by any absolute standard. Mimi, in particular, was torn between two very different urges. On one hand, she had strongly bohemian, artistic, urges -- as did all of her sisters. She was a voracious reader, and a lover of art history, and encouraged these tendencies in John. But at the same time, she was of that class which has a little status, but not much security, and so she was extremely wary of the need to appear respectable. This tension between respectability and rebellion was something that would appear in many of the people who Lennon later worked with, such as Brian Epstein and George Martin, and it was something that Lennon would always respond to -- those people would be the only ones who Lennon would ever view as authority figures he could respect, though he would also resent them at times. And it might be that combination of rebellion and respectability that Lennon saw in Paul McCartney. McCartney was from a family who, in the Byzantine world of the British class system of the time, were a notch or so lower than the Smith family who raised Lennon, but he was academically bright, and his family had big plans for him -- they thought that it might even be possible that he might become a teacher if he worked very hard at school. McCartney was a far less openly rebellious person than Lennon was, but he was still just as caught up in the music and fashions of the mid-fifties that his father associated with street gangs and hooliganism. Lennon, like many teenagers in Britain at the time, had had his life changed when he first heard Elvis Presley, and he had soon become a rock and roll obsessive -- Elvis was always his absolute favourite, but he also loved Little Richard, who he thought was almost as good, and he admired Buddy Holly, who had a special place in Lennon's heart as Holly wore glasses on stage, something that Lennon, who was extremely short-sighted, could never bring himself to do, but which at least showed him that it was a possibility. Lennon was, by his mid-teens, recreating a relationship with his mother, and one of the things they bonded over was music -- she taught him how to play the banjo, and together they worked out the chords to "That'll Be the Day", and Lennon later switched to the guitar, playing banjo chords on five of the six strings.  Like many, many, teenagers of the time, Lennon also formed a skiffle group, which he called the Quarrymen, after a line in his school song. The group tended to have a rotating lineup, but Lennon was the unquestioned leader. The group had a repertoire consisting of the same Lonnie Donegan songs that every other skiffle group was playing, plus any Elvis and Buddy Holly songs that could sound reasonable with a lineup of guitars, teachest bass, and washboard. The moment that changed the history of the music, though, came on July the sixth, 1957, when Ivan Vaughan, a friend of Lennon's, invited his friend Paul McCartney to go and see the Quarry Men perform at Woolton Village Fete. That day has gone down in history as "the day John met Paul", although Mark Lewisohn has since discovered that Lennon and McCartney had briefly met once before. It is, though, the day on which Lennon and McCartney first impressed each other musically. McCartney talks about being particularly impressed that the Quarry Men's lead singer was changing the lyrics to the songs he was performing, making up new words when he forgot the originals -- he says in particular that he remembers Lennon singing "Come Go With Me" by the Del-Vikings: [Excerpt: The Del-Vikings, "Come Go With Me"] McCartney remembers Lennon as changing the lyrics to "come go with me, right down to the penitentiary", and thinking that was clever. Astonishingly, some audio recording actually exists of the Quarry Men's second performance that day -- they did two sets, and this second one comes just after Lennon met McCartney rather than just before. The recording only seems to exist in a very fragmentary form, which has snatches of Lennon singing "Baby Let's Play House" and Lonnie Donegan's hit "Puttin' on the Style", which was number one on the charts at the time, but that even those fragments have survived, given how historic a day this was, is almost miraculous: [Excerpt: The Quarrymen, "Puttin' on the Style"] After the first set, Lennon met McCartney, who was nearly two years younger, but a more accomplished musician -- for a start, he knew how to tune the guitar with all six strings, and to proper guitar tuning, rather than tuning five strings like a banjo. Lennon and his friends were a little nonplussed by McCartney holding his guitar upside-down at first -- McCartney is left-handed -- but despite having an upside-down guitar with the wrong tuning, McCartney managed to bash out a version of Eddie Cochran's "Twenty-Flight Rock", a song he would often perform in later decades when reminding people of this story: [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, "Twenty-Flight Rock"] This was impressive to Lennon for three reasons. The first was that McCartney was already a strong, confident performer -- he perhaps seemed a little more confident than he really was, showing off in front of the bigger boys like this. The second was that "Twenty-Flight Rock" was a moderately obscure song -- it hadn't charted, but it *had* appeared in The Girl Can't Help It, a film which every rock and roll lover in Britain had watched at the cinema over and over. Choosing that song rather than, say, "Be-Bop-A-Lula", was a way of announcing a kind of group affiliation -- "I am one of you, I am a real rock and roll fan, not just a casual listener to what's in the charts". I stress that second point because it's something that's very important in the history of the Beatles generally -- they were *music fans*, and often fans of relatively obscure records. That's something that bound Lennon and McCartney, and later the other members, together from the start, and something they always noted about other musicians. They weren't the kind of systematic scholars who track down rare pressings and memorise every session musician's name, but they were constantly drawn to find the best new music, and to seek it out wherever they could. But the most impressive thing for Lennon -- and one that seems a little calculated on McCartney's part, though he's never said that he thought about this that I'm aware of -- was that this was an extremely wordy song, and McCartney *knew all the words*. Remember that McCartney had noticed Lennon forgetting the words to a song with lyrics as simple as "come, come, come, come, come into my heart/Tell me darling we will never part", and here's McCartney singing this fast-paced, almost patter song, and getting the words right.  From the beginning, McCartney was showing how he could complement Lennon -- if Lennon could impress McCartney by improvising new lyrics when he forgot the old ones, then McCartney could impress Lennon by remembering the lyrics that Lennon couldn't -- and by writing them down for Lennon, sharing his knowledge freely. McCartney went on to show off more, and in particular impressed Lennon by going to a piano and showing off his Little Richard imitation. Little Richard was the only serious rival to Elvis in Lennon's affections, and McCartney could do a very decent imitation of him. This was someone special, clearly. But this put Lennon in a quandary. McCartney was clearly far, far, better than any of the Quarry Men -- at least Lennon's equal, and light years ahead of the rest of them. Lennon had a choice -- invite this young freak of nature into his band, and improve the band dramatically, but no longer be the unquestioned centre of the group, or remain in absolute control but not have someone in the group who *knew the words* and *knew how to tune a guitar*, and other such magical abilities that no mere mortals had. Those who only know of Lennon from his later reputation as a massive egoist would be surprised, but he decided fairly quickly that he had to make the group better at his own expense. He invited McCartney to join the group, and McCartney said yes. Over the next few months the membership of the Quarry Men changed. They'd been formed while they were all at Quarry Bank Grammar School, but that summer Lennon moved on to art school. I'm going to have to talk about the art school system, and the British education system of the fifties and early sixties a lot over the next few months, but here's an extremely abbreviated and inaccurate version that's good enough for now. Between the ages of eleven and sixteen, people in Britain -- at least those without extremely rich parents, who had a different system -- went to two kinds of school depending on the result of an exam they took aged eleven, which was based on some since-discredited eugenic research about children's potential. If you passed the exam, you were considered academically apt, and went to a grammar school, which was designed to filter you through to university and the professions. If you failed the exam, you went to a secondary modern, which was designed to give you the skills to get a trade and make a living working with your hands. And for the most part, people followed the pipeline that was set up for them. You go to grammar school, go to university, become a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher. You go to secondary modern, leave school at fourteen, become a plumber or a builder or a factory worker. But there are always those people who don't properly fit into the neat categories that the world tries to put them in. And for people in their late teens and early twenties, people who'd been through the school system but not been shaped properly by it, there was another option at this time. If you were bright and creative, but weren't suited for university because you'd failed your exams, you could go to art school. The supposed purpose of the art schools was to teach people to do commercial art, and they would learn skills like lettering and basic draughtsmanship. But what the art schools really did was give creative people space to explore ideas, to find out about areas of art and culture that would otherwise have been closed to them. Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Ian Dury, Ray Davies, Bryan Ferry, Syd Barrett, and many more people we'll be seeing over the course of this story went to art school, and as David Bowie would put it later, the joke at the time was that you went to art school to learn to play blues guitar. With Lennon and his friends all moving on from the school that had drawn them together, the group stabilised for a time on a lineup of Lennon, McCartney, Colin Hanton, Len Garry, and Eric Griffiths. But the first time this version of the group played live, while McCartney sang well, he totally fluffed his lead guitar lines on stage. While there were three guitarists in the band at this point, they needed someone who could play lead fluently and confidently on stage. Enter George Harrison, who had suddenly become a close friend of McCartney. Harrison went to the same school as McCartney -- a grammar school called the Liverpool Institute, but was in the year below McCartney, and so the two had always been a bit distant. However, at the same time as Lennon was moving on to art school after failing his exams, McCartney was being kept back a year for failing Latin -- which his father always thought was deliberate, so he wouldn't have to go to university. Now he was in the same year at school as Harrison, and they started hanging out together. The two bonded strongly over music, and would do things like take a bus journey to another part of town, where someone lived who they heard owned a copy of "Searchin'" by the Coasters: [Excerpt: The Coasters, "Searchin'"] The two knocked on this stranger's door, asked if he'd play them this prized record, and he agreed -- and then they stole it from him as they left his house. Another time they took the bus to another part of town again, because they'd heard that someone in that part of town knew how to play a B7 chord on his guitar, and sat there as he showed them. So now the Quarrymen needed a lead guitarist, McCartney volunteered his young mate. There are a couple of stories about how Harrison came to join the band -- apparently he auditioned for Lennon at least twice, because Lennon was very unsure about having such a young kid in his band -- but the story I like best is that Harrison took his guitar to a Quarry Men gig at Wilson Hall -- he'd apparently often take his guitar to gigs and just see if he could sit in with the bands. On the bill with the Quarry Men was another group, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, who were generally regarded as the best skiffle band in Liverpool. Lennon told Harrison that he could join the band if he could play as well as Clayton, and Harrison took out his guitar and played "Raunchy": [Excerpt: Bill Justis, "Raunchy"] I like this story rather than the other story that the members would tell later -- that Harrison played "Raunchy" on a bus for Lennon -- for one reason. The drummer in the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group was one Richy Starkey, and if it happened that way, the day that George joined the Quarry Men was also the day that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were all in the same place for the first time. George looked up to John and essentially idolised him, though Lennon thought of him as a little annoying at times -- he'd follow John everywhere, and not take a hint when he wasn't wanted sometimes, just eager to be with his big cool new mate. But despite this tiny bit of tension, John, Paul, and George quickly became a solid unit -- helped by the fact that the school that Paul and George went to was part of the same complex of buildings as Lennon's art college, so they'd all get the bus there and back together.  George was not only younger, he was a notch or two further down the social class ladder than John or Paul, and he spoke more slowly, which made him seem less intelligent. He came from Speke, which was a rougher area, and he would dress even more like a juvenile delinquent than the others. Meanwhile, Len Garry and Eric Griffiths left the group -- Len Garry because he became ill and had to spend time in hospital, and anyway they didn't really need a teachest bass. What they did need was an electric bass, and since they had four guitars now they tried to persuade Eric to get one, but he didn't want to pay that much money, and he was always a little on the outside of the main three members, as he didn't share their sense of humour. So the group got Nigel Walley, who was acting as the group's manager, to fire him. The group was now John, Paul, and George all on guitars, and Colin Hanton on drums. Sometimes, if they played a venue that had a piano, they'd also bring along a schoolfriend of Paul's, John "Duff" Lowe, to play piano. Meanwhile, the group were growing in other ways. Both John and Paul had started writing songs, together and apart. McCartney seems to have been the first, writing a song called "I Lost My Little Girl" which he would eventually record more than thirty years later: [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, "I Lost My Little Girl"] Lennon's first song likewise sang about a little girl, this time being "Hello, Little Girl". By the middle of 1958, this five-piece group was ready to cut their first record -- at a local studio that would cut a single copy of a disc for you. They went into this studio at some time around July 1958, and recorded two songs. The first was their version of "That'll Be the Day": [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, "That'll be the Day"] The B-side was a song that McCartney had written, with a guitar solo that George had come up with, so the label credit read "McCartney/Harrison". "In Spite of All the Danger" seems to have been inspired by Elvis' "Trying to Get to You": [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Trying to Get to You"] It's a rough song, but a good attempt for a teenager who had only just started writing songs: [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, "In Spite of All the Danger"] Apparently Lowe and Hanton hadn't heard the song before they started playing, but they make a decent enough fist of it in the circumstances. Lennon took the lead even though it was McCartney's song -- he said later "I was such a bully in those days I didn’t even let Paul sing his own song." That was about the last time that this lineup of Quarry Men played together. In July, the month that seems likely for the recording, Lowe finished at the Liverpool Institute, and so he drifted away from McCartney and Harrison. Meanwhile Hanton had a huge row with the others after a show, and they fell out and never spoke again. The Quarry Men were reduced to a trio of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison. But -- possibly the very day after that recording if an unreliable plaque at the studio where they recorded it is to be believed -- something happened which was to have far more impact on the group than the drummer leaving. John Lennon's mother, with whom he'd slowly been repairing his relationship, had called round to visit Mimi. She left the house, and bumped into Nigel Walley, who was calling round to see John. She told him he wasn't there, and that he could walk with her to the bus stop. They walked a little while, then went off in different directions. Walley heard a thump and turned round -- Julia Lennon had been hit by a car and killed instantly. As you can imagine, John's mother dying caused him a huge amount of distress, but it also gave him a bond with McCartney, whose own mother had died of cancer shortly before they met. Neither really spoke about it to each other, and to the extent they did it was with ultra-cynical humour -- but the two now shared something deeper than just the music, even though the music itself was deep enough. Lennon became a much harder, nastier, person after this, at least for a time, his natural wit taking on a dark edge, and he would often drink too much and get aggressive. But life still went on, and John, Paul, and George kept trying to perform -- though the gigs dried up, and they didn't have a drummer any more. They'd just say "the rhythm's in the guitars" when asked why they didn't have one. They were also no longer the Quarry Men -- they didn't have a name. At one point late in the year, they also only had two guitars between the three of them -- Lennon seems to have smashed his in a fit of fury after his mother's death. But he stole one backstage at a talent contest, and soon they were back to having three. That talent show was one run by Carroll Levis, who we talked about before in the episode on "Shakin' All Over". The three boys went on Levis' show, this time performing as Johnny & The Moondogs --  in Manchester, at the Hippodrome in Ancoats, singing Buddy Holly's "Think it Over": [Excerpt: The Crickets, "Think it Over"] Lennon sang lead with his arms draped over the shoulders of Paul and George, who sang backing vocals and played guitar. They apparently did quite well, but had to leave before the show finished to get the last train back to Liverpool, and so never found out whether the audience would have made them the winner, with the possibility of a TV appearance. They did well enough, though, to impress a couple of other young lads on the bill, two Manchester singers named Allan Clarke and Graham Nash. But in general, the Japage Three, a portmanteau of their names that they settled on as their most usual group name at this point, played very little in 1959 -- indeed, George spent much of the early part of the year moonlighting in the Les Stewart Quartet, another group, though he still thought of Lennon and McCartney as his musical soulmates; the Les Stewart Quartet were just a gig.  The three of them would spend much of their time at the Jacaranda, a coffee bar opened by a Liverpool entrepreneur, Allan Williams, in imitation of the 2is, which was owned by a friend of his. Lennon was also spending a lot of time with an older student at his art school, Stuart Sutcliffe, one of the few people in the world that Lennon himself looked up to. The Les Stewart Quartet would end up indirectly being key to the Beatles' development, because after one of their shows at a local youth club they were approached by a woman named Mona Best. Mona's son Pete liked to go to the youth club, but she was fairly protective of him, and also wanted him to have more friends -- he was a quiet boy who didn't make friends easily. So she'd hit upon a plan -- she'd open her own club in her cellar, since the Best family were rich enough to have a big house. If there was a club *in Pete's house* he'd definitely make lots of friends. They needed a band, and she asked the Les Stewart Quartet if they'd like to be the resident band at this new club, the Casbah, and also if they'd like to help decorate it.  They said yes, but then Paul and George went on a hitch-hiking holiday around Wales for a few days, and George didn't get back in time to play a gig the quartet had booked. Ken Brown, the other guitarist, didn't turn up either, and Les Stewart got into a rage and split the group. Suddenly, the Casbah had no group -- George and Ken were willing to play, but neither was a lead singer -- and no decorators either. So George roped in John and Paul, who helped decorate the place, and with the addition of Ken Brown, the group returned to the Quarry Men name for their regular Saturday night gig at the Casbah. The group had no bass player or drummer, and they all kept pestering everyone they knew to get a bass or a drum kit, but nobody would bite. But then Stuart Sutcliffe got half a painting in an exhibition put on by John Moores, the millionaire owner of Littlewoods, who was a big patron of the arts in Liverpool. I say he got half a painting in the exhibition, because the painting was done on two large boards -- Stuart and his friends took the first half of the painting down to the gallery, went back to get the other half, and got distracted by the pub and never brought it. But Moores was impressed enough with the abstract painting that he bought it at the end of the exhibition's run, for ninety pounds -- about two thousand pounds in today's money. And so Stuart's friends gave him a choice -- he could either buy a bass or a drum kit, either would be fine. He chose the bass. But the same week that Stuart joined, Ken Brown was out, and they lost their gig at the Casbah. John, Paul, George and Ken had turned up one Saturday, and Ken hadn't felt well, so instead of performing he just worked on the door. At the end of the show, Mona Best insisted on giving Ken an equal share of the money, as agreed. John, Paul, and George wouldn't stand for that, and so Ken was out of the group, and they were no longer playing for Mona Best. Stuart joining the group caused tensions -- George was fine with him, thinking that a bass player who didn't yet know how to play was better than no bass player at all, but Paul was much less keen. Partly this was because he thought the group needed to get better, which would be hard with someone who couldn't play, but also he was getting jealous of Sutcliffe's closeness to Lennon, especially when the two became flatmates. But John wanted him in the group, and what John wanted, he got. There are recordings of the group around this time that circulate -- only one has been released officially, a McCartney instrumental called "Cayenne", but the others are out there if you look: [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, "Cayenne"] The gigs had dried up again, but they did have one new advantage -- they now had a name they actually liked. John and Stuart had come up with it, inspired by Buddy Holly's Crickets. They were going to be Beatles, with an a. Shortly after the Beatles' first appearance under that name, at the art school student union, came the Liverpool gig which was to have had Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent headlining, before Cochran died. A lot of Liverpool groups were booked to play on the bill there, but not the Beatles -- though Richy Starkey was going to play the gig, with his latest group Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Allan Williams, the local promoter, added extra groups to fill out the bill, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, and suddenly everyone who loved rock and roll in Liverpool realised that there were others out there like them. Overnight, a scene had been born. And where there's a scene, there's money to be made. Larry Parnes, who had been the national promoter of the tour, was at the show and realised that there were a lot of quite proficient musicians in Liverpool. And it so happened that he needed backing bands for three of his artists who were going on tour, separately -- two minor stars, Duffy Power and Johnny Gentle, and one big star, Billy Fury. And both Gentle and Fury were from Liverpool themselves. So Parnes asked Allan Williams to set up auditions with some of the local groups. Williams invited several groups, and one he asked along was the Beatles, largely because Lennon and Sutcliffe begged him. He also found them a drummer, Tommy Moore, who was a decade older than the rest of them -- though Moore didn't turn up to the audition because he had to work, and so Johnny "Hutch" Hutchinson of Cass and the Cassanovas sat in with them, much to Hutch's disgust -- he hated the Beatles, and especially Lennon.  Cass of the Cassanovas also insisted that "the Beatles" was a stupid name, and that the group needed to be Something and the Somethings, and he suggested Long John and the Silver Beatles, and that stuck for a couple of shows before they reverted to their proper name. The Beatles weren't chosen for any of the main tours that were being booked, but then Parnes phoned Williams up -- there were some extra dates on the Johnny Gentle tour that he hadn't yet booked a group for. Could Williams find him a band who could be in Scotland that Friday night for a nine-day tour? Williams tried Cass and the Cassanovas, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and Gerry and the Pacemakers, but none of them could go on tour at such short notice. They all had gigs booked, or day jobs they had to book time off with. The Beatles had no gigs booked, and only George had a day job, and he didn't mind just quitting that. They were off to Scotland. They were so inspired by being on tour with a Larry Parnes artist that most of them took on new names just like those big stars -- George became Carl Harrison, after Carl Perkins, Stuart became Stuart de Staël, after his favourite painter, and Paul became Paul Ramon, which he thought sounded mysterious and French. There's some question about whether John took on a new name -- some sources have him becoming "Long John", while others say he was "Johnny" Lennon rather than John. Tommy Moore, meanwhile, was just Thomas Moore. It was on this tour, of course, that Lennon helped Johnny Gentle write "I've Just Fallen For Someone", which we talked about last week: [Excerpt: Darren Young, "I've Just Fallen For Someone"] The tour was apparently fairly miserable, with horrible accommodation, poor musicianship from the group, and everyone getting on everyone's nerves -- George and Stuart got into fistfights, John bullied Stuart a bit because of his poor playing, and John particularly didn't get on well with Moore -- a man who was a decade older, didn't share their taste in music, and worked in a factory rather than having the intellectual aspirations of the group. The two hated each other by the end of the tour. But the tour did also give the group the experience of signing autographs, and of feeling like stars in at least a minor way. When they got back to Liverpool, George moved in with John and Stuart, to get away from his mum telling him to get a proper job, and they got a few more bookings thanks to Williams, but they soon became drummerless -- they turned up to a gig one time to find that Tommy Moore wasn't there. They went round to his house, and his wife shouted from an upstairs window, "Yez can piss off, he's had enough of yez and gone back to work at the bottle factory". The now four-piece group carried on, however, and recordings exist of them in this period, sounding much more professional than only a few months before, including performances of some of their own songs. The most entertaining of these is probably "You'll Be Mine", an Ink Spots parody with some absurd wordplay from Lennon: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "You'll Be Mine"] Soon enough the group found another drummer, Norm Chapman, and carried on as before, getting regular bookings thanks to Williams. There was soon a temporary guest at the flat John, Stuart, and George shared with several other people -- Royston Ellis, the Beat poet and friend of the Shadows, had turned up in Liverpool and latched on to the group, partly because he fancied George. He performed with them a couple of times, crashed at the flat, and provided them with two formative experiences -- he gave them their first national press, talking in Record and Show Mirror about how he wanted them to be his full-time group, and he gave them their first drug experience, showing them how to get amphetamines out of inhalers. While the group's first national press was positive, there was soon some very negative press indeed associated with them. A tabloid newspaper wanted to do a smear story about the dangerous Beatnik menace. The article talked about how "they revel in filth", and how beatniks were "a dangerous menace to our young people… a corrupting influence of drug addicts and peddlers, degenerates who specialise in obscene orgies". And for some reason -- it's never been made clear exactly how -- the beatnik "pad" they chose to photograph for this story was the one that John, Stuart, and George lived in, though they weren't there at the time -- several of their friends and associates are in the pictures though. They were all kicked out of their flat, and moved back in with their families, and around this time they lost Chapman from the group too -- he was called up to do his National Service, one of the last people to be conscripted before conscription ended for good. They were back to a four-piece again, and for a while Paul was drumming. But then, as seems to have happened so often with this group, a bizarre coincidence happened. A while earlier, Allan Williams had travelled to Hamburg, with the idea of trying to get Liverpool groups booked there. He'd met up with Bruno Koschmider, the owner of a club called the Kaiserkeller. Koschmider had liked the idea, but nothing had come of it, partly because neither could speak the other's language well. A little while later, Koschmider had remembered the idea and come over to the UK to find musicians. He didn't remember where Williams was from, so of course he went to London, to the 2is, and there he found a group of musicians including Tony Sheridan, who we talked about back in the episode on "Brand New Cadillac", the man who'd been Vince Taylor's lead guitarist and had a minor solo career: [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan, "Why?"] Sheridan was one of the most impressive musicians in Britain, but he also wanted to skip the country -- he'd just bought a guitar on credit in someone else's name, and he also had a wife and six-month-old baby he wanted rid of. He eagerly went off with Koschmider, and a scratch group called the Jets soon took up residence at the Kaiserkeller. Meanwhile, in Liverpool, Derry and the Seniors were annoyed. Larry Parnes had booked them for a tour, but then he'd got annoyed at the unprofessionalism of the Liverpool bands he was booking and cancelled the booking, severing his relationship with Williams. The Seniors wanted to know what Williams was going to do about it.  There was no way to get them enough gigs in Liverpool, so Williams, being a thoroughly decent man who had a sense of obligation, offered to drive the group down to London to see if they could get work there. He took them to the 2is, and they were allowed to get up and play there, since Williams was a friend of the owner. And Bruno Koschmider was there. The Jets hadn't liked playing at Williams' club, and they'd scarpered to another one with better working conditions, which they helped get off the ground and renamed the Top Ten, after Vince Taylor's club in London. So Bruno had come back to find another group, and there in the same club at the same time was the man who'd given him the idea in the first place, with a group. Koschmider immediately signed up Derry and the Seniors to play at the Kaiserkeller.  Meanwhile, the best gig the Beatles could get, also through Williams, was backing a stripper, where they played whatever instrumentals they knew, no matter how inappropriate, things like the theme from The Third Man: [Excerpt: Anton Karas, "Theme from The Third Man"] A tune guaranteed to get the audience into a sexy mood, I'm sure you'll agree. But then Allan Williams got a call from Koschmider. Derry and the Seniors were doing great business, and he'd decided to convert another of his clubs to be a rock and roll club. Could Williams have a group for him by next Friday? Oh, and it needed to be five people. Williams tried Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. They were busy. He tried Cass and the Cassanovas. They were busy. He tried Gerry and the Pacemakers. They were busy. Finally, he tried the Beatles. They weren't busy, and said yes they could go to Hamburg that week. There were a few minor issues, like there not being five of them, none of them having passports, and them not having a drummer. The passports could be sorted quickly -- there's a passport office in Liverpool -- but the lack of a fifth Beatle was more of a problem. In desperation, they turned eventually to Pete Best, Mrs. Best's son, because they knew he had a drum kit. He agreed.  Allan Williams drove the group to Hamburg, and they started playing six-hour sets every night at the Indra, not finishing til three in the morning, at which point they'd make their way to their lodgings -- the back of a filthy cinema.  By this time, the Beatles had already got good -- Howie Casey, of Derry and the Seniors, who'd remembered the Beatles as being awful at the Johnny Gentle audition, came over to see them and make fun of them, but found that they were far better than they had been. But playing six hours a night got them *very* good *very* quickly -- especially as they decided that they weren't going to play the same song twice in a night, meaning they soon built up a vast repertoire. But right from the start, there was a disconnect between Pete Best and the other four -- they socialised together, and he went off on his own. He was also a weak player -- he was only just starting to learn -- and so the rest of the group would stamp their feet to keep him in time. That, though, also gave them a bit more of a stage act than they might otherwise have had. There are lots of legendary stories about the group's time in Hamburg, and it's impossible to sort fact from fiction, and the bits we can sort out would get this podcast categorised as adult content, but they were teenagers, away from home for a long period for the first time, living in a squalid back room in the red light district of a city with a reputation for vice. I'm sure whatever you imagine is probably about right. After a relatively short time, they were moved from the Indra, which had to stop putting on rock and roll shows, to the Kaiserkeller, where they shared the bill with Rory Storm & the Hurricanes, up to that point considered Liverpool's best band. There's a live recording of the Hurricanes from 1960, which shows that they were certainly powerful: [Excerpt: Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, "Brand New Cadillac"] That recording doesn't have the Hurricanes' normal drummer on, who was sick for that show. But compared to what the Beatles had become -- a stomping powerhouse with John Lennon, whose sense of humour was both cruel and pointed, doing everything he could to get a rise out of the audience -- they were left in the dust. A letter home that George Harrison wrote sums it up -- "Rory Storm & the Hurricanes came out here the other week, and they are crumby. He does a bit of dancing around but it still doesn’t make up for his phoney group. The only person who is any good in the group is the drummer." That drummer was Richy Starkey from the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, now performing as Ringo Starr. They struck up a friendship, and even performed together at least once -- John, Paul, George, and Ringo acting as the backing group for Lu Walters of the Hurricanes on a demo, which is frustratingly missing and hasn't been heard since. They were making other friends, too. There was Tony Sheridan, who they'd seen on TV, but who would now sometimes jam with them as equals. And there was a trio of arty bohemian types who had stumbled across the club, where they were very out of place -- Astrid Kirscherr, Klaus Voormann, and Jurgen Vollmer. They all latched on to the Beatles, and especially to Stuart, who soon started dating Astrid, despite her speaking no English and him speaking no German. But relations between Koschmider and the Beatles had worsened, and he reported to the police that George, at only seventeen, was under-age. George got deported. The rest of the group decided to move over to the Top Ten Club, and as a parting gift, Paul and Pete nailed some condoms to their bedroom wall and set fire to them. Koschmider decided to report this to the police as attempted arson, and those two were deported as well. John followed a week later, while Stuart stayed in Hamburg for a while, to spend more time with Astrid, who he planned to marry. The other four regrouped, getting in a friend, Chas Newby, as a temporary bass player while Stuart was away. And on the twenty-seventh of December, 1960, when they played Litherland Town Hall, they changed the Liverpool music scene. They were like nothing anyone had ever seen, and the audience didn't dance -- they just rushed to the stage, to be as close to the performance as possible. The Beatles had become the best band in Liverpool. Mark Lewisohn goes further, and suggests that the three months of long nights playing different songs in Hamburg had turned them into the single most experienced rock band *in the world* -- which seems vanishingly unlikely to me, but Lewisohn is not a man given to exaggeration. By this time, Mona Best had largely taken over the group's bookings, and there were a lot of them, as well as a regular spot at the Casbah. Neil Aspinall, a friend of Pete's, started driving them to gigs, while they also had a regular MC, Bob Wooler, who ran many local gigs, and who gave the Beatles their own theme music -- he'd introduce them with the fanfare from Rossini's William Tell Overture: [Excerpt: Rossini, "William Tell Overture"] Stuart came over from Hamburg in early January, and once again the Beatles were a five-piece -- and by now, he could play quite well, well enough, at any rate, that it didn't destroy the momentum the group had gathered. The group were getting more and more bookings, including the venue that would become synonymous with them, the Cavern, a tiny little warehouse cellar that had started as a jazz club, and that the Quarry Men had played once a couple of years earlier, but had been banned from for playing too much rock and roll. Now, the Beatles were getting bookings at the Cavern's lunchtime sessions, and that meant more than it seemed. Most of the gigs they played otherwise were on the outskirts of the city, but the Cavern was in the city centre. And that meant that for the lunchtime sessions, commuters from outside the city were coming to see them -- which meant that the group got fans from anywhere within commuting distance, fans who wanted them to play in their towns. Meanwhile, the group were branching out musically -- they were particularly becoming fascinated by the new R&B, soul, and girl-group records that were coming out in the US. After already having loved "Money" by Barrett Strong, John was also obsessed with the Miracles, and would soon become a fervent fan of anything Motown, and the group were all big fans of the Shirelles. As they weren't playing original material live, and as every group would soon learn every other group's best songs, there was an arms race on to find the most exciting songs to cover. As well as Elvis and Buddy and Eddie, they were now covering the Shirelles and Ray Charles and Gary US Bonds. The group returned to Hamburg in April, Paul and Pete's immigration status having been resolved and George now having turned eighteen, and started playing at the Top Ten club, where they played even longer sets, and more of them, than they had at the Kaiserkeller and the Indra. Tony Sheridan started regularly joining them on stage at this time, and Paul switched to piano while Sheridan added the third guitar. This was also when they started using Preludin, a stimulant related to amphetamines which was prescribed as a diet drug -- Paul would take one pill a night, George a couple, and John would gobble them down. But Pete didn't take them -- one more way in which he was different from the others -- and he started having occasional micro-sleeps in the middle of songs as the long nights got to him, much to the annoyance of the rest of the group. But despite Pete's less than stellar playing they were good enough that Sheridan -- the single most experienced musician in the British rock and roll scene -- described them as the best R&B band he'd ever heard. Once they were there, they severed their relationship with Allan Williams, refusing to pay him his share of the money, and just cutting him out of their careers.  Meanwhile, Stuart was starting to get ill. He was having headaches all the time, and had to miss shows on occasion. He was also the only Beatle with a passion for anything else, and he managed to get a scholarship to study art with the famous sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, who was now working in Hamburg. Paul subbed for Stuart on bass, and eventually Stuart left the group, though on good terms with everyone other than Paul. So it was John, Paul, George and Pete who ended up making the Beatles' first records. Bert Kaempfert, the most important man in the German music industry, had been to see them all at the Top Ten and liked what he saw. Outside Germany, Kaempfert was probably best known for co-writing Elvis' "Wooden Heart", which the Beatles had in their sets at this time: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Wooden Heart"] Kaempfert had signed Tony Sheridan to a contract, and he wanted the Beatles to back him in the studio -- and he was also interested in recording a couple of tracks with them on their own. The group eagerly agreed, and their first session started at eight in the morning on the twenty-second of June 1961, after they had finished playing all night at the club, and all of them but Pete were on Preludin for the session. Stuart came along for moral support, but didn't play. Pete was a problem, though. He wasn't keeping time properly, and Kaempfert eventually insisted on removing his bass drum and toms, leaving only a snare, hi-hat, and ride cymbal for Pete to play. They recorded seven songs at that session in total. Two of them were just by the Beatles. One was a version of "Ain't She Sweet", an old standard which Gene Vincent had recorded fairly recently, but the other was the only track ever credited to Lennon and Harrison as cowriters. On their first trip to Hamburg, they'd wanted to learn "Man of Mystery" by the Shadows: [Excerpt: The Shadows, "Man of Mystery"] But there was a slight problem in that they didn't have a copy of the record, and had never heard it -- it came out in the UK while they were in Germany. So they asked Rory Storm to hum it for them. He hummed a few notes, and Lennon and Harrison wrote a parody of what Storm had sung, which they named "Beatle Bop" but by this point they'd renamed "Cry For a Shadow": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Cry For a Shadow"] The other five songs at the session were given over to Tony Sheridan, with the Beatles backing him, and the song that Kaempfert was most interested in recording was one the group had been performing on stage -- a rocked-up version of the old folk song "My Bonnie": [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, "My Bonnie"] That was the record chosen as the single, but it was released not as by Tony Sheridan and the Beatles, but by Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers -- "Beatles", to German ears, sounded a little like "piedels", a childish slang term for penises. The Beatles had made their first record, but it wasn't one they thought much of. They knew they could do better. The next week, the now four-piece Beatles returned to Liverpool, with much crying at Stuart staying behind -- even Paul, now Stuart was no longer a threat for John's attention, was contrite and tried to make amends to him.  On their return to Liverpool, they picked up where they had left off, playing almost every night, and spending the days trying to find new records -- often listening to the latest releases at NEMS, a department store with an extensive record selection. Brian Epstein, the shop's manager, prided himself on being able to get any record a customer wanted, and whenever anyone requested anything he'd buy a second copy for the shelves. As a result, you could find records there that you wouldn't get anywhere else in Liverpool, and the Beatles were soon adding more songs by the Shirelles and Gary US Bonds to their sets, as well as more songs by the Coasters and Ben E. King's "Stand By Me". They were playing gigs further afield, and Neil Aspinall was now driving them everywhere. Aspinall was Pete Best's closest friend -- and was having an affair with Pete's mother -- but unlike Pete himself he also became close to the other Beatles, and would remain so for the rest of his life.  By this point, the group were so obviously the best band on the Liverpool scene that they were starting to get bored -- there was no competition. And by this point it really was a proper scene -- John's old art school friend Bill Harry had started up a magazine, Mersey Beat, which may be the first magazine anywhere in the world to focus on one area's local music scene. Brian Epstein from NEMS had a column, as did Bob Wooler, and often John's humorous writing would appear as well. The Beatles were featured in most issues -- although Paul McCartney's name was misspelled almost every time it appeared -- and not just because Lennon and Harry were friends. By this point there were the Beatles, and there were all the other groups in the area. For several months this continued -- they learned new songs, they played almost every day, and they continued to be the best. They started to find it boring. The one big change that came at this point was when John and Paul went on holiday to Paris, saw Vince Taylor, bumped into their friend Jurgen from Hamburg, and got Jurgen to do their hair like his -- the story we told in the episode on "Brand New Cadillac". They now had the Beatles haircut, though they were still wearing leather. When they got back, George copied their new style straight away, but Pete decided to leave his hair in a quiff. There was nowhere else to go without a manager to look after them. They needed management -- and they found it because of "My Bonnie": [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, "My Bonnie"] "My Bonnie" was far from a great record, but it was what led to everything that followed. The Beatles had mentioned from the stage at the Cavern that they had a record out, and a young man named Raymond Jones walked into NEMS and asked for a copy of it. Brian Epstein couldn't find it in the record company catalogues, and asked Jones for more information -- Jones explained that they were a Liverpool group, but the record had come out in Germany. A couple of days later, two young girls came into the shop asking for the same record, and now Epstein was properly intrigued -- in his view, if *two* people asked for a record, that probably meant a lot more than just two people wanted it. He decided to check these Beatles out for himself. Epstein was instantly struck by the group, and this has led to a lot of speculation over the years, because his tastes ran more to Sibelius than to Little Richard. As Epstein was also gay, many people have assumed that the attraction was purely physical. And it might well have been, at least in part, but the suggestion that everything that followed was just because of that seems unlikely -- Epstein was also someone who had a long interest in the arts, and had trained as an actor at RADA, the most prestigious actors' college in the UK, before taking up his job at the family store. Given that the Beatles were soon to become the most popular musicians in the history of the world, and were already the most popular musicians in the Liverpool area, the most reasonable assumption must be that Epstein was impressed by the same things that impressed roughly a billion other people over the next sixty years. Epstein started going to the Cavern regularly, to watch the Beatles and to make plans -- the immaculately dressed, public-school-educated, older rich man stood out among the crowd, and the Beatles already knew his face from his record shop, and so they knew something was going on. By late November, Brian had managed to obtain a box of twenty-five copies of "My Bonnie", and they'd sold out within hours. He set up a meeting with the Beatles, and even before he got them signed to a management contract he was using his contacts with the record industry in London to push the Beatles at record companies. Those companies listened to Brian, because NEMS was one of their biggest customers. December 1961, the month they signed with Brian Epstein, was also the month that they finally started including Lennon/McCartney songs in their sets.  And within a couple of weeks of becoming their manager, even before he'd signed them to a contract, Brian had managed to persuade Mike Smith, an A&R man from Decca, to come to the Cavern to see the group in person. He was impressed, and booked them in for a studio session. December 61 was also the first time that John, Paul, George, and Ringo played together in that lineup, without any other musicians, when on the twenty-seventh of December Pete called in sick for a show, and the others got in their friend to cover for him. It wouldn't be the last time they would play together. On New Year's Day 1962, the Beatles made the trek down to London to record fifteen songs at the Decca studios. The session was intended for two purposes -- to see if they sounded as good on tape as they did in the Cavern, and if they did to produce their first single. Those recordings included the core of their Cavern repertoire, songs like "Money": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Money (Decca version)"] They also recorded three Lennon/McCartney songs, two by Paul -- "Love of the Loved" and "Like Dreamers Do": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Like Dreamers Do"] And one by Lennon -- "Hello Little Girl": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Little Girl"] And they were Lennon/McCartney songs, even though they were written separately -- the two agreed that they were going to split the credit on anything either of them wrote. The session didn't go well -- the group's equipment wasn't up to standard and they had to use studio amps, and they're all audibly nervous -- but Mike Smith was still fairly confident that they'd be releasing something through Decca -- he just had to work out the details with his boss, Dick Rowe. Meanwhile, the group were making other changes. Brian suggested that they could get more money if they wore suits, and so they agreed -- though they didn't want just any suits, they wanted stylish mohair suits, like the black American groups they loved so much.  The Beatles were now a proper professional group -- but unfortunately, Decca turned them down. Dick Rowe, Mike Smith's boss, didn't think that electric guitars were going to become a big thing -- he was very tuned in to the American trends, and nothing with guitars was charting at the time. Smith was considering two groups -- the Beatles, and Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, and wanted to sign both. Rowe told him that he could sign one, but only one, of them. The Tremeloes had been better in the studio, and they lived round the corner from Smith and were friendly with him. There was no contest -- much as Smith wanted to sign both groups, the Tremeloes were the better prospect. Rowe did make an offer to Epstein: if Epstein would pay a hundred pounds (a *lot* of money in those days), Tony Meehan, formerly of the Shadows, would produce the group in another session, and Decca would release that. Brian wasn't interested -- if the Beatles were going to make a record, they were going to make it with people who they weren't having to pay for the privilege. John, Paul, and George were devastated, but for their own reasons they didn't bother to tell Pete they'd been turned down. But they did have a tape of themselves, at least -- a professional-quality recording that they could use to attract other labels. And their career was going forward in other ways. The same day Brian had his second meeting with Decca, they had an audition with the BBC in Manchester, where they were accepted to perform on Teenager's Turn, a radio programme hosted by the Northern Dance Orchestra. A few weeks later, on the seventh of March, they went to Manchester to record four songs in front of an audience, of which three would be broadcast: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Please Mr. Postman (Teenager's Turn)"] That recording of John singing "Please Mr. Postman" is historic for another reason, which shows just how on the cutting edge of musical taste the Beatles actually were -- it was the first time ever that a Motown song was played on the BBC. Now we get to the part of the story that, before Mark Lewisohn's work in his book a few years back, had always been shrouded in mystery. What Lewisohn shows is that George Martin was in fact forced to sign the Beatles, against his will, and that this may have been as a punishment. The Beatles had already been turned down by Parlophone once, based on "My Bonnie", when Brian Epstein walked into the HMV store on Oxford Street in London in mid-February. HMV is now mostly known as a retail chain, Britain's biggest chain of physical media stores, but at the time it was owned by EMI, and was associated with their label of the same name -- HMV stood for "His Master's Voice", and its logo was the same one as America's RCA, with whom it had a mutual distribution deal for many years. As a record retailer, Epstein naturally had a professional interest in other record shops, and he had a friend at HMV, who suggested to him that they could use a disc-cutting machine that the shop had to turn his copy of the Decca tapes into acetate discs, which would be much more convenient for taking round and playing to record labels. That disc-cutter was actually in a studio that musicians used for making records for themselves, much as the Quarry Men had years earlier -- it was in fact the studio where Cliff Richard had cut *his* first private demo, the one he'd used to get signed to EMI.  Jim Foy, the man who worked the lathe cutter, liked what he heard, and he talked with Brian about the group. Brian mentioned that some of the songs were originals, and Foy told him that EMI also owned a publishing company, Ardmore & Beechwood, and the office was upstairs -- would Brian like to meet with them to discuss publishing? Brian said he would like that. Ardmore & Beechwood wanted the original songs on the demo. They were convinced that Lennon and McCartney had potential as songwriters, and that songs like "Like Dreamers Do" could become hits in the right hands. And Brian Epstein agreed with them -- but he also knew that the Beatles had no interest in becoming professional songwriters. They wanted to make records, not write songs for other people to record.  Brian took his new discs round to George Martin at EMI -- who wasn't very impressed, and basically said "Don't call us, we'll call you". Brian went back to Liverpool, and got on with the rest of the group's career, including setting up another Hamburg residency for them, this time at a new club called the Star Club. That Star Club residency, in April, would be devastating for the group -- on Tuesday the tenth of April, the same day John, Paul, and Pete got to Hamburg (George was ill and flew over the next day), Stuart Sutcliffe, who'd been having headaches and feeling ill for months, collapsed and died, aged only twenty-one. The group found out the next day -- they got to the airport to meet George, and bumped into Klaus and Astrid, who were there to meet Stuart's mother from the same flight. They asked where Stuart was, and heard the news from Astrid.  John basically went

This week there are two episiodes of the podcast going up, both of them longer than normal. This one, episode one hundred, is the hundredth-episode special and is an hour and a half long. It looks at the early career of the Beatles, and at the three recordings of “Love Me Do”. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Deltones. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources No Mixclouds this week, as both episodes have far too many songs by one artist. The mixclouds will be back with episode 101. While there are many books on the Beatles, and I have read dozens of them, only one needs to be mentioned as a reference for this episode (others will be used for others). All These Years Vol 1: Tune In by Mark Lewisohn is simply the *only* book worth reading on the Beatles’ career up to the end of 1962. It is the most detailed, most accurate, biography imaginable, and the gold standard by which all other biographies of musicians should be measured. I only wish volumes two and three were available already so I could not expect my future episodes on the Beatles to be obsolete when they do come out. There are two versions of the book — a nine-hundred page mass-market version and a 1700-page expanded edition. I recommend the latter. The information in this podcast is almost all from Lewisohn’s book, but I must emphasise that the opinions are mine, and so are any errors — Lewisohn’s book only has one error that I’m aware of (a joke attributed to the comedian Jasper Carrott in a footnote that has since been traced to an earlier radio show). I am only mortal, and so have doubtless misunderstood or oversimplified things and introduced errors where he had none.   The single version of “Love Me Do” can be found on Past Masters, a 2-CD compilation of the Beatles’ non-album tracks that includes the majority of their singles and B-sides. The version with Andy White playing on can be found on Please Please Me. The version with Pete Best, and many of the other early tracks used here, is on Anthology 1.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Errata I pronounce the name of Lewisohn’s book as “All Those Years” instead of “All These Years”. I say ” The Jets hadn’t liked playing at Williams’ club” at one point. I meant “at Koschmider’s club”   Transcript   The Beatles came closer than most people realise to never making a record. Until the publication of Mark Lewisohn’s seminal biography All These Years vol 1: Tune In, in 2013 everyone thought they knew the true story — John met Paul at Woolton Village Fete in 1957, and Paul joined the Quarrymen, who later became the Beatles. They played Hamburg and made a demo, and after the Beatles’ demo was turned down by Decca, their manager Brian Epstein shopped it around every record label without success, until finally George Martin heard the potential in it and signed them to Parlophone, a label which was otherwise known for comedy records. Martin was, luckily, the one producer in the whole of the UK who could appreciate the Beatles’ music, and he signed them up, and the rest was history. The problem is, as Lewisohn showed, that’s not what happened. Today I’m going to tell, as best I can the story of how the Beatles actually became the band that they became, and how they got signed to EMI records. I’m going to tell you the story of “Love Me Do”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Love Me Do (single version)”] As I mentioned at the beginning, this episode owes a *huge* debt to Mark Lewisohn’s book. I like to acknowledge my sources, anyway, but I’ve actually had difficulty with this episode because Lewisohn’s book is *so* detailed, *so* full, and written *so* well that much of the effort in writing this episode came from paring down the information, rather than finding more, and from reworking things so I was not just paraphrasing bits of his writing. Normally I rely on many sources, and integrate the material myself, but Lewisohn has done all that work far better than any other biographer of any other musician. Were the Beatles not such an important part of music history, I would just skip this episode because there is nothing for me to add. As it is, I *obviously* have to cover this, but I almost feel like I’m cheating in doing so. If you find this episode interesting at all, please do yourself a favour and buy that book.  This episode is going to be a long one — much longer than normal. I won’t know the precise length until after I’ve recorded and edited it, of course, but I’m guessing it’s going to be about ninety minutes. This is the hundredth episode, the end of the second year of the podcast, the end of the second book based on the podcast, and the introduction of the single most important band in the whole story, so I’m going to stretch out a bit. I should also mention that there are a couple of discussions of sudden, traumatic, deaths in this episode. With all that said, settle in, this is going to take a while. Every British act we’ve looked at so far — and many of those we’re going to look at in the next year or two — was based in London. Either they grew up there, or they moved there before their musical career really took off. The Beatles, during the time we’re covering in this episode, were based in Liverpool. While they did eventually move to London, it wasn’t until after they’d started having hits. And what listeners from outside the UK might not realise is what that means in terms of attitudes and perceptions. Liverpool is a large city — it currently has a population of around half a million, and the wider Liverpool metropolitan area is closer to two million — but like all British cities other than London, it was regarded largely as a joke in the British media, and so in return the people of Liverpool had a healthy contempt for London. To give Americans some idea of how London dominates in Britain, and thus how it’s thought of outside London, imagine that New York, Washington DC, and Los Angeles were all the same city — that the financial, media, and political centres of the country were all the same place. Now further imagine that Silicon Valley and all the Ivy League universities were half an hour’s drive from that city. Now, imagine how much worse the attitudes that that city would have about so-called “flyover states” would be, and imagine in return how people in large Midwestern cities like Detroit or Chicago would think about that big city.  In this analogy, Liverpool is Detroit, and like Detroit, it was very poor and had produced a few famous musicians, most notably Billy Fury, who was from an impoverished area of Liverpool called the Dingle: [Excerpt: Billy Fury, “Halfway to Paradise”] But Fury had, of course, moved to London to have his career. That’s what you did. But in general, Liverpool, if people in London thought of it at all, was thought of as a provincial backwater full of poor people, many of them Irish, and all of them talking with a ridiculous accent. Liverpool was ignored by London, and that meant that things could develop there out of sight. The story of the Beatles starts in the 1950s, with two young men in their mid-teens. John Winston Lennon was born in 1940, and had had a rather troubled childhood. His father had been a merchant seaman who had been away in the war, and his parents’ relationship had deteriorated for that and other reasons. As a result, Lennon had barely known his father, and when his mother met another man, Lennon’s aunt, Mary Smith, who he always called Mimi, had taken him in, believing that his mother “living in sin” would be a bad influence on the young boy. The Smith family were the kind of lower middle class family that seemed extremely rich to the impoverished families in Liverpool, but were not well off by any absolute standard. Mimi, in particular, was torn between two very different urges. On one hand, she had strongly bohemian, artistic, urges — as did all of her sisters. She was a voracious reader, and a lover of art history, and encouraged these tendencies in John. But at the same time, she was of that class which has a little status, but not much security, and so she was extremely wary of the need to appear respectable. This tension between respectability and rebellion was something that would appear in many of the people who Lennon later worked with, such as Brian Epstein and George Martin, and it was something that Lennon would always respond to — those people would be the only ones who Lennon would ever view as authority figures he could respect, though he would also resent them at times. And it might be that combination of rebellion and respectability that Lennon saw in Paul McCartney. McCartney was from a family who, in the Byzantine world of the British class system of the time, were a notch or so lower than the Smith family who raised Lennon, but he was academically bright, and his family had big plans for him — they thought that it might even be possible that he might become a teacher if he worked very hard at school. McCartney was a far less openly rebellious person than Lennon was, but he was still just as caught up in the music and fashions of the mid-fifties that his father associated with street gangs and hooliganism. Lennon, like many teenagers in Britain at the time, had had his life changed when he first heard Elvis Presley, and he had soon become a rock and roll obsessive — Elvis was always his absolute favourite, but he also loved Little Richard, who he thought was almost as good, and he admired Buddy Holly, who had a special place in Lennon’s heart as Holly wore glasses on stage, something that Lennon, who was extremely short-sighted, could never bring himself to do, but which at least showed him that it was a possibility. Lennon was, by his mid-teens, recreating a relationship with his mother, and one of the things they bonded over was music — she taught him how to play the banjo, and together they worked out the chords to “That’ll Be the Day”, and Lennon later switched to the guitar, playing banjo chords on five of the six strings.  Like many, many, teenagers of the time, Lennon also formed a skiffle group, which he called the Quarrymen, after a line in his school song. The group tended to have a rotating lineup, but Lennon was the unquestioned leader. The group had a repertoire consisting of the same Lonnie Donegan songs that every other skiffle group was playing, plus any Elvis and Buddy Holly songs that could sound reasonable with a lineup of guitars, teachest bass, and washboard. The moment that changed the history of the music, though, came on July the sixth, 1957, when Ivan Vaughan, a friend of Lennon’s, invited his friend Paul McCartney to go and see the Quarry Men perform at Woolton Village Fete. That day has gone down in history as “the day John met Paul”, although Mark Lewisohn has since discovered that Lennon and McCartney had briefly met once before. It is, though, the day on which Lennon and McCartney first impressed each other musically. McCartney talks about being particularly impressed that the Quarry Men’s lead singer was changing the lyrics to the songs he was performing, making up new words when he forgot the originals — he says in particular that he remembers Lennon singing “Come Go With Me” by the Del-Vikings: [Excerpt: The Del-Vikings, “Come Go With Me”] McCartney remembers Lennon as changing the lyrics to “come go with me, right down to the penitentiary”, and thinking that was clever. Astonishingly, some audio recording actually exists of the Quarry Men’s second performance that day — they did two sets, and this second one comes just after Lennon met McCartney rather than just before. The recording only seems to exist in a very fragmentary form, which has snatches of Lennon singing “Baby Let’s Play House” and Lonnie Donegan’s hit “Puttin’ on the Style”, which was number one on the charts at the time, but that even those fragments have survived, given how historic a day this was, is almost miraculous: [Excerpt: The Quarrymen, “Puttin’ on the Style”] After the first set, Lennon met McCartney, who was nearly two years younger, but a more accomplished musician — for a start, he knew how to tune the guitar with all six strings, and to proper guitar tuning, rather than tuning five strings like a banjo. Lennon and his friends were a little nonplussed by McCartney holding his guitar upside-down at first — McCartney is left-handed — but despite having an upside-down guitar with the wrong tuning, McCartney managed to bash out a version of Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty-Flight Rock”, a song he would often perform in later decades when reminding people of this story: [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, “Twenty-Flight Rock”] This was impressive to Lennon for three reasons. The first was that McCartney was already a strong, confident performer — he perhaps seemed a little more confident than he really was, showing off in front of the bigger boys like this. The second was that “Twenty-Flight Rock” was a moderately obscure song — it hadn’t charted, but it *had* appeared in The Girl Can’t Help It, a film which every rock and roll lover in Britain had watched at the cinema over and over. Choosing that song rather than, say, “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, was a way of announcing a kind of group affiliation — “I am one of you, I am a real rock and roll fan, not just a casual listener to what’s in the charts”. I stress that second point because it’s something that’s very important in the history of the Beatles generally — they were *music fans*, and often fans of relatively obscure records. That’s something that bound Lennon and McCartney, and later the other members, together from the start, and something they always noted about other musicians. They weren’t the kind of systematic scholars who track down rare pressings and memorise every session musician’s name, but they were constantly drawn to find the best new music, and to seek it out wherever they could. But the most impressive thing for Lennon — and one that seems a little calculated on McCartney’s part, though he’s never said that he thought about this that I’m aware of — was that this was an extremely wordy song, and McCartney *knew all the words*. Remember that McCartney had noticed Lennon forgetting the words to a song with lyrics as simple as “come, come, come, come, come into my heart/Tell me darling we will never part”, and here’s McCartney singing this fast-paced, almost patter song, and getting the words right.  From the beginning, McCartney was showing how he could complement Lennon — if Lennon could impress McCartney by improvising new lyrics when he forgot the old ones, then McCartney could impress Lennon by remembering the lyrics that Lennon couldn’t — and by writing them down for Lennon, sharing his knowledge freely. McCartney went on to show off more, and in particular impressed Lennon by going to a piano and showing off his Little Richard imitation. Little Richard was the only serious rival to Elvis in Lennon’s affections, and McCartney could do a very decent imitation of him. This was someone special, clearly. But this put Lennon in a quandary. McCartney was clearly far, far, better than any of the Quarry Men — at least Lennon’s equal, and light years ahead of the rest of them. Lennon had a choice — invite this young freak of nature into his band, and improve the band dramatically, but no longer be the unquestioned centre of the group, or remain in absolute control but not have someone in the group who *knew the words* and *knew how to tune a guitar*, and other such magical abilities that no mere mortals had. Those who only know of Lennon from his later reputation as a massive egoist would be surprised, but he decided fairly quickly that he had to make the group better at his own expense. He invited McCartney to join the group, and McCartney said yes. Over the next few months the membership of the Quarry Men changed. They’d been formed while they were all at Quarry Bank Grammar School, but that summer Lennon moved on to art school. I’m going to have to talk about the art school system, and the British education system of the fifties and early sixties a lot over the next few months, but here’s an extremely abbreviated and inaccurate version that’s good enough for now. Between the ages of eleven and sixteen, people in Britain — at least those without extremely rich parents, who had a different system — went to two kinds of school depending on the result of an exam they took aged eleven, which was based on some since-discredited eugenic research about children’s potential. If you passed the exam, you were considered academically apt, and went to a grammar school, which was designed to filter you through to university and the professions. If you failed the exam, you went to a secondary modern, which was designed to give you the skills to get a trade and make a living working with your hands. And for the most part, people followed the pipeline that was set up for them. You go to grammar school, go to university, become a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher. You go to secondary modern, leave school at fourteen, become a plumber or a builder or a factory worker. But there are always those people who don’t properly fit into the neat categories that the world tries to put them in. And for people in their late teens and early twenties, people who’d been through the school system but not been shaped properly by it, there was another option at this time. If you were bright and creative, but weren’t suited for university because you’d failed your exams, you could go to art school. The supposed purpose of the art schools was to teach people to do commercial art, and they would learn skills like lettering and basic draughtsmanship. But what the art schools really did was give creative people space to explore ideas, to find out about areas of art and culture that would otherwise have been closed to them. Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Ian Dury, Ray Davies, Bryan Ferry, Syd Barrett, and many more people we’ll be seeing over the course of this story went to art school, and as David Bowie would put it later, the joke at the time was that you went to art school to learn to play blues guitar. With Lennon and his friends all moving on from the school that had drawn them together, the group stabilised for a time on a lineup of Lennon, McCartney, Colin Hanton, Len Garry, and Eric Griffiths. But the first time this version of the group played live, while McCartney sang well, he totally fluffed his lead guitar lines on stage. While there were three guitarists in the band at this point, they needed someone who could play lead fluently and confidently on stage. Enter George Harrison, who had suddenly become a close friend of McCartney. Harrison went to the same school as McCartney — a grammar school called the Liverpool Institute, but was in the year below McCartney, and so the two had always been a bit distant. However, at the same time as Lennon was moving on to art school after failing his exams, McCartney was being kept back a year for failing Latin — which his father always thought was deliberate, so he wouldn’t have to go to university. Now he was in the same year at school as Harrison, and they started hanging out together. The two bonded strongly over music, and would do things like take a bus journey to another part of town, where someone lived who they heard owned a copy of “Searchin'” by the Coasters: [Excerpt: The Coasters, “Searchin'”] The two knocked on this stranger’s door, asked if he’d play them this prized record, and he agreed — and then they stole it from him as they left his house. Another time they took the bus to another part of town again, because they’d heard that someone in that part of town knew how to play a B7 chord on his guitar, and sat there as he showed them. So now the Quarrymen needed a lead guitarist, McCartney volunteered his young mate. There are a couple of stories about how Harrison came to join the band — apparently he auditioned for Lennon at least twice, because Lennon was very unsure about having such a young kid in his band — but the story I like best is that Harrison took his guitar to a Quarry Men gig at Wilson Hall — he’d apparently often take his guitar to gigs and just see if he could sit in with the bands. On the bill with the Quarry Men was another group, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, who were generally regarded as the best skiffle band in Liverpool. Lennon told Harrison that he could join the band if he could play as well as Clayton, and Harrison took out his guitar and played “Raunchy”: [Excerpt: Bill Justis, “Raunchy”] I like this story rather than the other story that the members would tell later — that Harrison played “Raunchy” on a bus for Lennon — for one reason. The drummer in the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group was one Richy Starkey, and if it happened that way, the day that George joined the Quarry Men was also the day that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were all in the same place for the first time. George looked up to John and essentially idolised him, though Lennon thought of him as a little annoying at times — he’d follow John everywhere, and not take a hint when he wasn’t wanted sometimes, just eager to be with his big cool new mate. But despite this tiny bit of tension, John, Paul, and George quickly became a solid unit — helped by the fact that the school that Paul and George went to was part of the same complex of buildings as Lennon’s art college, so they’d all get the bus there and back together.  George was not only younger, he was a notch or two further down the social class ladder than John or Paul, and he spoke more slowly, which made him seem less intelligent. He came from Speke, which was a rougher area, and he would dress even more like a juvenile delinquent than the others. Meanwhile, Len Garry and Eric Griffiths left the group — Len Garry because he became ill and had to spend time in hospital, and anyway they didn’t really need a teachest bass. What they did need was an electric bass, and since they had four guitars now they tried to persuade Eric to get one, but he didn’t want to pay that much money, and he was always a little on the outside of the main three members, as he didn’t share their sense of humour. So the group got Nigel Walley, who was acting as the group’s manager, to fire him. The group was now John, Paul, and George all on guitars, and Colin Hanton on drums. Sometimes, if they played a venue that had a piano, they’d also bring along a schoolfriend of Paul’s, John “Duff” Lowe, to play piano. Meanwhile, the group were growing in other ways. Both John and Paul had started writing songs, together and apart. McCartney seems to have been the first, writing a song called “I Lost My Little Girl” which he would eventually record more than thirty years later: [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, “I Lost My Little Girl”] Lennon’s first song likewise sang about a little girl, this time being “Hello, Little Girl”. By the middle of 1958, this five-piece group was ready to cut their first record — at a local studio that would cut a single copy of a disc for you. They went into this studio at some time around July 1958, and recorded two songs. The first was their version of “That’ll Be the Day”: [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, “That’ll be the Day”] The B-side was a song that McCartney had written, with a guitar solo that George had come up with, so the label credit read “McCartney/Harrison”. “In Spite of All the Danger” seems to have been inspired by Elvis’ “Trying to Get to You”: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Trying to Get to You”] It’s a rough song, but a good attempt for a teenager who had only just started writing songs: [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, “In Spite of All the Danger”] Apparently Lowe and Hanton hadn’t heard the song before they started playing, but they make a decent enough fist of it in the circumstances. Lennon took the lead even though it was McCartney’s song — he said later “I was such a bully in those days I didn’t even let Paul sing his own song.” That was about the last time that this lineup of Quarry Men played together. In July, the month that seems likely for the recording, Lowe finished at the Liverpool Institute, and so he drifted away from McCartney and Harrison. Meanwhile Hanton had a huge row with the others after a show, and they fell out and never spoke again. The Quarry Men were reduced to a trio of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison. But — possibly the very day after that recording if an unreliable plaque at the studio where they recorded it is to be believed — something happened which was to have far more impact on the group than the drummer leaving. John Lennon’s mother, with whom he’d slowly been repairing his relationship, had called round to visit Mimi. She left the house, and bumped into Nigel Walley, who was calling round to see John. She told him he wasn’t there, and that he could walk with her to the bus stop. They walked a little while, then went off in different directions. Walley heard a thump and turned round — Julia Lennon had been hit by a car and killed instantly. As you can imagine, John’s mother dying caused him a huge amount of distress, but it also gave him a bond with McCartney, whose own mother had died of cancer shortly before they met. Neither really spoke about it to each other, and to the extent they did it was with ultra-cynical humour — but the two now shared something deeper than just the music, even though the music itself was deep enough. Lennon became a much harder, nastier, person after this, at least for a time, his natural wit taking on a dark edge, and he would often drink too much and get aggressive. But life still went on, and John, Paul, and George kept trying to perform — though the gigs dried up, and they didn’t have a drummer any more. They’d just say “the rhythm’s in the guitars” when asked why they didn’t have one. They were also no longer the Quarry Men — they didn’t have a name. At one point late in the year, they also only had two guitars between the three of them — Lennon seems to have smashed his in a fit of fury after his mother’s death. But he stole one backstage at a talent contest, and soon they were back to having three. That talent show was one run by Carroll Levis, who we talked about before in the episode on “Shakin’ All Over”. The three boys went on Levis’ show, this time performing as Johnny & The Moondogs —  in Manchester, at the Hippodrome in Ancoats, singing Buddy Holly’s “Think it Over”: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “Think it Over”] Lennon sang lead with his arms draped over the shoulders of Paul and George, who sang backing vocals and played guitar. They apparently did quite well, but had to leave before the show finished to get the last train back to Liverpool, and so never found out whether the audience would have made them the winner, with the possibility of a TV appearance. They did well enough, though, to impress a couple of other young lads on the bill, two Manchester singers named Allan Clarke and Graham Nash. But in general, the Japage Three, a portmanteau of their names that they settled on as their most usual group name at this point, played very little in 1959 — indeed, George spent much of the early part of the year moonlighting in the Les Stewart Quartet, another group, though he still thought of Lennon and McCartney as his musical soulmates; the Les Stewart Quartet were just a gig.  The three of them would spend much of their time at the Jacaranda, a coffee bar opened by a Liverpool entrepreneur, Allan Williams, in imitation of the 2is, which was owned by a friend of his. Lennon was also spending a lot of time with an older student at his art school, Stuart Sutcliffe, one of the few people in the world that Lennon himself looked up to. The Les Stewart Quartet would end up indirectly being key to the Beatles’ development, because after one of their shows at a local youth club they were approached by a woman named Mona Best. Mona’s son Pete liked to go to the youth club, but she was fairly protective of him, and also wanted him to have more friends — he was a quiet boy who didn’t make friends easily. So she’d hit upon a plan — she’d open her own club in her cellar, since the Best family were rich enough to have a big house. If there was a club *in Pete’s house* he’d definitely make lots of friends. They needed a band, and she asked the Les Stewart Quartet if they’d like to be the resident band at this new club, the Casbah, and also if they’d like to help decorate it.  They said yes, but then Paul and George went on a hitch-hiking holiday around Wales for a few days, and George didn’t get back in time to play a gig the quartet had booked. Ken Brown, the other guitarist, didn’t turn up either, and Les Stewart got into a rage and split the group. Suddenly, the Casbah had no group — George and Ken were willing to play, but neither was a lead singer — and no decorators either. So George roped in John and Paul, who helped decorate the place, and with the addition of Ken Brown, the group returned to the Quarry Men name for their regular Saturday night gig at the Casbah. The group had no bass player or drummer, and they all kept pestering everyone they knew to get a bass or a drum kit, but nobody would bite. But then Stuart Sutcliffe got half a painting in an exhibition put on by John Moores, the millionaire owner of Littlewoods, who was a big patron of the arts in Liverpool. I say he got half a painting in the exhibition, because the painting was done on two large boards — Stuart and his friends took the first half of the painting down to the gallery, went back to get the other half, and got distracted by the pub and never brought it. But Moores was impressed enough with the abstract painting that he bought it at the end of the exhibition’s run, for ninety pounds — about two thousand pounds in today’s money. And so Stuart’s friends gave him a choice — he could either buy a bass or a drum kit, either would be fine. He chose the bass. But the same week that Stuart joined, Ken Brown was out, and they lost their gig at the Casbah. John, Paul, George and Ken had turned up one Saturday, and Ken hadn’t felt well, so instead of performing he just worked on the door. At the end of the show, Mona Best insisted on giving Ken an equal share of the money, as agreed. John, Paul, and George wouldn’t stand for that, and so Ken was out of the group, and they were no longer playing for Mona Best. Stuart joining the group caused tensions — George was fine with him, thinking that a bass player who didn’t yet know how to play was better than no bass player at all, but Paul was much less keen. Partly this was because he thought the group needed to get better, which would be hard with someone who couldn’t play, but also he was getting jealous of Sutcliffe’s closeness to Lennon, especially when the two became flatmates. But John wanted him in the group, and what John wanted, he got. There are recordings of the group around this time that circulate — only one has been released officially, a McCartney instrumental called “Cayenne”, but the others are out there if you look: [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, “Cayenne”] The gigs had dried up again, but they did have one new advantage — they now had a name they actually liked. John and Stuart had come up with it, inspired by Buddy Holly’s Crickets. They were going to be Beatles, with an a. Shortly after the Beatles’ first appearance under that name, at the art school student union, came the Liverpool gig which was to have had Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent headlining, before Cochran died. A lot of Liverpool groups were booked to play on the bill there, but not the Beatles — though Richy Starkey was going to play the gig, with his latest group Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Allan Williams, the local promoter, added extra groups to fill out the bill, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, and suddenly everyone who loved rock and roll in Liverpool realised that there were others out there like them. Overnight, a scene had been born. And where there’s a scene, there’s money to be made. Larry Parnes, who had been the national promoter of the tour, was at the show and realised that there were a lot of quite proficient musicians in Liverpool. And it so happened that he needed backing bands for three of his artists who were going on tour, separately — two minor stars, Duffy Power and Johnny Gentle, and one big star, Billy Fury. And both Gentle and Fury were from Liverpool themselves. So Parnes asked Allan Williams to set up auditions with some of the local groups. Williams invited several groups, and one he asked along was the Beatles, largely because Lennon and Sutcliffe begged him. He also found them a drummer, Tommy Moore, who was a decade older than the rest of them — though Moore didn’t turn up to the audition because he had to work, and so Johnny “Hutch” Hutchinson of Cass and the Cassanovas sat in with them, much to Hutch’s disgust — he hated the Beatles, and especially Lennon.  Cass of the Cassanovas also insisted that “the Beatles” was a stupid name, and that the group needed to be Something and the Somethings, and he suggested Long John and the Silver Beatles, and that stuck for a couple of shows before they reverted to their proper name. The Beatles weren’t chosen for any of the main tours that were being booked, but then Parnes phoned Williams up — there were some extra dates on the Johnny Gentle tour that he hadn’t yet booked a group for. Could Williams find him a band who could be in Scotland that Friday night for a nine-day tour? Williams tried Cass and the Cassanovas, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and Gerry and the Pacemakers, but none of them could go on tour at such short notice. They all had gigs booked, or day jobs they had to book time off with. The Beatles had no gigs booked, and only George had a day job, and he didn’t mind just quitting that. They were off to Scotland. They were so inspired by being on tour with a Larry Parnes artist that most of them took on new names just like those big stars — George became Carl Harrison, after Carl Perkins, Stuart became Stuart de Staël, after his favourite painter, and Paul became Paul Ramon, which he thought sounded mysterious and French. There’s some question about whether John took on a new name — some sources have him becoming “Long John”, while others say he was “Johnny” Lennon rather than John. Tommy Moore, meanwhile, was just Thomas Moore. It was on this tour, of course, that Lennon helped Johnny Gentle write “I’ve Just Fallen For Someone”, which we talked about last week: [Excerpt: Darren Young, “I’ve Just Fallen For Someone”] The tour was apparently fairly miserable, with horrible accommodation, poor musicianship from the group, and everyone getting on everyone’s nerves — George and Stuart got into fistfights, John bullied Stuart a bit because of his poor playing, and John particularly didn’t get on well with Moore — a man who was a decade older, didn’t share their taste in music, and worked in a factory rather than having the intellectual aspirations of the group. The two hated each other by the end of the tour. But the tour did also give the group the experience of signing autographs, and of feeling like stars in at least a minor way. When they got back to Liverpool, George moved in with John and Stuart, to get away from his mum telling him to get a proper job, and they got a few more bookings thanks to Williams, but they soon became drummerless — they turned up to a gig one time to find that Tommy Moore wasn’t there. They went round to his house, and his wife shouted from an upstairs window, “Yez can piss off, he’s had enough of yez and gone back to work at the bottle factory”. The now four-piece group carried on, however, and recordings exist of them in this period, sounding much more professional than only a few months before, including performances of some of their own songs. The most entertaining of these is probably “You’ll Be Mine”, an Ink Spots parody with some absurd wordplay from Lennon: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “You’ll Be Mine”] Soon enough the group found another drummer, Norm Chapman, and carried on as before, getting regular bookings thanks to Williams. There was soon a temporary guest at the flat John, Stuart, and George shared with several other people — Royston Ellis, the Beat poet and friend of the Shadows, had turned up in Liverpool and latched on to the group, partly because he fancied George. He performed with them a couple of times, crashed at the flat, and provided them with two formative experiences — he gave them their first national press, talking in Record and Show Mirror about how he wanted them to be his full-time group, and he gave them their first drug experience, showing them how to get amphetamines out of inhalers. While the group’s first national press was positive, there was soon some very negative press indeed associated with them. A tabloid newspaper wanted to do a smear story about the dangerous Beatnik menace. The article talked about how “they revel in filth”, and how beatniks were “a dangerous menace to our young people… a corrupting influence of drug addicts and peddlers, degenerates who specialise in obscene orgies”. And for some reason — it’s never been made clear exactly how — the beatnik “pad” they chose to photograph for this story was the one that John, Stuart, and George lived in, though they weren’t there at the time — several of their friends and associates are in the pictures though. They were all kicked out of their flat, and moved back in with their families, and around this time they lost Chapman from the group too — he was called up to do his National Service, one of the last people to be conscripted before conscription ended for good. They were back to a four-piece again, and for a while Paul was drumming. But then, as seems to have happened so often with this group, a bizarre coincidence happened. A while earlier, Allan Williams had travelled to Hamburg, with the idea of trying to get Liverpool groups booked there. He’d met up with Bruno Koschmider, the owner of a club called the Kaiserkeller. Koschmider had liked the idea, but nothing had come of it, partly because neither could speak the other’s language well. A little while later, Koschmider had remembered the idea and come over to the UK to find musicians. He didn’t remember where Williams was from, so of course he went to London, to the 2is, and there he found a group of musicians including Tony Sheridan, who we talked about back in the episode on “Brand New Cadillac”, the man who’d been Vince Taylor’s lead guitarist and had a minor solo career: [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan, “Why?”] Sheridan was one of the most impressive musicians in Britain, but he also wanted to skip the country — he’d just bought a guitar on credit in someone else’s name, and he also had a wife and six-month-old baby he wanted rid of. He eagerly went off with Koschmider, and a scratch group called the Jets soon took up residence at the Kaiserkeller. Meanwhile, in Liverpool, Derry and the Seniors were annoyed. Larry Parnes had booked them for a tour, but then he’d got annoyed at the unprofessionalism of the Liverpool bands he was booking and cancelled the booking, severing his relationship with Williams. The Seniors wanted to know what Williams was going to do about it.  There was no way to get them enough gigs in Liverpool, so Williams, being a thoroughly decent man who had a sense of obligation, offered to drive the group down to London to see if they could get work there. He took them to the 2is, and they were allowed to get up and play there, since Williams was a friend of the owner. And Bruno Koschmider was there. The Jets hadn’t liked playing at Williams’ club, and they’d scarpered to another one with better working conditions, which they helped get off the ground and renamed the Top Ten, after Vince Taylor’s club in London. So Bruno had come back to find another group, and there in the same club at the same time was the man who’d given him the idea in the first place, with a group. Koschmider immediately signed up Derry and the Seniors to play at the Kaiserkeller.  Meanwhile, the best gig the Beatles could get, also through Williams, was backing a stripper, where they played whatever instrumentals they knew, no matter how inappropriate, things like the theme from The Third Man: [Excerpt: Anton Karas, “Theme from The Third Man”] A tune guaranteed to get the audience into a sexy mood, I’m sure you’ll agree. But then Allan Williams got a call from Koschmider. Derry and the Seniors were doing great business, and he’d decided to convert another of his clubs to be a rock and roll club. Could Williams have a group for him by next Friday? Oh, and it needed to be five people. Williams tried Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. They were busy. He tried Cass and the Cassanovas. They were busy. He tried Gerry and the Pacemakers. They were busy. Finally, he tried the Beatles. They weren’t busy, and said yes they could go to Hamburg that week. There were a few minor issues, like there not being five of them, none of them having passports, and them not having a drummer. The passports could be sorted quickly — there’s a passport office in Liverpool — but the lack of a fifth Beatle was more of a problem. In desperation, they turned eventually to Pete Best, Mrs. Best’s son, because they knew he had a drum kit. He agreed.  Allan Williams drove the group to Hamburg, and they started playing six-hour sets every night at the Indra, not finishing til three in the morning, at which point they’d make their way to their lodgings — the back of a filthy cinema.  By this time, the Beatles had already got good — Howie Casey, of Derry and the Seniors, who’d remembered the Beatles as being awful at the Johnny Gentle audition, came over to see them and make fun of them, but found that they were far better than they had been. But playing six hours a night got them *very* good *very* quickly — especially as they decided that they weren’t going to play the same song twice in a night, meaning they soon built up a vast repertoire. But right from the start, there was a disconnect between Pete Best and the other four — they socialised together, and he went off on his own. He was also a weak player — he was only just starting to learn — and so the rest of the group would stamp their feet to keep him in time. That, though, also gave them a bit more of a stage act than they might otherwise have had. There are lots of legendary stories about the group’s time in Hamburg, and it’s impossible to sort fact from fiction, and the bits we can sort out would get this podcast categorised as adult content, but they were teenagers, away from home for a long period for the first time, living in a squalid back room in the red light district of a city with a reputation for vice. I’m sure whatever you imagine is probably about right. After a relatively short time, they were moved from the Indra, which had to stop putting on rock and roll shows, to the Kaiserkeller, where they shared the bill with Rory Storm & the Hurricanes, up to that point considered Liverpool’s best band. There’s a live recording of the Hurricanes from 1960, which shows that they were certainly powerful: [Excerpt: Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, “Brand New Cadillac”] That recording doesn’t have the Hurricanes’ normal drummer on, who was sick for that show. But compared to what the Beatles had become — a stomping powerhouse with John Lennon, whose sense of humour was both cruel and pointed, doing everything he could to get a rise out of the audience — they were left in the dust. A letter home that George Harrison wrote sums it up — “Rory Storm & the Hurricanes came out here the other week, and they are crumby. He does a bit of dancing around but it still doesn’t make up for his phoney group. The only person who is any good in the group is the drummer.” That drummer was Richy Starkey from the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, now performing as Ringo Starr. They struck up a friendship, and even performed together at least once — John, Paul, George, and Ringo acting as the backing group for Lu Walters of the Hurricanes on a demo, which is frustratingly missing and hasn’t been heard since. They were making other friends, too. There was Tony Sheridan, who they’d seen on TV, but who would now sometimes jam with them as equals. And there was a trio of arty bohemian types who had stumbled across the club, where they were very out of place — Astrid Kirscherr, Klaus Voormann, and Jurgen Vollmer. They all latched on to the Beatles, and especially to Stuart, who soon started dating Astrid, despite her speaking no English and him speaking no German. But relations between Koschmider and the Beatles had worsened, and he reported to the police that George, at only seventeen, was under-age. George got deported. The rest of the group decided to move over to the Top Ten Club, and as a parting gift, Paul and Pete nailed some condoms to their bedroom wall and set fire to them. Koschmider decided to report this to the police as attempted arson, and those two were deported as well. John followed a week later, while Stuart stayed in Hamburg for a while, to spend more time with Astrid, who he planned to marry. The other four regrouped, getting in a friend, Chas Newby, as a temporary bass player while Stuart was away. And on the twenty-seventh of December, 1960, when they played Litherland Town Hall, they changed the Liverpool music scene. They were like nothing anyone had ever seen, and the audience didn’t dance — they just rushed to the stage, to be as close to the performance as possible. The Beatles had become the best band in Liverpool. Mark Lewisohn goes further, and suggests that the three months of long nights playing different songs in Hamburg had turned them into the single most experienced rock band *in the world* — which seems vanishingly unlikely to me, but Lewisohn is not a man given to exaggeration. By this time, Mona Best had largely taken over the group’s bookings, and there were a lot of them, as well as a regular spot at the Casbah. Neil Aspinall, a friend of Pete’s, started driving them to gigs, while they also had a regular MC, Bob Wooler, who ran many local gigs, and who gave the Beatles their own theme music — he’d introduce them with the fanfare from Rossini’s William Tell Overture: [Excerpt: Rossini, “William Tell Overture”] Stuart came over from Hamburg in early January, and once again the Beatles were a five-piece — and by now, he could play quite well, well enough, at any rate, that it didn’t destroy the momentum the group had gathered. The group were getting more and more bookings, including the venue that would become synonymous with them, the Cavern, a tiny little warehouse cellar that had started as a jazz club, and that the Quarry Men had played once a couple of years earlier, but had been banned from for playing too much rock and roll. Now, the Beatles were getting bookings at the Cavern’s lunchtime sessions, and that meant more than it seemed. Most of the gigs they played otherwise were on the outskirts of the city, but the Cavern was in the city centre. And that meant that for the lunchtime sessions, commuters from outside the city were coming to see them — which meant that the group got fans from anywhere within commuting distance, fans who wanted them to play in their towns. Meanwhile, the group were branching out musically — they were particularly becoming fascinated by the new R&B, soul, and girl-group records that were coming out in the US. After already having loved “Money” by Barrett Strong, John was also obsessed with the Miracles, and would soon become a fervent fan of anything Motown, and the group were all big fans of the Shirelles. As they weren’t playing original material live, and as every group would soon learn every other group’s best songs, there was an arms race on to find the most exciting songs to cover. As well as Elvis and Buddy and Eddie, they were now covering the Shirelles and Ray Charles and Gary US Bonds. The group returned to Hamburg in April, Paul and Pete’s immigration status having been resolved and George now having turned eighteen, and started playing at the Top Ten club, where they played even longer sets, and more of them, than they had at the Kaiserkeller and the Indra. Tony Sheridan started regularly joining them on stage at this time, and Paul switched to piano while Sheridan added the third guitar. This was also when they started using Preludin, a stimulant related to amphetamines which was prescribed as a diet drug — Paul would take one pill a night, George a couple, and John would gobble them down. But Pete didn’t take them — one more way in which he was different from the others — and he started having occasional micro-sleeps in the middle of songs as the long nights got to him, much to the annoyance of the rest of the group. But despite Pete’s less than stellar playing they were good enough that Sheridan — the single most experienced musician in the British rock and roll scene — described them as the best R&B band he’d ever heard. Once they were there, they severed their relationship with Allan Williams, refusing to pay him his share of the money, and just cutting him out of their careers.  Meanwhile, Stuart was starting to get ill. He was having headaches all the time, and had to miss shows on occasion. He was also the only Beatle with a passion for anything else, and he managed to get a scholarship to study art with the famous sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, who was now working in Hamburg. Paul subbed for Stuart on bass, and eventually Stuart left the group, though on good terms with everyone other than Paul. So it was John, Paul, George and Pete who ended up making the Beatles’ first records. Bert Kaempfert, the most important man in the German music industry, had been to see them all at the Top Ten and liked what he saw. Outside Germany, Kaempfert was probably best known for co-writing Elvis’ “Wooden Heart”, which the Beatles had in their sets at this time: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Wooden Heart”] Kaempfert had signed Tony Sheridan to a contract, and he wanted the Beatles to back him in the studio — and he was also interested in recording a couple of tracks with them on their own. The group eagerly agreed, and their first session started at eight in the morning on the twenty-second of June 1961, after they had finished playing all night at the club, and all of them but Pete were on Preludin for the session. Stuart came along for moral support, but didn’t play. Pete was a problem, though. He wasn’t keeping time properly, and Kaempfert eventually insisted on removing his bass drum and toms, leaving only a snare, hi-hat, and ride cymbal for Pete to play. They recorded seven songs at that session in total. Two of them were just by the Beatles. One was a version of “Ain’t She Sweet”, an old standard which Gene Vincent had recorded fairly recently, but the other was the only track ever credited to Lennon and Harrison as cowriters. On their first trip to Hamburg, they’d wanted to learn “Man of Mystery” by the Shadows: [Excerpt: The Shadows, “Man of Mystery”] But there was a slight problem in that they didn’t have a copy of the record, and had never heard it — it came out in the UK while they were in Germany. So they asked Rory Storm to hum it for them. He hummed a few notes, and Lennon and Harrison wrote a parody of what Storm had sung, which they named “Beatle Bop” but by this point they’d renamed “Cry For a Shadow”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Cry For a Shadow”] The other five songs at the session were given over to Tony Sheridan, with the Beatles backing him, and the song that Kaempfert was most interested in recording was one the group had been performing on stage — a rocked-up version of the old folk song “My Bonnie”: [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, “My Bonnie”] That was the record chosen as the single, but it was released not as by Tony Sheridan and the Beatles, but by Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers — “Beatles”, to German ears, sounded a little like “piedels”, a childish slang term for penises. The Beatles had made their first record, but it wasn’t one they thought much of. They knew they could do better. The next week, the now four-piece Beatles returned to Liverpool, with much crying at Stuart staying behind — even Paul, now Stuart was no longer a threat for John’s attention, was contrite and tried to make amends to him.  On their return to Liverpool, they picked up where they had left off, playing almost every night, and spending the days trying to find new records — often listening to the latest releases at NEMS, a department store with an extensive record selection. Brian Epstein, the shop’s manager, prided himself on being able to get any record a customer wanted, and whenever anyone requested anything he’d buy a second copy for the shelves. As a result, you could find records there that you wouldn’t get anywhere else in Liverpool, and the Beatles were soon adding more songs by the Shirelles and Gary US Bonds to their sets, as well as more songs by the Coasters and Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me”. They were playing gigs further afield, and Neil Aspinall was now driving them everywhere. Aspinall was Pete Best’s closest friend — and was having an affair with Pete’s mother — but unlike Pete himself he also became close to the other Beatles, and would remain so for the rest of his life.  By this point, the group were so obviously the best band on the Liverpool scene that they were starting to get bored — there was no competition. And by this point it really was a proper scene — John’s old art school friend Bill Harry had started up a magazine, Mersey Beat, which may be the first magazine anywhere in the world to focus on one area’s local music scene. Brian Epstein from NEMS had a column, as did Bob Wooler, and often John’s humorous writing would appear as well. The Beatles were featured in most issues — although Paul McCartney’s name was misspelled almost every time it appeared — and not just because Lennon and Harry were friends. By this point there were the Beatles, and there were all the other groups in the area. For several months this continued — they learned new songs, they played almost every day, and they continued to be the best. They started to find it boring. The one big change that came at this point was when John and Paul went on holiday to Paris, saw Vince Taylor, bumped into their friend Jurgen from Hamburg, and got Jurgen to do their hair like his — the story we told in the episode on “Brand New Cadillac”. They now had the Beatles haircut, though they were still wearing leather. When they got back, George copied their new style straight away, but Pete decided to leave his hair in a quiff. There was nowhere else to go without a manager to look after them. They needed management — and they found it because of “My Bonnie”: [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, “My Bonnie”] “My Bonnie” was far from a great record, but it was what led to everything that followed. The Beatles had mentioned from the stage at the Cavern that they had a record out, and a young man named Raymond Jones walked into NEMS and asked for a copy of it. Brian Epstein couldn’t find it in the record company catalogues, and asked Jones for more information — Jones explained that they were a Liverpool group, but the record had come out in Germany. A couple of days later, two young girls came into the shop asking for the same record, and now Epstein was properly intrigued — in his view, if *two* people asked for a record, that probably meant a lot more than just two people wanted it. He decided to check these Beatles out for himself. Epstein was instantly struck by the group, and this has led to a lot of speculation over the years, because his tastes ran more to Sibelius than to Little Richard. As Epstein was also gay, many people have assumed that the attraction was purely physical. And it might well have been, at least in part, but the suggestion that everything that followed was just because of that seems unlikely — Epstein was also someone who had a long interest in the arts, and had trained as an actor at RADA, the most prestigious actors’ college in the UK, before taking up his job at the family store. Given that the Beatles were soon to become the most popular musicians in the history of the world, and were already the most popular musicians in the Liverpool area, the most reasonable assumption must be that Epstein was impressed by the same things that impressed roughly a billion other people over the next sixty years. Epstein started going to the Cavern regularly, to watch the Beatles and to make plans — the immaculately dressed, public-school-educated, older rich man stood out among the crowd, and the Beatles already knew his face from his record shop, and so they knew something was going on. By late November, Brian had managed to obtain a box of twenty-five copies of “My Bonnie”, and they’d sold out within hours. He set up a meeting with the Beatles, and even before he got them signed to a management contract he was using his contacts with the record industry in London to push the Beatles at record companies. Those companies listened to Brian, because NEMS was one of their biggest customers. December 1961, the month they signed with Brian Epstein, was also the month that they finally started including Lennon/McCartney songs in their sets.  And within a couple of weeks of becoming their manager, even before he’d signed them to a contract, Brian had managed to persuade Mike Smith, an A&R man from Decca, to come to the Cavern to see the group in person. He was impressed, and booked them in for a studio session. December 61 was also the first time that John, Paul, George, and Ringo played together in that lineup, without any other musicians, when on the twenty-seventh of December Pete called in sick for a show, and the others got in their friend to cover for him. It wouldn’t be the last time they would play together. On New Year’s Day 1962, the Beatles made the trek down to London to record fifteen songs at the Decca studios. The session was intended for two purposes — to see if they sounded as good on tape as they did in the Cavern, and if they did to produce their first single. Those recordings included the core of their Cavern repertoire, songs like “Money”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Money (Decca version)”] They also recorded three Lennon/McCartney songs, two by Paul — “Love of the Loved” and “Like Dreamers Do”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Like Dreamers Do”] And one by Lennon — “Hello Little Girl”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Hello Little Girl”] And they were Lennon/McCartney songs, even though they were written separately — the two agreed that they were going to split the credit on anything either of them wrote. The session didn’t go well — the group’s equipment wasn’t up to standard and they had to use studio amps, and they’re all audibly nervous — but Mike Smith was still fairly confident that they’d be releasing something through Decca — he just had to work out the details with his boss, Dick Rowe. Meanwhile, the group were making other changes. Brian suggested that they could get more money if they wore suits, and so they agreed — though they didn’t want just any suits, they wanted stylish mohair suits, like the black American groups they loved so much.  The Beatles were now a proper professional group — but unfortunately, Decca turned them down. Dick Rowe, Mike Smith’s boss, didn’t think that electric guitars were going to become a big thing — he was very tuned in to the American trends, and nothing with guitars was charting at the time. Smith was considering two groups — the Beatles, and Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, and wanted to sign both. Rowe told him that he could sign one, but only one, of them. The Tremeloes had been better in the studio, and they lived round the corner from Smith and were friendly with him. There was no contest — much as Smith wanted to sign both groups, the Tremeloes were the better prospect. Rowe did make an offer to Epstein: if Epstein would pay a hundred pounds (a *lot* of money in those days), Tony Meehan, formerly of the Shadows, would produce the group in another session, and Decca would release that. Brian wasn’t interested — if the Beatles were going to make a record, they were going to make it with people who they weren’t having to pay for the privilege. John, Paul, and George were devastated, but for their own reasons they didn’t bother to tell Pete they’d been turned down. But they did have a tape of themselves, at least — a professional-quality recording that they could use to attract other labels. And their career was going forward in other ways. The same day Brian had his second meeting with Decca, they had an audition with the BBC in Manchester, where they were accepted to perform on Teenager’s Turn, a radio programme hosted by the Northern Dance Orchestra. A few weeks later, on the seventh of March, they went to Manchester to record four songs in front of an audience, of which three would be broadcast: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Please Mr. Postman (Teenager’s Turn)”] That recording of John singing “Please Mr. Postman” is historic for another reason, which shows just how on the cutting edge of musical taste the Beatles actually were — it was the first time ever that a Motown song was played on the BBC. Now we get to the part of the story that, before Mark Lewisohn’s work in his book a few years back, had always been shrouded in mystery. What Lewisohn shows is that George Ma

We are honored to bring John Mosley, aka Mr. Popular Nobody, on the Sola Stories Podcast! John is one of the most in-demand educators in the industry, who’s grown a massive following on social media (@popular_nobody) and a clientele that includes celebrities like Kendrick Lamar and Eminem.  John joins Kim Bennett (@kimi_kisses) for a conversation about what inspired him to become a barber, what to look for in a brand partnership, and how he’s grown his brand, Popular Nobody.  Listen as John discusses why he thinks the Sola model is the future of the beauty industry and some inspiring words for the Sola community. As both educators, Kim and John talk about the importance of education and why it’s so important to invest in to maintain a successful career behind the chair.  John is not just an educator on stage but in every aspect of his life. Tune in to be inspired by John’s aspirational accomplishments. His success as an entrepreneur is sure to spark a fire in you to strive for more in your own business.  In This Episode [01:35] Welcome to the show, John! [02:56] John shares his background in sports and his mom’s influence to become a barber. [04:30] John shares that his entire family is hairdressers and cosmetologists. [06:42] What inspired you to become an educator and give back to the industry? [09:02] John discusses the power of creating your own path. [12:00] John shares what to look for in a brand that you want to be an educator for. [14:46] Listen as John shares the soft skills that it takes to match the heart skills. [16:03] John shares what Popular Nobody means and how it originated. [18:00] John talks about vertical integration within a business. [20:22] What is the Popular Nobody brand doing to help others? [21:16] John speaks about his new nonprofit, Nobody Way Foundation. [23:35] He shares the first time he heard of Sola Salon Studios. [24:55] What is your favorite thing about Sola? [26:01] John shares words of encouragement for the Sola community. [27:20] Listen as John speaks about what we can be proud of during this pandemic. [28:10] John discusses Black Lives Matter. [30:41] John speaks about getting involved in beauty schools and developing education. [37:00] John discusses his Instagram and how he uses it to boost his business. [40:00] John shares the ins and outs of social media and how to lay out a page. [41:30] John shares his final thoughts and his thanks for believing in him. [42:38] We are all in the same ocean, but we are not all in the same boat. [45:03] Thank you for being on the show! Stay Connected Sola Salon Studios Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram Connect with Kim @kimi_kisses Connect with John @popular_nobody  

Like most things this year, the start of the school year has been looking a lot different for most families. Whether your child is required to go back to school fully in-person, a mix of virtual and in-person learning, or 100 percent remote learning, we know parents are struggling to navigate this new norm, specifically regarding how it affects their life as a salon owner.  In an effort to support you finding your groove as a working parent, we hosted a panel discussion with some of our parent Faces of Sola who, too, are balancing back-to-school with life in the salon. This panel was so valuable and chock-full of so much incredible advice, resources and overall support, we wanted to share this special discussion with you on the Sola Stories podcast, too.  Our panel was moderated by Sola’s Culture Ambassador and first Sola professional, Kim Bennett (@kimi_kisses), who was joined by panelists Shelbie Donoho (@shelbiedonoho), Amanda Fagan (@amandainreverie), Tahesa Nelson (@hairbytahesa), Ashley White (@ashleywhitestudio) and Steven Wren (@mrwrencuts).  Together, they discuss balancing the back-to-school struggles and how they have been (or plan to) balance this new norm and share what is working for them as their individual scenarios unfold. As we always say, we are all in this together, lean on your Sola community and take advantage of the Sola tools available to help you when you don't know what to do or where to turn. If you would still like to watch the full webinar we hosted, you can watch the recording on our YouTube channel or in your Sola Pro app. In This Episode [00:26] Welcome to the show! [02:24] Kim shares that her daughter is doing hybrid learning in school. [03:56] Shelbie is in Springfield, Missouri, and her daughter is in private school, going full time. [05:54] Amanda speaks about being with Sola since 2016; she shares that her children are being taught with the hybrid model. [07:06] Tahesa from Madison, Alabama, has been with Sola for five years, and her son is in school full time. [08:00] Ashley is in Michigan, but her Sola location is in Indiana. Her two children are going to school full time and are thrilled. [09:37] Steven is a father of three, and his children will be 100% remote learning in Chicago. [11:20] Kim speaks about her biggest concerns with school and working during this pandemic. [15:30] Steven speaks about how teaching from home has been going. [18:35] They discuss their children's mental health and how it’s related to their kids going back to school. [21:23] The panel discusses how important flexibility in their schedules is, especially with having their children at home. [24:07] Listen as they discuss how the Sola tools have helped them keep in contact with their clients throughout the pandemic. [28:09] They speak about best practices with hybrid and remote learning. [31:12] As beauty professionals and community leaders, we can talk to our clients and share what is working and what’s not. [33:49] How do you organize the day with your children at home but keeping them within a school structure? [36:42] Kim speaks about being a single mom and how that affects her options when it comes to work and school options for her daughter. [38:36] Tahesa shares some great online resources she found that helped her when teaching her son (Outschool.com). [41:25] Steven speaks about the outside resources he has. [44:48] Kim and Ashley talk about how to plan for unexpected scheduling changes. [47:43] They discuss how great the clients have been with all the uncertainty and how the children are rolling with the punches. [50:27] The panel speaks about this pandemic's mental health aspect on our kids. [53:49] Steven shares some final thoughts on remote learning and hybrid learning. [55:25] Tahesa says to stick to your schedule and don't give up. [55:53] Amanda says to keep leaning into the support of your community. [56:48] Ashley shares some last sentiments and insights. [58:10] Kim says that you are not alone! [59:48] Thanks, everyone, for being on the show!   Stay Connected Sola Salon Studios Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram Connect with Kim @kimi_kisses Connect with Shelbie @shelbiedonoho Connect with Amanda @amandainreverie Connect with Tahesa @hairbytahesa Connect with Ashley @ashleywhitestudio Connect  with Steven @mrwrencuts

As the majority of our community has returned to work in the salon, with some still in forced closure in California, we’ve begun to hear from our community that the weight of these new, unforeseen challenges have become harder to bear. To support you through this time, we wanted to bring a mental health professional onto the podcast to help you sort through the fear, anxiety and overwhelming emotion you may be feeling, and help you take care of yourself, in addition to all the clients you serve behind the chair.  Dr. Allan Ribbler is a neurobehavioral psychologist, who also happens to be the father of our Sola Stories Podcast producer, Angela Ribbler. Dr. Ribbler chatted with Kim Bennett, Sola’s Culture Ambassador, for an open and honest conversation about the emotional burden of COVID-19, particularly within the Sola community, as well as tools and strategies you can use to create boundaries for yourself both in and out of the salon.   Working behind the chair, it’s likely you’ve also been hearing about the negative impacts of the pandemic daily with your clients. Tune in to get Dr. Ribbler’s tips on turning the conversation around when you need to protect your own energy.  Have you ever thought about seeing a therapist? Not sure when the right time to seek therapy is or where to start looking for one? Dr. Ribbler believes that most people seek therapy when they are in distress, but it can be helpful to have a therapist to help with your day-to-day life and get to know you before a major personal crisis hits. And just like it’s important to have trust and connection with your clients, he says the same goes with finding the right therapist and suggests ways to find one that’s the right for you.  This very special podcast episode can not only help you navigate this pandemic with a bit more ease, but will give you eye-opening tips to help you overcome any challenge you may face in your career or personal life for years to come.   In This Episode [05:32] Welcome to the show, Dr. Ribbler! [05:50] Dr. Ribbler shares his background and the settings he has practiced in. [07:18] Dr. Ribbler speaks about the range of anxiety disorders people are having with this pandemic. [10:08] Kim says that she is a “hear-stylist” because so much listening is involved when working behind the chair. [10:44] Being in the service industry, how important is it for us to listen to our clients? [13:30] Kim shares the absence of boundaries with clients. [15:22] Dr. Ribbler shares how to be empathetic with your clients, but leave that in the salon so you can be your best self at home. Know your values and apply them to yourself. [19:10] Dr. Ribbler speaks about a tool that will help you take the things you do at work and shut them off when you go home. [21:20] Kim shares that she didn’t realize she was close to burnout until the pandemic hit. [22:17] Dr. Ribbler discusses when it’s time to seek professional help. [23:40] He says most people get help when they are distressed. [27:12] Listen as Dr. Ribbler speaks about whether you need to see a therapist regularly or only when you need it. [30:15] Dr. Ribbler discusses how to find the best therapist that’s right for you. [35:45] Kim says that when she started as a stylist 30 years ago, nobody talked about mental health care, but now a lot of them do. [36:55] Dr. Ribbler shares some resources for finding a therapist. [39:06] Do you have a limit on how much COVID you can take a day? [40:21] Dr. Ribbler suggests ways to steer the conversation away from COVID and bring it back to happy times. [42:28] Dr. Ribbler shares some final thoughts for the listeners. [43:18] Thank you so much for being on the show and sharing your wisdom! Stay Connected Sola Salon Studios Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram Connect with Kim @kimi_kisses

On this episode of Sola Stories, Jennie is joined by Sola’s Culture Ambassador, Kim Bennett, also known as Kimi Kisses. Kim owns her salon in Denver, Colorado and was the first-ever Sola stylist. After being closed nearly 9 weeks, Kim knew she was not going to let this disease take down her business. So when she was able to reopen her salon on May 9th, she even shocked herself by generating $10,000 in sales in her first week! Kim credits the education and resources she received from Sola to help her make her #SolaStrong comeback and the sanitation training from Barbicide to ensure the utmost safety of her clients - many of whom said visiting her salon was the first time they had left the house since the pandemic hit.   Tune in to hear how Kim adapted her salon and procedures to keep her guests safe and how this pandemic has created opportunities to reinvent herself as a business owner once again.    In This Episode [00:43] Welcome to the show, Kim! [01:41] Kim shares how she is adjusting to the “now normal” created by the pandemic. [03:40] Listen as Kim speaks about what she was doing during the months that her salon was closed. [06:20] Kim discusses how she spent her time during the closure and planned how she would reopen her salon. [09:44] Kim killed it the first week that her salon was reopened, and she shares how she handled it all. [11:55] She speaks about how she wanted to make her guests feel safe and pampered. [13:40] How were the retail sales during that first week? [15:47] Kim discusses how she got her salon ready for the reopening and how she changed her retail space. [18:16] Kim speaks about how she brought up her guest's retail needs into the conversation and let them know the products were safe. [22:02] How did you use SolaGenius technology to rebook all of your clients during the multiple reopening date changes? [26:08] Kim feels like the technology that Sola offers was instrumental in staying connected with her guests. [28:30] Kim speaks about how she focused on keeping her client experience as personal as possible with the new restrictions. [31:37] Over half of Kim's guests her first week open told her that her salon was the first place they had been since being in quarantine. [34:00] We are in a COVID world, and we are all experiencing this together. Check out Sola’s COVID-19 Resource Center to help you adjust to this new normal. [35:24] Listen as Kim shares how she feels now - physically and emotionally - after a month back in the salon. [39:11] Jennie speaks about Kim's new sense of gratitude for the people around her. [41:33] Kim shares the big years she's had since she started working at Sola in 2014, and how Sola has been with her through all of her difficulties in life. [46:17] Thank you so much for being on the show! Stay Connected Sola Salon Studios Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram Connect with Jennie  @jenniethewolff Connect with Kim   @Kimi_Kisses  

Kim Bennett got burned by hourly billing. She lost a bunch of money and, having come up as a young lawyer in a corporate, in-house role, the model didn’t make sense to her. One day she pitched a client on a recurring monthly fee and, to her surprise, they accepted. That’s right, we’re talking subscriptions again. But where the guest from our last subscription-based law practice, Jon Tobin, uses almost as lead-gen for his firm, Kim’s “premium” subscriptions make up the bulk of the work that she does. With a bachelor’s degree in psychology, Kim talks passionately about how one should “show up” for their clients, emphasizing her role as a counselor, and a relationship-driven practice. Tune in and get subscribed. (See what we did there?)

Continuing our Legal Industry Transformation Week, today we welcome Kimberly Y. Bennett, Esq., Founder of K Bennett Law LLC, a boutique subscription legal services law firm. Kim is an innovator, entrepreneur, industry disruptor, and business coach—who happens to be a lawyer—and her mission is to help foster a permanent shift in the way law firms deliver legal services to clients.

Kim Bennett, Cathy Gilbert and Madonna Hill lead us in worship in song with "Jesus is Coming Soon" and Bro. David Blase follows with this week's message.

Do you long for belonging to something bigger than yourself? Listen as your host Jennie and Sola’s Culture Ambassador, Kim Bennett, continue discussing the benefits of a career with Sola Salon Studios, Kim’s nearly 16-year-long journey at Sola, and much more on this part 2 episode of the Sola Stories Podcast. If this is the first time you are tuning in, Jennie Wolff is the Chief Marketing Officer at Sola Salon Studios, and Kim is Sola’s first-ever Sola professional.  Kim shares why she believes it's so important to create and harness relationships in the beauty industry and the work you have to put in to build trust and honor. She also speaks about how she has established relationships within the Sola community all across the country using social media. Kim discusses how her local Sola community has impacted her business and tips on how a new Sola professional can create those meaningful relationships with their own Sola community. Kim speaks about the importance of education in the beauty industry, especially for independent salon owners. She shares ways Sola helps to educate stylists and the tools she and other Sola professionals can use to grow their businesses. Kim chats about why she became a Paul Mitchell educator and how she has parlayed that partnership in her salon. Do you want to become an educator? Listen as Kim shares advice for listeners who are thinking about becoming educators and the steps they can take to make it happen. She also stresses how important it is to make the most of your partnership with Sola. The Sola team has dedicated themselves to ensuring Sola professionals have everything they need to be successful as long as you are willing to put in the work. If you haven't listened to part 1, you should definitely check it out, but you can also listen to this as a stand-alone conversation. So sit back, relax, and enjoy.   In This Episode [00:26] Welcome to the Sola Stories Podcast! [00:42] Kim, thank you for being here! [01:01] Kim shares why it is so essential for her to have connections with people. [03:14] Kim chats about how connecting people can be a lot of work; build trust and honor. [07:13] How have you established relationships with your Sola community, and how has it impacted your business? [10:25] Kim shares how she has built relationships with Sola communities all across the country. [12:21] Kim gives tips to new Sola stylists for using social media to connect with the Sola community across the country. [15:01] How did you build your clientele and nurture those relationships? How do you continue to grow year after year? [17:10] Kim shares ways to confort a problematic client, and when that might be appropriate. [19:47] Kim speaks about why continuing education is so important to independent business owners. [21:56] How do you think Sola can help people stay educated at this time in their career? [23:31] Kim shares why she became an educator with Paul Mitchell. [26:17] Kim believes that combining her position as an educator with Paul Mitchell and being a salon owner at Sola is the magic she needed to be successful. [28:58] You don't just educate on stage, but also every day with the client in your chair. [30:08] What advice do you have for any listeners who want to become educators? [31:56] Kim speaks about how to become an educator. [33:34] Kim chats about how a stylist can make the most of their partnership with a brand. [34:49] How has partnering with a brand like Paul Mitchell helped build a more substantial business for Kim Bennett Studios? [37:05] Kim shares how people can make the most out of their relationship with the Sola brand. [39:40] Shout out to Angela, who is producing the podcast for us. [41:30] Kim chats about why she says you have to get uncomfortable to grow. [43:16] Kim's last words of wisdom are for everyone to find their balance of gratitude and perspective.   Links and Resources Jennie Wolff Sola Salon Studios @solasalons Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram   Find Kim Kim Bennett Studios @kimi_kisses Instagram

It all started nearly 16 years ago on a napkin at a Starbucks... Listen as your host, Jennie Wolff, and Sola’s first-ever Sola stylist, Kim Bennett, discuss why and how Kim started her nearly 16-year journey with Sola and much more on this episode of the Sola Stories Podcast. Kim first opened her Sola studio in Denver, Colorado in 2004. Even though salon studios weren’t as common in the industry as they are now, Kim saw the opportunity, saw the heart of the company, and took a leap of faith that changed her life forever. Kim has been a sounding board for the company since the beginning to ensure that at Sola, the beauty professionals always come first. Listen as Kim shares what inspired her to become a hairdresser, how she became a national educator for Paul Mitchell, and why she moved to Denver. Kim describes what led her to Sola, what inspires her in life and business, and how instrumental her mentors were to where she is today. She also speaks about mentorship, how seriously she takes it, and the responsibility she feels toward anyone who seeks her advice. On this episode, Kim shares what it was about the Sola Salon Studios concept that appealed to her, her fears when she first opened, and what she was most excited as she embarked on her journey. She speaks about how her salon has evolved over the last nearly 16 years and how the redesign of her studio has given her inspiration for continued growth. Kim opens up about being a single mom and how being her own boss allows her the freedom she needs to be there for her daughter. Kim believes that she is who she is today because of that meeting at Starbucks. Her salon at Sola isn’t just a job for Kim. Sola is her family. Jennie’s conversation with Kim isn’t over, stay tuned for part 2 because there is so much more to discuss. In This Episode [00:26] Welcome, everyone! [00:41] Jennie shares her background and why she accepted the position at Sola Salon Studios. [01:39] Jennie introduces Kim and shares a little of her inspirational journey with Sola. [04:15] Kim, thank you so much for being on the show! [06:43] Kim shares how she got into hairdressing and why it appealed to her. [08:41] Kim speaks about becoming a national educator for Paul Mitchell, who led her to move to Denver. [09:39] What led you to want to work with Sola? [11:06] Jennie chats about what she learned from Kim, about how different types of salons are to the industry. [12:21] Kim believes that what inspires her in life is just life. She loves the life she has and shares her joy. [13:31] What inspires you in business?  [14:51] Kim discusses her mentors, how instrumental they are to her success, and how she feels about mentorship. [17:35] Kim shares that Jennie has been a big part of her journey because of the fresh eyes she brought to the industry. [19:42] Kim speaks about how she found her mentors and how she approached them. [21:25] They chat about how social media enables you to connect with mentors that before seemed untouchable. [22:42] What does being a mentor mean to you? How do you respond to people that reach out to you? [24:19] Kim shares what appealed to her about the Sola model. [26:48] Kim speaks about her fears when she first started looking to join Sola. [28:39] What were you most excited about when you were setting up your studio that first day? [30:02] Kim describes what has changed since the recent redesign of her studio. [33:01] Kim shares how her business has evolved and how she continues to stay inspired to grow. [36:10] How has Sola as a company evolved? [38:25] Jennie speaks about the Sola Pro app, SolaGenius, and other Sola tools and programs that have helped Kim grow her business. [39:17] Kim shares what she would say to someone who is on the fence about opening their own studio. [41:03] Kim describes how having her studio has impacted her life outside of the salon, helping her create work-life balance. [43:26] When you have a salon studio, you can control everything about how you work. There are no limitations. [44:57] What one piece of advice would you give your twenty-something self if you had the chance? [46:24] Tune in to part 2 to hear more about Kim’s journey and evolution with Sola. Links and Resources Jennie Wolff Sola Salon Studios @solasalons Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram Connect with Kim Kim Bennett Studios @kimi_kisses Instagram

How is your salon handling the invasion of the coronavirus? Listen in as host, Jennie Wolff, Chief Marketing Officer at Sola Salon Studios, and her guest Kim Bennett, Sola's Culture Ambassador and the first-ever Sola stylist, discuss how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting Sola Salon Studios' independent salon owners and the greater beauty industry.  How is your salon handling the invasion of the coronavirus? Listen in as host, Jennie Wolff, Chief Marketing Officer at Sola Salon Studios, and her guest Kim Bennett, Sola's Culture Ambassador and the first-ever Sola stylist, discuss how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting Sola Salon Studios' independent salon owners and the greater beauty industry.  Kim (@kimi_kisses) shares how the mandated salon closures have affected her salon and her need to make sure her clients were all right. She also speaks about being lost the first few days she was home and how clearing her head helped her come up with some new ideas for the salon and how having a plan has kept her motivated. Listen as Jennie and Kim discuss ways to generate income for your salon while you are closed and to make sure you are communicating with your clients. Kim shares how she's used Sola's salon management technology, SolaGenius, especially the app's customizable reports to help her take an in-depth look into her salon business. They speak about taking this time to set up technology to help you run your business more efficiently if you don't already have it in place, as well as the Sola Blog, resources and education that you can turn to help you navigate the COVID-19 crisis. Have you been thinking about restructuring your business? You have the time now, so use it to change what you have wanted to change, let your new ideas shine, and get ready to be the busiest you've probably ever been once your salon doors reopen. Your clients have no other place to go, so once the mandate is lifted, they will line up to cover those roots and get back to normal. Jennie has been focusing on supporting the Sola community from the Sola Home Office, while Kimi is on the front lines as an independent salon owner, and together, they hand out some much-needed inspiration and ideas to keep you going during his unprecedented time. If you are looking for guidance to support you through these uncharted waters, you don't want to miss this episode. In This Episode [00:24] Welcome, everyone! [02:27] Kimi, thank you for being on the show. [04:08] Kimi shares what she experienced after the state of Colorado mandated salon closures for six weeks. [05:46] Jennie speaks about the COVID-19 task force they assembled at the Sola home office. [07:11] Kimi's first thought was to make sure her clients were being handled. [08:48] After the virus outbreak was your salon busy with people trying to get in before it forced them to stay home? [09:37] Jennie tells a story about her 91-year-old grandma's willingness to stop everything except getting her hair done. [12:14] Kimi shares how she stays motivated now that her salon is closed. [15:56] What are you doing to generate revenue in your salon during the shutdown? [18:21] Kimi speaks about Sola gift cards and how they are helping to generate revenue. [20:15] Kimi chats about the plan she has for when the salon reopens. [23:19] Are you learning how to communicate in a new way? Are you communicating with your clients? [24:18] Kimi shares how the SolaGenius reports are helping her work on her business while she can't work in it. [27:16] Jennie believes now is the time to set up technology for your business if you don't already have it. [28:01] Kimi says that working with Sola has elevated her in every aspect of her life. [29:33] Jennie shares about all the tools you can get through Sola and the blog they started. [32:00] Kim, how are you homeschooling, communicating with your clients and taking care of your family? [34:41] They recap taking the time now to restructure your business, change things you've wanted to change, and be ready to be very busy when you reopen. [37:33] Make connections with each other during this time, connect with Sola on Instagram, blogs with tips, and education videos. [38:58] Jennie reads some inspiring quotes from Faces of Sola. [39:58] Kim gives some final thoughts for the listeners. [41:13] Kim, thank you for sharing your words of wisdom with us. Links and Resources: Jennie Wolff Sola Salon Studio COVID-19 Resource Center Sola Salon Studios Follow Sola on Social: Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram Connect with Kim: Kim Bennett Studios

Kim Bennett, the first salon owner in the first Sola Salon in the country. She has been with Sola Salons for 15 years and is now their ambassador for stylists and education. We chat about her career and how Sola has helped her and others with their careers.

While we all wait for the ethics rules to change and open up avenues of innovation such as non-lawyer ownership in law firms, there are lawyers grabbing the bull by the horns and changing how they practice despite the confines of the ethics rules.  These lawyers are offering subscription legal services, virtual multi-state practices, concierge wills and trusts service through virtual portals, empowering self-represented litigants, and more.  On this episode, Megan and her guest Erin Gerstenzang will highlight some of these lawyers and also dish on presenting a talk to the Tennessee Lawyers Association for Women Empowerment Conference on this very topic. Lawyers Mentioned in This Episode: Jess Birken, Erin Levine, Jennifer Gerstenzang, Kim Bennett, Aastha Madaan, Brooke Moore, Laura O'Brien, Christina Scalera, Billie Tarascio, Ticora Davis, Laura Lester   Guest Info:  Erin Gerstenzang - Website and Twitter Thanks for listening! Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to the show to receive every new episode delivered straight to your podcast player every Tuesday. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me get the word out about this podcast. Rate and Review this show in Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Google Play, and Tunein and be sure to share this podcast with a friend. Be sure to connect with me and reach out with any questions or recommendations for specific resources: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Website Email me at megan[at]zaviehlaw[dot]com This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as legal advice specific to your circumstances. If you need help with any legal matters, be sure to consult with an attorney regarding your specific needs.

Kelly Street was joined this week by lawyer Erin Gerstenzang, a trial attorney with a law practice in Atlanta, Georgia. She provides concierge-level service to clients facing drug and alcohol-related offenses. In addition to running her boutique criminal defense law practice in Atlanta, Georgia, Erin Gerstenzang is dedicated to helping other attorneys succeed in their practices. She is a regular speaker at CLE events across the country and helps lawyers understand legal ethics in a technology-enabled world. She also lectures on women mentoring women, design-thinking for law firms, and using social media to build a legal brand. Erin Gerstanzang has been public speaking since before she had a trial and has legal in her blood as a second generation lawyer in a family full of lawyers.  Speaking has allowed Erin to introduce herself to new attorneys, gaining referrals and making a national name for herself and her firm. Erin speaks about everything from blood testing and criminal defense issues to women and diversity in the legal practice. Her perspective on public speaking is that it is a reputation builder. You can showcase expertise, being helpful, and teaching other attorneys to do their job better.  Erin gained traction in legal speaking by discussing legal ethics and has focused recently on social media, including in her talk at Clio 2018 with Kim Bennett.  Speaking tips:  Don't be boring. Present real tips, information, and advice. Less is more for your slides- your slides shouldn't be your presentation. Don't present sitting down. It's weird.  Show your personality in speaking and in lawyering. Refer to yourself 2-3 times during your presentation, (listen to hear why) Branding your practice: Step outside the lawyer box. You'll attract the kind of clients you want if you can create a strong brand. Improving your public speaking:  Get comfortable on the stage by filming your talks and watching them to identify your crutches and fine-tune your talks.  Creative Live - public speaking courses Vanessa Van Edwards - hand gestures Ted Talks - speakers show their hands Start off with an embarrassing story to create a connection with the audience, instead of wasting time thanking the audience. The first 30 seconds are vital to your talk. Watching yourself speak requires an act of kindness. Watch with the understanding that you will develop a tough skin and get better over time.  Do lawyers only want to hear from lawyers? Kelly says yes, Erin says no. The legal world has a lot of learning and growth to do but is making strides to be open to non-legal experts for noon-legal topics.  Then Erin shares her thoughts on paying for speakers- to get quality content, legal organizations should consider paying for speakers. You get A-Level speakers when you are willing to pay for it. 

Gyi and Kelly connected with Kim Bennett on her approach to marketing with a non-traditional law firm model. This episode bridges the gap between business development and marketing, which is how Kim approaches her own business as well as her work with clients.  K Bennett Law LLC is a boutique trademark, business, and employment law practice providing subscription and on-demand, flat fee virtual general counsel services focused on helping clients protect their brands and grow profitable, sustainable businesses. Virtual, subscription-based firm. What does that mean, how does one do that?  Creating a firm with unique differentiators sets you apart but also provides a new type of service level.  Looking at your client's issue holistically- is this 'bigger' than the issue they are coming to you for? This can build more goodwill with clients and create a longer-term relationship than just a one-time issue.  Lead nurturing- educating clients far in advance of retaining them as a client.  Working in a shared space, or coworking space, can help you find the clients that match your practice area. It can also give you access to teach and educate about your knowledge. Kim talks about how she works within ethical bounds while working in a coworking space.   

By now, most people are aware of the health benefits associated with bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Did you know that there are a multitude of delivery options available including: capsules, creams, sublingual tablets, injections, troche, and pellet therapy? What are the differences and what’s the most effective? In this week’s podcast, Dr. Hotze visits with the Director of Hotze Pharmacy, Kim Bennett, RPh. to talk about the many hormone delivery methods available for bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and breaks down the effectiveness of each one. Together they discuss the importance of physiologic dosing to maintain a natural hormone balance and the problems associated with pellet therapy. Watch now and subscribe to our podcasts at www.HotzePodcast.com If you have any of the signs and symptoms mentioned on this podcast, take out free symptom checker test at https://www.hotzehwc.com/symptom-checker/

By now, most people are aware of the health benefits associated with bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Did you know that there are a multitude of delivery options available including: capsules, creams, sublingual tablets, injections, troche, and pellet therapy? What are the differences and what’s the most effective? In this week’s podcast, Dr. Hotze visits with the Director of Hotze Pharmacy, Kim Bennett, RPh. to talk about the many hormone delivery methods available for bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and breaks down the effectiveness of each one. Together they discuss the importance of physiologic dosing to maintain a natural hormone balance and the problems associated with pellet therapy. Watch now and subscribe to our podcasts at www.HotzePodcast.com If you have any of the signs and symptoms mentioned on this podcast, take out free symptom checker test at https://www.hotzehwc.com/symptom-checker/

How do you choose the kind of life you want and then design how you’re going to live it? The next question becomes: Where do we even begin to answer that? Kim Bennett and I address both simultaneously in this episode. Our answer: examining our personal failures. In life, we have to fail in order to know what we want, what we’re good at, and what we need to design our own lives -- and do it with intention. What we tackle in this episode: How to capitalize on setbacks & failures turn them into opportunities How to design your career around the life you want to live When to know you have succeeded How to embrace daily setbacks and mistakes GUEST: Kim Bennett Website Instagram Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Join the conversation and be part of the Made community: Join the Self-Made CEOTM Club: http://bit.ly/SelfMadeCEOJoin Twitter Facebook Instagram

Host Ian Connett (@QuantumJurist) and co-host Dan Lear of Right Brain Law talk to Kim Bennett in this very special episode. K Bennett Law LLC helps serial entrepreneurs, start-ups and small businesses address their labor, employment, HR, intellectual property and general business strategy needs. For the latest topics, trends and tech in the legal industry, subscribe to the Evolve the Law Podcast: A Catalyst for Legal Innovation. Listen as legal experts and leaders share insights about the legal industry. For more information, questions, or suggestions about our podcast feel free to email us at evolve@abovethelaw.com     Links and Resources from this Episode For additional information go to https://abovethelaw.com/legal-innovation-center https://www.kbennettlaw.com/   Show Notes Kimberly's initial aversion to law practice.  Transitioning from the medical school path to law school.  Working for juvenile justice in Georgia with PHD/JDs.  How natural curiosity helps your legal career. Taking a cross-disciplinary approach. Lessons learned from psychology researching, including the importance of understanding empathy and  the client’s journey. The power of helping others get what they want. On going “heads down” during times of challenge. Getting it done. Dissecting internal vs. external motivations. Working through the Great Recession.  Joining a family practice and being a legal entrepreneur.  The power of taking things into your own hands. Working at Google'.  Kimberly's passion for moving the industry forward. Utilizing technology to offer subscription and virtual legal services.  How Kimberly built her practice and model helping businesses and lawyers evolve their practice. The results of Kimberly's Myers Briggs Test. How Kimberly's sees The Future of Law – getting back to being a true advisor.   Being a “creative thinker” vs. a “document drafter.” How to connect with Kim and learn more about her practice. Review and Subscribe If you like what you hear please leave a review by clicking here Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite player to get the latest episodes. Subscribe with Apple Podcasts Follow on Spotify Subscribe with Stitcher

A common financial misconception: attorneys are really expensive. Truth: Attorneys can be expensive but most are more affordable than you may think. You have to ask the right questions and do proper due diligence. In this bonus episode, I’m joined by Kim Bennett, owner of K Bennett Law, to unpack helpful financial tips and shortcuts you can take to find the right attorney for your business and personal needs. Tune in to hear us dispel the myths and stereotypes of working with attorneys. They’re not as financially out of reach as you may think. Join the conversation and be part of the MadeTM community: Join the Self-Made CEOTM Club: http://bit.ly/SelfMadeCEOJoin Twitter Facebook Instagram

This week, we discuss subscription fees with Kim Bennett, including her process for designing her fee options and responding to clients’ needs. Kimberly is an avid traveler, lover of technology, legal industry disruptor and an attorney who runs K Bennett Law LLC, a boutique virtual general counsel law practice offering on-demand and subscription operations and legal services.

Horse and Pet Rescue in these tough economic times is the topic for this week. We are joined by Kim Bennett, VP Shelter Outreach and Public Relations for Petfinder.com and Kentucky Equine Humane Center's Executive Director, Lori Neagle. The main thing we learned was it is almost impossible looking at adoptable pets for an hour and not wanting one, another one that is. Listen in...Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=87421)