Following the launch of their first ever album, Please, Please Me, the Beatles were, as John Lennon might have put it, dead beat.
It was 1963 and the band was on the cusp of the stratospheric fame that was about to follow. After all of their hard work on the album, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr came to Tenerife for a well-earned holiday staying just outside Puerto de la Cruz, the place to be at that time.
The Beatles' stay in the island's Orotava Valley has been well documented in a new book published by local historian Nicolás G. Lemus. The author tells how the fab three (John was holidaying in Torremolinos with Brian Epstein) spent their 12-day stay visiting Teide, La Orotava, going to see a bull fight and generally sunning themselves in the Tenerife sun.
The band travelled around the island in a bright red Austin Healy Sprite and shared company with fellow holidaymakers at the Taoro Hotel, the Rancho Grande and the Lido San Telmo - the ‘in' places to be seen. The lido was deemed so exclusive that the British owner David Gilbert refused to grant McCartney's request for the band to perform there. Apparently, Gilbert thought that a bunch of long haired musicians were not suitable for such a prestigious venue. As Mr Gilbert admitted to Lemus, it was to be a decision that he has regretted all of his life.
Lemus has spent ten years meticulously researching Los Beatles en Tenerife. It is the latest in a line of more than 20 books that give fascinating accounts of early British visitors and their influence on island life and the history of tourism in the Canary Islands.
