In September 1963, two weeks before his 21st birthday, John’s Aunt Elizabeth, who lived in Sutherland, Scotland, sent John £100 as a coming of age present. Together with Paul, he decided to go on a trip to Spain, although they only got as far as Paris.

After the Beatles evening gig at Knotty Ash Village Hall on Friday 29 September 1961, the group took a break while the duo left for a fifteen-day trip abroad.

Some reports have suggested that the two of them left without informing George or Pete, who were disgusted by the action, which almost caused the group to break up and resulted in Ray McFall and Bob Wooler lecturing John and Paul about acting irresponsibly. This isn’t actually so, John and Paul had planned the trip and no bookings were made for the period they were away.

Stuart Sutcliffe had informed John by post that Jurgen Vollmer, their friend from Hamburg, had moved to Paris, and he provided them with his address. During the trip they visited Jurgen who was to write about the visit and said that they wanted to have their hair cut in the same style as his. So he gave them both their first ‘Beatles’ haircut in his hotel room on the Left Bank.

They then went to the Flea Market and bought some mod-style clothes. Jurgen wore a corduroy jacket and a sweater with cut-off sleeves, which was collarless – and John wanted to dress like this. Jurgen wrote: “At that time, the rage in Paris was bell bottoms. The Beatles always wore very tightly cuffed, or ‘pegged’ pants with pointed shoes or very pointed boots. They were ‘Teddy boys’ in the English-fashion and dressed in black leather and black jeans…John and Paul wanted to dress more in the Paris fashion, but they were afraid to look queer in their home town of Liverpool.”

While in Paris, Paul sent a lengthy letter to me in Liverpool which began: “It was 10 o’ clock, it was, when we were entering the Olympia in Paris to see the ‘Johnny Hallyday Rock Show.’ The cheapest seats in ‘les theatre’ (French) were seven and sixpence, so we followed the woman with the torch (English)” (Note: Jacques points out that it should be ‘le theatre.’)

Further text can be found in the Archives section of the Mersey Beat site under the title ‘Parisian Rock.’

John and Paul stayed in Montmartre for a week and planned to travel on to Spain, but their money ran out. On their return to Liverpool they stopped off in London where they bought some Chelsea boots, which were later to become fashionable as ‘Beatle boots.’

On Monday 16 September 1963, John decided to take Cynthia on a belated honeymoon to Paris. The couple stayed at the luxurious George V Hotel and began to take in all the sights – the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, Montmartre – and John bought a movie camera.

On their return to the hotel they found a note from Astrid Kirchherr which revealed that she was in Paris for a few days with a girlfriend. There was a phone number with the note and John and Cynthia contacted her and arranged to meet. The four of them had a night on the town, drinking rough red wine until dawn. They were so blotto they decided to go to Astrid’s lodgings for coffee. After the coffee they drank another bottle of wine. John and Cynthia found they were in no state to return to the hotel and despite there being only a single bed, all four of them got into it and fell into a deep sleep.

Brian Epstein had also arrived in Paris and John and Cynthia met up with him and all three returned to England together on Wednesday 2 October.

When the Beatles set off by Comet 4B from London at 5.15pm on Tuesday 14 January 1964 for their season at the Olympia and were met at Le Bourget Airport, Paris by 60 French fans and almost 100 journalists and photographers, Ringo couldn’t join them as he was fog-bound in Liverpool. He flew across the next day with Neil Aspinall just in time to join the other members for a dress rehearsal which took place at the Cinema Cyrano in Rue Rameau, Versailles. The evening show, which was a warm up for their Paris season, didn’t go down too well with the audience of 2,000.

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