In 1963, Margaret Gordon won a competition to name the next Beatles LP. Her winning suggestion of "
Beatles For Sale" earned her a meeting with the group in Carlisle in November 1963. She brought with her some Beatles albums from a couple of friends who wanted them signed. Her best friend, Christine Gatenby gave Mrs Gordon her "Please Please Me" Beatles LP to be signed by the foursome, and Christine's sister Jackie Marsden sent along the "With The Beatles" album. Mrs Marsden, of South Bents, Sunderland was then aged 12. She said: “Christine was supposed to accompany Margaret to Carlisle, but my mother thought she was too young to go. We gave Margaret our LPs and she had them signed. It was a big thrill and I have kept it for 50 years. We had all their records.” Mrs Marsden's fully autographed "With The Beatles" LP
was sold at a South Tyneside auction house for £11,500.
In 1963, "With the Beatles" had advance orders of 500,000 and sold another half million by September 1965, making it the second album to sell a million copies in the UK, after the soundtrack to the 1958 film "South Pacific".
It remained at the top of the charts for 21 weeks, displacing "Please Please Me", meaning the group occupied the top spot for 51 consecutive weeks. The follow up to "With The Beatles" was the "A Hard Day's Night" album, with one LP side containing the songs from the film and the other side held other new Lennon and McCartney titles. So it wasn't until December 1964 that "Beatles for Sale", the album Margaret Gordon named, was released for the Christmas market. The album went to No1 and stayed there for 11 of the 46 weeks that it spent in the Top 20.
Source:
The Shields Gazette
