The Beatles Sweden Tour 1963 promoter speaks

Bengt-Åke Bengtsson in 1963.

Bengt-Åke Bengtsson was the founder and owner of the Swedish concert promoter agency Telstar, and he also managed Swedish group, The Telstars. He was born in 1931 and passed away in 2016, at 85. A few years before that, he wrote down his memoirs, including bringing The Beatles to Sweden for their first tour abroad.

A Swedish newspaper article from 2011 revealed that Bengtsson had written an autobiography consisting of 500 pages about his professional career. It looks like the book didn’t find a publisher. However, we recently came across a Swedish booklet, “Jubileumsboken” at 104 pages, where Bengtsson talks about the early years as tour promoter. The text may have come from Bengtsson’s book manuscript. The booklet takes us through the first acts he brought over to Sweden, starting with American group The Cousins and then the British group, The Phantoms.

After the success of these tours, Bengtsson went on to book bigger names, first the American singer Del Shannon and then to “Mr. Twist” himself, Chubby Checker. After hearing about The Beatles from a Danish band that had seen The Beatles in the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, Bengtsson and the leader of the band Telstars drove to Hamburg to sample The Beatles for themselves. After listening to The Beatles (with Pete Best, he claims) for about three hours at the Star-Club, they drove all the way back to Sweden.

Of course, this has to have been in 1962, as that was the year the Star-Club opened, and the Beatles played there three times that year and never again. The first time was with Pete behind the drums, starting Friday 13 April 1962, ending 31 May 1962. If Bengtsson’s memory is accurate, and it’s true that Ringo was not in the band yet, he must have seen them at this time. When they returned to the Star-Club in November, Pete was no longer with them.

Impressed by The Beatles, who were playing their interpretations of popular songs and a few of their own, Bengtsson started pestering an agent he knew in London, Alan Blackburn, and pushed for him to get the Beatles to Sweden. To no avail. Another British agent visited Sweden, and Bengtsson also tried to get to The Beatles through him, but no such luck. Bengtsson was a subscriber of the British music newspaper, New Musical Express and witnessed The Beatles’ rise to fame in their homeland, and their chart successes. They also started to chart in Sweden and had a few hits in the well known radio chart “Tio i Topp” (“Ten on Top”), the songs “Please Please Me” and “From Me To You” voted for by the radio studio audiences.

The music business scene in Sweden was relatively small, and people in the business side of things knew each other. So one day Bengtsson got a call from a business friend, manager of a well known club in Stockholm, who had gotten a telegram from the Grade Organisation (Lew and Leslie Grade Ltd. a.k.a. the Grade Organisation), wondering if anyone was interested in taking the Beatles to Sweden. They had exactly five days in October 1963, which would fit.

Bengtsson immediately jumped on this opportunity, and had to deal with a huge amount of paperwork and permits to make it happen. He got The Beatles for £200 a day, plus he had to provide the flights for The Beatles plus three more people, accommodation and meals plus transport within Sweden. The three were likely Neil Aspinall, Mal Evans and Brian Epstein. A contract was drawn, stipulating ten concerts by The Beatles in the five days. If there was just one concert in a day, a third concert was to be added to another day. Any of the ten concerts could be exchanged into a radio or a television show. This was taken into account at the draft stage of the contract, as Bengtsson had already contacted Klas Burling at Swedish Radio, who was anxious to tape a radio concert with The Beatles. In the end, they also partook in a television program, “Drop-In”. Bengtsson signed the contract, sent it to the Grade Organisation and got it back, signed by Brian Epstein.

Bengtsson now had to find venues in Swedish towns and cities, he had to hire some Swedish acts to fill out the bills, and as he was acutely aware that this “new” kind of music wasn’t so established in the countryside or in smaller Swedish towns, he needed to hire a popular Swedish act to draw in the ticket buyers. At the time of The Beatles tour, a Swedish act called Trio Me’ Bumba had a hit with “Spel-Olles Gånglåt“, which was in a more traditional vein, so they were chosen as top Swedish act for the tour.

Arrival in Sweden

When the Beatles arrived, a press conference was set up at or near the Arlanda airport. This event was held by EMI’s Swedish department. Thankfully, because Bengtsson was not speaking any other language than Swedish, so he just said hello to the group and than stayed in the background. Sture Borgendal was also usually present at the press meetings. He represented their publishing interests in Sweden. The tour guide was Stig Mattsson and he was also very bad at languages. Three cars drove the Beatles and company to their hotel in Stockholm, two of which had utility trailers with the instruments and amplifiers and the band members travelled with Bengtsson in his Lincoln.

In the record shops in Sweden at the time of their visit, “She Loves You” was their latest release. Swedish singles sleeves had different colour shades.

Brian Epstein arrived some time after the boys, and a meeting with Bengtsson was arranged. Bengtsson brought his friend, a journalist from the newspaper Kvällsposten (The Evening Post), Leif Matteson to help with translation.

Brian Epstein told Bengtsson which groups he had contact with and which groups he handled exclusively. He said that he worked in such a way that he actually owned the groups, even the Beatles. He had invested money in clothes, instruments, marketing, recordings and in other words: it was he who decided the bookings.

The episode of the “Drop-In” TV show with The Beatles was also sold to Danish and Norwegian television companies, jump starting the Beatles fever in the whole of Scandinavia.

Brian Epstein wanted to bring his groups to Sweden, and he told the guys that the groups and artists he had exclusively were The Beatles, Gerry and The Pacemakers, Billy J Kramer with the Dakotas, Sounds Incorporated and the singer Cilla Black. In addition, he helped Bengtsson to hire both Heinz and Brian Poole, The Searchers, etc.

In this meeting, Epstein asked Bengtsson if he was interested in an exclusivity arrangement, to handle his groups in Sweden and Scandinavia. This ended with a verbal agreement that evening and they agreed that the exact same contract, money and benefits that the Beatles had would apply to future tours with the Liverpool groups.

This was to lead to tours with several popular groups in Sweden. Among others, Gerry and The Pacemaker came in December 1963, Billy J Kramer in March 1964 and Sounds Incorporated in the winter of 1964.

In the conversation, Bengtsson of course mentioned the figure of £200 a day, which he had paid for the Beatles. Epstein was infuriated! He had been unaware that the Grade Organisation had kept £100 for themselves and only left £100 for the group and Brian. Epstein swore to cut off his relationship with Grade, and gave Telstar the exclusive right to bring The Beatles back to Sweden.

Leaving Sweden

When the Beatles left Sweden, they had played concerts in Karlstad (for 2 x 350 people), Stockholm (for 2 x 8000 people), Gothenburg (3 x 1700 people), Borås (3000), Eskilstuna (3000) and a radio show and a TV show, plus they had signed autographs in a record store in Borås. 

BEATLES SOUVENIRS AND BAND EQUIPMENT

Bengtsson and Matteson travelled to London in the first week of December for further discussions with Epstein, at his NEMS offices. On this occasions, a contract was signed for the exclusive rights to arrange concert tours with Epstein’s groups in Sweden. The Swedes also negotiated rights to produce and sell Beatles merchandise in Sweden and for export. This never materialised, as the next thing that happened was The Beatles conquering America and Bengtsson realised that the production of Beatles merch was better handled in countries like China, Taiwan, the Philippines, etc. who could produce this a lot cheaper and on a completely different level than Swedish companies.

Bubble gum collector’s cards produced in Sweden.

When in London, Bengtsson and Matteson also had talks with audio and amplifier company Vox, and wondered if they could take over the agency for Sweden. Bengtsson was an old music wholesaler and seller and had planned to start importing these things together with his good friend Ludvigsson in Eskilstuna. Nothing came of this either, Bengtsson says that this was likely because he saw that it was too capital-intensive for his finances.

STOCKHOLM 1964

Time passed and every week Bengtsson’s company received lots of letters and information from NEMS Enterprises in London. Gerry & the Pacemakers did their Sweden tour, and also at the start of 1964, Sounds Incorporated. One day Brian called and said something terrible had happened. He had received a request from the Stockholm Tourist Board in Sweden, who wanted the Beatles there. He had then discovered that on the back of the contract he signed when the Beatles were with Telstar for the first time in October 1963 it says that he was obliged to send the Beatles to Sweden within a year through the Grade Organisation in London.

Brian was completely devastated because he had signed a new, exclusive contract with Bengtsson for all the groups. If the Beatles were going to Sweden, they obviously had to go through his Telstar company. He wondered what we could do, and if Bengtsson wanted to go in and collaborate with Stockholm City and the organisers. He thought about it, but as he was very busy at the time with a booming live entertainment scene in Sweden and had a heavy workload already. He also realised that handling the Beatles shows now that they were so immensely popular and attracted huge crowds wherever they went, a lot of money had to be spent on hiring security staff. It cost a lot of money and many employees to handle such an event.

Brian Epstein approached Bengtsson many times over, being very concerned about how to solve the issue. In the end, Bengtsson received a compensation of 75,000 SEK (around one million SEK in 2024 or £ 73,500 or $ 93,835 or € 85,884) for the Beatles coming to Sweden in 1964, despite the fact that it was not under his contract. Bengtsson was very happy with that settlement.

Poster for the concerts at Johanneshov, Stockholm in 1964

Beng-Åke Bengtsson sold his Telstar company to EMA in 1970, who continued business as EMA Telstar. Bengtsson drew upon his experiences from the business of arranging concert tours to become the tour manager for many popular Swedish acts in the seventies.

The booklet “Jubileumsboken” has text in Swedish only and also contains newspaper clippings from the various Telstar tours of the sixties. It can be ordered from the Swedish Beatles fan club “Beatles Information Center” at Beatlesnytt.se, where you can also get a publication all about The Beatles in Gothenburg in 1963.