Tony Blackburn on retirement: 'I know people who stopped too early – and didn’t last long'
"I was definitely more a Beatles person."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Tony Blackburn can’t be certain what he was doing on the night of Saturday 2 February 1963, but he reckons he'd have spent it as a member of a dance band performing at the Pavilion Ballrooms in Bournemouth. Then aged 20, the now legendary DJ was a singer and a guitarist in an outfit called the Jan Ralfini Orchestra. They were the purveyors of the kind of entertainment – the quickstep and the foxtrot – that unbeknown to them was about to be swept aside by a phenomenon erupting that very evening, some 300 miles to the north.
Nobody can put a precise date on the birth of Beatlemania, but a strong case can be made for this one – the opening night of the band’s first ever UK tour, as one of the acts supporting the teenage singing sensation Helen Shapiro, at the Gaumont Cinema in Bradford.
Popular though Shapiro was, it was the Beatles that concertgoers went wild for, as their single Please Please Me was shooting up the UK charts.
Bradford turns out to have played a surprisingly significant role in the Beatles’ story. As the 2025 UK City of Culture, now is the time to explore it, and Tony Blackburn is doing just that in Bradford, Brass and the Beatles, a documentary being aired as part of a Radio 2 Loves Brass season. It touches on the Beatles’ connections with the famous Black Dyke brass band, and has taken Blackburn back to those days, not least the one time he saw the Beatles in concert (the same year as their Bradford appearance), at the Winter Gardens in Bournemouth.
"It was terrific. I’d never seen anything like it. The place was packed out, the girls went mad, it was just a great evening. Not musically, because you couldn’t really hear them. I’m not even sure they were plugged in! But what they created was very special."
In those days, he explains, you were either a Beatles or a Rolling Stones person, "and I was definitely more a Beatles person. I’ve always loved melody and I just thought their songs were more melodic".
Blackburn will always be known as the first voice on Radio 1 when it launched in 1967, and he remains a BBC fixture with his Radio 2 shows Sounds of the '60s (Saturday) and Golden Hour (Sunday). Across his career, he’s met all the Beatles and likes to tell the story of the time he interviewed Paul McCartney and cheekily suggested that he owed him a share of his royalties, thanks to the number of times he’d played Beatles records on the radio. "He just laughed!"
Radio itself is another love that never dies. At 82, it seems remarkable that Blackburn still chooses to wake up every Saturday at 3am to travel from his Berkshire home into Broadcasting House in London, to present Sounds of the 60s live at 6am. "I was offered the chance to pre-record it, but I said no, I’d much rather come in and do it. As long as I can, I always will. With live radio, you get an immediate reaction from the listeners."
With his live touring show as well as his broadcasting, Blackburn’s energy levels are prodigious. A vegetarian since the age of five, he has mostly enjoyed excellent health, but last year he had a spell in hospital, which prompted his doctor to advise him to slow down a bit. His agreement was reluctant.
"I dread the idea of retiring. Getting up in the morning with nothing to do doesn’t appeal to me. I know a lot of people who retired too early, and they haven’t lasted long. You need something to keep your brain going." The 3am alarm call would appear to be just that.
The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here.
Check out our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
