The Beatles had admitted their admiration for Brigitte Bardot and had requested that they meet her on the trip. However, the director of their French record label Odeon sent round a large box of chocolates on their first morning with the note, “Unfortunately, Brigitte Bardot is detained in Brazil. Let’s hope that these sweets will make up for her.” 

Vincent Mulchrone was to write in the Daily Mail, “If Paris and the Beatles are going to have an affair, it is getting off to a slow start. You can’t blame Paris. She was warm and inviting this morning. The Beatles were warm, but only because they were asleep, and stayed that way until three o’clock in the afternoon.

“Admittedly, George Harrison was astir early, but John Lennon and Paul McCartney slumbered on until frantic photographers formed them at lens point into the Champs-Elysees.

John and Paul shared a suite as they were committed to writing six new songs for their debut film in addition to a song each for Billy J. Kramer and Tommy Quickly. On the first night they had a piano brought into the suite and began work on the songs while George went out and visited the Club Eve.

The group appeared at the Olympia for twenty days with two, sometimes three, performance a day. (Jacques comments: “Around 40 concerts altogether”) .Their repertoire for the theatre was: From Me To You, Roll Over Beethoven, She Loves You, This Boy, I Want to Hold Your Hand, Boys, Twist And Shout and Long Tall Sally.

France was a completely different market from Britain, particularly as far as musical tastes were concerned. In addition, they didn’t release singles, but only issued albums and EPs – until 1967. Therefore, the Beatles had only had EPs issued by Odeon Records in France.

During the afternoon of Thursday 16 January the Beatles performed before an audience of students. The evening performance seemed to draw from French society and the audience was dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns. Celebrities attending included Johnny Hallyday, Francoise Hardy, Petula Clark and Richard Anthony. It was one of their toughest audiences and the Beatles didn’t seem to appeal to the French as much as they did to audiences in the rest of the world. During the show their amplification broke down on three different occasions and George voiced his opinion on stage that photographers had sabotaged the equipment.

Trini Lopez, who closed the first half of the show, had charmed the audience by speaking to them in French. The Beatles couldn’t speak the language and made little attempt to do so. However, at one point John said, “Je me lève á sept heures,’” which caused one woman in the front row to cry out, “How barbaric!” When the Beatles left the theatre there were two dozen police at the stage door, helping to hold back the mass of photographers.

After their cool reception the group returned to the George V Hotel. Years later, George Harrison was to comment, “The audience at the Olympia was nothing like any audience we’d had before. They were much older people wearing tuxedos, as though they’d come to see a film premier or watch a ballet. We were disappointed that there weren’t any of the nice French girls we’d heard so much about. They were all kept at home in those days, because of the strict Catholicism in France.”

The French critics were harsh in their reviews and Victor Mulchrome, writing in the Daily Mail, commented, “Beatlemania is still, like Britain’s entry into the Common Market, a problem the French prefer to put off for a while.” The French newspaper France Soir referred to the Beatles as ‘delinquents’ and ‘has-beens.’

When a BBC interviewer asked John “The French have not made up their minds about the Beatles. What do you think of them?” John answered, “Oh, we like the Beatles. They’re gear.”

On Sunday 19 January ORTF Radio recorded their show and on Wednesday 22 January an ORTF TV camera crew filmed their performance. (Jacques writes: “This is a bit confusing. ORTF was the French television at the time and the Radio was France Inter. But they were not really the sponsors and the Olympia was in partnership with the private Radio called Europe No.1 (now only called Europe 1). They had a weekly show called ‘Musicorama’ and they broadcast most of the concerts that took place in the Olympia. So the concert was mainly recorded by Europe No. 1. There are indeed parts of the concert in the archives of France Inter, but no complete performances. All the TV archives have completely disappeared and only a few seconds clip shot by Pathe and Gaumont newsreel is available and included in the ‘Beatles Anthology.’”)

On Tuesday 28 January, on their day off, John and George both flew to London. In the evening, George had dinner with Phil Spector and the Ronettes.

The two caught an early morning flight back to Paris on Wednesday 29 January, as they were due to record at the Pathe Marconi Studios. The Beatles then recorded two of their hit songs in German for the German branch of EMI, Electrola Gesellschaft. The instrumental music tracks were the original ones used for the English recordings, but the German lyrics had been hurriedly written by Camillo Felgen, from Luxembourg.

Felgen was to recall the EMI’s German producer Otto Demmlar had desperately flown Felgen to Paris and the George V Hotel to meet the Beatles, who had reluctantly agreed to make two German recordings. At the time Felgen was a programme director at Radio Luxembourg and had less than 24 hours to finalize the German lyrics and coach the Beatles phonetically to sing in German.

The numbers were the only songs the Beatles ever recorded in German.

George Martin, their recording manager, was to recall: “When they were appearing at the Olympia Theatre I went over to Paris and arranged to record them in the EMI studio there. They were to record German versions of ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’

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