The Beatles and Me On Tour by Ivor Davis

Author:Ivor Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2014-07-16T17:30:52+00:00

11: TALKIN’ ‘BOUT GIRLS

“We tried to make sure…we couldn’t always be sure. But there was a definite no-no involved in underage kids. Hey, listen, we didn’t have to worry. There were plenty of over-sixteen-year-olds.”—Paul McCartney

The Beatles were fast learners, and they soon realized it was best that they stuck to their carefully cultivated image of lovable, almost innocent, comic rubes at large in the U.S. of A., when, of course, it was the American audiences who were the real innocents.

In the early sixties, the Fab Four had performed in places like the Indra (which doubled as a strip club) and the Kaiserkeller in Hamburg’s notorious red-light district, neighborhoods crowded with hookers, transvestites and controlled by local gangsters—a wild west compared to the nightlife of Liverpool. They played long and arduous gigs, once for ninety-eight consecutive nights, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., fueled by uppers.

At the conclusion of these music marathons, rather than return to their rented, primitive living quarters in the back of a local flea-ridden movie house, they often sought out the company of the local ladies of the night for some warmth and comfort.

There was very little their eyes hadn’t already seen or their bodies experienced by the time they hit the American shores. And, except for John, they were unattached and, likely, the most highly desired eligible bachelors on the planet.

Despite America’s puritanical backbone, wherever the Beatles went there were legions of women of every stripe willing to oblige the boys’ every desire. From San Francisco to New York, innumerable teenage girls and young women buzzed around the band like flies around a sweaty stallion.

It was not uncommon for the younger girls to recruit their mothers to help them accomplish their mission—and even the mothers were not above offering their favors to anyone they perceived might have influence in getting their kids a private audience with the Liverpool quartet.

Girls jammed hotel lobbies zeroing in on anyone who had an English accent. One woman, hearing me speak, brazenly cornered me as I booked into Seattle’s Edgewater Inn on the third day of the tour. There was no time for beating about the bush. “I need to meet the Beatles,” she said to me. “I just want to make my daughter happy. What can you do for me? What can I do to make you happy?” For once, words failed me.

Normally upstanding citizens were prepared to engage in any number of personal indignities if it would help their cause. One embarrassed mother was reduced to screaming for help after getting stuck in a hotel’s heating ducts in a misguided attempt to squeeze her way through to where she imagined the Beatles’ rooms might be.

Hotel security had to summon the fire department to extricate her. As she was being escorted to the front door, she still insisted she wanted to meet the Beatles and get their autographs.

After that mishap, the Beatles management made it a custom to call ahead and insist security do mandatory pre-searches. Yet intrepid fans still found a way to hide out—ready to pounce should a real flesh-and-blood Beatle come into range.

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