Monday, January 24, 2011

Encounter with Paul McCartney


This story was originally published in issue #42 (Winter 1984 issue) of The Write Thing magazine. It was written by Bonnie Skaggs of Sunnyvale, California.



Meeting the Man (no average person)

It was August 31 (1983), and Barb Beden and I had just returned to London from Liverpool on the train. It was about 3:30pm when we arrived at the hotel, where we quickly changed and freshened up, an d"grabbed the bus in seconds flat" and arrived at Air Studios at 4:30pm.


We really didn't have much hope of seeing Paul since it was late in the afternoon, and there were no other fans around. For some reason, we decided to walk to the corner. There were many people on the street, and we were watching the front door to the office building where it is located, when suddenly we saw the back of Paul's head bobbing up and down in front of us. (If we had looked to the right, we would have seen him walked up the side street coming toward us). We called his name a couple of times, and he finally turned around to see us, then we ran up to him, one of us on each side of him, and walked with him to the door. As we got to the door, Barb said, "Can I take you pictures with her?" Paul said, "sure" and came around to stand by me, and as he did he noticed my shirt, which said 'County of Merseyside' on the front. (I was really glad I had it on at that point). Paul said, "Merseyside" and I said, "Yeah we just got back from the MBC; it was fun!" He said, "Was it?" To which I replied "Yes." We were waiting for Barb to take the picture (she was having trouble getting it to meter and was hitting the camera saying, "I can't get it to meter (panic)"." Then Paul said, "Mersey Beatle....?" And I said, 'Convention," He immediately responded by saying "Oh, MBC!" (ha ha really funny guy). Barb took the picture and Paul said, "Got to go. I'm in a hurry," and he went inside. I was standing there wondering what I had said? MBC?? Oh, yes, if the pictures looks like we are touching arms, we are! I remember thinking "Oh he's touching my arm!" After Paul had gone inside, Barb and I were so excited we were jumping up and down. I looked the building and the guard game me the thumbs up sign. We ran down to 1-hour photo and dropped off the roll of film. We were both very glad to see the picture come out perfect! We ended up seeing Paul 7 times altogether. We also saw Linda and George Martin a couple of times, so we really felt very lucky on our first trip to England. Paul was always so nice every time we saw him, even when he was really in a hurry, he always said something before going inside or leaving. We have many wonderful memories that will last forever.

1 comment:

  1. Cute story - as perhaps you American would say - glad you had a fun time here.

    Vince.
    England.

    ReplyDelete