Monday, July 30, 2012
Come see me at the Fest!
I just got my tickets for the Fest for Beatle Fans in Chicago in the mail. I am super-excited about going this year. In part because I haven't gotten out of town all summer and I am just generally excited to be going somewhere. But also because I know that this is going to be a great Fest!
I have been asked to be on a panel of women Beatle writers at the Fest. I will be with Susan Ryan, Tina Kukla, Kit O'Toole, and Jude Kessler to discuss the women's point of view of the Beatles. I am can't even begin to tell you how excited I am! Speaking at a Beatles convention has always been a dream of mine. Now, I personally do not think of myself as a writer. I just type of stuff that I find on this blog. I have dreams of writing a Beatles book, but I can't afford to publish a book at this point in my life. But hey....they asked me to be on this panel to talk about the Beatles, so why not? The panel will be at 7:45pm on Saturday in the forum room. If you are a reader of this blog, I would LOVE to see you there. I personally will be talking about the blog, because that is what I do. I thought it would be super-fun to get together with people who are viewers of the blog and get a photo taken.
But even if you don't make it to the panel, and are going to be at the Fest, I would love to talk to you. That is why I am putting up a current photo of myself so everyone can see what I look like (Yikes!). I was going to put up a photo of myself at the Fest last summer, but (excuse me while I brag) I have lost 61 pounds since then and look different. So here I am a few weeks at at the Muny in my hometown area of St. Louis Missouri.
I also am working on putting together a costume for the first time to wear on Friday night. It is something that has to do with this blog (and no I am not dressing up like Lizzie Bravo, although that isn't a bad thought). I will post photos after the fact. I am keeping it a secret right now.
Hope to see you all at the Fest in Chicago in a few weeks!
All you need is love,
Sara S.
Movie Premiere
John and Yoko rush by fans who were trying to get a glimpse of them at the Premiere of the Yellow Submarine movie in 1968.
Los Angeles
Think the kid in the background is happy to be close to the Beatles or just happy to be getting a photo taken?
Let John and Yoko stay in the USA
In recently reading through fan magazines that I have obtained from the early and mid 1970's, I am reminded of the fact that Beatle fans worked very hard for John Lennon to stay in the U.S.A. Each fanzine has addresses and petitions to send in for John. It is easy after the fact to forget that it was John's fans that really did all that they could for John to get his green card. I am not sure how much help it really gave John, but I'd like to think that it was maybe that little extra to help him win his case.
Here is a story written by Barbara Clark for "McCartney Lovers and Friends" from January 1973 from when she and her friends hung around during one of John's immigration hearings in April 1972.
So I thought I would write about last April 18, 1972, when
we went to see John at court. We started
off at 7am for the city, but heavy traffic, the car getting sick on the way
(the car stalled out while turning a corner, and a taxi pushed us down the
road, where we had to stop for over ½ hour) and the location of the 20 West
Broadway (Immigration Office) being unfindable, slowed us down a bit and we
didn’t arrive there until 9:30.
Having missed John by a few minutes, we were killing each
other, and then noticed that a crowd had already assembled (waiting for him to
come out). There were photographers,
news reporters, groupies, teenyboppers and assorted people who didn’t know what
the hell was going on, but stayed anyway just to see what was happening. Three long hours passed, and finally John
made his way out. Seeing the reporters,
he threw his arm around Yoko, and seemed to dread the upcoming serge. They literally jumped on him. He spent about 15 minutes answering questions about
the court proceedings. Answering some questions
on the lighter side, he said that in kindergarten and all through school,
nobody liked his face, and he seemed to always be in real bad trouble because
of it. He answered a girl’s question
about his LP that was going to come out in a few weeks (He was really cheerful
about that). He finally pushed his way
through the mob and smiled when he looked our way. “Thomas” opened the car door and they were
off. Tommy, Marie, Sagi and I were at
Apple on a hunch, when Geraldo Rivera from ABC news arrived along with some
cameramen. (They went inside to
interview John, and it was on TV that night).
Marie suggested that he ask John to do a concert for the children of
Willowbrook as George had done for Bangladesh.
He said that he would (Well it
worked!) He seemed to be rather snotty,
he thinks he’s a real celebrity you know.
We waited and waited and waited.
Soon after, two true blue Beatle fans (guys) from New Jersey
arrived. They came to give John a
letter. It was about Yellow Matter
Custard. They kept asking Marie if she
knew where John lived so that they could visit him and send him letters (“How
should I know?” she said innocently).
Eventually, we saw Tom (his driver) come out from Apple, and John came
out about five minutes later. The two
guys managed to speak to him and asked him about Yellow Matter Custard. John told them to contact Dave Morrell (He’s
about 17 ad calls himself the #1 Beatle fan because he has every LP and bootleg
going and about $1000.00 worth of Beatle collections.) Anyway, this Dave bloke was on the radio once
bragging about his bootlegs, and John was interested in Yellow Matter Custard
so he got to meet John and give him a copy (Oh yeah, he was also at Apple earlier
in the dya). Anyway he walked towards
Marie’s car looked in and then saw Tom behind us and got into the blue station
wagon. They took off and when we decided
to go our way we found that they were going in the same direction. We almost went through a red light, got hit
by a bus, and then found John in front of us.
His lane was going too slow and we didn’t know what to do. A cab driver yelled out for us to pass him
and Tommy yelled back, “but you don’t understand the situation!” Marie, having one of her nervous attacks,
kept saying “let’s take a vote on this.”
We had to pass, but I did look back and saw John resting his arm and
hanging out the window smiling at all the people passing by.
Fan club chat
Remember that episode of the Simpson's where Marge gets a response from Ringo 20 years after writing the letter? That is what seeing this bag full of fan mail makes me think of. How many of you wrote a fan letter to the Beatles? Did you get a response?
I guess the Lord must be in New York City
Found these on tumblr recently. I am not sure who took these photos. If anyone knows, I will be glad to give credit.
Not upset about the Beatles?
The caption here says that Ringo and Paul are trying to comfort Jaquelin Bermin who was nervous about meeting Princess Margaret. Yeah....put two Beatles around here. That will calm a young girl in 1964.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
The first day the Pats met George
Here is a story from the first issue of "McCartney Lovers and Friends" fanzine (getting my money's worth out of this one!). It is a story we all know and love about when George Harrison fan club president, Pat Kinzer met George in 1969. However there is a twist this time. Instead of hearing Pat's side of the story (which you can read in her wonderful book), this is her friend, Pat Simmon's memory of the day. And....it isn't the story of the day where they met George at his door and took all of the photos and had him sign all sorts of things. Instead it is about when they first met him. Nice little story.....
The year was 1968, Jul and August to be exact. About six months prior to this, Pat Kinzer
had mumbled on about “wouldn’t it be great to go to England” and I’d mumbled
back a dreamy “yeah, sure would.” So we
decided to make the dream become reality, threw our money in the bank, rounded
up a few other friends and pen pals, namely Joy Kilbane of Cleveland, Nancy
Scharfe of Chicago, and Sandy Meckes of Pennsylvania/Dutch land. I’m sure those of you who’ve been to England
can remember back to when you went for the very first time, and how you got off
the plane, looked around, and through that this couldn’t be happening to YOU,
because it only happens to those who wrote for “Datebook” or other such
gear-fab magazines. Even when you’re in the
bus on the way to the Pan Am terminal somewhere in the sticks outside of
London, you keep looking out the window at the cars on the freeway caught in
early-morning rush hour, and you keep thinking, “aren’t dreams weird, this HAS
to be Cleveland, but everybody keeps driving on the wrong side of the road!” I remember when we finally got to our hotel,
which was around Paddington, a none-too-swift area of London; we had to sit in
the lobby for about ten years before our room was ready, and our luggage the five
of us took up practically the entire lobby.
Finally, suffering through the time change, we stumbled our
way to the underground and tried to get familiar with how to figure out the
different lines, and we succeeded in winding up back at Paddington three times
in a row. Well, what can you except from
you first day in London with no sleep and the hour being about 7:30 am? After getting chased all over the place by
the St. John’s Wood police, who seem to get some kind of evil glee out of threatening
poor gullible Americans that they’d throw them in jail if they didn’t evacuate
the vicinity of Cavendish Avenue, believing them and running off to Piccadilly
where you also believed a guy in a record store who said an album cost around
five pounds, forgetting that five pounds is not the same as five dollars, going
down Carnaby Street in total fascination, visiting the Beatles Monthly offices,
and doing hours of souvenir hunting, we returned to our hotel rooms, our feet
burning so much we had to crawl around on hands and knees. But to skep all the rest of the intelligent
little happenings that went on the first few days of your fist big vacation
without mommy and daddy, we’ll go on to That Day I Never Thought Would Happen,
when we first talked to George.
By this time, in early August, we were staying in a hotel in
Esher. Pat, Sandy and I decided to roam
around Esher for reasons obvious while Joy and Nancy checked out Weybridge,
also for reasons obvious. We found
George’s private drive by asking a girl on a bicycle if she knew where you-know
lived, and she very tolerantly led us to the gates beyond which there was a
golf course, and somewhere beyond that the long driveway that led up to George’s
gates. I think I was in a state of shock
that whole walk up the private road, which was so narrow, it was more like a
bicycle path, and all gravel. You keep
thinking, he lives around here somewhere, but no, you’ll never see him, never
talk to him, because that just happens to other people, not you.
The walk seemed to take forever. Just when we thought we’d never find the place,
we came across the end of the driveway, looked down in it, and sure enough,
there was the famous high wall that surrounded his grounds. And you thought, naw, this isn’t for real,
you’re still dreaming. Then we were
standing in front of his house, the three of us trying to get up the guts to
ring the doorbell. I think it was Sandy
who finally did, after considerable shaking.
The feeling I got when that door began to slowly open, but no, it was
Margaret, who from gear-fab mags, we all knew, was George’s housekeeper. Pat, who as most everyone knows, I think, had
George’s club for many, many years, and also regularly wrote to 95% of George’s
relatives. George knew of her club
because his mother always mentioned it and always got him to sign stuff for
contest prizes and so forth. Anyway, she
had sent a registered letter of warning to him a few days before we left for
England, saying she was coming over with four people on such and such a date,
and would it be all right if we came by for talk on such and such a date,
giving the poor man enough notice to evacuate the country. Margaret said she remembered signing for the
letter and that George was aware that we were coming but as it was, he wasn’t
home – he was in London. She said if we
came back a little while later that day, he’d probably be back and we could
talk to him then. We talked to her for
quite a while, she was so nice, and then in a trance, walked back to beautiful
uptown Esher. Was it really going to
happen after all? Were we really going to
get to see him? After all these years of
wishing, hoping, dreaming, planning, was it really going to happen?
Somehow the time managed to go by that day. How, I couldn’t tell you. Later on in the afternoon, Pat, Sandy and I
stumbled back up Claremont road again.
There was a huge cloud of dust way down the road, and I was beginning to
think that perhaps we were in Esher after all, or even in Cleveland, maybe it
was Africa! But it wasn’t a mirage, and
as the cause for all the flying gravel came closer, we saw it was a dark green
Mini. Sandy said, “That’s George in that
car!” Pat looked skeptical. I said, “Naw, couldn’t be!” The car came closer, and the gravel flew
faster. Pat went white, and said, “It IS
George!” I said, “Naw, couldn’t be.” The car flew past us, screeched on the
brakes, backed up, and the door flew open, and oh God, it WAS George. The feeling…how can you describe it? Long before you actually meet him, you keep
reading in magazines and things how silly some girls acted, and you KNEW that
if it ever happened to you, that YOU would never act that way. So, our initial, simultaneous reaction, “Duh…it’s
him!” He looked so crammed in that
little Mini that he couldn’t sit up straight.
When we later told Joy and Nancy what had happened that day, we tried to
tell them what he was wearing and could only remember bright orange trousers
and none of us could remember what color of shirt he had on. He looked at each one of us and said, “One of
you….” Then he pointed to Pat, at which
point she completely lost whatever color she had left, which by this time wasn’t
much. He said, “You’re Pat, aren’t you?” Apparently Margaret had told him we’d been by
before and told him what Pat looked like.
He shook her hand, and meanwhile Sandy brilliantly exclaimed, ‘You
remember me George, I’m the one who dropped my rheumatism pills all over Paul’s
driveway the other day!” (Note: Sandy unfortunately had rheumatoid arthritis
and had to take pills for it, and when she, Nancy and Joy were waiting by Paul’s
a few days before this, George had come out of his house and gotten into a
taxi, which was right when Sandy’s pills fell out of her purse and scattered
all over the driveway, while George looked on sympathetically and maybe a bit
bewildered.) George looked at Sandy as
though to say, “Yeah ok kid, whatever you say…”
He said he’d talk to us, but he was “in bit of a roosh” right now, as he
was on his way back to London, but then asked us if we planned to stay in Esher
for a few days. We told him we did, and
he said we could come back the next day around 1:00 if we’d like. While we nodded like robots being fed
computerized instructions on what to do next, he zoomed (literally) off again.
If we thought passing just a few hours was hard before,
passing a whole 24 hour day had to be next to impossible. We even resorted to trying a séance,
Pennsylvania/Dutch style with Sandy saying, “Make out the lights!” and “whoever
is within our presence, make the shoe glow!”
and similar things. Funniest séance
I’d ever been in, but we had to do something to pass the time….
Up close and personal
When they told the fans at Wimbledon that they would have a chance to get "up close and personal with the Beatles" this fan really took it literally.
Robyn meets half of the Beatles
Robyn Flans was a writer from Modern Drummer magazine, but she also is a Beatles fan. She was one of those girls met Paul in L.A. during the "dirty weekend." She also interviewed Ringo in 1980 and 1996 for Modern Drummer magazine. No word if she ever met John or George....
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
August 1972
This is another article (I have several to type up) from the issue #1 (January 1973) of the fanzine by Marie Lacey called "McCartney Lovers and Friends." It is about some fans who meet up with Paul during his Wings European tour in 1972 and then right after the tour at his home. What I find the most interesting is this one sentence about how one of the girls was a "baddie" and was known as the girl who threw chocolate mousse in Paul's face. What? What happened there? Why did she do that? This story was written by Kris Martell who lived in New York City but was staying in London at the time.
McCartney’s Lovers and Friends
January 1973
Written by Kris Martell (NYC)
After a lot of disappoints and much confusion, Pat Miller
and I were off to see Wings in Holland.
We were not sure if we had tickets or not. We had called Holland a few times and got
different answers every time. We wanted
to go to all of the concerts in Holland, that being Breda, Groningen, Rotterdam
and Amsterdam. After several calls to
the Dutch Tourist Office, it seemed that Paul kept changing his mind and
cancelled out on a few (Breda included).
With the little money we had, it seemed that Amsterdam would be all we
would make. So, on august 19, Pat and I
were lucky and got a KLM flight (stand-by) to Amsterdam. We were really happy that we got that flight
because if we didn’t, a boat that left that midnight was the last resort and
that didn’t please us too much!
Everything was so sudden that I left with just a knap-sack on my back
and we were off. We were in the
Netherlands by 9:30p.m. and headed for the Dutch Information Center. They found Pat and I the cheapest dormitory
on Kriserstraat, right on the docks (it was beautiful there) for only $2.00 per
night, breakfast included. The next day,
we must have walked all over the city, every place from Ann Frank’s house to
Rembrandt’s. But, our first stop was the
Concert Gerbou. Stopping to ask some of
the natives for directions, we came upon a group of young people who told us
the concert was the night before. Pat
and I just couldn’t get over it, we believe it so much. He had changed dates so many times right and
left, why not Amsterdam as well? It wasn’t
until we had our tickets in our hands that we were happy. You might say we floated across the city for
7 ½ hours. We looked all over for his
hotel, including Dam Square because we thought that would be the most likely
place, but no such luck. So we walked
around the canals, took a boat trip and just enjoyed the beautiful city. The concert was at 7pm on August 20th
so we got to the Concert Gerbou at 5:30 pm.
Around 6, we saw a little white bus coming towards us to Paul, Linda and
the rest of the group, plus Mary, Heather and Stella. Pat and I were the only visible fans
around. A few technicians were scattered
nearby as they were using the Stones Mobile.
Paul came out in his white jacket holding Stella. Mary was holding onto Denny Laine, and
Heather to Linda. He came right towards
us, gave a big smile and said “hello girls” to which Linda turned around and
smiled. By this time, we were both
getting a bit spastic! Pat was totally
shocked because her relationship with Paul wasn’t exactly the best (She was one
of the “baddies” known for throwing a chocolate mousse in Paul’s face). Was just so happy because he made it just so
personal talking to us. Well after the
concert they all came out to listen to the playbacks in the mobile. By this time a crowd had assembled but
nothing like what I had experienced in Frankfurt. He came out of the hall, giving the “thumbs
up” sign, smiling and wearing sunglasses.
The whole family went into the mobile after him. We could hear the playbacks from outside. One of my friends managed to get inside and
another of my friends followed. They
were two English girls that had been standing outside his home for all the
years that he has lived there. One of
them went over to Paul, who was sitting in a chair listening to the playbacks. She went over to him to say that she was not
going to hang around the house anymore.
Paul seemed very pleased, took her hand and said that it was for the
best. Linda shed a few tears as they
left. It was really a very touching
thing, the best way to end off the evening.
Paul must have been very happy, knowing that they had come this far to
see him, and then to get in his van and say something like that. Linda kept saying that she didn’t mind them
coming in after a concert like this and talking and they seemed pleased that
they had enjoyed themselves at the concert.
In 45 minutes the group came out and went into the white van. Everybody cheered and Paul gave the “thumbs
up” sign again. The notable bus was
absent. Pat and I got to the airport and
slept there for the night. That was some
experience. I’d never done it
before! But it was great fun and by this
time we were on Cloud 9. I didn’t
realize so many people sleep out at airports but half of the departure lounge
was full of people. I’ve got many
memories from that night including banging a vending machine at 3am (we were
hungry and had no money) then cleaning my feet in the bathroom and then trying
to sleep while some janitor vacuumed the airport floor. But the best memory was the Concert
Gerbou! We got to London the next day,
literally exhausted. I slept all day and felt a bit sick. At 9pm Alf from the Apple Offices came over
to our flat and stayed for two hours. He
had his white Rolls parked right in front of the apartment – wonder what the
neighbors thought!?! By the 23rd
I was still sick and sleeping. Pattie
went to the “Godfather” premiere with Neilson.
By the 25th (Friday) I was well recovered. We thought that Paul might be coming
home. The concert in Berlin was the
night before. I really had my doubts though;
we all thought he’d be going to Scotland for a rest. Besides myself and my two friends from L.A.,
there was Harllet Vdo from Germany, Karen from Kansas, Angela, Mirella from
Italy and two girls from Georgia that I had met two years ago. We spent a few hours at #9, when Rosie came
out and said that he’d be home “shortly.”
Food arrived, Martha was home, everything looked great! I still had my doubts from previous
experiences. He was scheduled to come
home between 6-7 pm. We waited all day
and never left, just to make sure. We
heard the phone ring and a few times we were so sure that it was Paul calling
saying he’d be home in a week or so and not then. Well at 8pm, the red Lamgerghini came around
the corner. (I still wonder how it got
to the airport to meet him). He got out
to open the gate and had on a beautiful yellow and green shirt with his
suspenders and tight black pants. He
said, “You know we really don’t like people hanging around the house.” My friend said, “Well, we just wanted to
welcome you home, Paul.” Paul said, “Yeah,
but we don’t like people hanging around the house.” My friend said “We saw you in concert and it
was really good.” At the time, Paul was down
on the ground unlocking the gate and he only half-heard what she said. HE
looked up and said, “What?” My friend
said, “We saw the show in Paris and it was great.” Paul said, “Oh thank you.” As he was closing the gate, she gave him a
letter from one of the English girls and he said, “Oh Ok.” And “Goodbye.” While this was going on, my other friend was
talking to Linda who was in the car. We
had gotten flowers for her. My friend
gave them to her and said, “These are for you.”
Linda looked a bit surprised and said, “oh.” Then my friend said “These are for Paris,
Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Montreux.” (I
had gone to Frankfurt and Amsterdam, she to Paris and Karen to Montreux). Linda took them and winked! So did Heather, who had Stella on her
lap. When they went in, we all left, except
for the two girls from Georgia. They
waited for Rosie, and walked her to the station. Rosie said Linda came in and said, “They’re
still out there.” But Paul wasn’t affected
by it at all. Rosie said that they had
been having some arguments and things were being thrown around. She asked us if Linda was really as rich as
the papers made her out to be. She just
couldn’t get over the fact that she was from such a well-to-do family. Rosie also mentioned that the only thing
Linda cooked for dinner was soup, some vegetables and sandwiches (all the
time).
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