Getting to the Beatles

I found this article on a tumblr blog called "Good time music."   It is a pretty neat blog in that it posts a variety of scans from Teen magazines from the 1960's.   Someone named Beth I guess owns a bunch of these, scans them, fixes them up and allows "Good time music" to post them.   So check it out if you are interested in that sort of thing.   It isn't just Beatles, but just a variety of stuff from the 1960's Teen magazines.

This article came form the February 1967 issue of Teen Life magazine.  It from a column in the magazine known as "Teens take over."   These teens, Peggy and Kathy write about when they made a piece of artwork for the Beatles during the 1966 North American tour and Peggy got to go backstage and meet the Beatles in their dress room.    And Kathy.....poor Kathy.....she had to go to her sister's wedding rehearsal!   Oh how terrible!    She missed out on meeting the Beatles for a wedding rehearsal!   I bet she never let her sister live that one down, especially if the marriage didn't last!  Kathy really should have blown off the rehearsal (her sister would have gotten over it eventually) and met the Fab 4 with her friend.   I bet she would have if she had known that the Beatles would never tour again.

Getting to the Beatles

By Pegg Scheinman and Kathy Callison (Seattle, Washington)

Written for Teen Life magazine Feb. 1967

To meet the Beatles is impossible – or is it?  Many fans have tried and failed, but we were determined to succeed!   We decided we wanted to give them something of beauty rather than a spectacular display of emotion.  Peggy had learned how to make stained-glass windows at camp in California, so we thought it would be an original idea to give the Beatles an abstract portrait of themselves in stained glass with Seattle’s Space Needle restaurant in the background.

We started the project on August 18, 1966 – a week before the Beatles were due in town for their concerts at the Coliseum.  The first night we spent hours searching out pictures of them in fan magazines and drawing our impressions of their faces.  We put the last touches on the Space Needle sketch and fell into bed.

The next day we went to our neighborhood hardware store and bought a single piece of clear glass –15” by 33”.  Then we bought strips of lead and several tubes of glue.  We placed the glass on top on our drawing and glued the lead strips on the glass to follow the lines of the drawing.  After the laborious task of scraping off excess glue the day after, we began to stain the glass with assorted colors of special stain.  We used twelve different coloring including purple, brown, orange, green and yellow.

The next stage was getting a frame for the picture.  We went to the man who makes frames for some of the most famous artists in the Northwest and he agreed to make a frame of gold molding.

Our gift was completed – now HOW were we going to get it to the Beatles?  We talked with Egan Rank, who handled the Beatles for Northwest releasing, and he agreed to have our picture delivered to the boys along with a note from us asking if we could meet them.  I  (Kathy) went along to the 3 pm performance, and Peggy attended the 8pm show because I had to attend my sister’s wedding rehearsal.  We then talked to Mr. Rank.   He told us that the Beatles were very impressed with our window but it would be impossible to meet them.

On hear this news, I (Peggy)  was even more determined that I was going to meet them, and began to concoct a plot to meet the quartet.  I got to the Coliseum an hour before the show and tried to open several basement doors which appeared to lead to a maze of corridors beneath the Coliseum -- but as I am not a skilled UNCLE agent, I couldn’t break the locks.  I continued circling the place and talking to policemen.

A quarter of an hour before the second show, now a little desperate, I went over to a police sergeant.  Luckily he said that he had seen my photograph in the local paper and realized we had gone to a lot of work to try to meet the Beatles.  He told me to wait a minute, disappeared backstage and came back and said, “Follow me.”   I could hardly believe it!

He led me to a corridor outside their dressing room, and told me I could snap a few pictures as they went by to the stage.  But a few minutes later Paul McCartney came into the waiting area, shook hands with me and posed for several pictures!  And as if that weren’t exciting enough, their road manager invited me to come into the boys’ dressing room while they were taping radio broadcasts!  And there I sat with all of them for forty minutes!  They were all very nice to me and let me take as many pictures as I wanted.

I was amazed how small in stature the Beatles were.  They also looked very pale and thin.  I asked Paul if they were bored.  “No,” he said, “but we are all very tired.”

All too soon the time was up and I had to leave as the boys were getting ready for the next show.  I went out front to see the performance, which was wonderful, and on my way out a policeman I had talked to earlier came up and asked me if I’d seen the Beatles.  He didn’t believe me when I said I had.  Then I showed him the pictures I’d taken with my Polaroid camera and he was really surprised.  So was my mom!  My only regret is that Kathy was unable to share the victory of our project.  She worked so hard with me.  Oh well, perhaps next time….