Fab Four Mania!

 Fab Four Mania!

By Judy Phillips

The North Wales Weekly News

June 18, 1992

    Backstage in the Beatles dressing room on a hot August night, heartthrob Paul McCartney fixed me with a melting gaze and asked: "Me, keks are killing me. Do you mind if I take them off, luv?" 

     His tight trousers, soaked in perspiration, were proving slightly uncomfortable, to say the least, as he sat squirming in his seat. So while I discreetly turned my back at his request, he stripped off the offending pants and finished the interview with a towel wrapped around his waist. 

    Nearly 30 years ago, Llandudno became the center of the universe for hordes of Fab Four fans. A letter from a French man named Bruno Dupont asking if the Weekly News had any archive materials on the legendary group's five days topping the bill at the resort's old Odeon Theater, sent me off a nostalgia trip this week.

     As a young, fledgling reporter who wrote the paper's weekly pop music column and news that the Beatles were coming to town offered me the chance of one of the first interviews with the group, who were later to take the world by storm.

     Each of the five shows at the 2000-seat theater in August 1963 was a sell-out, their first hit record. "Love Me Do: had already launched them on the road to fame. Now, although their glory days were still to come, they had already built up quite an army of fans.

     A call to their manager, Brian Epstein, promised me a front row seat for the opening night of the show and an interview with The Beatles before they went on stage. So with notebook clutched in sweaty palm, I turned up at the theater in the late afternoon only to be told the group had been delayed because their old van had broken down near Abergele!

     It meant they arrived with barely enough time to do a soundcheck before they were due on stage. Still, I was promised by the road manager that I could see them after the show.

     Outside, hundreds of fans had been queuing for an hour or more to get in, and when the doors opened, they erupted into the auditorium. Already, the hysteria was building up, and as the curtains parted to reveal the group in their smart silk suits and pudding basin haircuts.  A girl sitting a few seats away from me kneeled over in a dead faint and was carried out by St John Ambulance first aid.

     As the hour-long spot progressed, the screaming rose to a crescendo until John and Paul's voices as they sang were virtually drowned out, and the floor shook as girls danced in the aisles in wild abandon.

     All too soon, it seemed the spotlight dimmed and they were gone, leaving some girls weeping, heartbroken in each other's arms. Such was their sense of loss. It was my cue to slip quietly away through a side door and backstage to the star dressing room.

     Knees knocking slightly, I knocked tentatively, and the door was opened by a sardonic John Lennon with a "What do you want, luv?" A breathless explanation of who I was, a flash on my press card, and I was inside to be confronted by four very hot and exhausted young men. They answered my questions with civility, but I could see Paul McCartney, although the most loquacious of the four was obviously uncomfortable until he stripped off his pants. 

     All too soon, my time was up, and I was ushered out by a minder into the balmy evening air past a milling mob of girls waiting at the stage door.