The Night of the Beatles Foot (1984)

 

The Night of the Beatles Foot

By Richard Harris

The Evening Post (Nottingham, UK)

December 19, 1984

    How I envy all these people with memories of the day they met Paul McCartney. The lucky few who shook John Lennon by the hand or got a friendly wave from Ringo Starr.  Me? The best I got was a quick glimpse of George Harrison's naked left foot.

     It seems we all have our memories of the day the Beatles came to town. We've been reliving some of them in the columns of The Post these past few days. What amazes me is how many actually managed to meet the Fab Four.

     The closest I got was behind 1000 screaming teenage girls who defied a bitterly cold winter's night to catch a glimpse of their idols, who were clowning around behind the lace curtains of a third-floor window.

     After all this time, I can't even remember why I was there. I wasn't even a Beatles fan then. When I turned up on the night, the four mop heads played at the local Odeon. They shared the bill with Gerry and the Pacemakers. I recall he brought the first half to a close with "You'll Never Walk Alone" in the days before it became a football anthem.  The second half started with one Tommy. Quickly. I wonder, what, if anything, ever happened to him?  He sang a song called "I'll Never Get Over You" to an audience that was already becoming breathless in anticipation. It's funny how you remember such useless details so clearly after so long. 

    And then the Beatles came on stage, in those ridiculous little gray suits with the twee collars. There was a good deal of screaming, cheering, whistling, and shouting, and probably somewhere in the distance, the lads were belting out "Twist and Shout", although I couldn't be sure it was, as they say, something of an experience. 

    But as a concert, it was a dead loss, because apart from a far-off pounding which rocked the floor and up through the seats. You couldn't hear a thing except the screaming of the fans.

     But you might be asking, 'What about George Harrison's bare foot?' Oh, yes!  It was afterwards, when in a chanting fever-pitch crowd outside the cinema, we were spilling over the road and onto the flower beds in the center of the town. All eyes were on a tiny third-floor window where an electric light burned brightly. Everyone assumed it was their dressing room. It could have been the chief projectionist's office, but what the heck.

     We stood there for ages. The girls were getting more and more frenzied, then the foot, it appeared, shoeless and sockless, out of the window from behind the curtain, twisting this way and that, as if waving to the crowd.

     Now I, not being a Beatles aficionado at that time, was singularly unable, at a distance of 150 yards, to tell the foot of a Beatles from the foot of an ice cream lady or an usherette. But the fans were in no doubt. "Look a foot," I muttered, not realizing the significance of the discovery. 

    And then the cry went up. "It's George! " they yelled. "George! George! George!" They chanted, for he was, in those days, the pinup of the four. It was a moment to savor.

     And when the time comes for me to bounce my grandchildren on my knee and tell them about the time I nearly met the Beatles. 

Well a barefoot was better than nothing, wasn't it.