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Tuesday, July 1, 2025

All About Beatles -- In Three Answers (1964)

 




All About Beatles -- In Three Answers (1964)
By Jan Mellow
The Plain Dealer
September 16, 1964

At a press conference yesterday at the Hotel Sheridan in Cleveland, one Beatle, John Lennon, had a few choice answers to the question. The answers went like this:

Q: What do you think of adult attempts to psychoanalyze the kids who like you?
 A: They have nothing better to do.
 Q: Are the answers that come up right? 
 A: No, wrong.
 Q: How do you personally explain Beatlemania?
 A: We don't even try.

    There was no explaining the controlled hysteria of the press conference, one of two in the afternoon, or the determination of the youngsters who managed to get past the police at the hotel.

     The guards were at every exit, amazingly good-natured and tolerant, but firm against the teenagers whose only desire was to get close to the Beatles.  List of contest winners and accredited representatives of newspapers, from dailies to high school sheets referred to frequently, and many a heart was temporarily broken because the name was missing. 
    
    Police had to laugh at some of the tricks the girls tried to use to get into the hotel. One said she had an uncle registered. Could not remember his name or room number. Another fainted on the sidewalk, saying moments later, she thought there was a first aid station in the hotel. 

    A boy with fuzzy cheeks insisted he had reservations for cocktails at the Kong Tiki. An 11-year-old girl offered a stolen key to a $ 35-a-day suite. A boy tried to hide in a packing crate being trucked in.

     Security was so good throughout the day that Chief Richard R Wagner, in civilian clothes, thought he might not be allowed in the parlor floor where the Beatles stayed. Alan J Lowe, Managing Director of the hotel, had scheduled the Beatles for the presidential suite.  At the last minute, Chief Wagner said too many people knew where they were going to be and asked that they be moved, preferably to the floor with the press conference.

     Throughout the afternoon, as a group of girls outside the hotel grew, some jokesters would wave out of the sixth-floor window, and the girls would scream, thinking that was where the Beatles were. Finally, at about 6:30pm and again, at seven, the Beatles finally opened a window of the parlor floor and waved. At those two points, the neat line of girls broke and spilled out from behind the fence of the quadrant, a public square allotted to them, and into the street. Police allowed them freedom until the Beatles' heads looked as if they wore Beatle wigs disappeared.

     Rush Hour was nothing like the problem that had been anticipated. Sidewalks were kept open at all times. Buses moved freely. Taxi cabs were under strict orders to travel only one mile an hour in the square had plenty of room. 

    The girls entertained passersby with their versions of an old football yell. "We like the Beatles and we couldn't be prouder. And if you can't hear us, we'll yell a little louder!" And they did in a crescendo that brought grins to the faces of the policemen. 

    The press conference was typical of  Beatle confusion, noise, and jokes. Someone asked whether they ever thought of the past while standing before screaming audiences. Ringo Starr said, "No, that's only when you're dying."

     Asked, which was which? (Obviously by an adult), they broke into a chant: "Ringo, John, George Paul. Ringo, John, George Paul." That means John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney.

     "What is your educational background?" A woman asked.  "Lousy," a Beatle said. "Do you ever quarrel?"  "Yes," a Beatle said. "About what?" "Everything".

     Another one said, "Do you plan a trip to Mexico?"  "We never plan anything," Paul McCartney said, "It's planned for us." "How many rings do you wear?" "I wear four. I have 10," said Ringo Starr.

     Harrison drew pictures throughout the conference. "He always does that," Lennon said. "He makes cartoons of you journalists."

     Security for The Beatles was so good on their arrival and during the day that one of the young men complained. Asked what he thought of the Cleveland police. He said they were "very efficient. They went a little too far last night."  Harrison said the Beatles were taken by routes that bypassed the airport crowd and the hotel greeters.

     Chief Wagner, who took over a small ballroom as police headquarters, didn't care. It was costing the city something like $17,000 in police overtime to protect Beatles fans against themselves, and he meant to get his money's worth, if possible. 

    Lowe agreed. He wanted the Beatles to be comfortable and their fans happy, and for nothing to go wrong in the hotel. Six uniformed men were on guard at all times by the elevator on the parlor floor in the hallway leading to the Beatles' suite.

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