Mama Beatle Says Lives Threatened (1980)

 'Mama Beatle' Says Lives Threatened

By Roger Kaye

Fort- Worth Star Telegram

December 9, 1980 

    "John Lennon and the Beatles lived in fear for their lives during their 1964 and '65 tours of North America,  and especially, were fearful of making a 1964 stopover in Dallas", says Ruby Hickman. As an executive with the airline that provided the charter plane for those tours, Ms Hickman of Fort Worth accompanied Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Sara, and George Harrison on those tours, and she vividly recalls the concern the four Beatles had for their safety. 

    The slaying of Lennon in New York Monday night painfully reminded Ms. Hickman of those tumultuous mid-60s days when death threats, bomb scares, and other threats of harm seemingly awaited the Beatles wherever they went.

    But never were the Beatles more concerned than when they went to Dallas to play a show at what was then known as Dallas Memorial Stadium. "We went to Dallas less than a year after President Kennedy had been killed. There, with all the threats they had gotten everywhere else, which made them literally live in fear of their own lives, they were frightened. 

    "They were frightened the whole tour about going into Dallas", Ms. Hickman said. The Texas trip wasn't without incident. Along with the usual bomb threat, one overzealous Beatle fan managed to jump on Ringo Starr in a hotel elevator, pulling out a big chunk of his hair and bloodying his scalp.

     "But there were murders and bomb threats everywhere we went," Ms Hickman added. "It was particularly frightening in Houston in 1965 when we couldn't get out of the airplane on the runway. A mob overpowered the police and packed symmetrically around the plane, from which no one was able to exit." The Beatles finally managed to escape in a catering truck, but Ms. Hickman recalls that the truck was bombarded by rocks, bottles, and shoes. "The Beatles lay flat on the floor through the whole thing," She said. "What they went through is impossible to describe, but they aroused emotions ranging from adulation to murder."

     As a result of what they witnessed a decade and a half ago, Ms Hickman, who was dubbed as the "Mama Beatle" by the media in 1964, wasn't that surprised to hear about Monday's tragedy in New York. "I'm still in a state of shock. I'm stunned, but it's almost something I expected and dreaded, although these years, because of the way I saw them live in fear," she said.  "And it wasn't just the Beatles, it was everybody on those tours. We all feared something might happen because all of the crackpots in the world at the time."

    "It was hard for me to understand why anybody would want to kill them, but professional security people emphasized to me over and over that there were people out there who would do in just do it, just to gain notoriety. And now it has happened."

     The Beatles' final performance was at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966. In retrospect, Ms Hickman wonders how the Beatles managed to tour as long as they did. "There were just 1000s and 1000s of people. Wherever they went, they were prisoners of their adulation, and the moms would become hysterical. Someone easily could have been hit by rocks and hurt seriously. We had to sneak them around in ambulances, armored trucks, and any other way we could in order to protect them. It was such an unreal life, and I really admire Lennon for stepping away from it all and breaking the group up in 1970."