Traveling with the Beatles (1964)

This story takes place in 1964 but the only photo I could find of Jim Stagg with the Beatles was from Memphis in 1966.

 Traveling with the Beatles

By Jim Stagg

Flip magazine 1964

Reprinted in With a Little Help From My Friends July 1982

     "Jim, how would you like to spend the next few weeks traveling with the Beatles?"  The speaker was Ken Draper, Program Director at KYW radio, and my immediate boss. Sitting across the room from him was Penny Bascom, the station's General Manager. Both are smiling, but I knew this was no joke. The last time I had seen those smiles was the day I was asked how I would like to walk 40 miles from downtown Akron, Ohio, to Cleveland to raise money for the March of Dimes. I still have a few tender spots on my feet to remind me that that was no joke.

     Before I could answer, Ken went on, "We've decided to send you on The Beatles American tour as a correspondent for The Group W (Westinghouse Broadcast that is) Stations.  Better do some shopping, you'll be leaving next week."  I now nodded, rather weakly, mumbled some historic words, like, "Why not?" and headed for the telephone to tell my wife, Valene, the news.

     As I left the room, the crazy thought kept running through my mind that there were probably 30,000,000  kids in the United States who would give anything to be in my shoes right now, and that I would be glad to give those shoes to any Cinderella who could fit into them.

     I had met the Beatles less than two months before, when I had flown to London with the winner of a KYW radio contest. The trip had lasted four days. One hour of that time had been spent with the Beatles. It had been one of the most hectic hours of my life as some 60 people pushed and shoved in a room the size of a rather small living room to get close enough for pictures and interviews with the Fab Four. 

    Paul McCartney and John Lennon had made special efforts to provide our contest winners and me with an interview and to accept some special gifts from their Cleveland fans. But we were never able to break through the crush of people to get within 10 feet of Ringo Starr and George Harrison, until their efficient press manager Derek Taylor literally shoved us into an adjoining room for pictures and brief introductions. I kept thinking at the time that I'd hate to have to go through this wild turmoil every day, and now I was about to do just that for a whole month. 

    The next week whizzed by in a blur of activity, shopping, packing, accepting messages from my listeners, to be delivered, I hoped, to the Beatles. Then I was on a jet headed for San Francisco. Somewhere on another jet headed in the same direction were four young Englishmen named John, George, Paul, and Ringo. I arrived in the Bay City well before the British party, and was on hand for the tumultuous welcome at the airport. It was a wild scene, and I caught only a fleeting glimpse of the guys with the hair in their eyes before they were whisked off to their hotel, leaving 1000s of screaming, hysterical fans behind. I climbed into the press corps limousine and sped back to the hotel to begin the busiest, most hectic, and most memorable month of my life.

     Several hours later, the first of the now-famed Beatles' American press conferences began. The Beatles were ushered into an unbelievably crowded room, amid the glare of television lights and the popping of flashbulbs. As a member of The Beatles' official press corps, I was seated immediately next to the spot where the boys were to stand for their interview. As they walked in, I noted they looked terribly tired. They had gone through a 15-hour plane trip, the wild reception at the airport, and another equally boisterous reception at the hotel. So I could understand the haggard faces I saw before me. Yet, I couldn't help thinking there were a month of plane trips and pushing and shoving receptions ahead of them, and wondering how in the world they would ever get through it all.

     My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a pleasant English-accented voice saying, " I met you in London." It was Paul McCartney. To say I was astonished would be an understatement. This handsome young Englishman, who had spent perhaps 20 minutes chatting with me in a crowded London office seven weeks previously, and as one of the most idolized performers in the history of show business, meets hundreds of people daily, could possibly remember me. It was almost unbelievable. In my astonishment, I was able only to nod and say, "How was the trip?" "Rugged." He answered, flashing a weary but famous smile. 

    It was an auspicious beginning to the tour, but in the next couple of days, it began to appear as though it was going to be the only highlight. The Beatles were tired and besieged by fans went up to their rooms. I saw them only at press conferences and at their concerts. It wasn't until we reached Las Vegas three days later that I had an opportunity to chat on a non-professional basis with the boys for the first time, and then only for a few moments when Paul and Ringo dropped into Derek Taylor's room, where I was trying to get the hang of a camera I had borrowed for the trip. Paul said he was looking for a camera, adding somewhat mournfully that he had already lost four on tours. "Yeah, I want to get me a camera too," Ringo chimed in. This led to some rather disparaging remarks about Ringo's picture-taking abilities. 

    I was to learn, as the trip progressed, that the gentle, friendly drummer is the target of much of the friendly needling that goes on among the group. Often, when interviewers and friends of friends invade the not always closely guarded dressing quarters of the quartet in the last turbulent and nervous moments before a concert, John, Paul, and George managed to become suddenly preoccupied with a variety of final preparations, leaving Ringo at the mercy of the hordes. Ringo gamely carried on, never refusing an interview. Afterwards, he would rush through his own last-minute preparations, while his fellow Beatles would wonder loudly why he was never ready on time.

     After the Las Vegas concert, I learned that Ringo had slipped down to the gambling tables to risk a bob or two. It was the first of several times on the tour that he was to leave the all-important safety of his guarded room to see some of the American sites he had read so much about. In one Midwestern city, he was to spend the after-concert hours in the company of an off-duty policeman. He had begun viewing the sites with grateful awe, testing the food of American restaurants and ending his private tour sipping coffee in the living room of the policeman's home, much to the delight of his host's family.

     Some 48 hours after Las Vegas, I was to learn part of the reason for Ringo's particularly keen interest in America. We were on a plane from Vancouver to Los Angeles, the first long flight of the American tour, and the Beatles, nervous and shy, ventured forth from their private compartment to mingle with the press corps. For the first time, Ringo slid into the seat next to me, and we began to talk about his plans for the future. He talked about the possibility of some day settling in America, and of a business venture he had hopes of investing in here. And suddenly he interrupted himself, "Oh, I better not tell you. You'll put it on the air." "Not unless you want me to, Ringo," I said. Ringo looked at me in an odd way, almost as though he were seeing me for the first time. Magically, the whole tone of our conversation seemed to change. It was no longer a celebrity talking to a reporter. Now it was two recent acquaintances getting to know each other. I knew then that I had been accepted.

     Elsewhere on the plane, the atmosphere was beginning to lighten.  Jackie DeShannon, the lovely songstress who immediately preceded the Beatles on stage in their nightly concert, started leading the press corps in a group sing-along. The entourage was in the middle of a current rhythm and blues hit when John and Paul came down the aisle to join the group. They raised their famous voices in song, not our song, but a boisterous rendition of "Hello Dolly." For some reason, now no longer clear, it seemed hilarious at the moment; it was the end of the air of reserve that, until that moment, had separated the Beatles from the unfamiliar American press corps with whom they were to live for still another three weeks. It was also the end of any organized singing efforts on the part of the talented newsmen. Henceforth on the trip, whenever voices joined in choral efforts, Lennon would burst into "Hello Dolly," and mass hysteria would prevail. 

    Perhaps it wasn't the same hysteria which rose from the floors of American auditoriums throughout the land when John and his three cohorts would break into "Twist and Shout", but it had the same effects on the reporters. The Beatles' stay in Los Angeles was a memorable one, filled with visits from Hollywood stars, some of whom came out of sheer curiosity to see the biggest names in show business today. Some to worship with the same starlight in their eyes that I had seen on 1000s of teenage faces.

     Marring the state, however, was the group's now-famous visit to the Los Angeles nightclub. I joined John, George, Ringo, and several of the reporters on that visit, and saw a hope for an evening of fun and relaxation turn into a shambles as a group of supposed adult patrons of the club mobbed The Beatles. Photographers, apparently, were tipped off to the visit by the manager who had promised complete secrecy, and they continuously flashed their bulbs in the Beatles' faces despite the boys ' pleas, to please stop.

    Finally, the normally placid George Harrison picked up a glass with the remaining three ice cubes and tossed the cubes in the general direction of one particularly pesky photographer. With that, we left just 20 minutes after arriving.  Blaring headlines describe the nightclub battle the next morning, and several papers predominantly displayed a picture of George Harrison throwing a drink at the troublesome cameraman. Some of the pictures had obviously been retouched to show liquid coming from a glass, which I can testify was empty. 

    The Beatles, for the first time since I had joined the tour, displayed a flash of anger, which, to my knowledge, appeared again only on two occasions, both connected with what the English lads felt was unjust treatment by the American police. The Los Angeles nightclub episode ended the Beatles' public ventures on their American tour. From that day on, they never left their hotel rooms as a group, except to travel to their concerts or to their waiting plane. It was a bitter pill for them to swallow. They had honestly looked forward to the opportunity of meeting and mingling with the American public.

     As the tour progressed eastward and security measures tightened, city by city, I began to realize more fully the loneliness of the existence of these four young men. The Beatles had become literally prisoners of love, trapped behind the locked doors of their hotel rooms by the idolatry of their fans. On more than one occasion, as the trip continued, I received a call in my hotel room from one of the quartet with a variation of the message, "Jim, we have no one to talk to up here. Why don't you come up for a game of Monopoly or cards?" The first of these calls came after a particularly successful concert. The boys were tired, but not too happy with the results of the concert to sleep; monopoly was the order of the day. The game began at 3am and continued until 730 that morning. For John, the game was a war. He rolled the dice as though $1,000 were riding on each throw, yelling and hoping with glee when his marker landed on a desirable property, sinking to the depths of despair when he was caught on someone else's railroad. Fines and assessments were placed on the center of the board to be taken by the lucky one who landed on free parking. And when George collected an unusually big pot in this manner, John spent a good portion of the next 15 minutes complaining about the luck of that bloody singer. 

    More memorable than Monopoly games were the rare occasions when the group was able to take advantage of a private swimming pool, which some of the hotels along the tour were able to offer. When these opportunities presented themselves, the Beatles disported themselves like four kids on their first visit to an old swimming hole, bouncing in and out of the water like four inflated toys. Watching John race towards the pool with wild war whoops or Ringo holding his ample nose as he leaped in feet first, one would never guess that here were four young men who, just hours before, had been the object of the hysterical outpouring of love by 1000s of teenagers and the subject of concern of half the police force in the particular city they were visiting.

     As the tour progressed and my friendship with The Beatles deepened, I realized more each day how very human each of these Liverpool lads was. Paul, filled with nervous energy, would pace the aisles of our chartered plane like a caged lion eager to get to the next city. The pacing stopped when he could rustle up a good poker game, after which it became a problem to pry him loose for the inevitable mad dash from the airport to the hotel. John, the accepted leader of the group, would sit and talk with me for hours about the merits of show business, English comedians, and offbeat authors. Literate, fluent, and highly intelligent, he is a young man who knows where he is going and, in less than two years, has earned enough money to be reasonably sure that he can point his wagon where he wishes. George, the man's man of the group, despite his slender, almost fragile build, loved to talk about anything and everything, especially music and money. Gate receipts and record distribution were his meat, and he was the group's authority on these topics. He was also the most serious musician of the four, the most musically talented of the group, and the only one still formally studying music. And then there was Ringo, friendly, outgoing, never too busy for an interview or just a few moments of plain gab. I don't ever recall seeing him walk down the aisle of our plane without saying hello to everyone who was awake, even though we had been in each other's company consistently for weeks twice during the criss-crossing journey of America.

     It was necessary for me to leave the Beatles party for short periods to fulfill commitments in Cleveland. On each occasion, Art Schreiber, KYW, radio news director, took over my assignment of covering the tour for the Group W stations. On the first occasion, his acceptance by the Beatles was gracious and genuine. Primarily, they told him because they knew if he and I worked for the same station, that he must be all right. Needless to say, I was flattered, particularly when I recall the invisible wall of uncertainty that separated the group from the American press corps when the tour began.

     My second and final leave-taking occurred when the tour reached Cleveland, the fourth-to-last stop. The Beatles, who had been relatively spirited through much of the tour, were becoming tired and homesick as their long journey neared the end. The wild pace of the tour became even wilder for me back at my home base, and my last goodbyes were said backstage just prior to the boy's appearance at Cleveland Public Hall. They were brief, but sincere, and as I bid goodbye to Art Schreiber, who was taking over again for me. 

     I felt a twinge of envy at missing those last few days of the never-to-be-forgotten American tour. Art, of course, needed no further introductions. He, too, had become a Beatle buddy, and he was with the Fab Four as they boarded the plane in New York for their eagerly awaited voyage home. As they stood on the ramp with dozens of microphones recording their farewells, The Beatles last words before disappearing into the cabin rang out and clear to the puzzlement of many they were "So long Art." Art played that farewell tape back to me when he returned to Cleveland, and I will never forget it, because just before the tape ended, as the Beatles obviously ducked out of the microphone's range, the unmistakable voice of Ringo Starr came floating over the noise of the crowd. "Hey, Art," he bellowed, "say goodbye to Jim." I knew then that I would never have any doubt about my answer if anyone were ever to say again to me, "Jim, how would you like to spend the next few weeks traveling with the Beatles?"