The Thrill of a Lifetime
By Jack Thomas
The Boston Globe
June 2, 1976
In every life, there are moments of extraordinary pleasure that we cherish above all others. Those few vivid seconds when life seems perfect, and we are lost in a special memory that not even time can tarnish. The Beatles sang sweetly about such moments. "There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed, some for better, some forever, some are gone, and some remain."
Paul McCartney's recent visit to Boston recalled such a moment in the life of an Auburndale teenager who was driven to ecstasy 12 years ago when she kissed Paul McCartney. It is still the happiest moment of her life.
The city was excited on September 11, 1964, because the Beatles were giving their first concert in Boston. Those were happier days. We were still recovering from the shock of John Kennedy's assassination, but the agony of the Vietnam War, the trauma of the race riots, and the murders of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were still in the future.
Tickets for the concert had long been sold, and dozens of teenage girls had written to the Globe for help in obtaining tickets. The Globe obtained a ticket and signed me to take 14-year-old Debbie Chase to the concert to write about her experience. The Beatles held a press conference early in the evening at the Madison Hotel, and security was exceptionally tight. Indeed, they made a point that teenage girls were to be excluded, but we were able to fast-talk our way into the press conference with the promise that Debbie would stand quietly and inconspicuously at the back of the room.
That was naive of me. I should have known that the kind of girl who wore her hair long and loose because McCartney liked it that way would never stand quietly and inconspicuously at the back of the room, no matter how sternly I admonished her. Surely enough, midway through the press conference, when I wasn't looking, she stepped over the television cables and headed for the front of the room, where the four Beatles sat behind a table.
"God", I thought, "we're both going to be thrown out on our ears, and the story will fall apart." But before the security guards could stop her, she was standing in the bright lights between George Harrison and Paul McCartney. Her eyes were wide, her face was flushed, and her hands were shaking.
McCartney turned, offered his hand graciously, and said, "I'm pleased to meet you." He must have felt the coldness of her hand and realized she was shaking because he touched her arm assuringly and said, "Hey, you'll be all right then." With the television cameras whirling and me scribbling madly in my notebook, she leaned down slowly and kissed him on his right cheek. There were about 40 reporters and photographers in the room, and they watched silently, choosing not to interrupt a tender moment.
When she arrived at her seat in Boston Garden, a preliminary rock group was singing. Debbie sat down and screamed as loudly as she could, "I just kissed Paul McCartney!" That threw two sections on the south side of the lower level of Boston Garden into a dither. Dozens of teenage girls yelled, leaped in the air, pounded their chairs, and lunged at Debbie to touch her. It took two plainclothes Boston police officers and a state trooper to restore order.
Debbie sent a thank-you letter a few days later. "You have made my fondest dream come true," she wrote, "and I don't know how I will ever be able to repay you. At school on Monday, the kids came up to me and congratulated me, and either shook my hand, so they could say they shook the hand that shook the hand of Paul and George, or they kissed my lips, so they could say they kissed the lips that kissed Paul McCartney. I can hardly stand to hear one of their songs or see a picture of them, because I get this really weird feeling inside, and I almost start crying for no reason at all. "
The incident happened a long time ago, as the Beatles said, "Yesterday, when all our troubles seemed so far away." Today, Debbie Chase is 26, single, living in Cambridge, happy, in love, and working as a box office manager for a rock music promoter.
"How long ago was that?" She asked yesterday. "Wow, 12 years ago. Well, I still love the Beatles, but it's not nearly the way it was. No one could have been more excited than I was that night. I was really shaking. If it happened today, it wouldn't be the same. I had laryngitis from telling that story, over and over. "You know, that was the happiest moment of my life," she said, "and it probably always will be."
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