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Gals Dare Death to See The Beatles (1966)

 This is one of those stories that has stuck with me all of these years.  I think we can all agree that these two girls took Beatlemania too far.  Threatening to take your own life to meet the Beatles is just way too much and I am glad that they were not rewarded for this act.  I also hope they were able to get the help they must have needed and I wonder what the outcome of the "disorderly conduct" charges were.

Gals Dare Death to See The Beatles

By Joseph Cassidy

The Daily News

August 23, 1966

    Two teenage girls undergoing what a Roosevelt Hospital psychiatrist later described as an "acute situation reaction" attracted 1000s of startled sidewalk gawkers yesterday afternoon by perching on the edge of the 22nd-floor rooftop of the Americana Hotel. 

    "We must see the Beatles." The West Brighton S.I. teenagers told emergency service cops, who had been trying for 20 minutes to talk them in from the 18-inch-wide ledge where they sat with their legs dangling. 

    The girls, Carol Hopkins, 17, of 21 Beament Avenue, and Susan Richmond, 16, of 356 Carey Avenue, told their would-be rescuers that they had tried unsuccessfully to gain entrance to the Beatles' 28th-floor suite at the nearby Hotel Warwick, and wouldn't come in unless they could see them. 

    While the crowds on the corner of 53rd Street and Seventh Avenue watched the drama above, a lesser crowd of 200 teens and subteen-age girls tried to generate their own storm by pushing and screaming for their heroes behind police barricades near the Warwick. They were unaware of the activity a block away. 

    On the Americana's roof, emergency service patrolman Richard Powers was trying desperately to get the two skinny blonde girls back to safety. Powers, an 11-year veteran cop, was 39 and looked about 70 as he pleaded with the youngsters. "I have a daughter about your age," he told the girls, whose hysterical sobs were making their position on the ledge even more precarious, "and I'd cry. It would break my heart if my girl was out here like this." But his listeners only shook their heads. Powers got to his knees on the asphalt rooftop. "We'll take you to see them. Just come away from the ledge. I promise you that you'll get to talk to them," he pleaded, although he knew he lied. 

    The girls just sat on the narrow ledge and sobbed. For 20 minutes, the cops scolded, cajoled, and pleaded. Occasionally, Carol would wave a ragged envelope and cry, "I have a letter for Paul, Paul McCartney. I have to give it to him. You wouldn't understand."

     "Nobody understands what they mean to us," Susan blurted out through her tears. "We've just got to see them." 

    On the street, the crowd was getting restless. "Are they gonna jump, or are they gonna keep us here all day?" A white-line barber leaned against a light pole asked. "I'm losing tips staying out here."

     Powers was getting ready with his partner, patrolman Patrick O'Connor, to move in on the girls. Maybe by hopping the three-foot-high guardrail, they could grab the girls before they slipped off. Then a police siren screamed 22 floors below. "It's the Beatles, girls. They've got the Beatles, and they're bringing them up here to see you!" Powers cried out. 

    That did it. Susan and Carol slowly got up, 200 feet above Seventh Avenue. They began combing their hair and putting on fresh lipstick. The cops moved in swiftly, caught the two in their arms, and dragged them back to the precipice. 

    The girls were taken to the hospital where the diagnosis was made, and then to the West 54th Street station to await night court on disorderly conduct charges.

     Meanwhile, the youthful crowd near the Warwick was still screaming. One 13-year-old told a newsman that the "Beatles were really tough. I'd just die to see them up close. I'd just die!"

Flash! City Girls See the Beatles (1966 Cincinnati)

Beatles fans in Cincinnati near the stadium in 1966 

 

Flash! City Girls See The Beatles

By Larry Smith

The Herald-Times (Indiana)

August 23, 1966

"We saw the Beatles. I mean, we really saw them!" Debbie Zimmerman, a 15-year-old Bloomington High School sophomore, not only saw the Beatles, but she got into their Cincinnati hotel room and out with a piece of lettuce, with French dressing on it and some hair that "just had to be Ringo's."

     Debbie, her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Zimmerman, 2212 La Jacque Lane, and two friends, Kathy Yates and Donna Glasgow, both 15 and BHS sophomores, bought tickets last May for last Saturday's Beatles show in Cincinnati. 

    The girls arrived in Cincinnati Saturday morning around 10 a.m. to await the 8 p.m. show that night. Mr. Zimmerman and the three girls set out to find the Beatles' headquarters. A Cincinnati newspaper story said the Beatles were supposed to be staying in the Vernon Manor Hotel on the sixth floor.

     Mr. Zimmerman called the hotel and asked for room accommodations for the night. It just so happened there was a suite available on the fifth floor. The hotel lobby was full of waiting teenagers since the night before, all waiting to catch a glimpse of their idols, but Debbie and her two companions, with their hotel room key in hand had proof that they belonged there, started the long walk up to the sixth floor to really see the Beatles. 

    The policemen sent them back down the stairs, but all was not lost. Debbie, Kathy, and Donna would not give up until the Beatles were on their way out of town. The outdoor performance was rained out Saturday night, and the Beatles' manager, Ken Douglas, announced that travel arrangements would be changed and that a performance was set for "right after church" Sunday. 

    Kathy said that about 4o'clock Sunday morning, a noise woke her, but she didn't find out until later that it was the Beatles themselves, still up and partying on the floor above. The girls were up by 6:30 Sunday morning, still planning on seeing the Beatles. Shortly before noon, the luggage for the Beatles' entourage was brought to the ground floor lobby, and Kathy said, "I touched it. I ran my hands over John's suitcase, and I touched George's clothes." A guard finally chased them away. 

    Then, from out of nowhere, Debbie's father appeared and told her to follow him to the sixth floor. There were only about 15 people there, mostly hotel employees. Debbie and a hotel maid were the only two females. Then it happened. The door opened, and out came John Lennon. Debbie said, "He's my favorite, and I screamed 'hi' three times, and he walked by and said 'hi' back." George and Ringo and Paul followed. 

    By this time, Debbie was in a state of shock. After the Beatles had left the hotel, Kathy and Debbie talked the maid into letting them see the hotel where the Beatles stayed. That's when they found the piece of lettuce, and Debbie found a tuft of hair that "just had to be Ringo's", and Kathy found some shed hair in a bedroom, and it "just had to be John's." There were some burnt matchsticks too. Debbie said, "The Beatles look so different in person. Their hair is so long."

McCartney Tight Lipped About His New Quartet (1971)

 McCartney Tight-Lipped About his New Quartet

By Drew Johnstone

London Express

August 20, 1971

(Campbeltown, Scotland) Beatle Paul McCartney remained tight-lipped this week about the group that he and his wife Linda plan to launch on the pop scene later this year. Paul, who is staying with his wife at their Scottish farmhouse near here, revealed this won't be a media group like the Beatles. "We're out to provide good music, and we're not caring whether the public likes it as big a way as they did the music of the Beatles."

     In a three-minute interview, while he paused with his seven-month pregnant wife as they walked to a stream in a field alongside their hillside hideaway, Paul said, "I'm still keeping the wraps on the group for the time being. I will say that the group, which I hope will make its appearance in the winter, will be out to provide nothing else but good music. It's not a planned thing. It's just a case of good musicians getting together for their own personal kicks; the Beatles are finished, and I'm not planning to revive their type of music with this group."

 McCartney refused to be drawn when asked about two American musicians, Dennis Siewell and Hugh McCracken, both from New York, who arrived in Campbelltown less than two months ago and bought a cottage near his farmhouse. Siewell, who plays the drums, and McCracken, a guitarist, arrived in the town with their wives and stayed for a month at the Argyle Arms Hotel.

     Later, they were seen on numerous occasions with McCartney and his wife. McCartney refused to reveal whether they had been rehearsing together, at either his farmhouse or the American's cottage, less than a half mile away; all McCartney would say was, "There will be four of us in the group. Linda and I will be responsible for the vocals. That's all I want to say about the group at this moment."

Press to Play

 

August 22, 1986

Is New Lennonism a Passing Phase? (1971)

 Is New Lennonism a Passing Phase?

By Chris Pritchard

The Sydney Morning Herald

August 22, 1971

    A dozen burly Scottish shop stewards were reading messages of support for their takeover of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders yards when a messenger walked in bearing a gift wrapped in cellophane. It was a bunch of red roses. A handwritten note said, "Best wishes from John and Yoko." In the next mail came a check for $2,000 --1000 each from the ex-Beatle and his wife, for the militant dockers fighting fund. 

    This week, a full-page advertisement in the semi-underground newspaper Ink reads simply, "Repression is bad for you. John and Yoko, summer 1971."

     Since John went political earlier in the year, there have been many jokes about Marxist- Lennonism. There are plenty of people who blame his metamorphosis on Yoko, but after a long chat with the pair of them, I'm convinced this just isn't fair. There are others who say that, like the days of meditation and the Maharishi, all this talk of revolution is yet another passing phase. Perhaps they are right. We can only wait and see. 

    John's conversion to hardcore left-wing politics was first made public in a Trotskyist newspaper, Red Mole. Across four pages, John and Yoko supported revolutionary struggles around the world, espousing basic working-class radicalism on the home front, and said they took their politics seriously. 

    About the same time, John's record "Working Class Hero" was released, and protesters everywhere were singing "Power to the People", a song more militant than his earlier "Give Peace a Chance." Where demonstrating crowds had a year or so before sung "We Shall Overcome" a dozen times during one protest because it was the only protest song they all knew, they now had the words and music of John Lennon. 

    If one point needs to be made, it's this: John's infatuation with Oz and the underground may well do him a power of commercial good with the youngsters who buy his records, but most of the kids don't give a jot about Clydeside and trade unions, and many of them are something boring that happens at work. No, if Lennon wanted merely to identify with the kids, he would have picked another cause. 

    The background of the four Liverpool lads who strummed together to give birth to the Beatles tends sometimes to be forgotten; they didn't starve. They weren't poor in that sense, but they were from typical working-class English homes where "money doesn't grow on trees, you know," and "take care of the pennies," are comments often heard. 

    As he put it the other day, "Judge Argyle said he wouldn't fine them (the three Oz editors), because they were too poor. But they've got rich friends. Mick Jagger has telephoned me several times, and we both want to help in whatever way we can. Whatever money is needed, we are prepared to find it."

The Beatles are Stuck With Hide-and-Seek (Cincinnati 1966)

 

The Beatles Are Stuck With Hide and Seek

By Dale Stevens

The Cincinnati Post

August 20, 1966

    The Beatles are trapped in stardom, and for me, looking back at every interview I've done with popular performers who no longer are free to walk down a quiet street, I have to wonder if the English boys sometimes feel they've given up more than the money has given them. Privacy is a wonderful thing. You lose it in the glow of such phenomenal success. Your best fan becomes your worst enemy. A group of people who love you becomes a mob. Love becomes violence, so the Beatles can't stick their head out of their hotel door. The police escort becomes a way of life. Many a star has told me he or she would rather have the privacy and not quite so much stardom, but by then it is always too late, and thus beside the point. 

    Point is, how now do you handle the fans who have gone berserk with their affection? In the case of the Beatles, the answer has been the will-of-the-wisp tactic, a frantic game of hide-and-seek, in which the yare always wins. They hide, as it were, to keep fans from getting hurt. Somewhere there must be a dividing line, an illusory, indefinable line between being fair to your fans and getting yourself or your fans torn apart. On the one side of the line is the obligation to give something in return to the people whose dollars have literally bought stardom for you; you cannot then turn your back on them completely in the name of safety. And yet, the other side of that line is mayhem for such an act as the Beatles. They appeal mostly to the younger audience, and the girls who scream at them would trample each other if they thought they actually might touch a Beatle, so the Beatles are virtually forced to hide away, to stay away, to run as briskly as possible to the stage with police on each side of them, and be spirited away in whatever trickery is needed after it's over. Are the Beatles overprotected? Do they cheat their fans of a fair chance to look or shake hands? It's easier to touch President Johnson than the Beatles, and the Beatles are quick to agree.

     But while Paul McCartney will admit overprotection, he and the other Beatles insist that one, it's the idea of their management, and two, it's necessary to protect the fans from themselves. I wasn't the most popular person in the Beatles' dressing room when they were at Crosley Field over the weekend, but I held my own in some feverish discussions with McCartney, Ringo Starr, and the Beatles' press boss Tony Barrow. When I said they are overprotected, Ringo said. "No, I don't think so. They just want to touch us. But when it gets into 1000s of people, it's dangerous, you know. It's as much for their protection as ours."

     McCartney made the point that as artists, it isn't their job to organize police control. But when I said they were being overprotected, he said, "Oh yes, that's the truth of it-the whole truth."

     Tony Barrow, as part of the management team, wouldn't quite agree with my contention that the Beatles are overprotected by their paid advisers. "There is a minimum," he said, emphasizing the word minimum, "of three organizations: the Beatles, police, and the promoters." By which McCartney quickly added, "And in all that were very insignificant in that lot, were where organization is concerned, we don't organize any of it." 

    What it all boils down to, as insider's note, is that McCartney, Ringo, John Lennon, and George Harrison are tightly controlled by their personal manager and co-owner, Brian Epstein. The Beatles would rather run into a crowd and shake hands, as Ringo told me they sometimes do. Epstein merely has to sit them down and give them the instructions, and his reputation for shrewd brilliance can be seen in the way. The Beatles obviously follow his directions. "That's why we have management," Ringo said to me. "We just do our job. We don't have anything to say. It's all organized for us. Without the protection, we'd never get a show done." But Lawrence Olivier and Frank Sinatra don't cloister themselves so extremely; they can go out. Ringo replied, "They're not pop stars. I've never seen 5000 people queued up to see Frank Sinatra around his hotel."

    The difference Ringo believes is the teenage audience for pop stars, and that's the way he wants it. "It's the young audience I like. They're nearer to us than older people are, you know, in age, thinking no, in the way they are. This generation, we're a part of this generation, and anyone over 35 is the last generation. And I like staying with our generation. It's better than the last one. I'm not saying you don't like the Beatles. A lot of older people do; I've had letters from people of 68 or 86, you know."

     As for the protection fuss, when the Beatles left, newsmen were waiting at the plane door at the airport ramp Saturday morning, John Lennon later told Walt Turner of WSAI. "It might have been 18 seconds, as the paper said, but you want to praise the police for their speed and efficiency, not shout at us. We have no control. We sit on the plane. The order comes. 'All right, Beetles, off the plane.' The car's waiting at the bottom of the ramp. We leap off the plane, go clunk down the stairs. We just zoom in, do what they tell us. Jump in the car. They say 'come along. Side here. Dive into that door.' Click, click, and you're in your bed. You know."

     McCartney, referring to the five Lexington, Kentucky girls who wanted to give the Beatles $367 worth of flowers, said the Beatles would have stopped had they been told. "We tried to, but those girls just jumped on the car, without an explanation. This is what happens. The whole business is so organized, even subdivided, sublet, that for an instant, all that Manila stink we got into was because exactly that one thing we didn't know about it."  The police said, "Get in that car', and so we got in. So that's the protection bit."

     Their contract stipulates they won't sign autographs, and for every other kind of request, they can fall back on the oldest dodge in show business: You'll have to see my manager. The truth, it is the kind of protection the really big stars must have, because as their management says, it's not a matter of making things safe for the Beatles, but safe for the people.

Beatles Colossal Brush Off Disappoints Fans (Cincinnati 1966)

Photo by Gordon Baer

 

Beatles Colossal Brush Off Disappoints Fans

By Dale Stevens

The Cincinnati Post and Times Star

August 20, 1966

Idols fly in, snub crowd, and vanish in 18 seconds

    Well, John, Paul, Ringo, and George-they say you're nice guys, but as far as I'm concerned, you're not. Even Frank Sinatra, at his saltiest, doesn't treat people the way you do. The Beatles, the English rock and roll group that has become the biggest hit in the history of show business, rolled into Lunkin Airport at 2:45 a.m. today. They preferred to stay over here overnight rather than in Memphis, where last night they did two concerts. From the door of the plane, past the waiting reporters and photographers, it took the Beatles a snappy 18 seconds to get into a limousine and away. 

    Their management, which apparently is more concerned with secrecy than courtesy, condescended to let the Beatles' car drive within the fenced-off area, so the 150 fans beyond the fence could wave, but standing within the fence were five young girls from Lexington, Kentucky, who had spent $367 on four floral horseshoes and wanted to hand them to Lennon, McCartney, Starr, and Harrison. 

    The limousine didn't stop, but Jan Greer, an 18-year-old Lexington student, got a grip on the window and tried to hand her carnation horseshoe to Paul McCartney. The 60 flower horseshoe split in two. Jan fell to the ground, bumping her head and rumpling her clothes, and away sped the Beatles, whose sole tribute to their followers and press was a collection of sincere, rehearsed smiles. 

    Afterward, the Kentucky girls insisted they didn't blame the Beatles. They still hoped to be able to present their flowers to the boys. They even vowed to buy another bouquet to replace the one lost in the motorcade. Jan, distraught, embarrassed, and sad because the Beatle car hadn't slowed down to less than 25 miles an hour, said she had said something stupid like "I love you" to Paul McCartney through the limousine window before falling. 

    Jan's friends are Linda Simmons, 19; Carol Lester, 18; Bonnie Sharp, 16; and Brenda Snowden, 16. Linda and Carol are secretaries in Lexington. For weeks, they had taken a few dollars from their salaries to pay for the flowers. The other girls, still students, had to save from their allowances for the $367, which included $20 to get the flowers here by refrigerated truck so they wouldn't wilt. Each horseshoe held five dozen carnations, one natural red, the other sprayed purple, blue, and green. Each horseshoe was three feet high, about half the size of a regular one used to crown winning horses, according to the florist who delivered them. And though the girls were permitted inside the runway fence, there was no guarantee they would be able to get their flowers to the Beatles. 

    They still had only words of love for the Britons after their brush-off. The newsmen had no such praise. All were miffed at the idea that the Beatles didn't even pause for a decent photo or as much as one question; the rush was put on by their management, of course, but it seemed a gross show of disrespect for the professional press to show up at the inconvenient middle-of-the-night arrival. 

    The medium-sized contingent of police, who were to guard the Beatles from possible overzealous fans, didn't have much to do at either Lumpkin or Vernon Manor Hotel because of the bewitching hour schedule. Barely 35 fans were at the Vernon Manor, evenly divided between teenage girls and fellows with hair as long as the Beatles' trusses. The Beatles and their group of about 65 people, managers, booking agents, international press, and supporting acts are housed on the sixth floor at the suburban hotel. Vernon Manor was sold out for the occasion. Some of the people staying there are believed simply to be in the same building with the Beatles. 

    Three cars were supplied by Stillpass Mercury for the motorcade, but owner Joe Stillpass laughingly denied he might later take one of the cars apart to sell it piece by piece. In the past, such items as bed sheets have been sold by the square inch once they had accommodated the Beatles. This scene this time was nothing like the 1964 Beatles' arrival, but the frenzy then was aided by their daylight landing. It doesn't signify any shift in sentiment by their followers. In 1964, almost 13,000 attended the Cincinnati Garden Show.

    Tonight, about 18,000 are expected at Crosley Field, and last night the best advance planning probably belonged to the two girls who showed up at the baseball park after the stage had been installed near second base. They chipped away part of the stage timbers for souvenirs, then kissed the infield dirt by the handful, replacing it near the stage steps in hopes the Beatles might walk on their kisses.

     That was precisely the atmosphere expected by Tom Dixon, Cincinnati police captain who headed the squad at Lunkin and Vernon Manor this morning. He said his men were prepared for anything, even the remote possibility someone might want to harm the Beatles. But his main job, he said, was to protect them from their followers. Kisses, he indicated, are more of a threat than killers. It must be true, for the limousine parked behind the Vernon Manor at 3:30 a.m. bore the script written on the dusky trunk, "Hi Ringo," and "I love you, Paul, and the dirty fingers belonged to Charlene Drescher of 1621 Pelham and Pam Kruger of 5832 Kennell, unlike the press, their adoration knows no bounds, and they do not insist upon professional conduct, and that, as I say, is show business.