It started in April 1963, when friends of my parents returned to New Jersey from a trip abroad with a present for me. It was something a record shop clerk in London had recommended as the perfect thing for a 13-year-old girl.
I prepared myself to act surprised and grateful, even if I didn’t like it. But when I opened it, I gasped. The four young men on the album cover were the cutest guys I had ever seen.
This album, “Please Please Me,” was not available in the United States. And the group, the Beatles, was unknown here. I loved them immediately.
My classmates thought my new obsession was weird, except for one girl, Sharon, who was open to new things. In the months before the first stirrings of Beatlemania in America, Sharon and I spent the after-school hours listening to the album and gazing at the cover. We could never decide which Beatle was our favorite, because our opinions changed by the day.
One afternoon I noticed a sticker on the inside of the cardboard sleeve with the address for the Beatles Fan Club. I mailed a letter to 13 Monmouth Street, London, and began waiting.
That summer I spent eight homesick weeks at a sleep-away camp in Maine. With every letter home, I asked if I had gotten a reply from the Beatles. With every letter back, there was a no.
My wait finally ended in early November, when I came home from school to find my mother at the door. She was holding a yellow sheet of paper, a Western Union telegram from a New York law firm. The message instructed me to call the office and schedule a meeting regarding the Beatles. I shrieked.
On a cloudy morning, my father drove me across the George Washington Bridge to an office building in Manhattan. We rode up a few floors in a smelly elevator, and I found myself seated at an oval table, staring at the glistening gold cuff links worn by a soft-spoken man with an elegant accent.
This was Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager. He spoke to me as if I were not an eighth-grader but an adult who was accustomed to business meetings. He said he needed a few teenagers to welcome the Beatles to America and run the fan club.
“Mr. Epstein,” I said, “I need to go to college!”
As my father and I left the room, not fully understanding what had just taken place, a secretary took me aside to let me know I would be receiving a ticket to see the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February, when they would be making their first U.S. visit.
Eleven days later, President Kennedy was assassinated. I put the Beatles on hold as I grappled with the horror and sadness that had befallen our country.
Through the darkness came the beginnings of light and hope when radio stations began playing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and other Beatles songs. On Feb. 7, thousands greeted the group on their arrival at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy airport. Two days later, my mother drove me to the city.
She parked not far from CBS Studio 50, where “The Ed Sullivan Show” was filmed. Prize ticket in hand, under the watch of mounted police officers, I said goodbye to my mom and moved alone through the crowd. Close to the theater, I had to push away two kids who tugged at my coat.
From my seat in the mezzanine I saw them at last — John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They were beautiful! I felt like I was suspended in an unreal space, and I was unable to breathe.
They started with my favorite, “All My Loving,” and played four more songs over the course of the show. Before I could comprehend the magnitude of what I was experiencing, it was over.
Dazed, I walked into the bitter February cold. On a far street corner I spotted my mother. She looked frozen in her navy blue cloth coat. I ran toward her, falling into her arms with tears running down my face.
Weeks later, I signed on as the head of a New Jersey chapter of the Beatles Fan Club. That summer, instead of going to sleep-away camp, I busied myself with Beatles-related activities: helping stage an overnight sleep-in on Broadway to promote their film “A Hard Day’s Night”; screaming my lungs out during their concerts at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium; and singing and shouting along with hundreds of fellow Beatlemaniacs outside the Delmonico Hotel, where the Beatles were staying.
The next summer, when they returned to play Shea Stadium, I was selected as the fan club representative who would attend their news conference and meet them in person. So there I was, a 15-year-old girl in a floral dress, waiting for the Beatles in the lobby of the Warwick Hotel.
My mother and I were standing near the revolving door as they made their way inside. Paul stumbled on a set of steps, knocking into my mom. I couldn’t believe her luck.
I left her side and went up the carpeted staircase with some members of the press toward the Warwick Room. It was furnished with banquet chairs arranged in neat rows before a narrow table set with a water pitcher, glasses, ashtrays and clustered microphones.
I sat down toward the front. Placed my handbag on the floor. Andy Warhol was seated a few rows ahead. The man next to me was the radio disc-jockey Bruce Morrow, known as Cousin Brucie. From my purse I took out my Instamatic camera, a pad and a pen.
The Beatles entered through a side door. Everyone stood. Cousin Brucie jabbed me with an elbow as he tried to get a better look.
I snapped some photos and scrawled illegible notes during the half-hour session. Afterward, a secretary to Sid Bernstein, the impresario behind the Shea Stadium concert, told me to stay put, adding that someone would come for me soon.
I sat alone in the Warwick Room for what seemed like forever. I felt forgotten.
Did I dare grab Ringo’s emptied pack of cigarettes? Could I touch the ashtrays full of Beatle cigarette butts? Or the napkin George had used? There was also the glass of water Paul had sipped from.
I stepped toward the table. I held my breath as I reached for Ringo’s cigarette pack and dropped it into my bag. Next, the napkin, followed by an ashtray filled with ashes and butts. Now came a real challenge — Paul’s glass of water. At that moment, the side door opened, and I discreetly dropped the glass into my purse. Oh, well, there wasn’t much water in it.
“Let’s go upstairs,” said the woman who had come to fetch me.
We rode a freight elevator to the 33rd floor. As we approached the suite, there was some kind of commotion: A girl around my age had sneaked in somehow, and police officers were busy taking her away. When George entered the room, I moved to the side, hoping no one would see me as part of the girl’s scheme.
The Beatles formed a receiving line to greet their guests. When it was my turn, one of Mr. Epstein’s assistants introduced me as the No. 1 fan-club organizer. George acted like we were old friends. Paul seemed like he was having a great time. Then came John.
I stood before him with a hand outstretched. He stared at me oddly. For a moment I was frightened. He gestured toward the floor.
“What’s that coming out of the bag?” John asked.
Water blackened with ash was leaking from my purse onto the carpet. I wanted to run away and never come back. My Beatles life was finished.
“Let me see what is going on in there,” John said.
I had no choice but to open my bag.
Paul took a glance and remarked that it was all part of the craziness of America. John stared intently at the napkin, the twisted cigarette pack, the ashtray, the empty glass.
“Do you like rubbish?” John asked.
“No. Just this garbage. For my collection.”
He said he would always remember me as “the rubbish girl.”
I was about to break down in tears when waiters arrived with trays of sandwiches from the Stage Deli. I joined in as everyone began devouring the food.
John, Paul, George and Ringo moved into an adjacent room where Cousin Brucie was hosting a live broadcast. Sensing it was time to go, I looked in and waved goodbye. “She’s a doll,” Cousin Brucie said, pointing in my direction. The Beatles seemed as bewildered as I was by his remark.
I went back into the freight elevator in the company of Neil Aspinall, the Beatles’ road manager. When we reached the ground floor, he pulled something from a pocket — a copy of John’s new book, “A Spaniard in the Works.”
“It’s from us,” he said. “For your collection.”
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