Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the British prime minister, was due to arrive in Washington the same day. He put his arrival back to the day after, to avoid the Beatle chaos.
That evening they accepted their first, and last, embassy invitation. They’d already turned down dinner with Lady Dixon, wife of the British ambassador in Paris.
‘We always tried to get out of those crap things,’ said George. ‘But that time we got caught. They were always full of snobby people who really loathe our type, but want to see us because we’re rich and famous. It’s all hypocrisy. They were just trying to get publicity for the embassy.’
Reports of what exactly happened at the Washington embassy party vary in detail, but Michael Braun, in his paperback book on the Beatles’ early tours (Love Me Do, Penguin, 1964), says that it started off amicably enough.
‘Hello John,’ said Sir David Ormsby-Gore (now Lord Harlech) when they arrived.
‘I’m not John,’ said John. ‘I’m Charlie. That’s John.’
‘Hello John,’ said the ambassador to George.
‘I’m not John,’ said George. ‘I’m Frank. That’s John.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the ambassador.
Several elderly ladies, with glasses of drink in their hands, accosted the Beatles and demanded autographs. Officious junior officials started pushing them around, insisting they spoke to people and gave autographs. ‘Sign this,’ one said to John, who refused. ‘You’ll sign this and like it.’ A young lady guest walked up to Ringo, removed a pair of nail scissors from her purse and started snipping off locks of his hair. John left early, but the others stayed on and saw it out. The ambassador and his wife said how sorry they were.
Even Brian’s charm hadn’t managed to calm things down. ‘Both the ambassador and his wife were extremely nice,’ he said later. ‘But the Beatles loathed that reception. Since then they have refused every invitation of that type.’
Sir Alec Douglas-Home at last arrived to meet President Johnson. ‘I liked your advance party,’ said the President. ‘But don’t you feel they need haircuts?’
The Beatles started back for New York and their Carnegie Hall concert, under the usual barrage of press, TV and fans. The American wheeler-dealers were now out in strength, trying to get contracts for Beatles products, at any price. It was estimated that in 1964, 50 million dollars’ worth of Beatle goods were sold in the States. Several unauthorized tape-recorded interviews, which no one realized had been done, were brought out as LP records, billed heavily under the Beatles name, much to Brian’s annoyance.
Over 6,000 were in the audience for each of the two Carnegie Hall concerts. Sid Bernstein had to turn down David Niven and Shirley MacLaine. Hysterical screams greeted and accompanied the Beatles’ two appearances, each only 25 minutes long, so the papers reported next day.
Sandi Stewart, the 15-year-old fan from New Hampshire, made it, but she didn’t think the screams were all that great. ‘That first concert wasn’t all that wild, I mean there wasn’t much screaming, nothing like later concerts which were completely wild. I remember being very annoyed with George that first time, perhaps that was why I didn’t like him. He seemed to be standing in the way of Ringo and we couldn’t see him. We all shouted at him to get out of the way and let us see Ringo.
‘You really do believe they can see you, just you alone, when they’re up on the stage. That’s why you scream, so they’ll notice you. I always felt John could see me. It was like a dream. Just me and John together and no one else.
‘Even when you’re screaming, you can still hear. All the reporters in the papers always said you couldn’t hear anything with all the noise, but you could, even when you were screaming. Their sexy movements made you scream even louder.
‘They were being sexy with you personally. It was an outlet. But I don’t think many girls got sexually excited, not at concerts anyway. I didn’t myself.’
The Beatles then went by plane from New York down to Miami for the second Ed Sullivan Show. The pilot wore a Beatle wig. They met Cassius Clay, who said he was the greatest, but they were the most beautiful.
It was getting close to 25 February, George’s 21st birthday. Even though Sandi Stewart didn’t like George so much, she still decided to send him a present. ‘We found out he was staying at the Deauville Hotel in Miami. We sent a registered parcel, figuring that was very clever, as he’d have to sign for it and we’d get his autograph. But we didn’t.
‘It didn’t really matter. John was the one I was in love with. I gave him three whole years of my life from then on.’
24 britain and back to the usa
Back in Liverpool, the Beatles’ old schools were getting some strange requests. Teenagers from all over the world were writing for any old desks belonging to the Beatles, or old caps or old exercise books. There were soon scores of signed exercise books in circulation, far more than they could ever possibly have had.
‘We were getting these very funny letters from girls, mainly in America,’ said Mr Pobjoy of Quarry Bank. ‘Asking if our boys would write to them. I thought they were howlingly funny. For the boys’ amusement as well as mine, I used to read them out in the hall after morning prayers.
‘The boys enjoyed them so much they were convinced for a long time that I was making them all up, but I gather that quite a few boys in the end did write to the wretched girls.’
The Beatles’ parents were also being contacted by a lot of American fans, some of them turning up on their doorstep, having forced their parents to stop off on their European grand tours to fit in the Dingle and Woolton.
‘I’d usually ask the ones who’d come a long way if they’d like some tea,’ says Jim McCartney. ‘When they said yes, I’d say, there’s the kitchen. They’d go in and start screaming and shouting because they’d recognize the kitchen from photographs. They knew more about me than I did myself. Fans would make very good detectives.’
On George’s 21st birthday, Mrs Harrison was unable to find room in her house for all the cards and presents. They came in mail vans by special deliveries.
Elsie and Harry, Ringo’s parents, like the others, began to find themselves surrounded and barricaded in their own home, while fans camped outside and stole bits of the door or chalked on the walls.
‘The first time I really noticed how well they were known,’ says Elsie, ‘was when we woke up one morning to find a busload of fans knocking at the front door. It was seven o’clock on a Sunday morning. They’d travelled overnight from London. Well, what could I do? I fetched them all in and gave them tea and biscuits. I thought it was marvellous. All that way, just for Ritchie. They never ate anything. They wrapped them up to take back as souvenirs.
‘They used to climb over the backyard wall, or sleep in the street for days. They were physical wrecks, most of them, but they were just too excited to rest or eat. They’d ask, which is his chair? I’d say, sit on them all love, he has. They always wanted to go up and see his bed as well. They’d lie on it, moaning.’
Cyn and Julian had by this time moved out of Mimi’s house and into a place of their own. She was still avoiding the press as much as possible. ‘A gang of reporters trailed me round for days, when they found out who I was. They cornered me one day when I was visiting my mother in Hoylake. This reporter chased me all over the place and besieged me in a shop. I managed to dart out the back and into a fruit shop next door, where I hid for half an hour till he’d gone.’
The Beatles came back from America to the usual hysterical scenes. The prime minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, called them ‘our best exports’ and ‘a useful contribution to the balance of payments’. Mr Wilson, leader of the Labour Party and a Liverpool MP, didn’t like the inference that a 14th Earl should be trying to cash in on the Liverpool Beatles. ‘The Tories are trying to make the Beatles their secret weapon,’ he said.