The time I strummed Paul McCartney’s bass guitar
On 4 December 1965, the Beatles appeared at Newcastle-on-Tyne’s City Hall during what would be their last ever British tour. I was a 22-year-old reporter in the Newcastle office of the Northern Echo. Orders from my newsdesk were: “Go along and try to get a word with them.”
I set out on the assignment with zero hope. This tour came in the wake of their Rubber Soul album, their second smash-hit film Help!, their performance to 55,000 people at New York’s Shea Stadium and their investiture as MBEs by the Queen. I’d be competing not only with Tyneside’s own heavyweight media but also the national newspapers and broadcasters who had offices there. Even if I got close to them, why would they waste a second on some nobody from the Northern Echo?
A few minutes before showtime, I was loitering backstage among a crowd of other would-be interviewers, including my friend Dave Watts from the Echo’s evening stablemate, the Northern Despatch. In those more innocent days, the Beatles’ dressing room was without any security protection, yet no one dared knock on the door, let alone barge in.
Then suddenly Paul McCartney came along the passage. As he opened the dressing-room door, Dave said: “I know that face” and, as he paused with a grin, I managed to ask: “Can we come in and talk to you?”
By: Philip Norman
Source: The Guardian
