That’s me in the picture: Joel Soroka shakes a tambourine at the filming of Hey Jude

I spent the summer of 1968 travelling around Europe, starting and finishing in London. I was a 21-year-old New Yorker and it was the first time I’d left North America. In early September, I found myself in a B&B off Edgware Road: there were no showers or central heating, and we ate rare bacon for breakfast. It was all new to me.

On 3 September I jumped on a bus to American Express near Piccadilly to pick up my mail, and caught a bus back – the wrong one. An attractive woman sat next to me and we got chatting. Then, out of the blue, she asked, “Would you like to meet the Beatles?” I said something like, “Give me a break.” But she said: “No, this is on the up-and-up.” She worked for Apple, she said, and the Beatles were filming a promo for their new single the following night. They were looking for a crowd, and she liked my face. I didn’t believe a word she was saying. She gave me an unofficial-looking piece of paper and told me to be at Victoria station the next day at 4pm, where a bus would be waiting.

But it was all exactly as she said. We were driven out of London to a hangar – Twickenham Studios, it turned out. We were a mixed bag of people and ages, everyone chatting excitedly, but there was a sense that no one believed we were actually going to meet the Beatles. When we arrived, we were led into a brightly lit studio. Technical people were milling around a platform that had drums and instruments set out on it.

By: Hannah Booth

Source: The Guardian

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