Read Beatles for Free Online Page B

the second house. George said I was daft – I’d never survive because they were going to be really loud for the film people. I managed the first show, but by the beginning of the second, the screams were so loud I almost collapsed. I had to get a policeman to help me out. He didn’t believe me when I said I’d been to the first show as well …
    ‘One of the first big things George did for us was in 1963. He said he’d got me a birthday present, but I couldn’t see it or hold it. All I had to do was get ready to go to Jamaica on Wednesday. I said I’ll need new clothes. He said, all you need is your cossy. That holiday in Montego Bay was the best ever.
    ‘On the beach one day, this bloke sat down and said, hello Mrs Harrison. How do you know I’m Mrs Harrison? He’d got a description of what I was wearing when I left the hotel that morning. He was a reporter. I woke Harold up. I said, there’s a reporter taking all your snores down. I was too thirsty to talk to him. I’d need a drink. He sent off this Japanese photographer he had and he came back with eight bottles of beer. He then took us round the clubs at night. We had a great time.
    ‘I think our proudest moment of all was the Civic Reception in Liverpool. Seeing our own townspeople turning out. From Speke airport onwards they were eight deep all the way into town. You should have seen all the poor old people, waving their clean white hankies as we passed. They’d come out specially from their old people’s homes, just for once. Oh, Lord, what a day.’
    George, at that time, had just started his interest in Indian music, which Mrs Harrison, in a rather convoluted way, thought she might have something to do with.
    ‘I always used to fiddle with our wireless to get Indian music. I’d tuned into Indian stuff once by accident and I thought it was lovely, so after that I was always trying to get it on the wireless. I’m not saying this has affected George. This was all before he was born …’
    Jim McCartney, Paul’s father, had also taken very easily to the new life, though in a different way, as he tried to keep out of the limelight. Unlike the others, he bought an old Edwardian villa, rather smart and grand, as opposed to a new bungalow, and turned himself into something of a gent, in his smart sports jacket and check trousers, owning a racehorse, tending his grapes in his own conservatory. He had of course been a salesman, so he always did look very neat and presentable.
    Jim first realized they were doing well when the phone started ringing non-stop. They always had a phone, despite living in a council house, because of his wife being a midwife. ‘It seemed to go every second. I answered it in case it was important. Girls would ring up from California and say is Paul there. What a waste of money. If they came to the house from a long distance, I’d say, do you want a cup of tea? Then I’d say, well there’s the kitchen. They’d go in and shout and scream because they’d recognize the kitchen from photographs. They knew more about me than I did myself. Fans would make very good detectives.
    ‘I used to think, how far can it go? Every newspaper was full every day of the police having to keep the kids back. All that free publicity. Brian never had to pay for any of it.
    ‘I think their secret was they were attractive to the kids because they represented their frame of mind, they representedfreedom and rebellion. And they liked doing it so much, that’s why they did it so well.’
    I stayed with Jim, and his new wife Angie, several times in their home, and always had a very enjoyable evening. When he came to London, he used to ring me and come round for tea. One night, when I was staying with him in Cheshire, Paul had sent up an advance copy of ‘When I’m Sixty-four’, which he said he had written with his dad in mind. That evening, they must have played it about 20 times, dancing round and round the drawing room. I was convinced Jim was