20 September 12 - 18, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Epstein. Lennon then offered them tickets to the show as well as passes to the press conference. “We mistakenly said we already had [tickets],” Hernan- dez laments. It was true, of course, but their seats were up in the balcony. “God knows how good his tickets would have been versus ours.” They did accept the press passes and as they were leav- ing, both McCartney and Harrison reminded them about the black hats. Pinter and Hernandez promised to bring them to the press conference. After leaving the suite, Pinter and Hernandez made their way back to the service elevator and as the doors shut, they dropped the facade. “We held on to each other and then came the release,” Pinter wrote. “The tears and hysterics of two fans.” THINGS WE SAID TODAY W FAA’s Bert Shipp was the only Dallas re- porter to score a one-on-one interview with The Beatles, which he did by promis- ing the officer stationed outside of their dressing room an autograph for his daughter. In the ambush interview, McCartney is wearing a black Stetson, one of four that had just been given to the band by Pinter and Hernandez, and it ap- pears to inform the tone of the interview. The band answers some of Shipp’s questions in exaggerated Texas accents and McCartney spends much of the interview pretending he’s riding a horse. Shipp informs McCartney that in Westerns, black hats are normally worn by the bad guys. “I’m going to be the good bad guy,” McCartney responds. “How’s that?” Shipp’s questions are met with tongue-in- cheek, sarcastic responses that had become the band’s trademark. “Do you have any political affiliations at all?” Shipp asks Starr. “No,” Starr answers dryly. “He doesn’t even smoke,” Lennon adds. “I don’t even smoke,” Starr confirms before taking a drag of his cigarette. When asked by Shipp what kind of girl they prefer, Len- non and Harrison have the same answer. “My wife,” says Lennon, who had been married to Cyn- thia Powell Lennon for two years at that point. “John’s wife,” Harrison jokes. Lennon punches his arm. The antics continued at the press conference, where doz- ens of reporters crammed into a small room in Memorial Auditorium’s basement to ask them about their clothes, whether they liked America, when they were coming back and what they liked about Dallas the most. “The organization,” Lennon sarcastically responded to the last question. “It was very hectic,” Harrison added. When asked about Ringo for President, a publicity stunt meant to coincide with the upcoming election, Starr made a joke about the Kennedy assassination. “You better watch yourself down here,” he told the re- porter. The response was a mix of gasps and laughter. Fifteen-year-old Donna Canada covered the press confer- ence for Datebook, a popular teen magazine at the time. She was the youngest reporter present. “I was very nervous since I had never been to anything this exciting in my whole life,” she wrote. “The policeman who let me in was a little hesitant, as all the kids outside the door chanted, ‘That’s not fair! She’s a teenager.’” Canada, who could not be reached for an interview, deliv- ered on what Datebook readers were likely interested in with a detailed account of what The Beatles wore. “Their attire could be described by any American girl who was familiar at all with the Beatles as nippy, gear or the fabmost,” she wrote, using the British slang popular among American fans at the time. “It truly was.” Canada didn’t have a tape recorder and had to frantically scribble down the questions and answers in her notebook. Her transcript is impressively accurate, considering she was taking additional notes as well. “Paul smiled constantly,” she wrote. “John, I feel, was the wittiest. He spoke up the most, too [...] Ringo was my favor- ite when I arrived, but as I left the conference, was last in line. Once I tapped him on the shoulder and he didn’t even turn around. He seemed so bored with the whole thing.” Canada also had a silent but humorous back-and-forth with Harrison. “George stared at me,” she wrote. “After about five min- utes, he winked. I looked around and there was no one be- hind me, so I winked back. He surprised me greatly by winking again. I felt like running up to him and hugging him, but I couldn’t risk being thrown out, so I stuck to my first impulse and winked again. I’ll never forget it.” As the conference con- cluded and the concert was about to begin, McCartney in- vited Canada to the band’s dressing room to get their auto- graphs. “I declined his offer because I didn’t want to be the only one in there,” she wrote. “I am crazy, now that I think of it. But I really got to meet and speak with the Beatles. It was a dream come true.” Twist and Shout W ilson doesn’t remember what songs The Beatles sang in Dallas. The Frank Sinatra detractor men- tioned earlier in this story doesn’t even remem- ber how she got her ticket. (Details like that get fuzzy after 60 years.) She mostly remembers what she was wearing and who she wore it for. “All I remember is screaming and probably crying,” Wilson says. “I can remember standing there in my blue Ivy League- style shirt, reaching my arms out and screaming, ‘Paul!’” In fairness to Wilson, very few who attended The Beatles’ Dallas concert can remember what songs they performed because they couldn’t hear them to begin with. The screams of 10,000 fans easily overpowered the primitive PA system at Memorial Auditorium. The predominantly teenage crowd was wound up tight and ready to explode after sitting through four openers. The Bill Black Combo, The Exciters, Clarence “Frogman” Henry and Jackie DeShannon were formidable performers, but barely stood a chance against the antsy fans. “Instead of just like one big main artist, it was more like a variety type thing where they would have a show with a bunch of different acts,” Barnes says. “The other acts were good, but everybody just kept saying, ‘No, we want The Bea- tles.’ So nobody paid much attention to them.” KLIF’s Ron Chapman and Dan McCurdy were bestowed the honor of announcing the main event after flipping a coin with other local DJs. They barely made it through the group’s name before deafening screams and cheers drowned out both their voices and the opening chords of “Twist and Shout.” “The place went crazy, of course, with screaming and peo- ple trying to rush the stage,” Bender says. “And not just girls. There were some guys in there too.” “You couldn’t hear a damn thing,” Hernandez says. “There were so many people screaming. There we were in the first balcony just going, ‘Shut up!’ [...] and trying to get people to just be quiet so we could hear them play.” Barnes fared better, but not by much. “Ringo played the drum so loud you can hear it over everything,” Barnes says. “They couldn’t drown him out.” Bender, whose seat was closer to the stage, says she could hear them fine. “I could hear the harmonies. I could watch Ringo keeping the beat,” she says. “I don’t know how they stayed together so well, but they sounded good. They were skilled at what they did in those situations with a lot of screaming. I never picked up on anything being off.” At one point, fans in front of Bender stood up on their chairs. She reluctantly followed suit so she could see McCartney sing “All My Loving.” He apparently made it worth her while. “I swear he looked right at me and winked,” Bender says. Wilson, who was in the balcony to the left of the stage, also felt a connection with Mc- Cartney at one point. “I was absolutely convinced at the time that Paul saw me in the audience,” she says. “I wrote a letter to him to say that I was the one in the balcony in the front row with my blue shirt on.” The Fab Four played 12 songs – “Twist and Shout,” “You Can’t Do That,” “All My Loving,” “She Loves You,” “Things We Said Today,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “If I Fell,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Boys,” “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Long Tall Sally,” in that order. It added up to only about 30 minutes. “It was disappointing that it was over so fast,” Barnes says. “I don’t remember too much after the show, but my parents dropped us off, and they had to go wait for us to get out of the show before they picked us up again. They said they got out to a back street to wait after the show and saw The Beatles drive by.” “I didn’t go back to the Cabana,” Bender says. “I knew that I was already in trouble with my parents, so I went back home and so did my friends. We were all just happy to be there.” Wilson, who was not at the Cabana before, did pay the ho- tel a visit after the band left. “We had paid a housemaid 50 cents to let us into the Bea- tles room before it got cleaned up,” she says. “And I remember very distinctly that we were in absolute awe at the thought that we were standing in the room that The Beatles had been in. [...] I remember we went into the bathroom and touched the toilet seat saying, ‘Oh, they sat on this toilet seat!’” She trails off laughing. “She probably took us into any empty hotel room that hadn’t been cleaned up yet,” she admits. “But we believed that The Beatles had been there.” Courtesy the Mark Naboshek Collection A Polaroid of the Beatles Fan Club meeting the band in Dallas; a ticket stub from the show; Beatles’ autographs on hotel note paper from the night. Music from p19
