19 September 12 - 18, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents go on to wear matching outfits to all Beatles-related events to distinguish themselves as co-presidents. Tickets for the Dallas concert cost $5.50 and went on sale on June 1. Fans camped out overnight to ensure they’d get a spot. Bender was among the fans who skipped school to wait in line. “I wasn’t the type to just skip school, but I was wanting to get tickets, so I paid a neighbor, a friend of my brother’s, who was actually 16 and had a driver’s license [to take me],” she says. “As responsible of a young lady as I was, I was just not going to miss The Beatles.” A report from NBC5 from the time compared the line to an “open-air slumber party,” with the teenage campers bringing snacks, blankets and magazines to help them pass the time. In subsequent years, it became more common for fans to wait like this for highly anticipated concerts, movies or other major cultural events, but it was still considered ex- treme in 1964. “Never have so many waited so long for so little,” NBC5 reported. Grownups just didn’t understand. Carol Barnes, a 13-year-old classmate of Bender’s, had never been to a concert before and desperately wanted to see The Beatles. She thought she had missed her chance when the tickets sold out within a day, but her luck changed when a pair of spare tickets went up for sale over the radio. “I really, really lucked out,” Barnes says. “A DJ came on the radio and said somebody had some tickets to sell. [...] I called up and got the phone number, and we went and picked up the tickets.” Barnes’ lucky streak continued when she realized her seats would be in the third row. ”I don’t know how they got those third-row tickets,” she says. “I would have thought somebody would sit in the line all night, or have to know somebody to get those third-row tickets.” No radio station was named an official sponsor of the Dallas show, but KLIF put in the work to be associated with it. The station sold branded memorabilia ahead of the show, correctly assuming it would all show up in photos of the concert. One pennant read “Beatles, we love you” on the front and “But our heart belongs to KLIF” on the back. The station’s big-ticket item was a “KLIF Beatle Bri- gade” sweatshirt. Barnes persuaded her parents to drive her from Fort Worth to Dallas to get one so she could wear it to the concert. She lost the sweatshirt decades ago, but she still lovingly describes it as though it were sitting in front of her. “It was real neat,” she says and sighs. “The picture of them on the front was from the ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ single. And that’s what I wore.” When Hernandez and Pinter heard The Beatles were coming to Dallas, they became women on a mission, and their plan involved more than just attending the concert. Us- ing their official fan club stationary, they penned a letter to Epstein asking for a chance to meet the band and present them with gifts on behalf of the Dallas fan club. They were shocked and elated when Epstein wrote back saying that it could be arranged. “The letter did not say how, when or where,” Pinter wrote. “But it was enough to know that Brian Epstein had actually read our letter and responded.” A HARD DAY’S NIGHT T he band’s jet sent shockwaves through the crowd of fans as soon as the wheels hit the ground. When the doors opened and the Fab Four emerged, they were given a warm, Texas welcome in the form of hysterical screaming. This had been the soundtrack of their entire tour, and Dallas was shaping up to be the grand finale. “I remember very clearly all of them and their entourage coming off down those steps,” Bender says. “And we’re wav- ing and going, ‘Welcome! We love you!’” WFAA footage from the landing shows around 2,000 fans sobbing, pressing up against the fence and waving around merch and magazines. Some look on the verge of fainting. Bender says the Dallas arrival was actually quite tame, es- pecially compared with a riot she saw break out when the band landed at the Houston airport less than a year later. “I didn’t see anyone try to climb the fence,” she says. The mop-topped heartthrobs were given dapper, 10-gal- lon white hats by the Dallas Civic Opera upon their arrival. The hats were noticeably too small for their heads, but they still flaunted them on their walk from the plane to the limo. After the band’s limo left, fans scrambled to race them to the Cabana Hotel, off Stemmons Freeway. At the time, it was a striking and fairly new piece of midcentury architecture owned by Doris Day. In the years to come, it would play host to many a celebrity, including Jimi Hendrix and this other counterculture icon named Richard Nixon. The building was later used as a prison and is now being converted into an affordable housing complex. But it was this night that the hotel truly earned its reputa- tion as a historic site, as 1,800 Dallas Beatlemaniacs were waiting for the band as they arrived. The limo pulled around to the back entrance to avoid the crowd, but the crowd out- flanked the vehicle and surrounded it on all sides. The Beatles had to make a mad dash through the throng, which was hellbent on lovingly tearing them to pieces, grab- bing at their clothes, jewelry and glasses in hopes of nabbing a souvenir. Both George Harrison and Ringo Starr lost their footing at one point and had to be picked up by officers to avoid being trampled. Bender and her friends were among the fans outside at the front of the Cabana, straining to catch a glimpse of The Bea- tles. The crowd quickly reached an unsettling density and had begun jostling each other to get closer to the windows, with the kids at the front tightly pressed up against the glass. “We were getting kind of packed in, and at some point I just said, ‘We’ve gotta get out of this. This is potential dan- ger,’” she says. “So we kind of pulled back and stayed in the parking lot.” Bender’s intuition turned out to be on point. “I heard the sound of breaking glass,” she says. “I heard screaming, and not happy screaming, but panic and people dispersing. And I heard an ambulance coming.” The pressure from the crowd had caused the glass to break. Several fans had fallen through the window and had to be hospitalized for severe cuts and lacerations. Others were injured by falling glass and treated on site by para- medics. The Beatles would later postpone some of their Dallas engagements to call and check in on injured fans. Bender was safe in the parking lot when the window broke, but she did have to tend to a personal crisis once the media arrived in the morning. “News channels were there with cameras in our faces and everything,” she says. “I was like, ‘Can you please not tell our parents that we’re here? And will you please not tell our teachers why we skipped school today?’” BOYS W hile other fans were clamoring outside, Pinter and Hernandez were being smuggled up to the band’s suite in a laundry basket. They had with them an oversized cigarette lighter with an engraved message: “To the Fab Four – Jolly John, Pretty Paul, Gorgeous George and Ring-a-Ding Ringo – Dallas Fan Club #24.” Thanks to Epstein’s cooperation, the fan club parliamen- tarians were able to make arrangements with the hotel ahead of time and had earned their coveted meeting on a promise to stay calm and mild-mannered. They took their roles as fan ambassadors incredibly seriously. “Our main goal was to be a different kind of Beatles fan,” Hernandez says. “To behave well. To enjoy the concert, enjoy ourselves, but not go absolutely physically crazy to where we might embarrass our family or ourselves or whatever.” As the co-presidents were escorted to The Beatles’ suite, their goal to remain model fans weighed on them. As princi- pled as they were, they were still 15-year-old girls whose world revolved around the men they were about to meet. “We showed our appreciation with polite responses and no screaming or fainting,” Pinter wrote. “All the while, we were screaming inside.” “They took us through some double doors, and there they were,” Hernandez says. “They were as gracious and as gentlemanly as they could possibly be. Just very normal people in normal, casual clothes.” The girls had countless questions for The Beatles, but were surprised when their idols had just as many ques- tions for them. They wanted to know everything about Texas, a place that fascinated and frightened them. “They were asking us what it looked like outside,” Her- nandez says. “They envisioned Texas to have a prairie and cactus and horses. And we were like, ‘No, there’s a freeway out there. There are cars. There are a lot of people that would love to get to you.’ We were trying to explain to them that that was the Old West.” The girls presented the lighter to the band and men- tioned that they also had four black Stetson hats for them. They had intentionally left these gifts at home in hopes of using them as leverage to get a second meeting. It worked. The mention of black hats immediately piqued the band’s interest, as they apparently felt the white ones they’d received at the airport (which they still had with them in the suite) didn’t suit them. Lennon had previously thrown his across the room in distaste. “You have black hats?” McCartney asked. Of course they did. They had read in a teen magazine that black was the band’s favorite color. Lennon was quiet for most of the meeting, according to Pinter, but he did have a lot of questions about the Kennedy assassination. “He was intrigued by the fact that I had seen President Kennedy only 17 minutes before he was shot,” she wrote. “Paul even came over to where we were when I was explaining the events that transpired.” Pinter went on to write that this conversation would come back to haunt her after Lennon himself was shot and killed in 1980. At one point, they heard the window break and screams from fans downstairs. It was apparently Lennon, who had been sitting by the window and was startled by the noise, who suggested they check in on the injured fans. Epstein reminded Pinter to collect the band’s autographs, which she did using a piece of hotel stationary. Pinter in- sisted Epstein sign as well, a request he resisted before oblig- ing. At that moment, he was her favorite Beatle for helping her and Hernandez arrange the meeting. Before their meeting concluded at around 3 a.m., Starr sug- gested that their press officer take a photo of everyone with his Polaroid camera. Pinter wanted to stand next to McCart- ney for the picture, but those plans fell through when Harri- son pulled her close to him. In between photos, Harrison asked Pinter and Hernan- dez how old they were. When they said they were 15, Harri- son laughed. “Brian, we have illegals in the room!” he joked to Andy Hanson/Dallas Times Herald/DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University A press conference held prior to the Beatles’ concert in Dallas Memorial Auditorium. >> p20
