Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MIRROR SHOWBIZ WRITER WHO The Beatles came to dinner and Paul sang my daughter to sleep ...but I didn’t get the gig as Ringo’s stand-in
It was the night I was never going to forget. That momentous night April 9, 1970. My world exclusive was splashed on the Daily Mirror’s front page: Paul Quits The Beatles.
Unimaginable drama was to unfold, and a world was left asking: “Where will we be without the Beatles?”
At the time I was the Mirror’s showbusiness columnist and as evening approached, I had just put on my coat and locked down my attache case when my office phone rang.
Instantly, I recognised the voice of one of my Beatles’ contacts. From the quiver in his tone, I knew he had something serious to impart.
Finally he stuttered: “Paul is quitting, Don. It’s definite. It’s all over. The Beatles are breaking up.
“Can you believe that?”
I slammed down the phone and called the home of a Beatles aide who was an executive of their Apple company. There was some reluctance on his part to elaborate but, vitally, he confirmed the story.
In a bold typeface normally reserved for earthquakes, plane crashes and other disasters, the Mirror’s front page first edition broke the news: ‘Paul Is Quitting The Beatles’ and then in later editions: ‘Paul Quits The Beatles.’
It had been a long and incredible journey. Wearily, as I drove home, I had time to reflect on how it all began.
My mind flashed back to June 1963 — the year when I wrote the very first national newspaper story on The Beatles.
It did not reflect too well on John Lennon who, inebriated at a party in Liverpool to celebrate Paul’s 21st birthday, got into an altercation with local DJ Bob Wooler.
Lennon had lashed out at him when he apparently suggested the Beatle was gay as he had just returned from a holiday in Spain with the group’s homosexual manager Brian Epstein.
A hungover Lennon apologised the next morning for his actions and Wooler decided not to go to his lawyers, but was left with a black eye, bruised ribs and torn knuckles.
John told me: “Why did I have to go and punch my best friend? I was so high I didn’t realise what I was doing.”
My relationship with The Beatles flourished – I toured with them for their first major concert tour. Chaos broke out from hysterical fans on every stop.
By sheer chance, I may have spawned a strand of their fame when I was credited with coining the term “Beatlemania”. It was the only term that seemed to fit the scenes I witnessed at one of the earliest Beatles concerts… the cacophony of hysterical fans as they mobbed the stage… the electric energy in the room.
Things got social. Paul, George and Pattie [Boyd, George’s wife] came around to dinner one night at my home and it was a relaxed, fun-filled and off-the-record evening. My six-year-old daughter Amanda couldn’t sleep so Paul settled her back in bed and sang a lullaby to her. A few days later a disbelieving school headmistress telephoned and asked: “Can it be true as I hear from your daughter that some of The Beatles were with you earlier this week?” My wife confirmed the unbelievable.
“Oh,” said the headmistress “In that case could you please ask Paul Mccartney to come and open our school fete on Saturday?”
When John and [ first wife] Cynthia moved house to a mansion on the St George’s Hill estate in Weybridge, I arrived before the removal vans drew on to the drive. John was unperturbed. He had become accustomed to my presence in odd places. “I knew that when I bought a new house I would find you in the kitchen,” he laughed.
Back at work in the newsroom, I was able to reveal bigger plans for The Beatles. Two tours to the States were scheduled and tours to Australia and the Far East were also planned.
First, though, was an invasion of Europe. I travelled with them for most of the way, standing in the wings of stages, occupying hotel rooms on the same floor, often dining with them and even getting a seat in their limo.
While The Beatles’ best performances were for the public, I was lucky enough to witness their well-rehearsed routines in their dressing room.
The boys would tune their guitars and John and Paul, sometimes with George and Ringo, would decide on the running order of their hits.
My eyes often fell on road manager Neil Aspinall who, with a variety of pens, would sometimes be squat in the corner as he forged the band’s signatures on postcard photographs to be sent out to fans.
I have often wondered how many hundreds of forged autographs of the Fab Four are still in circulation in the global market. Even experts have