Nothing says forever like a wrist tattoo
McCartney fan inks signature after Regina show
Chelsi Gobeil’s love for the Beatles will never change — and it’s not only because she got Sir Paul McCartney’s signature seared into her wrist Wednesday night.
Gobeil and her girlfriend were sitting in third row, each with a sign during Wednesday’s concert at Regina’s Mosaic Stadium.
Gobeil’s sign read Please Sign My Tattoo and her friend’s read Let It Be True, with an arrow pointing toward Gobeil.
About halfway through the concert, McCartney said something to the effect of trying not to read people’s signs because they distract him, Gobeil said.
But when everyone held their signs up, Gobeil’s must have caught McCartney’s eye because he said, according to Gobeil, “Oh, sign my tattoo? Where is it?”
And then just before the secondlast song, someone from McCartney’s crew came up to Gobeil and asked her to come with him.
“We pretty much ran all the way to the back of the stage and then he just, like, motioned to Paul and ... then they were like, ‘OK you’re on,’ ” explained Gobeil.
Mere seconds later, she was on stage with Paul, getting his signature under a previous tattoo on her wrist that reads Let It Be.
“It was one of the best moments of my life,” said Gobeil. “It was just crazy that it happened.”
Gobeil couldn’t wait to get the autograph tattooed.
As soon as the concert wrapped up, Gobeil’s brother put a call in to a local tattoo artist for what he called an emergency tattoo.
“So I had it done at around 12:45 a.m. last night,” said Gobeil. “This way, the story will always be with me.”
She added: “It’s (McCartney’s) name and a heart.”
Gobeil was introduced to The Beatles’ music as a little girl. She comes from a family of Beatles fans.
“I remember my mom showing me The Ed Sullivan Show and telling me about The Beatles,” said Gobeil, recalling her childhood encounter with the popular English rock band. “She had a little Paul McCartney figurine that she’d given me too.”
At about the age of six or seven when she was just learning to play the organ, Gobeil learned to play Hey Jude.
“It’s my favourite song of all times,” she said.
At 16, she went to her first McCartney concert in St. Paul, Minn., with her father, and has gone to six more since, including the one on Wednesday in Regina.
“Every time there was a tour, I’d start saving up so that I could go,” she said.
But trying to get McCartney’s attention was no easy feat.
Gobeil had her sign at his concerts in Orlando and Montreal, but left with no signature.
“I’m so glad it worked out in Regina because my friends and family were in the crowd,” she said, adding her mom cried when she saw her up on the stage with McCartney.
Gobeil said McCartney’s Regina concert was the best out of the seven to which she has been. Some 40,000 fans attended the event.