Days in the Life

Chapter Eight

I washed up quickly in the adjoining bathroom, changed into my old white nightgown and crawled into bed, already pretty bleary-eyed and worn out; after all, I fell asleep in the back of the limo while coming home from the concert last January--it just takes a hell of a lot out of you to spin around all hyper and act like a complete Beatle nut for over four hours! Even though I felt ready to crash into a heavy sleep, I knew I probably wouldn’t fall asleep for another half hour or so; I have such a hard time falling asleep in hotels... especially with the knowledge that I had the Fab For sleeping just yards away from me!

The bedroom I had was pretty nice, if not quite simple: a double bed, full-length mirror, nightstand with a really nice china lamp on it, and a cherrywood wardrobe next to the windows overlooking Lake Michigan. I stared at the tiny flower pattern on the wallpaper for a few minutes, trying to make myself tired; then my eyes fell upon the top of my vanity case and those two programs that Neil had given me before the concert. I retrieved the Beatles U.S.A. Ltd. one with the huge pictures in it. I really hoped Claire bought one for herself, since the pictures were really great; there were a few pages of each Beatle, first John, then Paul, then George, then Ringo. Many of the pictures were larger- than- life head shots of the boys--totally kissable ones you’d want to hang on your walls at home. I sat there for quite some time just staring at one of the Paul pictures, just staring at those round brown eyes of his, and thinking that that real-life face was just a hop, step, and jump away from me, literally.

I think I dozed off around one-thirty or so with the lamp on the nightstand still on, so when morning finally did come, I barely noticed the sun streaming straight through the window the moment it came over the horizon (low horizon over the lake, you know). I rolled over and slept for a little bit longer until there was a knock on the door.

“Hey, Laurie,” I heard John say as he opened the door a tiny bit. “Rise and shine, luv; we’ve gotta get going soon.”

“Mmm... what time is it?”

“Six o’clock; we have to leave here in an hour.”

“Okay, okay... just give me five minutes and I’ll be up,” I yawned, turning back over in my bed and hugging my pillow.

“All right, then... breakfast is already here, so you know,” he said, closing the door.

About one minute later, I’d fallen back to sleep. After a few minutes, I had a funny feeling that someone else was in the room with me--especially when I felt a few tiny drops of something wet splash my face. I brushed them away, the opened my eyes to see Paul aiming a spoonful of cornflakes and milk at me from the foot of my bed.

“Paul! What in god’s name are you doing?” I cried, yanking the sheet over my head. “Stop flinging milk at me!”

“No falling back to sleep!” he said in an irritatingly chipper singsong voice. “Get up or you’ll be wearing your breakfast, luv.”

“Okay, okay,” I said as I leaped out of bed, my messed-up hair flopping in my face. I pushed it aside and grabbed my robe as Paul munched on his breakfast, heading back into the common area.

I took a quick shower, scrubbing my hair and putting a finishing rinse in that made my hair extra shiny; I had to make it look somewhat good, since I really didn’t have time that morning to curl the ends with rollers or anything--I’d be lucky if it was dry by the time we left the hotel that morning! I went back into my bedroom, dug through my clothes suitcase, and chose my sleeveless black- and-white dress, plus pantyhose, my black heels, and a red scarf to cover up my hair if it really looked hideous.

After making sure I’d packed all my personal items back in the suitcases where they belonged, I shut off the lamp that had been on since the night before and headed into the common area where George and John were sitting by the breakfast cart. Brian and Neil were going through some paperwork at the writing desk in the corner near the TV; Mal was doing his usual job of hauling cases into the hallway by the elevator for our departure. He looked up from his work when I came in.

“Are you done with your cases?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah; I’m finished,” I said, heading for the breakfast cart. Apparently these boys didn’t eat big first thing in the morning; all they had ordered was cornflakes, milk, orange juice, and a large pot of coffee... not exactly my favorite bill of fare. If I wanted to eat anything else, I was going to have to force myself to get up much earlier and order something else from room service. I sighed and poured some milk into the bowl of cornflakes waiting for me on the cart.

“Where’s Paul and Ringo?” I asked, pouring myself a glass of orange juice.

“In the other room,” George said, indicating the bedroom next to mine. “They’re packing up.”

I finished what I could of the cereal just as Paul and Ringo came out of the bedroom; Paul had a very funny look on his face... a look that I’d seen before. Uh-oh, I thought. They’ve been smoking pot again... and right when we’re supposed to be leaving!

“Oh... good morning, luv,” Paul said, almost like he didn’t recognize me for a moment. “Are we ready to leave?”

“Not for another fifteen minutes, Paul,” Mal said, on his way to retrieve my suitcases from my room. “The question is: are you ready to leave yet?”

“Oh, sure! Never been readier!” he laughed, leaning against the arm of the couch. “Eh, Ring?”

Ringo nodded, then both of them started laughing for some reason unbeknownst to me and the others. John turned to them and said, “Eh, is there anything left?”

Paul shook his head. “Nope... the roach went swimming down the drain... travel light, you know, and leave the heavy stuff for Mal,” he said, staring at the breakfast cart.

“Hey; mind your manners, Paul,” Neil said from across the room. “You act like that at the airport and they’ll have you hauled off in an instant.”

Paul made a face, then shifted his gaze to a pack of cigarettes on the table. Man, if they didn’t get rid of the glassy-eyed giggles, they’d be more than obvious at the airport! Alice and Peter would just love it if they heard that the Beatles had been carted off to jail, leaving me stranded at O’Hare Airport!

By the time we were ready to leave, Paul and Ringo had stopped most of the giggly crap, much to my relief; they started acting with a bit more decorum as we headed down the hall to the service elevator we were taking downstairs. I stayed close behind the group, snapping my purse shut after I’d retrieved my new sunglasses from inside it. The elevator zoomed down to the first floor with the eight of us, opening its doors right next to the kitchen. Already I caught the scent of food cooking in the kitchen for lunch; it smelled like barbecued chicken or something along those lines--pity that we wouldn’t be around for lunch there later on!

The security guard led us to the back door, where our limo was waiting safely out of site. As we walked outside, the guard said, “The decoy limo has just been sent in front of the hotel; the kids are going wild over there right now.”

“As always,” George remarked, getting into the air-conditioned car right away. The weather already seemed miserably hot; the humidity was making the strong sunlight even more unbearable. It was total thunderstorm weather; I was starting to worry that we’d be flying with a storm on the way to Detroit! Good god; what if the bad luck that hit Buddy Holly hit the Beatles? Weird things happen sometimes... and what if that was one of them?

“Hey, listen,” the guard said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a piece of paper and a pen, “my daughter Katie just about passed out last night when I told her that I was in charge of security for your visit; she begged me for your autographs.”

“Sure,” Paul said, quickly taking the pen and paper and scribbling out his name, then passed it to the others to sign as I got in the car. George was the last to sign it, and he handed it through the car window to the guard when he was done.

“Thanks a lot, guys,” the guard said as the chauffeur closed the car door. “Have a good trip.”

“Thank you,” Ringo said as we pulled away from the doorway and rolled down a side street, far, far away from the front doors of the hotel in order to avoid a mob scene. We were a little scrunched inside the limo, regardless of the fact that it was a huge car; Paul, me, George, and Neil were in the very back, scrunched together hip-to-hip, and John, Ringo, Mal, and Brian were in the backwards-facing seat in the middle. Not that I was complaining about being sandwiched very tightly between two Beatles or anything--who would? It was just a little uncomfortable trying to keep perfectly still; if I raised an arm or moved my leg, I’d be knocking into whoever was on that side of me.

Thank god the ride to the airport wasn’t very long; we made it there in twenty minutes flat--a new land-speed record, at least in my experience! As we neared the terminal where we’d have to get out and run like hell for the plane, I noticed that there was practically nobody standing around to see the Fabs. I frowned, and Ringo asked, “Why the face, Laur?”

“There’s no one here,” I said. “I thought that there’d be a massive crowd here to see you off.”

“I think they’ve all been herded away from the terminal,” Brian said. “You’ll see all of them when we get on the plane; they’ll be there for one last sendoff.”

I nodded, getting ready to run as the chauffeur opened the car door. After the past couple of days, I was definitely getting accustomed to this crazy running stuff; like clockwork, we all hurried down the stairs inside the terminal once we’d all been handed our tickets, then headed downstairs to the gate.

It was at that point that I heard the screams starting up outside as fans caught a glimpse of the Beatles through the windows. Right away, I took a step back from the others and said to Neil in my British accent, “Hey, Big Brother, am I going with you?”

Neil gave me a wink and a smile, nodding as we followed the group outside into the sunlight as the fans went bananas. The cops at the airport had kept the fans far enough back so that there was no way they could break free and attack without someone catching them and pitching them back behind the heavy metal fences lining the sidewalk; other than my ears hurting me from the screams, everyone escaped every and all types of injury and made it onto the plane safe and sound.

“We’re in the back of the plane,” Brian said after doing a quick head count to make sure we were all accounted for. I glanced down the tiny hallway inside the plane at a partition and a door at the very end. So that was where we’d be hiding out for the next couple of hours while we flew across Lake Michigan to Detroit, I thought as we all sat down in the little room at the back of the plane. Not a bad setup; I wish I could get this kind of privacy on trips!

For the time being, it was just the four Beatles and me in the compartment--me and John next to each other, Paul and Ringo right across from us, and George across the aisle from us. Brian wanted to go talk to the members of the Cyrkle, another music group that he managed, and Neil went to hunt down a stewardess and see about getting some drinks served to us. Mal sat right outside the doorway, which I thought was a little unnecessary at first; I mean, would it be a crime for one of the Ronettes or one of the other singers to come back there and say hello to us? Hell, they had to share the stage with the Beatles, didn’t they? However, for the time being, I was pretty content with being the only one around the group for a while; the flight wouldn’t be too long, so at least we’d have a little time to catch up. We hadn’t had much time to talk during their visit to my house.

“Well,” I began after the plane had left the runway and was gliding above the city, “I wanted to let you guys know that I really enjoyed your last couple of albums; they were really great. I love the Revolver cover; that is such a cool picture! I’m tempted to frame the cover and hang it on my wall.”

“Aye, well, an old friend of ours from Hamburg put the cover together,” John said, lighting a cigarette. “We wanted to do something different for a change.”

Different was sure as hell right! The whole sound on that album was a total departure from what I’d been used to hearing from them. “Eleanor Rigby” just blew my mind the first time I listened to it after speeding home once I’d purchased the record from the store on August eighth. I mean, sure, they’d achieved a classical sort-of feel with the violins on “Yesterday,” but this time the effect was way different--not bad, just different. “Love You To” was another oddball that Claire cringed upon hearing; she said, “What’s all that noise on there? I’m glad I didn’t buy that album--it’s not that hot!” And “Tomorrow Never Knows”... like I said before, that song gave me nightmares after I fell asleep listening to the record on my record player in my room that night!

“What did you think of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’?” John asked, leaning forward; he seemed really eager to see my reaction to that song.

My mouth opened a little bit, but I had no idea what would be the polite thing to say. “Uh, it’s very... interesting,” I finally said. Sure, it sounded a little stupid, but I didn’t want to be rude and say, “Well, I think it’s totally off-the-wall!”

“We worked really hard on that one,” he said, sitting back in his chair and removing his little round sunglasses. “I don’t think we’ve ever used so much experimentation on a song, have we, Paul?”

Paul shook his head. “Nope. You’d be surprised what some of the earlier takes sounded like--totally different from the one that’s on the LP.”

“I’m still trying to figure out exactly what the song is all about,” I said, carrying on the conversation after a few silent moments. “Is there, like, some hidden meaning I’m missing?”

“Well,” John began with a little laugh, “the whole idea behind the song was that we were trying to describe an, uh, LSD experience in words.”

“A what?” I asked, not sure if I’d heard him right. Did he say LSD?

“LSD, luv,” Paul said in a quieter voice. “Lysergic acid diethylamide... hell of a mind trip. It’s much more powerful than marijuana.”

“Uh, okay.” I was beginning to feel completely naive around them; but I wasn’t exactly one to smoke pot like a very few of my classmates did, so I wouldn’t be one to know about something like that, anyway.

“It will change you forever,” John said, getting rather animated in the discussion. “It just opens up your eyes to things you’d never seen before, things you’d never thought before... it’s hard to describe to someone who’s never done it before, you know; I don’t know if that makes any sense.”

“I suppose so,” I said, nodding a little. “Not that I’ve had much of an experience with something like that... that sounds a little scary to me... I don’t know if I’d want to do something like that.”

“Laurie, we didn’t bring you on this trip to get you to take acid or anything, so don’t worry about that,” George said. “We’re not going to drop it into your tea like one of my friends did to me.”

My eyes widened. “Good lord; you took it without knowing? What must you have thought?”

“It wasn’t exactly that great; it was scary because none of us knew what the bloody hell was happening,” John said. “I don’t even know how we made it home that night; Cyn and Pattie were with us, too, and they’d taken it.”

“And Pattie wanted to get out of the car and smash up all the shop windows along the streets,” George added, putting his feet up on the seats across from him.

I must have had a terrified look on my face, because Paul said, “Calm down; you look like you’re in shock!”

“No, I’m okay,” I said, getting rid of whatever weird look I had on my face. “Just as long as you guys aren’t going to pull any tricks like that on me--”

“Of course not!” John said. “We don’t want to deal with the wrath of your mum and dad if you come back home in more than one piece... it’s not like we carry around little bottles of it with us.”

“No, that’s Mal’s job,” Ringo muttered, barely audible, and Paul elbowed him.

I sighed. “Are all the songs on Revolver about drugs?”

“No, of course not,” Paul said. “There are other things to life than that... ‘Yellow Submarine’ is more of a little children’s song than anything--”

“Oh, great,” Ringo said, joking around. “Now I’ve been reduced to singing songs for the kiddies... what a great job!”

“Hey, no complaints, Ring, or you’ll be singing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ on the next LP!” Paul said, punching him playfully.

“Hey, no fighting!” I warned, laughing.

Brian and Neil eventually joined us after a while; Neil had persuaded the stewardess to bring the drink cart down to our little compartment so we could have something to drink before the plane landed. I had a Coke, as did Ringo, Neil, and Paul, while John and George both had a Coke and rum mixed together; Brian had a scotch. I was already feeling a little hungry, but since the flight was so short, there was nothing much to eat besides a little packet of peanuts; I decided to wait for lunch and work up an appetite. While the others chatted about some minor things, I stared out the window at the shimmering blue waters of Lake Michigan beneath the plane. We were out of Illinois, the first time I’d been out of the state in quite a while, and on our way to Concerts Number Two and Three in Detroit, Michigan.

As the plane rolled up to the gate in Detroit, we all looked out the window and saw probably a few thousand fans screaming and cheering from behind metal fences, just like they had been doing at O’Hare. The Beatles stood up and stretched before they headed through the partition door and walked down the aisle to where the stewardess was unlatching the heavy-looking outer doors; I hung back with Neil and the others while the sound of the shrieks from outside the plane grew to deafening levels as the four of them began walking down the staircase to the tarmac and rushing inside the terminal.

We followed after them as the throngs of screaming fans tried to force their way inside the terminal; from what I could tell from a few jumps to see over the heads and shoulders of all the tall people walking in front of me, there were lots of TV cameras and newspaper photographers swarming around the group as they made their way towards the terminal doors and the cars waiting outside to take them to whatever hotel we were staying at that night. Tony Barrow, the guy I’d met last night, jumped into the car with them as well.

“Laurie, we’re going in a separate car to the stadium,” Neil said, holding me by my arm as he, Brian, and I quickly headed for the second car, trying to avoid the photographers and fans trying to grab at anyone and anything that had been on the same plane with the Beatles.

“Oh, we’re going right to the stadium?” I said as I jumped into the car, nearly losing a shoe I was moving so fast. “Are we going back to the hotel later?”

Shaking his head, Neil said, “We’re not staying at a hotel here; we’re leaving straightaway for Ohio right after tonight’s concert. We’ll get a hotel there and get some sleep before the show tomorrow night once we get into town.”

“Oh,” I said as we pulled away from the curb. “Are we going to do that for every show?”

“Oh, lord, no,” Neil said, rolling down his window for some air inside the stuffy car. “If we did that, we’d all be dead in a week.”

We followed the first car with the four Beatles and Tony Barrow to Olympia Stadium, where the Beatles and the other groups would play a 2:00 and a 7:00 show that day. I was certain that it was going to be pretty miserable singing in all that heat that day; it was just as warm there as it was back in Chicago. I listened as Neil asked the driver to go a little bit faster and keep up with the Beatles’ car.

“What’s the rush?” I asked, checking my watch. “We have plenty of time; it’s only a little past ten.”

Neil blinked a few times, then tapped my watch with his finger. “You forgot; we crossed time zones while we were on the plane. It’s past eleven right now; they’re on in less than three hours, and we’ve got to get them settled before fans start showing up for the concert this afternoon.”

Things were pretty calm around the stadium as we entered through a side door on the ballpark; the “dressing room” that day was the baseball players’ locker room area. Once the suitcases and instrument cases had arrived from the airport, courtesy of Mal Evans’ hard work getting them loaded onto a van and quickly transported to the stadium, Neil was sent out to fetch lunch for everyone. He came back over half an hour later with cheeseburgers and “chips”, as the Beatles called french fries, for everyone. I was ravenously starving by that point; I think I was the first one finished with my food, polishing off a bottle of Coke as well in the process.

That afternoon, the show seemed to run much shorter and more on-schedule than it had the night before; the Beatles had a press conference shortly after lunch, then they had to rush back to the locker rooms to change into their stage suits before the show. I really liked the outfits they had on that day: red silky-looking shirts, gray wide-pinstriped jackets, black pants, and black dress shoes again. So many hints of color were creeping into their wardrobes; no more brown and black stage suits for them! I supposed that the colorful clothes looked better on TV, now that color TVs were really hitting it big; we still didn’t have one at home--we’d just bought a bigger black-and-white Zenith last summer after the picture tube in our old one from 1958 finally gave out, and my dad wasn’t ready to go search for another TV yet.

I saw the concert from the home team’s dugout that afternoon, probably one of the few shady places in the stadium... and when I say “saw” the concert, that’s all that I did-- you couldn’t hear a thing in one of those outdoor stadiums! I barely kept up with their set list as they did their half-hour of performing to a pretty hyped-up crowd. I asked Neil how anyone could hear any of the music; he said that the music was being piped through the sound system throughout the stadium, so fans that were somewhat close to a loudspeaker would be able to hear what they were singing.

I thought that the whole stadium setup was pretty crappy, to put it bluntly, after seeing the afternoon concert; the Comiskey Park show that I’d been at the year before was probably the poorest of the three Beatle shows that I’d seen, since you could barely see the Beatles if you had lousy seats like we ended up with, and hearing them play was just about out of the question, especially if you had a red-headed fifteen-year-old sitting (er, jumping up and down in hysterics might be a better way to put it!) right in front of you screaming her lungs out the entire goddamn show!

After Paul finished screaming out “I’m Down,” they retreated from the stage in the middle of the field to the dugout, then down the hall to the relative peace and quiet of the locker room. I was so tired at that point that I crashed onto one of the rock-hard benches in the locker room and cat-napped for about an hour, my mind filled with sweet dreams of the Beatles. Everyone must have noticed how worn-out I’d been from a lack of sleep the night before, so they all left me alone while I slept; they didn’t even bother to wake me up--I woke myself up after a while.

When I woke up, I checked my now-reset watch and saw that it was a little after six o’clock--an hour before the opening acts were due to start singing. John was in a corner of the room making a phone call, and the other three were having a Speed tournament at one of the other benches in the room. I sighed, wondering what was going on back home at 12 Cold Creek. My family had probably finished dinner by that point... so maybe they’d be around to answer the phone... hmm...

Once John finished with his phone call about twenty minutes later, I approached Brian and said, “Would it be okay if I called home?”

He nodded, and I headed over to the phone and dialed my phone number. One ring... two rings... three... four... where the hell were they?

After the sixth ring, someone picked up; I heard Claire say, “Hello?”

“Claire!” I said, grinning. “It’s me!”

“Laurie!” she said. “Oh my god; where are you calling from?”

“Detroit; we’re in between shows right now, and I had some free time to kill... so I’m calling home to annoy you. You can tell Mom that everyone made it here in one piece and everything’s fine.”

“Okay... oh my god, Laurie... the show yesterday was just fabulous! Me and Mary Kay had the greatest time! And John even waved to us when they walked onto stage and said ‘Hi Claire!’; I swear to god, I think Mary Kay almost shit a gold brick!”

I grinned. “Let me guess; Mom and Dad aren’t around to hear you swearing, right?”

“Nope; they’re outside. Mom’s working in the garden again... we just had dinner a little while ago.”

“That’s what I’d figured,” I said, leaning against the wall and watching George beat Paul in a round of Speed. “So... anything else going on?”

“Hell, no. How’s everything going with you? It’s gotta be so much fun traveling with the Beatles! What are you guys doing tonight? Going around Detroit?”

“Nope; we’re leaving for Cleveland right after the show tonight,” I said, twisting up the phone cord. “We didn’t even check into a hotel here; we’re going to the next show by bus tonight.”

“Oh, good luck sleeping, Laur,” she said. “You’re going to be dead as a doornail by tomorrow night.”

“I know,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You don’t need to tell me that...”

“Oh, hey... I was watching the news before, and I still don’t think that those Southerners are too happy about the John-Jesus thing,” she informed me. “I heard that people are still pretty pissed off down there; just tell them to be careful at their shows down there.”

“Claire, I think we’re only doing about three shows ‘down there’ throughout the entire tour,” I said, drumming my fingers on the wall. “It’ll be okay; really. I’ll give John a hug for luck from you, okay?”

She laughed. “Okay... as long as you don’t neglect your Paulie in the process.”

“Oh, never!” I giggled, glancing over at Ringo throwing a card at Paul. It was definitely time to get back at him for that skirt incident from the other night. “Paul knows I’m desperately in love with him!”

Paul’s face went white as all conversation in the room stopped, and I gave him a devilish grin, just like he always did to me. He rolled his eyes, and I continued laughing with Claire over the phone as he approached me. Once he got to about two feet away from me, he reached over, clasped his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, and whispered in all seriousness, “Watch what you say, luv... or someday I just might have to take you seriously” before heading straight back to his card game as if nothing had happened at all.

I was dead silent, staring at the back of his head as Claire chattered on about having dinner with Mary Kay the day before; only when she shouted, “Lauren Ashley Donaldson, you haven’t been paying attention to a word I’ve said!” did I return my attention to the phone call.

After Claire told me her story again, we got off the phone, and I sat down on the bench next to me, still a little surprised by what Paul had said. His flirting had suddenly taken a bit of a more serious turn; maybe he’d been joking... but this time something seemed a little different, a little more like a genuine display of interest in my remark. Oh dear... he would spring something like that on me when I was that tired... and when we wouldn’t have a chance to be alone and talk about it until hours and hours later! Maybe I could sit with him on the bus and threaten to chop off his Beatle moptop if he didn’t stay awake and talk to me about what he’d said. Or maybe we could have a little time together at the hotel in Cleveland before I finally passed out from exhaustion from the lack of sleep and the effects that the searing-hot weather was having on me. Whatever happened, I had to grab him and talk about it before I went mad!

Continue to Chapter Nine