GEORGE HARRISON: Some may point to the Royal Variety Performance as when the Mania started, but I think it got out of hand when we first went to America, specifically when we landed at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York at the beginning of ’64. That was a bad time for me, our first American appearance. It was a maniacal blur. Mania here, Mania there, Mania, Mania, and more Mania. I dunno, this whole line of questioning makes me hungry. Probably best for your health and your sanity if you drop this and ask Paul what he thinks.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: When did the Mania begin? New York, y’know. At least, that’s what I think. Ask Ringo.
RINGO STARR: New York. It was beautiful, man. At least, that’s what I think. Ask John.
JOHN LENNON: Fookin’ New York, of course. It’s one of the two centers of the Earth. Hell’s the other. Hmm, speaking of hell, maybe you should ask the Devil when the Mania started. That cunt’ll know better than anybody.
And then there was my extensive, expensive Devil hunt. If you read my blog, you know I met with a prophet, a soul rebel, a Rastaman, an herbsman, a wild man, a natural mystic man, a lady’s man, an island man, a family man, Rita’s man, a soccer man, a showman, a shaman, a human, and a Jamaican, and then, $25,162 later, in April 2007, I found myself sitting in Mephistopheles’s tasteful, well-air-conditioned office down in the Sixth Ring, chatting amiably about where Beatlemania really began.
THE DEVIL: Oh, yes, it was New York, my pretty little journalist. Bwah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah! Now piss off, you twat.
Unfortunately, after spending $25,162 to find the guy, the Devil gave me only twelve seconds of his time. And I’m the twat?
GEORGE HARRISON: I hated New York. That city scared my bollocks off.
RINGO STARR: George’s line has always been “That city scared my bollocks off,” but what most people don’t know is he means that literally. At that particular moment—the moment things got tetchy at the JFK terminal, and the undead contingency of our traveling circus got a little freaked out—I was glad not to be a zombie. But on the other hand, if I had been a zombie, I would’ve freaked out, too, which means I wouldn’t have had to … had to … ehh … oh, bloody hell, I can’t even bring myself to discuss it.
LYMAN COSGROVE: A little-known fact about the Liverpudlian undead: unlike other zombies, their adrenal glands are fully active, and when overstimulated, they produce a shocking amount of adrenaline. And when a Liverpool Processer’s system is flooded with adrenaline, the genitalia is the most affected area of the body.
I could go on endlessly about my scientific theory of the reaction, but, to make a long story short, when a Liverpool zombie gets overly excited, his franks and beans fall off.
JOHN LENNON: So there we are, going into the terminal, on the way to the press conference. Everywhere we turn, there’re girls, girls, girls, and all these screamin’ blokes are closing in on us, and we’d already decided we couldn’t get physical with them because killing dozens of young men in front of telly cameras wouldn’t have been a good way to introduce ourselves to America, so we were a bit at their mercy. For the first time in my life, I felt completely helpless. Right when we got inside, I felt an odd sensation in the pit of my stomach, and the next thing I know, my bollocks are rolling down the hallway.
GEORGE HARRISON: As I watched my nuts bounce into John’s, I said to Paul, “Tell you what, mate, I didn’t sign up for this.”
PAUL MCCARTNEY: So, erm, there’re six Beatle bollocks rolling all over the floor, y’know, and John, George, and I are quietly freaking out. I mean, there were reporters stomping everywhere, and I was picturing somebody coming down hard with his loafer on my left testicle. Thing is, we couldn’t bend over to pick up our marbles, because our plonkers would’ve fallen right down our trouser legs and onto the ground, and that would’ve attracted some real attention.
So how did we solve this little problem without causing a ruckus? All I can say is, we were lucky to have a Ninja in the band.
BRIAN EPSTEIN: Ringo didn’t want to pick up John’s, Paul’s, and George’s testes, and I can’t blame him. God knows I wouldn’t have done it. It’s no secret that I’m gay, but that didn’t mean I had any urge to handle half a dozen zombie kerbangers. I told him, “Listen, Rings, just do your virtual invisibility. Nobody’ll be the wiser.”
He said, “Eppy, I don’t care if anybody sees me doing it. I just don’t want to touch the bloody things. Handling undead marbles can’t be sanitary, d’you know what I mean?” He pointed at the throng and said, “Also, it doesn’t look like it’ll be possible for me to slip away and wash my hands after I give the boys their balls back, now, does it?”
I said, “Don’t you remember, Ringo?: All for zombies, and zombies for all!”
He said, “I’m not a zombie.”
I realized I was going to have to get forceful with him. I said, “Yes, but you’re a Beatle. So get invisible, get on your knees, and collect Lennon’s, McCartney’s, and Harrison’s testicles.”
He sighed and disappeared. He was always a good, loyal lad, Ringo was.
JOHN LENNON: I’m not at all convinced the nuts Ringo gave me were both mine. I mean, it’s not like I’d recognize them—I’d never spent much time checking out my bollocks, and I certainly never inscribed them with my initials, because losing your softies is not an event you prepare for.
GEORGE HARRISON: Who cares if I’ve got one or both of John’s or Paul’s nuts? It’s not like I’m having kids anyhow. The fact of the matter is, having a bit of Lennon and/or McCartney in my sack probably helped make me a better songwriter.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: Listen, I’ve got one plonker and two bollocks, and it all works fine, so I’m not gonna worry about it.
Julie Proust’s face is riddled with S-shaped scars. The bruises on her arms are a veritable rainbow: along with the standard black and purple, we’re talking red, orange, yellow, green, and sky blue. Her nose has been broken and reset so many times that it’s less triangular than octagonal.
But man, what a rack.
A former Miss New York, Julie was killed, then reanimated in 1955 by the pageant’s third runner-up; her reign as pageant queen lasted a grand total of three hours.
A rabid music fanatic, Julie has the temperament and vibe of a true American zombie girl: sassy, headstrong, opinionated, and, dare I say it, sexy. I don’t know whether she cast some sort of spell on me, but when I spoke with her in April 2008, I couldn’t stop staring at her astounding cleavage. Aside from the constant litany of “Hey, sailor boy, eyes up here,” our chat was enlightening and revealing, and she readily offered up the truth behind what happened during the band’s ride from JFK Airport to Manhattan, a ride that, up until now, was one of the greatest Beatles mysteries of our time: The Case of the Missing Limousine.
JULIE PROUST: After plowing through two or three issues of Mersey Beat, I decided the Beatles were exploiting their zombieness for the sake of their own success. Now, I had no real moral problem with that—shit, I would’ve done the same thing to revive my pageant career if I could’ve figured out how—but there was one aspect that bothered me:
The girls.
According to that silly little paper, hundreds of little English teenyboppers screamed at Beatles shows until they were hoarse. Apparently these girls also ran after them in the street—which, when you think about it, was a farce; I mean, we’re talking three zombies and a Ninja, all of whom could run like the wind, and if they didn’t want these girls chasing them, they’d have sped the hell up. I also heard rumors of sexual enslavement, and yeah, those were never proven, but still.
It’s not like I was this staunch feminist or anything, but something about the whole deal made me want to give all these girls a big slap. “These guys are just zombie musicians, for cryin’ out loud,” I’d tell them. “They’re a good band, but jeez Louise, have some dignity.”
When I found out the Beatles were coming to the States, I decided to do something about it. I rounded up as many young female zombies as I could—a
grand total of nineteen—and formed a little group: BEATLES (Brain Eaters and Tongue Lovers Ending Sexism). We didn’t really think the Beatles were sexist, but it was a pretty cute little acronym, right?
I knew that if my little group of American zombie girls pooled our powers, we’d be able to cause some serious damage. Serious.
JOHN LENNON: So we’re in the limo on the way to the hotel, going slowly because the streets were clogged with fans, when all of a sudden we screech to a halt. I look out the window and see a bunch of gorgeous zombie girls trying to lift the car. Check that: they weren’t trying to lift it; they were lifting it. Then one of them opened the door, pulled Ringo and Eppy out, and threw them into the crowd.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: I still dunno how they did it, y’know, but once they had us full in the air, time stopped and the living people froze, yet we undead zombies remained awake and mobile. That was fortunate for Brian and Ringo, who would’ve been torn to pieces had they hit the mob before being suspended in midair.
JULIE PROUST: How did we stop the clock? Simple: girl power. It involves synching menstrual cycles and realigning the moon and … well, I’m not going to tell you any more, because I’m working on a book of my own.
GEORGE HARRISON: The girls, those BEATLES, carried our limo through the unmoving bodies, and they were moving quick. We were at their lair in three minutes flat, and from what I gathered, we covered several kilometers getting there. My geography was a bit hazy at the time, but I knew we weren’t in Manhattan anymore.
JULIE PROUST: Our lair was a shabby coach house in Yonkers—even back then, the rents in Manhattan were too damn high for us, and we weren’t exactly well funded.
We named it the Lair of Love and Death, and we filled it with water beds and medical supplies. We were shooting for sexy and scary, but we ended up with silly and clichéd. Still, it served its purpose.
JOHN LENNON: Those birds had it all planned out, man. They dropped the limo right by the front door of what they called the Lair of Love and Death or some shite, then opened the car doors and pulled us in like we weighed nothing. They somehow blocked our zombie powers, so we couldn’t fight back. Which, as it turned out, wasn’t such a terrible thing.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: Right after they stripped us naked and bolted us to the operating tables, they stripped themselves naked, y’know. John turned to me while one of the zombie girls gently whipped him with her bra, and said, “I bet Ringo would’ve loved this.”
RINGO STARR: Hell yeah, I would’ve loved it!
JOHN LENNON: One of the birds looked closely at my bollocks and said, “Looks like you’ve had some recent damage down there, Mr. Lennon. Adrenaline problems?” Those zombie ladies knew the score.
GEORGE HARRISON: I don’t quite know what they were trying to prove. They kidnapped us, they tied us down, they showed off their bodies, and then they untied us and bounced us from water bed to water bed. What was the point?
JULIE PROUST: Our whole point was to show these boys that we girls weren’t playthings, that we had feelings and shouldn’t be taken for granted. Thing is, they were pretty cute and very charismatic, and some of us got distracted, so, as the politicos say, we went off-message. How off-message? Let’s say that by the time we put them back in the limo, the Lair of Love and Death was a dustmen repository.
BRIAN EPSTEIN: After John and George loaded me and Ringo back into the limo, they told me what happened, and I had no choice but to believe it. How else could you explain a car that was there one second, then gone the next, then back the next after that? How else could you explain me losing a full ninety minutes of my life?
At the end of the day, the lads were happy and safe, and that’s all that mattered. Well, that’s not exactly all that mattered: I needed them to be ready for Sullivan.
Ever since talk show host David Letterman and his crew began broadcasting their late-night gabfest from New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater in 1993, many on Letterman’s staff believe that Mr. Sullivan’s ghost still haunts the venue that was home to his beloved variety show for more than three decades.
Guess what? They’re right.
The theories as to why Ed is all ghosted-up are myriad: maybe he was bitten by Anna the Juggling Bear after her less-than-successful 1959 appearance on Ed’s show, maybe he inhaled too much Brylcreem, maybe he ate a bad hot dog in the green room. However it went down, Ed is conflicted about his ghostly status: on one hand, his pre-ghost life was pretty good, but on the other, if he’s going to be stuck somewhere for all eternity, where better than a place that holds so many rrrrrreally big memories … memories that the specter is always ready to share.
As Ed’s ghost told me in January 2002, one of his favorite moments as host of arguably the most revered variety show in television history was the night that the Beatles conquered the United States … almost.
ED SULLIVAN: No matter what anybody tells you, deep down, John, Paul, George, and Ringo were nice boys. I always felt that all the talk about total world domination was for show. Think about it: if three artistically creative zombies and a talented Ninja don’t make a token effort to rule all the heavens and the Earth, they have no credibility. At the end of the day, I think they would’ve been happy to rule the charts, as well as a handful of key metropolises in the UK and the USA.
You might not have appreciated their music, and you might not have liked the length of their hair, and you might not have cared for their predilection for murder and mayhem, but you can’t deny that the Beatles were professionals. Music was both their life and their job, and they took it very seriously. They came to my studio with a plan, and they executed it to perfection. If the plan had worked, the world as we know it would’ve been quite a different place.
They called me into the dressing room after the afternoon dress rehearsal. John told me, “Listen, Ed, we’re not gonna be your normal guests.”
I said, “Oh, I know that. America’s going to remember this one.”
George quietly said, “Not if we have something to say about it.”
I asked, “What do you mean by that.”
Paul stood up, put his arm around me, and said, “Listen, mate, we like you. But most important, we respect you, and we don’t want any harm to come to you, y’know. So here’s a bit of advice: when we start singing ‘All My Loving,’ cover your ears.”
I said, “Why in God’s name would I do that? That’s a wonderful song, just wonderful.”
John said, “Thanks, Ed. We appreciate that. But trust us: You. Don’t. Want. To. Listen. To. That. Song.”
JOHN LENNON: I thought we’d be able to make it come to fruition, but I wasn’t sure. See, it’s not the kind of thing you can practice, so we wouldn’t know until we knew. Or didn’t know. Whichever came first.
GEORGE HARRISON: If you were to point the finger—and I’m not pointing, mind you—but if you were to point, you’d have to point at Paul. After all, John and I had the background harmonies down.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: It wasn’t anybody’s fault. We tried, and it didn’t work. Sod it. Lesson learned. Move on.
RINGO STARR: Whenever John, Paul, and George did something a bit off, they always blamed it on their zombie nature. Like, “Oh, we couldn’t help killing everybody at the Cavern Club; it was our zombie nature.” Or, “Oh, we didn’t mean to destroy EMI Studios; it was our zombie nature.” They had plenty of free will; they just didn’t use it all the time. So when they try and play off the Sullivan thing like it was their zombie nature, well, that’s utterly ridiculous.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: The plan was simple. When we got to the bridge, John and George’s descending “Ooh’s” would meld with my lead vocal and create a frequency that would allow us to control the minds of each and every listener. And, erm, it worked. For exactly thirteen seconds.
ED SULLIVAN: When they stopped singing, I uncovered my ears and yelled, “Boys, what’s going on? Keep playing, keep playing!” Then I noticed that everybody in the room was staring at the four of them with a glazed look on their fa
ce, not moving a muscle.
John called over, “Oi, Eddie, keep it down. We’ve got some work to do!” Then he said into the microphone, “Concentrate on my voice. Heed my command. You have three tasks, and you will follow them to completion. Task one, buy our latest record. Task two …”
And before he could continue, everybody snapped out of it and started screaming.
RINGO STARR: When the studio audience awoke, they were scared like you wouldn’t believe. Just check out the pictures. The look of horror on their faces was chilling.
JOHN LENNON: I was having a laugh with that first task. I always said I wouldn’t sell records by hypnosis, and I meant it. I thought the boys would get a kick out of it. They didn’t.
I’m not gonna tell you what the other two tasks were. See, I might pull them out at some point down the line, and like Ringo says, “The element of surprise is your friend.” But trust me, they’re good ones. Really, really good ones.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: That was the last time we tried to control the minds of a telly-viewing audience. Electronic hypnosis accomplished very little and, frankly, was a pain in the arse, y’know.
JOHN LENNON: We tried to take over the United States that night, and all we ended up with was another number one single.
BRIAN EPSTEIN: They played Sullivan’s show again the following week; this time it originated from Miami Beach, rather than New York. All they talked about in the two days leading up to it was mind control, mind control, mind control, and I wasn’t thrilled. I begged them to forget hypnosis and just play their tunes, but they were insistent. John said, “America could forget all about us next week. Think about it: coming over here didn’t help the other Brit acts, so we have to do what we can, when we can.”
Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion Page 12