Sister No. 1 Was Sent to Report on Day No. 2 of the New York Beatles Fest & This is What She Has to Say
I woke up yesterday, same as every morning -- greeted by my ragtag collection of Beatles memorabilia that has assembled itself on my walls and shelves since moving to New York 3 years ago. As always, the first thing I see when I wake up is a photo[1] of Paul McCartney, which was gifted to me by Beatles secretary, Freda Kelly. This photo sits tucked in the inside of my framed Paul McCartney poster, which was a souvenir for everyone who attended his secret Valentine’s Day show in 2015. Arranged around that Paul photo are little, vintage Beatles bubblegum cards from an AZ thrift store -- totems that recently made the big pilgrimage with me to Liverpool.
On the shelf to the left of my bed sits a copy of Mark Lewisohn’s “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions,” a couple Mexican pressings of Beatles 45s, a tiny Sgt. Pepper alarm clock, a Beatles coin purse, a laminated article from The New York Post that quotes my sentiments on the 50th Anniversary of the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan,[2] and a framed picture of the cover of Meet the Beatles.
To my right, a Capitol Records pressing of Rubber Soul sits on my turntable, the needle resting in the outgroove of side one. I’m still trying to get over the fact that when you put the needle down on track one, side one of any Capitol Records version of Rubber Soul, you hear “I’ve Just Seen A Face.” Everyone knows you should put the needle down and hear “Drive My Car!!!”[3]
I tell you all this not to make you worry about me, like next I’m going to confess that I have a lock of Paul’s hair in a plastic bag in my desk drawer, but because, yesterday, I was looking at these artifacts of my fandom for the last time before breaking my 25-year streak of never attending a Beatles Convention at the Hyatt Regency on the Hudson in Jersey City, New Jersey. Anticipating that the day would be something worth reporting on, I brought a notepad and took some [Strawberry] Field Notes;[4] I will attempt to make these lines I overheard, revelatory factoids, and other observations come together into a chronological, meaningful narrative.
11:18 a.m.
I’m sitting on a downtown C train, listening to “I’m Carrying” by Paul McCartney on repeat, backpack in my lap. In this backpack are some “HELLO MY NAME IS” name tags, so I can lie and say that my name is Lovely Rita, Lady Suffragette, Polythene Pam, etc. I’ve also got my Revolver album with me, which I hope to have signed by the cover’s designer, Klaus Voormann. Oh, and I’ve got a fat stack of business cards, which I hope to get rid of by the end of the day. What other convention-goers would unanimously appreciate that I have the old “Kiss Your Favorite Beatle” poster on the back of my business card?[5]
It’s 27 degrees and windy outside, and I only have two layers on, but I don’t really care. I’m wearing a dress with a Peter Pan collar, on which I have pinned my Ringo & Paul buttons, as well as an NRBQ button for good measure. I’m wearing the one pair of tights I own that doesn’t have runs[6] and the closest thing I own to Beatle boots: black leather pointed ankle boots from El Mudo in Tucson, hecho en Mexico. I’m also wearing my glasses, to avoid any contacts disasters.[7] It’s a long subway ride, and I have enough time to forget and then remember and then forget that I’m en route to my first Beatles convention, hoping I’ve packed and am wearing the essentials.
I get to the Fulton Street station and take the PATH train one stop to Exchange Place. Remember one paragraph ago when I said “I only have two layers on, but I don’t really care”? Well I do now because, as soon as I exit the PATH station, unholy ice air is hurled right at me, and I’m just one girl with two cold hands and no sense of direction. After a couple false starts, I realize that the Hyatt Regency on the Hudson was 300 feet to my right all along.
12:03 p.m.
I walk through the hotel’s revolving doors and go up the escalator. My eyes are already brimming with the kind of tears that come from overstimulation and a sense of belonging, because I’m hearing “Tomorrow Never Knows” over a hotel PA[8] and have also already seen my soulmate: he’s short, balding, and wearing metal bifocals. You know the type. He’s one of these men who wear square-fitting, high-waisted, light wash, most likely Kirkland-brand jeans,[9] paired with those big, puffy white and blue New Balance sneakers, a Rubber Soul t-shirt tucked into those aforementioned square-fitting, high-waisted, light wash, most likely Kirkland-brand jeans, secured with a belt, unashamed of whatever contours this creates. For me, it’s truly like looking in a mirror. I will see many of these soulmates today.
I wait in line to pick up my ticket[10] at will call. My first impression is that there’s a very homemade quality to the convention; flyers offering directions that were clearly made on Microsoft Word, a few balloon garlands, slightly wilted since the festival technically started at 5:30 p.m. the day before, handwritten schedules of events featuring every color of Crayola’s rainbow. I was just about to formulate an opinion on a guy I see wearing a unicorn horn telling the crowd about a 12:30 yoga class, when my friend Steve Shelley finds me in line. He will brave the entire day with me. “The whole thing was like going to Disney World for the first time, but you’re 28 and you kinda waited too long,” he will later tell me.
We get our tickets and wristbands and do a hot lap of the ballrooms and booths to get the lay of the land. I’m briefly scolded[11] by a woman in a plastic Mardi Gras peace sign necklace for not bringing a food donation. We pass the AV room, where they will be showing Beatles footage in between presentations; footage like “Paul McCartney: Live at the Budokan” and presentations such as “Photographing Ringo (and Paul, too)!” Steve and I make a note to return to this room at 1:00 p.m., for Dr. Kenneth Womack’s presentation “Finding Your Life’s Work with Sir George Martin.”
Klaus Voormann’s room is across the hall. We make a note to save that for later, too. We pass a booth for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and I’m reminded of Harry Nilsson. Harry worked to bring attention to this charity after John Lennon was killed. He even manned a kissing booth at Beatles conventions in the ‘80s to raise money.[12] We pass the Karaoke Room, a room complete with a green screen, a lounge area for your entourage, and an electric guitar and bass[13] for you to rock out on. You can choose your background: a field, a stage, outer space, and get your entire performance burned to DVD[14] for a small[15] fee. We pass more ballrooms, where lectures like “Drummers on Drumming” and “Laughing with our Liverpudlian Guests” are slated to take place later in the day. I’ve already begun to abuse the phrase, “I’m overwhelmed,” and I think Steve knows what I mean.
We enter the grand ballroom foyer and pass more Meet and Greet booths; booths for Louise Harrison, George Harrison’s sister, Gene Cornish of The Rascals, Mark Hudson, Joey Molland of Badfinger, Billy Kinsley of The Merseybeats, Laurence Juber of Wings, all of whom you can meet for a small[16] fee. This room serves as the biggest reminder that this year is Sgt. Pepper’s 50th Anniversary, since to our right there is a lifesize cardboard cutout of that iconic album cover, embedded in palm trees, with which you can pose for free![17]
We poke our heads into the grand ballroom, where an audience is listening to a presentation called “Sgt. Pepper: a U.S. Perspective.” As intriguing as the title is, we agree that we want to see the ninth floor marketplace instead. We wind back through the hotel lobby, past the free-for-all music circle that’s formed and is open to anyone who brings an instrument, as long as you can stand being wedged between all the hotel lobby standard issue faux leather loungers. We get to the elevators, hit the button for the ninth floor, and I smile when one guy repeats, “Number 9, number 9, number 9.”[18] I make sure to let him see that I’m smiling because, in this one moment, this guy, who most likely has a really boring job testing light bulb filaments at the GE plant in Schenectady, is saying a Beatle lyric that just so happens to be the number of the floor we’re going to, and thus gets to be the funny guy in the elevator. I really want to let him have that.
The elevator doors open and our eyes are met with a banner that reads “Apple Jam Stage.” Here, a group of soulmates are doing a pretty rockin’ rendition of “Rollover Beethoven.” People are up on their feet dancing. We walk through the authors’ section, where you can buy different books on different Beatles topics[19] from the authors themselves. We meander to the merchandise room, where towering over our heads is a wall of what must be 300 different Beatles shirts for sale. It’s like my dream version of Hot Topic.[20] This is the room where people come to buy Beatle boots and bootlegs, towels, shower curtains, earrings, socks, umbrellas, DVDs, books, magnets, postcards, coasters, toasters, and posters, plates, lunchboxes, jackets, vintage dolls of the lads, or even a collection of all four signed photos starting at $45,000, certificate of authenticity included. I think back on my tiny menagerie of Beatlebilia back in my tiny bedroom and am instantly humbled.
12:56 p.m.
We find seats for our first official event, Dr. Kenneth Womack’s presentation “Finding Your Life’s Work with Sir George Martin.” His slides boast never-before-seen photos of the fifth Beatle,[21] and I also learn that, while at the Guildhall School, George took oboe lessons from Jane Asher’s mother. There are so many too-good-to-be-true coincidences like this throughout the Beatles’ collective timeline...coincidences that would leave even the most reasoned, fact-based individual up in arms, incoherently exclaiming, “There’s no other explanation! The Beatles! The whole thing! It was just destiny!”
The presentation wraps up and we bravely cross the hall to enter Klaus Voormann’s room, right as a volunteer tapes up a notebook paper & ballpoint pen sign that says Klaus will be taking a 15-minute break after we meet him. The room is too well-lit. I immediately sympathize with Klaus. His visitors are guided past storyboards of his latest graphic novel, which tells the story of how the Revolver cover came about. I fish around in my backpack for my album cover, clumsily. Steve buys a copy of the new book to have signed. He tells Klaus he saw him play with the Plastic Ono Band in Brooklyn, which makes Klaus’s eyes, which have gone pink with strain in this clinical lighting, momentarily glimmer with recognition. He is certainly a man of few words. He signs my record and poses for separate photos with myself and Steve. We both leave a bit too giddy. But not too giddy to overhear a man from Sirius XM asking my old friend the unicorn horn guy who his favorite Beatle is and he responds, “Well, probably Ringo. Because I’m really into circles. And you know, circles...ring...Ringo…”
2:00 p.m.
We wind back out towards the lobby. We get a table at the lobby restaurant that overlooks the Hudson River, which we were pretending was the Mersey[22] throughout the day. Our waiter, who looked like more of a Kings of Leon guy, but like their early stuff, offered us a choice between a la carte menu items,[23] or the $16 buffet, which featured “salad and pasta and stuff.”
3:15 p.m.
I find us seats for the Q&A with Klaus Voormann. People shuffle in. True Beatle People. I see a soulmate who is simultaneously balding and sporting a ponytail, with righteous sideburns, and a denim vest with patches of each Beatles album cover on the back. I take a moment to picture him standing at the ironing board, carefully ironing those patches onto his vest one by one. A woman carrying two Heinekens sits down next to him. She hands him a beer and they kiss. I am now picturing her standing at the ironing board, carefully ironing those patches onto his vest one by one. In their same row, a man sits in his seat with a suede jacket draped over the back of his chair. If this were anywhere else in the world, this would just be a man sitting in his seat with a suede jacket draped over the back of his chair, but because we are at Beatles Fest, this is a man who is sitting in his seat with a suede jacket draped over the back of his chair, who wore it so he can look like a Beatle on the cover of Rubber Soul.
Klaus Voormann’s Q&A is enlightening, and makes me realize he’s not a man of few words after all. “I’ve never been good with words. I’m better with images, which is why it’s been hard meeting all of you wonderful people,” he admits. He shares revealing details about the Revolver cover; like how he wasn’t given any rules, direction, or guidance as to what anyone wanted the cover to look like. The two prototype covers were of the Beatles in a hot air balloon, and of the Beatles spilling out of a boat, but he had an epiphany to make the cover about their hair, which was long and outrageous for those days. He admits he drew Ringo looking up because his nose is so big. The cover collage originally featured a picture of Paul on the toilet, which George Martin made him remove. A picture of Brian Epstein with a piss pot on his head had to be scrapped, too. Another heartening part of the Q&A was when a show of hands revealed that I’m not the only one who has always been afraid of George Harrison’s face on the cover. But perhaps the most special anecdote from the hour was when he told the story about the big album artwork reveal at EMI: It was unveiled, and everyone is instantly overjoyed. Everyone is happy and congratulating Klaus, but he notices that Brian Epstein sobbing crying. Klaus nervously approached him, and asked what was wrong. Epstein told Klaus that he had been so worried that audiences wouldn’t understand this new Beatle music, which, as we know now, is artistically way beyond anything they’d ever done at that point. But saw his cover and instantly knew that it was going to “build the bridge between the fans and this new music.”
For doing the cover of Revolver, Voormann was paid 50 pounds.
Oh, and he also talked about all that other stuff about being a classically trained guitarist, playing with John and Ringo[24] (Ringo’s favorite trio, in his own words), and on Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” yadda yadda yadda.
4:30 p.m.
We catch the tail end of the “Drummers on Drumming” panel, led by Billy Amendola and featuring Steve Holley, Denny Seiwell,[25] and Chris Camilleri. I want to ask about that photo of Paul playing a snare drum in the toilet, but don’t.
6:15 p.m.
Laurence Juber has his solo stage performance, in which he goes full Laurence Juber.
7:30 p.m.
We sit in on a presentation entitled “The Beatles in Canada,” where I learned that “The story of the Beatles in Canada is similar to the story of the Beatles in the U.S., but different.” I also learn that there are whole books written on the subject. I sneak out a couple times to check in on the “Beatles Soundalike Contest Finals,”[26] which are happening in the big ballroom next door. I watch a tween sing and play his heart out on “Jet” and I can’t help but feel like his proud stage mom. Especially when he does mouth trumpets in the outro.
The “Beatles in Canada” presentation runs long[27] and so we stick around for the “Laughing with our Liverpudlian Guests” panel. Among the panel is Louise Harrison,[28] who, when asked about the Liverpool sense of humor, says, “Where I’m from, if you know somebody really well, you can make fun of them tremendously.” Joey Molland, who proves to be quite a cheeky old sod, quips that “Liverpool is a place where you ‘learn to fight with your mouths before your fists.’” Moments later, he fished for a compliment from audience members who had been to Liverpool on the city’s beer. “It’s damn great, isn’tit?”[29]
The only other moment worth mentioning from this panel is actually one that launched me into an existential crisis. Charles Roberts, who took the first ever known photo of John Lennon and the Quarrymen, revealed that once, one of his rolls of films was either stolen, exposed, or lost. This roll would have contained some of the earliest photos of the Quarrymen.
8:15 p.m.
I confess to Steve that I could use a drink. We walk past the lobby band, which has added about 12 new bandmembers[30] and has also attracted a bigger audience. Everyone seems to be in a better mood.[31] Everyone seems to be cutting loose.[32]