For me - apart from the natural pride I felt in seeing the Beatles perform in such places as the Hollywood Bowl, the vast Red Rock Stadium in the Colorado mountains, and the wonderful State Fair Coliseum in Indianapolis - my happiest time was spent on a ranch in the Ozark Hills in South Missouri. This was on September 19, my 30th birthday, and the day before our final American concert in New York. From Dallas we flew in our chartered Electra jet to a deserted airfield 70 miles from the ranch in the small hours of the 19th and our host, the millionaire owner of the airline, met us - the Beatles, Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor and myself. He piloted us in his own seven-seater, twin-engined aircraft to his private air strip at the ranch. We spent that night, the whole of Saturday and the following night at the ranch, fishing, horse riding, and lazing about in the warm autumn sunshine, and it was a tremendous tonic for the Beatles, who though they had stood up to the tour very well, were very tired young men. On the flight from Dallas at one minute past midnight Paul took over the aircraft intercom and announced that it was my birthday and the Beatles sang Happy Birthday, presenting me with an antique telephone and a set of water glasses. The Beatles, though not devoted to sport, took readily to the saddle, however, and fought majestically for three hours with four high-spirited farm horses, fording the river, climbing steep rocky banks, and emerging without a fall but with several bruises. So much did Paul enjoy riding that he awoke at 7am on Sunday for a further attempt which proved even more painful than the first. Brian Epstein Mersey Beat magazine, 1 October 1964
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 19:27:46 +0000
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