Fifty years ago, the Beatles came to my town and made musical history

Matthew Diebel | USATODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Game changers: 'Sgt. Pepper' "Sgt. Pepper" was the first rock album with printed lyrics, the first to win a best album Grammy. It may be the most influential record in pop history, and the best-loved. It changed the direction of The Beatles, and of rock 'n' roll.

And there they were.

The Fab Four. The Mop Tops. The most famous rock band there ever was.

And they were in the park behind my school.

It was early February of 1967, and rumors were swirling around our school in Sevenoaks, a town about 25 miles southeast of London. Some boys had seen some black Mini Coopers with darkened windows heading into Knole Park, the site of one of Britain’s most magnificent stately homes. And those Minis were said to contain the Beatles.

It was lunchtime, so we walked to the park entrance, which ran through the school grounds, and down into the park. And came upon the outdoor film set where the group was making a promo film for their soon-to-be released Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever single and upcoming Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, which was released in the United States 50 years ago Friday.

You may have seen the footage. There’s a section where the quartet ride horses, three of them white and one brown, through a stone archway. There’s a part where they surround an old piano and pour paint over it. And there’s a scene where John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are sitting at an elaborately set dining table being served guitars and other items by liveried footmen. The four then get up from the table and John and Paul overturn it.



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On the table was an empty Champagne bottle that one of my schoolmates grabbed as a souvenir. He later got John, George and Paul to sign the label. Somehow Ringo didn’t make the cut.

After a while, our lunch break was over. “Hadn’t we better go?” boys began asking one another. It was that – and therefore miss the experience of our young lives – or stay, and risk the wrath of teachers whose classes we had cut.

I chose to stay. After all, in front of us was The Greatest Band There Ever Was. At the height of their fame. And there was virtually no security. OK, so when they were filming, assistants herded us out of the way, but during breaks we could go here and there, hanging out with the bemused band members.

During the intervals, they mostly went back to relax near their cars. John, George and Ringo had the Minis, while Paul had a Humber Super Snipe, one of the fancy British cars of the day. John pretty much kept to himself, so I went over to where George and Ringo were hanging out. “Can I look inside the car?” I asked. “Sure,” one of them said. And so I and another couple of boys peeked inside. “You can get in if you like,” said George or Ringo. So we did.

And then George decided he would take us for a spin on one of the drives in the park. It was just a small circle, but there it was – we had ridden in a Beatles car.

Afterwards, I asked George for his signature, which he wrote in my school notebook. For some reason, like my schoolmate, I didn’t get Ringo’s.

It turned out the Beatles had been in the park a few days before, remaining undiscovered by us pesky, pimply students. They had taken in a few of the attractions in the picturesque town, including afternoon tea in one of its restaurants and a visit to an antique shop, where John bought a 19th-century circus poster. And it was from that poster that many of the words of the song Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, a song on Sgt. Pepper, were taken.

Eventually, the filming concluded and the group got into their cars. As Paul was driven away, I rushed up and he signed an autograph through his window. Like all of the band, he was smiling and friendly.

And so we trudged back to school. The next morning the boys who had skipped classes were told to report to their teachers. Our punishment? Six “solaces” of 250 words each, where we had to copy prose or poetry.

And so, rather than laboriously replicate, I wrote down lyrics to songs I had memorized.

They were Bob Dylan songs. I wasn’t much of a Beatles fan.

And those autographs? A few years later, my young sister needed a notebook. And she found one, with only a few words in it. I had set it aside rather than have the signatures sit amidst my schoolwork.

Wanting to start with clean pages, she erased them.



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