Sorry for 'breaking the rules', I'm just in one of those moods today. I sold my 'Beatles' autograph' last week for £700 ($900) and thought the story of getting it might give the community here a smile. Here goes:
I was rehearsing with my band which had been cobbled together to drum up some trade on a Sunday night in my bar. Paul, a friend from sixth form college played bass, Jim who I’d known for a few years, was a member of the Scout band no less and a decent drummer who I’d also been at primary school with. My long-suffering mother had unwisely (in that I’d present reasons to give up on her investment after about three years) decided to turn the old hotel stables from…………. well, ‘stables’ into a ‘wine bar’ for her capricious son in an attempt to encourage him to settle down and be responsible and take ownership and pride in something. Wine bars were all the rage in the 80s, and I called mine thus despite the fact that hardly anyone who came into it ordered a wine. By rights, it should have been themed out as a ‘cheap lager bar that sold the odd cocktail’ really.
Thursday night was rehearsal night: we had a set of covers. I’d tried un-successfully to write some songs of my own. They weren’t bad, they had a strong tune but lyrically they were immature, and all too often sounded like what they were: an attempt to sound like the Beatles. The gift of anybody really talented is to be influenced by one’s heroes but then deliver a final product that whilst redolent of one’s influences, sounds original. Sadly, I wasn’t born with this ability. By 1988, a band who sounded like The Fab Four in 1963, weren’t going to be signed, especially when the lead singer, moi, had a voice that many unfortunately compared to Al Stewart’s (which to my mind equated to bland and lacking any real bite).
By about 8.30 we’d done as much as we were prepared to do, Jim went home but Paul and I decided to go down to the town’s curry house which had become something of a habit in those days. We were greeted by Barri, the Bangladeshi owner and whilst not old, he wasn’t young either, and had a slight whiff of an ineffectual but likeable Headmaster about him. He bid us sit down in the hospitality area and choose what we wanted from oversized menus. It was a reasonably dark restaurant with a plastic tree that ‘grew’ from a centrally sited trunk around a column, then explored the ceiling of the establishment. Occasional dead aquariums were poorly positioned in spots here and there. I can’t remember whether there were any fish in them. It was horribly naff but added to the iconic status that the place had established itself within our group of friends. Paul, for some reason, kept a large piece of nan-bread in his jacket pocket. Permanently, in tribute.
Back in the hospitality area, Paul and I stared at the menus. There wasn’t any point to this practice as we always had the same: a chicken korma for me and a dhansak for him. But we clutched them absentmindedly whilst laughing as some Atherstone idiot, sat inexplicably with a Balti container on his head.
The door was pushed open. In walked Jeff Lynne and his assistant Phil. Jeff had been a regular in my parents’ pub The Olde Red Lion for years. When he first came in with his gang there was definitely something unusual about them, despite several being Jeff’s childhood friends who let’s face it, are often kept by stars as these friends liked them for being ‘them’ before fame and fortune beckoned. It was the first time anybody had requested that their drink had ‘an olive’ placed into it). So, no big deal, I’d been serving Jeff and Phil beer for years. Jeff wouldn’t be doing with the hospitality area and walked straight to his table. There were three men in Jeff’s party: obviously himself, Phil and I remember weighing the third figure up who brought up the rear: none other than George Harrison of The Beatles. Fuck me, I'll be blowed! Paul, who could tell that the figure was ‘someone’ hissed ‘who was that then? Was it Bill Wyman?’
Never really a Fabs Man, Paul was quite amused at the incident. Or should I say that he was amused at the effect that the presence of a Beatle had had on me. Should I say something? Or nothing? George was the one who after all loathed all the adulation, he received as a Beatle. I tried to recall whether there had been incidents whereby clueless autograph hunters had been traduced to a stunned silence as ‘The quiet Beatle’ told them where to get off, lecturing them on the value of self control, place and impermanence in one’s life. By now sitting down at our table, Paul’s taunting continued ‘why don’t you send a snowball ‘made up’ over via a waiter with a message ‘cheers for all the years’ laughing uproariously at his perceived wit. I endured the starter, getting myself into a lather over whether I should say something. After all, this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity, not to be missed. Or did George deserve his peace and to be left alone? At this point, Barri appeared by our table, rather like the shopkeeper from Mr Benn’s and was determined to find out the reason for my agitation. When I pointed out that ‘one of the guys over there was a really famous pop-star, Barri beamed proprietorially and smugly ‘Yes, he is the…………. E.L.O’ as if he had shares in Jeff’s old band.
‘No. Not ‘im.’ I casually pushed aside any cache that ELO had carried. ‘The guy talking to him, is George Harrison of The Beatles’.
Barri seemed shocked. ‘Who? Him?’ he said spinning around in some catatonic manner that denoted awareness of legendary status over mere fame. He turned back.
‘Oh goodness gracious me’. He actually said this!
But I stuck to my guns and left George alone, proud that I’d imposed a modicum of self-control on myself and proud that I’d ‘allowed’ him to enjoy an evening out without being recognised. But secretly, I harboured a sense of dissatisfaction. I could have met one of my heroes and bottled it. He’d parked his car in the Red Lion car park and had had a drink in the pub first. George had been in my home while I played the fool in the Indus’s ‘hospitality area’. Fuckity Fuck.
The next evening, I was in my families sitting room back at the hotel. The phone buzzed from reception: it was a phone call for me. It was Manik, one of the waiters at the Indian: ‘Adam, we thought that you should know, Jeff has booked another table for three at 8.00pm. We thought that you should know as you seemed so distressed last night’. Bingo! I messed up once, I wouldn’t again. What should I get him to sign? I settled on a coffee table book that contained a series of photographs that Robert Freeman had taken of the boys. Armed with this, I grabbed a coat and was gone. I stood outside the Indian, in my trench coat, armed with my book and a pen. A Mercedes pulled up with darkened windows. The same three figures got out, George had been driving. He looked suspiciously at me. Years later I read that he’d been very concerned after John’s death at the possibility of his own safety, and when I look back, I probably caused some alarm, in my Mafiosi style heavy coat, and arm inside holding a book. They walked towards me.
‘So what’s all this then?’ asked George. I had time and presence of mind to ask Jeff if he minded my intrusion and whether it was okay to ask for an autograph.
‘Just a book of pictures of you and the lads’ in the early days’ I stumbled but watching George turn the pages of the book. What was he thinking as he looked over them? Pride? Irritation at the realisation that he’d never escape this infernal band? I remember looking at his ear and thinking ‘John Lennon has spoken into that ear and given instructions for what he wants played on Strawberry Fields’. Far out! George asked ‘and who are you then?’
I replied, ‘I’m a guy whose messed his life up trying to be you’. He laughed and signed a picture taken in 1964 at the Washington Coliseum. ‘Well so long then’ said George. The three walked into the Indian and left me alone standing on the pavement. How thrilling and how pathetic that this brief meeting, something that happened to him many times daily possibly, meant so much to me. I could say ‘get a life’ but as I stand on the precipice of old age and having contracted Parkinsons years ago, I have to own up that there’s not much more life to ‘get’. I think I’d rather go back in time when this obsession began and when life seemed much more fun.
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Paul Linden - Aikido master with PD
My Introduction - ProudParkie2017 (my PD story)
PD or LBD and what about me?
Unexpected advice about PD
