By Matt Chaney, for chaneysblog.com<\/p>\n
Posted Thursday, March 16, 2017<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a92017 for historical arrangement and original content by Matt Chaney, FourWallsPublishing USA<\/p>\n
When The Beatles toured North America in late summer 1964, fan mobs tracked them like a public prey.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Beatles couldn\u2019t get out anywhere,\u201d said Bill English, a singer on the tour, speaking decades later. \u201cWhen we played Vegas [the second stop] they couldn\u2019t go down and gamble or play slot machines. We\u2019re staying at the Sands Hotel, and they took slot machines up to the rooms.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we played at Indianapolis, people started rocking the bus\u2026 And New Orleans was the worst. It was scary.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Beatles took refuge on their chartered jet, airborne, to let loose in high seclusion. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t any sitting in your seat on flights. It was a wild party every time,\u201d said English, formerly of the Bill Black Combo, front band of the Fab Four. \u201cWe had a tail section on the plane, a big round couch with a bar. We’d be back there talking and drinking, having a big time.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how Bill English learned of a Beatles plot for escape to\u00a0the Ozark hills, at the plane bar, Thursday night of the final week on tour. \u00a0A secret Beatles trip to the Missouri hills had been arranged, exclusively for the famed rockers, but they also tabbed English for the party.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome \u2019ere,\u201d said Paul McCartney, motioning to the Ozarks native. English drew close for McCartney’s briefing in British accent. \u201cWe\u2019re going to a place called Alton, Missourah. \u2019ave you ever heard of it? We want you to go with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAlton, Missouree<\/em>?\u201d English replied, sensing another Beatles prank. \u201cMan, that\u2019s only about 50 miles from my hometown, Piedmont, Missouri.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d McCartney said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to leave for Alton and nobody knows. We\u2019re going to this ranch and ride horses and everything. Then they\u2019re going to pick us up and we\u2019re going on to New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n Thirty years later, 1994, English laughed at the memory. \u201cIt takes me about 10 or 15 minutes, and I realize McCartney\u2019s serious. I said, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019ll go.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In early August of 1964, Bill English prepared for his second year of teaching junior-high PE classes at Potosi, Mo., in the state’s Lead Belt. He was 24, stalled in rock ‘n’ roll after showing potential. Then a college band-mate phoned from Memphis, Bob Tucker, rising guitarist and booking agent.<\/p>\n Tucker now led the Bill Black Combo, named for its founder, the former bass player for Elvis Presley. The Beatles had requested The Combo for their new American swing through 28 cities in 31 days, and Tucker needed a singer.<\/p>\n \u201cI had three weeks to go before teaching school,\u201d English said. \u201cAnd Tucker calls me, says, \u2018I\u2019ve talked to Bill Black, and he said call English and see if he wants the job.\u2019 I\u2019d set in, sung with different groups around northeast Arkansas and Memphis, and Black had heard me. Well, my mom and dad had worked all my life to put me through school, to get me a degree to teach or coach\u2014but I wanted to play rock ‘n’ roll. So bad.\u201d<\/p>\n English would make $4,420 in salary for the school year. Tucker guaranteed him a year\u2019s music dates for about $10,000 plus pay\u00a0for the Beatles tour. English\u2019s decision seemed easy, but first he had to see his father, Joe English, long-time music director at Piedmont High. \u201cSo I drive from Potosi to Piedmont, dreadin\u2019 to tell my dad. But he said, \u2018Man, get your clothes packed! Go for it.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Potosi Schools had to find a new PE teacher and Bill English was on his way to the Beatles tour, however slowly the ride began. \u201cBob Tucker, great guy\u2014he always figured out how he could save some money, because he was manager of the group,\u201d English said. \u201cAnd Tucker put us on a bus in Memphis. Greyhound. We rode fifty-seven hours<\/em>\u2026 to the Cow Palace in San Francisco. From then on it was first class.\u201d<\/p>\n English and Tucker didn’t begin as Beatles fans, really. They were \u201crockabilly\u201d players from the ’50s, influenced by Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, more. But so were The Beatles, as Tucker found out.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we were in Key West, Florida, Ringo and Paul came up to me and said, \u2018Look, can you go to town and buy us some albums? We want to hear some music,\u2019 \u201d Tucker recalled, speaking with me in Marion, Ark. \u201cSo they give me $600, and I went into town and I bought every damn album I could find.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd, man, they would put an album on, and play a cut, then set it sailing across the room. But when they got to Carl Perkins, or Jerry Lee Lewis, or anything that came out of the Memphis region, by god they played every cut. They really listened. And I feel like they came up with doing a couple of Carls [Perkins songs on the tour] because of that. They had a high regard for Memphis music and southern music. Definitely Memphis music.\u201d<\/p>\n The Beatles show began with the Bill Black Combo, followed by The Righteous Brothers, The Exciters, Clarence \u201cFrogman\u201d Henry, Jackie DeShannon, additional acts depending on locale, before the big headliner.<\/p>\n The Combo landed \u201ca lot of work because we were instrumental, we had some chart records, so we were a viable opening act,\u201d Tucker said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we were on the Beatle tour, because we went out and did our two or three songs, and then we backed the other solo artists. They didn\u2019t have to have four bands. On the Beatle tour, there were four acts in front of them. Today it would be only The Beatles.\u201d<\/p>\n English remembered: \u201cWe\u2019d come on, the Bill Black Combo, and I was the fortunate person\u2014or unfortunate one\u2014to walk out there. The first person to say, Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to The Beatles tour<\/em>. Well, you just said the word Beatles anytime, people went crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n English and Tucker held no illusion of their own stardom, or lack of it. Yet ego duped English at least once, on stage at Forest Hills Stadium in New York. \u201cI got into about the third song\u2026,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the crowd was nice; they\u2019d applauded and everything.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I mean, buddy, all of a sudden they came to their feet. And I think, Man alive, I\u2019m gettin\u2019 to \u2019em! They\u2019re diggin\u2019 me! And Tucker, he\u2019s kinda sarcastic and loved to do this\u2014he could tell I was really gittin\u2019 off\u2014and he walks up behind me on stage, says, \u2018English, you idiot. They\u2019re not clapping for you. The Beatles are landing backstage in a helicopter right now!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Friday evening, Sept. 18, 1964, The Beatles tour played in Dallas at Memorial Auditorium. From there the Fab Four and Bill English bolted for the Missouri Ozarks, bound for a private estate along the spring-fed Eleven Point River. \u201cWe left Dallas right after The Beatles hit the last note,\u201d English recalled.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went backstage, out the back, and got into laundry trucks. They took us to a limousine and out to the airport. We flew that night to the old Walnut Ridge Air Force base in northeast Arkansas.\u201d<\/p>\n Reed Pigman, owner of the charter airlines transporting The Beatles, had set them up at his secluded ranch on the Eleven Point. There they could unwind some 36 hours in solitude, supposedly. A local man, Junior Lance, came to Walnut Ridge to meet the rock stars, fetch them back to the Missouri hills.<\/p>\n \u201cJunior Lance<\/em>,\u201d English said, smiling, reminded of the name. \u201cSo he picked us up. Back then you called his Chevrolet a Carryall, and now they\u2019re Suburbans. And we go through Pocahontas [Ark.] and McCartney wanted to stop and get a cheeseburger, something to eat. Junior said, \u2018Nope, I have orders to take you straight to the ranch.\u2019 He kinda thought they were goofy, the Beatles. And we show up there and nobody was supposed to know. Nobody. It was top secret.\u201d<\/p>\n But awry had gone the plan, already. \u201cWe had no more got into the house and the phone started ringing,\u201d English said. \u201cAt that time, KXOK in St. Louis was the Top 40 station around. For years on radio. And we\u2019d answer the phone\u2014I\u2019d answer\u2014and they\u2019d say, \u2018Are the Beatles really there?\u2019 I\u2019d say, \u2018I don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Thus, typically of wherever The Beatles slept that August and September in America, fans awaited them next morning outside\u2014a rural stone road notwithstanding. Number estimates vary on the small crowd who country-stalked The Beatles at Pigman Ranch that Saturday, appearing at the gate from wee hours onward. A few hundred total, perhaps, with the proverbial crying girls.<\/p>\n One young woman didn\u2019t fuss over rebuff by Beatles security. Judy Woods, reared locally, knew an alternative route to see The Beatles at Pigman Ranch\u2014through her husband, Don, budding premier guide of Ozarks fishing. I spoke with Don Woods in 1994, streams expert, the same week I interviewed other locals and Bill English about The Beatles in \u201964.<\/p>\n \u201cThe front gate [at Pigman], they had it guarded. They wouldn\u2019t let people in that big ol\u2019 buffalo fence,\u201d Woods said. \u201cI told Judy I\u2019d go home and get the boat and motor.\u201d<\/p>\n Woods met back with his wife a couple miles upstream from Pigman property at Riverton village, a country store and dwellings. They launched boat below the bridge of\u00a0Highway 160, joined aboard by a couple friends. Oldest age of the group was barely 20. \u201cThe moon was out. We didn\u2019t even take a flashlight, afraid somebody would see us, you know,\u201d recalled Woods, a friend of the Pigmans.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went on down the Eleven Point, and I\u2019d been a guide about four years at that time. I was familiar with the water, and I knew where to park the boat down there and walk up a road to the ranch\u2026 We opened a backyard gate and walked in around this large home, which had about 14 rooms. Just slipped in there, stillness of night, and peeked in the big window and there they were [The Beatles]. That was the first long hair I\u2019d ever seen on a man,\u201d Woods said, chuckling. \u201cAnd they were playin\u2019 cards, havin\u2019 a good time. They had some women in there with \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n English didn\u2019t know those groupies in the house on Eleven Point River. The women weren\u2019t local, he said later, and Pigman barred stewardesses from this Beatles trip. Whatever, twas a fine time, apparently, although rock stars were paranoid in moments, even out in the sticks.<\/p>\n McCartney managed to rattle English a bit himself, the Ozarker, what for the Londoner\u2019s country driving. The two had grabbed fishing poles and headed for a pond on the Pigman estate. \u201cMcCartney gets into about a \u201950 Ford and we\u2019re driving down this gravel road,\u201d English said. \u201cPaul says, \u2018I haven\u2019t driven a car in years!\u2019 I said, \u2018Slow down.\u2019 He said, \u2018I don\u2019t have a driver\u2019s license! They took my license away from me!\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cSo we end up goin\u2019 fishing at a pond, me and Paul McCartney\u2026 We\u2019re sitting there at the pond, just fishing, and here out of nowhere these people start comin\u2019 on. Paul says, \u2018If they get to the other side of the pond, we\u2019re making a mad dash to the car.\u2019 And we did, because he was scared to death. It was wild.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a good time though. We rode horses,\u201d English said. \u201cA lot of people will remember the cover of Life Magazine<\/em>, shot by Ron Joy. We had about five photographers [on the tour], and he took the picture of the Beatles sticking their heads out of the horse stall at the barn at Alton, Missouri.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Bill English died of recurring cancer at age 66 in 2006, a retired salesman and musician, longtime resident of Van Buren, Mo., on the Current River near Big Spring. Many folks near and far had lost a beloved friend, but one of character unforgettable, forever alive in mind.<\/p>\n Last week Bob Tucker laughed in northeast Arkansas, river delta land across from Memphis, discussing his old college roomie and stage mate. \u201cEnglish\u2014The Beatles liked him, and invited him to go to the ranch with \u2019em, and all that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n Tucker\u2019s round face lit up, eyes twinkling. He\u2019d get in the last shot between two smart-assed pals, with love. \u201cBill English did more with less talent than anybody in the history of music. You can quote me,\u201d Tucker declared, laughing.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Bill English did have was personality and showmanship. Now, he was long and tall on that. And he was a great friend, and he had a talent for making everybody feel like he was their best friend. And that\u2019s a gift.\u201d<\/p>\n Matt Chaney is a writer, editor and publisher in Missouri, USA. For more information visit\u00a0<\/em>www.fourwallspublishing.com.\u00a0Email:\u00a0<\/em>mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Matt Chaney, for chaneysblog.com Posted Thursday, March 16, 2017 Copyright \u00a92017 for historical arrangement and original content by Matt Chaney, FourWallsPublishing USA When The Beatles toured North America in late summer 1964, fan mobs tracked them like a public prey. \u201cThe Beatles couldn\u2019t get out anywhere,\u201d said Bill English, a singer on the tour, … Continue reading 1964: The Beatles Flee For Hills of Missouri<\/span>