The Night I Hung Out with The Beatles

(an unverifiable fantasy)

By Steven Alan Green

I was 13 years old when Abbey Road came out. I had gone to London to meet a distant relative, my Uncle Clyde. Uncle Clyde was in the tourist trade, specifically luggage for ladies. He had a shop on Finchley Road and ran a barrow on Saturdays at Camden Market. Being my mother’s cousin’s nephew, neither one of us really had any history together; nonetheless stranger friendships have been forged by lesser circumstances. One day, Clyde has a very special order of matching overhead bags to deliver to a very special customer. Henry Sedgwick, the lease holder of Abbey Road Studios. Messer Sedgwick had ordered the customized pieces after reading an obituary in The Daily Telegraph of a man named Derek Galway, an Irish eccentric who was well known to dabble in the dark art of black magic. In the first paragraph of the obit, it was publicly revealed that Mr. Galway used a particular brand of case to tote around various talismans and potions. And since the Bell 2000 utility case was no longer in manufacture, and Derek Galway being a big collector of the occult, he just had to have as close as he could get to the actual valise.

So Uncle Clyde and I got on the number 189 bus to Crouch End, noting it would pass through St. John’s Wood (where Paul McCartney lived) and onto Abbey Road. When we arrived at the iconic music studios, other than the doorman security, the place was abandoned. We let ourselves in and walked right past Studio 2, where The Beatles recorded much of the album with the eponymous name. We each carried a suitcase, shouting out hello’s to anyone who’d listen. Suddenly, from down a dark hallway, a door creeps open and John Lennon said: “Would you like a cuppa tea?” Stunned beyond belief I found my face and mouth saying yes thank you and just as I turned to check with my escort, Uncle Clyde had gone. All I could hear was him arguing with the security man. Inside this little room were all four Beatles, who all seemed magically happy to see someone other than the usual electronic engineers and electricians. They offered me biscuits and asked me who I was and what I was doing there. George was particularly persistent in his inquiry, but oddly it was Ringo was seemed paranoid about the entire thing. Paul was stoned off his head and John kept jamming on a piano in the corner.

Eventually there was the sound of police sirens and the whole of the studio was bathed in red light. They had taken away Uncle Clyde on forgery of foreign currency charges. I stayed with the boys into the night, drinking tea and eating biscuits, and laughing it up. At some point I was absolutely knackered and excused myself, thanked the guys and went back to Paddington, where my hotel was. Quite a day for a 13 year old Beatles Fan.