Good Ol' Freda Page #5
the Bassnett Bar.
He was trying to educate me
on the cures and cheeses
and coffee and things like that.
Well, I would stay
there and get sozzled,
you know, 'cos I'd be trying
all these different things with them,
and then they would
just put me in a taxi
and I'd go home and
go straight to bed.
Now, John's family...
he only had Mimi.
Mimi was John's aunt.
She took John in when he was about five,
when his parents split up.
Mimi didn't let anybody in that house;
very few people got in.
You had to go 'round the back,
you know, like the tradesmen's entrance,
but I actually went up
and knocked on the front door,
and I got in the front door.
It wasn't that you were
frightened of Mimi,
you just watched
your Ps and Qs.
To me, Mimi was like my father,
she was old-school.
Any time I saw her with John,
which wasn't very often,
she was quite stern
but he did obey her.
I think
the Harrisons enjoyed the fame
more than any of
the other parents.
Mr. and Mrs. Harrison loved it.
They took to it more.
She was
excellent with the fans,
would let them into her house,
would give them a cup of tea,
you know,
every day, she just sat down
and wrote letters
to all these kids.
But they were very
protective of George,
maybe it was because he was
the youngest Beatle.
Mr. Harrison... Harry Harrison...
was always saying to me,
"You should learn
to dance properly,"
and I said "I don't
wanna learn ballroom
dancing,
I don't really like it,"
and he said "No,
He would get me up to dance
and show me how to do the quick-step
and the waltz and everything.
So we were like there...
I was really self-conscious about it,
I just did not want to learn
to ballroom dance.
You know, all the families
and all the boys believed in her.
She was 'good old Freda' to them,
in other words.
Seeing them on
and out the office,
going to their homes,
it didn't hit me how big they were
or worshipped they were
until the civic reception,
which was at
the Town Hall in Liverpool.
The only people that
were invited really
were The Beatles themselves
and The Beatles' families,
and that was it,
but Ritchie's family put me down
as one of their family.
We were picked up in a car
from the counsel,
we must have come
in the back way,
and the lads
were already here,
and we had a meal,
so we were all relaxed and everything,
and then next minute,
they then had to go out onto the balcony
and, just as they
opened these doors,
the noise hit us,
with the shouts and the screaming,
and then I came to
behind the door here
and I just couldn't
believe Castle Street.
It was just full of people;
as far as the eye could see
was people, everywhere.
I mean, the noise was deafening,
there was chaos in the street,
girls were wriggling and pushing
to get through the crowd,
and they were fainting,
and the ambulance men and police
were just passing
them over the crowds
to get them
into the ambulance.
It was unbelievable.
I think the penny
actually dropped
with me then,
how big they were,
'cos it hadn't really hit home
until I saw that amount of people,
it was about 200,000 people...
I couldn't even visualize 200,000 people
until I saw it that day.
I think now,
and I think the parents
must have been
so proud of 'em,
that their sons were
out on the balcony,
and Liverpool was
reacting to them.
I'm very proud that
I worked for them.
So what was Beatlemania
to you at the height of it,
when it was its busiest,
what, 1964, '65?
No sleep
with all the mail.
How many letters a week
were you getting, roughly?
Oh, God, thousands,
two to three thousand a day.
Must have sat up 'til 4,
5 o'clock in the morning
just answering... I used to do all
what we call detail letters...
I used to just
bring all them home
and then go back to work with
me little parcel the next day.
I don't know how I lived.
In the wake of the outbreak
of Beatlemania,
there was a very very sudden increase
in interest amongst fans,
people writing in,
asking for autographs,
asking to join
the Beatles fan club, etc.
Brian Epstein decided
that we would have a stamp.
It looked like
a proper signature.
And I remember, sometimes,
I would roll it across the autograph book,
and only half of
it would turn out,
or it would smudge.
I ruined so many
kids' autograph books.
And of course,
I'm a Beatle fan,
so I'm thinking
the way they're thinking,
and I thought "I'd go
mad if that was me. "
I know I was against them
and John Lennon was against them as well,
of the falseness.
and I asked him to sign something,
and he said, "I did that,"
"You don't normally
sign it that way,"
and he said "I've decided to sign that way
from now on,"
and I said,
"Is that because our stamps
look like you
wrote the signature?"
He went "Yeah. "
In the end, I thought,
"Oh, I'm dumping them. "
I never told Eppy,
I just thought, "Right,
I'll just keep all
these autograph books
and photographs
in the cupboard,
and when the lads come in,
I'll still carry on. "
I would know when they were staying
at home in their own houses,
oh, George is coming home tonight,
so I'll nab him, I'll go from the office
straight to Mackets Lane,
so I would go
'round and get them
to sign stuff in
their own house,
say, "Oh,
while you're sitting there,
watching the telly,
do us a favor.
Can you just
sign that bagful?"
So, if some of the fans,
especially in the foreign countries,
they didn't have the address
of the fan club,
so they just knew that they lived
in England somewhere,
so they would just
put 'To Paul McCartney'
or 'To George Harrison,
England,'
but it would come
through the system.
The post office, give them their due,
were very good,
they just knew where
the fan club existed.
The type of
questions kids would ask
in the fan club
letters was, you know,
'Can I have
a piece of Paul's shirt?'
or 'If I send you a map,
can you ask
Paul to come
'round at 6 o'clock?
Because I'm having a party
and I'd like him to come. '
But then it got
a bit out of hand,
because then
people wanted hair,
and it was
the same barber that cut
their hair,
it was always this one guy.
I mean, it was their hair,
they'd probably do DNA on it now.
He would have
a mat down on the floor
or something,
and cut their hair...
'cos he thought I was mental.
And he'd just say "There you go,
do you want that bit?"
I'd go "Yeah, yeah, thanks. "
Somebody sent a pillowcase in
and said "Can you get Ritchie to
sleep on this pillowcase
and then send it back to me
and get him to sign it?"
I must have known that he was going to
be home for three days,
so I just threw that in the bag
and took it to his house
and said, "Will you sleep on that tonight
and sign it then?"
And I remember saying to Elsie...
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"Good Ol' Freda" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Dec. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/good_ol'_freda_9197>.
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