Russell Baillie: We loved you, yeah, yeah, yeah

The Beatles.

Though after assembling the pages within this week's issue of TimeOut, I may now look like a man who was old enough to have seen the Beatles when they were here in 1964, they were a bit before my time. A bit.

My first LP was a copy of Help! inherited from my older sisters. I still think it's their most underrated album. Terrible movie though. Have tried to like it but unfortunately there exists A Hard Day's Night which never fails to make me smile or wish dear father and dear mother had arranged my arrival quite a lot earlier so I could have witnessed the Beatles in New Zealand the very year that film came out. By the sounds of it -- see pages five through nine -- it was pretty damn exciting. But the closest I ever got to real Beatlemania -- as opposed to the phoney version the Clash said had bitten the dust on London's Calling -- was at Paul McCartney's concert at Western Springs in 1993.

He played more Beatles songs than he and his old mates managed 29 years earlier. I wish he'd tour here again because a 20 minute na-na-na singalong of the endless chorus of Hey Jude is one of life's great silly pop pleasures (especially if the sister you inherited the Beatles album from is called Jude).

I did see McCartney up close one other time. [Warning: name drop anecdote alert]. Back when the first Lord of the Rings movie was at its first Oscars, I had leaned over the red carpet barrier to talk to Peter Jackson, a man whose first movie Bad Taste featured a odd van decorated with the faces of the fab four. I asked him whether he'd got used to being among so many famous faces yet, or whether he got starstruck at these things.

No, he started to reply in his usual nothing-fazes-me manner, just as I interrupted him: Look it's Paul McCartney ...

I'm pretty sure Jackson swore and said something like, "then again, there's Paul McCartney, he's a Beatle" and he wandered over to say hello and possibly be reminded by Sir Macca that the Beatles were once involved in plans to make a LOTR movie themselves.

The Beatles were special. Still are. That's why we've dedicated so much of this week's section to the eight days they rocked the joint in the winter of 1964.

Certain Auckland schools might recognise their crests on the caps worn by the Beatles on the cover. If it was your cap used at the band's Auckland's press conference, feel free to get in touch. No, you won't be in trouble for playing truant. Promise.

- TimeOut