Chris Watson (left), aged 15, and DJ Nev Chamberlain (centre) chat to Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr before The Beatles' concert in the Wellington Town Hall in 1964.
Chris Watson (left), aged 15, and DJ Nev Chamberlain (centre) chat to Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr before The Beatles' concert in the Wellington Town Hall in 1964.
It was a day in June 1964 that young Chris Watson, a 15-year-old from Timaru, would never forget. A plane ride to Wellington, two nights in a hotel, attending The Beatles concert and – best of all – meeting the fab four.
Now Watson, 76, is reluctantly parting with arestaurant menu signed by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr shortly before they went on stage at the Wellington Town Hall more than 60 years ago. All four band members signed the inside of the menu, and all of them, apart from John Lennon, signed the front cover.
All four members of The Beatles signed a menu for 15-year-old Kiwi Chris Watkins after he won a competition to meet the band and attend their concert in 1964.
The menu will be part of Webb’s online auction, The Estate, between May 2 and May 6, a fortnightly sale of treasures from different eras and countries.
Back in 1964, Watson won a nationwide “Meet the Beatles” competition run by Kiwi DJ Cham the Man (Nev Chamberlain). The challenge was to come up with as many words using letters from “The Beatles”.
Watson, then a fourth former at St Patrick’s High School, worked through the May school holidays and came up with 1197 words. Hard work, he tells the Herald on Sunday. There was no cheating with Google or online dictionaries six decades ago.
He’d never been on a commercial flight before, nor visited a big city. He remembers having an early dinner at the then fine-dining restaurant The Mermaid in a motel called The Lodge (now the Brentwood Hotel) in Kilbirnie, eating ham steak with grilled pineapple, followed by peach melba, and being taken to the town hall in Cuba St for the concert.
The highlight was a promised meeting with The Beatles before they went on stage for their second back-to-back show. Clutching his souvenir menu from The Mermaid, he asked the four band members to sign it.
A menu from Wellington restaurant The Mermaid signed by the four Beatles in 1964 is going up for auction next month.
Now it’s time for the menu and The Beatles’ signatures to belong to someone else, he says. Watson, who lives in Auckland, is downsizing, and says it was impossible to divide the menu between his three sons. He hopes a museum will buy the menu so it can go on public display.
“Why not have it out there so someone else can enjoy it?”
Watson remembers all of that special meeting: the Beatles’ longish hair, not allowed at his school, their friendliness, the laughing and joking while the band members drank Coke and ate fruit.
The Beatles on the balcony of the St George Hotel in Wellington shortly after their arrival on June 21, 1964. Photo / Alexander Turnbull Library
He managed to ask two questions: to John Lennon, who kept his sunglasses on throughout the encounter, Watson asked what he would do after his music career. Lennon replied, “write poetry”.
And he asked Ringo Starr how many drumsticks he had. The drummer replied “one”, causing more laughter from the band.
Watson admits he didn’t understand much of what the Fab Four said because of their strong Liverpool accents and “Scouse” slang.
Nor did he hear much of the concert. As soon as The Beatles appeared on stage, the screaming from girls in the audience drowned out the singing. However, he was given three Beatles records as part of his prize.
The Estate catalogue goes online on May 2, with bidding closing on May 6 at 8pm.
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