Fifty-year-old photo brings Beatle and Sonoman together at last
Charlie Schwartz says it was “the only time I ever cut school in my life.” He was with his best buddy Matt Blender in the student lounge at Fair Lawn High School in Bergen County, New Jersey, when a couple of other guys said, “The Beatles are coming in to JFK. Let’s go find them!”
It was February 1964, and the so-called “Fab Four” were in the United States for the first time as a group for what became an historic appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. A total of six kids spontaneously piled into a 1961 Chevy Impala convertible to go to the airport – four male seniors, and two female juniors – and were quite surprised when they managed to intersect a motorcade of limousines. They pulled up next to one of them on the Van Wyck Expressway, going about 60 miles an hour.
The window rolled down, and in the back seat of the limo was Ringo Starr. The kids waved and Ringo waved back, trying to carry on a conversation. Then Ringo picked up his ever-present camera and shot a couple pictures.
“A day after this whole thing happened,” Schwartz told the Index-Tribune recently, “it was history, I forgot about it.” He went about his life – moved to California, became a bartender in the San Francisco financial district, and married his wife Stacey about 15 years ago when they moved to Sonoma.
He remained a rock music fan – although perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, “I was a Stones fan. And a huge Grateful Dead fan.”
By: Christian Kallen
Source: Sonoma Index-Tribune
