Larry Kane: The reluctant Beatles fan
In 1964 Larry Kane was a 21-year-old journalist starting his career at the Top 40 music station WFUN Miami.
Kane considered himself a serious journalist. He'd contacted the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein in advance of the band's arrival in Florida to ask for an interview at the Gator Bowl stadium in Jacksonville.
"We planned to fly young fans to Jacksonville to meet the guys," he says. "But instead Brian Epstein and their publicist Derek Taylor suggested I cover the whole 1964 US tour. I've never quite worked out why the offer was made - except possibly that Brian, being new to America, assumed I was far more important than I was."
Kane tried to persuade his bosses to send instead one of the DJs already into the band. "There were all the Cuban refugees in Miami. There was war in Vietnam escalating and racial revolution in America - why would we bother about an English band who would doubtless disappear in a few months?"
But in December 1964 Kane found himself at the first venue on the tour - the Cow Palace in Daly City, California. "The reason WFUN sent me was because they wanted a real story every day - not just frivolous happy talk. Ultimately I was filing five or six stories each day because interest was huge. But first I had to establish some sort of rapport with the four Beatles.
"When I got to the hotel I received a call from Derek Taylor to go to their suite. I remember George Harrison was in the outer room reading a Green Hornet comic book and smoking incessantly - as we all did back then. George was pleasant and I did a short interview with him.
By: Vincent Dowd
Source: BBC News
