KCBS Reporter Recalls Beatles Exclusive Interview 50 Years Ago Today Ahead Of Landmark Cow Palace Concert
“All of my girlfriends. We all lived on the same street. All we did, you know,we we’re the Beatle’ girlfriends every single chance we had,” Denise McKevitt Rasmussen, who was celebrating her ninth birthday, said. Her dad let her pick two friends to take to the Beatles show at the Cow Palace. One of them was Terry O’Brien. “I remember I wore my pink pants dress with my John Lennon boots. Everyone had them then—the little white boots,” O’Brien said. Terry’s mom Gina was not so thrilled. “I just thought, she’s too young; she’ll get eaten alive down there but, oh, she wanted to go so bad,” she said. “They were so excited.” While youthful fans were primping, a KCBS reporter named Hilly Rose was trying to figure out an angle on what was obviously the story of the day. “The Beatles were big but really with teenagers—young people. And so guys our age, who in that time where in their 30s and 40s working at KCBS, we didn’t know a lot about them,” Rose said.
Rose had covered the chaotic arrival at San Francisco International Airport the day before, and had cooked up a plan. He called the Hilton Hotel and asked for the Beatles’ road manager. He name-dropped Ed Sullivan, and strongly suggested that CBS brass wanted to know about the threat of hysteria at the concert. And then he waited while the Beatles were consulted. “So five minutes went by. And then minutes went by. And then 30 minutes went by. And then 40 minutes went by and I thought to myself, I can’t lose this.”
Source: KCBS, San Francisco
