Their goal: Meet the Beatles on tour in 1966. Their solution: Impersonate the opening act.
In August 1966, as the Beatles made their way to Washington during what would ultimately be their last tour, a group of six scheming 15-year-olds from the District’s Chevy Chase neighborhood developed a plan: 1. See the concert. 2. For free. 3. By sneaking into what then was called D.C. Stadium. 4. Disguised as the Beatles’ opening act, a band called the Cyrkle. Incorporated into this plan were makeshift costumes, a rented limo, decoy groupies and the unwitting participation of D.C. police, who provided the fake band with a motorcade escort. Aside from a paragraph-long mention in the Washington Star, in which the kids refused to provide their names, the plot went uncatalogued in the public record. Now, on the concert’s 50th anniversary, members of the fake Cyrkle provide an oral history of how they pulled off one of the greatest pranks in Washington folklore.
The pranksters:
John Koehler: We were all from the same neighborhood. Half of us were away at school during the year, but we’d been hanging out since we were 6 or 7. I think the germ of the prank’s idea belonged to Eddie Merrigan or Mark Welsh.
Mark Welsh: I think Bob Booth came up with the idea.
Bob Booth: The germ of the idea might have been Tom Hinton’s?
Tom Hinton: My sister Margie was the one who told me, “Tommy, the Beatles are coming to town.” She went and got us tickets to go to the concert,but my friend Eddie Merrigan and I were always brainstorming. Finally, one of us, Eddie or I, said, “No, we should meet the Beatles.”
By: Monica Hesse
Source: The Washington Post
