In 1966, these Washington teenagers conned their way into meeting the Beatles

by Jeremy Mersereau

August 16, 2016

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By impersonating the opening act and tricking their way into a police escort, these now-senior citizens pulled off the con of a lifetime.

Today, sneaking backstage to a Drake or, I don’t know, Toby Keith show, is about as easy as navigating an Arctic shipping route on an inflatable raft, but things were different back in the heady, patchouli-reeking days of the 1960’s. All a group of determined teens needed back then to meet their heroes was a sweet cherry (car) to haul ass (go places) in, some outta sight (cool) buds to con security with, and a whole lot of confidence (confidence) to pull it off. That’s exactly what a group of Washington 15-year-olds did back in the day to get some face time with the Beatles.

When the Fab Four were scheduled to play what was then known as the D.C. Stadium, a group of young Beatles superfans hatched a foolproof (note: not really) plot to sneak backstage and meet the world’s most revolutionary band of mop-topped delinquents. Using throwaway costumes, a rented limo, fake groupies, and the inadvertent help of the D.C. police, 6 Washington-area 15-year-olds successfully impersonated the night’s opening act, The Cyrkle, pulling the garishly-dyed wool over the eyes of venue security.

“We’d seen the cover of the Cyrkle’s album. They wore turtlenecks and blazers, so we got those too,” John Koehler, the fake Cyrkle lead singer and head prankster told Washington Post.

We don’t look anything like them. But then again, who knew what they looked like then? All you knew was that you’d hear them on the radio. There was no YouTube, no VH1, no color TV.

“Eventually, we decided that there was one best way to be fairly certain that we would be believed when we got to the stadium: We should be escorted there by the police,” said Bob Booth, another of the pranksters. “That was the crucial piece. We decided if that hadn’t worked, we would have scratched the whole thing.” Somehow, the D.C. police believed the boys when they impersonated a Cyrkle manager and asked for a police escort to the stadium, which of course worked wonders for the plot’s veracity as the police motorcycles led them to the stadium’s access road.

Along with the help of a prankster’s sister who was instructed to start screaming “it’s the Cyrkle!” at a specific time, the boys made it into the stadium long before the real Cyrkle made their appearance, and managed to finagle their way to the Beatles’ dressing room before security realized their mistake.

Ringo sort of noticed us and said hi. We introduced ourselves for real at that point and said how we’d gotten in. Ringo thought it was funny that we would do that. He called John over and said, “Listen to this story,” and John had some cheeky response like, “So you wanted to meet us, now you’ve met us.” But Paul was saying, “Hey, George, have a listen to this,” and he played a few bars of what I now realize was the beginning of “Lovely Rita.”

Read the full account of the prankster’s wildly successful plan over at the Washington Post, and start planning your own spinoff backstage caper with the wisdom therein.

Tags: Music, News, beatles, George Harrison, John Lennon, paul mccartney, ringo starr, The Beatles

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