The fan is referring to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, on November 22, 1963—not only the day EMI released With the Beatles in the UK but also the day Mike Wallace of the CBS Morning News gave the Beatles their American television debut. He aired a performance clip that was set to be rebroadcast by Walter Cronkite on the evening news—until the JFK tragedy struck and the clip was forgotten until December 10.

That was nearly two months ago.

On the transatlantic flight, Ringo struggles with the weight of the moment. As he later explains, “I felt as though there was a big octopus with tentacles that were dragging us down into New York.”

Also on the flight is producer Phil Spector, who’d asked to catch a ride with the Beatles on the rationale that a jet carrying the British pop stars had to be crash-proof.

He’s also a fan. “It’s obvious that Paul McCartney and John Lennon may be the greatest rock and roll singers that we’ve ever had,” Spector later tells Rolling Stone. “I mean there is a reason for the Beatles other than the fact that they’re like Rodgers and Hart and Hammerstein, Gershwin and all of ’em. They are great, great singers. They can do anything with their voices.”

John and Spector start talking about a new group that Spector has befriended back in London: the Rolling Stones.

John and the others met them last spring, on a Sunday night at a blues spot in suburban London called the Crawdaddy Club, where the Stones were the house band. The Beatles stopped by after taping the television music program Thank Your Lucky Stars. They were all impressed by the lead singer, Mike (soon to be known worldwide as “Mick”) Jagger, while John was especially drawn to Brian Jones’s technique on the harmonica.

The two groups started hanging out a lot together backstage, and when the Stones admitted they didn’t have a follow-up to their debut single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On” (which came and went), John offered them a Lennon-McCartney original—“I Wanna Be Your Man.”

That night at the club, John relates, he and Paul “went off in the corner of the room and finished the song off while they were all just sitting there, talking. We came back and Mick and Keith said, ‘Jesus, look at that. They just went over there and wrote it.’”

The Stones covered it, and their version of “I Wanna Be Your Man” reached number 13.

“That’s when Mick and Keith decided they should write songs together themselves,” John tells Spector.

Then Paul comes up the aisle with an important message from the pilot: “Tell the boys there’s a big crowd waiting for them.”

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?

—“Baby, You’re a Rich Man”