They would go on to be the best-selling rock group in history, the standard against which all future bands are measured.
But when Jeanne Fell and her family welcomed them into their home for rehearsals, she wasn’t exactly won over.
“I wasn’t keen on that kind of music,” recalls Fell, 83, a long-time Flin Flonner originally from England. “So I mean I just thought, ‘Oh lord, that kind of music again.’”
Those musical tastes placed Fell in the minority back in Liverpool, England. For those four young lads were none other than The Beatles.
Granted, they weren’t yet The Beatles of international acclaim, of chart-topping eminence, of self-comparisons to Jesus.
Could fizzle
Rather, they were one of many English acts that could fizzle at any moment. No one could have predicted what lay ahead for them.
“When I knew them,” Fell says, “they were just a bunch of guys playing together.”
Though Fell met the future Fab Four twice, the passage of decades has rendered fuzzy her memories of the encounters.
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The location was her family’s grand three-storey home in Liverpool, the band’s hometown. Fell had been born east of Liverpool before moving to the city with her family as a teen.
The years are unclear, though based on Fell’s recollections the first meeting would have likely taken place between mid-1960 and mid-1962; the second between mid-1962 and early 1964.
Fell and her sister Patricia Mills shared the maiden name of Boulton. And it was in the Boulton home that they still resided along with Patricia’s husband, Gordon Mills.
Gordon was a musician whose band – the name of which escapes Fell – played gigs at The Cavern Club in downtown Liverpool.
Today The Cavern Club is the world-famous cradle of British pop music mainly because of another act that graced its stage – The Beatles.
“It wasn’t a great big place, but it was where bands played,” Fell recalls. “People went to it and listened to them.”
Evidently through his musical connections, Gordon knew The Beatles so well that on at least two occasions, the young men visited the Boulton house to rehearse.
“They were just getting together and playing, put it that way,” says Fell through her pleasant British accent.
That was when Fell had the positively unmemorable experience of meeting the band.
“I didn’t even know who they were when I met them,” she says. “It was my sister that told me who they were. It wasn’t my thing, that kind of music. I was more into ballet and stuff, you know.”
Adds Fell: “I couldn’t say that we were buddy-buddy.”
Fell believes that when she first met The Beatles, they had a drummer other than Ringo Starr. That drummer would have been Pete Best.
The second time she met the lads, Starr was part of the group along with the familiar lineup of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.
“In Liverpool everybody thought that they were great,” says Fell. “They were really into that kind of stuff. My sister and her husband thought that they were really good.”
The Beatles exploded from a regional phenomenon to global stardom with a landmark appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964.
By the time The Beatles had become household names, Fell was living in London. Her job as a manager with Brother Sewing Machines had taken her from Liverpool to the British capital.
The Beatles’ emergence as rock gods didn’t have much impact on her.
“I just thought, ‘Oh, that was kind of neat, I knew them when they weren’t famous,’” Fell says. “You know, that was about it.”
Fell never saw The Beatles again and continued to enjoy other types of music even as the Liverpool legends tore up the charts.
“I’m still not really into that kind of music,” says the grandmother of four.
In the decades that have passed since The Beatles stopped by the Boulton household, Fell has rarely spoken of knowing them.
When the subject does come up, she is careful not to garnish the story (as many of us no doubt would).
“I’m not one to try and get a big name because I knew them,” Fell says. “They weren’t famous when I knew them.”
Fell’s late sister Patricia, whose marriage to Gordon was short-lived, never met The Beatles again, either, but she was thrilled by their success.
In time Fell left not only The Beatles behind, but also England. She had fallen in love with a Canadian man by the name of Jim Fell.
Jeanne and Jim wed in 1965 in Flin Flon, raising two children and becoming pillars of the community.
Stays active
Today Jeanne stays active by knitting mittens, slippers and headbands for the less fortunate as a member of the Order of the Eastern Star.
She averages a remarkable 40 pairs a month, with the Northminster Memorial United Church and the Eastern Star supplying much of the wool.
Jeanne hasn’t made it back to England in some time, though she enjoys reminiscing about her homeland.
But she still doesn’t see her chance meetings with The Boys from Liverpool as anything terribly interesting.
“It’s been so many years ago and I never talk about it,” Fell says. “It just doesn’t occur to me to think about them, you know.”
As far as her loose connection to music history is concerned, it seems Jeanne is happy to just Let It Be.
