The following article appeared in New Musical Express on September 11, 1964, page 2
The Press Conference was becoming monotonous-reports Chris Hutchins-too many 10-year-old "reporters" were asking tedious questions like "What is the Beatles' favourite colour?" Than a radio newsman queried "What would happen if those 10,000 kids out there broke through the barriers and stormed the stage?"
Answered John Lennon: "We'd die laughing."
The newsman laughed, the journalists laughed and the child reporters, who had been smuggled in, laughed.
But for the police of all 15 states on the Beatles' visiting list, protection is no laughing matter. America has never encountered anything like The Beatles before and the Liverpoplians have required armies of guards to escort their every movement.
The Beatles, their press officer Derek Taylor, road manager Neil Aspinall and I were the sole occupants of a 60-seater coach chartered to take them the 50 mile journey from Atlantic City to Philadelphia towards the end of last week.
To get them to the coach was itself a major security operation. They were smuggled down a service lift of their Atlantic City hotel and into a laundry van which took them to a limousine more than a mile away. The limousine took them to a bus parked in a quiet cul-de-sac on the city's outskirts.
A police escort for the bus would have drawn other motorists' attention to it. Instead, a helicopter hovered over the road half a mile ahead, maintaining radio contact with the police cars and motor cycles standing by if required.
The operation was a success. The seemingly empty coash made its way to the back of the Philadelphia Convention Hall without attracting the slightest attention from the tens of thousands of waiting fans, who could have flattened it as easily as they crushed the limousine waiting to take The Beatles away from their earlier show in Seattle.
It was probably inevitable that the authorities and The Beatles should fall out somewhere along the line. Trouble started in Milwaukee when the police insisted on the group slipping away from the airport without driving past crowds who had been waiting all day for a glimpse of the famous four.
Within an hour a second bombshell was dropped. The Beatles were told that on arrival in Chicago the following day the Mayor would not allow them to go near an anticipated crowd of 20,000 at the major airport.
Instead they were deverted to a small airfield and driven almost unnoticed to the Stockyard Inn adjoining the enormous hall where they were to perform.
A city official went on record as describing The Beatles' intended spectacular arrival as "a cheap publicity stunt".
Paul fired back for The Beatles. He gave specially set up TV and radio interviews, apologising to the fans who had waited at the major airport in vain, announcing that the security operations were not of The Beatles' choice-and describing them as "a bit of a drag."