FIFTY years ago it was rare for pop stars to make it on to the
Honours List but that all changed on October 26, 1965 - the day The
Beatles collected their MBEs from Buckingham Palace.
With four
thousand screaming teenagers gathering at the gates of the Queen’s
official London residence before the 11am investiture, it must have
looked more like the queue for one of their concerts than the scene of a
usually sombre ceremony - but patient fans got their reward when the
band turned up together in John Lennon’s Rolls Royce.
The
ceremony took place at 11am story was front page news in the Liverpool
Echo:
Despite several years of stage experience, the band were nervous
before meeting the Queen - which led to one particular urban legend
springing up about their day at the Palace.
John Lennon claimed
later that the band smoked marijuana in the toilets beforehand to calm
their pre-gong jitters (these were pre-smoke detector days after all)
although George Harrison said later: “We never smoked marijuana... What
happened was we were waiting to go through, standing in an enormous line
with hundreds of people and we were so nervous that we went to the
toilet. And in there we smoked a cigarette - we were all smokers in
those days.”
However, the band all remembered the investiture
fondly in the end - even though the guardsman reading out Ringo Starr’s
name before the drummer stepped forward to receive his medal struggled
to keep a straight face.
Ringo remembered: “The Queen was great... it was obvious she was doing her best to make everyone feel relaxed and not nervous.”
Paul
said: “For four Liverpool lads it was, ‘Wow, hey man!’ It was quite
funny. But she was sweet. I think she seemed mumsy to us because we were
young boys and she was a bit older.”
The ceremony took place in
between the release of the singles Help!, which hit the top in August
1965 and their Christmas number one, the double A-side of Day Tripper
and We Can Work It Out. None of the lads' relatives were at the ceremony
although their manager Brian Epstein was in attendance.
The
ceremony was big news nationally but four years later, in November 1969,
Lennon returned his MBE to the Palace via his chauffeur, Les Anthony.
It was accompanied by a handwritten letter with copies also going to
Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the secretary of the Central Chancery.
The message, on notepaper headed Bag Productions, the company Lennon had
set up with Yoko One, gave three reasons for why Lennon was returning
the honour:
“Your Majesty,
“I am returning my MBE as a
protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing [the
Nigerian civil war], against our support of America in Vietnam and
against ‘Cold Turkey’ [his latest single] slipping down the charts.
“With love, John Lennon of Bag.”
His
fellow Beatle, Paul, didn’t feel quite the same about his
honour and in March 1997, more than 31 years after he first queued to
receive an honour from Her Majesty, he became Sir Paul McCartney. It was
an honour John and George never received in their lifetime (perhaps
unsurprisingly where Lennon is concerned after returning his original
title) but we may still hear the words: ‘Arise, Sir Ringo’ someday. And
hopefully the guardsman can keep a straight face second time around.
Sir Rino Starr is a must
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