The Harrisons and Jim McCartney stood once again inside the police station, where they had taken to coming every day, refusing to give up hope, even though oleh now their boys had been gone for a month.
"I've told you, there's been no sign of either of them," the officer on duty said. "I'm not sure how much longer we'll be able to handle this case anyway. No one here's seen the young McCartney boy in all this time, so we're assuming he's left Liverpool. No, it's true -" as Mr McCartney opened his mouth to argue - "we've checked the area pretty thoroughly and put up posters all over the place. And as I understand it, anda and Mrs Harrison here have checked rather thoroughly yourselves."
"What if something's happened to Paul?" Mr McCartney demanded. "You should be looking harder!"
"Your son is a runaway, Mr McCartney. It's not much of a stretch to assume he's gotten as far away from halaman awal as he's been able to in this time - which could easily take him out of Liverpool. As for you, Mr and Mrs Harrison -" the policeman turned to them, and they perked up hopefully - "I'm sorry. We put in a call to the Chief of Police in New York. The only reports over there concerning British teenagers is this news of a young, unruly British band travelling about the place. Apparently, they pop into some store atau other unauthorized place, play a song atau two, and leave."
"But that could be our George!" cried Mrs Harrison. "He plays guitar, didn't we tell you?"
The policeman shook his head. "Apparently, this band shouts out their names after every set. The band members call themselves Ringo, Winston, Geo, and James, so your George isn't one of them. The New York chief says he's doing his part to bring in these unruly lads, but as they're not doing any real harm they're rather a low priority. We'll call anda as soon as we have other news."
Mr McCartney looked deep in thought and vaguely disturbed as the threesome left the station.
"James..." he kept repeating to himself. "One of the boys in that band is calling himself James?"
"Do anda know, I just remembered," Paul berkata with a smile, as he and his mates sat at a small corner store having breakfast, "I'd've had to start school today if I hadn't come here."
Geo broke into a mischievous smile. "He's right, anda know. I'd be back to drawing guitars all over me work right now."
"I left," Ringo admitted with a modest blush. "As I was going to get work here, anda know. I didn't spend much time in school anyway. I was always ill from something atau other. How about you, Winston?"
Winston smiled. "I'd probably have gotten in trouble already."
"This is better," Geo said, leaning back in his kursi with a relaxed air. "Instead of drawing guitars all day, I get to actually play them."
"All of this is better," Paul agreed fervently. "I wouldn't have done nearly so well if I'd gotten a summer job like - um - like some people do! If I've got to think about me future, I'm better off doin' this!"
Winston studied Paul carefully. "Did someone tell anda all that, James? To get a job and think about your future?"
Paul avoided his eye. He wondered if Winston had guessed what he and his dad had fought about the night Paul left, and, from there, the reason he'd run away. Winston was very smart. Paul didn't know why he didn't want to trust his friends with any details about his running away, except that they were all very exposed and he wanted to keep his identity secret for as long as he could.
Geo came to Paul's rescue. "I've been told I should be an electrician. anda want to just ignore all that."
"Excuse us," came a voice from behind the boys, young and female, with an American accent. "Are anda James, Winston, Ringo, and Geo?"
The four lads turned around to see two teenage girls, maybe fifteen atau sixteen years old, both with neatly curled dark hair. One was in a berwarna merah muda, merah muda poodle rok and the other in a dress with red polka dots. Both had schoolbags on, reminding the four bandmates once again of their lucky position. "Yeah, that's us."
The girl in the poodle rok clapped her hands in enthusiastic satisfaction. "I knew it! I told anda it was them," she added to her companion, who gave her a small smile before grinning hugely at the boys. "We've heard so much about your shows! We caught one last week and we've been looking for another ever since."
"We're thinking of moving up to bigger venues," Winston told them. "Follow us long enough and we'll have tour schedules announced!"
The girls both squealed in delight. "I think you'd look wonderful up on a big stage," the girl in the polka dots sighed. "Can we please have your autographs?"
Paul was overjoyed. He had been offering autographs at the end of every set, but usually was unable to stick around long enough to give any. And now here were some fan asking for his autograph before he had even offered!
"Yes!" he berkata quickly, just in case any of his mates had been about to say no for some reason, and began hastily searching his pockets. "Have anda got a bit of paper... oh, never mind, we've got these napkins if anda don't... have any of anda lot got a pen? Don't go away...."
Winston was grinning a teasing grin at him once again, but Paul didn't mind - at least he didn't have to keep his liking for giving autographs a secret. The girls did have a bit of paper, as it happened, and Ringo had a pen in his pocket. He signed first, being careful to sign only his first name, which he finished off with a fancy, star-shaped underscoring. He handed the paper to Paul selanjutnya even though Geo was sitting in between them, since Paul had been so enthusiastic about it.
Paul took the pen and paper in a happy haze. He wrote out a nice message for their first real fans, and then, out of habit, he began to sign P-A... and then caught himself with a start. What was he doing? He couldn't go around advertising his real name! Not the one he used, anyway! The one that his father would tell the police to cari for....
What to do? He could hardly ask to use a new piece of paper. Paul hastily scratched out the letters PA, wishing he'd been using a pencil. Then he signed "James" and handed the pen and paper to Geo, saying, "Don't mind the scribbled bit, ladies, I... er... forgot me name for a minute." He blushed, wishing he hadn't berkata anything at all when a good excuse was so hard to come up with.
Winston grinned cheekily as Geo handed the pen and paper over to him. "We do that a lot, forgetting our own names. They're not our real ones, but that's a secret," he added with a wink.
"Oh," breathed the girls, looking very intrigued and a lot less confused. Paul gave Winston a grateful look. He was glad that, if Winston had to tease him about his alias when it was just the four of them, he would make things easier for him in front of other people.
The girls, in any case, seemed thrilled to get the lads' autographs. "Do anda have a band name yet?" asked the polka-dots girl curiously.
Four heads shook. "Not yet."
"Well, hurry up and get one!" encouraged the poodle-skirt girl. "We'd all cinta to be able to call anda something!"
"We'd better go now," berkata the polka-dot girl reluctantly. "We're late for school as it is."
"We have to tell all our friends we've seen you," the poodle-skirt girl agreed. "They'll be so jealous...."
The girls left the shop. "They're right, anda know," singsonged Geo. "We should come up with a name for ourselves."
"The gitar Drawings?" suggested Paul, as the foursome paid for their breakfasts and left the convenience store.
"The Summer Jobs," Winston added playfully, also on the theme of their conversation in the shop.
Paul blushed and hastily tried to think of a name that didn't have anything to do with that. "How about stroberi Fields and Penny Lane?"
The boys had taken to playing those two songs back-to-back at most shows. Penny Lane had been received very well and once atau twice, someone in the audience had even called out and requested it.
"We can't call ourselves that," frowned Geo. "Those are Winston and James's songs. What about Ringo and me?"
Winston accepted this without question. "He's right. The band name's got to be equal for all four of us."
"I still like putting 'beat' into our name somewhere," Ringo put in.
"Wouldn't that have lebih to do with anda than the rest of us?" Paul pointed out. "You give us all our beats; you're the drummer."
"We all play music," Ringo argued. "'Beat' isn't only about the drums."
"I've had another idea," Winston said. "Naming ourselves after an insect like Buddy holly and the Crickets."
"You mean like calling ourselves the Scorpions?"
"Or the Mosquitoes!"
"The Houseflies? The Hornets?"
"The Ants? No, it's not catchy enough...."
"What about the Ladybirds?"
"No, that sounds like a girl group."
"I'm not sure them other insects would go over so well, though."
"Especially with our audience," Paul added thoughtfully - the girls who had come up to them today didn't look at all like the type who would like insects. "Maybe this isn't a good idea."
"Fine." Winston looked disappointed.
"Where are we playing today, Winston?" asked Ringo, maybe to take Winston's mind off his rejected idea.
"It's like I told them girls," Winston replied, cheering up as the subject turned to something he got to decide as bandleader. "We're taking things to the selanjutnya level. We've already got ourselves an audience. Now we need to put ourselves in front of musik industry types. We're going to a musik store."
In a short while, the little band found themselves inside a very large musik store, with guitars and basses of every make and model all over the walls, as well as two atau three drum sets of varying sizes on the floor. There were bins of accessories for the guitars like capos and gitar picks and extra strings and little bottles of polish, and racks at the front of populer records, as well as record players for sale. It was enough to make a musician forget what he came here for, and the boys spent nearly an jam playing with all this, Ringo reverently examining a simple five-piece Ludwig drum kit while the others wandered round the walls, taking down the instruments and trying them. Paul surprised himself oleh paying far lebih attention to the basses than to the other guitars. There were no left-handed basses, so Paul held the basses upside-down and tried to figure out where the notes would go. He might have started out as a guitarist, but since joining this band he had become a genuine bas, bass player.
The expensive instruments here sounded heavenly after a bulan of secondhand store ones. The four lads welcomed the opportunity to play their songs on new, top-quality instruments. Ringo sat at the Ludwig drum set, with which he seemed to have fallen in love, and his bandmates joined him, Paul with a Hofner bass, George with a Gretsch guitar, and John with a Rickenbacker.
The band went right away into their biggest hits, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" and then into some covers inspired oleh some of the records they'd seen on display, including a couple of Buddy holly and the Crickets numbers because Winston had mentioned them earlier.
The customers in the toko were drifting towards the unusual event of four boys putting on a tampil in a musik store, but, perhaps because school had just started, there didn't seem to be as many enthusiastic teenagers in here, just severe-looking adults who didn't approve of this noisy disturbance. The people who came to watch them did so with arms folded, disapproval etched all over their faces. The four lads were beginning to feel decidedly unwelcome here, but Winston had berkata this was an important step for them, putting themselves in front of this sort of person, so they played on.
As soon as they finished their sixth number, a man who seemed to be the store manager came forward, looking angry. "Now look here, boys - this is a musik store and I expect my instruments to be played, but if anda want to put on a concert, anda do it in your own homes, understand? And you'd better not have gotten those instruments out of tune. Are anda planning to buy them?"
A hesitant pause, mostly because Ringo really, really didn't want to say "no" to that pertanyaan - but he knew they couldn't afford brand-new instruments.
Their hesitation was enough for the manager. "No, huh? And why aren't anda boys in school, anyway? Say - aren't anda that band in the newspapers, the one that keeps coming into different stores and making a scene?"
The four lads nodded. "Do anda want our autographs?" asked Paul charmingly, lowering his eyelids.
"I most certainly do not! You're a disturbance of the peace, that's what anda are, and you're not even content to disturb the peace in your own country; anda have to come here and disturb ours!"
"Isn't this where anda throw us out?" Geo reminded him politely, as though the manager had forgotten the script.
Winston wasn't interested in this. "And anda call yourself a musik store manager? anda wouldn't know good musik if it came and stepped all over your suit, manager."
The manager ignored Winston - atau pretended to - and addressed Geo. "I've half a mind not to throw anda out at all! You're a menace to our society, and I'd like to keep anda in here while I call the police, I would!"
A new voice spoke up from behind the boys. "Please don't do that."
The voice was a grown-up's, but young, and unusually pleasant compared to how the other adults around town had been speaking to them. What really interested the Liverpool lads, though, was that the speaker was obviously from Liverpool too - although, from the sounds of it, with a much higher-class upbringing. In any case, he was sticking up for them, and the four boys turned around to see who had spoken.
"I've told you, there's been no sign of either of them," the officer on duty said. "I'm not sure how much longer we'll be able to handle this case anyway. No one here's seen the young McCartney boy in all this time, so we're assuming he's left Liverpool. No, it's true -" as Mr McCartney opened his mouth to argue - "we've checked the area pretty thoroughly and put up posters all over the place. And as I understand it, anda and Mrs Harrison here have checked rather thoroughly yourselves."
"What if something's happened to Paul?" Mr McCartney demanded. "You should be looking harder!"
"Your son is a runaway, Mr McCartney. It's not much of a stretch to assume he's gotten as far away from halaman awal as he's been able to in this time - which could easily take him out of Liverpool. As for you, Mr and Mrs Harrison -" the policeman turned to them, and they perked up hopefully - "I'm sorry. We put in a call to the Chief of Police in New York. The only reports over there concerning British teenagers is this news of a young, unruly British band travelling about the place. Apparently, they pop into some store atau other unauthorized place, play a song atau two, and leave."
"But that could be our George!" cried Mrs Harrison. "He plays guitar, didn't we tell you?"
The policeman shook his head. "Apparently, this band shouts out their names after every set. The band members call themselves Ringo, Winston, Geo, and James, so your George isn't one of them. The New York chief says he's doing his part to bring in these unruly lads, but as they're not doing any real harm they're rather a low priority. We'll call anda as soon as we have other news."
Mr McCartney looked deep in thought and vaguely disturbed as the threesome left the station.
"James..." he kept repeating to himself. "One of the boys in that band is calling himself James?"
"Do anda know, I just remembered," Paul berkata with a smile, as he and his mates sat at a small corner store having breakfast, "I'd've had to start school today if I hadn't come here."
Geo broke into a mischievous smile. "He's right, anda know. I'd be back to drawing guitars all over me work right now."
"I left," Ringo admitted with a modest blush. "As I was going to get work here, anda know. I didn't spend much time in school anyway. I was always ill from something atau other. How about you, Winston?"
Winston smiled. "I'd probably have gotten in trouble already."
"This is better," Geo said, leaning back in his kursi with a relaxed air. "Instead of drawing guitars all day, I get to actually play them."
"All of this is better," Paul agreed fervently. "I wouldn't have done nearly so well if I'd gotten a summer job like - um - like some people do! If I've got to think about me future, I'm better off doin' this!"
Winston studied Paul carefully. "Did someone tell anda all that, James? To get a job and think about your future?"
Paul avoided his eye. He wondered if Winston had guessed what he and his dad had fought about the night Paul left, and, from there, the reason he'd run away. Winston was very smart. Paul didn't know why he didn't want to trust his friends with any details about his running away, except that they were all very exposed and he wanted to keep his identity secret for as long as he could.
Geo came to Paul's rescue. "I've been told I should be an electrician. anda want to just ignore all that."
"Excuse us," came a voice from behind the boys, young and female, with an American accent. "Are anda James, Winston, Ringo, and Geo?"
The four lads turned around to see two teenage girls, maybe fifteen atau sixteen years old, both with neatly curled dark hair. One was in a berwarna merah muda, merah muda poodle rok and the other in a dress with red polka dots. Both had schoolbags on, reminding the four bandmates once again of their lucky position. "Yeah, that's us."
The girl in the poodle rok clapped her hands in enthusiastic satisfaction. "I knew it! I told anda it was them," she added to her companion, who gave her a small smile before grinning hugely at the boys. "We've heard so much about your shows! We caught one last week and we've been looking for another ever since."
"We're thinking of moving up to bigger venues," Winston told them. "Follow us long enough and we'll have tour schedules announced!"
The girls both squealed in delight. "I think you'd look wonderful up on a big stage," the girl in the polka dots sighed. "Can we please have your autographs?"
Paul was overjoyed. He had been offering autographs at the end of every set, but usually was unable to stick around long enough to give any. And now here were some fan asking for his autograph before he had even offered!
"Yes!" he berkata quickly, just in case any of his mates had been about to say no for some reason, and began hastily searching his pockets. "Have anda got a bit of paper... oh, never mind, we've got these napkins if anda don't... have any of anda lot got a pen? Don't go away...."
Winston was grinning a teasing grin at him once again, but Paul didn't mind - at least he didn't have to keep his liking for giving autographs a secret. The girls did have a bit of paper, as it happened, and Ringo had a pen in his pocket. He signed first, being careful to sign only his first name, which he finished off with a fancy, star-shaped underscoring. He handed the paper to Paul selanjutnya even though Geo was sitting in between them, since Paul had been so enthusiastic about it.
Paul took the pen and paper in a happy haze. He wrote out a nice message for their first real fans, and then, out of habit, he began to sign P-A... and then caught himself with a start. What was he doing? He couldn't go around advertising his real name! Not the one he used, anyway! The one that his father would tell the police to cari for....
What to do? He could hardly ask to use a new piece of paper. Paul hastily scratched out the letters PA, wishing he'd been using a pencil. Then he signed "James" and handed the pen and paper to Geo, saying, "Don't mind the scribbled bit, ladies, I... er... forgot me name for a minute." He blushed, wishing he hadn't berkata anything at all when a good excuse was so hard to come up with.
Winston grinned cheekily as Geo handed the pen and paper over to him. "We do that a lot, forgetting our own names. They're not our real ones, but that's a secret," he added with a wink.
"Oh," breathed the girls, looking very intrigued and a lot less confused. Paul gave Winston a grateful look. He was glad that, if Winston had to tease him about his alias when it was just the four of them, he would make things easier for him in front of other people.
The girls, in any case, seemed thrilled to get the lads' autographs. "Do anda have a band name yet?" asked the polka-dots girl curiously.
Four heads shook. "Not yet."
"Well, hurry up and get one!" encouraged the poodle-skirt girl. "We'd all cinta to be able to call anda something!"
"We'd better go now," berkata the polka-dot girl reluctantly. "We're late for school as it is."
"We have to tell all our friends we've seen you," the poodle-skirt girl agreed. "They'll be so jealous...."
The girls left the shop. "They're right, anda know," singsonged Geo. "We should come up with a name for ourselves."
"The gitar Drawings?" suggested Paul, as the foursome paid for their breakfasts and left the convenience store.
"The Summer Jobs," Winston added playfully, also on the theme of their conversation in the shop.
Paul blushed and hastily tried to think of a name that didn't have anything to do with that. "How about stroberi Fields and Penny Lane?"
The boys had taken to playing those two songs back-to-back at most shows. Penny Lane had been received very well and once atau twice, someone in the audience had even called out and requested it.
"We can't call ourselves that," frowned Geo. "Those are Winston and James's songs. What about Ringo and me?"
Winston accepted this without question. "He's right. The band name's got to be equal for all four of us."
"I still like putting 'beat' into our name somewhere," Ringo put in.
"Wouldn't that have lebih to do with anda than the rest of us?" Paul pointed out. "You give us all our beats; you're the drummer."
"We all play music," Ringo argued. "'Beat' isn't only about the drums."
"I've had another idea," Winston said. "Naming ourselves after an insect like Buddy holly and the Crickets."
"You mean like calling ourselves the Scorpions?"
"Or the Mosquitoes!"
"The Houseflies? The Hornets?"
"The Ants? No, it's not catchy enough...."
"What about the Ladybirds?"
"No, that sounds like a girl group."
"I'm not sure them other insects would go over so well, though."
"Especially with our audience," Paul added thoughtfully - the girls who had come up to them today didn't look at all like the type who would like insects. "Maybe this isn't a good idea."
"Fine." Winston looked disappointed.
"Where are we playing today, Winston?" asked Ringo, maybe to take Winston's mind off his rejected idea.
"It's like I told them girls," Winston replied, cheering up as the subject turned to something he got to decide as bandleader. "We're taking things to the selanjutnya level. We've already got ourselves an audience. Now we need to put ourselves in front of musik industry types. We're going to a musik store."
In a short while, the little band found themselves inside a very large musik store, with guitars and basses of every make and model all over the walls, as well as two atau three drum sets of varying sizes on the floor. There were bins of accessories for the guitars like capos and gitar picks and extra strings and little bottles of polish, and racks at the front of populer records, as well as record players for sale. It was enough to make a musician forget what he came here for, and the boys spent nearly an jam playing with all this, Ringo reverently examining a simple five-piece Ludwig drum kit while the others wandered round the walls, taking down the instruments and trying them. Paul surprised himself oleh paying far lebih attention to the basses than to the other guitars. There were no left-handed basses, so Paul held the basses upside-down and tried to figure out where the notes would go. He might have started out as a guitarist, but since joining this band he had become a genuine bas, bass player.
The expensive instruments here sounded heavenly after a bulan of secondhand store ones. The four lads welcomed the opportunity to play their songs on new, top-quality instruments. Ringo sat at the Ludwig drum set, with which he seemed to have fallen in love, and his bandmates joined him, Paul with a Hofner bass, George with a Gretsch guitar, and John with a Rickenbacker.
The band went right away into their biggest hits, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" and then into some covers inspired oleh some of the records they'd seen on display, including a couple of Buddy holly and the Crickets numbers because Winston had mentioned them earlier.
The customers in the toko were drifting towards the unusual event of four boys putting on a tampil in a musik store, but, perhaps because school had just started, there didn't seem to be as many enthusiastic teenagers in here, just severe-looking adults who didn't approve of this noisy disturbance. The people who came to watch them did so with arms folded, disapproval etched all over their faces. The four lads were beginning to feel decidedly unwelcome here, but Winston had berkata this was an important step for them, putting themselves in front of this sort of person, so they played on.
As soon as they finished their sixth number, a man who seemed to be the store manager came forward, looking angry. "Now look here, boys - this is a musik store and I expect my instruments to be played, but if anda want to put on a concert, anda do it in your own homes, understand? And you'd better not have gotten those instruments out of tune. Are anda planning to buy them?"
A hesitant pause, mostly because Ringo really, really didn't want to say "no" to that pertanyaan - but he knew they couldn't afford brand-new instruments.
Their hesitation was enough for the manager. "No, huh? And why aren't anda boys in school, anyway? Say - aren't anda that band in the newspapers, the one that keeps coming into different stores and making a scene?"
The four lads nodded. "Do anda want our autographs?" asked Paul charmingly, lowering his eyelids.
"I most certainly do not! You're a disturbance of the peace, that's what anda are, and you're not even content to disturb the peace in your own country; anda have to come here and disturb ours!"
"Isn't this where anda throw us out?" Geo reminded him politely, as though the manager had forgotten the script.
Winston wasn't interested in this. "And anda call yourself a musik store manager? anda wouldn't know good musik if it came and stepped all over your suit, manager."
The manager ignored Winston - atau pretended to - and addressed Geo. "I've half a mind not to throw anda out at all! You're a menace to our society, and I'd like to keep anda in here while I call the police, I would!"
A new voice spoke up from behind the boys. "Please don't do that."
The voice was a grown-up's, but young, and unusually pleasant compared to how the other adults around town had been speaking to them. What really interested the Liverpool lads, though, was that the speaker was obviously from Liverpool too - although, from the sounds of it, with a much higher-class upbringing. In any case, he was sticking up for them, and the four boys turned around to see who had spoken.