There have been Beatles books written by music journalists, scholars and historians. By employees, associates and family members. By ex-wives, ex-lovers and the Fab Four themselves.

But few have been written from the perspective of just a regular fan. Apple Scruff Carol Bedford’s Waiting for the Beatles and Ron Schaumberg’s Growing Up with the Beatles are the only ones that come to mind.

New Jerseyite Debbie Gendler could be called an OG Beatles fan. After all, she became obsessed with the group in April 1963—nearly a year before the band’s introduction to U.S. audiences on The Ed Sullivan Show—when family friends who had been to England brought the 13-year-old back a copy of the Please Please Me LP.

Smitten, she tried to get friends interested, and had the moxie and drive (and Gendler had a lot of moxie and drive) to seek out band manager Brian Epstein, offer to run one of the band’s first U.S. official fan clubs, and befriend associates.

And while an estimated 73 million Americans watched the Beatles on that Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, Gender was one of the few hundred lucky fans to be in the actual studio audience. She would see the group several more times in New York venues, often with VIP status. And she bought Beatles merchandise. Lots of merchandise.
Debbie Gendler has written her memories of those screaming, halcyon days in the memoir I Saw Them Standing There: Adventures of an Original Fan During Beatlemania and Beyond (344 pp., $32.95, Backbeat Books).

Not all of her associations were glamorous. Gensler ran the Fan Club with almost no financial assistance from Brian Epstein and the band’s business office.

She heeded the call to gather a group of fans to sleep on the pre-cleaned up streets of Times Square overnight. Just in order to stage a PR photo opp of them lining up at a movie box office to buy tickets for A Hard Day’s Night.

That the teen and her friends would take on a seemingly dangerous task for nothing speaks volumes about their Beatle devotion. Throughout, Gendler also must have the most understanding and accommodating parents ever in terms of both transporting her to Beatle stuff and letting her alone in New York City (and England!) for some of it.

Only once did Gendler stand in the presence of all four Beatles themselves and, ironically, it definitely did not go well.

Gendler had been invited to attend a press conference at New York’s Warwick Hotel to promote the band’s 1965 US tour. Nervously, she took her seat in the ballroom, next to the overbearing New York DJ “Cousin Brucie” Morrow jockeyed for position and question time, sometimes physically.

Promised a private audience with the group due to her Fan Club position, Gendler found herself alone in the ballroom after the conference was over. Slinking up to the table the band had just occupied, she shoved some souvenirs into her purse: an ashtray with Beatle butts, Ringo’s cigarette, a napkin that George had used, and a drinking glass that had touched the lips of Paul McCartney which still had water in it.

Ushered into a hotel room, the Beatles filed in one by one and seemed a bit unenthused. When water mixed with ashes began pouring out of Gendler’s purse, John Lennon—who could famously turn witheringly cruel and insulting at the drop of a hat—asked the terrified Gendler “Do you like rubbish?” then called her “Rubbish Girl” to her dismay.

She stayed to have a sandwich with the group when food was delivered, but the moment she had prayed for and played over and over in her head was ruined.

Gendler and her mother later made a Beatle-destination trip to London, where she managed to briefly visit an ailing Brian Epstein at his home, meet producer George Martin at the Abbey Road studios, and interact with Paul and Ringo, who dropped by.

Paul suggested the go to the Bag O’Nails club that night, and the teen Gendler did, unaccompanied! A surprised Paul saw here there. She next went to Liverpool for cordial visits with George’s parents and Paul’s father and stepmother!
Gender’s obsessive Beatles days would come to an end with the breakup of the group and her own college and career movements. She would go on to have a successful career in TV production, developing some 9,000 episodes of programs for 36 different networks, and helped with the launches of HGTV and the National Geographic Channel. Some of her programs involved Beatles and Beatles-related folks, including Linda McCartney and Yoko Ono.

She would occasionally run into various Beatles, wives and associates over the years, and had an especially important hand in promoting Paul’s brother Mike McCartney’s photography exhibits and books, their families visiting each other several times between continents. Eventually, she found herself a sought-after interview guest.

I Saw Them Standing There is written with Gendler’s heady enthusiasm, but also an eye that’s both realistic and subjective into the less-happy sides of fandom and celebrity expectation. And even if the music business and music makers can disappoint, the music never will.