Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion (19 page)

JOHN LENNON:
Oh, I had plans, all right. I thought about yanking off my shoe-covered foot and hurling it up into the second balcony—not at the Queen, mind you, but in her general direction. I also considered hypnotizing the rich people in the crowd and commanding them to flip HRH the bird, just for a laugh, but the problem with that was I’d never put more than one person at a time under my spell, so I wasn’t sure I could make a mass hypnosis come together, and if it didn’t work, I’d be standing onstage with my plonker in my hand—figuratively, of course—and we couldn’t have that, now, could we? So I decided to cut them with my wit rather than my teeth.

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
Erm, I suppose it was kind of amusing.

GEORGE HARRISON:
Frankly, John’s come up with better material.

RINGO STARR:
Let’s just say he wasn’t exactly Peter Cook
or
Dudley Moore.

BRIAN EPSTEIN:
At that point, I, like most mortals, didn’t understand zombie humor.

JOHN LENNON:
Right before we played our closing number, I gave them what I thought was my scariest look, then said, “Those of you in the cheaper seats, tear your neighbor limb from limb. And those of you in the more expensive seats …
do the same fookin’ thing.
”

In retrospect, I dunno why everybody made such a huge to-do about it. Only one person actually followed my instructions, and from what I was told, his victim had it coming anyhow.

GEORGE HARRISON:
Some may point to the Royal Variety Performance as when the Mania started, but I think it got out of hand when we first went to America, specifically when we landed at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York at the beginning of ’64. That was a bad time for me, our first American appearance. It was a maniacal blur. Mania here, Mania there, Mania, Mania, and more Mania. I dunno, this whole line of questioning makes me hungry. Probably best for your health and your sanity if you drop this and ask Paul what he thinks.

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
When did the Mania begin? New York, y’know. At least, that’s what I think. Ask Ringo.

RINGO STARR:
New York. It was beautiful, man. At least, that’s what I think. Ask John.

JOHN LENNON:
Fookin’ New York, of course. It’s one of the two centers of the Earth. Hell’s the other. Hmm, speaking of hell, maybe you should ask the Devil when the Mania started. That cunt’ll know better than anybody.

A
nd then there was my extensive, expensive Devil hunt. If you read my blog, you know I met with a prophet, a soul rebel, a Rastaman, an herbsman, a wild man, a natural mystic man, a lady’s man, an island man, a family man, Rita’s man, a soccer man, a showman, a shaman, a human, and a Jamaican, and then, $25,162 later, in April 2007, I found myself sitting in Mephistopheles’s tasteful, well-air-conditioned office down in the Sixth Ring, chatting amiably about where Beatlemania really began.

THE DEVIL:
Oh, yes, it was New York, my pretty little journalist.
Bwah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!
Now piss off, you twat.

U
nfortunately, after spending $25,162 to find the guy, the Devil gave me only twelve seconds of his time. And I’m the twat?

GEORGE HARRISON:
I hated New York. That city scared my bollocks off.

RINGO STARR:
George’s line has always been “That city scared my bollocks off,” but what most people don’t know is he means that literally. At that particular moment—the moment things got tetchy at the JFK terminal, and the undead contingency of our traveling
circus got a little freaked out—I was glad not to be a zombie. But on the other hand, if I
had
been a zombie, I would’ve freaked out, too, which means I wouldn’t have had to … had to … ehh … oh, bloody hell, I can’t even bring myself to discuss it.

LYMAN COSGROVE:
A little-known fact about the Liverpudlian undead: unlike other zombies, their adrenal glands are fully active, and when overstimulated, they produce a shocking amount of adrenaline. And when a Liverpool Processer’s system is flooded with adrenaline, the genitalia is the most affected area of the body.

I could go on endlessly about my scientific theory of the reaction, but, to make a long story short, when a Liverpool zombie gets overly excited, his franks and beans fall off.

JOHN LENNON:
So there we are, going into the terminal, on the way to the press conference. Everywhere we turn, there’re girls, girls, girls, and all these screamin’ blokes are closing in on us, and we’d already decided we couldn’t get physical with them because killing dozens of young men in front of telly cameras wouldn’t have been a good way to introduce ourselves to America, so we were a bit at their mercy. For the first time in my life, I felt completely helpless. Right when we got inside, I felt an odd sensation in the pit of my stomach, and the next thing I know, my bollocks are rolling down the hallway.

GEORGE HARRISON:
As I watched my nuts bounce into John’s, I said to Paul, “Tell you what, mate, I didn’t sign up for this.”

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
So, erm, there’re six Beatle bollocks rolling all over the floor, y’know, and John, George, and I are quietly freaking out. I mean, there were reporters stomping everywhere, and I
was picturing somebody coming down hard with his loafer on my left testicle. Thing is, we couldn’t bend over to pick up our marbles, because our plonkers would’ve fallen right down our trouser legs and onto the ground, and that would’ve attracted some real attention.

So how did we solve this little problem without causing a ruckus? All I can say is, we were lucky to have a Ninja in the band.

BRIAN EPSTEIN:
Ringo didn’t want to pick up John’s, Paul’s, and George’s testes, and I can’t blame him. God knows I wouldn’t have done it. It’s no secret that I’m gay, but that didn’t mean I had any urge to handle half a dozen zombie kerbangers. I told him, “Listen, Rings, just do your virtual invisibility. Nobody’ll be the wiser.”

He said, “Eppy, I don’t care if anybody sees me doing it. I just don’t want to touch the bloody things. Handling undead marbles can’t be sanitary, d’you know what I mean?” He pointed at the throng and said, “Also, it doesn’t look like it’ll be possible for me to slip away and wash my hands after I give the boys their balls back, now, does it?”

I said, “Don’t you remember, Ringo?: All for zombies, and zombies for all!”

He said, “I’m not a zombie.”

I realized I was going to have to get forceful with him. I said, “Yes, but you’re a
Beatle.
So get invisible, get on your knees, and collect Lennon’s, McCartney’s, and Harrison’s testicles.”

He sighed and disappeared. He was always a good, loyal lad, Ringo was.

JOHN LENNON:
I’m not at all convinced the nuts Ringo gave me were both mine. I mean, it’s not like I’d recognize them—I’d never spent much time checking out my bollocks, and I certainly never inscribed
them with my initials, because losing your softies is not an event you prepare for.

GEORGE HARRISON:
Who cares if I’ve got one or both of John’s or Paul’s nuts? It’s not like I’m having kids anyhow. The fact of the matter is, having a bit of Lennon and/or McCartney in my sack probably helped make me a better songwriter.

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
Listen, I’ve got one plonker and two bollocks, and it all works fine, so I’m not gonna worry about it.

J
ulie Proust’s face is riddled with S-shaped scars. The bruises on her arms are a veritable rainbow: along with the standard black and purple, we’re talking red, orange, yellow, green, and sky blue. Her nose has been broken and reset so many times that it’s less triangular than octagonal.

But man, what a rack.

A former Miss New York, Julie was killed, then reanimated in 1955 by the pageant’s third runner-up; her reign as pageant queen lasted a grand total of three hours.

A rabid music fanatic, Julie has the temperament and vibe of a true American zombie girl: sassy, headstrong, opinionated, and, dare I say it, sexy. I don’t know whether she cast some sort of spell on me, but when I spoke with her in April 2008, I couldn’t stop staring at her astounding cleavage. Aside from the constant litany of “Hey, sailor boy, eyes up here,” our chat was enlightening and revealing, and she readily offered up the truth behind what happened during the band’s ride from JFK Airport to Manhattan, a ride that, up until now, was one of the greatest Beatles mysteries of our time: The Case of the Missing Limousine.

JULIE PROUST:
After plowing through two or three issues of
Mersey Beat,
I decided the Beatles were exploiting their zombieness for the sake of their own success. Now, I had no real moral problem with that—shit, I would’ve done the same thing to revive my pageant career if I could’ve figured out how—but there was one aspect that bothered me:

The girls.

According to that silly little paper, hundreds of little English teenyboppers screamed at Beatles shows until they were hoarse. Apparently these girls also ran after them in the street—which, when you think about it, was a farce; I mean, we’re talking three zombies and a Ninja, all of whom could run like the wind, and if they didn’t want these girls chasing them, they’d have sped the hell up. I also heard rumors of sexual enslavement, and yeah, those were never proven, but still.

It’s not like I was this staunch feminist or anything, but something about the whole deal made me want to give all these girls a big slap. “These guys are just zombie musicians, for cryin’ out loud,” I’d tell them. “They’re a good band, but jeez Louise, have some dignity.”

When I found out the Beatles were coming to the States, I decided to do something about it. I rounded up as many young female zombies as I could—a grand total of nineteen—and formed a little group: BEATLES (Brain Eaters and Tongue Lovers Ending Sexism). We didn’t really think the Beatles were sexist, but it was a pretty cute little acronym, right?

I knew that if my little group of American zombie girls pooled our powers, we’d be able to cause some serious damage.
Serious.

JOHN LENNON:
So we’re in the limo on the way to the hotel, going slowly because the streets were clogged with fans, when all of a
sudden we screech to a halt. I look out the window and see a bunch of gorgeous zombie girls trying to lift the car. Check that: they weren’t
trying
to lift it; they
were
lifting it. Then one of them opened the door, pulled Ringo and Eppy out, and threw them into the crowd.

PAUL M
C
CARTNEY:
I still dunno how they did it, y’know, but once they had us full in the air, time stopped and the living people froze, yet we undead zombies remained awake and mobile. That was fortunate for Brian and Ringo, who would’ve been torn to pieces had they hit the mob before being suspended in midair.

JULIE PROUST:
How did we stop the clock? Simple:
girl power
. It involves synching menstrual cycles and realigning the moon and … well, I’m not going to tell you any more, because I’m working on a book of my own.

GEORGE HARRISON:
The girls, those BEATLES, carried our limo through the unmoving bodies, and they were moving
quick.
We were at their lair in three minutes flat, and from what I gathered, we covered several kilometers getting there. My geography was a bit hazy at the time, but I knew we weren’t in Manhattan anymore.

JULIE PROUST:
Our lair was a shabby coach house in Yonkers—even back then, the rents in Manhattan were too damn high for us, and we weren’t exactly well funded.

We named it the Lair of Love and Death, and we filled it with water beds and medical supplies. We were shooting for sexy and scary, but we ended up with silly and clichéd. Still, it served its purpose.