Elmhurst man admits lying about opening for Beatles

Saturday, August 24, 2013

This is the story of aging rock musician Gary Goldberg, The Beatles and a lie that, in the end, came to haunt him. Goldberg took the podium last week at the Elmhurst Historical Museum to tell a few dozen spectators about his days in the Cave Dwellers — a 1960s Chicago garage-rock band that never made it big but, 48 years later, found a new audience among collectors of reissued and hard-to-find vinyl records.

The story was nearly true, save for the most attention-grabbing detail: that on Aug. 20, 1965, the Cave Dwellers opened for The Beatles at Comiskey Park, where legendary guitarist George Harrison played Goldberg's Hagstrom six-string and gave away his own guitar strap as thanks. What Goldberg, now 68, wasn't prepared for was being publicly confronted at the museum by former bandmates, prompting a Daily Herald investigation that culminated five days later with a striking confession. "We really didn't play (with The Beatles) at all," Goldberg admitted. "It (the story) just got carried away, and I couldn't stop it."