How Kabir Bedi interviewed The Beatles in 1966 (and asked John Lennon if he took drugs)

In 1966, while returning from a tour in Manila to London, The Beatles made a three-day layover in Delhi. Kabir Bedi, a 20-year-old-freelance reporter with All India Radio at the time, managed to get an exclusive interview with the Fab Four. In his memoir Stories I Must Tell (Westland Books), Bedi wrote that he spoke to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr for 30 minutes by bluffing to their manager, Brian Epstein, that the government had asked for the interview.

When Bedi later learnt that AIR had taped other programmes over the interview, he was outraged and left the national broadcaster. He headed to Mumbai, where he worked in advertising companies and later became a model and an actor. Here are edited excerpts of Bedi’s encounter with the Beatles.

By 1966, the year I interviewed them, The Beatles had become one of the most successful groups in the history of pop music. “Beatlemania” was raging around the world. And here I was, a crazy fan just out of college, interviewing them in their hotel room, the only Indian reporter to get through to them.

Source: Kabir Bedi/scroll.in

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