Minneapolis Tribune intern got into the Beatles' hotel room by dressing up as a waitress

A Minneapolis Tribune summer intern shared John Lennon’s potato chips in a Minneapolis hotel in August 1965 -- 50 years ago -- after posing as a hotel waitress, and got a front-page story out of it.

Holly (previously Susan) Stocking, now a retired professor of journalism at Indiana University, was a reporting intern at the Minneapolis Tribune in the summer of 1965 when the Beatles came to visit. Their one and only concert in Minnesota was on August 21, 1965 – 50 years ago. Stocking dressed up as a waitress at the hotel where the band was staying, in hopes of getting access to the band. Here is the story of her encounter – and how John Lennon took pity on a fledgling reporter, enabling her to get a page-one story, transcribed word-for-word below.

Monday, August 23, 1965

By Susan Stocking, Minneapolis Tribune Staff Writer

I didn’t faint, I didn’t scream. I didn’t even squeal. I ate potato chips. In a room with Beatles Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon – and all I did was munch potato chips! And nervously slop coffee in their saucers. “Half up,” said Lennon, sprawling on the blue spread of a bed in Room 528 of the Leamington Motor Inn. “I drink it white.”

It must have been 9 p.m. Saturday while the Beatles were still bugging the crowd at Metropolitan Stadium when I slipped into a waitress uniform and began the long wait in the tiny kitchen of the motor in.

Source: Star Tribune

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