Saturday, September 7, 1974: I know have told this story before, but some stories are worth repeating. I was just a 26 year old manager at a Sam Goody Music store in NYC and came up with this crazy idea 10 months earlier to gather Beatles fans at a hotel to celebrate a common love for The Beatles on the 10th anniversary of their arrival in America. After months of spending every spare minute trying to get it organized, the day had finally arrived! And I was a nervous wreck. My mind was racing over capacity. What did I forget? How was it going to turn out? Could we fit everyone in the old Commodore Hotel on 42nd St, NYC? About an hour before the doors opened, Tony King, the VP of Apple in the US come up to my suite and brought me the signed instruments for the Charity Raffle, along with other items to auction. All of this is documented in the 10/24/74 cover story of Rolling Stone Magazine!! He then proceeded to give me 7 signed copies of John Lennon’s books, 6 to auction off for charity and one he personalized for me “To Mark, With Love, John Lennon, September Beatlefest, 1974, with sketches on the page. It is my most cherished item in my collection. Tony then told me that John wanted to come down to pick the winner of his guitar. I was so overwhelmed that somehow a calm come over me at that moment and I began to get ready to go downstairs. When I got to the ballroom, about 10 minutes after the opening, I looked out from the balcony and the room was completely full of Beatles fans! It is a moment I will never forget. These fans were all here because of me and my idea, and of course, The Beatles. Only a couple of people were told of John’s surprise and we had figured out his walk through the kitchen up to the balcony where we had set up a mike just for this purpose. Nobody could know or pandemonium would happen. Our MCs were Murry the K and Jim Kerr. Jim kept teasing the audience with rumors that he heard about John being in the building on that first day. We wouldn’t dare tell our MCs about what was to happen on the Sunday night! Unfortunately, John headed up to his farm in upstate NY instead of joining us, but the fans knew that this entire event would not have happened if John didn’t personally give me the go ahead. I did get to personally thank John and tell him about the convention a short while afterwards. There is no way I could have foreseen that 38 years and 117 National FESTS later, we would still be going strong, presenting a vast majority of friends and family of The Beatles and their amazing story.

Shown above is the actual Cover of Rolling Stone.