"My Ticket to Ride" by Janice Mitchell

If you've followed my blog for a while, you'll know that I spent several teenaged years in the mid-1970s obsessed with the top boy band of the day, the (cough!) Bay City Rollers. Whenever I had a fight with my mother, I would lie awake at night, plotting how I would run away to Scotland (where the Rollers were from)(and then she'd be sorry...!).  I never did quite figure out how I was going to manage to get to Scotland all by myself on my $5 a week allowance (plus occasional money from babysitting)  ;)  (I'd never even been on a plane before, and it was a lot harder to research and arrange those sorts of things in pre-Internet times)  but there was nothing I wanted more than to go to there, meet my favourite Roller (Woody), marry him and live happily ever after. 

Janice Mitchell lived my dream -- a version of it, at least. In 1964, at the age of 16, she and her friend Martha (Marty) ran away together from Cleveland to London, with the goal of meeting the Beatles (they figured hanging around the clubs frequented by the band in Soho would do the trick) and getting jobs with Brian Epstein (he's a busy man, he must need help! and Janice could type!!).  They actually made it to England (after cashing in Marty's college fund)(!), found and rented an apartment, and spent 23 days there, sightseeing, visiting clubs and hanging out with local boys (including a hitchhiking trip to Liverpool), before they were apprehended by police and abruptly hauled back to the States. The girls didn't realize their disappearance had made international headlines. Not only did Janice and Marty suffer personal consequences, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and rock and roll generally, were banned from Cleveland for two years afterward, until 1966 (!). 

Not allowed to talk about what had happened, and encouraged to put the entire episode behind her, Janice didn't tell anyone about her amazing adventure for more than 50 years (!). She went on to become a journalist, a federal investigator (now retired), a private investigator and adjunct professor.  She's still a Beatles fan. :) 

Now, she's written a book about the experience. You've gotta love the title: "My Ticket to Ride: How I Ran Away to England to Meet the Beatles and Got Rock and Roll Banned in Cleveland (A True Story from 1964)."  :) 

I first heard about Janice and her book via Ann Moses, who was the editor of Tiger Beat magazine back in the 1960s/early 1970s. I read & enjoyed Ann's memoir "Meow" a few years ago (reviewed here) and have followed her on Facebook ever since then. 

"Author Janice Mitchell contacted me a few years ago and asked me for advice for a book she was working on," Ann wrote in a Facebook post last September. "After hearing her summary of her adventure, I told her the story was “golden” and to forge ahead."  

This all sounds rather light-hearted, and there's a charming naivete to the teenagers' plans and escapades -- echoes of a simpler, more innocent time -- but there's a dark/sad/serious undercurrent to Janice's story, too -- one that lifts the book above a simple fan-girl's memoir. Janice's parents were alcoholics, who left Janice with an aging great-aunt and uncle and disappeared when she was 8 years old. She didn't see them, nor her younger sister and brother, for another 20 years. Music, and the Beatles, gave colour and meaning to her somewhat dreary life. She truly believed she would not be missed and that her great-aunt would be better off without having her around to worry about. 

Janice remembers the police officers in England treated them with kindness -- those in their own country, not so much. They were taken from the plane in Cleveland straight to a juvenile detention centre, until their families were able to bail them out, and charged with juvenile delinquency, based on complaints of forgery, truancy, disobedience and running away. This treatment seems like a huge amount of overkill -- but, as one of the book blurbs says, it was "an era in America when young women exercising some control over their lives presented a serious threat to adult society."  Clearly, not everyone back then was a Beatles fan...! 

This was a fast read, and I enjoyed it hugely (I'll admit it was right up my alley). If you're a Beatles fan (as I am), or (like me) ever dreamed of running away to follow your favourite boy band, you will enjoy this book. :) 

5 stars. 

(Caroline Sullivan also lived a version of my dream in the 1970s,  WITH the Bay City Rollers. She and some friends (who called themselves the "Tacky Tartan Tarts")(!) followed the Rollers around the U.S. for four straight summers, from 1975 to 1979  (She wound up sleeping with one of them too -- unnamed in the book, but it's not hard to guess who it was.)  Now a music journalist in Britain, she wrote a memoir about her Rollermaniac days called "Bye Bye Baby: My Tragic Love Affair with the Bay City Rollers" in 1999.  My British penpal from those days -- one of the few penpals I'm still in touch with from that time -- sent me a copy before it became available here in North America. :)  I enjoyed that one too.  :)   )   

This was Book #19 read to date in 2022 (and Book #3 finished in April), bringing me to 42% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 6 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."