I Saw Them Standing There: Adventures of an Original Fan During Beatlemania and Beyond

The breathless debut memoir from TV executive Gendler recounts how she caught the Beatles bug in 1963 and, 60 years later, remains obsessed. At 13, family friends brought Gendler a record album from England with “the cutest four guys I’ve ever seen!” on the cover. Her seventh-grade peers were not interested, but Gendler wrote to the band’s London-based fan club; six months later, she met with Beatles manager Brian Epstein in Manhattan and came away with a ticket to the group’s inaugural performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. When 1964’s Meet the Beatles topped the charts, she felt vindicated: “Kids... who had laughed at me... wanted to be my Beatles buddy.” Gendler spent years tracking the band’s every move: she corresponded with Harrison’s mother, who sent an old sock, and in 1965 attended a Beatles press conference where she dumped an ashtray, with the fab four’s cigarette butts, and a used water glass into her purse (Lennon, asking why her purse dripped dirt, mocked her as “rubbish girl”). Though the obsessive rehashing of trivia may entertain Beatles diehards, there’s frustratingly little self-reflection on the deeper meaning of Gendler’s fandom, especially given the humiliation she was sometimes subject to around the band. Still, this chatty and effusive account has its moments. (Feb.)