Miss O'Dell: A Beatlesque Life
She went to live in London on a whim at age 20 and wound up working for the Beatles’ Apple Corps. After rubbing elbows with rock and roll’s biggest stars, she worked for some them as tour manager in the 1970s.
She is Chris O’Dell, and she recounted the adventures of her youth in her 2009 book
Miss O’Dell – My Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and the Women They Loved.
O’Dell, who lives in her hometown of Tucson, Ariz., and worked as a licensed counselor and addiction specialist until she retired, parlayed an introduction to Apple’s press officer Derek Taylor into a dream career of various jobs and friendships with the aristocracy of acoustic rock. She was living in Los Angeles in early 1968 when Taylor told her, “You should think about coming to London, Chris.” Within days she was on a plane to England, where she began living a fantasy that lasted more than a decade.
As she notes in her book, “I wasn’t famous. I wasn’t even almost famous. But I was there.”
After just showing up at the Apple offices day after day, O’Dell eventually was given the task of organizing Beatles’ press clippings and other odd jobs. One day in May 1968 she was asked to escort fledgling singer/songwriter James Taylor for an evening. Taylor had signed with Apple and was working on his first album in London.
Following dinner Taylor went to O’Dell’s hotel room with his guitar. “It was after midnight when James opened his guitar case and began to play while I listened, absorbing the gentle energy of his music and feeling so relaxed I could have drifted right off to sleep,” O’Dell wrote. Two hours later he was still working on lyrics, trying to finish a song he was writing.
She tried to tell Taylor that she needed to get to sleep, but he pleaded, “Look, you don’t mind if I stay the night do you? It’s kinda late and I’d like to finish this song and crash.”
When O’Dell awoke the next morning Taylor was asleep on the bed. The song, which turned out to be “Carolina In My Mind,” had been completed, and he sang it to Chris in the bathroom before she left for work.
“I was stunned by his voice and how soft he was,” O’Dell said. “I felt as if he were singing straight from the depths of his soul, exposing his loneliness and longing to me.”
O’Dell’s book mentions several “magical musical moments” in her time with the Beatles. The first occurred on Aug. 1, 1968. She was at Trident Studios, where she booked sessions for Billy Preston, Mary Hopkin, James Taylor and other Apple artists. She expected to just watch as the Beatles put the finishing touches on “Hey Jude.” But Paul McCartney recruited her to provide one of the many voices on the refrain of the song.
She wrote, “Terrified that I’d sing out of tune and ruin the recording, I started off pretending to sing and just mouthing the words, but as we all clapped and swayed, our separate voices soon blending into one resounding chorus, my fears disappeared. With my eyes focused on Paul, the skilled conductor leading the troops, his hands swooping in circles, the look of joy on his face mirrored on the faces of all the rest of us, I sang my heart out.”
About two months earlier she had attended an evening session at Abbey Road studios, where the Beatles were working on the “White Album.” She turned from spectator to participant when she was asked to stand at a microphone with Paul, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and Yoko Ono to provide hand claps for the “Revolution 9” track.
In August 1969 she was assigned to help bail out Bob Dylan by buying some harmonicas in Soho and delivering them to Dylan at the Isle of Wight Festival. Dylan, who was making his first public appearance in three years, had forgotten to bring his own harmonicas.
O’Dell watched the show from a seat about 20 feet from the stage. Then she was invited to return to London in a small, private plane with John and Yoko. Truly a rock fan’s dream come true!
When asked for recollections of Dylan’s songs, voice and stage presence, O’Dell replied, “Oh, my gosh. This is pushing the memory envelope too much! I can’t remember the songs, although (he) was with The Band so I’m sure there were many from that album (‘The Basement Tapes.’) I was not a Dylan fan prior to this, so I was amazed at how much I enjoyed the concert.”
By 1975 O’Dell had crisscrossed the Atlantic many times and had become an experienced tour manager. In October that year she became the manager of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour.
O’Dell’s “most magical” Beatle moment occurred on Jan. 30, 1969. Beatle aficionados remember that date as the final time the Fab Four played in public – on the rooftop of the building that housed Apple’s headquarters on Savile Row. The structure was too weak to hold spectators, and workmen had to shore up the roof with support poles just to accommodate the band and film crew.
Chris sat lamenting her exclusion when head cameraman Tony Richmond suddenly turned her into his “assistant” and brought her onto the rooftop. The concert originally was to be part of a television documentary, but it became a part of the “Let It Be” film instead.
O’Dell treasures a photograph showing her with Ono, Ringo’s wife Maureen and Ken Mansfield (U.S. manager of Apple Records) as the Beatles played in front of them.
“Actually, the rooftop moment was not that big a deal at the time,” O’Dell said. “There were many more memories that I cherish – the quiet moments with each of the Beatles that I spent in their homes with their families.”
A romance with singer-songwriter Leon Russell blossomed in late 1969 after they met in London. He won her heart by penning the song “Pisces Apple Lady” about her, and they soon moved to Los Angeles where they lived together for a few months. After they broke up O’Dell returned to England.
O’Dell’s closest friend among the Beatles was Harrison. She was his house guest in the 120-room Friar Park mansion near the English town of Henley-on-Thames, starting in March 1970. Harrison’s wife, Pattie, became Chris’s best friend.
For weeks she listened as Harrison crafted and rehearsed the songs that would appear on his debut solo album, “All Things Must Pass.” O’Dell offered to type the song lyrics, which would be printed on the record jacket, and he gave her the OK to do it.
“That ranks pretty high on my list of memorable experiences,” O’Dell said. “I listened to George sing most of those songs acoustically, and it was so beautiful. Most of the songs sounded better when he just played the guitar and sang.”
The following year O’Dell was back in L.A., working as an assistant to producer Peter Asher. Harrison came to town for talks with Capitol Records, and one night he and Chris met at the beach house he was renting. He sprang a huge surprise on her: the gift of a song, “Miss O’Dell.” Before he sang it to her for the first time (accompanying himself on acoustic guitar), he remarked, “I’m going to make you famous.”
Chris’s reaction? “I was dumbstruck,” she wrote in the book. “I didn’t know what to say. I felt – awkward. That was the word. Totally awkward. I had no idea how to react.” The song appears as a bonus track on Harrison’s CD “Living In The Material World.”
Today she looks back on the event and says, “There is no greater gift than having one of the Beatles write a song with your name in the title. It’s now the ring tone on my phone!”
O’Dell’s relationship with Harrison was indeed special. She commented, “George and his music had a huge impact on my life. He was the spiritual one, and we resonated in that area. We never had more than friendship, as his wife was my best friend.
“I didn’t talk to or see him in the last years of his life. I would have told him how much I loved him and how much I miss him.”
O’Dell’s rock and roll lifestyle also included sex and drugs. She had sexual relationships with some of the biggest names in the business. And she was a chronic abuser of drugs such as cocaine, marijuana and alcohol.
Finding her way out of those addictions enabled her to pursue an education and, in turn, help others.
“I have been a licensed professional counselor and addictions counselor since the early 2000s,” she said in 2010. “I am still going to continue with some of that, but now I’m looking at teaching yoga and just enjoying my life. I’ve worked since I was 16, and now is the time to slow down and really live. I’m all about traveling and seeing parts of the world I haven’t visited yet.”
I asked her, of the experiences she described in her book, which she regrets the most.
“I have no regrets,” she said. “Each of my experiences made me who I am today.”
