Pat DiCesare tells a great story in a long blog on Pollstar.com about how he booked the Beatles in Pittsburgh in 1964.
He says he got a call from an agent with the William Morris Agency, who told him to get $5,000 and drop it with a bartender at the Club Elegant in Brooklyn for a chance to get the Beatles.
So he tried to get investors to help. "But, when Tim told them he had to leave the cash 'with a bartender in Brooklyn,' and that there was no guarantee that he could get the date or that the bartender was for real, no one would invest the $5,000," DiCesare says.
He told his father, who worked for Westinghouse in West Pittsburgh, of his predicament. His dad said little during the conversation.
"The next day when he came home from work we sat at the table eating dinner. As I was eating, he slid an envelope across the table-cloth. I didn't think much of that and he said, 'go on, open it.' I opened the envelope and inside was a cashier's check. It was made out to me in the amount of five thousand dollars."
His father had put a lien on his house to try and fulfill his son's wish.
"Dad, I can't take this, are you sure you want to do this?" DiCesare asked. "Yes, go do the show with your Beatles," he said.
He did. And paid his father back. And then some.
Be sure to read the full story. It has a lot more details.
But cheers to his dad. What a guy.
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Comments
Great story Steve, thanks !!!
Mike: Thanks. I can't take credit for the full story, but I wanted to alert people in case they hadn't seen it. It's a marvelous blog piece that includes a lot more than the story about his dad.
Now this is the kind of REAL story I want to hear, not historical fiction fantasy!
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