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)

Summary

A true-adventure, coming-of-age tale set in the exhilarating first wave of Beatlemania

It's 1964, and 16-year-old Janice is struggling in a grim foster home in Cleveland when she falls suddenly, deeply in love . . . with the Beatles. They and their music stir in her an ecstatic new sense of freedom. With a friend, she hatches a bold plan to escape their dreary lives and run away to London to meet the Fab Four.

On their own for the first time—in "Beatleland"—they explore a new city, a new culture, and a new life, visiting the hippest clubs of Soho, meeting some nice English boys, and hitchhiking to Liverpool. But unbeknownst to them, the runaways have become international news—and a hunt is on.

Adventure and newfound freedom end abruptly when Janice is apprehended by London police and hauled home to Cleveland and an unforgiving juvenile justice system. Warned by responsible adults to put it all behind her, she doesn't speak of her extraordinary adventure for more than fifty years.

In this memoir, she looks back with fresh insight on the heady early days of Beatlemania and an era in America when young women exercising some control over their lives presented a serious threat to adult society.