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Before Beatlemania captivated America, George Harrison made an unassuming visit to Benton, Illinois, in September 1963, staying with his sister’s family.
The quiet trip, just months before The Beatles’ seismic U.S. debut, offered a rare glimpse into the ordinary life of a musician on the brink of global fame.
During his stay, the Briton embraced small-town American life: he went camping, jammed with locals, enjoyed roller-skate-delivered root beer, bought records, and even purchased a new guitar.
Four months later, Benton residents, along with 73 million others, watched him on The Ed Sullivan Show, marking the start of the British Invasion.
Now, the house where Harrison and his brother Peter lodged in Benton, 100 miles southeast of St. Louis, is up for sale.
This news has prompted concern among Beatles fans, mindful of the property’s precarious past. In 1995, the residence at 113 McCann Street faced demolition but was ultimately saved by activists, including Harrison’s sister, Louise Harrison Caldwell.
Mining brought the family to Benton
Previously known for hosting the state’s last public hanging in 1928, Benton, population 6,700, was built on Southern Illinois’ rich veins of coal. Louise Caldwell moved to town when her husband, a mining engineer, got a job in what was then a thriving industry.
The house they chose is a five-bedroom bungalow built in 1935 with a brick facade across its wide front porch.
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In the mid-1990s, a state agency bought the house from a subsequent owner with plans to flatten it for parking. Mega-fan Robert Bartel of Springfield, a Beatles author and documentarian, alerted the media and Fab Four loyalists.
Local investors repurchased it from the state and opened the Hard Day’s Nite Bed and Breakfast, featuring the couch Harrison traded guitar licks on and stacks of other loaned Beatles memorabilia, including a bevy from Bartel.
The bed-and-breakfast closed in 2010. Benton resident Grady Adams has since operated it as regular bed-and-bath apartments but now wants to sell, listing it for $105,000. Brian Calcaterra, Benton’s director of economic development, suggested the city draft an ordinance to protect the house from demolition by a new owner, but Benton Mayor Lee Messersmith said the city council has not discussed the matter.
“Of course, if it doesn’t get demo’d, I would prefer that,” Adams said.
‘That momentum is not here’
Whether there’s interest — or energy — to return the McCann Street house to its Beatles glory is up for debate.
Jim Kirkpatrick of Creal Springs, author of Before He Was Fab, a recollection of Harrison’s visit which has been optioned for a movie, has had at least one encouraging conversation with someone considering purchase.
Benton business owner Robert Rea, a historian who helped save the Beatles house three decades ago, said the obsession has faded.
“When we did this (in 1995), the world went crazy because they thought, ‘George is going to come, he’s going to save the house,’” Rea said. “And I’m just being honest with you, maybe I’m missing it or something, but that momentum is not here.”
His last quiet vacation
Harrison’s trip was perhaps the last time the musician could enjoy obscurity. He camped in Shawnee National Forest. He sat in with a popular local group when they played a nearby Veterans of Foreign Wars hall. The band’s leader took him to a drive-in restaurant with carhops on skates, where he guzzled root beer for the first time.
At a record store on Benton’s downtown square, Harrison bought a pile of vinyl. Included was James Ray’s R&B single, “I’ve Got My Mind Set on You,” Harrison’s 1987 cover of which went to No. 1.
He also bought a Rickenbacker 425 guitar like the one bandmate John Lennon had. Harrison played the guitar a month later when the Beatles recorded “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” It sold at auction in 2014 for $675,000.
One day during Harrison’s visit, he and Caldwell dropped by WFRX radio, where then-17-year-old Marcia Schafer Raubach had a Saturday afternoon teen program. Harrison gave her a copy of “She Loves You,” which he told her had just hit the top of the British charts.
Raubach interviewed Harrison on the air, the first for a Beatle in America, and played the 45, which she still has. She said it sounded different than the songs American teens were then punching up on jukeboxes. But it didn’t make an impression on her audience.
Despite his longish hair in a land of crew cuts, Raubach found Harrison, dressed in a crisp white shirt, jeans and sandals, “very clean cut, he was personable and mannerly and they call him the ‘quiet Beatle’ — well, he was.”
“If I had known what they were going to become, I would have handled that differently,” Raubach, now 79, said. “It’s still amazing that he even came here and that I met him. I think he really liked Southern Illinois.”
Harrison never returned to Benton, though, dying in 2001 at 58. Caldwell was 91 when she died in 2023.
