Stunned silence, and then the four lads burst into various cheers.
A ٹمٹم, gig, لٹو tonight! Their first ٹمٹم, gig, لٹو - well, not really their first, the boys saw the department-store ٹمٹم, gig, لٹو from last ماہ as their first, but their first one that their hosts actually wanted them to play! "Where are we going?" cried Winston happily.
Of course, سے طرف کی now his bandmates all knew the answer. "To the toppermost of the poppermost!"
Brian was looking very pleased for the lads. "Your ٹمٹم, gig, لٹو starts at eight tonight, so I'll be here at seven to drive آپ over; as I'm your manager, I'd like to come along and see how آپ do. Have آپ all been practising what I told you?"
The boys nodded. "We know how to stand on stage, no jumping یا shouting and that," Winston recited with his deadpan look. "But James here does all the talking to the audience; you'll have to ask him about that." He gave Paul a bit of a teasing grin. Paul was too happy to mind.
"Good," Brian replied, a little distractedly. "Now, this ٹمٹم, gig, لٹو does pay - not very much, but it is only first gig. So I think آپ lads should keep all the profits this time. You'll be in higher demand the مزید آپ play, and your pay will be higher too."
"Will we get to play Madison Square Garden?" asked Paul hopefully. He had barely paid attention to the parts about money, but Geo had nodded seriously along with all of it. He might have been the youngest among them, but he seemed to have better financial sense than any of his bandmates.
Brian smiled in answer to Paul's question. "I don't see why not, eventually."
The boys grinned at one another excitedly. "And there's just one مزید thing, lads," Brian went on. "Have آپ decided on a band name yet?"
Four heads shook, a little embarrassed.
Brian sighed. "I suppose it can't be helped for tonight. But now that you're playing real gigs, آپ won't be able to get away with not having a band name for much longer. The شائقین need a name to identify آپ by. Venue owners need to know who to تشہیر is playing a دکھائیں for them. You've got to be memorable, and in order to do that, you've got to have a proper band name."
The lads knew he was right. Perhaps if they tried very hard, they would be able to come up with something acceptable before tonight. But as the دن wore on, the sun bright on the not-quite-autumn leaves, none of them really felt like trying to come up with names, and they spent most of the afternoon outside their hotel running and jumping and generally horsing around.
The dance the lads were playing at was at a high school, its first dance of the new school year. It was a good venue for a band that was just starting out, Brian explained as he drove them there, the bandmates wriggling excitedly around in the backseat. And was especially good for this band, because it would be mostly teenagers here, and the people who liked their موسیقی best seemed to be teenagers too. Which was unsurprising, since the lads themselves were teenagers.
"Like a little high school ourselves," کہا Winston. "We could call our band the Quarrymen - after me old high school."
Geo frowned. "None of us went there."
Ringo and Geo then started in talking about schools they had gone to that they could name the band after, but Paul کہا nothing. Why he was being secretive about that, he wasn't sure - maybe he had just gotten used to the idea that giving away any personal details, even to his friends, was a bad idea. Whatever his reason was, the conversation made him quite nervous, and he quickly snapped, "Why do we want to name our band after our old schools? I thought we ran away to get away from all that!"
"So آپ did run away, James!" replied Winston, with an "a-ha" in his voice.
"Well - I - well... I... no I didn't, I... er... so did you!" snapped Paul, very flustered now, shaking his left finger in his agitation. "So did the rest of آپ lot!"
Brian turned round a little here, then changed his mind and shook his head. He hadn't caught all of their conversation, but whatever they were discussing back there, he figured it was better if he didn't know. Brian thought, once again, of how being this band's manager seemed to mean getting them out of trouble a lot....
"All right, lads," he told them, when they'd parked the car and were preparing to go in, "just remember what I've shown you. You're a group of clean lads playing for teenagers, and I've shown آپ how to act like one. And give them your best songs, the ones they might remember from your - er - gigs before. It's what they'll want to hear."
"All right, we know, Brian," Winston told him cheerfully. "We've had lessons, remember?"
Brian stopped, but continued to look at the lads like a proud father would look at his four sons who were about to اقدام out and pursue their fortunes.
The lads took their instruments and went to where the dance would be held. They found themselves in a gymnasium with colourful decorations everywhere and a raised area where they would be playing. The lads stopped and stared. Their first stage. This was where they would be playing tonight, where their very first official ٹمٹم, gig, لٹو would take place. Where they would take a big step آگے in their journey to the Toppermost of the Poppermost.
There was a long میز, جدول with a bowl of مککا, عجیب الخلقت and things like cakes and sandwiches, and Geo helped himself to two یا three of these on the way over, so the other lads followed his example and each grabbed a cake یا a سینڈوچ for himself.
As the lads began to set up their instruments, couples began to trickle in. Girls came with their hair tightly curled, in pearls and their best dresses with flared skirts, accompanied سے طرف کی boys in their best suits. Many of them smiled up at the stage where the lads were standing, and a couple waved. Paul waved back for a good full minute, throwing in a few winks for good measure. They really had made a name for themselves during their stay here. Even if they still didn't have a name for themselves....
The lights went down, and the band was announced, with no proper name, just as James, Winston, Geo, and Ringo (Winston always complained that he wanted his name to come first, but when آپ put Winston before James, it didn't seem to flow right) and then the teenage crowd was cheering, and the lads began to play.
They began with a new one Paul had written (with Winston's help) called "I Saw Her Standing There" which caused every seventeen-year-old girl in the crowd to cheer and wave her arms enthusiastically in the air. They played their biggest hits, سٹرابیری, اسٹرابیری Fields Forever and Penny Lane, peppered in some covers to round out the set, and finished with a very long round of "Love Me Do" that lasted through at least twenty-five repetitions of its sole verse - the audience didn't seem to want it to end. Winston had کہا something to Paul about adding in a bridge to that song, just to round it out, but for the moment, it was a great crowd-pleaser just the way it was.
As the final repetition finally ended, the boys were greeted سے طرف کی a storm of screaming and cheering and clapping. Multiple people lamented that the dance was over and now the lads had to go home: "More! More! Make the dance longer! Bring them back! Just one مزید song!" Paul was grinning like crazy; his face hurt, but he didn't think he would ever be able to stop. He looked over at his three best friends, who greeted him with equal grins splitting their faces. They'd done it. They'd played a real کنسرٹ for real شائقین - real شائقین who loved them like crazy. This was their first taste of success, and Paul was savouring the sweetness of every moment.
Girls began to run towards the stage now, some pulling their dates سے طرف کی the hand, others alone. Boys, too, were hurrying over, wanting to shake the lads' hands before they left. Cries of, "Can I please have your autograph?" were heard on all sides. Teenagers surrounded the stage, pressing into one another to try and get closer to the lads, hands reaching out to touch them. It finally took Brian, a principal, and two supervisors to get the lads offstage and back into the hallway. This was, of course, after Paul, Winston, Geo, and Ringo had signed as many autographs and shaken as many hands as they could manage. One of the freshman girls, who had come without a date, had kissed Geo.
Once outside, Brian told the lads he would go back in to get their instruments, which they had never packed up. "I might need to find آپ lads a roadie sooner than I'd thought," he remarked as he went in.
Brian hadn't specifically told the lads not to go far, so the boys wandered down the streets, chatting happily with one another about how good their دکھائیں had been. "They love us! We'll be the Toppermost of the Poppermost in no time!"
"Think we'll have a band name سے طرف کی اگلے gig?"
"Brian'll want us to. Always says we've got to have one if we want to be memorable and that. 'Course, I think they remember us now, but he has got a point...."
A sudden thought chilled Paul, in spite of the warm summer night. What about their individual names? If they got to the Toppermost of the Poppermost still using their aliases, the شائقین might remember them سے طرف کی those names forever, and changing back to their real ones would be fooling around too much with their established image, something Brian had warned them against doing. Would Paul McCartney become a famous rock سٹار, ستارہ only to have the whole world know him forever as James?
But what else could he do? Should he tell everyone his other name now, before it was too late? Would that be safe? His father didn't know he was in New York, after all....
Paul's sudden change in mood was felt سے طرف کی his bandmates. None of them کہا anything, but slowly they all fell out of their single, laughing group, to quietly examine the shops that lined the road - most of which were closed - alone.
Paul sat down on the steps of a little convenience store, which was dark inside but had its door slightly ajar. He felt suddenly tired. This should have been one of the happiest nights of his life, and it was, but now, he couldn't help worrying. Things were happening very quickly, and he was going to have to make a decision about this soon. But how would he know what to decide?
"Oh, Paul..." called a voice from behind him, very softly.
Paul's head spun round, startled. After a ماہ of using his first name, he was able to respond to it without looking around to see who was being spoken to, but now he found his instinct was still to respond to his familiar, comfortable middle name. He had almost forgotten what it was like to be called Paul.
Standing behind Paul was Winston, grinning very broadly, though Paul though it was Winston's I'm-not-very-pleased-with-you grin he detected in the shadows. Winston, it seemed, had been inside the convenience store when Paul sat down on its steps, and now he had come out again, holding a large piece of paper and grinning at Paul as if Paul had somehow offended him.
And suddenly, it hit him. Winston had called Paul سے طرف کی his proper name.