Heritage Shep And The Fab Four

When PLAYBOY sent humorist Jean Shepherd to interview the Beatles, he walked away unimpressed. As this never-before seen conversation shows, time did not dilute his views

- Jim George

Tucked among the considerable credits of the late and legendary writer Jean Shepherd — radio shows, TV programs, short stories, books, perennial film favorite A Christmas Story — sits one entry that has remained largely overlooked: his February 1965 Playboy Interview with the Beatles. The writer storyteller broadcaster, credited today with inspiring talents from Jerry Seinfeld to Tom Wolfe, got the plum assignment of traveling with and interviewing the musicians during their fall 1964 tour of the U.K., observing Beatlemania up close and from both sides of the curtain.

While the Hammond, Indiana native would go on to have a rich history with the magazine, penning two dozen short stories over nearly two decades and winning an unprecedented four Playboy Writing Awards, in 1964 Shepherd was an odd choice to interview the world’s biggest band. For starters, his heart was not that of a rock-and-roller but of a jazzman. Indeed, Shepherd had collaborated with Charles Mingus on the musician’s 1957 album The Clown, improvising a spoken word narration for the title track. Furthermore, Shepherd cultivated an apparent disdain for mainstream music, which the Beatles had taken over. The dynamic between author and subject was what the Brits would call chalk and cheese.

Yet the interview he filed was historic: It presented the Beatles in an adult forum, arguably for the first time. Religion, sex, homosexuality, transexuality, money, royalty — the Beatles touched on plenty of mature topics, though mostly via wisecracks. The language used was hardly the gentle fare found in the fawning teen mags of which the Beatles were a staple; you would not find, for instance, Ringo saying “tits” in 16 magazine.