Few people can claim to have spent the whole of their youth with The Beatles, and fewer still would have come out of the experience unscathed. Freda Kelly — who was 17 when she first laid eyes on the Fab Four at the now-legendary Cavern Club in Liverpool, is one of those people, perhaps the only one.
The year was 1961 and Kelly, who had just left school, was working as a secretary in a Liverpool office. She used to sneak into The Cavern on her lunch hour and after work, and in a matter of months she was handpicked by The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein to work as their secretary. "And I kept at it for 11 years," Kelly told The Japan Times while in Tokyo to promote "Good Ol' Freda" — a documentary about The Beatles, pieced together from her testimonials.
In the movie and during the interview, Kelly was frank, straightforward and even exuberant. But she wasn't about to give anything away, and she certainly wasn't ready to talk about their private lives, whether from 1961 or 2013. It's just not her style.