George Harrison slept here, which is weird when you stop to think. This city deep in the kidneys of southern Illinois isn’t quite nowhere, but it feels like it’s within driving distance.
Yet here at 113 McCann St. you’ll find a slate-gray house once owned by Louise Caldwell, older sister of George Harrison. In 1963, before he was GEORGE HARRISON of THE BEATLES, he was the would-be rock star who sat and chatted with his sister on a very ’50s-looking brown-flecked foldout couch and slept in a small room downstairs.
George no longer sleeps here. Neither does sister “Lou,” except when she’s visiting.
But you can sleep here. In 1995, three couples bought this home from the state of Illinois and, roughly 14 months ago, opened it as a bed-and-breakfast inn, Hard Day’s Nite, that seeks to capitalize on its place in music history.
Some folks here like to refer to Benton as “the musical birthplace of the Beatles in America,” which overstates the case quite a lot. It is, however, the first place in the United States where any of the Beatles performed.
On Sept. 17, 1963, George Harrison and his brother Peter came here to visit their sister. During his two-week vacation from the Beatles, George sat in with a local band, the Four Vests, at the Bocce Ball Club in Benton and VFW Hall 3479 in Eldorado. They performed a few Carl Perkins and Buddy Holly songs.
“One guy comes over to Gabe (McCarty, leader of the Four Vests) and says, `That kid that’s trying out for your band tonight — you’d be crazy if you don’t hire him,’ ” Louise Harrison, now 66, remembers with a laugh. “Another guy comes over to George and says, `You know, kid, with the right kind of backing, you could really go places.’ “
When he wasn’t playing, Harrison stayed with his sister, her husband and children in the middle-class neighborhood.
Louise — she’s back to using the last name Harrison — had moved to Benton in March of that year. Her husband, a mining engineer, had been transferred here from northern Quebec. They bought the home for $12,000 and lived in it for five years.
At the time, McCann Street was more residential than it is today. Two neighboring houses have since been demolished to make way for a parking lot to hold cars for the neighboring Illinois Department of Mines and Minerals building.
The rest of the general vicinity now appears to conform to build-what-you-want-wherever-you-want zoning laws. Diagonally across the street is the Rich Herrin Gymnasium (home of the high school Rangers), and down the block is the Franklin County Jail Facility (better than a jail — a jail facility!). Freight trains pass by day and night at Chinese-water-torture intervals.
Louise Harrison and her family moved away in 1968. The house changed owners a couple of times before the state of Illinois bought it. But before the home could be torn down for parking, some Beatles fans got involved and made sure it was preserved.
Then Dorothy and Cornelius Schultz, Jim and Daryl Chady, and Cindy and Scott Rice bought and refurbished the house, which is marked with American and British flags flying out front.
The new owners have turned the upstairs into three cozy bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and its own name. There’s the “George” room (it’s the biggest), the “Paul” room (it has the largest bathroom) and the “John” room. The “Ringo” room is downstairs.
Except for a picture of their namesakes, these charming rooms would fit in any other B&B.
The decor in the Hard Day’s Nite common areas (living room, sitting room and dining room) is devoted to the Beatles without being at all garish or overdone. Among the framed and unframed posters, the wall hangings include a replica of Beatles clothing complete with shirt and tie, some rare 45s and maybe a dozen copies of Louise Harrison Caldwell’s correspondence from the early 1960s.
There’s a July 15, 1963, letter from Beatles manager Brian Epstein to Louise Harrison Caldwell asking for her help in promoting the band stateside. He enclosed copies of the Beatles’ first British album, “Please Please Me,” and single, “From Me to You.”
“I will really be more than grateful for anything that you can do with the records,” Epstein wrote, “because we really are very anxious indeed that their records will eventually `break’ in the States.”
She sent the records to KXOK in St. Louis, where they were rejected. On the wall is a letter from the station’s program director saying he won’t play the song “Please Please Me” because they’ve already been airing Del Shannon’s version.
Also notable is an Aug. 31, 1964, letter from psychic Jeane Dixon regarding the Beatles. Seems a rumor has been circulating that Dixon had predicted that the Beatles would be in a plane crash on their way to Indianapolis. Caldwell wrote to Dixon to find out if she’d actually said that.
Dixon said no.
“I feel that there is great success ahead for each of them . . . not necessarily as a group,” Dixon wrote in an apparently not-terribly-clairvoyant moment, considering that the Beatles were already, by that time, superstars.
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Hard Day’s Nite Bed & Breakfast, 113 McCann St., Benton, Ill. (618-438-2328). Room rates are $60 a night and include breakfast.
