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AUTHOR/JOURNALIST IVOR DAVIS ‘s new eye-opening book, “Me and the Beatles OnTour” is the first inside account of life with the Beatles on their First American tour –by someone who was there.
London born Davis first came to America in the early Sixties and was appointed West Coast Correspondent for the four million a day circulation London Daily Express in l963.
His first big assignment in l964 was to hang out, travel with and get to know the four members of a new pop group from Liverpool who were tearing up the world with their music and amazing energy.
He was the only British daily newspaper correspondent to cover the tour from start to finish and found himself with unparalleled access to the Fab Four on the road, in their hotel, and during long nights of card and Monopoly games as they talked frankly about their bizarre life as Beatles.
He also ghosted a regular column for George Harrison.
His fresh and funny insider memoir is a fascinating travel back in time where for the first time he chronicles, in frank and amusing fashion, what happened to the world’s most famous band at a critical moment in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.
He was there to witness it first hand, living and breathing life on the road with the band.
Over a more than four decade career as a writer for the Express and the Times of London, he covered major events in North America. He penned a weekly entertainment column for the New York Times Syndicate for over 15 years interviewing some of the biggest names in showbusiness from Cary Grant to Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton to Tom Cruise and Muhammed Ali.
In 1962 he was smuggled onto the campus of the riot torn University of Mississippi when James Meredith was enrolled and three years later was in the frontlines as Los Angeles’ Watts Riots erupted.
He covered Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential bid and was in the Ambassador Hotel the night Kennedy was assassinated. He was one of the Boys on the Bus chronicling the life of an actor turned politician. First Ronald Reagan’s campaign for Governor of California, and then as President.
He was a co-author of the l969 political book “Divided They Stand” and witnessed some of the biggest trials in American history. Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of killing Bobby Kennedy in 1969. Black militant Angela Davis who was acquitted of murder in l972. A year later he attended Daniel Ellsberg’s trial for leaking the Pentagon Papers. He was in San Francisco in 1976 to see heiress Patty Hearst convicted of robbery after being kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
In l969 he co-wrote “Five to Die” the first book ever published about the Sharon Tate
murders. The book was updated in 2011. As a foreign correspondent he traveled throughout the western hemisphere covering riots, floods, earthquakes and politics. As Editor at Large for Los Angeles Magazine he and his late wife Sally Ogle Davis wrote over 100 major magazine and cover stories. He has reported on four World Soccer Cups for CBS radio.
He currently lives in Southern California and is working on two new books: One about movies the other a true crime story.