My Ticket to Ride cover art

My Ticket to Ride

How I Ran Away to England to Meet the Beatles and Got Rock and Roll Banned in Cleveland (A True Story from 1964)

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About this listen

A true-adventure, coming-of-age tale set in the exhilarating first wave of Beatlemania.

It's 1964, and 16-year-old Janice is struggling in a grim foster home in Cleveland when she falls suddenly, deeply in love...with The Beatles. They and their music stir in her an ecstatic new sense of freedom. With a friend, she hatches a bold plan to escape their dreary lives and run away to London to meet the Fab Four.

On their own for the first time - in "Beatleland" - they explore a new city, a new culture, and a new life, visiting the hippest clubs of Soho, meeting some nice English boys, and hitchhiking to Liverpool. But unbeknownst to them, the runaways have become international news - and a hunt is on.

Adventure and newfound freedom end abruptly when Janice is apprehended by London police and hauled home to Cleveland and an unforgiving juvenile justice system. Warned by responsible adults to put it all behind her, she doesn't speak of her extraordinary adventure for more than 50 years.

In this memoir, she looks back with fresh insight on the heady early days of Beatlemania and an era in America when young women exercising some control over their lives presented a serious threat to adult society.

©2021 Janice Mitchell (P)2021 Tantor Women Adventure England
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A great story, interesting from many perspectives, especially the impact of the British Invasion on a pair of American teenagers, the troubled upbringing of the author and her treatment on being returned home. Unfortunately the reader’s British accents are dreadful, especially that purporting to be Liverpudlian, which is unrecognisable as Scouse. I thought at first that the character was meant to be Irish and lying about being from Liverpool.

Great story, terrible British accents

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Two girls leave cleaveland to go to London to see the Beatles.its a brilliant story. I didn’t want it to end. And thought how brave they were to do that at 16.

The Beatles

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