Beatlemania was all the rage in Toronto when the British rock group was set to perform its first show in the Canadian city in September 1964. Tasia Richards, 16 at the time, found herself in the middle of the craze.
She recalled standing in front of the hotel where the four-member Beatles were staying as police were holding the line back. They were hurting her stomach, she said, so she decided to duck underneath. As luck would have it, a limo stopped right in front of her and out walked Paul McCartney.
She watched as his tie flew up, and hoping to get a little souvenir, she grabbed onto it and tried to rip it. However, the knit fabric wouldn’t budge, and McCartney told her, “Let go of my bloody tie,” Richards, now 78, recalled.
Tasia Richards, a Palm Desert resident, says that her first kiss was with Paul McCartney in Toronto back in 1966. Richards recounts the story during an interview at her home in Palm Desert, Calif., on Sept. 22, 2025.
As she let go and watched him pass her by, a thought entered her mind: She wanted McCartney to be her first kiss. She didn’t know why or how, but she was ready to make it happen.
Two years later, through the sheer determination of a teenager with a crush, she said her dream came true.
“Sixty years later, you still think of it,” Richards said in her Palm Desert home recently. “It’s hard not to think of him. You listen to a song and it comes back.”
With McCartney set to return to the desert for the start of his new tour leg Sept. 29 at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, Richards decided to share her story in hopes of inspiring other people to chase after their dreams. Though she didn’t snag tickets to the concert due to steep prices and a recent cancer diagnosis, she still has a task for herself: She wants to get the rocker’s autograph, something she’s been chasing after for more than 60 years.
More: Attending Paul McCartney’s Sept. 29 concert at Acrisure Arena? Here’s what to know
A crush is born
Richards described herself as an active, hardworking young woman in her teen years, who was a good student and was involved in several extracurriculars, such as basketball, volleyball and the drama club.
While her friends were all swooned by Elvis Presley and his swaying hips, Richards didn’t care for him. But when she saw the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964, she instantly developed a crush on McCartney.
“For some reason, I went, ‘Oh, I really like him,'” Richards said, adding she wasn’t sure what it was about him that made her heart skip a beat.
Tasia Richards, wearing sunglasses, in a photograph from the 60s, brings back memories during an interview in Palm Desert, Calif., on Sept. 22, 2025.
Afterwards, she and her friends bought all their records and magazines, many of which she still has to this day. When the band came to Toronto in 1964, Richards and a friend decided to camp outside the Maple Leaf Gardens in order to get good seats. Unbeknownst to her at the time, she met her future husband, radio reporter J.J. Richards, when he came to cover the growing line of eager Beatles fans.
After the concert, Richards had her tie encounter with McCartney. She can still recall all the screaming and yelling from fans and how quickly everything happened, but not why she wanted him to be her first kiss. She was so serious about it that she prayed, surrounded by her collection of Beatles memorabilia, for it to happen.
“Two weeks later, I went, ‘What the heck was that all about?’ … I thought, ‘This is crazy, this is never going to happen, snap out of it,’ because I had common sense enough to know that’s impossible,” Richards said. “And then I would always finish with, ‘But that’s what I want.'”
Tasia Richards holds a photograph of herself as a teenager surrounded by Beatles photographs during an interview at her home in Palm Desert, Calif., on Sept. 22, 2025.
More: Paul McCartney has a history of epic desert performances. Will his Sept. 29 set compare?
A three-step kissing lesson from McCartney
The Beatles returned to Toronto in August 1965 and 1966. By the latter, Richards, now 18, was determined to get at least an autograph from McCartney, let alone a kiss. So, her perseverance leading her, she found a way to sneak into the press conference ahead of the show.
Richards, carrying a camera around her neck, went up to McCartney, snapped a few photos and asked for his autograph. He didn’t have a piece of paper or pen with him, so Richards said he pointed to a man at a podium, who signaled back to her that she would eventually receive it.
After the press conference, she said the man from the podium told her that McCartney, 24 at the time, had invited her to the band’s hotel suite after the show.
Tasia Richards, a Palm Desert resident, says that her first kiss was with Paul McCartney in Toronto back in 1966. Richards recounts the story during an interview at her home in Palm Desert, Calif., on Sept. 22, 2025.
“I remember my friends watching the second concert, and me being in the bathroom combing my hair and putting my eyeliner on and getting myself ready,” Richards said with a laugh.
It didn’t feel like it was real, Richards said, until she walked onto the eighth floor of the King Edward Hotel and the man from the podium took her jacket and told her he was glad she could make it. Inside, she recalled George Harrison introducing himself, to which she replied, “Oh yeah, you think I don’t know who you are?” Ringo Starr came in afterwards, and they chatted about the press conference and his son, she said. Then Lennon arrived, who Richards said helped himself at the bar, chatted with Harrison’s family and then left.
Finally, McCartney came in. She remembered him coming up to her, lightly touching her on the shoulder and saying, “I’m so glad you could make it.” She said he later sat on an ottoman and positioned his arms on her knees so he could watch television, while she recalled her knees shaking.
They later went into a barely-lit bedroom, where she recalled McCartney sitting on the bed and smoking, while she shyly asked if she could sit on the edge.
“He said, ‘What do you want to talk about?’ I said, ‘Well, I can do an interview on you. Does the song ‘Yesterday’ have a special meaning for you?'” Richards recalled. “He said, ‘No interview,’ and did not answer my question. Then we just started chatting about everything, really.”
They spoke about religion, and Richards, who described herself as being so naive at the time, said he was the first man to tell her he did not believe in God. She recalled asking to take off her uncomfortable shoes at one point, to which McCartney told her, “Yes, as far as I’m concerned you can take everything off,” which she laughed off. Afterward, the subject of sex was brought up, and Richards said she didn’t believe in it, and that caught him off guard (she then clarified she believed in it with the right person).
Tasia Richards holds a photograph of herself as a teenager surrounded by Beatles photographs during an interview at her home in Palm Desert, Calif., on Sept. 22, 2025.
“That’s when the lightbulb went on,” Richards said, referring to why she was invited up to his hotel room. She decided then to tell McCartney that she was the young woman who grabbed onto his tie and that she wanted a kiss from him. “Initially, I know he didn’t believe me.”
But he got up from the bed, took off his shirt and told her to come over to him, she recalled. That’s when Richards received a three-step kissing lesson from McCartney.
Lesson No. 1: “You put your arms around me,” he said.
Lesson No. 2: He lifted her chin up.
Lesson No. 3: “He kissed me,” she said with a giggle.
Tasia Richards, a Palm Desert resident, says that her first kiss was with Paul McCartney in Toronto back in 1966. Richards recounts the story during an interview at her home in Palm Desert, Calif., on Sept. 22, 2025.
So, was he a good kisser? “Yes, he was,” Richards said, not sharing any other details.
She said McCartney invited her to travel with the band, but she turned him down. For Richards, it was “always about a kiss” and nothing more. Decades later, when a friend asked her if she ever regretted not taking things further with McCartney, Richards said the thought never entered her mind.
What she does think back on, however, is the conversation she had with McCartney, especially when he asked her how she could feel so strongly about somebody that she’d never met before.
“I’ve never been able to answer that myself,” she said. “I don’t know if I had met him in a previous life or something. I just have no idea why that happened and what was the reason behind it.”
Let it be
Tasia Richards’ husband J.J. Richards, top left, in a photograph with Paul McCartney.
As she left the hotel suite and got in the elevator, she realized she forgot to ask McCartney for the autograph he owed her. Sixty years later, she’s still chasing that signature, and she has the perfect photo for it: One of her late husband interviewing Macca.
Richards has attended several of McCartney’s shows over the decades. His headlining performance at the 2009 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival stands out because as she was looking around her, “at least three, if not four, generations of people in the (Empire Polo Club) grounds … all sang the songs … It was really lovely.”
Earlier this summer, around the time his Acrisure Arena show was announced, Richards was diagnosed with liver cancer. As a result, she couldn’t justify paying $1,700 in the midst of her health battle. But leave it to her to find a way to get her autograph — one may be through someone who will be working backstage.
“I think that would be a lovely way to complete this story, to bring it to an end,” Richards said. “If God wants this to happen, it’ll happen. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But he will always have a soft spot in my heart.”
If she had another opportunity to give McCartney a kiss, would she do it? “I would give him the biggest hug ever, providing, of course, his security doesn’t kick me out.”
Ema Sasic covers entertainment and health in the Coachella Valley. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @ema_sasic.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Desert resident says her first kiss was with Paul McCartney
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