A girl, a train and a miniature pistol: how I met the Everly Brothers

I was drifting in and out of sleep last week, listening to the news, when suddenly eight words — at first sounding no different from the general run — slammed into my senses. ‘Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers is dead.’ For the first time I knew how it felt when ‘the earth stood still’. One of the two brightest flames of my youth had been extinguished. I was friends with both Phil and Don Everly for some 45 years and it was, to be sure, a dazzling friendship.

Beat this for its beginnings: it was 1960 and we met at midnight, boarding the Flying Scotsman at King’s Cross, surrounded by the thickly hissing steam from that great green engine. The sleeping car attendant, as neat as a pin in his starched white bum-freezer jacket, was standing by. ‘They say that some American singers, the Beverly, Everly or some such brothers are coming on board.’ He neither knew — nor I expect cared — that these were the men who were in the midst of altering the course of popular music throughout the world; the Beatles once called themselves ‘the English Everly Brothers’. Believe it or not, I happened to be armed with a tiny fake pistol with a report as loud as a Howitzer — my mother had given it to me to ward off attack — and it clearly was time for action. Never again would that tiny firearm be put to a better use. As the Everlys stepped over the steaming void between the platform and the train, I fired it over their heads while hollering ‘Hail and welcome to the Everly Brothers!’ They had to notice and they did, with star-spangled knobs on: the first instant of what looked like terror was quickly followed by excited laughter.