JOSE VICTOR Z. TORRES Reviews
You Won’t See Me: When the Beatles ghosted Imelda” by David Guerrero
(Penguin Random House, 2025)
SEEING WHAT WAS NOT SEEN
The title of the book is already intriguing. It was based on a song composed in 1965 by Beatles member Paul McCartney, who was dealing with a crisis over his failing relationship with a girlfriend. It was a song of trying to get hold of but unable to get in touch with her, resulting in the lost of what was supposed to be a time of being together.
But, as author David Guerrero explained in an online magazine interview, he used the song title as a metaphor for the lack of visibility—in this case the Beatles ghosting Imelda—and how the Philippines was an “invisible” country to the Western world in the ‘60s, saying that “it took at least another 55 years for the Filipino Beatles fans to be seen in the story, and for their side to be heard” citing his BBC documentary and later, the publication of this book.
So, after over six decades of popularity in records, tours, movies, videos, and screaming fans, and even a longer music legacy through at least four generations, it seemed that everything we want to know The Beatles had been written about in biographies, anthologies, memoirs, and histories.
Except for their two-day concert tour in the Philippines.
The basic facts were this. It was a year after the country elected a new popular president, Ferdinand Marcos who, with his young wife, Imelda, was changing the political landscape with the motto of “making the country great again.” And what could a good opportunity to place the Philippines on the map by making the country part of the world tour of the Beatles—the band that was becoming a world music phenomenon. The Marcoses as well as Filipino officials and close associates laid the welcome mat thick for the group.
The Beatles arrived in the Philippines on July 3, 1966 and performed at the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium on July 4 to a massive cheering crowd of fans of all ages. But their euphoria of success ended when they left the country on July 5 after running through a gauntlet of “goons” who assaulted the band, their managers and publicists as they ran to their plane at the Manila International Airport. The cause of anger against them? They allegedly snubbed an invitation to a luncheon and performance from the First Lady at Malacañang Palace where 300 guests were left waiting. And the government officials (especially those that gave them the welcome mat to the country) made sure that the Fab Four paid for their insult.
The incident in the Philippines left a lasting effect on the Beatles. The Philippine concert was to be their final world tour in their entire career. They never traveled again to another country to perform.
David Guerrero’s book is a narrative of that three-day (mis)adventure of The Beatles in the Philippines. What was impressive about this well-researched work is that it answered (or sometimes tried to answer) the how, why, and what-nots that one will not read in any of the published Beatles’ history. The Fab Four were portrayed in their Philippine tour as victims of how people in power dealt with Western snobbery. But Guerrero also showed that part of the reason was either a miscoordination on the part of the promoters or even the Beatles’ fault because of the indecisions by their publicists and manager.
You Won’t See Me not only detailed much of the unknown events that happened before, during, and after their concert tour in Manila, it also brought to light the Filipino personalities behind the Philippine tour—names that remained in the shadows of the pages of that part of the Beatles’ story
Aside from this, Guerrero’s research also turned up interesting anecdotes beyond the fiasco with Malacañang.
There is the meeting of the Fab Four after their concert with a group of young, female fans whose daring escapade to meet the band led them to the Manila Hotel room where the band was staying. It was an unforgettable moment for these girls as they still remembered every detail of that short encounter when Guerrero interviewed them for his book, fifty-five years later.
Another surprising anecdote was souvenir hunter Paul McCartney’s purchase in an Ermita art gallery of a work by a painter named Ben Cabrera—who would be famous decades later as National Artist for Visual Arts, BenCab—that added a bright spot on The Beatles stay here.
Considering that much of their personalities were hidden behind the band’s sheen of fame, these tidbits of incidents with fans gives us an interesting side of artists dealing with the travails of popularity.
After their concert tour in the country, the Beatles decided to end their world tour. But contrary to what may have been written about their stay here, Guerrero wrote this:
“The voice of Filipino fans have not been heard in all the stories. This has served to de-humanize them to something of a faceless mob. But as we have seen, these admirers struck with the group through thick and thin—until they were sixty-four and beyond. The tour date was, obviously a nightmare for the band, but t was—at least, partly their own management’s making.”
And as for the Philippines, Guerrero wrote: “the Philippines itself, for a country of 117 million, ranked fourteenth in population globally, is strangely underrepresented in world culture. As others have pointed out, the Philippines suffers from their low awareness of very negatively skewed publicity…. This is not an easy place to understand, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”
The Beatles’ three days in the Philippines was a paragraph or two in the story of the band through a legacy of music. At first glance, it begged to be forgotten. Like what the song said, “You Won’t See Me.”
Yet Guerrero’s book made sure that their famous (or infamous) sojourn in the Philippines was a story that added and should always be part of the Beatles’ history.
*****
Jose Victor Z. Torres is a Full Professor at the History Department of the De La Salle University-Manila. He graduated with an AB Journalism degree at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) and a M.A. and PhD (magna cum laude) in History at the UST Graduate School. He was a former researcher for the Intramuros Administration before he entered the teaching profession at UST and DLSU-Manila. He is a multi-awarded writer, winning the prestigious Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature five times and the National Book Award for Travel Writing in 2006 for his book: Ciudad Murada: A Walk Through Historic Intramuros.. In 2017, he won his second National Book Award for the Essays in English category for his book, To the Person Sitting in Darkness and Other Footnotes of Our Past. He is the author and editor of books on Philippine history and culture and a contributor of articles on history and culture to local magazines and university journals. He has also lectured in both local and international conferences on history and culture.
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