Fangirl at 70: Tennessee Beatles fan headed to Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and International Beatles Week

When legendary musician Paul McCartney performs in Knoxville on Tuesday, in the crowd will be one of his biggest longtime fans from East Tennessee, fangirling out with her best friend of 45 years and their 10-person entourage.

“Oh my gosh. I don't think I can scream anymore, but I certainly will be bugged-eyed,” Dianne Walls Anderson of Chattanooga told Knox News.

Look for her at Thompson-Boling Arena wearing a self-made shirt featuring a photo of a ticket from 1965 and a photo of McCartney on the back. “I was there … and now I’m here,” the shirt reads.

Anderson has been a huge fan of McCartney and the Beatles since she saw the British band make its live U.S. television debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February 1964.

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A year later, as a 13th birthday present, she saw them live on stage at a concert in Atlanta.

“All the little girls in my grade school, we were all crazy about the Beatles, and we constantly bought those little magazines … like Sixteen and Tiger Beat. … We just kind of had a social club about them and, of course, every time a new album came out, we had to rush down and get it. So, I just love their music,” Anderson recollected.

“And they weren't bad looking either, for boys about 10 or 12 years older than we were,” she added.

That first concert in Atlanta stands as her favorite Beatles memory, but throughout the decades, Anderson’s fandom never wavered. She’s got shrink-wrapped albums still unopened, memorabilia and memories from numerous concerts.

But it’s the scrapbook that she began in the sixth or seventh grade that she holds dear.

“I have little tidbits that I saved from their tours, or when they got married, or when the Beatles had their children, and things like that. … I still actually have some of those Teen Beat magazines, if you can believe that?”

The Beatles fun that Anderson has lined up this summer doesn't stop with McCartney. She’s going to see Ringo Starr in Atlanta in June and then, for her birthday in August, she and her friend Lynn Whittenburg are off to Liverpool, England, to attend International Beatle Week. They’ll meet up with other Beatles fans from Amsterdam, Belgium and beyond.

“I’m trying to make this birthday — which is my 70th — I'm trying to make it fun, especially after being locked up for two years and in physical therapy for most of that,” Anderson said referencing her recovery from a bad car accident in 2020.

“It just keeps you young, I think, if you can connect with something (from your childhood)," Anderson said.

“It holds its magic for me, I guess.”

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Paul McCartney in Knoxville: Superfan from Tennessee heads to the show