[6] Apple Corps press officer Derek Taylor recalled that unlike the groupies that bands such as the Beatles and the Byrds attracted in the United States, the scruffs' motives were innocent, as they sought merely to be supportive of their heroes.
[3] According to American journalist Al Aronowitz, who documented the scruffs' all-night vigils during the 1970 recording sessions for All Things Must Pass, George Harrison's first post-Beatles solo album:[7] "In the morning they'd go off to their jobs and in the evening they'd be back outside the studio door again.
"[6] Beatles biographer Bill Harry lists the members as Margo Stevens, Gill Pritchard, Nancy Allen, Carol Bedford and Wendy Sutcliffe, and other girls known as Sue-John, Chris, Di, Kath, Virginia, Dani and Lucy.
[5] Pritchard, a 17-year-old hairdresser in March 1969, left Birmingham for London midway through serving a customer after hearing radio reports about McCartney's upcoming wedding to Linda Eastman.
[9] Harrison showed an interest in some of the scruffs, asking after their families and, in author Alan Clayson's description, sharing exchanges that recalled "the spirit of the Cavern".
[20] In November 1968, Lennon and Yoko Ono released their avant-garde album Two Virgins on Apple Records with a cover showing the couple naked.
[25] Pritchard recalled that it was at 6 am, after the sort of particularly cold night that used to make them "curse the Beatles sometimes under our breath"; Stevens, Bedford, Lucy and a girl named Cathy were the others present when Evans delivered the invitation.
We were so moved we went home in a daze ..."[4] Some of the scruffs described American producer Phil Spector as a favourite, saying that he understood why they waited on the steps at Apple and even joined them there for breakfast one morning.
After the release of All Things Must Pass in November 1970, according to Pritchard, Spector wrote a letter to the scruffs, c/o "The Steps" at 3 Savile Row, and he continued to send them cards.
[4] The scruffs assembled at Apple on 12 March 1971,[3] the day that the High Court of Justice ruled in McCartney's favour to dissolve the Beatles as a legal partnership.
[27] Pritchard recalled that Lennon's white Rolls-Royce arrived and he, Harrison and Starr tumbled out laughing uncontrollably, with "tears streaming down their faces".
[3] According to another account, which Beatles historian Keith Badman attributes to the Apple scruffs, the three former bandmates first drove to McCartney's house, where Lennon climbed the wall and threw two bricks through the windows.
Taylor said the magazine was "hilarious" though also "quite cruel at times", and reflective of how the scruffs often had a better perspective on life at Apple than those on the inside, "because they weren't caught up in the details.
[3] McCartney's wedding was the subject of heavy press coverage,[5] which showed the Apple scruffs and other fans in mourning at losing the last romantically available Beatle.
[30] Margo Stevens recalled reporters pushing her towards the newspaper and TV cameras, and goading her to add to the spectacle by weeping harder; episodes such as this taught the scruffs to distrust the press, she said, since they "didn't understand us and made everyone look like idiots".
"[6] Wendy Sutcliffe, who first came to London to look for the Beatles in 1967, recalled that this issue was what especially impressed them about Harrison's tribute song: "[he] understood how we felt and ... knew we weren't just sad, stupid girlies.
A CBS News report predicted that the gathering at 3 Savile Row was "only the beginning", since, "The event is so momentous that historians may one day view it as a landmark in the decline of the British Empire.
[3] When Harrison attended the opening of the refurbished Apple Studio at 3 Savile Row, in October 1971, the NME reported that the scruffs were "still around in force".
[36] In Alan Clayson's view, the Apple scruffs' vigils ended through the individuals' personal maturation along with "the realisation that the Beatles as a 1960s myth would long outlive the mere mortals that constituted its dramatis personae".
[11] In a 2014 article he wrote for Rolling Stone about this and subsequent fan phenomenons, Shaw states: There are Beliebers, One Directioners, Miley Cyrus's Smilers and Beyoncé's Beyhive.