"Yoko hugged me": Rosanna Arquette recalls how the Beatles were a big part of her growing up

Actor, activist and filmmaker Rosanna Arquette joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about her Bohemian upbringing, favorite Beatles song, friendship with Paul McCartney and much more on “Everything Fab Four,” a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.

Arquette, known for such films as “Pulp Fiction,” “After Hours” and “Desperately Seeking Susan,” is a member of the famous show business family sharing the same name (along with siblings Richmond, Patricia, Alexis and David). As she told Womack, they were brought up by a “poet and actress” mother and “actor and musician” father. “We lived a very unconventional life,” she said. “Abbie Hoffman once slept on our living room floor.” She even met Dr. Martin Luther King when she was only six years old, since her mother was also a social activist.

Their family moved around the U.S. a lot when Arquette was young, including spending time on a commune, but the one constant was music. “Music was always, always around,” she explained. “We had a lot of musician friends, and I always gravitated to people in music. They made me feel safe. And the Beatles were for sure a big part of that. Even at five I would sit and listen to ‘Sgt. Pepper.’ At nine it was ‘Revolver.’ The Beatles were just a big part of me growing up.”

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That love of music would eventually lead Arquette to film backstage interviews at the long-running Coachella Festival, where she “talked to everybody. I talked to Sir Paul. No one said no.” She counts McCartney and his family among her friends, as well as a few members of John Lennon’s, too. “Yoko [Ono] and Sean are in my ‘All We are Saying’ documentary . . . I actually met her and John when I was a child in New York City. Yoko hugged me and said sweetly, ‘Have a nice life.’ I never forgot that.” On a more somber note, Arquette also never forgot where she was when she heard of Lennon’s death. “I was in LA at a restaurant called Figaro’s. I got on a red-eye and flew to New York and stood in front of that building for the 10 minutes of silence.”

Currently, Arquette is still busy acting, directing and producing, and her passion for her family and social justice burns as brightly as ever – as does her love for the music she grew up with. “It was much more poetic,” she said. “The lyrics meant something. Paul – even though he was part of that era – he appreciates the young bands and the young artists coming up, he enjoys shepherding people. The next generations, that’s really what it’s all about.”

Listen to the entire conversation with Rosanna Arquette on “Everything Fab Four” and subscribe via Spotify, Apple, Google or wherever you’re listening.

“Everything Fab Four” is distributed by Salon. Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin and the bestselling books "Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles” and “John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.” His latest book is the authorized biography of Beatles road manager Mal Evans, “Living the Beatles Legend,” out now.