McCartney and Coward met at a party and, while Coward was friendly to McCartney and Lennon, who was also present, he later said to a reporter, "The Beatles, those two I met, seemed nice, pleasant young men.... Of course, they are totally devoid of talent." Later, Coward later to a concert by the group in Rome (he was horrified by the hordes of screaming teenagers and later said, "I should have liked to take some of those squealing young maniacs and cracked their heads together") and went to visit the Beatles after the show. Brian Epstein informed him that the Beatles hadn't been very pleased by his comments in the press and didn't want to say hello. Coward asked Epstein's assistant to go get one of the Beatles, and McCartney came out. "I explained gently but firmly that one did NOT pay much attention to the statements of newspaper reporters.... The poor boy was quite amiable and I sent messages of congratulations to his colleagues." However, Coward said that despite these remarks to McCartney, he considered them "bad-mannered."
