So here's another "50 years ago today" in rock history, 1965 being a momentous year. A few weeks ago Dylan went electric at Newport. Today, August 15, the Beatles played to by far the largest rock 'n roll crowd to date, over 55,000 at Shea Stadium in NYC—the home of the baseball Mets who, in their fourth year, went 50-112 under manager Casey Stengel.
Up till then, even Elvis, who the Liverpool guys idolized, hadn't played to audiences half that size. (Two weeks later near the end of the '65 tour the group met Elvis in LA.) Yes, The Beatles at Shea Stadium was historic (first stadium concert, largest crowd, biggest payout), but in all the brouhaha we sometimes forget:
• Along with DJ Murray The K, there were many warm-up acts, including soul singer Brenda Holloway (dynamite), King Curtis (holy shit), The Young Rascals (their early best), Cannibal and the Headhunters (an East LA Latino band with a danceable hit whose "na-na-na-na-na" is stuck in our collective consciousness), Sounds Incorporated (who I sorta remembered but had to Wiki to read how interesting they were), and Killer Joe Piro and His Discotheque Dancers (who?).
• The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, whose "Satisfaction" had topped the charts most of the summer, attended the show and visited The Beatles backstage before they went on.
• Two future Beatle wives were in the audience, although they weren't the screaming 13-year-olds often associated with the concert. Linda Eastman was 24, a year older than Paul McCartney, who she'd marry four years later in 1969; and 18-year-old Barbara Bach eventually wed Ringo Starr, but not until 1981.
• After Ed Sullivan introduced them, The Beatles played just 30 minutes, singing 12 songs (do the math, no "Hey Jude"-length songs tonight). That was a typical set on the 1965 tour, where the show included most of the opening acts mentioned above and a half-hour of Beatles. Playing in nine cities, it was their third tour of the US after two tours in 1964.
• The Fab Four also appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" that same night, only it was a taped performance they had made a day earlier.
Why Shea?
The year before, during The Beatles' first tour of the States, they easily sold out two performances at NYC's Carnegie Hall, prompting the ticket manager to joke to promoter Sid Bernstein that they could've sold out 30 shows. That got Bernstein thinking about a much larger venue, which is how Shea Stadium came to be the first show on The Beatles' 1965 two-week American tour, which also traveled to Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, Bloomington, Portland, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Promoter Bernstein guaranteed manager Brian Epstein that his group would fill Shea, even offering to buy unsold tickets at twice the face value. He didn't have to buy any, because the show sold out seven months ahead of time. Tickets started at $4.50 and went clear up to $5.65! You must've gotten a really really good seat for that extra $1.15. In today's dollars the group cleared $1.4 million, at the time the largest single-night take.
Still in their early 20s, and just a few years from playing Liverpool's tiny Cavern Club, the group was riding a mighty big wave, just back home from a successful European tour—the height of Beatlemania. In the months preceding Shea the lads released three #1 hits ("I Feel Fine," "Eight Days a Week," and "Ticket To Ride"), two #1 albums (Beatles '65 and Beatles VI) and their movie Help! opened just two days before the Shea concert. A month later the single "Help!" hit #1, and the LP of the same title soon did the same.
Long & Winding Road
On the afternoon of the 15th, to avoid causing traffic jams that might block tunnels and bridges, the guys were helicoptered from a heliport near their Warwick Hotel in Manhattan to Shea Stadium in Queens. The entire trip was filmed by pros working for Ed Sullivan, and the flying travelogue was featured in an upcoming documentary. Beatles' management wanted to land in the outfield, but undoubtedly for safety reasons NYC authorities wisely nixed that plan, and the helicopter put down on the roof of a nearby building at the 1964 World's Fair (remember them?).
From there The Beatles were driven to the stadium's innards in a Wells Fargo armored truck (the badges they wear onstage were given to them by a guard). They changed into tan Nehru jackets and black slacks in the umpire's locker room; then, after Ed Sullivan's introduction at 9:16 pm, they sprinted from the third base dugout, instruments in hand, to the small stage at second base. Unlike today's stadium shows, no seats were set up in the infield, which meant the band, which was used to crowds so close they could pass drinks, was "so far away from the audience," recalled Ringo.
No Exit
A recent Wall Street Journal article suggests John Lennon was a bit freaked out by the crowd's size and frenzy. On top of that, even though there were more than 2,000 cops on duty (many with cotton balls in their ears), this was new territory for the security forces—so big, so bonkers, bad shit could definitely happen. Onstage, there was no exit other than the return route toward the chaos. And what if thousands of teenagers rushed the field, like they did whenever The Beatles appeared in public? Some tried that night, a few nearly made it, putting John on edge.
After the band finished "A Hard Day's Night," a girl jumped on the field and made a beeline for the stage, eluding the clutches of police. When she was finally caught, the stadium crowd began to boo and Paul McCartney playfully booed along with them. Shocked, Lennon walked forward with his guitar, swung around in front of Mr. McCartney and gave him a stony "Are you nuts?" glare.
Biographer
Philip Norman says Bob Dylan introduced Lennon to pot in 1964, and thereafter he partook often. So it probably wouldn't have helped John's paranoia at Shea if he was stoned out of his gourd. That seems likely in the crazy closing number, "I'm Down," where John puts down his trusty Rickenbacker for the electric organ—parodying Jerry Lee Lewis, with fingers, fists and elbows flying up and down the keyboard. Ringo later recalled: "[He] just went mad ... just got crazy." The Beatles had a large stage, figuratively and, this night, literally—what Lennon later
called "the top of the mountain." So maybe it was fitting to end like happy drunks rocking a Hamburg strip club, which they did probably hundreds of times. Not that long ago. I'd be giddy too.
Can You Hear Me Now?
That day promoters, musicians and stage hands were learning for the first time about security and other logistics for super-large shows, but videos from the event suggest they hadn't really figured out the whole musical performance thing. John, Paul, George and Ringo played to 55,600 screaming kids in a baseball stadium, yet their speakers are about 3 feet tall, like they're playing a school dance. Their regular 30-watt amps were ramped up to 100 for the show, but that still proved inadequate, as were the speakers lined up along the first and third base lines. So the sound engineers decided to use the stadium's PA system—not the best solution for musical quality.
This being years before in-ear monitors and other devices that help musicians hear themselves, the Shea sound system produced feedback, echoes and other complications that, combined with the constant screaming, meant the guys couldn't hear themselves or one another. They ended up watching each another as much as listening, but by then they were used to it and John didn't really seem all that concerned:
INTERVIEWER: "Does it bother you that you can't hear what you sing during a concert?"
JOHN LENNON: "No, we don't mind. We've got the records at home."
It's doubtful many in the audience heard much music either, which became a main reason the band quit touring a year later. So few were really listening, which probably got old, as would the nutso days. The music was changing too, less crafted for loud arenas. Immediately after the 1965 American tour ended, they took a short break and recorded
Rubber Soul. They didn't attempt
anything like "Norwegian Wood" in the Shea environment.
Put Me in the Movies
Anticipating Woodstock, which also began on August 15, only four years later, the Shea Stadium concert was filmed by Ed Sullivan's production company, using more than a dozen cameras. Like the investors backing Woodstock and other mega-concerts, Sullivan and his producers could make a pile of money beyond the show itself. The result is the 50-minute documentary The Beatles at Shea Stadium, which premiered on the BBC in March 1966, not airing in the US until January 1967. It's still not available at Netflix, Amazon and similar outlets, although you can find copies online. Most of the footage that was shot remains unreleased.
Audio mistakes, which were numerous given the crowd noise, pathetic equipment and the band's inability to hear, were fixed in post-production with overdubs and other studio magic. A couple songs from Shea were left out of the film ("She's a Woman" and "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby"), and almost every tune was doctored to some extent. The entire song "Twist and Shout" was lifted from The Beatles' later appearance at the Hollywood Bowl and reworked for the Shea film, while Ringo's live "Act Naturally" performance was dropped completely, and his studio version was substituted.
After their brief set, barely more than a half-hour, the band didn't risk another jog across the infield to the dugout. People were climbing fences, cops were chasing kids everywhere, medics were treating dozens of passed-out teens (it was a hot, humid night), and things might get a little scary if The Beatles ran back to the dugout, toward the wired crowd. Rather than incite more mayhem, the band jumped into a Rambler station wagon, which drove them to the dugout, then on to the waiting armored van and helicopter.
I was the right age and all, and a Beatles fan since the beginning, but I don't recall asking my parents to fork over five bucks and drive me to Flushing Meadows, which wasn't that far. By then, I think I had tired of the poppy tunes and clean-cut image—even mom liked "Yesterday" and "Michelle." So I took up with grittier bad-boy bands like The Stones and The Kinks, the ones my parents hated. My loss, should've gone.
And In The End
Shea Stadium 1965 was the first time a large outdoor arena was used for a rock concert. It would hardly be the last. A year later, in August 1966, The Beatles played Shea again on their final tour. Between the two concerts America increased its troop level in Vietnam to more than 200,000, igniting the first large anti-war demonstrations. The nation and especially its youth were growing up, and the 1966 Shea Stadium concert, which was far from a sellout, was more sober, less nuts. Interviewed years later, McCartney and Starr forgot about it completely, remembering only the first show in 1965.
In July 2008, just before Shea Stadium was demolished to make way for Citi Field, Billy Joel played the final concert at the historic venue. Among the artists who joined him on stage was Liverpudlian Paul McCartney, who sang the last song ever played at Shea: "Let It Be."