The Beatles’ Shea Stadium Concert + 60
At a time when music superstars sell out arenas and stadiums regularly on tour (Taylor Swift, Coldplay, Springsteen), it might be difficult to truly appreciate the extraordinary event of August 15, 1965, when the Beatles played to a sold-out Shea Stadium filled with over 55,000 hysterical fans, whose noise was virtually deafening throughout the Fab Four’s half-hour concert.
That performance, the first stadium rock concert and an appropriate venue to reflect the Beatles’ unprecedented stardom, kicked off the group’s 1965 tour, just two weeks after the release of their Help! album and film.
On that hot August night in Flushing, Queens, Beatlemania reached its delirious crescendo — or, perhaps, the peak among many.
The Shea concert has been written about thousands of times in the past 60 years, with virtually no stone left unturned, but it’s still worth remembering a few of the details.
So, let’s dive!
Before the Beatles ever set foot on American tarmac, New York promoter Sid Bernstein booked them to play Carnegie Hall, for that prestigious venue’s first rock concert. He did so without any guarantee that they would be a hit in America. Brian Epstein was reluctant to have them perform in front of a possibly half-empty hall. But once “I Want to Hold Your Hand” reached #1 on the charts, tickets The Ed Sullivan Show and Carnegie Hall concert (scheduled for February 12, three days after their appearance on Sullivan) became hot commodities.
The “invasion” was next. The Beatles appeared on Sullivan’s show to a national viewership of 73 million people, followed by the Carnegie Hall concert, and another concert in Washington, D.C.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Bernstein for my book, We’re Going to See the Beatles! He explained in his soft-spoken manner how the events in February of ’64 leading to the Shea concert unfolded, as he found a way to top both his own and the Beatles’ successes in New York.
“My tickets for the Carnegie Hall concert, which were priced at $3.50, $4.50, and $5.50, sold out in a half hour at the box office,” he said. “And they were selling for up to about $500 a ticket on the street. After Carnegie Hall, I heard from the box office manager, Nat Posnik, who said, ‘You could’ve played them for fifty days, Sid, and sold out the house for fifty days.’ I called Brian overseas, and said, ‘Brian, we had talked about the possibility of playing Madison Square Garden. I want to change that.’
‘Where to you want to play them, Sid?’
‘I want to put them in Shea Stadium.’
The idea would seem preposterous to just about any rational-thinking person at the time.
“Brian was concerned again about the Beatles possibly playing to empty seats in a stadium with 55,000 seats. I said, ‘Brian, I’ll give you ten dollars for every empty seat there is’…We had done Carnegie Hall on a handshake, and we did Shea Stadium on a handshake, too.”
Bernstein booked Shea Stadium for August 15.
Shea was still sparkling new, having been completed in ’64 as the permanent home of the New York Mets. Immediately adjacent to the stadium at the time was, of course, the 1964–65 World’s Fair, which had only two months left to go before closing forever.
Once Bernstein announced that the Beatles would be playing at Shea, his office was deluged with thousands of ticket requests, as were the other venues in the city selling the prized tickets. The highest ticket price for seeing the biggest rock group in the world: $5.65.
The Beatles returned to New York on August 14th, staying at the Warwick Hotel on 54th Street and 6th Ave. in Manhattan. Their first order of business was to tape another appearance in front of a live audience for Sullivan’s program, to be aired on its season premiere in September.
The next day, fans began to stream into Shea by late afternoon. The gates opened at 5:15, with about 5,000 fans rushing in. Hawkers made their rounds outside the stadium selling Beatles souvenirs. At the same time, the Beatles themselves were on a New York Air helicopter, taking off from the Wall St. helicopter pad and over the East River, then to Queens. The original plan was to land on the grounds of the stadium itself but were denied permission, so the chopper landed on the World’s Fair pad. A Wells Fargo armored truck provided their transporation for the remaining leg of the trip to the stadium.
With the stage set up squarely over second base on the baseball diamond, and three rows of wooden barricades strung along the perimeter of the infield, the concert began at 8:00 p.m. with popular New York DJs Murray (“the K”) Kaufman of WINS, and Bruce (“Cousin Brucie”) Morrow of WABC sharing MC duties.
The warm-up acts included Sounds Incorporated (another band managed by Epstein), the rather generically-named Discotheque Dancers, and singer Brenda Holloway, backed by King Curtis and his R&B band. Alas, the anticipatory screams for the Beatles by the impatient crowd drowned out the thankless efforts of the openers.
Finally, Sullivan took to the stage to introduce the group everyone had been waiting — and screaming — for.
The songs played that night, and for most of the stops on the ’65 tour, were: “Twist and Shout,” “She’s a Woman,” “I Feel Fine,” “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” “Ticket to Ride,” “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Baby’s in Black,” “Act Naturally,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Help!” and “I’m Down.”
Unfortunately, due to copyright issues, the official version of the concert film in its entirety is not available on YouTube. However, you can click on each of the individual songs the Beatles performed, or see the video collage below, to appreciate the atmosphere as it was happening.
UPDATE: I have found this film of the entire concert, with the audio supplied directly from the audio recording board behind the stage (which is why the deafening cheers from the crowd sound so muffled). This is also the version as it was before some re-recording was done by the group in the studio to make it better suited to air on TV in the U.K.
Talking with so many of the original generation of fans for my book was a wonderful experience, as many described their personal memories of being at Shea (the idea for me to do the book grew from an article I wrote for Beatlefan magazine in 2005, marking the concert’s 40th anniversary).
Valerie Volponi recalled, “My friend Inga had an uncle who knew somebody who worked at Shea Stadium, and offered to get us tickets. We had no idea until the day of the concert that our tickets were for the front row right behind the dugout. We couldn’t believe how close we were. When the Beatles came out, we got to see the back of their heads really well! It was very overwhelming. You couldn’t hear anything but a roar. And my cousin head the roar — he lived several miles away and said you could hear it.”
Murray the K, after leaving the stage, retreated to the clubhouse under the stands and found, to his astonishment, dozens upon dozens of prostrate girls lying on every available flat surface, being attended to by the medical staff and police.
Linda Cooper took a bus from the D.C. area with her friend: “My friend Gloria and I went. And she, with the heat, and she was a screamer — she passed out. So then a policeman comes and hauls her off! And I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God. We have to get a bus, I’m how many hundreds of miles away from home, and there goes my girlfriend! What is my priority? I’m not leaving the concert!’ I finally found her in the some sort of tent that they had set up for all of the girls that had passed out.”
Back in the stands, among the tens of thousands of excited fans, were two young women who didn’t know each other at the time, but whose lives would later intersect against truly astronomical odds. They were Linda Eastman, an aspiring rock photographer who, four years later, would become Paul McCartney’s wife, and Barbara Goldbach, a young model who would become known as actress Barbara Bach — who, in 1981, became Mrs. Ringo Starr. A number probably hasn’t been invented yet to demonstrate the remote chances of two teenage girls from the New York area attending the same concert by the world-famous group, and each eventually marrying a Beatle.
[Just for good measure, there was another teen fan in the stands who traveled from central New Jersey to see the concert, and would later make quite a name for herself, too — her name being Meryl Streep.]
To record the concert for posterity, Sullivan’s production company used thirteen cameras, including one in a helicopter, to film the onstage activities and crowd reactions.
Upon the conclusion of the concert, the Beatles made a hasty exit in a white station wagon, $160,000 richer, leaving behind a stadium full of blubbering, crying, exhausted teenagers.
Maryanne Laffin: “I went to the Shea Stadium concert by myself. None of my friends wanted to go. I saved up my baby-sitting money, gave it to my mother, she wrote me a check, I bought the ticket. My father dropped me off and picked me up. I remember coming home and I couldn’t talk. I had such a sore throat!”
Of the $304,000 gross, promoter Bernstein, after footing the bill for the numerous expenses, took home $7,000 (which was quite a hefty sum in 1965).
Two months after the concert, on the day before the World’s Fair closed, a time capsule constructed by Westinghouse was sealed and placed in the ground, designed to be opened in 5,000 years (we humans should be so lucky). There were 45 items placed inside the tube. One of those was the single of “A Hard Day’s Night.” So, it could be said that regardless of changing trends, styles of music, language, and cultural touchstones, evidence of the Beatles’ contribution to our history is secure for at least the next 5,000 years. But it would have been nice if the committee selecting the items had thought to include a phonograph for playing the record. Instead, we’ll have to hope the capsule will be opened by some very industrious people.
The concert film was first broadcast in the U.K. on March 1, 1966, after some audio dubbing by the group to improve upon their live stage performance. Ironically, it did not air in America until January 10, 1967, as the Beatles were in the studio creating Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the music of which was light years away from the Help! era songs they performed on the ’65 tour. The swiftness of their musical evolution in such a short timespan remains unparalleled in modern music.
Compared to the epic ’65 concert, the group’s return to Shea the following summer has received relatively short shrift in the annals of their career as a band. The setlist for their return engagement was as impressive as ever: “Rock and Roll Music”, “She’s a Woman”, “If I Needed Someone”, “Day Tripper”, “Baby’s in Black”, “I Feel Fine”, “Yesterday”, “I Wanna Be Your Man”, “Nowhere Man”, “Paperback Writer”, and “Long Tall Sally”.
Still, things were undeniably a little different from the year before. The Beatles had suffered a few public relations setbacks on the ’66 tour, and, after being assaulted by angry mobs for the unintentional snub of Philippines First Lady Imelda Marcos, barely escaped with their lives. They had also become pariahs throughout the southern Bible Belt due to the infamous interview quote from John regarding Christianity and how “the Beatles are more popular than Jesus” among young people.
Perhaps as a cumulative result, the ’66 Shea concert took place with as many as 11,000 empty seats (estimates varied among the press accounts) — something that would have been unthinkable the year before. There was also no official film made of the event, as there had been in ’65, but this pastiche of audio clips and home movies by attendees does a fairly good job of preserving at least fragmented moments of the concert:
Some newspaper and TV reports focused on the empty seats rather than on the sustained and barely-controlled chaos among the fans, whose enthusiasm for the group hadn’t wavered a bit.
Sid Bernstein offered at least a partial — and surprising — explanation of the lower attendance.
“The reason,” he said, “was the Singer sewing machine. I had the opportunity to work with Tony Bennett, who had done a TV show sponsored by Singer. The vice president of Singer told me the company was opening a new store at Rockefeller Center, right above the rink. I liked him and wanted to help him with the promotion. I told him I’d sell him several thousand tickets for the Shea concert for face value, for them to put on sale at the store. He became the main outlet. My babysitters were counting the tickets with me to take to him. We had to count off about 18,000 tickets. We put them in cigar boxes, shoe boxes…A year after the event, I found a box full of tickets — about 2,500 tickets that we didn’t send down to Singer. And that was the reason there was a big space of empty seats in Shea Stadium at the concert.”
Whether that story, even directly from Bernstein himself, is closer to part truth and part myth, and whether there were other factors involved, seems destined to be a matter of conjecture among Beatles fans and historians. The difference between the two Shea concerts can perhaps best be summed up most succinctly by George Harrison, in the documentary The Beatles Anthology.
“I don’t ever remember going there twice,” he said of Shea Stadium.
Be that as it may — even if the group had only done that one concert in ’65, it remains an epic event in rock music history. As the Beatles had done some many times before and after that night, they became the first — they became the trailblazers.
Until next time…
If you would like to read more stories about the Shea concert from the fans who were there, plus memories of over 40 individuals from that first generation telling of their personal experiences from all across the country, We’re Going to See the Beatles! is available at Amazon.com with the link below:
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Links to other Beatles-related articles of mine, plus a small sampling of miscellaneous pieces focusing on entertainment and pop culture:
“The Beatlemania Years on New York Radio” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Remembering When the Beatles Appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“The Man Who Filmed the Beatles” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“1964: Pop Culture’s Greatest Year?” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Sgt. Pepper vs. Sgt. Friday — How Dragnet Battled the Counterculture” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Was the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour Really a Failure?” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“The DJ Who Told Us That Paul is (maybe) Dead” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“For The Last Time: Let it Be was NOT The Beatles’ Break-up Album” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“The Night John Lennon Died” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Two Classic Albums -Layla and All Things Must Pass at 50" | by Garry Berman | Medium
“When British ‘New Wave’ Was New — and Great” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“50 Years ago: A Chorus Line Comes to Broadway” | by Garry Berman | Jul, 2025 | Medium
“Television Stars Who Went from Hits to Flops” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“More TV Stars Who Went from Hits to Flops” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Those Hilarious British Panel Shows” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Perry Mason and its Entertaining Imperfections | by Garry Berman | June, 2024 | Medium
“Retro Review: Pan Am” https://medium.com/@garryberman/retro-review-pan-am-2afc7af35905
“Retro Review: Local Hero at 40” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“When Comedy Met Tragedy: the JFK Assassination” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“ It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 60th Anniversary” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Has Fawlty Towers Been Overrated?” | by Garry Berman | May, 2024 | Medium
“A Marx Brothers Classic, Animal Crackers, Re-released 50 Years Ago” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Virginia O’Brien: An Appreciation” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Why I Stopped Watching Saturday Night Live — 45 Years Ago” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Television’s Greatest Sitcom Dad?” https://garryberman.medium.com/televisions-greatest-sitcom-dad-ef2dab761525
“A Mother’s Day Tribute to our Funniest Sitcom Moms” https://medium.com/@garryberman/a-mothers-day-tribute-to-our-funniest-sitcom-moms-68f9122538a8
“Breaking the Fourth Wall (in comedy)” https://medium.com/@garryberman/breaking-the-fourth-wall-in-comedy-51edfa9f88f0
“Comedy to Die For: When Death Rears it’s Head in Sitcoms” https://medium.com/@garryberman/comedy-to-die-for-when-death-rears-its-head-in-sitcoms-7a51cb0acc32
“Saying Goodbye to Modern Family” https://medium.com/@garryberman/saying-good-bye-to-modern-family-73897235416d
“Whatever Happened to Comedy Teams?” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“No Laughs, Please: Our Greatest Comedians as Dramatic Actors” https://medium.com/@garryberman/no-laughs-please-37fdf614e85a
“Fifty Years of The Odd Couple on TV” https://medium.com/@garryberman/fifty-years-of-the-odd-couple-on-tv-part-i-62a0eac93520
“My Funny Valentine: Comedy’s Real-life Married Couples” https://medium.com/@garryberman/my-funny-valentine-comedys-real-life-married-couples-1f0605e2caca
“The First Person to be Censored on TV was…Eddie Cantor?” https://medium.com/@garryberman/eddie-cantor-the-first-person-to-be-censored-on-tv-78b56c68cae1
“Mary Kay and Johnny: Television’s First Sitcom” https://medium.com/@garryberman/mary-kay-and-johnny-televisions-first-sitcom-835fec303b5e
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Please visit www.GarryBerman.com to read synopses and reviews of my books, and order them via the links to Amazon.com.
