6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
When the Beatles hit a grand slam in rock-and-roll
Fourteen-year-old Barbara Kiczek of suburban Roselle, New Jersey, felt as if she had gone to heaven. And it wasn't because she was sitting so high in an upper level of Shea Stadium in Queens, the new home of baseball's New York Mets.
'I swore that Paul McCartney was waving at me,' she said. 'Here I am sitting in the third tier, and I said, 'Look, he's looking right at me!'' Now Barbara Langan, she was laughing at the thought 60 years later.
She and her sister, Chris, a year older, were mad for the Beatles. And they were at the group's historic concert at Shea Stadium on Aug. 15, 1965.
The crowd size was unprecedented. The Beatles had played in 1964 before about 16,000 people in New York's Forest Hills Stadium, and 20,000 in Missouri at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. The 55,600-seat capacity at Shea seemed impossible to fill for any popular music act — especially a rock-and-roll group — but the Beatles did it, easily selling out tickets priced at $4.50, $5 and $5.65. It remains the largest crowd for a Fab Four concert.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones attended the show, as well as Ronnie Spector and Nedra Talley of the Ronettes, and so did Marvin Gaye. Amazingly, so did Linda Eastman and Barbara Bach, who later married McCartney and Ringo Starr, respectively.
'Packing stadiums was a new thing for a rock-and-roll band, and now it's as common as the cellphones that distract us,' said veteran radio DJ Meg Griffin, now hosting a Beatles Channel show on SiriusXM. 'Artists and bands, including the Rolling Stones, U2, Billie Eilish and more, play huge stadiums. Beyoncé and Taylor Swift fans expect it (along with better sound and giant video screens). The Beatles were the first.'
The tale began, as it did for so many American teens, on Feb. 9, 1964, when John Lennon, George Harrison, McCartney and Starr — just 20 to 23 years old themselves — debuted on what was then Sunday-night appointment TV, 'The Ed Sullivan Show.'
When the Beatles concluded their five songs with 'I Want to Hold Your Hand,' plenty of teens like Barbara and Chris were nodding 'yes.'
After that, Langan said, 'I followed them constantly.' She even started a fan club, writing newsletters and mailing them to people across the country.
Sullivan introduced the group everyone was waiting for at Shea that night: 'Honored by their country, decorated by their queen, and loved here in America, ladies and gentlemen — the Beatles!'
The four emerged from the third base dugout, three of them clutching their guitars, looked at the incredible scene of fans pretty much going out of their minds — 80 percent teenage girls, by some estimates at the time — and ran to the stage that had been set up at second base.
'It was deafening, because everybody was screaming,' Langan recalled. And I was part of that, screaming 'Paul!,' because he was my favorite Beatle — it was just a natural reflex.'
Felix Cavaliere, the front man for the '60s band the Rascals ('A Beautiful Morning,' 'Good Lovin'') was sitting in the third base dugout for the concert. Sid Bernstein, the promoter who brought the Beatles to America for two concerts at Carnegie Hall on Feb. 12, 1964, and who put the unprecedented stadium show together, had signed on to manage the fledgling band earlier in 1965. The group had appeared the previous day at D.C.'s Washington Coliseum.
'What better opportunity to advertise your new group,' Cavaliere, then 22, said from his home in Nashville.
As part of his contract with the city, the Mets and their stadium, Bernstein was given time and space for messages on the large scoreboard over the outfield fence. Bernstein dictated to a Shea staffer: 'Please, for your safety and your neighbor's safety, stay in your seats throughout the concert. Failure to do so could result in the cancellation of this event.'
Listening to the crowd getting louder and louder from his dugout perch, Cavaliere was taking it all in. 'The screaming started pretty quickly,' he said. 'It was hysteria.
'Then, all of a sudden, I look up and on the scoreboard is: 'The Rascals are coming. The Rascals are coming. The Rascals are coming.' And the next thing I remember is [Beatles manager] Brian Epstein saying very calmly to Sid, 'If that sign is not taken down within 60 seconds, there's not going to be a show.''
The Rascals promo came off, and the show went on.
Another thing that's stuck with Cavaliere over the decades is the comical image of Bernstein chasing some fans on the field. 'Sid was a heavyset man,' he said. 'As the show was starting, a couple of young girls charged the stage. And here's this 260-, 270-pound man running after them.'
Sheila Clarendon, from the Jersey Shore town of Brielle, had just graduated high school and went to the concert with a friend.
They had a plan to deal with unruly fans. They joined a group called the Beatles Bobbies International and even wore 'official' arm bands to the concert.
There were Beatles Bobbies groups in England and all over the United States. 'While in New York, Bobbies plan to sit in a group and prevent others from rushing onstage. If anyone faints, they plan to assist them,' the Trenton (New Jersey) Times reported.
'We had been to other concerts, and the noise was so incredible, you couldn't even hear them sing,' Clarendon, who had already seen the Beatles in Atlantic City the year before, said by phone from Florida. 'So we thought maybe we could calm people down so we could hear them sing.
'It did not work,' she conceded. 'We ended up screaming at people to shut up and we were just as loud as they were.'
Bernstein, a World War II veteran, was a manager, an artist's agent and then a concert promoter in New York — he worked with the likes of Tito Puente, Miles Davis, Judy Garland and Tony Bennett before sticking mostly with the Beatles and other rock-and-roll acts.
He first heard about the Beatles in 1963, when he began reading British papers and magazines for a class he was taking at the New School, and seeing more and more stories about an oddly named quartet from Liverpool attracting crowds and causing some 'hysteria.'
'I realized that any day now, the excitement might find its way to American shores,' he said in his autobiography, 'It's Sid Bernstein Calling,' written with Arthur Aaron. And he was determined to be the guy who brought them across the pond.
Bernstein, who died in 2013, called Epstein, and convinced him that he could book the band into New York City's prestigious Carnegie Hall for Feb. 12, 1964, Abraham Lincoln's birthday. 'It's a legal holiday here in the states,' he told Epstein. 'The kids will be out of school, and we can do two shows.' They agreed on a payment of $6,500 for two shows.
Later, Bernstein persuaded a hesitant Epstein to book Shea for the 1965 concert by promising to pay him $10 for each empty seat, lessening any financial risk. Of course, it was a total sellout.
Sid Bernstein's son, Dylan, 58, related what he called a 'funny side note' to the Shea story. In an email message, he said New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. and other officials 'told Sid that their teenage children, and their children's friends, were desperate for tickets to the show. I guess permission to use Shea was inevitable.'
Even the Mets, playing in Houston when the concert took over their home field, were excited about the Beatles. Rookie outfielder Ron Swoboda, then 21, described himself as 'a huge Beatles fan' in an email, adding, 'I was totally jealous that they appeared at Shea while we were on the road.'
But at least one member of the ballclub — the team's lead groundskeeper, Pete Flynn — was around to help the Beatles that night.
'My dad didn't boast,' said his daughter, Eileen Flynn, in an interview, 'but it was obviously something people always wanted to talk about.'
'My dad was from Ireland,' she said. 'He really didn't like rock music. He liked his Irish music and country music.' The night of the concert, Flynn was behind the wheel of a Mets white station wagon, charged with getting the group into the car after they finished the last of their 12 songs, 'I'm Down,' and out of the stadium.
He quickly, but safely, drove them across the field — avoiding any fans who had jumped onto the grass — through a gate in the outfield fence, where the band was transferred to the Wells Fargo armored truck that brought them in, and back to a helicopter waiting at the World's Fair grounds, next to the stadium, for the return ride to Manhattan.
Four decades later, Flynn had another Beatle encounter, when McCartney flew in for a Billy Joel concert at the stadium — the final concert there, dubbed 'The Last Play at Shea.' That stadium was demolished and replaced by Citi Field after the 2008 season. It was Flynn who drove McCartney in a golf cart to the stage, where he played 'I Saw Her Standing There' and 'Let It Be' with Joel.
Flynn's greeting to McCartney was captured on film for a documentary, with the groundskeeper reintroducing himself, saying: 'I'm the guy who drove you before.'
McCartney addressed that July 18, 2008, crowd: 'Hey New York. It's so cool to be back here on the last night. Came here a long time ago and we had a blast that night. And we're having another one tonight.'
Security at the 1965 concert — some 2,000 strong — included many New York Police Department officers trained to confront any problem. But they were no match for the noise of tens of thousands of screaming teenage girls. The police were seen covering their ears as they kept their eyes wide open for potential trouble.
After David Katz turned 16 at the end of March in 1965, he headed to Shea to see if he could get a job with concessionaire Harry M. Stevens.
'I had this idea of getting a pass to get into Shea to see the Beatles in August,' Katz, a Queens native, recalled in a telephone interview. 'I also remember my mother was upset with me because Aug. 15 is my grandfather's birthday and the whole family is going out and I wasn't going to go.'
The interview was simple. He got his stadium pass and was told to report back and pick up what he was going to sell (starting with sodas, the heaviest item). 'When you come in,' he said, 'they said, 'show this pass to the people at the gate.''
'Never once did I work at the stadium,' Katz said with a laugh. 'I knew the Beatles were coming, and that's the only reason I got the job, so I could get in to see them.'
The scheme worked, but the concert left Katz dissatisfied. 'You couldn't hear s--- and you could see that they couldn't hear s---. I don't recall recognizing any songs,' Katz said. 'In my mind, it was a bunch of noise. It was a big disappointment. It wasn't worth the effort.'
Brenda Holloway, from Los Angeles, had a different perspective — from the stage. The 19-year-old was a singer signed to Motown when she was invited to tour with the Beatles starting with the New York show.
Even now, in a phone call from the West Coast, she sounded surprised that it all happened. 'I used to go to sleep at night listening to them,' Holloway said.
And when did she actually realize she would sing before more than 50,000 people? 'When I walked into the entrance to Shea Stadium and I looked at it. Everything was so big, I was so small.'
Holloway was one of the opening acts — along with the Discotheque Dancers troupe, King Curtis and his band, Sounds Incorporated and Cannibal & the Headhunters — Beatles fans either ignored or couldn't really hear. 'The crowd was just so overwhelming. They were excited, They were screaming, just doing their thing,' Holloway said. If she had been in the crowd, she admitted with a laugh, she would have been yelling 'I want the Beatles,' too.
After singing her cover of the Four Tops hit 'I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch),' Holloway stepped aside to watch the Beatles perform from the back side of the stage.
Their opener, 'Twist and Shout,' provoked a tidal wave of noise.
'It was like a verbal tsunami, too much to even fathom in your mind,' she said.
Nobody had ever seen a concert like this Beatles show, said Warren Zanes, a musician, music historian, professor and writer ('Deliver Me From Nowhere,' a book about Bruce Springsteen being made into a movie).
'They had so little gear. Each had a 100-watt Vox amplifier, which was pumped through the stadium's baseball PA system, and one guitar each for three of them. So, basically what they would have used in a club setting.
'As an experience, everyone — audience, performers — they were all in something new.'
