The Beatles: end of The Beginning
It was 50 years ago that The Beatles performed in their last ever public concert and now a documentary looks back at the early touring years
THEY ripped through Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally as they had a thousand times before and then they were off. For the last time. Candlestick Park, San Francisco, August 29, 1966. The Beatles, the first band to make sports stadiums their stage, were turning their backs on stadiums, stages and live audiences for ever.
The audience wasn’t told, nobody knew, maybe they didn’t quite know themselves but one thing they did know: they’d had enough of it.
Perhaps “audience” is not really the word. They, mostly girls, didn’t go to Beatles concerts to listen, they went to scream. Nobody took in the music and that included The Beatles. They couldn’t hear themselves play. It was, said Ringo, turning them into bad musicians.
In 1963 a British journalist writing about the Moptops and their fans came up with the term Beatlemania. It was no more than the truth. It really was a mania. Rudolph Valentino had crowds of idolatrous women, Frank Sinatra had his bobbysoxers, today’s celebrities court and complain about media harassment but none ever experienced anything like this.
When they stopped touring it was only three years since From Me To You had taken them to the top of the singles charts, only 30 months since they had set foot in the US for the first time. When they landed in New York there were thousands of screaming, fainting girls waiting for them at the airport. Their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show got the biggest television audience in US history. How did it happen?
You may say it was the moment when society in both countries was changing: teenagers, even young teenagers were experiencing new freedom and had money to spend. You may say that the US was still reeling from the assassination of President Kennedy and was looking for something young, vibrant and hopeful. Is that really enough to explain the (mostly benign) insanity that was unleashed?
The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years, an enjoyable feature-length documentary released next month, captures the glorious madness of it all. Even if you were around at the time it comes as a shock to see how crazy it was. Even if you remember it’s a joy to be reminded how utterly wonderful The Beatles were.
They were a brilliant band, forged by Liverpool’s Cavern, numberless hours playing in Hamburg and on the road. They were terrific together in every way: sharp, clever, funny and quick. If John was the wittiest and had edge, Paul was twinkly and charming and George and Ringo often had a good line.
lIVERPUDLIANS have a way with words and from the start their playing, their singing, their harmonies, their confidence and their four-inoneness were utterly captivating. Whether you were a music fan or not, a teenager or not, a girl or not, From Me To You struck a chord of recognition – this was something wonderful, something special that we were going to love.
The moptop haircuts and Beatle suits (forced on them by their manager Brian Epstein) helped too. We knew we loved them, we didn’t yet know they were geniuses (or, as the late Ian MacDonald, author of a great book on The Beatles says, Lennon and McCartney together were “a genius”).
What we see in the Eight Days A Week film is not so much their genius as songwriters, it’s the magic of their presence and their brilliance as performers, their personality and the evidence that they had something about them that nobody else has ever matched. You don’t need to be looking through rose-tinted bifocals to see how magical they were.
Through all the madness, the pressure, the travel, the work, the interviews, the hysterical fans, the crazed love, the threats, what kept them sane and sustained them was their four-in-oneness.
Prime minister Harold Wilson invited The Beatles to Downing Street and described them as “a fine body of men”. In June 1965 they got their MBEs.
In August 1965 they played to 55,600 people in New York’s Shea Stadium, which must have been something of a thrill but by the following year and their next US tour they were older, wearier and things had turned a little weirder.
On the first leg of their 1966 tour they had an unpleasant time in the Philippines “I hated the Philippines,” said Ringo, “it was like that hot/ gun/ Spanish inquisition attitude.” George didn’t care for it either: “As soon as we got there it was bad news. There were tough gorilla-little men in short sleeves who acted very melancholy.”
Then they inadvertently failed to respond to an invitation to an audience with Imelda Marcos, the president’s wife. This did not go down well. The Beatles performed there to an audience even bigger than Shea Stadium but were hustled out of the country.
Before going to the US in August 1966 The Beatles did an interview with Maureen Cleave of the Evening Standard, a journalist they knew well and liked. “We are more popular than Jesus,” said John “I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.”
In Britain the quote passed almost unnoticed. It was a very Johnish thing to say and, by the by, at the time it may well have been true. In the US it caused a storm. Beatles records were burned in public, The Beatles were banned from some radio stations, people were setting fire to Beatles effigies in the Bible belt.
JOHN would have to apologise but would that be enough? On August 12 in Chicago he gave a press conference. “I’m sorry I opened my mouth,” he said, “I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion.”
There were death threats. “By the time we got to the Bible belt,” said Paul, “there were people banging on our windows. It made us wonder about touring. It was a case of how much of a good thing can you have? But we were getting a bit fed up anyway.”
Ringo says: “I don’t think anyone didn’t want to stop touring.” So in San Francisco, 17 days after John’s apology, they played their last gig. The next time they were in public view they had transformed into Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They made the recording studio their home and the world is grateful. They produced music that will outlast us all.
In August 2014, Candlestick Park, last post of The Beatles on stage, hosted its final performance before closure and demolition. It was a solo concert by Paul McCartney. His encore included Long Tall Sally and Yesterday. Eight Days A Week opens in cinemas on September 15.
vanessa feltz is away