TIME CAPSULE:

we look back at all the fun of the The Beatles’ 1964 tour

On Thursday June 11, 1964, Sydney was in the grip of a drenching storm. It was cold at 7.30am but 2000 kids screamed their heads off as they were soaked to the skin watching the Beatles arrive in Australia. Aussie teenagers had never experienced anything like it. Three hundred thousand South Australians closed the city. The streets outside the band’s hotels in Sydney and Melbourne were blockaded by fans screaming: “We love you Beatles, oh yes we do,” for hours on end. Self-confessed Beatle maniac Jennie Small told the Powerhouse Museum: “My Beatles were Ringo and George.” She still has the sign she made, “Ringo, how about a ring? 44 226” (her phone number). “We divided them up so we weren’t trespassing on each other’s potential partners,” she laughs. On the tour, the Beatles played a 10-song, half-hour set in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin and Auckland, often doing two shows a day. It was only a fortnight in their history, but it changed Australia forever. Australian groups started to form with their own version of the Mersey beat sound. It was the first national teenage movement – kids grew their hair and were expelled from school, Cuban heels and the latest London fashions hit the streets. Mod was in. The Inn Shoppe was in. Australia, the land that shut on Sundays, was jolted out of slumber and never looked back. Australian kids felt connected with the rest of the world just as the Sixties started to swing. John remembered the tour fondly. He wrote, years later, in the notes to the Anthology box set: “Australia was a high moment, like the first time in America: us appearing on every channel and ten records in the charts. It’s funny, but more people came to see us there than anywhere. There was good security and everybody was happy and shouting, but we still saw everybody, everywhere we went – and nobody got hurt.”