Here are some concert memories from a variety of sources
I watched John Lennon through binoculars as The Beatles
sang Twist and Shout at their concert at Festival Hall in Melbourne. Couldn't
hear a thing over the screaming fans. Slept outside the Atheneam Theatre to
purchase tickets to 'A Hard Day's Night' - my bedroom ceiling was wallpapered
Beatle pictures, I was a devoted fan!! I miss John's wit and commentary on the
state of things political and loved 'The Bag' protests with Yoko.
--Kaye Separovic
"My main memory is of sitting there (eight rows back
from the stage) and seeing the guys on stage," says Inge.
Can she remember the screaming?
Yes, but "I was so focused on getting in there and
seeing them that the rest is a bit of a blur".
"My main focus was to see my heroes and experience them
live."
Inge believes she was at The Beatles' first Melbourne
concert, which the media went on to report was the only one where the music
could be heard above the screaming.
A sound-level check by an acoustics expert at one of the
Australian concerts revealed the screams were louder than a Boeing 707 in full
flight.
This prompted one reporter to write:
"If you've never heard the screams of Beatles' fans, borrow
a Boeing 707, put it in your living room and start it up. It won't be quite as
loud as Beatles' fans, but you'll be getting closer."
While Inge's taste in music has changed over the years, she
still doesn't mind a good Beatles' song, "particularly the early songs,
before Yellow Submarine".
But she will never forget that memorable trip to Melbourne.
--Inge Schilling
“I was there! I was at Festival Hall. I still have my
original 1964 program. I screamed like a girl from the moment they walked on
stage to the moment they left. It was the highlight of my youth spent going to
concerts. It changed everything for me. They seemed like aliens. The Beatles
walked on stage with their boots and haircuts and their guitars and they looked
like they had stepped out of a spaceship. I remember feeling sorry for our
local music scene because it was still stuck in the `50s — all the bands that
opened for them were still in that look. Everything changed dramatically after
that. I didn’t follow them around Melbourne as a kid, I figured I’d meet them
eventually and I did. Well, I met Paul and Ringo. Paul’s the one I followed as
a kid. I’ve got one of the largest private collections of Beatles handwritten
lyrics in the world. I’m the only person in the world to have handwritten
lyrics by all four Beatles. Ringo only wrote one song in the Beatles, Octopus’s
Garden, that there’s handwritten lyrics for and I’ve got the only copy. He
wrote it on Magic Christian stationery, he wrote it when he went to Sardinia on
Peter Sellers’ boat. I’ve been collecting for years. I don’t tell Paul
McCartney, I’m worried he’ll go after me! But I’d never sell this stuff. It’s a
great investment. I love so many of their songs, especially the old simple ones
like There’s a Place, and we play We Can Work It Out on stage
sometimes.”
--Rick Springfield (the singer of the 80's song Jessie's girl)
“I’ve never seen anything like Beatlemania, and I’ve seen
most of the big bands. By the time they arrived in Australia, Beatlemania had
gone around the world. The British explosion was on, it was different to the
American scene with Elvis and Little Richard. It was our music. That’s how we
thought of it. I’d been buying all the records, myself and Ronnie Burns. So we
were wildly excited. To use the word in the biblical sense we camped out all
night for tickets. It was the first big rock concert I’d seen. I’d go with my
mum to Music for the People with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Hector
Crawford, there were big crowds, but I remember thinking that Festival Hall was
the biggest venue around. Sounds Unlimited were one of the bands on before the
Beatles. They had their drum kit on stage, when the time came, they peeled the
label off the drum kit and it was the Beatles’ logo and the crowd went berserk.
The myth is that the screaming was so loud you couldn’t hear the band. There
was a lot of screaming but you could hear the band. I could certainly hear more
of the band from outside when I’d been kicked out. The security at the event
were boxers I think, or they worked at the boxing, and they threw me out
because I was hysterical. And I got caught trying to see them at the Southern
Cross. Little did I know I’d end up working for them. Years later I told Paul
McCartney at Live8 about how I tried to get their autograph at the Southern
Cross. He actually asked me for my autograph. I still hold the Beatles in awe. The
Long and Winding Road is still my favourite song of all time. I told Paul
that too, he said “Oh dear, you’re not going to die are you?’ After I had the
accident with the ladder Paul said “You almost did it!’ Luckily I can never do
things successfully.”
-
Ian “Molly” Meldrum
Molly's friend that went with him to the Beatles concert has a slightly different memory:
“I was 17 or 18 when we saw the Beatles. You’ll have to ask
Ian what age he was because he lies! It was a very impressionable age. The
Melbourne scene had been rock and roll and folk music. The Beatles were a
combination of that, so we were very drawn into it. It was such a huge
phenomenon. Ian and I camped outside Myer in Lonsdale Street for a couple of
nights to get tickets, we were almost first in the queue. When we got to
Festival Hall there was incredible excitement. The previous day there’d been
the big scene outside the Southern Cross Hotel where Ian was pushed through a
window into the florist. At the concert we’d actually booked a whole row for
all our friends, so about 25 seats. Ian was OK, we were sitting there, we were
excited. It wasn’t like they did a two hour show, they only did ten songs. When
they came onstage everyone stood up, and Ian was screaming like a girl at the
Beatles on stage. A St Johns Ambulance guy came to Ian and said he was so
hysterical he should go outside. I pushed Ian back down in the seat, the guy
walked away. When the Beatles went into the next song Ian got up again and he
was more hysterical. The St Johns Ambulance guy came back again, he was quite
disturbed by Ian’s reaction. I must have clenched my fist as if to say `If you
don’t calm down I’m going to thump you’. And two security men in white
dustcoats came, grabbed Ian and I, put our arms behind our backs and marched us
to the front door. They literally threw us outside on the street outside
Festival Hall. We’d only seen three songs. We can still hear the screaming and
the band, they went into Long Tall Sally, and Ian was sobbing and
scratching the door of Festival Hall with his fingernails. There’s probably his
scratches still in the door. I couldn’t console him but I wasn’t happy he’d got
me thrown out too. But we shared in the whole experience. It was the kind of
phenomenon that probably won’t be repeated. It was genuine hysteria.”
--Ronnie Burns
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