Monday, August 31, 2015

Frisco's Near Riot

In many ways I think the two shows the Beatles did at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, California on August 31, 1965 were the most out of the control shows they ever did in the United States.   There are other shows that were pretty wild and crazy such as the Cleveland 1964 and 1966 shows, but the Cow Palace '65 shows were wild because fans were getting carried up onto the stage while the show was going on!      Look at the photos and read the newspaper accounts and decide for yourself.
















Somebody on Guard
Associated Press

Five teenage girls were injured when a youth leaped on stage with Britain's Beatles, touched drummer Ringo Starr on the shoulder and then did a swan dive off the stage into the front row seats.

The incident occurred Tuesday at the Cow Palace as thousands of screaming, fainting and sobbing teenagers threw jelly beans, stuffed animals and themselves at the singers.

Police said there were no serious injuries and that everyone recovered.

Wave after wave of frantic teenagers, mostly girls, charged the line of police and guards in front of the stage during the Beatles' concluding performances on their American tour.   A private guard, John Edwards, 43, either fainted or was knocked out at the afternoon performance but returned to help control the evening crowd.  The shows drew 28,000 fans.

The evening performance was stopped about ten minutes while Beatle Paul McCartney pleaded with the pushing, shoving teenagers to let police remove Mrs. Julia Stewart, who is five months pregnant from the arena floor, where she had fallen in a faint.  She was taken to a first aid station.

The audience participation performance marked the last day of the Beatles eight city tour of the United States.  Sources said they would take back more than a million dollars to the United Kingdom.

Between shows the Beatles told reporters that they'd make their third movie next year in Spain-- a western.  No details were given.


Beatles end U.S. tour in wild S.F. concert
UPI

The Beatles fly back to London today after a 19 day tour capped by farewell performances here almost spilled out of control as hysterical girls leaped onto the stage to grab their beloved Liverpudlians.

"This was the wildest of the whole trip," leader Paul McCartney said after the final show last night.  "We don't blame the police--there just weren't enough of them."

Playing at the Cow Palace, a cavernous auditorium designed for stock shows, the British four were on a stage almost completely surrounded by a sea of 17,000 adolescents whose unbelievable screaming drowned out sounds of real pain.

At least 51 girls were carried out.  Some had just fainted.   But some 30 suffered minor injuries from the crush against the stage.   At one point, a teenage girl flung herself against Paul McCartney and almost toppled him off the stage.  Others grabbed George Harrison and John Lennon.  Drummer, Ringo Starr, high on his podium, was comparatively safe except for the thousands of stinging jelly beans, as well as teddy bears, shoes and lipstick cases thrown at the stage.


Beatles Aide ripped Frisco near-riot. 

UPI

Brian Epstein, manager of  the Beatles, today criticized the management of San Francisco's Cow Palace where a near-riot broke out during the performance of the shaggy haired singing quartet Tuesday.

Mr. Epstein, at a new conference held several hours after the Beatles returned from a concert tour of ten American cities, blamed the management for "insufficient security."

The Beatles netted an estimated one million from the tour.

During the disturbance which forced the Beatles to cut short the second show, the fans threw rings, pens, flashlights, Teddy Bears and jellybeans onto the stage.

"They may have underestimated the Beatles' appeal," he said of the management.  "There is a problem here.  Their adulation can be underestimated."


Here is what Alf Bicknell had to say:

The boys played the Cow Palace San Francisco.  It's over, Thank God!  What can I say?  If all the rest of the shows were put together they could never beat this for enthusiasm from the boys. Oh, but the crowd was wild!  I've never seen the likes of it.  Incredible.  So frightening out there tonight as well.  At one point, I thought the show was going to stop and not continue.  Pulling those kids up on the stage, it's a wonder that one of them, or more, wasn't killed.  What happened to the security to put the fans to close?   They just climbed up onto the stage, on top of those being crushed.  Anyway, everyone mucked in, and thank God, again, no one was hurt.

 
And Alf memories of it from 1990:
Cow Palace.  Amazing!  I think this was one of the first concerts, the only one that I can remember, that the Beatles had to leave the stage due to the pandemonium and excitement of the people.  And it was exciting!  I used to get excited every time they went on stage, but this was special.  A guy appeared out of nowhere, from the back of the stage, over a high wire.  John used to wear a sort of sailor's hat, and this guy grabbed it, which seemed to be a one-bounce movement.  With the hat in hand, he dived straight into the audience.  Before I go any further, it was some while later that the hat was returned, to everyone's amazement.  I remember it so well.  John was absolutely delighted.

But the excitement of the concert.  It had got to such a hectic state.  They all had to leave the stage, back to the dressing room.  I think Paul had to go and ask people to quiet down, not to subdue anyone, but just for the fear of anybody getting hurt.  There are photographs to prove how bad it had gotten, with me running on stage.  I was never on stage with the Beatles before.  It was very exciting.





Fan memories of the two shows at the Cow Palace in '65






One of these shows was attended by the now infamous Merry Pranksters.   The guys that hooked them up with LSD was able to purchase a block of 30 tickets for them and so they got into their bus and on the trip to the Cow Palace dropped some acid while listening to the Beatles "Help!" record.   By the time they got to the concert, they were obviously not in the right state of mind and the behavior of the Beatles' fans got to be too much and so they actually left the concert early.    You can read about it in the book "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test."

Here are some other fan memories as collected from various places online



I was 12 rows behind the stage at this concert...before they came out they were 6 feet from me looking over the entrance – Ann Marie

My friends and I were standing close to the stage but moved because we thought we were going to get crushed. It was crazy! I was also 13. – Anonymous

Wow! I was at that concert, and I remember the guy stealing John's hat - I was shocked, too, and thought it was a crap way to treat someone who had given us so much joy. – Marty

I was there at this show in San Francisco. I had just turned 13 a couple of months before. I remember when this teenage kid climbed up the cyclone fence behind the stage. He climbed all the way to the top of this fence that had to be 20-30 feet high. He rolled over the top and came sliding down, instantly jumped across the stage, ripped the hat right off of John's head, then did a dive into the front rows. It was shocking. – MG

Two show at the Cow Palace













One more press conference



Strangely enough---this is the only photograph I have ever been able to find of the Beatles 1965 press conference in San Francisco.   Anyone out there have any others???

The last big arrival in the U.S.


Beatles at the Cabana Hotel


1999-08-30 04:00:00 PDT PALO ALTO -- On Aug. 31, 1965, the Fab Four were holed up on the top floor of the eight-story Cabana Hotel in Palo Alto, watching TV and ordering room service after two sold-out shows at the Cow Palace.
Outside, the frenzied 500 -- teenage Beatles fans, mostly girls -- swarmed the parking lot along El Camino Real and the property across the street, causing a traffic jam unheard of in those uncongested days.
After the Beatles left the next day, hustled out in a delivery truck, their sheets were cut into small pieces and sold in the parking lot. The room service dishes and cutlery disappeared. Eventually, the celebrity appeal of the Cabana, a prototype of Caesar's Palace and managed by Doris Day's brother-in-law,Jack Melcher, also slipped away, and the hotel closed in 1992.
Now the newly renovated Crowne Plaza Cabana Palo Alto has decided it's time to get back, so to speak: The management is looking for memorabilia -- and memories -- of those fevered 48 hours when fans camped out before and after the concerts in Daly City. A few items have already been installed in the Beatles Room, number 810, which officially opened Saturday night. Hotel officials were planning to meet today to decide what the room's rate will be.
Anita Gonzalez of San Leandro never forgot her brush with the Beatles at the Cabana. She was "16 or 17," and having a nose job done at Stanford Hospital when she heard that her beloved band was staying nearby"I begged my father to take me out of the hospital and drive me by the hotel just in case I could see them," she recalled. "He thought I was nuts because I looked so horrible -- my face was all black and blue, my nose bandaged -- but he did it, and then he took me back to the hospital."
Some teens tried to pass themselves off as journalists to gain entrance to the heavily guarded hotel, which had 23 members of the then- University of Santa Clara football team stationed at elevators, stairwells and the lobby. A few girls managed to slip past the security force outside and began clambering up the grillwork for a look at their favorite moptop before being dissuaded.
Deborah Hudson of San Jose still speaks with envy of her then-teenage girlfriends who drove from Bakersfield to Palo Alto "and stayed for the whole time" during the Beatles' brief visit.   Hudson, a free-lance writer, and Gonzalez, office manager of Health magazine in San Francisco, finally got to go inside their former idols' inner sanctum this weekend. While the real memorabilia is under management's lock and key, hanging on the Beatles Room walls are authentic-looking framed reproductions from the personal archives of Vienna Watkins, the Cabana's original director of sales and marketing.
Now an artist and co-owner of galleries in Murphys and Bear Valley, Watkins gave the hotel a three- page, 27-point mimeograph from Beatles manager Brian Epstein detailing security measures ("no children unless accompanied by an adult"); the yellow "welcome Beatles" ribbon that staff members had to wear for identification, later autographed by Paul McCartney; and news clippings from the Palo Alto Times.
In one photo, 14-year-olds Rocky Keith and Sue Moore of Palo Alto "sob with joy as they tell of seeing the Beatles leave" the hotel.
Watkins said those two were not the only ones shaken up by the visit. A mother of young children at the time, she recalled that the lads from Liverpool looked like "four scared kids" when they returned to the hotel -- and with good reason.
"Their limousine was dented on the top, on the sides, and the back from all the fans pressing against it," Watkins said. "This place was filled with kids."
But inside the hotel, they were safe, she said. "We had the Santa Clara football team -- they were big! We had security, we had our badges, and we parked our cars and stayed here for 24 hours."
David Young, the new Crowne Plaza's executive sales director, says he has been surprised by the lasting impression the Beatles' short stay made.
"I was at a Hewlett-Packard golf tournament recently, and everybody who was in a certain age group came by and said they had tried to dress up like the press with a suit and camera to try to sneak in to the Beatles," he said.
Of course, the Beatles actually stayed in two rooms on the eighth floor -- no one is exactly sure which -- and the story goes that Ringo didn't spend the night there at all (he was with a woman). Hotel officials hope to clear up some of those details in October, when they plan to host a Beatles night for fans to bring in their mementos.
As for Gonzalez, hotel visitors will soon be able to say, in Beatles style, they saw her standing there -- her portrait will also be going on the Beatles Room wall.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Choas at the Hollywood Bowl




As you can see in these photos  the Beatles had quite a scene as they left the Hollywood Bowl in 1965.  

Fans at the Hollywood Bowl




I am not sure if it is because this was the 2nd time the Beatles' played the Hollywood Bowl, but there isn't a lot of fan memories out there of this show.



I was at The 1965 Hollywood Bowl Beatle Concert, I was 12 years old, my family and I were visiting my English Grandparents, and vacationing in LA from Chicago like we did every summer.  My Grandfather found out that The Beatles were going to be in town when we were there, so he got tickets. I was beside myself! I was so excited we were in the back, near the speakers so we could hear the music, much to my Dads dismay, not to mention the screaming! I was screaming too! My eyes were glued to John most of the night. I have seen hundreds of shows since and The Beatles will always stand out above them all, they had no fancy lights or effects, it was just them with their vox amps, guitars, drums and John’s Hamond organ, but that’s all they needed-  Anna

I was laying there in the sun and I saw them, about 75 yards away....but I didn’t realize it was really them until they ran up these stairs and I saw them get into this big black limo...and when I went up to the road to take a good look....they drove right by me, on the coast highway near sunset blvd. and it was John’s head I could see through the window...with sunglasses on...in the back and I went...”holy shit! That's the BEATLES!!!!!!!!!!” – Chuck




Backstage at HB





Rock Show at the Hollywood Bowl '65











The Beatles played the Hollywood Bowl on August 29 and 30, 1965.   As I am sure you all are aware of,  some songs from these shows showed up on the "Beatles live at the Hollywood Bowl" album (which has never been released on CD).