The Beatles plus one

 Love this fan snap of the Beatles and Jimmie -- but know what I love just as much?  The writing on the back of the photo.  The photographer got Paul and John's instruments confused but that isn't surprising because it appears that the fan behind the camera had eyes just for George. 

Down under with George

 September 8, 1998 

Boomerangs over Melbourne

 June 16, 1964 

The good life in Australia

 

March 1982 -  Melbourne, Australia 

Racing Day with George in Melbourne

 March 8, 1997 - Melbourne 

Good rockin' in Melbourne

Hello Melbourne!

Melbourne

On stage with John in Melbourne

I love the stories of the few fans that actually made it up on stage with the Beatles in concert.  I should make a list of the fans that actually accomplished this difficult task.   One such fan was Brent McAuslan, who got onstage and shook John's hand in Melbourne, Australia. 

This story was written by Aaron Landmaid and you can find it here. 

 

THE Beatles had been on stage for more than half an hour and had worked the packed crowd at Melbourne’s Festival Hall into a frenzy. 

As the Fab Four launched into their final song, John Lennon suddenly spotted a young Aussie striding across the stage to meet him.

The kid wasn’t meant to be there. Police and soldiers had created a ring of steel around the biggest band in the world.

Shocked, but seemingly impressed, Lennon smiled widely and held out his hand.

“How are you, cobber?’’ he asked.

The teenager placed his hands on Lennon’s shoulders in a brief moment of admiration and then turned to face a squad of stern-faced police.

Fifty years later, the ­moment Brent McAuslan met a Beatle is still etched into his memory.

It had been a spontaneous decision for the then 19-year-old. Though, he now admits, the bold move was made easier after he asked a friend to run ahead of him to distract police.

It gave Mr McAuslan a brief window of opportunity and he made his dash for the stage and the history books.

The moment he stood next to The Beatles was captured in print and in grainy TV footage.

“It was the last song so I knew if I got thrown out afterwards I wasn’t going to miss anything,” Mr McAuslan said.

“I got so close to him I could see the makeup caked on to his face and the sweat breaking through it all - it was a remarkable moment for me.’’

Walked off stage, Mr McAuslan said he was trapped against a wall by police. But as the band came off stage themselves, Paul McCartney told them to let him go.

“Honestly, I didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal,” Mr McAuslan said. “But I think the cops thought I made them look stupid.

“Then when Paul told them to let me go, it was like Moses parting the waters. They just let me go back into the crowd.’’

As he did so, he told a Melbourne Sun reporter: “I won’t wash my hand for years.”

Now 69 and living on the Gold Coast, the lifelong Beatles fan has been the subject of numerous interviews and a mini-documentary. Footage of his feat even featured in the recent Martin Scorsese documentary about the life of George Harrison.

“It’s my 15 minutes of fame that never seems to end,” he said.

A short (only 6 or 7 minutes) film was made about him and I posted the video link from youtube below.  

 

The Beatles at the Melbourne Town Hall

When the Beatles attended a reception with the mayor at the Town Hall in Melbourne, it seemed almost like a repeat of the reception the boys attended in Washington D.C. in February of 1964.   Originally there were 150 special guests invited, but that number grew to 350 people because the mayor was a very nice man who gave out invitations to fans who wrote to him asking for one.   

Prior to the reception the Beatles were to appear on the balcony of the Town Hall.  15,000 people showed up in the street to see them.   The Beatles, along with the mayor and his young daughter, Vikki stepped out to the balcony and waved to the crowd belong.  She remembers, "People were even hanging out of the windows of the Manchester building."

Vikki recalls standing on her tiptoes and looking over the side, amazed by the large crowd.

Originally there was a "no autographs" rule in place at the reception, but that rule was broken by the mayor himself and suddenly pure insanity broke out.  The attenders of the reception were pushing, shoving and doing whatever it took to try to kiss or touch one of the Beatles.  Derek Taylor stopped one person from repeating what happened in Washington D.C., when he saw one man trying to get a hold of Ringo's hair. 

One fan named Annie Cooper had a wonderful time and had this to say in 1982,
"My mother wouldn't let me go to the Southern Cross on Sunday, and I had to content myself with watching it on TV.  But on Monday I received an official looking envelope from the City Council which included a very formal invitation from the Mayor to attend his civic reception for the Beatles.  It turned out that a lady who knew how Beatle crazy I was had written on my behalf asking for tickets, but hadn't told me.  What I remember best is arriving at Swanston Street, seeing all those thousands of people in the streets and being able to walk right in the front door.  When they made their speeches and the Mayor said they would be mingling with the guests, my friend and I stood frozen for about ten minutes but we finally got enough courage to shake their hands.   I think we ended up shaking hands with each of them about six times.  If they did notice our recurring faces they never gave any indication."


Annie and her fellow Beatle fan friends may have been having a good time shaking the Beatles' hands, but the Beatles themselves weren't having a fun time.  After one fan pushed the Mayor's wife to try to kiss Ringo, the Beatle drummer demanded that they leave immediately.   So the Mayor took the boys into another room that was on the second floor. 

Here is where the Mayor's 11 year old daughter, Vikki had her most wonderful Beatle memories.

As luck would have it, there was a piano in the room.  Paul McCartney sat down at the keyboard, George, John and Ringo, gathered around with Vikki, her sisters Liz and Ann and her brother Peter making up the circle.  "They were sort of giggling and laughing and enjoying the casualness of everything," Vikki  says.

Vikki recalls, "The Beatles came and as a family we sat around and Paul played the piano.  We had sandwiches and drinks and we sat around singing with them--well they were doing the singing thank goodness.  But that was pretty special."

No one seems to really recall what Paul played on the piano while the other sang, but some think they sang snippets of Beatles songs.  

And like all guests of the lord mayor, the lads signed the visitors' book, which Vikki has in her possession. George's handwriting is rather neat, Ringo's messy, Paul's clear with a flourish and John's a scrawl that can hardly be read.  Her mother also had a patch that came off of Paul McCartney's shirt. 

Besides sitting around singing, they also listened to a university student named Noel Kemp play the didgeridoo.  Because of the insanity of the crowds, the Beatles stayed half an hour longer than planed and Brian Epstein called their time with the family as "the most happy informal moment since the tour began."   For Vikki Curtis, it was one of the happy memories of her life.  How many Beatle fans can say that they got a private Beatles concert?

Information for this article came from

The Beatles Downunder (book) by Glenn Baker (1982)

Back in '64, who could ask for more? (article)in the Age, author not listed,  from October 20, 2002

A Brush with the Beatles: Famous Melburnians celebrate 50 years on (article and video)  in the Sydney Morning Heldard by Neil McMahon March 1, 2014

The Melbourne concerts

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