Police and Fans Play Beatle Football (New York City 1966)

 

Police and Fans Play Beatle Football

By Kathy Parker

Hartford Courant

September 3, 1966

    The excitement of our trip to the Beatles concert at Shea did not begin with the appearance of the Beatles themselves. It started on the highways outside the city, where cars passed us displaying signs, "To the Beatles", "Beatles forever," "We love the Beatles."

     Inside the halls of the stadium, I could feel the tension. We took our field-level positions just four rows behind the police barriers. Busloads of police patrolled the field and parking lot. Behind us rose a towering wall of fans. Huge signs suspended from the railings flapped in the breeze. Many took note of John and Cyn's anniversary. 

    Every few minutes, a helicopter chopped overhead, and tremendous screams went up from the crowd. Last year, the Beatles arrived by helicopter.

     Just before showtime, the throng swayed toward one end of the stadium, where a red truck was backing into the lower level; the Beatles were inside. The 7:30 p.m. show began at 8:15 p.m. with the Remains. Other acts included the Cyrkle and the Ronettes. The crowd was impatient. People were standing on their chairs. 

    All the announcer said was, "And now...." and the crowd went wild. The announcer asked for a few bars of "We Love You, Beatles. Oh, yes, we do." The crowd sang in remarkable unison, 45,000 strong.

 One Beatle... two Beatles, three, four. Could I really be seeing them? Everyone climbed to the armrests on their seats. Faces were washed with tears. Girls clutched each other for balance. Some fell backward into the crowd. Lines of police moved in and stood like toy soldiers along the barriers. Field glasses were selling better than hot dogs. 

    About halfway through the concert, someone got through the ropes. Several policemen ran after the girl. Gradually, more and more people tried the same thing as groups of police rushed first to one place, then another, playing Beatle football, tackling fans.

     Suddenly, it was over. The Beatles waved a hurried good night, and ran off the stage into a station wagon. As the car sped across the field, hundreds in the lower level rushed outside. A huge trailer truck was concealing a hole in the fence where the Beatles' car would exit; the truck moved. The Beatles drove through. They changed into the Wells Fargo truck and roared out across the parking lot. Throngs ran down the stadium ramps and out into the night, chasing along the zigzagging trails of the Beatles. Later, the Fab Four switched to a limousine and drove to the airport, where they boarded a plane to the West Coast to enter the lives of 1000s of other American teenagers.

Written by Gail Andrews:

     I  too went to see the spectacular show at Shea. There was some excitement during the show when fans spotted two of the Lovin' Spoonful in the audience. The Beatles wore beige suits with light blue striped shirts and sang 11 songs. Paul introduced the first song and said the initial "hello," which brought screams from the stadium.

     I don't know what it meant, but Paul and John kept referring to the year 1948 as they introduced the songs. Paul seemed to be in an exceptionally happy mood, but John, George, and Ringo were quiet. The security measures were more than needed, as only eight fans tried to reach the Beatles. The performance ended abruptly, and the Beatles were whisked away in a gray station wagon with New York license plate number 97368.

Rain in Venice

 September 4, 2001 - Venice, Italy 

The famous couple

 

September 3, 1986

Arriving at the press conference

 

September 5, 1966 -- Arriving to talk about How I Won the War 

Rembrandt

 September 3, 1966

The Liberation of Paul McCartney (1971)

 The Top of Pop

By Lillian Roxon

Daily News

September 5, 1971

    Poor Paul McCartney. One year the prettiest face in rock and roll. This year, the man everyone loves to hate. Everyone's at him. His old friend and workmate John Lennon has a nasty song about him in his new album. His old girlfriend and housemate Fran Schwartz has 20 pages about him in her just-finished and still very hush-hush book. His most devoted fans get into fights with him, and now Rock Liberation has chosen him as its next big target.

     Rock Liberation? Oh yes! If you think women's liberation is heavy, wait till Rock Lib gets really steamed up this fall. It was Rock Lib that staged that big party in the street outside Bob Dylan's house on his birthday this summer. Not that he was there or anything, but he sure as hell heard about it. And the next thing we know, there he was, liberated as all get out, up on stage at the Bangladesh concert with George Harrison, singing all his old songs and pouring money into the pockets of the poor and needy. Incredible.

     Maybe Rock Lib has nothing to do with it at all, but you can't blame them for feeling encouraged. So flushed with success, they have now turned to Paul, not early enough to get him to Madison Square Garden, alas, but still. 

    In what must have been more than a casual coincidence, the day the Liberators chose to shake up the former Beatle was also the day the women of New York chose for their second annual mass march up Fifth Avenue. What I think the rock people were trying to tell us was that they are all kinds of oppression, and that it is probably better to be born female than to have to listen to another Paul McCartney solo effort. 

    In any case, there they all were at 79th and Park, where the McCartneys sometimes stay when in town, waving placards and making speeches designed to goad Paul like Dylan back into the land of the living. It was no use telling them it's not nice to parade noisily outside people's homes, and that besides Paul is getting a band together with the talented and beautiful Denny Laine.

    It was no use pointing out that anyone truly interested in liberating rock might do better to use that energy promoting new, fresh artists instead of trying to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to old ones. It was no use because Rock Lib does have a point. Paul has been snotty and isolated. If musical aristocrats like Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts could come out of their isolation to back Howlin Wolf in one of the most magnificent and important albums of the year, the London Hall and Wolf Sessions, then it's hard to see what Paul has been trying to prove all alone there in Scotland. The sooner he's liberated, if you ask me, the better

At the Hotel St. Regis

Photo by Matthew Lewis Jr. 

 

Much love and thanks goes to Ingryd for cleaning up the top photo and for sharing the 2nd.

September 2, 1971

Sgt Pepper era John

 

Here's Derek

Photo by Paul McCartney 

 Taken at the airport in Hong Kong at the start of the World Tour in 1964

Concerts Today are Just Spectacals (1976)

Paul and Linda performing in Cincinnati in 1976 -- not knowing that some people were having a terrible experience. 

 I hear a lot of people complaining about the concert experience today, and I agree with most of what they're saying (ticket prices are out of control for most shows these days), so I found this article about the concert experience 50 years ago really interesting.   I, for one, am glad that "festival seating" for the most part is in the past.  I can't imagine the nightmare that must have been for a big concert, and how disappointing it must have been to get there early and find yourself way in the back, unable to see over the heads of everyone standing.  Anyhow I thought this writer had an interesting comentary. 

Concerts Today are Just Spectacals

By Terry Lawson

The Journal Herald

September 2, 1976

     I don't go to concerts anymore, and I feel pretty guilty about it. A good portion of my life revolves around music, and even the best-produced record albums are no substitute for experiencing music live. Communication is, of course, what music is all about, and presumably musicians should communicate best in an environment where they can receive as well as give.

     But I find it hard to fathom that most music fans are getting much out of the vaudeville spectacles that pass for concerts these days. They seem increasingly to have less and less to do with music. My last foray into the arena was to attend the summer's Paul McCartney and Wings concert at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati. The first disappointment came when it was discovered that the Cincy appearance was one of two on the tour that called for "festival seating." To the uninitiated, festival seating is a red herring word for "no reserved seats"; it generally means that the promoter of the concert did not want to go to the trouble and expense of having tickets numbered and ushers hired to guide patrons to seats. Also, with this arrangement, more bodies can be packed into a limited space since there are no seats set up on the floor. 

    To counter this, I and about 4000 others arrived at Riverfront an hour or so early to attempt to get a decent seat. Most of the gathered crowd amused themselves by indulging in the great American pastime, boozing. By the time the appointed door-opening hour had come and gone, the crowd was surly, screaming and smashing empty glass containers against the walls of the arena. When the crowd began pushing against the glass door, the security people panicked and threw all the doors open at once, allowing the 20,000 or so who gathered behind the early birds to swarm in ahead of the mob in front. The promoters also abandoned the idea of collecting tickets, prompting the wheeler-dealers attending the concert to return outside and sell their tickets to the unsuspecting, hoping to score a scalper's ticket at the arena. 

    By the time my friends and I made it inside, the only seats left were behind the stage. $9.50 bought me a beautiful view of McCartney's back. Oh yes, the music was terrific. That is-- the part of it you could hear between the constant barrage of firecrackers being lit and pitched all around the arena. One firecracker sailed perilously close to McCartney's right ear. He hardly blinked, causing an observer to deduce this was sort of de rigurer. 

    Leaving the scene was as revolting as the rest. Vomit and broken glass were everywhere you stepped. The feeling was that of a prisoner leaving Devil's Island. The papers reported the next morning that one concertgoer left the Coliseum and walked directly into the Ohio River, drowning.

     Now this may be somebody's idea of a good time, but not mine. When I related this experience to a friend, he chided me, saying I was just "too old to enjoy myself." The same friend returned to Riverfront the following week to see Yes, his favorite band, and came away with an almost identical reaction. "Maybe I'm too old too," he grumbled. 

    Of course, not all concerts are as poorly produced and managed as the McCartney fiasco. There are some promoters, Bill Graham of Fillmore fame, who come immediately to mind, who are professional enough to avoid the pratfalls and attempt to bring the music-hungry hordes an enjoyable experience. But concerts do not function as purely musical experiences anymore. More and more, they have become excuses for a gathering of the tribes, for young people to assemble, to smoke grass, booze, and revel in their sameness. The music is secondary. Pity, I sure do love to hear live music.