Din of Iniquity to Some Thrill More Than 20,000 (Memphis 1966)

 

Din of Iniquity to Some Thrill More Than 20,000

By Edwin Howard

The Memphis Press

August 20, 1966

    The songs are ended, but the melee lingers on. The melee is Beatlemania, and if anything, it's worse today because 20,128 Memphisians, Mid Southerners, and hundreds of Outlanders have now actually seen and sort of heard the Beatles like in person.

     For five hours yesterday, the swinging Liverpudlians and their fellow travelers, the Ronettes, the Cyrkle, the Remains, and Bobby Helm [sic] turned the Colosseum into a den of iniquity, in the opinion of another 8000 Memphisians and Mid-Southerners who attended a religious rally at the auditorium protesting Beatle John Lennon's recent alleged anti-Christian statements. Another 600,000 or so Memphisians stayed away altogether, perhaps expressing the opinion that what the Beatles brought to Memphis was a DIN of inequity. 

    Whatever it was that emanated from that seven-foot-high Colosseum platform, it certainly, in the words of another British entertainer of some years ago, "split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing save inexplicable dumb shows and noise." One of the first aid men was offering earplugs to special duty policemen before the first show and finding several takers.

     Actually, Beatle music can be quite pleasant if you can hear it, but the crowd of 12,539 at last night's performance effectively drowned them out even with their Super Beatle Vox guitar amplifiers turned up full blast. Their "Yesterday" is as haunting a ballad as even an old fellow of 40 could wish. "I Want to Be Your Man" has a fine driving rhythm, and they're first-rate musicians, but the consistent obbligato of screams from the Beatles' entrance to their departure from the stage 40 minutes later made it hard to tell one tune from another. 

    Among the others were "Paperback Writer", "Nowhere Man," "If I Needed Someone", "What Can the Matter Be," and "I Feel Fine." The show was an hour and 35 minutes old before the Beatles were introduced by MC Johnny Dark of WMPS, George Klein of WHBQ did the honors at the 4o'clock show, attended by 7589. 

    The crowd was patient and responsive to the preliminary performers, of whom the Cyrkle, a clean-cut American group, seemed to me to score the highest. Negro singer Bobby Helm [sic], formerly of Nashville, got a good round of cheers for his current hit, "Sunny." But all this was as the whisper of a laconic mute to the bedlam that greeted the Beatles' mere appearance, let alone performance. A single word from John, Paul, or George, (Ringo just sat there grinning and drumming) was enough to send the constant fortissimo of audience approval crescendoing into ear-shattering shrieks of pure ecstasy. 

    The audience toll was rather less than one might have expected. Only six girls passed out and had to be taken to the aid station during the two shows. The first customer of the day, about 1130 a.m., was a girl with a purportedly twisted ankle. When a friendly aid man said he'd have to tape it and send her home, she got up indigently and walked out without a trace of a limp.

     Shortly after the Beatles appeared for the evening show, a firecracker exploded on the main floor, and Julie Wilson and Nick Isch, both 16, of Bates, Mississippi, were rushed out and to the aid station by police. Julie had a laceration on her leg from the explosion. Nobody seemed quite sure whether the pair had set off the firecracker themselves, or someone else had tossed it from above. There was a bomb report during the afternoon show, but the bomb seen under the stage turned out to be a resin bag. 

    Like everything else connected with the Beatles' ten-and-a-half-hour sarjoun in Memphis, the 7p.m. press conference was an instance of organized pandemonium. It was certainly no place for a newspaperman. Most of the press seemed to be teenage girls representing this or that small-town weekly or radio station, and the crying crush occasioned by the Beatles' appearance was enough to make an old news hand tear up his press card. 

    A few cogent questions were asked and coolly answered. Lennon, asked about the rash of Beatles record bans following Datebook magazine, quoting him as saying the Beatles are more popular than Jesus, and said, "I don't mind people banning our records or not liking them. That's their right to ban them or not play them or play them, but a lot of the banning seems to have been for publicity. They seem to be lifting the bans now because they've got their publicity, but they still seem to need to play our records. "

    Asked if he had mentioned religion in his two published books, Lennon said, "Yes, there's a little on religion in both, and people could make more of them than anything in that magazine, because I'm as serious about my writing as anything. It's not flippant."

     On why they didn't come to Memphis to record one of their albums earlier this year: "Little things kept getting in the way, like money. We wanted to come. A couple of tracks would have been much better if we had come. We wanted Steve Cropper, a guitarist for Booker T and the MGs, to A&R direct the session. He's the best we've heard."

     On why John is going to be in a movie, How I Won the War, by himself without the others: "Because this fellow rang me up and said, 'You want to be in a movie by yourself without the others?'"

     On the Bible Belt:  "We've never heard of it before we came. It's just a tag like the Mop Top Four. It doesn't really mean anything."

     The Beatles departed Memphis at 12:12 a.m. today on their chartered American Airlines Electra for Cincinnati. They and their troop took $71,957.60 with them. 65% of their shows. 110,704 gross. The Memphis promoters, Early Maxwell Associates, paid all Memphis expenses out of the remaining $38,746.40. About 50 fans were at the airport, at the Air National Guard gate, to see the Liverpool Longears off. Two carloads made it onto the runway, but were chased off by security police. Well, that's Beatlemania for you. Hair today, gone tomorrow.