Meet the Beatles for Real: Seattle

Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Fans Throng to See a Beatle Take Wings (Seattle 1976)

Fans Throng to see a Beatle Take Wings

By James Erikson

The News Tribune

June 11, 1976

It wasn't Beatlemania. It certainly wasn't Wingsmania. Maybe it was a touch of Paul McCartneymania that lured more than 67,000 people to see him and his band in the Kingdome last night.

The Kingdome was filled with people and smoke, some smelling like stale perfume, long before the ex-Beatle and his group Wings made their entrance.

When the lights dimmed and the band members finally emerged on the stage, you didn't have to ask whom the people had come to see. "Oh my God! There he is!" shrieked one buxom blonde. "Oh, Paul! "EEEee OOOoo."

Another girl just screamed. A patch on her jacket said it all. "I love Paul."

What could have been a tragedy nearly occurred at that point, as skyrockets were set off in the Kingdome. One didn't go up, but instead fizzled, plunging as a molten fireball into the audience in front of the stage. People screamed and pushed against security guards on the other side of the rope. The guards pushed back, and some people fell down. Luckily, no one was trampled.

The only screams reminiscent of the Beatlemania of more than 10 years ago came at the beginning of the concert, and for the few Beatles songs on the program. Emotional high points were the Beatles' songs "Lady Madonna" and "Yesterday", while the visual highlights came from "Live and Let Die", the song McCartney wrote for a James Bond film. A display of smoke, spotlights, and laser beams accompanied the latter.

Those who came expecting to capture a part of the Beatle past didn't. McCartney is trying to show where he is today. Those who came to hear rock and roll did.

Monday, February 23, 2026

A Delray Beach Woman's Rock n Roll Journey (2019)

A Delray Beach Woman's Rock n Roll Journey with the Zombies and the Beatles

By Larry Aydlette

The Palm Beach Post

March 20, 2019

Link to original full article

February 1964. "The Ed Sullivan Show." America melts down at the sight of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. And when the Beatles go on tour, King is determined to see them. But she's crushed: they're not coming anywhere near her hometown of Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Fortunately, King has a mother every teenager dreams about. She promises to take Nancy and her 18-year-old sister anywhere the moptops are playing. The closest date turns out to be in Vancouver, British Columbia on Aug. 22. Nancy immediately springs into action, writing the Beatles' record company in Los Angeles and getting the band's North American itinerary, including their stay at the Edgewater Inn in Seattle, Washington, for a show the day before.

Mom promptly books them into the same hotel. (These Kings did not mess around.) In the lobby, Nancy overhears men with British accents. She chats them up. One is a reporter for the Liverpool Echo named -- and we're not kidding -- George Harrison.

He calls the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein and vouches for King. After the Seattle show, only one girl can go up to "meet the boys," so her older sister Carolyn relents (which is a pretty good IOU for a sibling to possess).

And so...

"Brian answered the door and Paul was behind him."

For about 30 minutes, it was King, the Beatles, Epstein and the Liverpool reporter in a hospitality suite. She talked mostly to Paul McCartney and George Harrison, "who couldn't have been nicer. John (Lennon) totally ignored me. Paul eventually took me over and introduced me to John, who made some comment about the black hills of Dakota."

Ringo Starr came out from a shower and "he showed me all the rings on his fingers and where he got them." McCartney offered her a cigarette. She declined. They all signed her paperback copy of a novel based on "A Hard Day's Night." She told Paul her favorite Beatles song was "Do You Want to Know A Secret?" He modestly admitted the lyrics were pretty good.

The band discussed a recent prediction from horoscope queen Jeane Dixon that the Beatles' plane would crash on tour. "I remember John saying, 'When your time comes, there's nothing you can do about it,'" King said. "He was philosophical."

And then it was over. King returned to her room -- and burst into tears. What was she going to do with the rest of her life now?

"I was up crying all night, saying, 'I can't believe my dream came true.'"

The next morning, a puffy-eyed King had her picture taken with Epstein. The Vancouver concert was "anticlimactic," she remembered. "They were a little speck on the field, you couldn't hear them, the girls were screaming so loud."

But back home, she was an instant celebrity, Grand Forks' lone link to Beatlemania. The local paper wrote about her. She was invited to gab about George's eye color and Paul's hair on air. And she soon had a gig interviewing British Invasion bands for her hometown radio station.

Monday, November 4, 2024

Full Coliseum Applauds Ex-Beatle

Full Colliseum Applauds E-Beatle

By M.J. Greenwood

The News Tribune

November 5, 1974

A capacity crowd at the Seattle Center Coliseum warmly greeted ex Beatle George Harrison and a few of his friends in a Monday night concert. Not counting the concert for Bangladesh in 1972, this nationwide 27-city tour marks the first public concert appearance of Harrison in eight years.

Seattle was the second stop on the tour. Among Harrison's friends were Billy Preston, and Indian sitarist, Ravi Shankar. The concert opened with Harrison and his rock band performing such classic Harrison songs as the haunting "Something," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and a newer Harrison tune, "Sue Me. Sue You Blues."Then, to round off the first set, keyboard wizard Billy Preston played his million-seller, "Will It Go Round in Circles," to a highly appreciative audience.

After a brief break, the tone of the concert changed from wild, sporadic applause to one of quiet and apprehension for the upcoming set featuring the exotic sound of Ravi Shankar and his fellow musicians. The music in the way that it's played resembles somewhat the Western style of jazz and classical improvisations in that there are melodies within melodies and no established time lengths of the works. At the end of the Indian music set, the Western musicians joined them in a rare collaboration of a Ravi Shankar song with inspired results.

After another brief intermission, Harrison and his friends returned for such hits as" In My Life", "For You Blue,"" Give Me Love Give Me Peace on Earth," and a possible Harrison single, "Dark Horse," named after his Dark Horse Record label. Billy Preston sent the crowd to a new frenzy with "Nothing From Nothing" and the rocker of the night, "Outta Space", featuring Preston dancing a jig the length of the stage.

Harrison's finale, the song that was about all of us, was the moving "What is Life." After the thunder standing ovation, Harrison offered his encore. The song was probably most associated with his name, "My Sweet Lord." What also made the concert such a moving and impressive affair was the fact that all proceeds from the concert booklets that were sold during the show, plus a great amount of the money made from the concerts, will go to charitable organizations in the US as well as abroad.