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The Beatles' 1965 US tour

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The Beatles 1965 USA Tour
Tour by The Beatles
Cover of the tour booklet
Start dateAugust 15, 1965
End dateAugust 31, 1965
Legs1
No. of shows11
The Beatles concert chronology

The Beatles staged their second concert tour of the United States (with one date in Canada) in the late summer of 1965. At the peak of American Beatlemania, they played a mixture of outdoor stadiums and indoor arenas, with two historic stops on this venture.

The Shea Stadium show

The Shea Stadium concert on August 15 was record breaking and one of the most famous concert events of its era. It was the first concert to be held at a major outdoor stadium and set records for attendance and revenue generation — promoter Sid Bernstein said, "Over 55,000 people saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium. We took $304,000, the greatest gross ever in the history of show business"[1] — demonstrating that outdoor concerts on a large scale could be successful and profitable.

The Beatles were transported to the roof of the World's Fair by a New York Airways Boeing Vertol 107-II helicopter, then taking a Wells Fargo armoured truck to the stadium. At the stadium itself were 2,000 security personnel to handle crowd control.[1] The crowd was confined to the spectator areas of the stadium with nobody other than the band themselves and security personnel allowed on the field. As a result of this, the audience was a long distance away from the band while they played on a small stage in the middle of the field.

"Beatlemania" was at one of its highest marks at the Shea Concert. Film footage taken at the concert shows many teenagers and women crying, screaming, and even fainting. The crowd noise was such that security guards can be seen covering their ears as the The Beatles enter the field.

The sound was so deafening that none of The Beatles could hear much of anything. Vox had specially designed 100-watt amplifiers for this tour and it was still not anywhere near loud enough, and so the Beatles used the house amplification system. John Lennon described the noise as "wild" and also twice as deafening when the Beatles performed. Not being able to hear each other or even themselves, The Beatles just played through a list of songs nervously, not knowing what kind of sound was being produced. At the end of the show (during "I'm Down"), John Lennon saw the whole show as being so ridiculous that he just began playing the keyboard with his elbows while the whole group laughed hysterically. The Beatles section of the concert was extremely short by modern standards (just 30 minutes), but was the typical 1965 Beatles tour set list, with Ringo opting to sing "Act Naturally" instead of "I Wanna Be Your Man."

A documentary entitled The Beatles at Shea Stadium[1] was produced by Ed Sullivan (under his Sullivan Productions, Inc. banner), NEMS Enterprises Ltd. (which owns the 1965 copyright), and the Beatles company Subafilms Ltd. The project utilized twelve cameras to capture the mayhem and mass hysteria that was Beatlemania in America in 1965. With overdubs recorded by the Beatles in London in January 1966 to cover audio problems throughout the concert recording, the documentary aired in the United States in 1966 on the ABC television network, and has been widely available on the bootleg circuit for decades.

In May 2007, a recording of the entire show sourced from the actual in-line stadium public address system surfaced. [2] The recording offers a fascinating minute-by-minute document of the complete concert, including opening sets from King Curtis, Cannibal and the Headhunters, Brenda Holloway and Sounds Incorporated. More importantly for fans, it offers the actual Beatles performance unaltered by overdubs and sweetening.

The Hollywood Bowl shows

Two shows were played at Los Angeles' high-profile Hollywood Bowl; the second, on August 30, featured one of the group's better performances and provided much of the material for the officially-released 1977 live album The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl.

Set list

The typical set list for the shows was as follows (with lead singers noted):[3]

  1. "Twist and Shout" (excerpt) (John Lennon)
  2. "She's a Woman" (Paul McCartney)
  3. "I Feel Fine" (John Lennon)
  4. "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" (John Lennon)
  5. "Ticket to Ride" (John Lennon and Paul McCartney)
  6. "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" (George Harrison)
  7. "Can't Buy Me Love" (Paul McCartney)
  8. "Baby's in Black" (John Lennon and Paul McCartney)
  9. "Act Naturally" or "I Wanna Be Your Man" (Ringo Starr)
  10. "A Hard Day's Night" (John Lennon and Paul McCartney)
  11. "Help!" (John Lennon)
  12. "I'm Down" (Paul McCartney)

Tour dates

Instruments & Equipment

Instruments The Beatles had on the tour, shown here for each member of the group.

John

  • 1964 Rickenbacker 325 Guitar
  • 1964 Gibson J-160 E (spare)
  • Vox organ

Paul

  • 1963 Hofner violin bass
  • 1961 Hofner (backup)

George

  • Gretsch Tennessean Guitar
  • Rickenbacker 12-string
  • Gretsch Country Gentleman

Ringo

  • Ludwig 22-inch-bass kit (drum)
  • Number 5 drop-T logo drum logo (drum head)

References

  1. ^ a b c Roy Carr & Tony Tyler, The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, 1976, p. 46
  2. ^ Rolling Stone Magazine Issue 1027, May 31, 2007 (page 90).
  3. ^ Nicholas Schaffner, The Beatles Forever, 1977, p. 45
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