The Beatles' 1965 US tour

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.

After this tour's conclusion, the Beatles, who had been touring, recording and promoting non-stop for three years, took a six-week break before reconvening in mid-October to record the album Rubber Soul.

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 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] This demonstrated that outdoor concerts on a large scale could be successful and profitable.

The Beatles were transported to the rooftop Port Authority Heliport at the World's Fair by a New York Airways Boeing Vertol 107-II helicopter, then took a Wells Fargo armoured truck to the stadium. Two thousand security personnel were at the stadium to handle crowd control.^[1] The crowd was confined to the spectator areas of the stadium with nobody other than the band members, their entourage, 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 Beatles enter the field. Despite the heavy security presence individual fans broke onto the field a number of times during the concert and had to be chased down and restrained. Concert film footage also shows John Lennon light-heartedly pointing out one such incident as he attempted to talk to the audience in between songs.

The deafening level of crowd noise coupled with the distance between the band and the audience meant that nobody in the stadium 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. 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"), 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 titled 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 utilised 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. "Baby's in Black" (John Lennon and Paul McCartney)
3. "She's a Woman" (Paul McCartney)
4. "I Feel Fine" (John Lennon)
5. "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" (John Lennon)
6. "Ticket to Ride" (John Lennon)
7. "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" (George Harrison)
8. "Can't Buy Me Love" (Paul McCartney)
9. "I Wanna Be Your Man" (Ringo Starr) (at Shea Stadium this song was replaced by "Act Naturally", also sung by Starr)
10. "A Hard Day's Night" (John Lennon, with Paul McCartney)
11. "Help!" (John Lennon)
12. "I'm Down" (Paul McCartney)

Tour dates

Instruments and equipment

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

John

• 1964 Rickenbacker 325 semi-hollow electric guitar
• 1964 Gibson J-160E acoustic/electric guitar (used as a backup)
• Vox Continental electric organ

Paul

• 1962 Hofner Violin hollowbody bass
• 1961 Hofner Violin hollowbody bass (used as a backup)

George

• 1964 Gretsch Tennessean hollowbody electric guitar
• 1964 Rickenbacker 360-12 thinline electric guitar (used for "A Hard Day's Night")
• 1963 Gretsch Country Gentleman hollowbody electric guitar (used as a backup)

Ringo

• Ludwig 22-inch-bass 4-piece drum kit
• Number 5 drop-T logo bass drum head

References