The Beatles' 1965 US tour

• 1. Introduction

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  The Beatles' 1965 US tour began on the 15th of August at Shea Stadium, in the New York City borough of Queens. Promoter Sid Bernstein declared the opening night the greatest gross in the history of show business. The total was $304,000. The Beatles received $160,000 for their performance, an amount that worked out to $100 for each second they were on stage. Beatlemania was at its peak that summer, and the roar inside a baseball stadium in Queens was its highest expression. John Lennon later told Bernstein: "You know, Sid, at Shea Stadium I saw the top of the mountain." But what had those three weeks of touring actually been like? And what did the experience set in motion?

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• 2. Before the First Show

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  The band began rehearsing in London on the 25th of July. That date fell four days before the royal premiere of Help!, their second feature film. Those rehearsals prepared the band for both the US tour and a live slot on ABC Weekend TV's Blackpool Night Out. The group worked at the Saville Theatre and then at the ABC Theatre in Blackpool on the 30th of July.

  Brenda Holloway and the King Curtis Band opened alongside Cannibal & the Headhunters and Sounds Incorporated at every show. The package-tour format, placing multiple acts on the same bill, was standard for the era. The Beatles traveled with a core entourage. Road managers Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans handled logistics on the road. Manager Brian Epstein, press officer Tony Barrow, and chauffeur Alf Bicknell completed the inner circle.

  In his autobiography, Barrow describes the publicity strategy that shaped American interest before the band arrived. Interviews the individual Beatles gave to British publications were syndicated widely in the United States. Barrow notes this was easily arranged, given the group's enormous international popularity. For the New York opening, promoter Bernstein added a local band, the Young Rascals, to the bill.

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• 3. Night at Shea

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  The Beatles were flown to the World's Fair by a New York Airways Boeing Vertol 107-II helicopter, landing on the rooftop Port Authority Heliport. A Wells Fargo armoured truck then carried them to Shea Stadium.

  Two thousand security personnel were stationed at the venue for crowd control. The entire audience was confined to the spectator stands, with no one but the band, their entourage, and security allowed on the field. The Beatles performed on a small stage at the center of the field. The result was that the audience spent the entire show at a distance from the band. At the time, the crowd of over 55,000 made it the highest-attended concert in the United States. That record held until 1973, when Led Zeppelin drew 56,000 people to a show in Tampa, Florida.

  Security guards can be seen in concert film covering their ears as the Beatles entered the field. Fans throughout the stands were visibly crying, screaming, or fainting. Individual fans repeatedly broke through the security cordon and had to be chased across the field. Concert footage captures Lennon good-naturedly pointing out one such incident as he tried to address the crowd between songs.

  Vox had designed 100-watt amplifiers specifically for this tour, but they proved insufficient against the noise. The band fell back on Shea Stadium's house amplification system. On-stage fold-back speakers were not standard in 1965, so the Beatles could not hear their own playing. They had no way to tell whether they were producing any coherent sound or performing in unison. Lennon described the level of noise as wild and said it was twice as deafening once the Beatles took the stage.

  During the closing song, "I'm Down," Lennon visibly lost his composure. "I feel that on that show John cracked up," Starr said, "not mentally ill, but he just got crazy, playing the piano with his elbows." The spectacle reduced Harrison to hysterical laughter. Music critic Richie Unterberger later called the film's "I'm Down" sequence one of the most thrilling of any Beatles concert footage. Starr also chose to sing "Act Naturally" at Shea rather than the usual pick, "I Wanna Be Your Man."

  Mick Jagger and Keith Richards attended the concert alongside their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. Afterward, the Beatles spent the evening and part of the following day with Bob Dylan at the Warwick Hotel. Pete Flynn, a Shea Stadium groundskeeper, drove the Beatles from the stage to a centerfield gate after that show. He would repeat the journey in reverse 43 years later. In 2008, he drove Paul McCartney to the stage for Billy Joel's final concert at the same stadium.

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• 4. Six Days in Benedict Canyon

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  Brian Epstein arranged a six-day break in Los Angeles, a deliberate contrast to the relentless schedule of the 1964 tour. He rented the band a secluded house at 2850 Benedict Canyon Drive, off Mulholland Drive. The Beatles arrived there in the early hours of the 23rd of August. They had come directly from their second show at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Oregon. The large Spanish-style house was built into the side of a mountain, hidden from the outside world. The band typically woke at 2 pm and spent their days by the swimming pool, with a panoramic view of Benedict Canyon.

  Twelve officers from the local police department were assigned specifically to protect the band during their stay. Security from the Burns Agency supplemented that detail. Their address became widely known, and fans besieged the area. They blocked roads, tried to scale the steep canyon walls, and some rented helicopters to spy from the air.

  Actor Eleanor Bron, who had co-starred with the Beatles in Help!, was among the guests who came to Benedict Canyon. Folk singer Joan Baez visited as well. On the 24th of August, Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of the Byrds arrived, along with actor Peter Fonda.

  On the 27th of August, the Beatles traveled to Perugia Way in Bel Air to meet Elvis Presley at his home. Two days later, the band played two concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The second of those shows, on the 30th of August, was later used to produce the 1977 live album The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl.

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• 5. What the Tour Left Behind

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  Poet Allen Ginsberg had attended both of the Beatles' shows at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland on the 22nd of August. Inspired by the Beatles and by the sight of a police line separating the band from their audience, he composed the poem "Portland Coliseum." The Beatles and their entourage landed at London Airport, now called Heathrow, on the 2nd of September, greeted by a crowd of fans.

  Rubber Soul, recorded beginning in mid-October after a six-week break, drew directly from what the band had seen and heard in the United States. The album reflected the group's exposure to singles from artists on the Motown and Stax labels. The mutually influential relationship the band had forged with the Byrds shaped it further. Dylan had urged Lennon to strive for more meaning in his lyrics, and that challenge registered on the new record.

  "Drive My Car" evoked the starlets the Beatles had met at Hollywood parties. Lennon initially built "Run for Your Life" on an early Elvis Presley recording called "Baby Let's Play House." Soon after returning to London, Lennon discussed the meeting with Presley at length in an interview with the NME.

  Ed Sullivan produced a documentary about the Shea Stadium concert under his Sullivan Productions, Inc. banner. NEMS Enterprises Ltd and the Beatles' company Subafilms Ltd joined as co-producers. Twelve cameras had been used to capture the event. The Beatles later carried out overdubs in a London studio to cover audio problems in the original concert recording. The completed film aired on British television in March 1966. It reached American audiences on the ABC network in 1967 and circulated widely as a bootleg thereafter.

  In May 2007, a recording surfaced from Shea Stadium's actual in-line public address system. It captured the full evening, from the support acts through the Beatles' closing song, with no overdubs and no editing applied afterward.

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