Beatles at Shea While The Mets are Away
The Beatles play the first ever stadium concert and the Mets make history
SHEA STADIUM - Monday, August 16, 1965
The Sports Time Traveler is following exciting sporting events also from precisely 60 years ago.
And the Music Time Traveler is following rock music from the 1960s precisely 60 years ago.
This article is a rare collaboration between the two.
Last night was a milestone in rock history and baseball history that I just had to travel back in time virtually to experience.
It was the first ever rock concert in a sports stadium. And it was an important first for the New York Mets as well.
The Beatles performed here in New York’s Shea Stadium in front of a frantic sellout crowd of 55,000.
Shea Stadium was available because the usual tenants, The New York Mets, were on a road trip to 8th wonder of the world, the brand new Houston Astrodome.
We begin with the Beatles.
GETTING TO THE GIG
The Daily News article by John McGee and Leeds Moberley reported in detail about how George, John, Paul and Ringo got to Shea Stadium last night. The Beatles slipped out the service entrance of the Warwick Hotel at 54th and 6th in Manhattan at 7pm. A crowd of 1,000 standing a block away couldn’t see them. But they were spotted by about 100 other people who ran screaming after their limo.
The limo drove them to the Wall Street heliport where they flew to the World’s Fair heliport near Shea Stadium in Queens. From there, they went via an armored Wells Fargo truck to the ballpark and entered through a side door.
AP reporter Mary Campbell explains in her article this morning that when the Beatles rode in on the armored truck, “they were pinned with badges designating them honorary Wells Fargo agents.”
If you look at the video near the end of the article, you’ll see John and Paul wearing what look like sheriff’s badges on the left breast of their jackets as they start playing “Twist and Shout.” Those are the Wells Fargo agent badges.
THE SHOW BEGINS IN SILENCE
At 8pm, the program got underway with the playing of the Star Spangled Banner. The Daily News reported, “That brought the excited fans to their feet in patriotic silence.”
FOLLOWED BY A DEAFENING ROAR NEVER HEARD BEFORE
The Daily News reported that an announcer on the ball field then said, “Don’t worry - the Beatles are here. And from that moment nobody could hear anything but screams.”
There were 6 acts prior to the Beatles. The Daily News wrote, “The first performers, the Discotheqe Dancers, went through their routine with a rock-and-roll band, but it might as well have been a silent movie.”
Literally, no one could hear the music over the throng of Beatles’ fans who were screaming insanely with the anticipation of seeing the four lads from Liverpool.
The Daily News wrote, “You couldn’t even hear the planes passing overhead to and from nearby LaGuardia Airport.”
NOTE From The Music Time Traveler
I interrupt this article to share a perspective from the present time. I want to tell you how crazy it is that the crowd was so loud you couldn’t hear the jet airplanes.
I spent quite a bit of time in Shea Stadium watching New York Mets’ games in the 1970s. The roaring, almost painful blast from the jet engines, was a familiar part of the experience of Mets’ games. I never remember the crowd at Shea being anywhere close to as loud as what the Daily News was describing for the Beatles’ concert. And as we’re about to see, other reporters wrote the same thing about the volume of noise generated by the Beatles’ fans.
Now back to 1965.
ED SULLIVAN INTRODUCED THE FAB FOUR
At 9:15pm, the Beatles were introduced by Ed Sullivan, the man whose iconic Sunday night TV show on CBS had been the host of the Beatles’ first performance in America last year in February, 1964.
When Ed Sullivan announced the Beatles, they came running out of the visitors’ dugout on the 3rd base side of the field.
As the Beatles walked and jogged to the makeshift stage near 2nd base, the crowd noise was so loud that nothing could be heard in the stands. On the video tape link I share below, it seems like you can hear Ed Sullivan and the Beatles, but that tape has been re-mastered.
That’s not what people heard in the stadium stands last night.
WHAT THEY HEARD IN THE STANDS
What people heard in the stands was reported on by Mary Campbell in the AP article this morning that appeared in hundreds of newspapers and was titled, “BEATLES DROWNED OUT.”
Campbell wrote, “The Beatles stood on second base and for some 55,000 excited fans in Shea Stadium Sunday night it was better than the World Series, the All-Star game and 50 grand slam homers rolled into one.
The crowd, mostly girls, average age 15 to 16… couldn’t hear much, despite 29 loudspeakers.
Here’s my favorite part of Mary Campbell’s account, “The nearly universal sustained screaming prevented anybody hearing the Beatles.”
In the New York Times, Murray Schumach described the scene similarly, “Beatles fans, more than 55,000 of them, the largest collection ever seen and heard in one place, were in magnificent and terrifying voice last night at Shea Stadium.
Their immature lungs produced a sound so staggering, so massive, so shrill and sustained that it quickly crossed the line from enthusiasm to hysteria and was soon in the area of the classic Greek meaning of the word pandemonium.
THE CONCERT
The Beatles played 12 songs over 35 minutes.
Here is the set list:
"Twist and Shout"
"She's a Woman"
"I Feel Fine"
"Dizzy Miss Lizzy"
"Ticket to Ride"
"Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby"
"Can't Buy Me Love"
"Baby's in Black"
"Act Naturally"
"A Hard Day's Night"
"Help!"
“I'm Down"
When they were done, they were whisked off the field in a white ambulance that took them from second base to the Wells Fargo armored truck and back to the heliport at the World’s Fair.
Watch this short clip of the Beatles taking the stage last night:
The New York Daily News put the Beatles on the front page of the paper this morning, just under the top headline about a bombing in Vietnam, where things are starting to heat up.
THE AMAZIN’ METS
The regular show at Shea is the New York Mets, the worst team in baseball history. They’re on their way to their 4th consecutive year with well over 100 losses.
The Mets played yesterday afternoon in the Houston Astrodome - the world’s first indoor baseball stadium.
The Mets had lost 11 straight before the Beatles arrived in NY on Saturday. But the magic taking place back in their hometown seemed to have a spooky “MET-a-physical” impact on the Lovable Losers.
In their last 2 games, on Saturday night and Sunday, the Mets did something they’d never done in their short 4-year franchise history.
They didn’t allow a single run all weekend!
The Mets won Saturday’s game 1 - 0 with pitchers Galen Cisco and Darrell Sutherland combining to allow just 3 hits in 10 innings. The game was played in front of 41,732 fans - nearly as many as the Beatles played in front of.
Then on Sunday afternoon, Al Jackson pitched a 7 hit shutout to improve his record for the season to 6 - 16. The Mets won 3 - 0, powered by 20-year-old rookie Ron Swoboda’s 18th home run of the year.
It’s the first back-to-back shutout games in Mets history!
The double shutout improved the Mets’ record to a dismal 36 - 81, still the worst in baseball by quite a bit.
The 1965 Mets are in no danger of falling short of 100 losses again this year.