the beatles :: Blog
Today in Rock: The Beatles' record-breaking 1965 Shea Stadium show
The Beatles played Shea Stadium in New York City on August 15, 1965. They were the first rock group to play an outdoor sports stadium, and the show attracted 55,600 fans - the most attended show of the time. The promoter of the show, Sid Bernstein, said that the concert grossed $304,000, the largest gross from any event in show business up to that point. “It was the biggest crowd we ever played to anywhere in the world,” John Lennon said of the Shea show. “I heard a jet taking off, and I thought one of our amplifiers had blown up. We couldn’t hear ourselves sing.” The noise was so deafening that at the end of the show, during “I’m Down,” Lennon began playing a keyboard with his elbows while the whole group laughed hysterically. A documentary about the show, The Beatles at Shea Stadium, was produced by Ed Sullivan and was broadcast on ABC-TV the following year. The Beatles played a second show at Shea on August 23, 1966. It was one of their final live performances.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s newly revamped Beatles exhibit includes the jacket that Paul ...
Rock Hall opens one of the most comprehensive Beatles exhibits in the world as part of the Museum's redesign
As part of our re-design of the Museum’s galleries, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has just opened a fantastic new Beatles exhibit. It features all new casework, a video element and – best of all – several great new artifacts. The Museum has had a great relationship with Yoko Ono since day one. As a result, we have always had numerous artifacts representing John Lennon, including his Sgt. Pepper uniform, the guitar he played during the bed-ins for peace that he and Yoko held in 1969, several lyric manuscripts and a black leather jacket from the Beatles’ days in Hamburg. This time around, as we revamped our Beatles exhibit, both Olivia Harrison and Ringo Starr also contributed artifacts. George Harrison’s widow loaned us a striped suit that he wore during the Beatles’ 1966 tour of the U.S. and an orange jacket that he wore to the premiere of Yellow Submarine. Ringo loaned us a red jacket that he wore in the “Strawberry Fields Forever” promo film. In addition, the exhibit includes Lennon’s collarless jacket that he wore in 1963 and 1964, the Beatles logo drumhead from the band’s appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in ...
Thirty years later: Remembering John Lennon
It’s hard to believe that it has been 30 years since John Lennon was assassinated outside of his apartment in New York City. At the time, I was running Rolling Stone magazine’s bureau in Los Angeles. I had just gotten into my car to drive home from work when a news bulletin came on the radio stating that John Lennon had been murdered. How could this happen? The world was shocked. We simply could not believe what we were hearing on the news. Here was a man who worked so hard to bring peace and love to the world, and someone kills him. We immediately dropped what we were doing at Rolling Stone, so we could put together a special issue about John. In the years since, I have been fortunate to get to know Yoko Ono, and she has been very generous to the Hall of Fame. In 2000, we did a major exhibit about John here at the Museum. Then, when we had our Hall of Fame Annex in New York, we did a big exhibit about John’s years in New York. We also have several of John’s things – his Sgt. Pepper uniform, lyric ...
