RSS | 
Twitter
| 
Be a fan!
All those years ago
Often the reader's reaction is: Wow, I remember that! I didn't realize it was so long ago.
Try this one for size.
Monday marked the anniversary of the final regularly scheduled concert by history's most influential rock group, the Beatles. The show took place at San Francisco's Candlestick Park.
Rate This Story:
1 the lowest - 5 the highest
Current rating:
That's right. It's been 45 years since the Fab Four played in front of an audience, save for a few TV specials and the famed impromptu 1969 rooftop concert in London.
That's a long time ago, especially considering the sway the Beatles still hold over the musical world.
You may be familiar enough with the group's story to know it continued to record throughout the rest of the '60s, some of the most popular and enduring songs and albums in history.
But John, Paul, George and Ringo were done with the stage after the summer of '66. They couldn't hear themselves play over the screams of the crowd, and with the relatively primitive equipment available for concerts, they couldn't perform the compositions they were creating in the studio.
My earliest memory of the Beatles is hearing the strident chord that opens the song "A Hard Day's Night," and I remember the news reports when they officially announced their breakup in 1970. But I'm too young to remember Beatlemania firsthand.
The band still was big time throughout the '70s, whether it was the constant fighting among former members or rumors of a reunion. That ended, of course, with the murder of John Lennon in 1980.
By that time, I'd collected numerous Beatles and related solo albums, and I'd stumbled through trying to learn some of their songs during early stabs at playing guitar. Most of 'em don't come easy.
Geez, even that was more than 30 years ago.
These days, Sir Paul McCartney is doing just fine at age 69, having just completed a North American tour. The other surviving member, Ringo Starr, 71, led his All-Starr Band on a European tour this summer, and he's heading for South American in the fall.
He also is paying tribute to his late bandmate George Harrison and his efforts in organizing the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, which Starr calls "the very first major music concert for a cause." If you watch it on DVD 40 years later, it's still a pretty good show.
You also can watch a lot of DVDs featuring the Beatles, themselves, from the movie version of "A Hard Day's Night" to the band's landmark appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show."
But none of that compares, I'm guessing, with the actual experience of attending a Beatles concert. And no one has been able to do that in four-and-a-half decades.
Online editor Harry Funk can be reached at hfunk@observer-reporter.com.
remembering the beatles : 9/2/2011
i saw the beatles in kansas city, missouri when i was going to school there. i was only 18 years old and i recently saw paul at consol energy center this year. two events in my life that i'll never forget it. the stadium show in kansas city was just as described in your column. lots of screaming kids but it was an experience like none other for me at that time. thanks for the nice column about them. i was very happy to see it.
- Keep it civil and stay on topic.
- No profanity, vulgarity, racial slurs or personal attacks.
- Comments that harass others or joke about tragedies will be deleted.
- Keep it brief and turn off all caps.
- No URLs.
