Sep 7, 2024 By Brad Hundt 8 min read

It was another Monday afternoon in September in Pittsburgh, with the usual industrial smoke scenting the air on a day that had seen drizzle and fog.

At exactly 4:36 p.m. on that day in 1964, the wheels of a Lockheed Electra aircraft traveling from Baltimore hit the runway at Greater Pittsburgh Airport, as the airport was then known. There to greet the passengers were an estimated 4,000 people, hordes of reporters, and two limousines and an escort of six police cruisers.

The Beatles had come to town.

Plenty of concerts in Pittsburgh’s history have gained legendary status, whether it’s a newly-electric Bob Dylan cranking up “Like a Rolling Stone” at the Syria Mosque in 1966, Elvis Presley belting out his hits at a New Year’s Eve show at Civic Arena seven months before he died, or Bob Marley playing his last concert ever at the Stanley Theatre eight months before he died. But perhaps the most legendary of them all is the Beatles’ Sept. 14, 1964, appearance at Civic Arena, the only time the Fab Four played Pittsburgh.

The stop in Pittsburgh 60 years ago was part of a 24-city, 32-concert blitz across North America six months after John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr took the country by storm after their appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Organized in the months after those landmark broadcasts by General Artists Corporation in New York, it took the Beatles to most of the continent’s major cities in a frantic, one-month span, starting Aug. 20, 1964, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco and concluding on Sept. 20, 1964, at the Paramount Theater in New York.

The Beatles had by then done extensive tours of Britain on their way up, playing in ballrooms and theaters in dots on the map like Bridge of Allan, Tamworth, Widnes and, yes, Mold, but the tour of North America in the late summer of 1964 had never seen the Beatles – or any other artist, for that matter – cover so much territory in such a compressed time frame. The band would return to North America in 1965 and 1966, but those tours were limited to two weeks, had them playing stadiums in many locations and had much smaller itineraries. Aside from Pittsburgh, the 1964 outing also was the only time the Beatles ever played Las Vegas, Denver, Kansas City, Dallas, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Jacksonville, Fla., Baltimore, Vancouver, Montreal, Indianapolis and Atlantic City.

Years later, the Beatles expressed a much more jaundiced view of their time on the road and their tours of America, but while the 1964 tour was happening, Lennon called it “marvelous” and “fantastic.”

When plans for the tour were hatched, many insiders in the music, radio and concert industries had no way of knowing how long interest in the Beatles would last. But, during the summer of 1964, Beatlemania remained at a fever pitch – the Beatles’ first movie, “A Hard Day’s Night,” arrived in U.S. theaters just before the tour got underway, the soundtrack album hit No. 1 at the end of July and didn’t move out of that spot until Halloween, and they were on the cover of Life magazine at the end of August.

In Pittsburgh, fledgling concert promoter Pat DiCesare decided to take a chance on getting the Beatles booked at Civic Arena. General Artists Corporation demanded $5,000 up front and, as DiCesare tells it in his memoir, “Hard Days, Hard Nights,” demanded that the money be wired to a bartender in Brooklyn. DiCesare, then still in his 20s, got the cash from his father, who worked for Westinghouse. His father borrowed the amount from Westinghouse’s credit union, and a lien was placed on their house.

Once a Pittsburgh concert was confirmed, a ticket price of $5.90 was set – about $60 in 2024 dollars. Tickets were only available by mail order, with eager fans having to send in self-addressed stamped envelopes. DiCesare recalled in his book that the mountain of ticket requests were sifted by a group of nuns. The concert sold out in a day. The Beatles were guaranteed $25,000, and a share of the gate receipts, bringing their total take for the Pittsburgh concert to $37,000.

While the Beatles kicked open the door for the British Invasion, they were not the first of the new bands from the Queen’s realm to play Pittsburgh – the Dave Clark Five played Civic Arena in early June 1964, and, a few weeks later, the Rolling Stones played to about 400 people at West View Park, an amusement park in the North Hills.

The Beatles’ concert would not feature just the Beatles. The 1964 tour was a package that included Bill Black’s Combo, the Exciters, Clarence “Frogman” Henry, and Jackie DeShannon. The Beatles topped the bill with a set that lasted just a little over a half-hour that opened with “Twist and Shout” and concluded with “Long Tall Sally.” In between, they played “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “She Loves You,” “If I Fell” and seven other songs.

DiCesare recalled, “The set up for the Beatles was amazingly simple. All their equipment arrived in a Ford Econoline van. … In 1964, we used the same sound system the arena used for sporting events.” The Beatles themselves arrived at the arena after traveling down the Parkway West with fans in hot pursuit. A throng of fans was outside the arena and chased the Beatles’ car.

In a front page story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Alvin Rosensweet wrote, “The Beatles came to Pittsburgh yesterday, amidst wild scenes normally reserved for presidential candidates.”

In 1999, Betsy Herk of Donora told the Observer-Reporter that she saw the Beatles’ car enter Civic Arena when most other fans were diverted by a decoy car. She remembered, “I really got a good look at John (Lennon), who was wearing sunglasses and a yellow shirt with polka dots. He was smiling as if at something someone else in the car had just said, and he didn’t really look at me, but he was only about 20 feet away and it was certainly exciting.”

As was customary on the other stops on the tour, the Beatles talked with the local media in a press conference before the show. In the days well before newspapers had dedicated entertainment or music reporters on staff, most of the local outlets sent general newsmen, and the questions they asked were, to put it charitably, fairly shallow and condescending. The Beatles were asked, among other things, about the wear and tear on their clothes, what they looked for in women’s fashions, who their favorite actors were and whether they felt competitive with other groups.

When Civic Arena opened three years before the Beatles’ concert, it was known for its retractable roof, and Harrison wondered, “Is this the place that can be changed into open-air?” Lennon called it “a very good idea, that. I hope they don’t lift the roof while we’re playing.” McCartney chimed in, “So do I.”

Like it was in other cities, the Beatles’ performance was hard to hear over the din of screaming girls. Judy Spinda, from Bentleyville, wrote in her diary that she thought “my eardrums would burst.” The Pittsburgh Press dispatched Kasper Monahan, its 70-year-old drama and film critic, to the concert, and he described it as “the emotional binge to end all emotional binges.”

Bob McKeg, who lives in Pittsburgh’s West End and is a musician, was not able to get a ticket to the concert but stood outside the arena during the show. He remembers occasionally being able to make out what song was being played, and how the screams carried up the street.

After the last notes of “Long Tall Sally” rang out, the Beatles leapt into a car, left Civic Arena and went straight back to the airport. They did not stay in any hotels in the region, and instead arrived in Cleveland, the next stop on the tour, in the small hours of the morning. Once in Cleveland, they stayed at the Sheraton hotel.

Neither Lennon nor Harrison ever came back to Pittsburgh. Lennon never toured in the years between the Beatles’ split and his death in 1980, and Harrison’s sole American tour, in 1974, bypassed Pittsburgh. McCartney has returned to Pittsburgh three times, in 1990, 2010 and 2014, and Starr has played in the region a handful of times since the 1980s, the most recent appearance being in 2022 at PPG Paints Arena, across from where Civic Arena once stood.

For anyone who was lucky enough to be at the Beatles’ only Pittsburgh concert – or even within earshot of it – it’s an experience they have never forgotten.

“It left an indelible mark,” McKeg said.