The Beatles and baseball: Remembering when the band played Shea Stadium

The greatest foursome ever to take the field at Shea Stadium wasn’t a World Series champion Mets pitching rotation or a gang of blue-chip Jets defensive linemen, but it was Queens royalty. John, Paul, George and Ringo were on a first-name basis with the world. It was time for America to meet The Beatles.

“They said they wouldn't come here until they had a number one hit in America,” recalled Rick Cerrone, former Yankees director of media relations and current editor-in-chief of Baseball Digest, who is a serious and knowledgeable Beatles fan with a memorabilia-filled Beatles room in his home. “They did. It was 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' [Feb. 1, 1964].”

It was the first of many.

Before a Mets prodigy slugged prodigious home runs while patrolling Strawberry Fields, forever The Beatles were about singles. When Lennon-McCartney-Harrison-Starr played their historic concert at Shea Stadium on Aug. 15, 1965, they already had achieved rock music immortality.

The United States got its first up-close look at The Beatles on their three historic appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in February 1964 — broadcasts that helped to launch the British invasion of rock 'n' roll music to America and marked the beginning of Beatlemania in this country. The group's television debut on Feb. 9, 1964, attracted an estimated 73 million viewers,

Two months later, on April 4, Beatlemania was at its peak. The Beatles had the top five songs on the Billboard Magazine’s Hot 100 chart. Cerrone has the 45s framed and on display. The batting order:

1: "Can’t Buy Me Love"

2: "Twist and Shout"

3: "She Loves You"

4: "I Want to Hold Your Hand"

5: "Please Please Me"

Shake it up, baby, now

Talk about Amazin’! There’s never been a hit streak like it. The Beatles ruled the record world; now they were going for a world record.

No wonder Shea was shaking, packed to its 55,000-seat capacity with screaming, hysterical fans for a hard day’s opening night of this wildly anticipated U.S. tour in 1965. They had a ticket to ride for the first rock concert at an outdoor stadium. 

The Beatles opened their 12-song, 30-minute set with “Twist and Shout,” an appropriate concert kickoff number as it pretty much described the actions of the frenzied crowd. The screams essentially drowned out the music. In fact, the noise had begun to build the moment The Beatles entered the dugout before walking to the stage set up near second base.

They had arrived by a helicopter that landed on the site of the nearby World’s Fair and took armored cars to Shea (the stadium was available because the Mets were on an eight-game road trip to Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco). Their arrival was well-organized, but The Beatles could never have anticipated the volume of their reception — both in numbers of fans and level of noise.

“It was terrifying at first when we saw the crowds, but I don’t think I ever felt so exhilarated in all my life,” Harrison said in Bob Spitz’s lengthy and detailed book, “The Beatles.”

Help!

“It was ridiculous. We couldn’t hear ourselves sing,” Lennon said in Spitz’s book.

For the up-tempo finale, “I’m Down,” Lennon played the organ with his elbows, clowning around because no one could hear them over the crowd. Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, watching from behind the first-base dugout, called the scene “frightening.”

Do you want to know a secret?

The Beatles didn’t dress for the show in the spacious home locker rooms of the Mets or Jets. According to Cerrone, they changed in a far less glamorous area of Shea Stadium.

The topic came up while he was watching the Fox telecast of an MLB game last August.

“It was the 60th anniversary of The Beatles' historic concert at Shea Stadium, and Kenny Albert and the other announcers started wondering, where did these guys change? What locker room did they use? Did they give The Beatles the home clubhouse?” Cerrone said. But even though he was only 10 years old for that concert and could not attend, he knew the answer.

“I texted Kenny that I could give him with complete authority that they used the umpires’ room,” Cerrone said. “And the reason I knew that is because the Shea umpires’ room manager back then, Lou Cucuzza Sr., told me. In the documentary ‘The Beatles at Shea Stadium’ [which aired on ABC-TV in 1967], they are filming in the umpires' room, and there's Lou! I knew him when he became the visiting clubhouse manager at Yankee Stadium.

“It wasn't palatial. They weren't putting out banquet tables for them,” Cerrone added. “There's probably four lockers in the room, and it sufficed. So it was very spartan. Everything about it was spartan. The staging was spartan. The sound system was spartan. The sound actually went through the same PA system that they would do the lineups and announcements with. Those are not high quality. People would look at it now and go, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ You go to a concert now, you’ve got huge video screens and speakers hanging from everywhere. But Shea is where it all started.”

The concert reportedly grossed a record-breaking $304,000, of which The Beatles received $160,000 (worth an estimated $1.7 million today) — for a 30-minute performance.

Drive my car to Shea

Marty Appel, like Cerrone a former Yankees director of media relations and noted Beatles aficionado, attended the Fab Four’s second concert at Shea, about a year later, Aug. 23, 1966.

“The hype was so great for the first one because The Beatles had really planted the flag in America,” Appel said. “I was a junior in high school and I didn't drive yet and it just seemed overwhelming. But by the second concert, I was more mature, was able to drive and had friends who wanted to do it. I think we paid $5.75 for the tickets. We wound up in the upper deck in rightfield, just to the fair side of the foul pole.”

Reportedly, about 11,000 seats went unsold, but the group earned $189,000 out of the $292,000 gross and the noise level again was so incredibly high for the 11-song performance.

"I have vivid memories of that whole half-hour concert,” said Appel, who has visited Abbey Road in London with his wife numerous times and has had a photo taken each time on the spot where The Beatles walked for the famous Abbey Road album cover. “It’s part of our routine. I would do it today if I was there today.”

His long-ago night at Shea was anything but routine. “We couldn't really hear the songs. You’d hear the first chord, and then the screaming would start and you really wouldn't hear the rest of the song,” Appel said. "But you knew the song, right from the first chord, and so you're singing it in your head while they're singing it on the stage.

"I had zero regrets about going. Even as we realized we weren’t going to hear what they were singing, just the experience of it was unbelievable.”

You say you want a revolution?

The First Night at Shea, the first rock concert at an outdoor stadium, became the launching pad for generations of such mega-events. A notable example more than 40 years later was Long Island legend Billy Joel’s "Last Play at Shea" concerts on July 16 and 18, 2008.

A surprise guest for the second encore of the second show? None other than Paul McCartney.

“British Beatlemania” endures. They did start the fire, and Shea Stadium played a starring role. 

Bob Herzog retired from Newsday in 2018 after 42 years working in the sports department as an editor and writer.