The night Paul McCartney returned to Shea Stadium: We’ll never forget it, and its memory will live on”
There were a number of reasons why The Beatles became the success that they did. They were comprised of excellent songwriters who wrote tunes that took the world by storm. Equally, they were charming and good-looking and rose to fame at the right time. However, one of their biggest defining moments was in 1964, when the band took to the stage on The Ed Sullivan Show and completely took over America.
This is the moment that Beatlemania officially started, as suddenly, overnight, everybody in America wanted to be in a band. Teenagers across America were stripping out their garages, getting their friends together and teaching themselves how to string together the chords necessary to put together a hit.
The Beatles already had a very distinctive live sound by the time they landed in America in 1964, and this is because they had already been playing together for years beforehand. Steve Van Zandt of the E Street Band, who is often hailed for his ability to play live, commented that the reason The Beatles sounded as good as they did was because by the time they came over to the US, they had already been together for what would prove to be half of their time as a band.
“By the time they came to the US, they were halfway throughout their career,” commented Van Zandt when talking about the almost instant appeal of the band. “They had been going since ’57 and were gone in ’69. So by ’64 they were quite sophisticated and highly evolved.”
Because of the band’s exceptional ability when playing live, there were a large number of people who were desperate to see them play. This led to them breaking records early on as they were one of the first bands to play stadium shows. While these gigs might have been monumental in terms of how many people attended, they were disastrous from a technical point of view. The technology simply wasn’t there for bands to play in stadiums, which meant that The Beatles couldn’t hear themselves while on stage.
One of the first stadium shows they did was in New York at Shea Stadium. The former home of the New York Mets saw The Beatles take to the stage as the band tried their best to play, but were drowned out by the roar of the crowd.
“We didn’t really know what to expect, as no-one had ever played a stadium show before,” said Paul McCartney when he was reflecting on the first time they played at Shea Stadium, “Like a lot of things we did, it was going into the unknown. The technology was so different. We couldn’t really hear ourselves when we played there as the crowd were so loud. Vox had specially designed us 100-watt amplifiers but they were nowhere near loud enough.”
Shea Stadium closed in 2008, but Paul McCartney returned to play one final show before it was rigged up for demolition. He went on for one of Billy Joel’s last tracks as he was wrapping up his show at the stadium. McCartney was finishing up a gig and needed a speedy flight and police escort upon landing to get to the show on time, but he was able to take to the stage one last time at the stadium where he and his band had made history so many decades ago.
“She was a blast!” said McCartney, “I can’t tell you what it felt like to be back there onstage after all these years – and to think I nearly didn’t make it.”
The show also clearly showcased how far live technology has come since McCartney played there for the first time. “The crowd were just as loud this time round but technology has moved on now so we can hear what we are playing,” he said, “The stadium is such a special place to us. We’ll never forget it, and its memory will live on.”
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