A national anniversary is occurring: 50 years ago this week, the Beatles stormed into New York sparking the beginning of BeatleMania in the US.
We were midway into the St. Olaf Choir's East Coast tour as this unfolded, about to be the first college choir to perform in Avery Fisher Hall. Before we boarded our buses that evening to head over to Lincoln Center, we looked down on the streets below from hotel rooms and witnessed an incredible wall-to-wall, crushing crowd outside Carnegie Hall where John, Paul, George, and Ringo were about to perform. Police on horseback were unable to contain the mayhem. Hard to believe that was all half a century ago this week!
Both we and the Beatles were sold out that night; that's roughly 6,400 seats all together. I'm contacting some of my friends to see if they still have access to photos taken from our hotel windows of the BeatleMania outbreak. Meanwhile, below, is one shot of some of those friends posing by one of the East Coast concert posters. Am hoping to get imagery of the "mania" from Dave, the fellow on the left. He had a special 35mm camera. Note the crew cuts. It was a different era. ;-)
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| St. Olaf Choir members in New York City |
I remember when a few of us guys would walk into shops or drug stores on the '64 tour, some of the clerks would look up and say "Are you the Beatles?" That happened in both Ohio and New York. It seemed totally ridiculous, since none of us had haircuts remotely like their "pudding cuts", but I suppose we were about the right age, and again, it was part of the mania sweeping the country.
Another piece of trivia: up until that tour in 1964 the choir's official name was The Saint Olaf Lutheran Choir. In fact, we were given bumper stickers to put on our luggage bearing the official name. However, several students that year took scissors, cut their stickers in thirds, discarded the "Lutheran" portion, and then pasted the two remaining pieces together on their suitcases. So rebellious we were back then !
As far as I remember, ever after, it was always referred to as the St. Olaf Choir. Now you know the "rest of the story." ;-)
2 comments:
Great memories, Warren, thanks! JoAnne, my spouse of almost 50 years, was teaching in Northwood, ND, when the Beatles' era was born. She watched the boys on the Ed Sullivan Show via her landlady's black and white tv set. I was at KSTP in Minneapolis-St. Paul, working there while attending the U of M. I didn't pay much attention to Beatles' music as I was DJ-ing Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Judy Garland, Henry Mancini and all the other performers of the Great American Songbook. The Beatles, at the time, weren't part of that but I have since grown to appreciate their contribution to pop music.
I am positive that I watched the Ed Sullivan Show on the evening that the Beatles performed, but I can't picture in my mind where I was. It had to have been in the basement of our sorority house on the Northwestern campus, as that's where our ONLY television set was . . . we were all very infatuated with this group, especially with Paul, who was the most good looking!
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