Day 209 – The Beatles at Shea

Saturday, August 16, 2025

Sixty years ago yesterday The Beatles played Shea Stadium. And so began the transformation of musical performance. No one was ready for it. The Beatles and everyone who was there said they couldn’t hear the music over the screaming. Now, I’ve learned they plugged their 100 watt amplifiers into the PA system. That was it. I heard Bruce at RFK Stadium 30-40 years ago and I marveled at the huge sound poles he had placed on the field. Now? Metallica brings 50-70 trucks and takes up the sod to erect sound and video poles, and a stage.

The Beatles walked out from the 3rd base dugout to a riser on second base.

A few years after the Beatles played Shea I heard the Doors play on a baseball diamond with a snow fence strung from first to third base. They were on a riser at Home Plate and we sat in the outfield bleachers. Same place I heard Blind Faith. I heard Led Zeppelin play at the Wolman Ice Skating Rink in New York City.

They either weren’t very good or we didn’t understand. It was one of their first shows. 

I heard Janis perform at the Yale New Haven Bowl. She was in the End Zone facing the bleachers at that end of the stadium. I heard her again at the Baltimore Civic Center (now The Mariner Center). It’s basically a larger high school multi-use cafeteria with a stage. Except, the center part is a hockey rink. I heard her a third and last time at Cole Field House at the University of Maryland, performing on a riser.

When I went out west to look at colleges in ’68 I heard Steppenwolf play at The Avalon Ballroom. Now only remembered in the beginning of their Cheap Thrills album. You walked up to the second floor on a wide switch back staircase. Most people were sitting on the floor zoned out. There was a light show, which projected from the balcony onto the stage. It was a series of overhead projectors and people were using two sheets of transparent plastic material that they had squirted food coloring in between and were lifting and depressing the top sheet.

Felix Cavalierie of The Young Rascals was in the third base dugout that night at Shea. When I was in high school everyone was playing the Rascals music. Also, The Stones. Satisfaction was huge. I went to a dance (remember them? Sometimes it was a sock hop in the gym; sometimes a band on a cafeteria room stage). The band on the stage played Satisfaction. At the end of the song the crowd was stamping out the beat. The band wasn’t quite sure what to do. They looked at each other with that What do we do now? look. The bass player just began the bass line and the band played the whole song again. We went crazy at the end clapping and cheering.

This was before drugs had taken the grip they developed later. Yes, there were people who zoned out, and dropped out, but it wasn’t considered a huge thing. Free Love. Peace, and pot. It was tame compared to the stuff that can destroy you today.

I heard Eric Burdon and the Animals at The Philmore West. A huge flat hard floored room. Eric had a big tube billowing out smoke. The next time I was in that space was two years ago for a Van Gogh light show, and it was only in part of it.

I spent a lot of time going to New York to the Philmore East. a multi-tiered theater. I heard Sam & Dave, Ten Years After (for ten years after Elvis), The Super Sessions with Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, Arthur Brown (Fire!I), many more that I can’t remember at the moment (but I will!)

Music has changed. Or rather noise has changed. Rap? Eh. Taylor? Interesting because of her huge appeal. Some of her songs have stickiness in that they stay in your head, but range? Not so much. It’s okay. Same with Sabrina Carpenter. I prefer the powerhouse singers: Adele, Whitney, Christina. Beyonce tries, and her showmanship is great, but when it comes to the big note? No, she dodges it. 

I miss being able to go to a record store and thumb through the bins, flipping albums. Picking one up and looking on the back for the songs and maybe a bit more. Now? I’m not even sure where to find an album. I mean if it’s announced that someone has “dropped” an album I ask, “where? On the floor?”

If they are really really huge you might find a cd at Target or vinyl at Barnes and Noble. Yeah. It’s different today and I hear kids think the old man is out of it. They can’t dance. They don’t even know how to pay attention (“What?” is the typical response.) 

The beauty and the chaos of a James Brown show, or the Stones, is not around. Well, yes there’s Tay-Tay, and Olivia and you can go to hear thousand of screaming women screaming the lyrics. That’s a different dynamic than what I experienced.

When I heard The Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden in the fall of 1969 Mic was walking to one end of the stage and the first notes of Satisfaction rang out he leapt in the air and turned 180 degrees before landing to run back to the mic and sing the opening words, “I can’t get no…satisfaction.”

Or watching Alvin Lee of Ten Years After strumming his guitar, Big Red, while lazily having a cigarette in his mouth. How was he going to put that cigarette up and make it to the mic in time to sing? I wondered. The answer came soon enough. Two big strides and he screamed out the opening line. The cigarette shot from his mouth to a corner of the stage. Yeah. Those were different times.