The Beatles bet on filling Shea and invented a rock’s new era

When it comes to the Beatles’ remarkable story, there is no shortage of highwater marks. Their history is pocked with career-making highlights: the band’s bravura February 9, 1964, appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” that netted some 73 million viewers. The group’s June 25, 1967, performance of “All You Need Is Love” on the “Our World” satellite broadcast that was relayed across the globe with an estimated viewership of some half a billion people. Or somewhat more quaintly but no less impactful: the Beatles’ final public performance as a working rock ‘n’ roll band on the rooftop of their office building on January 30, 1969, scant months ahead of the release of their “Abbey Road” swan song.

Perhaps no event looms larger than the Beatles’ August 15, 1965, performance at Shea Stadium in front of 55,600 fans. The concert ushered in a new era in rock music in which superstardom was defined by a band’s ability to sell out massive stadiums in contrast with the arenas and ballrooms that had previously defined the genre’s pinnacles of success.

Even the Beatles’ arrival at the stadium that fateful day was bathed in big-time celebrity, with the group majestically traveling by helicopter from Manhattan across the East River to Flushing Meadows, where Shea Stadium had opened in April 1964. The robust, concrete stadium had opened in time for the New York Mets’ third Major League Baseball season. The club had joined the league as an expansion team in 1962 in the company of the Houston Astros.

The Beatles’ Shea Stadium gig was the brainchild of Sid Bernstein, who had previously scored headlines with the band in the form of their sold-out Carnegie Hall shows in February 1964. But as the promoter soon discovered, selling out a stadium was a far cry from the 2,900-seat Midtown venue. As author Dave Schwensen observes in “The Beatles at Shea Stadium: The Story Behind Their Greatest Concert,” filling nearly 56,000 seat was a daunting proposition: “Even though the Beatles had been breaking records for concert attendance and sales, there was no precedence or guarantee they would sell that many tickets for one show. The only other rock ‘n’ roll artist with enough star power to headline an outdoor stadium show had been Elvis Presley almost a decade earlier.”

On October 11, 1956, the King had set an attendance record with 26,500 fans at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas. But there were plenty of empty seats that day. The stadium’s capacity at the time was 75,000 patrons, a staggering figure that was well beyond Presley’s reach at the height of his fame.

For manager Brian Epstein, the very notion of the Beatles performing in any venue with slews of empty seats was a non-starter. Epstein feared that even the mighty Beatles couldn’t fill a stadium. As Bernstein later recalled, negotiating with Epstein wasn’t easy, but “I ad-libbed and told him I’d give him 10 dollars for every empty seat. I’d won his confidence and friendship during the Carnegie Hall concerts and he said, ‘That’s a deal.’”

For Bernstein, it was an incredible boast. The brutal truth was that the promoter simply didn’t have the money to back the event, and Epstein was demanding an advance fee of $100,000 — a cool million bucks in today’s dollars — which accounted for 60% of the gross receipts. Complicating matters even further, Epstein refused to allow Bernstein to advertise the event until he provided the Beatles with a $50,000 deposit. “And that was $50,000 I didn’t have,” Bernstein later admitted. “Nowhere near that. So I asked for a little time to get that money together.”

What Bernstein likely didn’t know was that another suitor was emerging in the form of the Houston Sports Association. The Houston Astros were set to open their gleaming new home in April 1965. Billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World, the Astrodome had been enjoying international headlines since it began construction in 1963. With a maximum capacity of 50,000 in its football configuration, the venue would be the first multi-purpose domed stadium, complete with air-conditioning to withstand the brutal Texas heat.

While Bernstein managed to secure his promised deposit for Epstein, presenting the manager with a $100,000 check at the Plaza Hotel in January 1965, selling out some 56,000 seats at Shea Stadium still seemed like a pipe dream. While he had set a record with the highest fee for a rock concert, Bernstein was a long way from setting the genre’s attendance record.

When the Houston Sports Association made its play in February 1965, the organization promised to nearly double Bernstein’s attendance boast. Thanks to the incredible cache of materials collected by Beatles roadie Mal Evans and saved from the refuse heap in 1988 by a resourceful temp, we have access to a revelatory letter from Thomas Knorr, the Association’s Vice President who had set up a subsidiary firm, Concerts International, to bring music events to the Dome when the stadium wasn’t hosting the Astros, its primary tenant.

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Knorr not only promised to best Bernstein’s fee, but even more remarkably, to sell out a pair of August 1965 shows in which the Beatles would perform in front of 100,000 patrons in a single day.

In Knorr’s words, the event would be a show-biz marriage made in heaven, uniting “the romance of the fabulous Astrodome,” which was set to open in just two months’ time, and “the tremendous popularity of the Beatles.” In so doing, Knorr wrote, “the Beatles will draw their greatest audience ever.” His letter included a slick brochure that highlighted the venue’s array of luxurious amenities.

While the Houston Sports Association’s offer must have surely been tempting, it is likely that the city’s population at the time gave Epstein pause. Even after collecting Bernstein’s fee in January 1965, he was rightly concerned about the prospect of witnessing a sea of empty seats at Shea Stadium that August.

But even still, New York City represented a much safer bet than Houston, which was only just beginning to gather the momentum that would see it become the nation’s fourth-largest city by the 1990s. In 1965, Space City boasted a metropolitan population of 1.4 million in comparison with the Big Apple, which dwarfed that figure with a citizenry of 7.8 million.

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As it happened, Bernstein made good on his promise of filling up Shea and meeting Epstein’s expectations in the nick of time. As late as midsummer, he was still running advertisements for the concert, which didn’t sell out until the waning days of July 1965. But by then, the Beatles were enjoying a new momentum that simply couldn’t be stopped. The band was riding high on their new single, the chart-topping “Help!” and the group’s zany new film of the same title was set to open in New York City on August 11.

That same week would see the release of the “Help!” soundtrack album, along with an appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on the eve of their Second American Tour’s opening night at Shea. The stadium, to Epstein’s relief, was filled to the brim with nary an empty seat to be found. That night, John Lennon later recalled, “I saw the top of the mountain.” And what a sight it was.

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