The Beatles, 50 years on: \u2018Life-changing\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\u201cIt was so loud and so exciting! We\u2019d never seen anything like it,\u201d said Salmon, who was then a senior at Chula Vista High School.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing The Beatles on \u2018The Ed Sullivan Show\u2019 in 1964 was a life-changer for me. Seeing them at Balboa Stadium was like they\u2019d dropped in from another planet!\u201d said Rachac, who was then a 12-year-old student at Linda Vista\u2019s Montgomery Junior High School.<\/p>\n
The concert, which took place here 60 years ago this week, made a major impact even on some fans who were unable to attend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was only 8 so I was too young to go, but I recall that date really well,\u201d said leading San Diego rock drummer Joel Kmak, a longtime member of the Beat Farmers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember thinking that afternoon: \u2018Wow! The Beatles are probably in town now.\u2019 And then I remember thinking, a few hours later: \u2018They are probably going on stage now.\u2019 I have since met and talked to people who went. It was a huge deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Beatles\u2019 performance here was the first rock concert ever held at downtown\u2019s Balboa Stadium, which was then the home of the San Diego Chargers. The venue went on to host concerts by the Jimi Hendrix Experience; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Elton John; Santana; the Eagles; Fleetwood Mac; Yes; Peter Frampton and more.<\/p>\n
Much of the stadium was torn down in 1979, but it is still used for high school and recreational sports team games. For one memorable night in 1965, the stadium was the center of the music universe as the already legendary English quartet from Liverpool \u2014 also fondly known by many fans as the Fab Four \u2014 took the stage.<\/p>\n
Like no other band before or since, The Beatles redefined what popular music could do and how it could reflect and transcend its time and place. Beginning with its landmark 1965 album, \u201cRubber Soul,\u201d the band transformed the creative parameters of rock music. By that time, the group had already transformed pop culture like no one since Elvis Presley, who \u2014 by coincidence \u2014 the four Beatles met in Los Angeles for the first time the night before their Balboa Stadium performance.<\/p>\n
The show here was the ninth of 12 concerts on the band\u2019s 1965 North American tour. It famously opened at New York\u2019s Shea Stadium and drew a record-setting audience of 55,000-plus. No other act, English or American, had ever mounted a stadium tour before, let alone one that paid them a minimum of $50,000 per show, plus a percentage based on the total attendance count.<\/p>\n
Intriguingly, The Beatles\u2019 San Diego concert was something of a flop, at least commercially speaking. Only 17,013 of the 27,014 available tickets were bought. But for those who attended, witnessing Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison in the flesh was a dizzying experience and then some.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was crazy. All I could hear was the girls screaming. Just seeing the band in person, even without being able to hear the music, made a huge impression on me,\u201d said Rachac, who credits The Beatles for his becoming a lifelong musician and producer.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could barely hear the music over the screams, but it was an awesome day,\u201d agreed Salmon, who went on to found the Beatles\u2019 fan club Come Together. She also co-founded The Wheeling Sands, an all-girl band that specialized in playing Beatles\u2019 songs. Salmon later gave each of her children Beatles-related names: Rocky (after the song \u201cRocky Raccoon\u201d); Zak (after the name Beatles drummer Ringo Starr gave his firstborn son); Sunshine (after the song \u201cGood Day Sunshine\u201d); and Jet (after the Paul McCartney & Wings song \u201cJet\u201d).<\/p>\n
The Beatles delivered their Balboa Stadium concert quickly. The band ripped through 12 songs in just 31 minutes, opening with its version of The Isley Brothers\u2019 \u201cTwist and Shout\u201d and concluding with a classic driving rocker of its own, \u201cI\u2019m Down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat show was something else!\u201d said English drummer Tony Newman of Sounds Incorporated, one of the concert\u2019s opening acts. \u201cThe kids in Balboa Stadium started to jump over the barriers onto the field. They came over the top of the barriers, and there were these police and security guards catching them to keep them from hurting themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newman\u2019s recollection in a 2020 San Diego Union-Tribune interview was shared by San Diego percussionist Randy Hoffman and former San Diego Police Chief Ray Hoobler.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were all kinds of cops who were chasing the kids down, one by one, and tackling them,\u201d Hoffman said in a 2005 Union-Tribune interview. \u201cI think the cops were probably better than the Chargers were in those days.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the concert, Balboa Stadium was equipped with a 4-foot-high Cyclone fence around the perimeter of the field. No one was permitted to be on it, apart from the 100 policemen and 100 security guards on hand. Undaunted, some determined fans jumped over the fence in futile attempts to reach the stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember one youngster scaled the fence and ran out onto the playing field, and Officer Rufino Yaptangco made one of the finest open field tackles I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d Hoobler said in a 1984 Union-Tribune interview. \u201cThe noise was damned near debilitating. It was bedlam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hoobler, then a brand-new police lieutenant, oversaw security at The Beatles\u2019 concert here. He died in 2001.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was, by today\u2019s standards, a well-behaved crowd, that spoke well for the youth of San Diego,\u201d Hoobler said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t let my two daughters, who were 13 and 15 at the time, go to the concert. It created a lot of dissension, but based on the news clips of the concerts at other locations, I didn\u2019t know what to expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was quite a learning experience and when I walked away, I had a more enlightened attitude about Beatlemania, and a very positive attitude about the youngsters in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salmon, still a devoted fan, will be attending Paul McCartney\u2019s Oct. 4 concert at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis country was a dreary place after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, so when The Beatles came here, it was like a giant light went on,\u201d she said. \u201cTheir music was so great, and it called out to our generation. It still does.\u201d<\/p>\n
YOUR TURN<\/p>\n
Did you attend The Beatles\u2019 1965 San Diego concert at Balboa Stadium? Either way, we\u2019d like to know how the band and its music impacted you. Send your responses to: george.varga@sduniontribune.com. Please include where you reside \u2014 not your address, but the area (such as North Park, Lakeside or Chula Vista).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carmen Salmon and Gary Rachac have never met. But both giddily attended the first and only San Diego…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":171970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,5424,3549,7264,1072,7289,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-171969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-music-and-concerts","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-things-to-do","15":"tag-top-stories-sdut","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115084375049793680","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}