I saw the Beatles in Atlanta
Published in
5 min readJun 25, 2024
In August of 1965, two months after my high school graduation, the most extraordinary thing happened. A band called the Beatles held one concert in Atlanta, and I was there!
Atlanta Stadium was demolished years ago, two of the band members have gone on to their rewards, and age has taken away my ability to sing and dance. But that memory lives on.
This new band from across the pond took us all by surprise. The band members wore pointy shoes with heels higher than most young men were sporting. Their hair was long and not greased down, and I loved it.
Their music was different than any songs on the Billboard at that time. The 60s were a time of change when it came to music and all it influenced. We went from teen-throb, bobby-socks-wearing music at the beginning of the decade to so-called hippy songs that blasted for days on a little dairy farm near “Woodstock” at the very end.
The Beatles made their appearance smack dab in the middle of that decade, and life as we knew it was never the same. I didn’t throw away my 45s of Ricky Nelson, Pat Boone, the Beach Boys, and, of course, Elvis! But, a new era had started, and I began appreciating many of the latest and what I considered odd groups from England.
I can’t say every song was great, but the innocence and freshness of the Beatles’ early work captured my attention. Engaging, sometimes poetic, and chanting lyrics drew in my generation. Parents, preachers, and some educators warned kids about this new phenomenon. I know first-hand that the Beatles inspired many lectures and sermons. But there was no stopping the overwhelming influence, often referred to as the British Invasion.
On February 9, 1964, I was glued to my TV as the Beatles first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show. For those who do not recognize Ed Sullivan’s name, I’ll take a moment while you Google it. I couldn’t hear much because of the screams inside the studio. The pouty host did not appreciate the noise and said to his audience, “If you don’t keep quiet, I’m going to send for a barber!” They didn’t, and he didn’t.
A little over a year later, the boy I was dating and yours truly parted ways. It was not a bad breakup, but I can’t say we remained close friends (TMI). When he called and said he had tickets to the Beatles concert, our friendship took on a new meaning. It was a big event, even for a passive Beatles fan like me. I didn’t ask if I was the first one he thought of when he bought the tickets. I didn’t care.
Police were everywhere, and people were wired! If someone had hiccupped before the band walked onto the stage, the whole audience would have escalated the screams to a higher decibel than was already assuring future deafness.
There were several opening acts, including a great band from Atlanta, but no one paid attention to anything they said or sang.
Our seats were way up high, and I could only see the stage and giant speakers. When the band walked out across the field and up onto the stage, the already screaming audience jumped to their feet and raised, I started to say the roof, but the stadium didn’t have one. They raised something. The girl, four seats to our left, fainted, a couple of people in front of us were arrested (I don’t want to know what they did), and I found myself screaming like the rest.
I later read that the sound system in Atlanta was innovative and unique. It helped the band to hear themselves over the crowd. I don’t see how! The man from the sound company who provided the system was offered a job on the spot to tour with the Beatles, but he turned them down. It’s rumored he said he didn’t see much future in four guys with long hair!
We were so far away and so high up that John, Paul, Ringo, and George were the size of ants and could have been Herman, Bob, Jacob, and Larry for all I knew. It didn’t matter. They began with “Twist and Shout,” and we all did exactly that. For 35 minutes, 30,000 fans, some of whom had stripped their tonsils from screaming, sang every song in unison! There is no way to describe the excitement of that evening accurately. If the energy in that new stadium could have been harnessed, it would have easily powered Atlanta for a month!
Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of attending many concerts, but the Beatles concert in Atlanta in 1965 was the best. I didn’t realize that night, as I doctored a sore throat, that it would be a once-in-a-lifetime event for me and many others. I wish I had kept my ticket stubs, but I wasn’t as sentimental back then as now. I don’t know what I would do with them anyway, maybe just lay them on top of my old records with the first Beatles album that cost me $2.97.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!
Spencer Kirkpatrick, then the 14-year-old guitarist for the Beatles’ opening act, the Atlanta Vibrations, went on to be a founding member of the band Hydra. They were highly acclaimed, but they never saw the success industry insiders expected of them. Many great guitarists, including Steve Morse, formerly of Deep Purple and Kansas, rate Spencer high on their list of top guitarists.
