The Beatles at Shea Stadium 1966

Here’s something you probably won’t have seen before. It’s a colour home movie shot by Bud Harper of the Beatles’ second Shea Stadium appearance, in 1966.

When interviewed for The Beatles Anthology, the boys themselves couldn’t even remember having played Shea twice, they just remembered the big 1965 concert there. We apologise for a confusing soundtrack, they appear to have overdubbed different music to the clip twice and you can hear both instances.

From The Beatles Bible:

23. August, 1966: A little over a year after their first triumphant appearance at New York’s Shea Stadium, The Beatles returned for a second time.

The concert did not sell out, with 11,000 of the 55,600 tickets still available. Nonetheless, The Beatles made more money from their appearance than they had in 1965, receiving $189,000 – 65 per cent of the gross takings of $292,000.

Curiously enough the second Shea Stadium concert had about 11,000 seats unsold. So it was a pretty unsettling time. And it was against this background that they said, ‘Right, we definitely won’t do any more. We are going to have a break and then we are going into the studio to make a record.’

George Martin, Anthology

The support acts were The Remains, Bobby Hebb, The Cyrkle and The Ronettes. The Beatles performed 11 songs: Rock And Roll Music, She’s A Woman, If I Needed Someone, Day Tripper, Baby’s In Black, I Feel Fine, Yesterday, I Wanna Be Your Man, Nowhere Man, Paperback Writer and Long Tall Sally.

During the performance of Day Tripper hundreds of fans broke through barriers and attempted to reach the stage. They were held back by security guards and none managed to get close to The Beatles.

When they played Shea Stadium again, for me it blended in with the first one, though it was said there were slightly fewer people there than the year before. For some reason I missed the police van that was taking us. I had gone back for something, and before I could get in the van, they slammed the doors and of it went. I was left at the hotel, so I got a cab, but that broke down in Harlem. Another cab took me to the stadium, but there were thousands of people, and I thought: ‘Oh God, they’re really going to let me in! I’m going to just knock on the door and say, “I’m with The Beatles?”‘ Then I saw the four of them banging out of a window, and they saw me wandering round the car park. It was like magic; they were shouting, ‘There he is! Let him in!’

Neil Aspinall, Anthology

Straight after the concert The Beatles flew to Los Angeles. They arrived the following morning in the early hours and enjoyed a rest day before flying on to Seattle.