Meryl Streep at the Shea Stadium concert – the truth

Meryl Streep with dark hair and a cap at a Beatles concert at Shea Stadium.

One recently much publicised myth is that actress Meryl Streep was at the famous Beatles concert at Shea Stadium in August 1965, when she was a kid. Yes, Meryl was at a Beatles concert, yes it was at Shea Stadium. It just wasn’t the famous 1965 concert but the largely forgotten 1966 concert at the same venue. Famously, the three surviving Beatles didn’t even remember having played Shea Stadium twice when they were interviewed for the “Beatles Anthology” TV-series. Here’s one of those YouTube clips who are pretending it’s the 1965 concert:

In the clip, the TV reporter’s line of questioning reflects the disappointing ticket sales, which makes him ask if the Beatles’ popularity is on the decline.

Whereas the 1965 tour of the USA was a triumph with sold out venues everywhere, this was not the case with the 1966 tour, which came after a controversial statement from John Lennon about the Beatles’ popularity versus that of Jesus Christ. The disappointing 1966 tour of USA ended with the Beatles giving up touring altogether.

Here’s an older and longer version of the newsclip footage, which doesn’t try to pass this off as the 1965 concert, but correctly identifies it as the 1966 Shea Stadium concert.

Born June 22, 1949, Meryl Streep was 17 at the time of the 1966 Shea Stadium concert in August. In 1990, she presented a Grammy lifetime achievement to Paul McCartney, and in 2013 she made an appearance in McCartney’s music video to “Queenie Eye”, filmed at Abbey Road studios in London.

The posting of this fact was spurred by the many claims that Streep was at the 1965 Shea Stadium Beatles concert. Unfortunately, this corrective will be a feeble attempt to set the record straight, as popularly believed myths usually triumph over the truth.