Tags
So apparently yesterday’s post conflated two days — the press conferences were indeed on Monday, August 22, but the concert was on Tuesday, August 23. Which should have been obvious had I looked at the date on the ticket that I posted. But I’m going to give myself a mulligan on this one, because on tour the days tend to blend together after awhile.
According to Bob Spitz’s The Beatles, the boys were sick to death of the whole business by this point:
George was fed up with the grim, chaotic life of the Beatles. In discussions with friends, he talked of feeling “wasted” and virtually “imprisoned” by the constraints of Beatlemania. The touring and its effluvia had beat him up, physically and emotionally. “It had been four years of legging around in a screaming mania.”
“Nobody was listening at the shows,” complained Ringo, who said he “was fed up playing” in such a haphazard manner. Bashing along to “She’s a Woman” and “I Feel Fine” day in and day out wasn’t his idea of drumming. It was impossible for him to hear what the others were doing onstage, forcing him to play to their body language. There was no percentage in it.
And to John, the whole scene was a dreadful experience. “I didn’t want to tour again,” he said, “especially after having been accused of crucifying Jesus…and having to stand with the Klan outside and firecrackers going on inside.” Creatively, physically, emotionally he had had it with playing those kinds of gigs. Beatlemania represented everything he detested — the phoniness of the band’s image, their lack of progress as musicians, the degree to which he’d sold out.
Even Paul, the natural-born showman, went so far as to say touring “had become spiritually rather empty.” But once the Shea Stadium show was done, there will still three more dates to play: Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. We’ll all just have to keep slogging it out for awhile longer.