Rare Beatles Shea Stadium photos fetch £30,000 …Fifty years & going strong

Rare Beatles Shea Stadium photos fetch £30,000 …Fifty years & going strong

Mangalore Today News Network

UK, March 25, 2013: Pictures of The Beatles’ 1965 Shea Stadium concert, taken by an amateur  photographer who bluffed his way backstage, have sold for £30,000. Marc Weinstein used a fake press pass to get next to the stage for the historic New York show. The only other photographer present ran out of film during the gig.

 

Weinstein’s 61 black and white images with copyright fetched £30,680, compared with a pre-sale estimate of £15,000-£20,000, Omega Auctions said. Shea Stadium was The Beatles’ biggest concert - and the biggest ever pop concert by any group up to that date.

It came at the height of Beatlemania and the band’s music was famously drowned out by the screams of the 55,000-strong crowd.Weinstein later recalled how he used a home-made press pass to con a policeman into escorting him to the stage area."I just blended with everybody there," he said.

"I had a method of operation; I just acted like I belonged. Anybody in authority, I would look the other way."
Auctioneer Paul Fairweather said the successful bidder was "a South American gentleman currently living in Washington [who] is a huge collector of Beatles memorabilia".

A further collection of 65 unpublished colour slides of The Beatles taken by physicist Dr Robert "Bob" Beck in 1964 sold for £27,140. They had an estimate of £10,000-£15,000.

I Saw Her Standing There was the first song on the first Beatles record. That was 50 years ago in 1962. Much to the amazement of people the amount of fame that the Fab Four gathered as a band stands the same way now the way it stood when they were a band. It’s not clear now who’s more famous — The Beatles or Harry Potter. The four from Liverpool have enthralled millions of various ages over the ages.While they as a band have split up four decades earlier and lost two of their members, their fan following, if anything, has increased.

The story of The Beatles began at St. Paul’s Parish Fete in Woolton in 1957 when Paul McCartney first met John Lennon. Lennon at that point was a member of a band called the Quarry Men. Lennon was impressed with McCartney as he could play a popular number then called Twenty Flight Rock. McCartney shortly after that was invited by Pete Shotton, a member of the Quarry Men, to join the band. Soon after George Harrison joined too as a lead guitarist. Thereafter, the three of them with a few other members played under various names such as Johhny and the Moondogs and The Silver Beatles at quite a few places.

In 1960, they travelled to Hamburg, Germany to play at clubs such as the KaiserKeller and the Indra. They also made their first professional recording at Akustik Studios, Hamburg. After Germany, in 1961 they started playing at The Cavern, nightclub in Liverpool, England where they came in contact with brian Epstein , a record retailer. Epstein became their manager in December, 1961.

The year 1962 was to be a turning point for Lennon, McCartney and Harrison (Starr still had not joined). On May 9, they were offered a recording contract with Parlophone records, an offshoot of EMI. In August, Ringo Starr replaces Pete Best as the drummer. On October 5, in the same year the single Love Me Do is released. By March 1963, their first album Please Please Me is number one in the charts.

This was a watershed moment for them and thenceforth it was success after success with every album they recorded and released. By 1964, I Want to Hold Your Hand was the number one record in America. They became the first British act to thrive in America and began the British Invasion. The Beatles ceased to exist as a band in 1971 causing a great deal of heartbreak to fans the world over. Any hopes of a Beatle reunion were dashed when John Lennon was tragically shot dead on December 8, 1980.

The frenzied state existed to such an extent that they were forced to stop touring and performing live. According to them, when they performed the four could not hear what they played at times because of the noise. Interestingly their last live concert, a short performance, was on the rooftop of Apple in 1969.

Among the albums, The White Albums are arguably their most complete where each song is different from the other and yet equally good. At the beginning, they were heavily influenced by Rock and Roll and love songs which is seen in their earlier albums. As they came into contact with some of their contemporaries such as Bob Dylan and The Bryds, they began to be influenced by them too.




Indian music became popular in the west solely because of The Beatles and Ravi Shankar. Their quest to find out more about numerous elements led lead guitarist George Harrison to even collaborate with and learn from legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar. This said, they did not stop recording love songs and rock and roll numbers altogether. The Fab Four added to their repertoire. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club amongst all the albums is often considered their most acclaimed album.

Many of their songs have become standards in their own genres. Hey Jude was even sung by McCartney in the 2012 Olympics. Their songs, such as Hard Day’s Night, Daytripper, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, to name a few, never grow old and to this day enthuse people with a range of emotions.

In short, old and young alike come together to sing the songs of The Beatles as the music flows across the universe.