Biggest single concert?
The Beatles started by playing coffee bars, church halls and small family homes. By the time of their second US tour no standard music venue was large enough to meet the demand for tickets. So promoters like the legendary Sid Bernstein hired sports stadia.
May 15th, 1965 - Shea Stadium
The opening concert of The Beatles 1965 US tour was held at Shea Stadium in New York. This was the first time a major sports area had been used as a music venue.
The sound was atrocious by modern standards. Amplification essentially provided through a public address system - similar to the ones that sportscasters used to convey messages. It has been compared to the sound of a thousand transistor radios playing simultaneously.
Then there was the effect of mass screaming. Even the band could not hear themselves above the noise made by teenage fans.
Despite these technical issues, the gig was an unprecedented commercial success. Box office returns were the largest for any Beatles live concert
Tickets
Ticket prices ranged between $4.50 and $5.75. That top ticket cost around $60 adjusted for inflation - but was still considered expensive. Despite this the demand was overwhelming.
55,600 tickets sold out in seventeen minutes. The Beatles returned to Shea Stadium in August 1966, but ironically the main news story was that ticket sales were down to 45,000, around 10,000 below the previous year.
The first Shea Stadium would remain the largest in terms of official ticket sales. But in 1966 The Beatles would play in front of a much bigger audience in Manilla. The problem was that the majority of those there did not have tickets
