The Beatles with didgeridoos during their 1964 Australian tour. Source: News Corp Australia
THERE may have been loudly colourful change brewing in England, but it was steady black and white for Australia during the winter of 1964.
In the era of test patterns and epilogues, out here nothing changed much. Not in a hurry anyway.
Our prime minister, Robert Menzies — born in the previous century — had been leader for 15 years. Victoria’s premier, Henry Bolte, had been there for nine.
The last of our English war-hero governors-general sat in Yarralumla; the 1st Viscount De L’Isle was already a schoolboy at a time when most Australians might have thought Gallipoli was a runner in the Melbourne Cup.
Australia was an isolated, British outpost. Not everyone owned a television. Overseas travel was prohibitively expensive, and so were international phone calls.
We were so unsure of ourselves that when anyone famous came here they were immediately asked what they thought of Australia, usually in the first five minutes.
A then little-known lecturer in economic history at Melbourne University, Geoffrey Blainey, had started on what would become a landmark book codifying the impact all this had had on our nation.
But The Tyranny of Distance would not appear until 1966.
What helped tame that distance — in the long term — was the Beatles’ 1964 tour.
The band flew in to Australia that June for a series of concerts that almost never was, and with an accidental Beatle on board.
The Beatles wave to the huge crowd outside the Southern Cross Hotel, Melbourne.
And they turned the country upside down.
The Beatles were in Australia for less than a fortnight. But we would never be the same.
Soon it will be 50 years since four Liverpool musicians — average age 22 — arrived here unleashing the future with oceanic force.
The story of the band’s time in Melbourne is remarkable, not least because they were here just four days, but — unlike any other city on earth — we had five of them.
Throughout 1963 the era’s pale pop hits rose like bland soufflés: Hey Paula, Blame It On The Bossa Nova, Blue Velvet and Summer Holiday. Local stars such as Johnny O’Keefe, the Delltones and Johnny Chester commonly recorded versions of Americans songs.
As 1964 dawned the Beatles were top of the charts, where they would spend most of the year with unpredictably swerving hits such as I Saw Her Standing There, Can’t Buy Me Love, A Hard Day’s Night, All My Loving, I Should Have Known Better and I Feel Fine.
They had written them all. No band did that.
By the time the Beatles flew out of Australia headed for Heathrow via Singapore, they had inspired a generation of young musicians and singers who would soon crowd our charts with homegrown rock’n’roll — Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs, the Bee Gees, the Easybeats, Normie Rowe, the Master’s Apprentices, The Twilights, the Loved Ones, Johnny Young, John Farnham and Russell Morris.
It all started on June 11 with a scheduled flight from Hong Kong’s Kai Tak that refuelled in Darwin where Australia witnessed the first manifestation of Beatlemania; at 2.35 on a winter’s morning 400 fans crowded the little terminal to see John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and stand-in drummer Jimmy Nicol pass through Customs and Immigration.
Paul McCartney playing the piano at the Melbourne Town Hall during a State Reception.
Fans held up signs and photographs of the Beatles: John, Paul George and Ringo they read, although some had hurriedly added Jimmy.
Ringo had collapsed at a photo shoot in London on June 3 and was having his tonsils removed.
But, typically for the time, the contracts Beatles manager Brian Epstein had signed with Australian promoter Kenn Brodziak and others had no “out” clause, and many thousands of fans from Amsterdam to Auckland had already purchased tickets for the tour.
Epstein asked the band’s producer, George Martin, if he knew of any drummers who could step in to the world’s most famous band. Martin had worked recently with a session player who he knew had also recorded budget label versions of Beatles’ songs.
Jimmy Nicol was snoozing at home when his phone went after lunch. He was summoned to rehearse with the Beatles. It went well. Two hours later he was told to pack his bags for the trip. The next morning he flew with the band to Denmark.
Just 27 hours after picking up the phone Nicol was playing on stage before 4000 fans; the newest Beatle, even dressed in Ringo’s ill-fitting suit.
George Harrison was unhappy with the substitution and said he wouldn’t tour without Ringo. “If Ringo’s not going, I’m not going,” George said. “You can find two replacements.”
Epstein was able to convince Harrison that he’d be letting down many thousands of Beatles fans if the tour was scrapped.
It certainly wasn’t an economic decision: Epstein had verbally agreed that his band would do the Australasian tour for 1500 pounds a week. That was in late 1963. Soon after, Beatlemania swamped the globe and Epstein could command 20 times that, but he and Brodziak agreed that the price would be upped to 2500 pounds, and that the income from the Adelaide dates — it was not in the original schedule — would be given directly to Epstein.
The Beatles at their Melbourne press conference with stand-in drummer Jimmie Nicol (left) at the Southern Cross Hotel. Picture: Laurie Richards
Interestingly, although Ringo might have been the new boy, Lennon — whose band it was — gravitated towards the eldest Beatle and clearly considered Harrison to be dispensable. When Harrison briefly walked out on the band on January 10, 1969, during the Let It Be sessions, an irritated Lennon told the others: “Let’s get Eric (Clapton). He’s just as good and not such a headache.”
Ringo had walked out six months earlier. When he was convinced to return he found his drum kit festooned with flowers — bought by Harrison.
And so it was that the Beatles would fly from Sydney to Adelaide for their first Australian appearances. Like today, not much happens in South Australia and the world’s most famous band in town was big news.
Almost half the population of the state lined the route from Adelaide Airport to the city — perhaps more than 300,000 people. Various Beatles said ever after that it had been their biggest reception.
“I didn’t know that many people were in Adelaide,” said the assistant tour manager, Malcolm Cooke.
They did two sets a night of just 10 songs. With Nicol on drums, the band omitted their version of the Shirelles’ song Boys. It had been Ringo’s token vocal on the band’s first album.
But neither did they perform it in Melbourne where they flew next. Ringo’s tonsils might have been removed, but he was still a little delicate.
They played four shows over two nights in Adelaide to 3000 fans each time and the set was unchanging: I Saw Her Standing There, I Want To Hold Your Hand, All My Loving, She Loves You, Till There Was You, Roll Over Beethoven, Can’t Buy Me Love, This Boy, Twist And Shout and Long Tall Sally.
The support acts were Sounds Incorporated, Johnny Chester, Johnny Devlin and The Phantoms.
The Beatles wave to unprecedented crowds outside the Southern Cross Hotel.
At the end of each show Cooke arranged for the national anthem — then God Save the Queen — to be played. A loyal audience rose to its feet, briefly silenced. By the time the screaming started again the Beatles had left the building.
“All you heard were the opening notes of each song,” Cooke recalls. “As soon as they identified the song (there was a) crescendo level of screaming. It didn’t go up and down, it didn’t come in waves.”
As the songs ended it would subside “until they heard the first notes of the next song”.
At lunchtime on June 14 the band flew in to Essendon Airport in a chartered Ansett-ANA Fokker Friendship
Thousands of fans were at the airport to greet them, many thousands more lined the streets as the Beatles made their way to the now demolished Southern Cross Hotel on the corner of Bourke and Exhibition streets. Epstein and his recovering drummer had arrived earlier from Sydney after a flight that had left Heathrow and refuelled at San Francisco, Honolulu and Fiji.
There was such a crush outside the hotel that Sunday afternoon that navy and army cadets were summoned to help the 300 police keep order.
There must have been many vacant seats at school on the Monday because a similar number was there the following day. Young people were defying their parents and teachers to catch a glimpse of the band. We were a little late, but the ’60s had started.
The Beatles — all five of them — were asked to appear on the hotel’s first-floor balcony and the famous picture of that moment taken by this newspaper is republished often. The crowd is enormous and boys hang like strange fruit in the winter-bare plain trees out the front.
Moments later they sat before microphones for the ritual press conference. The band-members were witty and practised in charming strangers.
The Beatles with security and hotel staff at the Southern Cross Hotel. Picture: Laurie Richards
Interviewer: What do you expect to find here in Australia?
Lennon: Australians!
Interviewer: If there were only three things you could do in Australia what would they be?
Harrison: I don’t know really. First of all, I’d like to tie me kangaroo down, sport, and then after that ...
Interviewer: Jimmy ... what’s it like being suddenly thrust in with the Beatles?
Nicol: It’s the end, you know.
And it was the end. That Sunday the band had an evening off and celebrated their reunion with local girls until 4am.
Jimmy Nicol chose not to join them. He had been a Beatle for 10 days and performed with the band 11 times for a total of five hours.
He woke early on the Monday and left without disturbing his former band mates. He was driven to Essendon Airport by Cooke, after Epstein presented Nicol with an engraved gold watch. The inscription read: “To Jimmy, with appreciation and gratitude — Brian Epstein and The Beatles.”
Jimmy Nicol, stand-in drummer for Ringo Starr, waits to head back to England at Essendon Airport.
A famous picture of Nicol alone at the airport at which, less than a day earlier, he had been welcomed by so many, speaks a thousand words.
Nicol hated being considered a mere footnote in another band’s story. A few years later he smashed that watch.
Some fans who managed to get in to the Southern Cross asked Lennon to sign copies of the band’s newest album With The Beatles.
Lennon was furious that local EMI executives — because of complex printing union regulations — had substituted the cover art. He shouted at them at a reception they held to welcome the band to Melbourne.
Lennon had fallen in love with the now iconic shadowy group picture taken by Robert Freeman. He had also fallen for Freeman’s wife Sonny with whom he was having an affair that would be the subject of a song Lennon would soon write — Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).
But it wasn’t all short shows and screaming girls. On the afternoon of the Beatles’ last day in Melbourne, George Harrison borrowed a red MG and drove through the eastern suburbs along Whitehorse Rd — Box Hill, Blackburn, Mitcham and Ringwood — and up the Mt Dandenong Tourist Road to Olinda stopping at the Kenloch tea rooms for a sandwich. A picture of him outside hung there for many years.
The Beatles played two sets a night for three nights straight at Festival Hall. The sets varied little and lasted less than half an hour.
A total of 45,000 Victorians saw the Beatles here, including football legends Ted Whitten and Ron Barassi. Ian Meldrum went, was hysterical and almost passed out, as he would in the dying moments as Barry Breen secured his beloved St Kilda’s only premiership two years later.
Their last show here was filmed by Nine and broadcast as The Beatles Sing For Shell.
Paul McCartney waves a boomerang while John Lennon and George Harrison look down at fans from a balcony of the Town Hall during their visit to Melbourne.
Johnny Chester remembers sitting in a Spartan “dressing room” backstage at what was essentially a boxing venue talking to George Harrison. “It was a little cubicle. We were sitting on a massage table chatting about cars and the people we liked musically — all the stuff that young blokes talk about,” Chester said.
The setlist for that final show was: I Saw Her Standing There, I Want To Hold Your Hand, You Can’t Do That, All My Loving, She Loves You, Till There Was You, Roll Over Beethoven, Can’t Buy Me Love, This Boy and Long Tall Sally.
During Long Tall Sally a young audience member, Brent McCausland, leapt up on the stage and shook Lennon’s hand.
The final words of that song are “Have some fun tonight”.
Did we what.
Epilogue: Paul McCartney returned to Melbourne playing two nights at the Myer Music Bowl in November 1975, two days after the sacking of the Whitlam Government. He came again for another two sold-out gigs at the MCG in 1993. George Harrison returned to see several Grands Prix at Albert Park beginning with the 1997 event. He attended the 2000 race but died the following year. Ringo Starr finally returned to Melbourne in February last year for two shows at Festival Hall with his All-Starr Band. John Lennon, shot dead in New York in December 1980, never returned to Australia.
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