PAUL IS GETTING BACK TO DODGER STADIUM

Paul is getting back to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Sunday for the first time since he played there with The Beatles 48 years ago. This time around, let’s hope he has a better escape route planned.

Back in 1966, his exit from Chavez Ravine went anything but smoothly. He and the rest of the Beatles — John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — ended up trapped in a Lincoln Continental that was smothered fender-to-fender by a frenzied blanket of screaming, crying, pawing, clawing fans who desperately wanted to touch their idols.

Paul McCartney will perform at 8 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 10, at Dodger Stadium, 1000 Elysian Park Ave, Los Angeles. Tickets for his “Out There” tour start at $69.50. Visit tinyurl.com/pauldodgers.

 



It was Sunday night, Aug. 28, 1966, and The Beatles were trying to make a break for it after playing for 45,000 people at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. It was the first concert booked at the 4-year old ballpark and, though no one knew it at the time, the second-to-last show The Beatles would ever perform. After another stadium gig the following night at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, their concert career was over.

Westlake Village’s Bob Eubanks, who cut his teeth in radio at Oxnard’s KACY from 1958 to 1960 before jumping ship to powerhouse station KRLA in Los Angeles, is responsible for bringing The Beatles to Dodger Stadium.

The future “Newlywed Game” host and Rose Parade emcee booked the date with his business partner Mickey Brown. It was the third time they had brought The Beatles to SoCal, following sold out shows at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964 and 1965.

At the Hollywood Bowl concerts, The Beatles were able to slip out through the guarded backstage exit, Eubanks said. But at Dodger Stadium there was no secure retreat. The Fab Four were completely out in the open, with 45,000 pairs of eyes trained on their every move. A 6-foot-tall stage was set up at second base. Behind it was an enclosed tent that housed the Lincoln. As soon as The Beatles played the last note of “Long Tall Sally,” they were to race offstage, head for the tent, dive into the car and be whisked out of the stadium through a center field gate before fans could get out of their seats and catch them.

“I’m onstage after the show saying, ‘The Beatles have left,’ ‘The Beatles have left,’ and everyone in the stadium is laughing at me,” Eubanks told The Star in 20111. “I turn around and here comes the Lincoln back in and it’s limping. There were 10,000 kids waiting for them outside the center field bleachers.”

According to news reports, those kids mobbed The Beatles’ car, ripping off hood ornaments and outside mirrors. James K. Christ, a 20-year-old who was part of the security team that night, told the Long Beach Press-Telegram that girls were jumping all over the car. “We ran up and tried to pull them off,” he said. “There were waves of them. My lungs were on fire. My shoes got ruined. My badge got torn off.”

Because of the melee, The Beatles’ driver had no choice but to turn around and head back into the stadium where Eubanks and his crew managed to guide the Lincoln to the Dodger dugout and hustle the band into the team’s dressing room.

“Lennon was furious. Just furious,” Eubanks said. “They wanted to go to a party. It got nasty, it really did.” After several minutes of feverish brainstorming, Eubanks hatched a new plan. He’d get the band out the same way he got them into the stadium — hidden in an armored car.

Good idea, except … “Somebody let the air out of the tires during the concert,” Eubanks said. “So the armored car had taken off to the 76 station down the street.”

Tony Barrow, The Beatles’ publicist, described the ordeal in his 2006 book, “John, Paul, George, Ringo & Me.” “All four boys were on the point of despair and we were discussing the possibility that our party might have to stay cooped up at the stadium overnight,” he wrote. “Ringo broke the ensuing silence by saying in a small voice: ‘Can I please go home to my mummy now, please can I?’ ”

As everyone’s mood continued to darken, Eubanks cooked up another plan.

“We put The Beatles into the back of an ambulance and covered them with blankets,” Eubanks said. “I told the driver, ‘Drive right down through the crowd. As soon as you break away from the kids, go to the 76 station. The armored car is there.”

The nervous ambulance driver navigated through the crush of kids, but he blew it when he got into the clear, gunned the accelerator and hit a speed bump in the stadium parking lot.

“The radiator fell right out of the ambulance,” Eubanks said. “Wham! Sparks are flying everywhere. Now here comes the armored car, so the kids realize what the heck is going one. We immediately get The Beatles out of the ambulance and into the armored and that armored car became a mound of girls.”

The writhing mass of out-of-control fans seemed impenetrable and Eubanks was out of ideas. He needed a miracle — and it came roaring out of nowhere.

“All of a sudden, the Hells Angels showed up,” Eubanks said. “I have no idea where they came from. They circled that armored car and led it off the Dodger Stadium grounds.“That’s the last time I saw The Beatles … or the Hells Angels.”

In 1966, The Beatles started their set at 9:33 p.m., according to Associated Press reporter Bob Thomas, and they were off the stage by 10. In those 27 minutes they packed in 11 songs, beginning with Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music.” McCartney got to belt out “She’s a Woman” and croon “Yesterday”; Lennon turned reflective on “Nowhere Man”; Harrison sang “If I Needed Someone”; and Starr pounded his way through “I Wanna Be Your Man.”

In his AP review, Thomas was unimpressed. “To the adult, a Beatle concert must be viewed as a social phenomenon, since it is impossible to enjoy as entertainment.”

Nearly 50 years later, McCartney, now 72, is playing considerably longer than 27 minutes on his current “Out There” tour. His show at Target Field in Minneapolis on Aug. 2 lasted nearly three hours and featured 39 songs, including Beatles classics (“Blackbird,” “And I Love Her,” “Paperback Writer,” “Lady Madonna”), solo smashes (“Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Another Day”), Wings hits (“Listen to What the Man Said,” “Live and Let Die”) and songs from his latest CD, “New” (“Queenie Eye,” “Everybody Out There,” “Save Us”).

And unlike that 1966 AP review, notices are far more glowing these days. Jon Bream of the Minneapolis Star Tribune raved about McCartney’s “unstoppable spirit,” “crackerjack” and “unimpeachable” repertoire.”