In the early morning hours of September 17th 1964, the Beatles flew from New Orleans to
Kansas City, Missouri. The group arrived in Kansas City at around 2am,
checking into the Terrace Penthouse on the eighteenth floor of the Hotel Muehlebach. The
Beatles ate, drank and played poker before retiring to their beds.
After a day of sleeping late and relaxing in their room, the Beatles held the following press conference on the top floor of the Hotel Muehlebach just before rocking the house at Kansas City's Municipal Stadium.
Originally, the Beatles had been scheduled to have a day off on September 17th. Kansas City was a late addition to their already-hectic tour following an amazingly generous offer by baseball team owner Charles Finley, whose daughter was a Beatles fan. The group, usually demanding approximately $25,000 per show, accepted Finley's incredible check in the amount of $150,000 to sacrifice their day off and add Kansas City to their tour. Since the Beatles usually only performed just over 30 minutes per show, this meant that they would be earning nearly $5,000 per minute.
After a day of sleeping late and relaxing in their room, the Beatles held the following press conference on the top floor of the Hotel Muehlebach just before rocking the house at Kansas City's Municipal Stadium.
Originally, the Beatles had been scheduled to have a day off on September 17th. Kansas City was a late addition to their already-hectic tour following an amazingly generous offer by baseball team owner Charles Finley, whose daughter was a Beatles fan. The group, usually demanding approximately $25,000 per show, accepted Finley's incredible check in the amount of $150,000 to sacrifice their day off and add Kansas City to their tour. Since the Beatles usually only performed just over 30 minutes per show, this meant that they would be earning nearly $5,000 per minute.
Finley
flew to San Francisco to talk to the band's manager, Brian Epstein, and
offered $50,000 to bring The Beatles to Kansas City. They finally
agreed on $150,000, and the Fab Four flew into Kansas City to play a
show on one of their only days off from the tour.
"At the other
stops on the tour, they made between $25,000 and $50,000 per show," says
Kansas City Star reporter and blogger Rick Hellman.
Finley was trying to cultivate a younger fan base for his baseball team, says Chuck Haddix, director of the Marr Sound Archives at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
"He became a hero," says Haddix, who also
hosts Fish Fry on KCUR. "He was doing pretty much what we continue to do
today to try to attract younger fans and cultivate the younger fan base
by bringing The Beatles to Kansas City."
The concert was held at what was then the baseball stadium, which was unusual for concerts.
"It really foreshadows what would happen in the 1960s and 1970s with these big concerts," Haddix says.
Before they played their 31-minute set in to a crowd of around 20,000, The Beatles attended a press conference and answered reporters' questions about their hair, screaming girls and whether or not they would ever consider living in the United States. The images above are from that conference, and you can read the full transcript here.
Two KCUR staffers and many listeners had their own memories of the concert, and they shared them with Steve Kraske on Tuesday's Up To Date.
"You
couldn't hear the first song, that is what I remember," Ron Jones,
director of community engagement at KCUR, told Kraske. "The screaming
was so loud you couldn't hear any music."
There is not audio from the show, but you can watch a short clip that was filmed covertly by a fan.
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