The Beatles arrived in Adelaide in June 1964.
John called it “Fabulous — the best reception ever” and he
had the greatest vantage point of all, leaning out over the balcony at
the Adelaide Town Hall.
What the 23-year-old musician could see glancing up and down King William St, just before 1pm on Friday,June 12, 1964, was a surging sea of animated faces and tightly pressed bodies comprising more than half of the city’s population.
The 300,000 people who crammed into the
centre of Adelaide that day formed what is still regarded as the
biggest reception the Beatles received anywhere in the world.
The memorable occasion, which happened 50 years ago this week, is also the biggest event in the history of South Australia.The police were certain they had not dealt with anything like it before.
That
included the first visit by Queen Elizabeth, in 1954, and a second
visit, the year before the Beatles arrived, when an estimated 150,000
people assembled roadside to see Her Majesty and Prince Phillip drive through town on their way to Elizabeth.
A police spokesman called
the crowd for the Beatles “the noisiest and most excited ever in the
state — but wonderfully well behaved.”No other event since has come close.
Prince
Charles and Princess Diana were the biggest crowd magnets on the planet
when they arrived in South Australia in 1983, and this year their son
William and his wife Kate Middleton had enormous crowd-pulling
persuasion as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Neither duo could
compete with the hype for the Beatles.
Two other contrasting events in Adelaide have attracted greater crowds than those that gathered for a royal occasion. About
200,000 people crammed into Victoria Park in November 1986 to hear Pope
John Paul II say Mass while in 1995 the last of the 11 Grand Prix that
roared around the parklands saw a similar number attend on the Sunday
race day.
No one would consider any of those moments changed South
Australia “forever” but that is the claim for the visit of Liverpool’s
Fab Four — which was actually three, plus one, with Ringo Starr
initially too ill to travel to Australia. For many, the social
turmoil and hysterical reaction created by having the Moptops in town
signified a monumental change in Adelaide’s staid, staunch conservative
attitude.
Even establishment figures were inspired to record the
moment, with Geoffrey Dutton — a founding member of the Adelaide
Festival — leading off his poem The Beatles in Adelaide with the lines:
“Give way, square city named for a dull, dead queen, Bulge like the trousered bottoms
of squealing sixteen.”
And squeal they did, young girls and boys alike, finally grabbing their opportunity to relinquish the shackles of
convention and assert their likes and desires on a moribund society
still in the grip of the gloomy aftermath of two world wars.
The City of Churches was rapidly becoming the “City of Urges” and few authority
figures were ready for the onslaught. The Education Department issued a
stern directive that any student found to be absent on the Friday the Beatles arrived would be suspended. One school went further. Unley
High School — the facility that would later educate Australia’s first
female prime minister — declared any student absent that Friday who
could not produce a doctor’s note would be expelled. With no exceptions.
Unley
students with a broad-minded GP for a parent were incredibly popular
that weekend. Other headmasters took the smart move of choosing that
Friday for the half-day Arbor Day public holiday to shortcut the
Education Department’s ultimatum.
The Beatles were a glimpse of an exciting, unpredictable future — and most Down Under youngsters were primed for a promised land of infinite possibilities where youth culture set the agenda.
Radio presenter Bob Francis, then a 25-year-old DJ with 5AD, found himself at the centre of the furore.Francis had no idea what was to come when he bemoaned the fact on radio that
the Beatles were yet another group to bypass Adelaide for the lack of an adequate pop-music venue.
The
now 75-year-old, who retired from the airwaves last year, suggested
3000 signatures could be enough to prod the entrenched government of
“Honest” Tom Playford into action.
Within three days he received 80,000.
“They
even came in on rolls of toilet paper,” Francis, who is still stopped
in the street and thanked for bringing the Beatles to town, says “I
sent them (signatures) off to the Melbourne headquarters of the company
running the tour and was amazed within days to get the message back,
‘Beatles concert in Adelaide booked for June 12’.”
There was a
hiccup when the hire cost of the 3000-capacity Centennial Hall, situated
at Adelaide Showground, turned out to be “exorbitant”, but John
Martin’s department store jumped in to sponsor four shows and the rest
is remarkable history.
It all began well before the civic
reception at the Town Hall with large crowds scattering rose petals
along the cavalcade route from the airport along Tapleys Hill Rd, Anzac
Highway and West Tce to North Tce. Fanatical photographer George
Harrison, whose extensive pictorial essay of his Adelaide visit was
published in the volume 50 Years Adrift by Beatles publicist Derek
Taylor, recalled the scenes in his memoirs.
“Sitting in an
open-top car waving at all the people, I felt like a tourist on an
amusement ride. It was almost surreal,’’ Harrison wrote as he recalled
the incredible moment when he had just turned 21.
“I’ll never forget this boy riding up alongside us on his bicycle, shaking Paul’s hand and saying ‘G’day mate’.’’Only
seven months had passed since John F Kennedy was gunned down and
Harrison reflected that he felt a little vulnerable in the open-topped
Ford convertible.
Harrison was later a regular visitor to Adelaide for the Formula One Grand Prix and, in 1995, spoke of the 1964 visit.
“We had no idea that so many people would be waiting for us,” he told a reporter.
“After all, there were only 3000 people at the airport in New York, so why should there be 300,000 in Adelaide?”“It
would have been really frightening if all the people hadn’t been so
good natured. There was a lot of screaming but a lot of smiles, too. It
stuck in our minds
as the most fantastic reception the Beatles ever had.’’
By
the time the Beatles hit Adelaide, most of the morals campaigners were
no longer getting airplay and even the city’s establishment had been
charmed and wanted to rub shoulders with the fresh-faced, cheeky
celebrities.
In South Australia, it would have been difficult to
find anyone better connected than dashing daredevil Hugh Reskymer “Kym”
Bonython who, among his many roles, was the Adelaide representative of
the promoter bringing the Beatles to Australia.
“Kym was married
to a former Miss South Australia, Julianne McClure, who was also a
member of a prominent family,” Francis recalls. “The McClures had a
fabulous property at Clarendon in the Hills and Kym and Julie organised
for the best chef in town to provide a spread for about a hundred of
Adelaide’s A-listers.
“It was incredible — the only trouble was the Beatles never bothered to rock up.”
They
had far better distractions to keep them occupied. Except for the
concerts, the lads — including Ringo’s stand-in Jimmy Nicol — never left
the beds of their hotel rooms at the South Australian Hotel, which
stood opposite Parliament House, where, by all accounts, over a couple
of hard day’s nights, the sexual revolution was in full swing.
Francis
had the room along from the Beatles and gained a full insight of the
goings-on. “They were all lovely polite boys, but I’m not claiming there
was one angel among them.
“The girls were literally climbing up the drainpipes to get at them.”
One girl in particular pushed her luck further than most for an audience.
Francis was the only person allowed back stage at Centennial Hall in the Beatles’ dressing room before the four shows.“When
you think of the demands of rock-bands and celebrities these days the
place was an embarrassment — not that anyone complained,” he says.
“The
room had just five chairs in it with a few bare light bulbs around the
sides and hadn’t changed since they built the joint in 1936.”
There was one unexpected luxury, though, when a girl dressed in a South Australian Hotel maid’s uniform knocked on the door holding a tray with four mugs and a silver coffee jug on it.
Francis immediately recognised the maid as a girl who had been asking him for weeks to get her an introduction to the Beatles. “I
ended up telling her she had no chance of meeting them. It just wasn’t
going to happen. And here she was — I told her, ‘You little bugger.’
“Well
she came in handing out coffee and after I told the lads about her they
chatted away and she left with all their signatures.“I’d love to know who she is and if she’s still around. How brilliant would it be if she’s still got the autographs?”
The
ingenious visitor unquestionably got the genuine article, but many
others didn’t as Francis witnessed press secretary Derek Taylor deftly
reproduce the signature of each Beatle on reams of sale memorabilia.
Ironically,
the Beatles were far from Francis’ favourite artist — the ‘Big O’, Roy
Orbison holds that accolade. And while he admired their music he didn’t
get to hear much of it live, as the screams reached a crescendo when he
introduced the band.
It was regarded as a significant honour for
Francis to introduce the band to the stage as the Beatles had brought
their own compere, English comedian Alan Field, who performed at every
other Australian concert. “I pleaded with the kids to stop yelling, but they weren’t listening,” he adds.
“The band couldn’t hear themselves and you’ve got to remember how primitive their sound equipment was.”
And
then, after four unforgettable, if indistinct, shows the phenomenon was
over and the band and small entourage flew out for Melbourne, leaving
Adelaide to assess their impact.
Psychologist Mary Smith, from the
Adelaide Children’s Hospital, reassured concerned parents at the time
that the highly unusual behaviour of their children the previous 48
hours was all the result of “mass hysteria” — and therefore not a
permanent condition. Things would return to “normal” in good time. She may have underestimated the mood for change.
The
Beatles in Adelaide was a hint of something previously forbidden and
most of the state’s newly empowered young adults made it apparent they
wanted more.
Within nine months — and after an absence of 32 years
— the Labor Party swept to power in South Australia with a mandate to
implement social reform that became a more radical agenda two years
later when Don Dunstan replaced Frank Walsh.
Wowserism was declared well and truly dead.
Liquor
licensing laws were relaxed, public lotteries and the TAB were
established and the state was first to reform abortion laws.Some regard the visit of the Beatles
as the beginning of the “permissive society”, while others identify the two-day tour as the start of Adelaide bridging to the rapidly changing modern world of the Swinging Sixties and a sign of a growing maturity. In
another symbol of the end to the past, the stuffy colonial South
Australian Hotel, which had accommodated the Beatles, closed its doors
on June 26, 1971, and was demolished soon afterwards to make way for
Ansett’s new Gateway Hotel.
When Centennial Hall was knocked down
in 2007, after deteriorating and becoming unstable, Bob Francis was
presented with a chunk of stone from the historic building by the
demolition team.
He has one other special memento of his moments of fame with the world’s greatest and most-enduring rock band.
It’s a personal letter from the Fab Four thanking him for everything he did for the group and the time he spent with them.
It includes a note and signature from drummer Ringo Starr who only joined up with the other band members in Melbourne.
Ringo
had clearly been told, in eager tones, by John, Paul and George all
about the magical scenes and wonderful time he had missed in Adelaide.
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