1965 In Review: A Year That Brought Us Chaos, Rockets & The Beatles at Shea Stadium
The year 1965 was one of launches. Several Gemini rockets were sent skyward, some pilotless, others carrying astronauts who glanced back and even space-walked around a world of blue innocence. President Lyndon Johnson enacted his Great Society reforms, including a war on poverty. Unfortunately, that war interfered with a different conflict in Vietnam; with doubled drafts and bloody protests, no one knew which war was most important. Civil Rights workers launched marches from Selma to Montgomery led by Martin Luther King; unconscionably, fatal bullets were launched at Malcolm X. A riot blasted off in Watts. The giant Gateway Arch was raised over St. Louis, and the World’s Fair, with its futuristic saucer-like creations, came to Flushing Meadows, New York. Last but not least, the Beatles famously played Shae Stadium on August 15 to 50,000 screaming fans.
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By then, the Beatles had already been launched in America, flying into the newly renamed Kennedy Airport in early 1964 to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show and change the culture forever and for better. But now, one year later, they were returning to a site close to that World’s Fair; namely, Shea Stadium, where, in August, some 50,000 music fans would congregate to see them run out to the field and play a dozen songs in about 30 minutes. It was beautiful chaos.
So says my cousin Judy Weissman. She’s 75 now, and still brightly recalls how that event really came together, earlier in the year, as she and two of her best friends traveled into New York City and stayed up for hours. They were 15.
“We waited in line all night long in Manhattan to get tickets,” she recalls of the wondrous hours of anticipation about five months before the show. “Everybody was in the same [joyous] mood.”
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Judy was always cool; I can’t recall a time when she wasn’t. I was 5 years old then, and I remember being at some party where Judy was in attendance; it was the first time I’d ever seen a Beatles album, and it was their Capitol Records debut, Meet the Beatles. The back cover had descriptions of each of the lads. Someone had written in pencil how old each of them was at the time. I remember being curious that two were older — John and Ringo — and George was the youngest. We listened to the music and a brand-new fandom was rooted.
At the time, I had no idea Judy was getting ready to participate in a moment in history. I don’t think it seemed that way to her, though; after all, that wouldn’t have been cool. She was just doing her thing.
As she remembers now, her seats for seeing the lads were “up in the crowds; it wasn’t too bad. Of course, everybody wanted to be sitting in their laps!” Soon enough, with Sullivan’s introduction, the Beatles came running. “It was glorious,” she says. “I didn’t know how many other people were there and I didn’t care.”
What about the famous claim that no one could hear the music over all that screaming? “The music was dynamite!” she says. “Oh yeah, we heard it amidst the screams. And sure, I screamed, too. It was almost religious because at that point, they were so big.”
Then just like that, it was over. But as memory serves, the feeling remains even all these years later. “There were 50,000 people there but we were all one,” Judy says. “We all wanted and respected and loved the same stuff, and that was wonderful.”
As jarring as many moments were during that fateful year, there is so much to remember and celebrate. Now, 60 years later, it’s clear that in terms of pop culture, we all want and respect and love the same stuff. And the Beatles? We’re still in love with them. And we feel fine.
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