When the Beatles played what would be their last public concert at San Francisco’s cold and windy Candlestick Park in 1966, there was only one photographer the Fab Four wanted to document that historic event: the indomitable photojournalist Jim Marshall.
Marshall, whom Annie Leibovitz once anointed as “the rock ‘n’ roll photographer,” was given exclusive access and free rein to photograph the show both onstage, backstage and behind-the-scenes. With his trusty Leica camera, he was there from the time the Beatles arrived at the airport to their hasty departure in an armored car after the concert, which lasted a little more than 30 minutes and was drowned out by the screams of thousands of young women caught up in the hysteria of Beatlemania.
Commemorating the 60th anniversary of that concert, Chronicle Books is publishing “The Beatles by Jim Marshall: Live at Candlestick Park 1966” (176 pages, hardcover, $40), a slick coffee table tome with more than 150 black-and-white photos from that hard day’s night, including about half that have never before been published. The book goes on sale June 2 but can be preordered in advance at lnk.to/beatlesbyjimmarshall.
George Harrison of the Beatles meets the Baez sisters, from left, Pauline, Mimi and Joan. (Photo by Jim Marshall)
Many of Marshall’s candid shots, perhaps too many of them, show these slightly shell-shocked lads from Liverpool waiting for showtime in the Giants locker room, dutifully doing interviews and meet-and-greets, drinking tea, smoking cigarettes and hanging out with invited guests and friends, notably Joan Baez and her two sisters, Mimi Fariña, the late founder of Marin-based Bread & Roses, and Pauline Marden. We also catch glimpses of other luminaries from those days: the trench-coated San Francisco Chronicle music critic Ralph J. Gleason, co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, and “Big Daddy” Tom Donahue, the father of free-form radio. There are no drugs, booze or groupies in sight.
After Marshall’s death in 2010 at 74, his longtime assistant, Amelia Davis, inherited his estate of more than 1 million negatives, his “children,” and combed through them to select the pictures for this collection, which includes shots of the Beatles’ arrival at San Francisco International Airport, their opening act, the Ronettes, and their show the year before at Daly City’s Cow Palace. She has curated several books before this, most recently, “The Grateful Dead by Jim Marshall,” released last year.
“In his photographs, Jim reveals the sheer boredom of waiting to begin a live performance, with the Beatles doodling on the catering tablecloth and chain smoking, just killing time,” she writes in her introduction. “In each frame, Jim shows us details that make the Beatles human, not gods, as they were thought of at the time, but just regular people.”
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr weren’t exactly regular people. That tablecloth she mentions, for instance, sold at auction in 2022 for $88,000.
Rock photographer Jim Marshall, standing, pictured with members of the Beatles before their show at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in 1966. (Courtesy of Jim Marshall)
In an insightful opening essay, rock historian and author Joel Selvin provides much-needed context to the Beatles’ phenomenal career at that point, which he describes as a “three-year juggernaut” of recording, making movies and touring that had left them “exhausted and traumatized.” By the time of the Candlestick concert, which no one knew at the time would be their last, the band had already played in the Bay Area twice, at the Cow Palace in 1964 and 1965. Many of Marshall’s shots of swooning teenyboppers were taken at the second Cow Palace show. In contrast to the outrageous ticket prices for superstar bands in today’s market, it’s shocking to learn that tickets for the Cow Palace and Candlestick concerts were $6 and $6.50.
In her intro, Davis remembers the San Francisco-based Marshall telling her that the Beatles were simply going through the motions for that last live show.
“They didn’t want to play,” he said. “They were too burnt out.”
(Courtesy of Chronicle Books)
With the exception of Baez, it’s notable that there are no fellow musicians hanging out with the Beatles in any of the Candlestick photos. It could be that they were in the soon-to-be-famous Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, creating the psychedelic rock that would become known to the world the following year, the Summer of Love, as the San Francisco sound.
“Across town from Candlestick, local San Francisco bands with goofy names such as Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Country Joe and the Fish, as yet unknown outside the Bay Area, were playing dances and concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom,” Selvin writes. “They were ushering in a psychedelic era of rock that would take center stage on the world music scene the next year but was still sequestered in San Francisco at this point. The world was turning and the Beatles knew it.”
When it was showtime, the Beatles, in matching suits and shirts, had to run, carrying their instruments, from the dugout to a makeshift stage set up on second base because the Giants groundskeepers wouldn’t allow any vehicles on the infield grass. Marshall was right beside them, and you can sense the din and chaos in the darkened ballpark, illuminated only by the glare of the stadium lights. Marshall had to shoot the band’s performance through a protective metal fence erected around the stage, which seems symbolic of the prison of fame the Beatles found themselves in. They played the same 11 songs, including “Day Tripper,” “Nowhere Man” and “Long Tall Sally,” that they had played on every stop of the grueling tour — 19 shows in 14 cities in 19 days. Marshall’s photos of the megastar musicians exiting the stage and racing to the armored car are a frantic blur, a scene of near desperation in their need for escape.
Retiring from touring did nothing to blunt the once-in-a-century talent of the Beatles. After taking some time off, they spent four months in a London studio recording their psychedelic masterpiece, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
On June 5, Davis and Selvin will appear at a book event at Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma. More info at copperfieldsbooks.com/event/2026-06-05/amelia-davis-joel-selvin.
Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net