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The Beatles take the field at Candlestick Park in San Francisco for their ticketed last concert on Aug. 29, 1966. The new book \u201cThe Beatles by Jim Marshall: Live at Candlestick Park 1966\u201d contains rare photos of the event.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jim Marshall\/Jim Marshall Photography<\/p>\n
The Beatles disembark at San Francisco International Airport for their concert at Candlestick Park\u00a0on Aug. 29, 1966.<\/p>\n
Jim Marshall\/Jim Marshall Photography<\/p>\n
Ringo Starr, left, and John Lennon with the Baez sisters in the clubhouse at Candlestick Park before the Beatles\u2019 final concert on Aug. 29, 1966.<\/p>\n
Jim Marshall\/Jim Marshall Photography<\/p>\n
With George Harrison behind him, John Lennon exists the stage as he catches the armored car that will take the Beatles to San Francisco International Airport.<\/p>\n
Jim Marshall\/Jim Marshall Photography<\/p>\n
When Paul McCartney closed out Candlestick Park with a triumphant sold-out concert on Aug. 14, 2014, he ended with a medley of Beatles hits as photos by the late Jim Marshall flashed on the big screen behind him, showing his old band playing its final ticketed concert in the same stadium, on Aug. 29, 1966.<\/p>\n
This montage of images was not a surprise to Marshall\u2019s heir and archivist, Amelia Davis<\/a>. She\u2019d licensed the photos to McCartney\u2019s handlers and was seated in the 10th row watching them as they appeared. What she hadn\u2019t expected was her own reaction upon seeing these archival black-and-whites blown up, and the wild reaction of the crowd to these nostalgic pictures.\u00a0<\/p>\n Right then, the book came into focus.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Paul McCartney, left, and John Lennon perform at Candlestick Park on Aug. 29, 1966.<\/p>\n Jim Marshall\/Jim Marshall Photography<\/p>\n It took 12 years because Davis had a backlog of books featuring the San Francisco photographer\u2019s images. But the timing ended up being just right for \u201cThe Beatles by Jim Marshall: Live at Candlestick Park 1966,\u201d to be released Tuesday, June 2, by Chronicle Books, just in time for the 60th anniversary of that last summer tour.\u00a0 In close to 200 enlarged images, half of them never before printed from the negatives, Marshall captured the entire fly-in and fly-out fiasco, 30 minutes of bad sound and bad weather in a half-empty stadium.<\/p>\n The Beatles by Jim Marshall: Live at Candlestick Park 1966 \u00a0 Amelia Davis in conversation with Joel Selvin: 7 p.m. Friday, June 5. Copperfield\u2019s Books, 140 Kentucky St. Petaluma. https:\/\/copperfieldsbooks.com<\/a> \u2022 3 p.m. Sunday, June 7. RSVP required at www.eventbrite.com<\/a>. Trick Dog, 3010 20th St., S.F. www.trickdogbar.com<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing that worked well that night was Jim\u2019s camera,\u201d Davis told the Chronicle during an interview at her home office just around the corner from Jim Marshall Way, as decreed in a city ceremony last December<\/a>.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Marshall, a Lowell High School graduate who had established himself as the go-to freelance photographer for all the rock and jazz acts coming through his hometown, had exclusive access to the Beatles for their San Francisco show that was to conclude the summer tour of 1966. He photographed that one hard day\u2019s night as if he\u2019d been tipped off that it would be the final show.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Davis insists he did not know and that nobody knew except the Beatles themselves. Marshall covered the event with the same thoroughness he covered all the big music stories \u2014 front stage, backstage and all points before, during and after.\u00a0<\/p>\n Marshall was there when the charter plane landed at a private terminal at San Francisco International Airport. He followed the bus carrying the band to Candlestick, and he followed the bus on a loop around the stadium while a city worker found the key to the gate. He was the only photographer allowed into the visitor\u2019s clubhouse to photograph the interminable boredom of the world\u2019s most famous band waiting to take the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n Photographer Jim Marshall, center standing, in the Candlestick Park clubhouse with the Beatles on\u00a0Aug. 29, 1966.<\/p>\n Jim Marshall\/Jim Marshall Photography<\/p>\n They sat at a fold-up banquet table brought by the caterer and doodled on the tablecloth, while smoking and chatting with other music insiders who had been invited, including Chronicle music critic Ralph Gleason and folk singer Joan Baez<\/a>, who brought her sisters. He also shot the obligatory meet and greet with San Francisco officials bringing their kids in for a photo shoot.<\/p>\n Those images have leaked out often enough over the years, Davis said, \u201cthat everybody had hoped that we would do a coffee-table photography book of the Beatles at Candlestick.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The idea had festered until last summer, when Chronicle Books published \u201cThe Grateful Dead by Jim Marshall\u201d<\/a> in time for the special weekend of Dead & Company shows in Golden Gate Park. Davis, an exceedingly courteous woman who guards the Marshall legacy like a pit bull, was at a bookstore launch when Mirabelle Korn, an editor for Chronicle Books took the opportunity to ask her what was next.<\/p>\n It took Davis maybe 10 minutes to come up with the definitive answer that it would be the Beatles at Candlestick, though she admits it wouldn\u2019t have taken that long if it wasn\u2019t for the fact she was busy signing books.<\/p>\n At the time, Davis did not know the whole sordid backstory to the Beatles\u2019 last concert. But former Chronicle rock critic and author Joel Selvin <\/a>did, and he knew exactly how to document it. He contacted Raechel Donahue, widow of the late promoter Tom \u201cBig Daddy\u201d Donahue, an influential Top 40 DJ at KYA-AM radio, who had left to form Tempo Productions, with another DJ, Bobby Mitchell.<\/p>\n The story, as Donahue told it to Selvin, who wrote the text for the book, was that Tempo had contracted with the Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, to produce the concerts in San Francisco. Donahue\u2019s plan was to put on two shows at the Cow Palace, as the Beatles had done to launch their first North American tour, in August 1964 and the following summer.<\/p>\n The Beatles perform at the Cow Palace on\u00a0Aug. 31, 1965.<\/p>\n Jim Marshall\/Jim Marshall Photography<\/p>\n But the Beatles, or Epstein, had wanted to go big, with one show at an outdoor stadium seating 44,000. They apparently thought Candlestick could help them recreate the famed Shea Stadium concert of August 1965, when they flew into a packed stadium by helicopter, wearing the medals bestowed upon them by the Queen of England.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n By 1966, Beatlemania was on the wane, and the show at Candlestick was quixotically scheduled on a Monday night, when concerts rarely took place, in order to work around the San Francisco Giants\u2019 baseball schedule.\u00a0<\/p>\n The concert did not sell as expected.\u00a0<\/p>\n So the band, in Los Angeles after playing the Hollywood Bowl, decided to cut the tour short and cancel its San Francisco stop.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s when Donahue, a 6-foot-5, 400-pound man, flew to Los Angeles \u2014 his wife in tow \u2014 to make his presence known. They had a $10,000 deposit on the line.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTom always made a good impression and invariably got what he wanted, even from the Beatles,\u201d said Selvin, who got the whole story from Raechel, who now lives in Mexico.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The Beatles ended up honoring the contract, and it became a commuter concert. Epstein didn\u2019t even bother to make the trip.<\/p>\n \u201cThe last Beatles concert ranks high among the signal events in San Francisco rock lore,\u201d said Selvin, who noted that there were competing concerts that weekend at both the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore. \u201cThe scene was being born.<\/a> You\u2019ve got the sun setting over Candlestick Park and the sun rising over the Fillmore.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Beatles by Jim Marshall\u201d takes the story from its earliest roots in San Francisco \u2014 Chubby Checker leading the audience at the Cow Palace in dancing \u201cThe Twist,\u201d in 1962, through the Beatles at the Cow Palace with fainting fans and John Lennon wearing a Bob Dylan-style railroad hat.<\/p>\n Marshall\u2019s pictures of that 1965 Cow Palace scene almost seem as quaint as the Cavern in Liverpool next to Candlestick a year later, where the Beatles played from second base behind a double row of metal fencing that resembled a cage more than a stage. From the stage, Lennon even apologized to the crowd for the weather.<\/p>\n The Beatles perform at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on\u00a0Aug. 29, 1966, their last ticketed show as a band.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jim Marshall\/Jim Marshall Photography<\/p>\n The opening act, the Ronettes, went on without their namesake Ronnie Spector, who was under orders from her husband, Phil Spector, not to perform.<\/p>\n According to Selvin, the Beatles probably did not know who Marshall was but the promoter Donahue certainly did and that\u2019s how Marshall got exclusive access. When the band finally came out through the tunnel that ran from the clubhouse, Marshall was ahead of them, running backward with his cameras dangling from his neck, snapping images of the long walk from the dugout to the bandstand on second base. Each band member had also brought their own cameras and were taking pictures for posterity.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Beatles played the same 30-minute set they had played on the entire tour, not one song more or less. They unplugged and got off that stage in a hurry, as if they had a plane to catch.\u00a0<\/p>\n Marshall was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, and he caught those first moments that marked the end of Beatlemania. He got images of all four looking windblown, their mop tops unrecognizable. In fact, the last photo of the book shows McCartney not looking anything like the lovable Paul. He looks like he too knew what was coming, which was the end of the Beatles as a live act.<\/p>\n Paul McCartney, center, runs between security guards to catch the armored car that will take the Beatles to San Francisco International Airport after the band\u2019s final ticketed concert in 1966.<\/p>\n Jim Marshall\/Jim Marshall Photography<\/p>\n There was no post-concert band party or reception. The Beatles jumped into a waiting armored truck, which drove across the outfield and out the center field gate, headed straight back to SFO. While they were still in the jet on the runway, George Harrison was reportedly heard by the press officer saying, \u201cWell, that\u2019s it. I\u2019m not a Beatle anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In the aftermath, Marshall sold maybe five images of that last show to publications and collectors. But there were 16 proof sheets with 36 images per sheet, for a total of 576 images locked away in his metal filing cabinet.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thirty of those images will now go on display at SFO Museum for one year, starting Aug. 3, with additional Marshall images from the 1960s providing context. On Aug. 31, a complementary exhibition of the Beatles at Candlestick will open at Leica Store San Francisco.<\/p>\n Ewa Aulin, Miss Teen International 1966, peeks out from the armored truck at Candlestick Park at the Beatles\u2019 concert Aug. 29, 1966.<\/p>\n Jim Marshall\/Jim Marshall Photography<\/p>\n In culling the 200 images for the book, Davis and her wife and archivist, Bonita Passarelli, worked together to find every identifiable person in every image. The biggest mystery was a blond woman who appeared to be waiting inside the Loomis Armored car. From the sash she was wearing, they identified her as Ewa Aulin, Miss Teen International 1966, who later played the title role in the 1968 film \u201cCandy,\u201d in which Ringo Starr appeared.<\/p>\n Davis is hopeful Aulin is in the area and will come up and introduce herself at book launch events at next month at Copperfield\u2019s Books in Petaluma<\/a> or at Trick Dog in the Mission<\/a> District. Trick Dog will serve a specialty whiskey cocktail and a cardboard cutout of Marshall with his cameras at Woodstock will be standing alongside to enhance the mood.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019d love to hear her side of the story,\u201d said Davis.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Beatles take the field at Candlestick Park in San Francisco for their ticketed last concert on Aug.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[329,65739,647,330,101,103,102,104,106,105,23009],"class_list":["post-337367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-arts-and-exhibits","tag-books","tag-music","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-vault"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
By Amelia Davis\u00a0
(Chronicle Books; 176 pages; $40)\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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