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[Mervap]

It occurred to me that today is the 49th anniversary of The Beatles' last ever concert (for paying customers). A kinda sad anny, but it was the beginning of a great composing period for them as well.....thoughts?

[2 of 3]

Yes, it is sad(in a weird way)...I mean..we got a boatload of incredible music from them when they stopped touring. But, we also don't have any live performances from that era(a bit yeah..but nothing like the hours and hours we have of Paul today)  Burnout is a terrible thing. 

[kylenz]

I recently heard that Candlestick Park concert in its entirety on YouTube (for the first time EVER!) and was heartened by the heavy swag in their sound at that stage. 'Day Tripper' for example sounds really heavy and has that psych rock vibe to it. It's amazing though, that just weeks and months leading up to Strawberry Fields Forever and the Sgt Pepper album, that they were still playing pretty much the same "yeah yeah yeah" Mersey Beat sound to appease the crowds. They played nothing from Revolver, even though it had been out a couple of weeks at that stage. I liked George's rendition of 'If I Needed Someone' at that concert.

Here's the audio from the concert - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZqmEnjvS2M

I think the band also did a pretty good band version of 'Yesterday' - it translated well as a band without all the string arrangements etc - shows the test of a good song.

Imagine if they tried to play 'Tomorrow Never Knows' - it was recorded and released by that time - pretty mindblowing that they were recording all that stuff while still singing 'Baby's In Black' and 'I Feel Fine' 

[2 of 3]

Thanks for that Kyle. Wow...a lot of info there I didn't know before. Wasn't a sellout? Amazing. How would you like to be able to say, you were the promoter who did that last Beatle show ever....and you LOST money? Crazy. 

I did notice they were pretty tight. Was their last show one of the few shows they could actually hear themselves?

Great band. 

[Mervap]

If my figures are right, even if every ticket was sold at full price, the promoter would have lost money. According to what was quoted under the video, the Beatles fee of $90,000 plus 65% of the gate, and the city's 15% take would have added up to about %50,000 more than a full venue at full price tickets would have yielded. That is, unless the $90,000 fee for the Lads WAS their 65%.....either way, the margin was fairly small. I'll bet the promoter also got a chunk of the parking and concessions.

Having said that, the audio was pretty danged good for a single mike cassette recorder. And the band was pretty good too!

[kylenz]

Yeah, it runs out during the last song 'Long Tall Sally' because of course, it was being taped on one side of a C60 tape. Apparently John right at the end began playing the opening lines to 'In My Life' but they didn't actually play the song. Would've been really cool if they did that.

[2 of 3]

$4.50 to see The Beatles. Too funny. 

[Greg]

I am so glad they stopped touring.  Didn't Brian approach them about a tour within a few months after this tour, and they wouldn't even entertain the idea? 

I think more touring would have taken too much away from their time and effort on the great albums that followed.

However, I wish to the music gods that they would have played live somehow just a few times somewhere and had it filmed.  Similar to the rooftop but not outdoors on a January day with just a handful of audience members.

[2 of 3]

HD Rooftop. Nice. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCtzkaL2t_Y

[kylenz]

HD Rooftop. Nice. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCtzkaL2t_Y

Yep that's on the new 1+ blu-ray. It's a bummer though that they didn't bother to fix the sync issues before releasing it though. This one's okay, but 'Get Back' on the rooftop is atrocious syncwise.

[2 of 3]

the rooftop is atrocious syncwise.

I guess that is because they did each song a few times and blended together the best bits?

[kylenz]

Surely though with modern computers etc though, and the army of restoration experts deployed to this project, re-syncing it up would be a breeze? It always amazes me when people watch out-of-sync music videos and say "oh but there's nothing wrong with it". Or is it something people have just gotten used to it?

[2 of 3]

I guess it depends on the audio and video footage they used. Maybe it was too difficult to get both perfect, without taking away from the performance. Or maybe Yoko refused to pay for anybody to be synced except John?