THE BEATLES COME TO MINNEAPOLIS

 

The Beatles came to town on August 21, 1965 and had a terrible time.  "Big Reggie" from Danceland brought them in and put up the money.  He asked Bill Diehl of WDGY to m.c.  Diehl went to Chicago to see them in action and to spend a day with them.  He brought back 16 mm film he took of the concert. 

Things didn't start well when they were attacked at the airport by 3,000 crazed fans when they got off the plane. They lounged on cots in the Twins’ locker room before the show at the Met Stadium, and Ray Crump (who worked at the Met) later sold the sheets to an ad agency for $800. The sheets were eventually cut up and given away in drawings at Dayton’s. Diehl later retrieved some dirty dishes and gave them away in a contest.

Before the concert, the Fab Four held a press conference in the Minnesota Room of the stadium. Bill Diehl knew George's sister, Louis Harrison Caldwell, and got exclusive coverage, as well as WDGY flags on their microphones.  KDWB retaliated by prefacing their questions with "KDWB wants to know..." 

At the press conference,  Randy Resnick of B-Sharp Music presented George with a Rickenbacker 360-12 guitar on behalf of the musicians of Minnesota.  Randy has a picture of the presentation, which appeared in the Minneapolis paper. George used the guitar during the show, but it disappeared a year later after their last concert in Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

Fred Anderson reveals how a picture of the Beatles at the press conference with the second issue of Twin City a' GoGo ended up on the cover of the third issue: a' Go Go editor Bruce Goldstein made arrangements with Big Reggie to put copies of Issue #2 on the tables. The cover of #2 had pictures of the individual Beatles, and the mop-tops looked at the magazines and played with them and such.  The photo on the cover of issue #3 of the magazine was of the Beatles with Issue #2.  The picture was taken by Kent Kobersteen of the Minneapolis Tribune. Fred (who worked as a copy boy there) made a print of the negative and slipped it to Bruce. Photos were also taken by photographer Bill Carlson (not the broadcaster) as a stringer for UPI.

Opening acts on the tour were King Curtis, Cannibal and the Headhunters, Brenda Holloway, and the Sounds Incorporated. Local groups the Accents and Gregory Dee and the Avanties played in the concourses.

The Beatles played to only about 28,500 people at the 40,000 seat Met Stadium (the only show in the tour that wasn’t sold out), possibly due to underpromotion for fear of pandemonium (which they got anyway). Tickets ranged from $3.50 to $5.50, and the group was paid $50,000. Enduring terrible acoustics, the lads sang 12 songs in 30 minutes. There is a plaque at the Mall of America at the spot near second base where they played. The 150 security guards and ushers were armed with smelling salts for fainting fans. Regardless of the less-than-stellar numbers, the concert still had to be cut short when fans rushed the field. A typical Beatles escape was made in a Falconers’ laundry van (they sat on folding chairs).

Their not-so-luxurious accommodations were the entire 5th floor of the Leamington Motor Lodge (not the hotel) at 4th Ave. and 10th Street in downtown Minneapolis - decoys were set up at much better digs. The coup de grace was when Police Inspector Donald R. Dwyer found a girl in Paul’s room and charged him with making a “false hotel reservation.” Fortunately, the girl was able to prove that she was 21 (and from Cleveland). Dwyer told the Minneapolis Star that “Those people are the worst I have ever seen visit this city.” Needless to say, the Fab Four couldn’t wait to get out of town and vowed that they “would never come back to Minneapolis.” (McCartney did return, though, on June 4, 1976, with his band Wings. The show at the St. Paul Civic Center did sell out.)

In 1995, KSTP-TV produced a video called "The Beatles:  Minnesota Mania!"  The video includes an extensive interview of Bill Diehl and members of Minnesota bands from that era. 



Here's another site that has some video of  Inspector Dwyer and the press conference.