The Beatles Take Shea Stadium

On August 15, 1965, the Beatles opened their second North American tour with a concert at Shea Stadium in Queens, the first time a major rock act had ever played a stadium built for baseball. Promoter Sid Bernstein booked the ballpark on a hunch that arenas could no longer hold Beatlemania, and he was right: a record crowd of 55,600 packed the stands. Ed Sullivan walked out to introduce the band, security guards covered their ears as the group ran onto the field, and the screaming was so constant that John, Paul, George, and Ringo could not hear their own amplifiers over the house PA. The show barely topped half an hour, but it proved a stadium tour could work, a model every arena-filling band since has followed.