Beatles 1964 US Tour Part 5: Key West, 9.11.64 to 11.9.64

 After being diverted from their planned Jacksonville stay by Hurricane Dora, The Beatles had an unscheduled rest at the Key Wester Motel on September 9-11, 1964. An aerial view of the motel can be seen here. It can be seen that the motel was sandwiched between the airport and the ocean, which is becalmed by the protection of a coral reef. The perimeter road is South Roosevelt Boulevard. The motel had been built in 1951 by Charles Helberg and Benjamin Kilpatrick. Helberg died on January 30, 1967, in the motel.

Larry Kane states that, "Not a creature was stirring at 4 a.m. when the plane touched down, other than a few police officers, a representative from the hotel and a handful of fans, who kept their distance."(1) This was due to Kane agreeing with Brian Epstein to delay telling WFUN about the diversion until 9am. However, the Miami News stated that the arrival time was 3.30am and that 500 fans were in attendance (2):

On Thursday September 10, The Beatles' clothing went to the laundry and "John Ringo" bought a shirt (3):

Fans had gathered in large numbers by Thursday (4):

However, The Beatles were able to take a drive up the Keys, with John getting all the way to Key Largo, a trip of over 90 miles (5).

(1) Kane, Larry. A Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles' 1964 Tour That Changed the World (Kindle Locations 1851-1853). Dynamic Images, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
(2) Miami News, 9.9.64, p.5
(3) Palm Beach Post, 11.9.64, p.48.
(4) Miami Herald, 11.9.64, p.8-B
(5) Miami Herald, 12.9.64, p.1-B

Beatles 1964 US Tour Part 4: Use Of An Anti-Jewish Slur

Larry Kane's tour memoir, Ticket To Ride, contains an unsettling revelation about the use of the word 'kike' by a Beatle in 1964. British journalist Ivor Davis summarized the incident here:

"I was sitting next to Jewish journalist Larry Kane on the plane and he got upset when he heard the word 'kike' coming from where The Beatles were sitting.

"I challenged Derek Taylor as to who it was, even though I knew it was John.

"He had a very black sense of humour - I remember being in a hotel suite with him while he performed Hitler salutes. It peed Brian off and he used to tell him off.

"I know it sounds as though John was antisemitic, but I don't think he was - he just satirised, rather wickedly, whatever he fancied."

Kane gave this account in an article for Esquire in 2014:

Another time, we were flying to Seattle and I sat about five rows from where they were in the back and I heard someone say the word kike. I don't know what made me do this, but some things sort of make you explode. So I got up, went to the back, and said, "I'm not going to take that kind of shit." I know they weren't talking about me, but I grew up in a very bigoted environment in southwest Miami and I was unhappy. So I went back to my seat and everybody on the plane was like, "Oh my God, what's going on?" John, George, and Ringo each individually came up to me and sort of leaned down and explained they were being silly and apologized. Paul came by and said, "You okay?" I still felt weird about it days later.

Interestingly, Kane feels that this helped his bond with Taylor and The Beatles. Immediately after he had complained on the plane, Lennon made amends:

we had a relaxed and compassionate conversation about the roots of prejudice in Liverpool. It was a good talk. As we spoke, Ringo and George walked by. Ringo gave a wink, and George just said, "How you doing, Larry?" Paul didn’t make a special trip. He did pass by on the way to the bathroom and said, "Great working with you, Larry." It was, I interpreted, his way of smoothing the episode over. I felt good, but still self-conscious that I had responded so aggressively. Whatever the roots of the prejudice, and whatever the reasons someone had spoken that word, I knew I would never hear it again for the remainder of the tour. And this incident did something else; it showed me that the Beatles possessed genuine compassion and feeling [Kane, Larry. A Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles' 1964 Tour That Changed the World (Kindle Locations 687-693). Dynamic Images, Inc.. Kindle Edition]. 

On Taylor, he reveals that:

Two years later, Derek, who was by then the former Beatles press secretary (he was released after the 1964 tour by Brian Epstein), accompanied another rock group, the Byrds, on a publicity tour to Miami. At a private dinner with me, he brought up the subject. I had long forgotten, but Derek had not. He confirmed that he wasn’t the one who had said the word and that the boys had been embarrassed. When I asked him who’d said it, he changed the subject. 

He concludes:

In a strange way, this episode added to the familiarity developing between the Beatles and me. Certainly such episodes weren’t the best way to get acquainted, but sometimes adversity can bring people closer [Kane, Kindle Locations 695-699].

Lennon had a tendency to take his anger and sense of humour out on Jews up to his death. In his December 1970 interview with Jann Wenner, Lennon said, "Eastman is a Wasp Jew, man, and that’s the worst kind of person on earth." In his September 1980 Playboy interview, he jests about the "Jewish schmaltz" of Sid Bernstein and jokes to Yoko about the time "when you went to the meeting with the ten Jewish lawyers wearing an Arab headdress that we brought back from the pyramids (Sheff, pages 12 and 79)." However, I am inclined to agree with Ivor Davis that, rather than being antisemitic, Lennon "just satirised, rather wickedly, whatever he fancied."

Beatles 1964 US Tour Part 3: Las Vegas, 20.8.64

 The background to the booking of this leg of the tour has been provided by John Romero:

When I asked Sahara Director of Entertainment Stan Irwin how he won the Beatles, he gave me one of those professional looks and said, “Simple.” And it was—if you had his straight ahead gut instinct. Here’s Stan the Man to tell you the whole story:   

“There was a guy named Roy Gerber, a theatrical agent based in New York. He was also my agent when I did standup comedy. Roy represented the General Artists Corporation, which no longer exists, and he was always scrambling around looking for clients.  

“So GAC got word to Roy that the Beatles wanted to see Las Vegas and play a date there, and he and his partner, Norman Weis, grabbed the next plane. Roy once had a Las Vegas office and knew all the right people in the entertainment business.  

“When booking agents came to Las Vegas in those days (1964) they’d start with the closest hotel to the airport and work north down the Strip. So from the Tropicana on, Roy and Norm worked the major casinos. Later they told me they got the same answer everywhere—only a handful of talent bookers had ever heard of the Beatles. Crazy, isn’t it? The Beatles played the Ed Sullivan TV show in February, just four months earlier, and 73 million people watched them. Or maybe it was 73 million kids. Anyway, Roy and Norm talked to Desert Inn publicist Gene Murphy, who told them there was a new young guy at the Sahara who might be interested. I was that ‘new young guy.’ 

“I’d been a standup comic at the old Club Bingo in 1949. Then they put me in charge of entertainment, publicity, promotion and advertising. So when the Bingo was rebuilt and named the Sahara in l952, they asked me to come back as the entertainment director—and I accepted.  

“When Roy came in and mentioned the Beatles, I said ‘British guys, pretty good,’ and I thought he’d fall over. After a few seconds I said okay, I’ll take them, but I want them for two shows. And since the boys seldom worked two shows in a night, Roy had to do some convincing. Finally the Beatles agreed.  

“I’d been thinking of putting them in our main showroom, the Congo Room, but it held just 600 and there was no way to get any more seats in the place. I said, Hold it, these guys belong in the Convention Center, and I rushed over there to check the seating. They told me they could put 7,000 a show in the rotunda. I said that was still too small, and asked for the balcony, too. They agreed, and that pushed the total seating for each show to 8,408." 

Romero, John. Las Vegas, the Untold Stories: ...That Made Sin City the Entertainment Capital of the World (Kindle Locations 1583-1603). Abbott Press. Kindle Edition. 

Did this perhaps make the venue unsafe? According to Mitch McGeary's website:

8,408 people were put in an Arena designed to hold 7,500 people per show. Patrons were put behind the stage to make this possible, and the fire laws were taken to the Nth degree as far as spacing between aisles and seating.

One of the inducements for the Beatles to come to Las Vegas was that they wanted to see Las Vegas. What they saw was the airport, a limousine, a hotel, the Convention Center, the hotel, a limousine, and the airport. Because the Beatles wouldn't be seeing any of Las Vegas, slot machines were brought up to their suite for them. It wasn't a manner of win or lose, they just wanted to see what it was like.

Newspaper reports give details of The Beatles' arrival (1):

Unknown to The Beatles, the authorities received a bomb threat (2)

On payment, Romero says: “We paid them $25,000, priced the top ticket at $25 and the lowest price at $12.50. The Sahara netted $52,000 on ticket sales. Not bad for booking a group even our regular clientele had never heard of.” (Kindle Locations 1621-1623).

(1) Boston Globe, 20.08.64, p.27.

(2) Hanford Sentinel, 21.08.64, p.2.

Beatles 1964 US Tour Part 2: The "Prediction of Plane Crash" Story Debunked

Several books on The Beatles, including the memoirs of Ivor Davis and Larry Kane, repeat a story that "psychic" Jeane Dixon had forecast that the Beatles’ plane would crash on the flight out of Philadelphia on September 2, 1964. However, Dixon had already denied making such a prediction back in March. Her denial appeared in the first two pages of the San Francisco Examiner on March 26, 1964:

George Harrison's sister, Louise, later telephoned Dixon about the rumour and had been reassured that it was false. The San Francisco Examiner confirmed on September 3rd that this news had been passed on to the group:

For some reason, this news seems to have either never reached the journalists who were traveling with The Beatles, or passed on by the journalists to the public, so the story has been recycled ever since, even though a letter by Dixon to Louise had reportedly been on display in Louise's old house, as reported by the Chicago Tribune on Sunday 8 March 1998. Louise also printed the letter in her book, as discussed here.

Dixon herself is a curious figure. She claimed to have been born in 1918 but her actual year of birth was 1904. She was born Lydia M Pinckert in Medford, Wisconsin and raised on a dairy farm in Carthage, Missouri, which she left with her family in 1919, eventually settling in California. In 1922, she started calling herself Jeane Pinckert while working in a bank. In 1928 she married Charles Zuercher. He died in 1940. She then married James Lamb Dixon and started making predictions. Her first famous prediction was probably the the result of the 1948 Presidential election of that year. In 1973, Dixon’s real past and age are revealed by author Daniel St. Albin Greene in the National Observer.

Beatles 1964 US Tour Part 1: San Francisco, 19.8.64

 The group touched down at a special area near the airport at 6.24pm on Tuesday 18.8.64. They had aimed to greet fans in an area of the airport called 'Beatleville' but this plan was abandoned due to fears caused by the crush of fans. 19 people received first aid treatment in that area, often for fainting, such as shown in the following day's Press-Democrat (Santa Rosa, California), p.2:

Tickets for the concert at Cow Palace were mainly priced at $6.50. The brevity of The Beatles' set (29 minutes plus two interruptions caused by throwing of jelly beans) caused a complaint in the San Francisco Examiner of 20.08.64, p.1:

The Beatles met Shirley Temple Black backstage, the first of many encounters on the tour where celebrities would bring younger family members to meet the group (link); Ringo went out on the town with western actor Dale Robertson (Davis, p.170), where they visited the Rickshaw cocktail lounge, at 27 Ross Alley, operated by Mai Tai Sing (profile here and here), now a sewing factory. The group met Joan Baez for the first time (Davis, p. 167).

Larry Kane's memoir, Ticket To Ride, contains a horrific account of a young woman sustaining a broken leg. However, this does not appear in contemporary press reports, which stated only that "a girl was bruised".

The take was initially estimated at $90,000, later corrected to $91,670 (see this blog page).

The Beatles and "White Australia"

The report below from the Sydney Morning Herald, June 19, 19964, is interesting in showing The Beatles' interest in issues of racial discrimination at that time, a theme that would resurface in the USA three months later

It is also worth noting that the White Australia policy, which had been introduced in 1901 to exclude people from Australia's neighbouring Asian countries (especially China), was nearing the end of its life at this point. It was effectively terminated in March 1966. The main factor in ending the policy was Australia's increasing dependence on global public opinion and economic pressure. The Beatles tour of 1964 made a contribution to that, spreading a form of music largely invented by African-Americans and allowing The Beatles to speak freely in press conferences.

Rory Storm Coroner Verdict

Rory's cause of death has sometimes been reported, including by his biographer, as an accidental overdose. However, this report makes clear that the coroner concluded that it was a suicide pact with his mother. Rory's biographer* states that "A verdict of accidental death was recorded for Rory" but the report below from the Liverpool Echo dated 7, November, 1972, refutes this:

*Hogan, Anthony. From a Storm to a Hurricane: Rory Storm & The Hurricanes. Amberley Publishing. Kindle Edition, Location 2009.